WOMEN ON THE HOME FRONT:

FAMILY SAGA 4-BOOK COLLECTION

LONDON BELLES by Annie Groves

PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES by Pam Weaver

CORONATION DAY by Kay Brelland

and

THE WAR WIDOWS by Leah Fleming

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

London Belles

Pack Up Your Troubles

Coronation Day

The War Widows

Copyright

About the Publisher

ANNIE GROVES

London Belles

I’d like to dedicate this book to all those who throughout WW2 made do,

mended and somehow kept together the fabric of everyday life.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Part One: August 1939

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Part Two: June 1940

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Annie Groves

Copyright

Part One

August 1939

Chapter One

‘So what are you going to do now that old Bert has finally gone, Olive? I mean, you won’t have his pension any more, will you? Your Tilly might be working up at the hospital as an assistant to the Lady Almoner, but I dare say she isn’t bringing in very much,’ Nancy Black sniffed.

As Olive knew, Nancy had a keen interest in the business of her neighbours and an even keener nose for ‘problems’ of any kind. She was the kind of person who liked spreading doom and gloom; the kind of person who would complain about the noise children made playing innocently together in the street and then go on to extol the virtues of her own daughter and only child. Some people were inclined to call her a bit of a troublemaker but Olive always tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.

The afternoon sunshine sparkled on the immaculately clean windows of Article Row, the narrow byway that wound between the close interweaving of London streets, within the boundaries of Chancery Lane to the west, Farringdon Road to the east, Fleet Street to the south and from High Holborn to Holborn Viaduct to the north.

Nancy stood, leaning on the broom with which she had been sweeping the short path to her front door whilst she waited for Olive’s answer to her original question about the loss of her father-inlaw’s pension.

The row of fifty narrow three-storey houses, with the addition of their attics and cellars, clinging together as though for mutual protection, had been built, so it was said, by a wealthy East India merchant in the seventeen hundreds, whose fortune had been saved for him by the keen eye of a poor articled clerk working for a pittance for his lawyer. In recognition of his good fortune the East India merchant had had Article Row built, with the houses in it to be rented out for peppercorn rents to help the struggling. After he had lost his money in the South Sea Bubble débâcle, his estate, including the Article Row houses, had been sold, as a result of which Article Row was one of the few places in Holborn where an ordinary working-class family man bringing in a steady wage might buy his own home. Separated by class and stature from the inhabitants of the Inns of Court, and artistic, some said slightly louche Bloomsbury beyond, and by respectability from their poorer neighbours towards the East End and the river, Article Row was a world almost unto itself, its inhabitants living by their own set of rules and observances, one of which was that a front path must always be spotless.

Across the road from the front of the houses were the blank windowless high walls of a succession of buildings that housed various small businesses, some of which employed inhabitants of the Row. These ivy-covered brick walls gave the Row a vague semirural aspect, much cherished by some of the long-standing residents, who felt that Article Row being one single row of houses gave it a special air of gentility.

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that, and what I’ve a mind to do is take in lodgers.’ Olive looked her neighbour firmly in the eye as she delivered this information. Married at eighteen, widowed a year later when her husband, weakened by the dreadful rigours of the First World War had died from TB, Olive had learned as a young wife how to deal tactfully but firmly with bossy members of her own sex.

Olive had spent all her adult life living under the roof of her husband’s parents, who had taken them in when Jim, their only child, had been poorly, and Olive and Jim’s daughter, Tilly, only a baby. Although Olive would never have said so to anyone, especially a gossipy and sometimes forthright neighbour like Nancy, it hadn’t been easy for her, left motherless at sixteen, and an only child herself, to deal with a strong-willed mother-in-law who adored her only son. Olive’s mother-in-law had not been above hinting that Olive had seized her chance to improve her lot in life by marrying her son, and that that marriage had drained him of what strength he had left, thus hastening his death.

Jim, though – dear kind, gentle person that he had been – had always sworn that their love for one another had given him strength and the desire to hold on to life, especially once he knew that there was to be a baby. How he had loved Tilly. And his mother had softened towards Olive once she had become a grandmother.

Olive had repaid her in-laws’ kindness by nursing first her mother-in-law through ill health to her death, and then more recently her father-in-law, Bert.

A better daughter-in-law than Olive it would be impossible to find, her late mother-in-law had been given to saying in her later years.

‘Lodgers?’ Nancy queried sharply now, breaking into Olive’s thoughts, her narrow face beneath her greying hair taking on an expression of pursed-lipped disapproval. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. That’s not the kind of thing we do round here. I don’t want to disappoint you, Olive, especially with you needing to replace Bert’s pension – after all, no one can live on fresh air – but I’d think twice if I were you. After all, you don’t want people thinking you’re lowering the tone. Of course, if you was to think of selling the house, then I reckon that my daughter and her husband might be willing to take it off your hands.’

Aware that Nancy was trying to manipulate her, Olive smiled pleasantly and pointed out, ‘There’s plenty of houses in the Row already owned by a landlord and rented out.’

‘Yes, but they’re respectable types. After all, most of them work in the civil service for the Government, and they’re decent families who rent the whole house, not just a room. You get all sorts when you just let out a room: young men – and young women – behaving like they shouldn’t. There could be all sorts of goings-on going on.’ Nancy sniffed again, her pursed mouth becoming even more prune-like with disapproval. ‘Anyway, I don’t know how you could take in lodgers, seeing as you’ve only got two bedrooms, same as the rest of us, and there’s you and Tilly living there already.’

‘There’s the attics: that makes two more,’ Olive pointed out calmly. ‘I’ve made up my mind to give it a try, Nancy. Like you said, our Tilly doesn’t bring in that much.’

‘You could go back cleaning, like you did before Bert got took bad. There’s still plenty staying on in the Inns of Court, despite all this talk of war.’

‘Well, that’s another thing, Nancy,’ Olive responded, playing her trump card. ‘Tilly’s been telling me that the Lady Almoner, up the hospital, has been saying that if there is a war then anyone with spare rooms is going to have to take in other folk on the Government’s orders, and to my way of thinking it’s better that I let my rooms now whilst I’ve still got a chance to choose who I have living in them.’

For a few seconds Nancy was silent. But never one to give up on an argument she wanted to win, she announced triumphantly, ‘Well, I’m not saying that I don’t admire you for thinking of it, but you’ll have to be careful, you not having a man around. You don’t want the wrong sort. Like I said before, this is a respectable street and you’ll have some saying they don’t want anyone lowering the tone.’

Yes, and you’d be one of the first to complain, Olive thought wryly.

Nancy shook her head. ‘And as for there being a war, well, I’m telling you now there won’t be one. It’s all just talk, you mark my words.’

‘I hope you’re right, Nancy,’ Olive answered quietly.

Olive knew perfectly well that her plans to let out her spare bedrooms to bring in the money they would need to live on now that her father-in-law had died, and his pension with him, would be all over the street within a couple of hours. It was all right for Nancy, Olive thought wryly. She had a husband who brought in a good wage from his work at a factory where they made artificial limbs, close to Barts Hospital, a business that had boomed, thanks to the Great War. Of course, Nancy would have been delighted if she could have persuaded her to sell her house to Nancy’s daughter, who was married with a child of her own, Olive knew. But Olive loved the neat little house in Article Row she had inherited from her father-inlaw, and had no intention of selling it.

‘So how are you going to get these lodgers then?’ Nancy wanted to know, obviously still eager to disapprove of Olive’s plan.

‘I’ve thought of putting a notice in the papers, and probably in the bakery, if Mrs Macharios will let me.’

‘The bakery? But that’s run by them Greek foreigners. We don’t want any of them coming living here in Article Row, thank you very much.’

Olive suppressed a small sigh. She liked the Greek family – members of Holborn’s Greek Cypriot community – who owned and ran the small bakery two streets away.

‘The Macharioses aren’t just foreigners, Nancy, they are refugees. And very nice and pleasant they are too. Besides, you won’t get any of their girls wanting lodgings, because they are very strict with them and keep them at home until they get married, you know that.’

Nancy gave another sniff. ‘Refugees, is it? We’ve got a sight too many of them already without getting involved in a war with Hitler that will bring in some more.’

Olive kept her peace. She suspected that in the eyes of most of the other inhabitants of Article Row, she herself was something of a ‘refugee and a foreigner’ since she had not been born and brought up in the area. She personally liked the mix of people living in the small houses that filled the narrow backstreets of the area: Greeks, Italians, Jewish people, flood tides of the lost and desperate, washed up by the Thames and left to make lives for themselves as best they could, clustered together in their small communities, clinging to the ways of the countries and homes they had left.

Nancy’s sharp tongue, though, was a small price to pay for the pleasure of living in Article Row, Olive admitted half an hour later as she poured boiling water onto the tea leaves she had spooned into her warmed teapot. Olive’s kitchen was her pride and joy. The upstairs of the house was filled with the heavy late-Victorian furniture that her in-laws had inherited from their parents, but after her mother-in-law’s death, Bert had allowed Olive to modernise the kitchen and the front room, even paying for the new gas oven, and the coal-fuelled stove, which not only heated the kitchen but provided hot water as well.

In addition to her gas oven, Olive had a whole wall filled with cupboards just like some she’d seen in the newspaper that had seen on display at the Modern Homes Show. Bert had always had an eye for a bargain and a clever tongue for getting himself a good deal, and he had bartered with a friend of a friend who worked at a wood yard, and who knew someone who could knock up the cupboards for them at a quarter of the price of some fancy factory.

Olive had painted them herself, a really pretty duck-egg blue, which went with the kitchen’s cream walls, and the curtains of pale blue, apple green and white gingham. Ever so proud of her kitchen, she was. Her heart swelled with pride every time she walked into it. From the stone sink under the window she could look out into the garden – a long narrow strip, at the bottom of which was the blank brick wall that separated her garden from that of the house beyond. The floor of Olive’s kitchen was covered in a good practical mosaic-patterned linoleum that didn’t show the dirt. Not that there was any dirt on Olive’s kitchen floor – certainly not. She swept and washed it every single day. Very house proud, Olive was, putting her back into whatever task she took on. That was something that, like her domestic skills, she had learned from the grandmother, who had taken her in after her mother had died and her father had then disappeared from her life. Not been very lucky in their dads she and her Tilly hadn’t. But she’d been determined right from the start to make sure that her daughter had the very best mum she could possibly have and that she would grow up knowing how loved she was.

That was why, over the years, Olive had gently but determinedly turned down several men who had tried to court her, some perhaps for her own sake, but some, she suspected, because of what they had hoped she would bring them, be it a good housewife and a stepmother for their children or, in one or two cases, the hope of the inheritance she might one day get from her in-laws. Well, that day had now come and if there was one thing that Olive was determined on it was that she wasn’t going to have any man coming along and disrupting her routine or her life.

It was ten to five. Tilly would be home soon. Tonight, after they’d had their tea and listened to the news, they could sit down together and talk about her plan to let their spare bedrooms.

‘Come on, Tilly, it’s finishing time. Thank heavens. I’ve never known the Lady Almoner be as sharp as she was today. We’ve got more than enough work on our hands here without her giving us even more,’ Clara Smith grumbled as both girls pulled the covers onto their typewriters, the office clock having reached five o’clock.

Clara and Tilly were the most junior members of the Lady Almoner’s office staff, Clara being the previous ‘dog’s body’, as she referred to Tilly’s role, before Tilly herself had been taken on. Clara was just coming up for nineteen, whilst Tilly was just a few weeks short of her seventeenth birthday.

‘We can’t blame her for us having to type up all these new lists,’ Tilly pointed out patiently. ‘The Hospital will need them if there’s a war and patients have to be moved.’

‘A war. I’m sick and tired of all this talk about a war,’ Clara complained, ‘and all these things the Government keep making us do, like buying blackout material, having to have gas masks, putting up Anderson shelters, and the like. My dad’s only gone and joined the local ARP, and with all the drills we’re having to do here anyone would think we were at war already.’

‘I know,’ Tilly agreed, ‘but the Hospital hasn’t stopped making plans in case there is a war, no one has, and the Government has said that if Hitler invades Poland, they won’t stand for it.’

The girls looked at each other in bleak and sober silence, their shared apprehension showing in their tense expressions.

‘They’re still calling up the lads for that six months’ National Service training,’ Clara admitted reluctantly. ‘My Harry’s had his notification.’

In April the Government had passed a law to make it obligatory for all young men of twenty and twenty-one to undergo six months’ military training.

Clara tossed her head so determinedly that her carefully curled brown hair bounced.

‘Well, I know one thing,’ she announced. ‘If there is to be a war, my Harry better look smart and get an engagement ring on my finger before it starts. Him and me are going to the Hammersmith Palais tonight, seeing as it’s a Friday. Are you doing anything?’

Tilly shook her head. Her mother considered her too young to go out dancing at places like the Hammersmith Palais, which was where all the boys went to size up the girls.

Five minutes later, on her way down the staircase of St Barts’ main hall, Tilly paused as she always did, unable to stop herself from gazing in awe at the paintings. It had been Clara who had told her importantly during her first week at Barts that the Biblical murals had been painted by William Hogarth and were over a hundred and fifty years old. But that was nowhere near as old as the hospital itself. Barts had been the very first hospital to be established in London, though the original buildings had been replaced in the eighteenth century. Tilly marvelled to think how old the hospital was: hundreds of years. She had found the sheer size of the place a bit overwhelming at first, and feared getting lost whenever she was sent to one of the wards to get the details of a patient from the sister there, but she could find her way around with relative ease now.

Tilly felt that she was very lucky to be working at St Barts, which had a special place in the hearts of Londoners, and whose nurses liked to claim was London’s very best hospital. And to be working for the Lady Almoner too. There was never a day when Tilly didn’t think gratefully of her old headmistress, who had recommended her for the job, her being a second cousin or something of the Lady Almoner. Miss Moss, her headmistress, had come to number 13 Article Row herself to tell them about the job. Tilly’s eyes filled with tears now when she remembered the happiness and pride she had seen on her mother’s face when Miss Moss had told them that she considered Tilly to be the right kind of person for the job, because she had been a good hard-worker at school, clean and neat, with a sensible head on her shoulders, and Miss Moss knew that her mother had sent her off to learn shorthand and typing after she had left school instead of her having to get a job in a factory. Tilly hadn’t really known what a hospital Lady Almoner was but Miss Moss had explained that it was someone who was in charge of the social care of a hospital’s patients – everything from finding out who a patient’s relatives were, if they came into hospital because of an accident, to making arrangements for a patient to be looked after properly at home once they were discharged. From making up and sending out bills, to dealing with all those charities and insurance companies who provided funds for patients and their health care – running the Almoner’s office, Miss Moss had explained, involved an awful lot of administration work, the kind of work for which Tilly, with her shorthand and typing skills, would be ideally suited.

Tilly knew she would never forget how hard her mother had worked to get the money together for her secretarial school lessons, taking in laundry and sometimes even cleaning rooms at the nearby Inns of Court.

Tilly was proud of her mother and she knew that her mother was proud of her. Having pride in yourself and your work was something her mother had taught her from an early age. Tilly and her mother were much closer than many of the girls she had been at school with were to their mothers, but then those girls had had siblings, and . . . and fathers. Tilly caught her breath. She had never known her own father, just as she had never known what it was to be part of a large family.

The hall was busy with comings and goings, nurses in their crisp uniforms walking at that swift pace that nurses had, that was almost as fast as running but without actually doing so, porters pushing patients in wheelchairs, doctors, white coats flapping, heads down, one hand clasping papers, stethoscopes round their necks, Consultants, in their smart suits and their bow ties, and, of course, the patients themselves.

All sorts came to St Barts to be treated, from the poorest to the wealthiest, and Tilly’s heart swelled with joy at being part of such a wonderful organisation, with its proud history of caring for those in need.

As she passed under the main entrance to the hospital she hesitated and then turned back to look at the painted head of Henry the Eighth, before joining the teeming mass of Londoners homeward bound after their day’s work.

* * *

Tilly wasn’t the only one passing through Barts’ main hallway to pause and consider the history of the ancient building and all that it stood for.

Sally Johnson paused too, still acutely conscious of her new Barts uniform, with its distinctive high nurse’s hat. She still half expected to look down and see that she was wearing her old and dearly familiar Liverpool hospital uniform. She could feel forbidden tears pressing against her eyeballs, her eyes themselves gritty and tired, and not just from the long shift she had just worked. She missed Liverpool, her home city, so very much. She missed the smell of its salt air, the sound of its voices, the humour of its citizens, the familiarity of its places and faces . . . She felt . . . she felt like an outcast, alien, a person cut adrift from all that mattered most to her, but she had had no choice other than to leave. She couldn’t have stayed. Not after what had happened. Not after such a betrayal. The very thought of it caused her pain as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel felt, but without the comfort of anaesthetic. That it should have been her best friend who was responsible for her agony only made the pain harder to bear.

Right now, though, instead of thinking about the past, she decided she should be thinking about the present and the future. She had been granted temporary accommodation in a nurses’ home close to the hospital, but as she was on only a short-term contract – she hadn’t decided yet whether or not she would stay in London – she needed to find lodgings reasonably close to the hospital. She was, though, Sally freely admitted, perhaps too particular about where she was prepared to live. In Liverpool she had lived at home as soon as her initial training had come to an end, and it would take somewhere very special indeed to come up to the high standards of cleanliness and comfort her mother had always maintained. A small spasm of pain tensed Sally’s body. Those at home in Liverpool who had known her as a happy, fun-loving, sociable girl who loved going dancing at Liverpool’s famous Grafton Ballroom, who was a keen tennis player and who had a wide circle of equally lively young friends of both sexes, would probably hardly recognise that Sally now in the withdrawn unhappy young woman she had become. Sometimes Sally barely recognised herself any more, she admitted, dragging her thoughts away from her own unhappiness to the miserable situation the country now faced.

In the event of the country going to war against Germany plans had already been made for most of the hospital staff and the patients to be moved out of London, partially for safety, and partially to make sure that there would be operating theatres and beds available for the injured should the city be bombed. Only a skeleton staff would remain here in London with Barts doctors and surgeons travelling between the evacuated patients in the country and the hospital here in the city. As a temporary member of Barts’ staff, Sally had volunteered to stay in London for the duration of her one-year contract. Right now she felt that she preferred the anonymity of working hard in a busy city where people came and went without their lives really touching, to making close friends.

It wasn’t easy, though, to think about making a new life and home for herself here in London when her heart yearned for Liverpool and her home. No, not her home any more. Her home, like her father, now belonged to someone else who had far stronger claim on them than she did, despite all the false protestations and pleas that had been made for her to stay.

Stay? When she had been so betrayed? Now she was going to cry . . .

She stared up at the Hogarth scenes as though in doing so she might be able to force back her emotions, oblivious to the fact that she herself was being watched until a quiet male voice beside her remarked, thoughtfully, ‘As a surgeon I can never pass this painting without reflecting on Hogarth’s skill in understanding the needs and desires of the human race.’

Sally whirled round, dumbstruck with chagrin at the familiar sound of the voice of one of the hospital’s most senior consultants, the world-famous plastic surgeon Sir Harold Delf Gillies. Sally recognised his voice so easily because only a matter of days ago she had been on theatre duty when the great man had operated for the benefit of his students on a young child with a hare lip. Now overcome with self-consciousness and the fact that so great a personage should deign to speak to her outside the operating theatre, she could only nod her head.

‘There is a great deal to be learned from history,’ Sir Harold continued. ‘It is said that when Hogarth learned that St Bartholomew’s Founders were going to engage an artist from overseas because they could not afford the fees of a British artist, he immediately offered to provide the hospital with two paintings free of cost, thus echoing the same charitable impulse that had led to the hospital coming into being in the first place, and possibly with the same practical eye for the future, knowing that just as the Founders’ charitable donations to the hospital would carry their names and their charity into the future, so his paintings would be here for us to see and marvel over. It is a foolish or perhaps overproud man – or woman – who does not sometimes reflect on how history will judge them.’

Knowing the pioneering work Sir Harold had undertaken, Sally could only swallow hard and nod again.

‘You have a natural bent for theatre work, Nurse, and I think the temperament for it.’

Sally was still trying to come to terms with the gift of his compliment several minutes after he had gone. Merely to have had the famous surgeon speak to her was more than any well-trained nurse ever expected, never mind being recognised by him and then praised for her ability.

It wasn’t so much Sir Harold’s praise that lingered on in her thoughts as she made her way to the nurses’ home where she was living, though, as much as his comment about how a person might be judged.

Did her father ever worry about how he might be judged? Did her ex-best friend?

‘Take in lodgers?’ Unwittingly repeating the words of their neighbour, Tilly stared at her mother in astonishment, over the deliciously scented and gently steaming serving of fish pie that Olive had just dished up for her.

Her mother was a wonderful cook, and even though they were C of E, not Catholic, they always had fish on Fridays. Fish pie with lovely creamy mash, parsley sauce and peas was one of Tilly’s favourite meals. Now, looking at her mother, her shiny almost black curls – which Tilly had inherited from her, along with her sea-green eyes and pale Celtic skin – caught back in a neat bun, a faint flush warming her skin, Tilly felt the urge to protest that she didn’t want them to have any lodgers, and that she had been looking forward to it just being the two of them after the long years of her mother nursing her in-laws.

But before she could do so her mother told her gently, as though she knew what she was feeling, ‘We have to, Tilly, love. Bills don’t pay themselves, you know, and without your granddad’s pension coming in, I’d have to go back to cleaning or taking in washing, and I reckon that I’d be better taking in lodgers than doing that.’

‘But it will mean you looking after them, Mum, just like you did with Gran and Granddad.’

Olive shook her head, dislodging a small curl from her bun, which she tucked back behind her ear. At thirty-five, her figure as neat as it had been the day she’d met Tilly’s father, she was glad that Tilly had inherited her own looks from the Irish side of her family, and her own trim figure with them. Though with that kind of beauty, Olive would never want Tilly to use her looks in the cheap kind of way that some young women did. A pretty face could bring trouble on a girl who didn’t stick to society’s rules. Even here, on respectable Article Row, there had been daughters who had been married with unseemly haste, and babies born ‘at seven months’ whilst weighing as much as any full-term infant. Not that Olive was in any hurry to see Tilly married. Her own experience as a young wife, a young mother and then a young widow meant she felt it was more important right now that Tilly was equipped with the means of earning her own living because you never knew what the future might hold. Of course, Olive would never share those views with anyone else. Good mothers were expected to want good marriages for their daughters, not financial independence.

‘No, what I’m thinking, Tilly, is advertising only for respectable female lodgers, young women who will keep their rooms tidy and look after them.’

‘But we’ve only got two spare bedrooms.’

‘And an extra bathroom – don’t forget about that. I know I said at the time that I couldn’t see why your grandfather wouldn’t have his bed moved downstairs to the front parlour, which would have been much easier for me, but now I think having that will help us to get the right kind of young women wanting those attic rooms.’

Olive went over to her daughter, smoothing her curls back off her face and dropping a kiss on her forehead as she told her, ‘You’ll see, it will all work out for the best.’

‘But what if there’s a war, Mum, and the lodgers and us get evacuated?’

Olive’s expression firmed. ‘No one’s going to evacuate me from this house, Tilly, I can tell you that, and we don’t know yet that there will be a war.’

‘But what if there is?’ Tilly persisted. ‘I’m not a child any more, Mum. I read the papers and listen to the news. There’s all that blackout material you bought for us to cover the windows with, and our gas masks. No one’s said anything about us handing them back, have they? And boys are still having to do their military training. Clara in the office said only tonight that her Harry is going to be starting his soon. I don’t want you worrying about things and not telling me, Mum. I want to share them with you.’

Olive smiled both sadly and proudly, as she stroked the silky darkness of her daughter’s hair.

‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘You aren’t a little girl, you’re a young woman, Tilly, and if there’s to be a war, then we’ll deal with whatever it brings us together.’

They smiled at one another, and then Olive added briskly, ‘Meanwhile, as soon as we’ve finished eating and washed up, you and me are going to sit down and write out an advertisement to let the attic rooms. I was thinking that if you could get permission to type it on your typewriter at work then it would look properly businesslike and attract the right kind of lodger. Now eat your fish pie before it goes cold.’

Later that evening, in her bedroom, cold-creaming her face before she went to bed, Olive paused. There would be those Olive knew who would disapprove of her plans and even be opposed to them. A small tremble, part apprehension and part determination, ran through her body. Her father-in-law had been fond of boasting that he had got this house at a good price because of its number – thirteen. Thirteen was lucky for some, he had often said, giving a wink as he added, ‘Especially for those who have the good sense to make their own luck.’

Now with the respectable silence of the Row settling round its inhabitants, Olive hoped desperately that it would be lucky for her as well in her new venture. Because if it wasn’t then she would face having to sell the house, and she and Tilly would have to take a step down in the world.

Chapter Two

‘David, do come along, otherwise we’re going to be late meeting Emily and Jonathon at the Ritz.’ The sharp female voice was accompanied by an equally sharp and pointed glare in Dulcie’s direction, as the smartly dressed brunette placed a very possessive and expensively leather-gloved hand on the arm of the dashingly handsome man Dulcie had been flirting with from behind her makeup counter in Selfridges cosmetics and perfume department.

‘You’ll be for it now,’ Lizzie Walters came out from behind her own counter to inform Dulcie. ‘You know who she is, don’t you?’

‘No. And I don’t care either,’ Dulcie informed the other girl, tossing the blonde hair that swept down onto her shoulders as she did so, her attention more on her own reflection in the nearby mirror than on what Lizzie was saying to her. And hers was a reflection well worth any man’s second look, Dulcie knew. She was, after all, a looker. Everyone said so. It was her looks that had got her this very desirable job at the department store in the first place. Women customers looked at Dulcie’s flawless complexion, and the way in which the makeup she was wearing emphasised her dark brown eyes and her pouting lips, and wanted to look like her, whilst men listened mesmerised when Dulcie sprayed her wrist with scent and then invited them to ‘test’ the fragrance. It was perhaps no wonder that in the six months she had been working in Selfridges, Dulcie’s sales had earned her praise from their supervisor, but Dulcie herself had become unpopular with some of the other girls. Not Lizzie, though. Lizzie, small, plain and good-natured, worked on a counter selling bath salts, favoured by the store’s more elderly Home Counties customers.

‘Well, you should care,’ Lizzie warned, ‘because her dad’s one of the directors here. Arlene wot works on the Elizabeth Arden counter and whose dad is one of the managers is pally with her.’

Dulcie tossed her head again. ‘You mean that Arlene sucks up to her. Well, I’m not going to. And anyway, it’s not my fault that her beau was gentlemanly enough to pay me a compliment.’

Lizzie gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Wasn’t it? I mean, the way you put that lippy on yourself and then pouted at him like you did . . .’

‘I was just showing him how it looked on,’ Dulcie defended herself virtuously. ‘So who is he anyway, then?’

Lizzie knew everything about the store and those who worked there. She’d been there herself for over ten years, after all.

‘David James-Thompson, his name is, and he’s proper posh. Lydia Whittingham met him at a house party in Surrey, according to Arlene, and the talk is that she’s going to land him and that they’ll get engaged this Christmas.’

‘Well, good luck to her, but I can’t say as I’d want to get engaged to a chap who’s always going to have an eye for other girls and flirt with them.’

‘You encouraged him.’

‘He didn’t need encouraging; that kind never does,’ Dulcie retorted smugly. ‘You can take my word for it.’

It was true. One look into David James-Thompson’s laughing hazel eyes and she’d known exactly what sort he was. Her sort, with his good looks, his thick wavy brown hair, his dashing man-of-the-world air, and most of all the devilment she had seen glinting in his eyes when he had looked at her so appreciatively. Whatever else David James-Thompson was, it certainly wasn’t good marriage material.

‘I must say, I envy Lydia being taken to the Ritz,’ Lizzie continued.

‘Well, I don’t. If he was to ask me out, I’d want to go somewhere like the Hammersmith Palais where we could have a bit of fun, not the Ritz, with all those posh types and snobs.’

Lizzie laughed at her. ‘The Palais? You’d never get a man like him going somewhere like that.’

‘Want to bet?’ Dulcie challenged her. Everyone knew that the Hammersmith Palais was simply the best dancehall in London. That was why Dulcie was prepared to make the trek from the East End to Hammersmith every Saturday night, instead of going somewhere local.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Lizzie said, but Dulcie persisted.

‘Come on, bet you five bob I can get him to meet me at the Palais, and before Christmas.’

‘You’re never serious.’

‘I certainly am.’ It was just the sort of challenge that Dulcie loved; daring, reckless, breaking the rules, pushing against boundaries, and using her looks to get her own way.

Born into a noisy cockney family, with an elder brother and a younger sister, Dulcie had learned young that she had to fight and use what nature had given her to get what she wanted, and to hang on to it once she had.

Two hours later Dulcie had left Selfridges and Oxford Street behind her, along with her white overall with its pink collar and trimmings. An admiring look from a motorist in a rakish-looking soft-topped car had her pausing to admire her reflection in a nearby shop window, and reflect that the bows she had added to the dress she was wearing, and which she had had copied by a local dressmaker from her own sketches of a dress in Selfridges Young Ladies Models Department looked much fancier than the original. The dress had small puffed sleeves and a close-fitting bodice, the bows adorning the ends of the long seams that ran from the bust down to below the waist. The fabric – silk, no less – had a dark plum background and was covered in a pansy print in a variety of hues from pale lilac through off-white to darkest purple – colours that suited her dark eyes and nicely tanned arms and legs, as well, of course, as drawing attention to her blonde hair.

White opened-toed high-heeled sandals and a white handbag completed her outfit, and Dulcie wasn’t in the least bit surprised that men turned to look at her and other women cast her assessing and very often antagonistic looks. She was nineteen now and she’d known from being fourteen that she was a head-turner. She’d had more boys asking her for dates than any of the other girls in the bustling street where her family lived, but Dulcie wasn’t daft. They could take her out but they weren’t going to take her for a ride. There was no way that she was going to end up married to some no-hoper and a new baby on the way every year, like the girls she’d been at school with and her own mother. She would marry one day, of course – every woman had to have a husband to keep her – but first she wanted to have fun. And fun for Dulcie was flirting and dressing up and going out to the pictures, or a dance hall. Once she agreed to be someone’s steady girl, all that would have to come to an end, and she wasn’t ready for that – not yet.

Gleefully she imagined her triumph when she won her bet with Lizzie. A double triumph since in achieving it she would be getting the better of Miss Hoity-Toity, with her stuck-up airs and graces. Dulcie had no doubts about the success of her plan. David James-Thompson would come back to the shop. She knew men and she knew what that gleam in his eyes had meant. He was up for some fun and so was she, although their ideas of what fun was might not be exactly the same. There was no way she would let him get into her knickers. She wasn’t daft. He was the sort that would run a mile if he thought he’d got her sort into trouble. But that wasn’t going to happen.

She joined the queue waiting for the bus that would take her home to Stepney in the East End. Her father worked in the building trade as a plumber, and the family had a better standard of living than many of their neighbours, with a whole house to themselves, though Dulcie and her sister had to share a room and a bed.

When she did get married she wasn’t going to be like her mother and have three children – six, if you counted the three that had died before being born. Dulcie didn’t really want any children at all.

The bus was crowded and Dulcie had to stand, strap hanging and receiving an admiring look from the young conductor, who had to squeeze past her as he collected everyone’s fares, whilst the bus lurched away from the kerb and pulled out into the traffic.

Dulcie was glad when the bus finally reached her stop and she was able to get off. There’d been an old man coughing away the whole time Dulcie had been standing close to him. A really poor sort he’d looked too, smelling of drink and his clothes shabby. Dulcie wrinkled her nose as she left the bus stop.

There was a pub on the corner of the street up ahead of her. Automatically Dulcie crossed the road to avoid having to walk past the group of men and women standing outside it. There were two families in their street who were notorious for the rows and fights they had when they’d been drinking. The Hitchins at number 4 and the Abbotts at number 9. It was nothing unusual to see both husbands and wives sporting bruises and black eyes. Ma Hitchins, all twenty stone of her, loved nothing better than a good set-to, rolling up her sleeves at the drop of a wrong word, ready to go into battle, and her children, as thin and cowed as she was fat and aggressive, knew better than to approach their mother when she’d had a few drinks. ‘Poor little ragamuffins’ was what Dulcie’s own mother called them.

The house Dulcie’s parents rented was halfway down the street at number 11. Cheaply built and mean-looking, the houses cast shadows over the street that stole its sunlight.

The street was busy with its normal early evening summer life; children playing with hoops and balls, grandmothers sitting on front steps and gossiping, men returning home from work. Dulcie knew everyone who lived there and they knew her.

‘Fancy going down the pictures tonight, Dulce?’ one of a group of young men called out to her as he sat astride his bike, smoking a cigarette.

‘Not with you and them roving hands of yours, I don’t, Jimmy Watson,’ Duclie called back without stopping.

She and Jimmy Watson had gone to school together, and he was a friend of her older brother, Rick.

‘Heard the news, have you?’ Jimmy carried on undeterred. ‘About me and your Rick getting our papers.’

‘So what’s news about that?’ Dulcie challenged him ‘Every lad’s getting called up.’ She had reached her own front door now, which, like most of the doors in the street, was standing open.

‘It’s me, Ma,’ she called out from the hall.

‘About time. I need a hand here in the kitchen, Dulcie, getting tea ready.’

‘It’s Edith’s turn. And besides, I’ve got to go upstairs and get changed.’

Edith and Dulcie didn’t get on. Edith had aspirations to become a professional singer. She did have a goodish voice, Dulcie acknowledged grudgingly, but that was no reason for their mother to spoil and pet her in the way that she did, letting her off chores so that she could ‘practise’ singing her scales. Dulcie suspected that Edith was very much their mother’s favourite.

‘She’s got an audition tonight, down at the Holborn Empire, and with Charlie Kunz, as an understudy for one of his singers,’ her mother told Dulcie importantly. Charlie Kunz was a very well-known musician and band leader, who had made many records.

Dulcie, though, refused to be impressed, puckering up her lips to study her reflection in the small mirror incorporated into the dark-oak-stained hat and coat stand. That new lipstick sample she was wearing suited her a real treat. She’d have to find a way of making sure it got ‘lost’ and then found its way into her handbag, she decided, giving her full cherry-red lips another approving look.

Everyone at home had laughed at her when she had first announced that she wanted to work in the makeup department of Selfridges.

‘You’ll never get taken on by a posh place like that,’ her mother had warned her. ‘If you want fancy shop work then why not ask Mr Bryant at the chemist’s if he’ll take you on?’

‘Work in that musty old place, handing out aspirin and haemorrhoid cream? No, thanks. I will get a job at Selfridges, just you watch.’

And of course she had, even if it had taken her six months of persistence to do so, first turning up and hanging about chatting with the cleaners and the like, finding out what was what and, more importantly, who was who.

Once she’d got all the information she needed, the rest had been easy. Ignoring the disapproving looks of the female lift attendants in their dashing Cossack-style uniforms, every day for a week she’d ‘accidentally’ ridden up in the lift with the manager of the ground-floor cosmetics department, on his way to have his morning coffee in the managerial restaurant, until, via a carefully planned process of acknowledging his presence with a shy smile, through to a welcoming smile that lit up her whole face, he finally asked her which department she worked in. That had been her cue to explain, fake modestly, using the ‘posh voice’ she had learned to mimic, that she didn’t actually have a job at Selfridges, and that she rode in the lift every day hoping to pluck up the courage to put herself forward for one.

The manager had been totally taken in. Her pretty face and perfect skin would be a definite asset to his department. Dulcie had been whisked through the formalities of becoming an employee, but although she might have charmed and taken in the manager, the girls she worked with were not as easily won over. Middle-class girls in the main, and protective of their own status, they were quick to sense that Dulcie was not really one of them. It wasn’t just because they thought of her as lower class that they kept her at a distance, though. In Dulcie’s eyes the truth was that it was because she was by far and away the best-looking girl on the whole of the cosmetics floor. Not that their hostility bothered her. She had wangled things so that her counter, the ‘Movie Star’ range of makeup, was almost the first that people – men – saw when they walked onto the floor, which meant that she got plenty of customers. Traditionally, Selfridges had its perfume counters close to the main doors on Mr Selfridge’s instructions, so that customers coming in would receive a delicious waft of perfume. The idea was that this would tempt them to the counter to buy, as well as adding to the allure and exclusivity of the store itself.

It wasn’t just her pretty face that kept Dulcie’s sales up, though. She knew how to sell, and how to make ‘her’ customers want to come back to her. The reality may be that ‘Movie Star’ makeup was made in a factory not very far away at all from Smithfield Market, but its management, like Dulcie herself, were determined to ensure that their cosmetics reflected the glamour of Hollywood films and encouraged customers to think that by buying it they too could look like their favourite movie star – or, failing that, the pretty girl who had sold them their precious new lipstick. The manager was very pleased with his decision to take her on, and Dulcie was equally pleased with her own success. Even the senior buyer for the cosmetics floor, Miss Nellie Ellit, had made it her business to seek Dulcie out and give her the once-over. It was thanks to Miss Ellit that Selfridges was well stocked with lipsticks ahead of war potentially breaking out, with more orders soon to be delivered.

So much for her brother, Rick’s, teasing that the only job she was likely to get in Selfridges was scrubbing its floors.

Dulcie headed for the kitchen. Unlike some in the area, who only had a couple of rooms to house a whole family and so had to buy hot food from one of the many small shops in the area, Mary Simmonds had her own kitchen. Today the kitchen smelled of cooking fish, making Dulcie wrinkle up her nose. Now that she was working at Selfridges she had a good dinner there in the canteen, and so she wasn’t particularly hungry.

‘Rick called by Billingsgate on his way home and brought back with him a nice piece of hake,’ her mother told her.

‘I passed Jimmy on my way home. He said that him and Rick had got their papers,’ Dulcie informed her mother.

‘That’s right,’ Mary agreed. ‘I don’t know why they’re making them all do this training when there isn’t supposed to be going to be a war.’ She was frowning now.

Dulcie knew, from the photographs of her as a young girl, that her mother had once been pretty, but now she was thin, and her hair turning grey, and her frown was caused by her anxiety for Rick and what might happen to him if there was a war.

The Government had bombarded them all with that many leaflets and warnings about blacking out windows, getting fitted for gas masks, children being evacuated to the country, not to mention filling the streets with sandbags and the parks with trenches, and setting up Air Raid Precaution posts all over the place, but at the same time the Prime Minister had said that they weren’t going to go to war with Germany.

Germany was going to war with other countries, though, and now the same Prime Minister who had said there would not be a war was saying that if Germany went ahead and invaded Poland then Britain simply wouldn’t stand for it. Dulcie didn’t think she trusted Germany – or the Prime Minister.

‘Come on, Dulcie,’ her mother instructed sharply now. ‘Get that oilcloth on the table and get the table laid, will you? I’m in a bit of a rush tonight, what with Edith upstairs getting ready for her audition. It’s lucky that Rick’s around to go with her because your dad would never have let her go on her own.’

‘Not in my good frock, Mum. I’ll have to get changed first,’ Dulcie protested.

Although her mother sighed, she didn’t argue, but then, as Dulcie knew, her mother was a stickler for keeping her home and her family clean. She’d been in service before she’d met Dulcie’s father and married him, a country girl brought up to London by the family she worked for, and she had what she called ‘my standards’. Those standards meant that unlike many of their neighbours there were no bedbugs in their beds, even if that did mean standing the feet of the beds in jars of water, and Dulcie’s father regularly putting a coat of lime wash on the bedroom walls.

As she reached the top of the stairs, Dulcie saw Rick coming out of the bathroom, his chest bare and damp, his trouser braces hanging from his waist, and his face obviously freshly shaved, a towel slung over one shoulder.

‘It’s Edith who’s being auditioned,’ she mocked him, ‘not you, or are you hoping that one of the chorus girls might take a fancy to you?’

‘Can’t see why they shouldn’t take a shine to a good-looking chap like me,’ Rick grinned back, not in the least bit put out by his sister’s taunt. But then nothing and no one ever got under Rick’s skin, Dulcie was forced to admit.

Over six foot tall, broad-chested and strong-armed from the local lads’ boxing club he’d attended when he’d been at school, Rick, like Dulcie, had inherited their mother’s family’s good looks, although his hair was much darker than his sister’s. Easy-going, with a sense of humour, Rick liked taking the mickey out of his sisters, especially Dulcie, who had such a high opinion of herself.

‘Well, seeing as you’ve got your papers to go and do your training, and that means you getting a short back and sides, I don’t reckon much to your chances.’

Rick laughed and winked at her. ‘Much you know. Girls love a chap in uniform. Why don’t you come with me and Edith down to the Empire?’

‘What, and have to listen to her caterwauling and then banging on about her ruddy singing for the rest of the evening? No, thanks.’ Her mother and her brother could fuss round Edith as much as they liked, Dulcie wasn’t going to join in.

Turning on her heel, Dulcie pushed open the door to the bedroom she shared with her sister, and then froze, as she saw what Edith was wearing as she sat at their shared dressing table, brushing her hair.

‘What do you think you’re doing thieving my new blouse?’ she demanded furiously, dropping her handbag onto the bed and going over to her sister.

‘I’m not thieving it, I’m only borrowing it.’

‘On, no, you aren’t. You can take it off right this minute.’

As she spoke Dulcie reached out and grabbed hold of her sister, who immediately tried to push her off, yelling as she did so, ‘Mum, Mum, Dulcie’s being rotten to me.’

‘That’s my blouse and you aren’t wearing it.’ Dulcie had to raise her voice to make herself heard above her sister’s screams of protest as Dulcie tried to unfasten her blouse. ‘You’re always thieving my things, helping yourself to them, and then ruining them.’

‘No I’m not.’

‘Yes you are. Now get my blouse off.’

‘Dulcie, I’ve got to borrow it. I’m going for my audition this evening and I haven’t got anything decent to wear. I’m not like you, working at Selfridges. Oww!’ Edith screamed as Dulcie grabbed her hair and gave it a furious tug.

‘What’s going on?’

Both of them turned to look at their mother, who was standing in the open doorway.

‘It’s her, she’s pinched my best blouse.’

‘It’s Dulcie, Mum, she’s being mean to me.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Dulcie, why shouldn’t she borrow your blouse? She won’t harm it. She is your sister, after all.’

‘Sister? She’s a thieving nuisance, and she’s not wearing my blouse,’ Dulcie insisted, her temper well and truly up now. ‘I’m sick and tired of her treating my things like they’re hers, borrowing my stuff without so much as a by-your-leave.’

‘That’s enough, Dulcie,’ her mother told her sharply. ‘Look how you’ve upset Edith.’ She gestured to the younger girl’s tear-stained face. ‘I thought better of you than this, I really did.’

‘That’s it,’ Dulcie exploded. ‘I’ve had enough of this and her treating my clothes like she owns them. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to find myself somewhere to live. Somewhere I’ve got a room of my own, with no thieving sister sharing it.’

‘Dulcie!’ Both her sister and her mother looked shocked.

Rick came in to join the fray, shaking his head and warning her, ‘It’s all very well saying that, Miss Hoity-Toity, but who’s going to rent you a room? Mind you, I’m not saying that this place won’t be a lot more peaceful without you around.’

As always when she was challenged, Dulcie immediately dug her toes in and refused to back down. As the elder girl in her family it was her opinion that her younger sister should look up to her, and their mother should put her first and not fuss over Edith like she did. Dulcie’s pride was smarting, and even though right now she had no idea how she would get herself a room of her own, she was determined that she would do so.

The sound of their father’s voice downstairs, demanding to know where his tea was, had them dispersing, her mother hurrying back down, whilst Rick retreated whistling to his own room and Edith went back to brushing her hair, an expression on her face that to Dulcie was unbearably smug and triumphant.

Sibling quarrels were part and parcel of their shared home life, and normally blew over, but during the evening, the more Dulcie thought about renting a room of her own, the more appeal the idea had. She resented the cramped space she shared with her sister almost as much as she resented the way Edith thought she could help herself to her clothes, and, what was more, her pride was still stinging from the fact that their mother had taken Edith’s side in the quarrel. Didn’t she give her mother a whole two shillings a week for her keep more than Edith did? The trouble with her mother was that she didn’t appreciate her like she should, and the trouble with her sister was that she didn’t respect her like she should.

Dulcie might not have thought anything of the two of them sharing a bed before she had started to work for Selfridges, but now, from listening to the other girls, she recognised that most of them lived in rather better circumstances than her own, middle-class girls in the main, whose parents had neat houses on the outskirts of the city, instead of growing up at its heart as she had, in what was unpleasantly close to being a slum area. Dulcie could well imagine how Lydia, whose father was a director, would look down on her if she knew how Dulcie’s family lived. She couldn’t imagine David James-Thompson walking her home here after that date she intended to have with him. No, that certainly could not be allowed to happen. She’d have Edith hanging out of the window, gawping at him and then her mother insisting that he come in and listen to Edith’s caterwauling, she was that proud of her. No, finding a room of her own somewhere a bit more respectable would suit the image she decided she needed to project if she was to win her bet with Lizzie.

First thing tomorrow she’d buy herself a paper and start looking for somewhere. With a room of her own, she could do what she wanted. There’d be no parents wanting to know where she was going and who she was seeing; no brother poking his nose in and warning her about not egging lads on, and knowing her place; no irritating sister. In her mind’s eye Dulcie pictured herself dressed up to the nines, and going off to the Hammersmith Palais dancing with handsome David, the director’s stuck-up daughter’s beau, her clothes immaculately washed and ironed and not salvaged from her sister’s disrespectful treatment of them.

* * *

Gratefully Tilly picked up from her desk the ‘Rooms to Let’ notices she had been given permission to type out – and not just to type, but also to place on the notice board in the corridor outside the Lady Almoner’s offices.

The office Tilly shared with Clara was in reality more of a long narrow corridor than a proper room. Its one small window overlooked an inner yard where waste bins were stored. Panelled in dark wood from floor to ceiling, the room was dark and smelled musty from the contents of the files stored in the ancient filing cabinets that lined both the long walls. To reach Tilly and Clara’s desk, at which they sat on opposite sides to one another with their heavy typewriters, it was necessary to squeeze between the filing cabinets and the desk itself. Tilly’s typewriter was old and very well used, its ‘d’ key inclined to stick unless you knew just how much extra pressure to apply to it to make sure that it didn’t. Each girl had a set of drawers in which she kept her stationery: Official-looking notepaper with the Lady Almoner’s name and title printed on it, as well as Barts’ address for official letters, thin copy paper and plain white paper for typing up patient notes, memos and envelopes. Here too were kept their very precious pieces of carbon paper, which had to be used until one could barely read the copy they made. Fresh supplies had to be pleaded for from Mr Davies, who was in charge of the stationery cupboard, and who, so Clara claimed, counted out every single sheet of paper he gave them.

The doors at either end of the office were never closed. There was normally a trail of people coming in and out: junior clerks carrying or wanting files for their superiors, senior clerks bringing in handwritten letters and notes that had to be typed immediately, or sometimes requesting that Tilly or Clara took down their dictation in shorthand. Tilly and Clara were certainly kept very busy. Once a week Miss Evans, the Lady Almoner’s personal secretary, would march into their office, her greying hair swept back into its tight bun, the jacket of her tweed suit on over her blouse, no matter how warm it was, her eyes, behind her rimless glasses, seeming to notice immediately a typing mistake or a file that was in the wrong place, as she went through the week’s diary with the two girls.

Now, grabbing some drawing pins, Tilly headed for the corridor outside the main office where the clerical staff worked, narrowly avoiding bumping into a senior nurse, and dropping her typed notice as she did so.

Both Tilly and the nurse, a tall slender girl with glorious dark copper-coloured hair drawn back under her cap, lovely cream-toned skin and eyes so intensely blue they were almost violet, came to a halt.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Tilly said.

‘It was my fault.’ The other girl smiled, both of them bending down to retrieve Tilly’s notice.

The nurse reached it first, a small frown creasing her forehead as she read it.

‘Is this your notice?’ she asked Tilly. ‘I mean, are you the one who is advertising the rooms to let?’

‘Yes. Well, my mother is. My grandfather died recently and since we’ve now got two spare bedrooms and a bathroom standing empty my mother thought we should let them out.’

‘Where? I mean, is your house within easy reach of the hospital? Only I’m looking for somewhere myself.’

Tilly recognised immediately that the other girl was exactly the type of lodger her mother was looking for. Tilly guessed that the nurse was older than she, perhaps in her early twenties, and that she had that air and manner about her that said she was responsible and reliable.

‘Yes. We live on Article Row in Holborn, at number thirteen. It isn’t far away at all.’

Sally had been doing her own assessment. The young girl in front of her was well turned out and spotlessly clean, her manner bright and energetic, the kind of girl who quite obviously came from a good home. A home that would be clean and properly looked after, Sally judged.

‘Well, bumping into you looks like being a piece of good luck for me,’ she announced. ‘I’m Sally Johnson, by the way.’ She held out her hand for Tilly to shake.

‘I’m Tilly – Tilly Robbins.’

‘Look, Tilly, I’m really keen to see your rooms. How about if I came and had a look at three o’clock on Sunday afternoon? I’m off duty then.’

‘Yes. I’m sure that will be all right. I’ll tell my mother.’

Sally gave a brisk nod of her head, and then turned on her heel to hurry away, thinking what a stroke of luck it had been to bump into Tilly like that – fate, almost. Sally considered herself to be a good judge of character and she had liked Tilly straight away. Not that she was going to get her hopes up too high until she had seen the room in question. She’d certainly feel more comfortable if she wasn’t easy accessible to anyone who might take it into their head to come down from Liverpool and enquire for her at Barts’ nurses’ home, and she was conscious of the fact that her room there was only temporary. She’d meant what she’d said before she left when she’d told her father that she didn’t want anything to do with him in future – him or his new wife.

Chapter Three

‘The vicar’s wife has just told me that she thinks she knows someone who’d be exactly right for a lodger,’ Olive told Tilly as they walked home together arm in arm after the Sunday morning service. ‘I mentioned to her that I wanted to let a couple of rooms at our Women’s Voluntary Service meeting on Wednesday night, and now it seems she’s heard of a girl who’s looking for a room.’

Despite the warm sunshine Tilly shivered as she glanced down a side street to see a convoy of army lorries loaded with men in uniform rumbling along the Strand. The signs of preparation for a war that Mr Chamberlain had assured them would not happen were all around them, from the sandbags piled up around buildings, to the men in ARP uniforms, and the ongoing work on preparing public bomb shelters. In Hyde Park work was underway to dig trenches for shelters and war defences, and Tilly and her mother were doing their own bit ‘just in case’ it came to war. Tilly had joined her local St John Ambulance brigade, and her mother had joined the local Women’s Voluntary Service group – the WVS for short – run by Mrs Windle, the vicar’s wife.

There’d been a smattering of young men in uniform in church this morning, with their families, and Tilly had stopped to speak with one of them – a boy who had been ahead of her at school and who was home on leave from his obligatory six months’ military training.

The last time she’d seen Bob had been early in the summer, before he’d started his training, and the difference in him had really struck her. Gone was the soft-featured, faintly shy boy she remembered and in his place was a thinner, fitter, tougher-looking young man who spoke proudly of his determination to do his bit for the country, and his belief that Hitler would not stop merely at invading Czechoslovakia, no matter what the Prime Minister might want to think.

After church the talk had all been of the prospect of war.

Now, though, feeling her mother’s slight squeeze on her arm beneath the smart little white boxy jacket trimmed with navy blue she was wearing over her Sunday best frock, Tilly turned to her to listen.

‘The girl Mrs Windle has in mind is your own age, Tilly, and an orphan. Apparently she’s spent virtually all her life in an orphanage run by the Church, but now she’s too old to stay there any more. They’ve kept her on to help with the younger children but the Church has decided to evacuate the orphans to the country, they can’t take her with them. They’ve found her a job working on the ticket desk at Chancery Lane underground station and now she needs somewhere to live where she’ll feel comfortable and safe. She’ll be coming round to look at the room at four o’clock this afternoon, after the nurse you were telling me about. They both sound ideal lodgers for us. I’m looking forward to meeting them.’

‘Sally, the nurse, is a bit older than me, Mum, but I think you’ll like her.’

Like Tilly, in her navy-blue, white-spotted dress, Olive was wearing her Sunday best outfit, an oatmeal linen two-piece of neatly waisted jacket and simple straight skirt, made for her by a local dressmaker from the Greek Cypriot community. Both women were wearing hats, a girlish white straw boater with navy-blue ribbons in Tilly’s case, a neat plain oatmeal straw hat for Olive, which she was wearing tilted slightly to one side, in the prevailing fashion.

‘I feel sorry for the orphan girl, though. How awful never to have known her parents,’ Tilly sympathised, earning herself another maternal squeeze on her arm.

‘Yes, the poor little thing was left on the doorstep of the orphanage as a baby. According to Mrs Windle, she’s very shy and quiet,’ Olive approved. ‘She’ll be good company for you, darling. You’ll be able to go to church social events and dances together, I expect. Young people need to have fun, especially now, when there’s so much to worry about.’

Because it was such a warm day neither of them felt like a heavy traditional Sunday lunch, and so instead they were going to have a nice salad made from a tin of John West salmon Olive had splashed out on, and some lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes bought from Alan, the barrow boy from Covent Garden, whose pitch was just off the Strand. Eaten with some thin slices of buttered brown bread from the local bakery, it would be a feast fit for a queen, so Olive had pronounced before they had left for church. As an extra treat they were going to have a punnet of strawberries, again bought from Alan, with either some Carnation milk or possibly some ice cream from one of Italian ice-cream sellers who sold their wares from the tricycle-propelled mobile ice-cream ‘vans’ they drove round the streets.

The houses of Article Row didn’t have large back gardens, but at least there were gardens and not merely back yards, like those of the poorer quality houses in the area.

Olive and Tilly’s garden had a small narrow strip of lawn surrounded by equally narrow flowerbeds, with an old apple tree down at the bottom of the garden almost right up against the wall.

The Government had been urging people to think about growing their own salad and vegetables, but Olive wasn’t keen. She was city born and bred and didn’t know anything about gardening. The garden had been her father-in-law’s preserve before he had become too ill to work in it, and although she and Tilly kept the lawn mowed, pushing the small Wilkinson Sword lawn mower over the grass in the summer, and weeded the flowerbeds Olive didn’t fancy her chances of actually being able to grow anything edible.

‘We could take a walk over to Hyde Park this evening, if you fancy it,’ Olive suggested to Tilly as she unlocked their front door. ‘We might as well enjoy this good weather whilst we’ve got it.’

‘Yes, I’d like that,’ Tilly agreed immediately. ‘Bob was saying after church this morning that some of the men will be parading and drilling there – you know, being put through their paces a bit.’

‘We’ll go then. We have to support our young men in uniform.’

It was dead on three o’clock when Sally knocked on the well-maintained dark green front door of number 13. She had liked the look of Article Row the minute she had walked down it, after exploring a little of the area. Article Row might be different from the neat semi in Liverpool’s Wavertree area where she had grown up and lived with the parents, but she could see that here the householders were every bit as proud of their homes as her parents and their neighbours in Lilac Avenue had been of theirs.

Her keen nurse’s eye saw and immediately approved of Olive’s sparkling windows, immaculate front path and tidy little front garden. Sally liked too the way that the door was answered within seconds of her knocking on it.

She would have known that the woman stepping to one side to invite her into the clean fresh-smelling hallway was Tilly’s mother because of their shared looks, even if Olive hadn’t introduced herself with a warm but businesslike smile and a firm handshake.

The hall floor was covered in well-polished linoleum in a parquet flooring design, with a red and blue patterned carpet runner over it, the same carpet continuing up the stairs and held in place by shining brass stair rods.

‘I’ll show you the room first and then you can see the rest of the house afterwards,’ Olive suggested. ‘It’s this way.’

As she followed Olive up the two flights of stairs to the upper storey, Sally took note of the clean plain off-white-painted walls and the well-polished banister rail. On the first landing the doors to the bedrooms were closed, as were the doors on the upper floor, but she liked the fact that Olive opened both bedroom doors, telling her, ‘Both these rooms are more or less the same size. The front room was my late father-in-law’s until he died. It was his idea to install a bathroom up here. I must say, at the time I thought it was a lot of work for nothing, but now I’m glad that he did. Whoever takes the rooms will share the bathroom between them.’

‘Your notice said that you wanted respectable female lodgers,’ Sally checked as she stepped inside the front-facing bedroom. It was simply furnished with the unexpected luxury of a double bed, a shiny polished mahogany wardrobe and a matching dressing table, and a square of patterned beige carpet over brown patterned lino, the walls papered with a plain cream paper with a brown trellis design. A dark gold satin-covered bedspread and eiderdown covered the bed, and when Sally lifted them back she could see that the bed linen underneath was immaculately white and starched.

In addition to the bed, wardrobe and dressing table there was a comfortable-looking chair and a small bookcase.

‘That’s right,’ Olive confirmed. ‘We’ve got another girl coming to look at the rooms at four this afternoon, an orphan, recommended by the vicar’s wife. She’s just started working at Chancery Lane underground station.

Sally nodded.

‘And this is the back bedroom,’ Olive told her, stepping across the narrow landing, its floorboards stained dark oak.

This bedroom overlooked the garden and was rather more feminine in décor, with its pale lemon wallpaper decorated with white green-stemmed daisies. Its furniture was very similar to the furniture in the front room, though its coverlet and eiderdown were more of a lemon yellow than gold.

This time Sally paid her would-be landlady the compliment of not checking the bed linen.

The bathroom was as immaculately clean and fresh-looking as the bedrooms, half tiled in white, blue curtains hanging at the windows and a blue-patterned lino on the floor.

She liked it. She liked it very much, Sally acknowledged.

‘If you were to take the room you’d be expected to keep it neat and tidy, although of course I’d given it a good clean once a week,’ Olive told her.

‘And the rent?

‘Ten shillings a week. That includes an evening meal as well as breakfast, although I dare say, you being a nurse, you’ll be working shifts.’

‘Yes,’ Sally agreed as she followed Olive downstairs and into the kitchen, which she wasn’t surprised to see was as clean and tidy as the rest of the house.

‘There are no gentleman visitors to be taken up to your room, but I do not rule out the possibility of you inviting a male friend into the front room to wait for you,’ Olive continued.

Sally didn’t have any problem with that.

‘And the kitchen?’ she asked. ‘As I work shifts I’d want to be able to make myself a hot drink and have something to eat when I get back from my shift.’

Olive pursed her lips. She didn’t like the thought of anyone else making free with her kitchen but she could see that Sally, as Tilly had said, was the sort who could be trusted and who had the right kind of standards.

‘Yes, I’d be happy to allow that,’ she agreed.

‘Good, then in that case I’ll take the room.’ Sally informed her, specifying, ‘The front room, please. I like to see what’s going on.’ What she really meant was that she didn’t want to be surprised by any unexpected visitors from Liverpool coming in search of her.

‘It will be one week’s rent in advance,’ Olive told her. Although she was striving to sound business like, inwardly she was delighted to have found such an ideal lodger, and so quickly. If the little orphan turned out to be as good then Nancy was going to have to admit that she had been wrong complaining about the prospect of lodgers bringing down the neighbourhood.

‘I’m living in the nurses’ home at Barts at the moment. I’d like to move in as soon as possible, if that’s all right with you? Say, Tuesday? I’ll pay you then.’

‘That will suit me nicely,’ Olive confirmed.

‘I’ll aim to be with you at ten in the evening, if that suits you?’ Sally offered, as she extended her hand to shake on their agreement.

‘You mean she’s taken the room already? That means that if the orphan girl says she wants the other room when she comes then you’ll have let them both straight away,’ Tilly praised her mother, after Sally had gone.

‘Yes, and I must say that it’s a relief. I was anxious whether we’d actually get anyone interested, never mind exactly the right type of person. I like your nurse, Tilly.’

‘She’s not my nurse, but I liked her too.’

Dulcie pushed off her forehead a stray curl that had escaped from her smooth Veronica Lake hair-style to curl damply against her skin. In her right hand she was holding her best handbag: white leather, bought off a market trader, probably, she imagined, having been ‘acquired’ by dubious means. Or at least that had been her interpretation of the way in which the stall holder had looked warily up and down the street before producing the bag from a sack tucked away out of sight, when she’d asked to see ‘something good quality’. Dulcie didn’t mind where it had come from. What mattered to her was that it looked exactly like the classy and expensive bags on sale in Selfridges, at prices way beyond her slender means. Dulcie didn’t consider what she had done to be dishonest. It was part and parcel of the way of life for many of those who had the same hand-to-mouth existence of her own family. The fact that her dad and her brother both worked as plumbers in the building trade meant that they both suffered periods when they weren’t working, and Dulcie had grown up knowing that one penny often had to do the work of two. Dulcie had ambitions for herself, though: nice clothes, which, along with her good looks, attracted the attention of men and the envy of other girls, and having a good time.

She wasn’t having a good time right now, though. She was already beginning to regret having said that she would find somewhere else to live. Initially, when she’d looked in the newspaper there had been so many rooms advertised that she thought it would be easy. But now, having spent over two hours of her precious Sunday – the only day she had off work – crisscrossing the streets between her parents’ home in Stepney and Selfridges where she worked, she decided she really wanted something a bit closer to Selfridges than Stepney. But one look down some of the streets in the advertisements had been enough for her to dismiss them as not the kind of places she wanted to live at all, and that was without even asking to see the rooms. She wasn’t going to give up, though; slink home with her tail between her legs, so to speak, and have Edith get one up on her because she’d failed.

Two young men on the opposite side of the road – Italian, by the looks of them – were watching her as they smoked their cigarettes. The trouble with Edith was that she was an out-and-out show off, who always wanted to be the centre of attention, Dulcie decided crossly, as she stopped walking, as though she was unaware of the men’s presence as she pretended to check the seam of her stockings. The result was a gratifying increase in their focus on her. They were good-looking lads, no doubt about that, with their olive complexions, crisp dark wavy hair, and their dark brown gazes, which were paying her such flattering attention.

Reluctantly she straightened up and continued down the street. All she’d heard ever since Edith’s audition was how impressed they’d been at the Empire by her singing, and how Mr Kunz had said that he’d be a fool not to give her a chance. Dulcie would certainly be glad to get away from that – and from her sister.

Her feet, in her white sandals, were beginning to swell up, her toes feeling pinched, the August sunshine hot on her back. As a concession to the fact that it was Sunday – and she’d felt obliged to accompany her family to church after her father had started laying down the law about the importance of still being a family even if she was planning to move out, and that her elder brother could end up having to go to war, thanks to the Government telling Hitler that he wasn’t to invade Poland, and that if he did the British Army would go to its aid – she was wearing a very smart white hat with a deep raised flat brim, trimmed with a bow made from the same fabric as her favourite silk frock. She’d been lucky with that piece of silk, and no mistake, snapping it up when she’d seen it on sale as the last couple of yards on the roll in Selfridges’ haberdashery department. It hadn’t been her fault that the Saturday girl had thought that it was one shilling and sixpence a yard instead of the four shillings and sixpence it should have been because the price written on the inside of the roll had been rubbed away a bit. Dulcie hadn’t rubbed it away.

She was hot and beginning to feel tired and hungry. She looked at the paper again. Only three ringed notices left, the next one advertising a room to let somewhere called Article Row, Holborn.

Well, she was in Holborn. She saw a couple of children playing hopscotch out in the street and called out to them, ‘Article Row, where is it?’

‘Right behind you, miss,’ one of them answered her, pointing to the narrow entrance almost hidden by the shadows thrown by the surrounding buildings.

Cautiously Dulcie approached it, stepping into the shadows and then out of them again as Article Row opened out ahead of her, her spirits lifting as she realised how much better the houses were here than in the other streets she had visited. Number 13, the paper said. Determinedly she started to walk down the narrow street of uniformly neat tall houses, with their shining windows and painted front doors. Here and there she noticed a lace curtain move slightly.

‘The orphan girl is very late – it’s gone five o’clock now – do you think that she’s changed her mind or found somewhere else?’ Tilly asked her mother as they sat together in the kitchen, listening for the sound of anyone knocking on the front door. The kitchen door was open to the warm summer air, and Tilly’s faint sigh as she looked towards it had Olive saying lovingly, ‘You go out and enjoy the sunshine, Tilly love, I’ll hang on here a bit longer just in case she does turn up. Oh!’ They both looked towards the door into the hall as they heard the knock on the front door.

‘That must be her. Now you stay here because I want you to meet her. From what Mrs Windle said, she’s a bit on the shy side and I think she’ll probably welcome seeing someone of her own age.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Tilly agreed. Pulling open the front door, Olive stared in bemusement at the appearance of the young woman who was standing on her doorstep. A quiet shy orphan was how the vicar’s wife had described Olive’s prospective lodger, but this young woman looked anything but quiet or shy, and she was dolled up to the nines, wearing clothes that were just a bit too stylish and attention-attracting for Olive’s taste.

‘I’ve come about the room you’ve got to let,’ Dulcie announced without preamble, stepping forward so that Olive was forced to move back and admit her into the hall.

‘Well, yes . . .’ Olive began, taken aback by both her prospective lodger’s appearance and her manner.

‘It’s this way, I suppose?’ Dulcie continued, heading for the stairs without waiting for Olive to invite her to do so.

From the kitchen Tilly goggled at the passing vision, taking in the close fit of Dulcie’s silk dress and the stylish brim of her hat with a tinge of envy laced with excitement. Tilly was a dutiful daughter and she understood that her mother’s protective attitude towards her was for her own benefit, but sometimes she did yearn for a bit more excitement in her life. The girl whose heels she could now hear on the stairs was, Tilly knew immediately, someone who knew how to have fun, the kind of girl that secretly she half envied and would like to have as a friend even though she suspected that her mother would not be too keen on their friendship.

‘These rooms are on the top floor, are they?’ Dulcie demanded on the first landing. ‘That will play hell with my feet, especially with me standing on them all day.’

Standing on them all day and wearing such high heels, Olive thought wryly, but all she said was, ‘Actually, there is only one room now; the other has been taken.’

It had, had it? Well, Dulcie thought that was probably a good sign, although she certainly wasn’t going to be fobbed off with the second-best room. She’d insist on seeing them both, she decided as they reached the top landing.

‘This is the room that’s left,’ Olive told her.

As she stepped into number 13’s back bedroom, for once Dulcie had nothing sharp to say. The room was easily half as big again as the one she shared with her sister. It had a double bed that she would have all to herself, a large wardrobe for her clothes, a dressing table, the glass top of which was shiny and clean and empty of the clutter that Edith spread all over their own small chest with a mirror stuck on the wall above it. There was even a chair, and a sort of shelf thing.

Dulcie walked over to the window, barely glancing into the garden below, her mind racing, calculating. If this was the room the other lodger hadn’t chosen then what must that room be like?

‘I’d like to see the other room before I make up my mind,’ she told Olive firmly.

‘That room’s already been taken,’ Olive repeated.

‘I’d still like to see it,’ Dulcie insisted, pushing past her to go and open the other bedroom door, and then frown as she looked inside and saw that whilst it was the same size as the back bedroom, its décor was nothing like as good. Fancy anyone deliberately choosing all that dull beige and brown over the lemon and daisy-patterned wallpaper of ‘her’ room. Her room and she was determined to have it, but Dulcie wasn’t going to let anyone know that and give them the upper hand.

‘Somewhere a bit better than what’s normally on offer is what I’m looking for,’ she announced. ‘I work at Selfridges, see, and Mr Selfridge, he likes them as works for him to keep up their standards,’ she told Olive, stepping back onto the landing.

The mention of the well-known and very smart Oxford Street store and the information that Dulcie worked there would normally have pleased Olive and been a point in Dulcie’s favour, but on this occasion Olive felt dismayed, and not just because she didn’t think that Dulcie was the kind of young woman she wanted under her roof.

‘You are Agnes Wilson, aren’t you?’ she asked her. ‘Only the vicar’s wife told me that you were going to be working at Chancery Lane underground station, when she said that you were looking for a room.’

Someone else was after ‘her room’? Dulcie wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

‘No, I’m not Agnes Wilson. My name’s Dulcie Simmonds,’ she told Olive. ‘I saw the advertisement for this room in the paper.’

‘Oh!’ Olive felt both relieved and uncomfortable. ‘In that case, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t let the room to you. I’ve as good as promised it to Agnes. In fact, I was expecting her to come round this afternoon, that’s why I thought you were her.’

The very thought that she might lose the room to someone else was enough to make Dulcie, used to having to compete with her younger sibling, all the more determined to have it.

‘Well, you might have been expecting her but she hasn’t turned up, has she? And even if she did, there’s no saying that she would want the room,’ Dulcie pointed out, adding acutely, ‘I can’t see a landlady wanting to let out a room to someone who isn’t reliable. It’s all very well her not turning up to view the room when she was supposed to, but what if her rent started not turning up when it was due?’

Dulcie had a point, Olive was forced to admit. Even so, she wasn’t keen on letting the room to someone she suspected could be a disruptive influence on the household.

‘It should be first come, first served,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘I am here first, and I’ve got the money to pay my rent.’

As she reached down to open her bag, Olive recognised that Dulcie wasn’t going to be dissuaded and that she was going to have to give in.

‘Very well,’ she agreed, against her better judgement. ‘It will be a week’s rent of ten shillings, including breakfast and an evening meal, in advance, payable the day you move in. I don’t allow gentleman callers to visit my lodgers in their rooms, so if that’s a problem . . . ?’

She was half hoping that Dulcie would say that it was, but Dulcie merely shrugged her shoulders and told her, ‘That suits me. If a lad wants to see me then he can prove it by taking me out somewhere. I’m not courting anyone and I don’t intend to start courting either. Not if there’s to be a war. You never know what might happen.’

Somehow Olive didn’t think that Dulcie was referring so much to the potential loss of a young man’s life as the potential opportunity for her to amuse herself with the variety of young men a war could bring into her life.

As they went back downstairs it was hard for Olive not to feel rather unhappy about the prospect of having Dulcie as a lodger. So much for her belief earlier that everything had worked out really well.

‘Before you go I should introduce you to my daughter, Tilly,’ Olive told Dulcie. ‘She works at Barts in the Lady Almoner’s office, and my other lodger is a nurse from the hospital. A very respectable young woman indeed,’ she emphasised, causing Dulcie to grimace inwardly, imagining what a dull pair her landlady’s daughter and the nurse sounded, as she responded to Tilly’s shy smile with a brief handshake.

Not that that bothered her. Dulcie wasn’t one for girl friends unless for some reason it suited her to have one, like when she wanted to go dancing and neither Rick nor Edith would go with her, and she certainly wasn’t looking for a bosom pal. That kind of thing was for soft schoolgirls.

‘So that’s that then,’ Tilly announced after Dulcie had gone, with a final, ‘Right then. I’ll be round Tuesday evening then, about eight o’clock, if that suits?’

‘Now we’ve got two lodgers.’

‘Yes,’ Olive agreed. ‘Although I’m not sure that Dulcie will fit in as well as Sally.’

Working in the orphanage kitchen buttering bread for the orphans’ tea, Agnes hoped desperately that Matron would not take it into her head to come in. Because if she did, she was bound to ask her how she had got on this afternoon going to look at that room she had been supposed to go and see.

She had intended to go. She’d got the directions to it from Cook, whose husband worked on the London trams and knew everywhere, and she’d told herself that it was silly for her to feel so alone and afraid. After all, she was seventeen, and most of the orphans had to leave the orphanage at fourteen. She’d been lucky that Matron had taken pity on her and allowed her to stay on and work to earn her keep.

To Agnes the orphanage wasn’t just her home, it was her whole life. The orphanage had taken her in when she had been left on its doorstep as an almost newly born baby, left in a shopping basket wrapped in a shabby pink blanket, which she still had, and wearing a flannelette nightdress and a nappy.

All of the other orphans knew something of their parentage and many of them had family, even if that family could not afford to house and feed them. Agnes was unique in the fact that she had no one. There’d been articles in the papers about her, Cook had once told her, attempts made to find the mother who had abandoned her. Sometimes even now Agnes looked at her reflection in the mirror and had wondered if she bore any resemblance to that mother, if her mother also had pale skin that flushed too easily, a pointed chin, pale blue eyes and light brown hair that sometimes refused to curl and at others curled where she didn’t want it to. Had she been thin, like Agnes herself was? However much she thought and wondered, even ached privately about her mother, Agnes never thought about her father. Cook had, after all, come right out with what no one else would lower themselves to say, especially Matron, who was so good and who had been a missionary in Africa in her youth, and that was that a baby who had been abandoned on an orphanage doorstep probably did not have a father, at least not a respectable married-to-her-mother kind of father, a father who would want to acknowledge that Agnes was his daughter.

Agnes didn’t really mind being an orphan. Not like some of the other children, who came into the orphanage when they were older and who could remember their parents. Those children had been Agnes’s special little ones before she had been told that she had to leave. She had comforted them and assured them that they would come to like being at the orphanage and feel safe there, like she did. Agnes feared the outside world. She feared being judged by it because of her birth. She rarely left the orphanage other than to go to church and to walk with a crocodile of children escorting them on some improving visit to a museum or a walk in Hyde Park. At fourteen, when other orphans her age were boasting about the fun they would have when they were free of the orphanage’s rules and restrictions, she had cried under her bedclothes for weeks, she had been so miserable at the thought of leaving.

That had been when Matron had said that she could stay on and work to earn her keep. She had been so grateful, feeling that her prayers had been answered and that she would be safe for ever. But now this war they might be having meant that the orphanage was being evacuated to another church orphanage in the country and that there wouldn’t be room for Agnes, or for some of the other staff either.

Matron had explained it all to her and had told her that they had found her a job working at Chancery Lane underground station, selling tickets, and a room in a house owned by a friend of a vicar’s wife.

‘You’ll like it at the station, Agnes,’ she had said. ‘And you know it well, from taking the little ones there on the underground. As for the landlady, she has a daughter your own age, and I am sure that the two of you will quickly become good friends.’ Matron had told her this in that jolly kind of voice that people used when they didn’t want you to be upset and cry.

Agnes had nodded her head, but inside she had felt sick with misery and fear. She still did, but now those feelings were even worse because this afternoon, instead of going to see Mrs Robbins at 13 Article Row, she had gone and sat on a bench in Hyde Park, where she had wished desperately that she didn’t have to leave the orphanage and that the orphanage didn’t have to be evacuated to the country. Agnes had never hated anyone in her life, but right now she felt that she could hate Adolf Hitler. She would have to go and see Mrs Robbins eventually, she knew that. And tomorrow morning she would have to present herself at Chancery Lane underground station, ready to start her new job. She wouldn’t be able to escape doing that, because Matron was going to take her there herself.

Chapter Four

‘So you’re going ahead then with this taking in lodgers business?’

Nancy had caught Olive just when Olive was in the middle of hanging out her washing, coming to the hedge that separated their back gardens and obviously determined to have her say.

‘Yes. I’ve got lodgers for both rooms now,’ Olive agreed as she pegged out the towels she had just washed. There was a decent breeze blowing, so they should dry quickly.

‘And one of them’s from the orphanage, so I’ve heard.’ Nancy’s voice was ominously disapproving. ‘You wouldn’t catch me taking in an orphan. You never know what bad blood they might have in their veins.’

‘According to the vicar’s wife, Agnes is a very quiet, respectable girl.’

‘Well, that certainly wasn’t her I saw coming walking down the Row yesterday afternoon then, all dressed up to the nines and on a Sunday too. Anyone could see what sort she is. Too full of herself for her own good. I hope you won’t be giving her a room.’

‘I think you must mean Dulcie,’ Olive felt obliged to say. ‘Yes, she is going to be moving in. She works in Selfridges.’

‘She might work in Selfridges but it’s plain where she’s come from, and where she’s going to end up if she isn’t careful. I don’t want to worry you, Olive, but there’s going to be a lot of people in the Row who won’t be at all happy about what you’re doing. You know me – I like to mind my own business – but I wouldn’t be being a good neighbour if I didn’t warn you for your own good. It’s like I was saying to Sergeant Dawson after church yesterday: we’ve got standards here in the Row.’

Olive nodded but didn’t say anything. Inwardly, though, she suspected that she hadn’t heard the last of her neighbour’s disapproval.

Agnes had had the most terrible day, the worst day of her life, starting from when Matron had left her in the charge of Mr Smith, the portly, moustached, stern-looking man who was in charge of the ticket office at Chancery Lane station and thus in charge of her.

Her new dull grey worsted uniform piped in blue, which London Transport supplied for its female employees working on buses, trams and the underground, was too big for her. They hadn’t been able to find anything to fit her when she’d been taken to the large supply depot where the uniforms were handed out because she was so small and thin. Agnes knew she’d only been taken on in the first place because Matron had spoken up for her, and that had only made her feel even more as though she wasn’t really good enough. The grey serge didn’t do anything for her pale complexion and mouse-brown hair, her uniform somehow making her face look pinched and thin, and she’d seen from the look that Mr Smith had given her that her appearance hadn’t impressed him.

She’d felt sick with anxiety before she’d even tried to follow Mr Smith’s brisk instructions, but that had been nothing to the horrible churning feeling that had gripped her stomach when a customer had complained loudly about her slowness and then she’d gone and given him the wrong change.

After that the day had gone from bad to worse, leaving her filled with panic and despair. She’d seen from the look that Mr Smith had given her at five past five, when he’d told her to clock off because the evening shift was about to start, that he was angry with her because of all the mistakes she’d made. She’d let Matron down, she knew, and soon she was going to have to admit to her that she’d deliberately not kept her appointment with Mrs Robbins in Article Row.

Now, still wearing her second-hand uniform, her head down, and tears not very far away, Agnes headed for the steps that would take her out of the station and into the daylight, gasping as she was almost knocked flying.

Immediately a pair of male hands gripped her, a male voice saying, ‘I’m sorry. Are you all right?’

Those words – the first of any kindness she had heard all day – were too much for her and to her shame she couldn’t stop herself from bursting into tears.

Immediately the young man – she could see through her tears that he was a young man – pulled her into the privacy of a shadowy area against the wall and announced, ‘You must be the new girl that started at the ticket office this morning. I’m Ted Jackson, one of the drivers. What’s wrong?’

‘Everything,’ Agnes told him tearfully. ‘I made a customer cross because I was too slow and I got his change wrong. Mr Smith is really angry with me, and I know he’ll give me the sack and then Matron at the orphanage will be upset because I’ve let them down.’

‘Orphanage?’

‘Yes. I’m an orphan but I can’t stay at the orphanage any more because they’re going to be evacuated, and anyway you can’t stay once you’re fourteen. I was lucky that they let me stay for so long.’

The poor kid looked as pathetic as a half drowned kitten he’d once rescued from the river, Ted thought sympathetically.

‘Look, I’m not due to start work yet, so why don’t you and me go upsides and have a cup of tea? It will help calm you down,’ he suggested, putting his hand under her elbow and leading her back towards the steps.

Agnes experienced another surge of panic, but a different one this time. Matron was very strict with her girls, and Agnes had never ever been alone with a young man.

‘Come on, it’s all right, you’ll be safe with me,’ Ted assured her as though he had guessed what was worrying her. ‘Got two sisters of me own at home, I have.’

They’d reached the top of the steps and somehow Agnes discovered that she was being bustled into a small café where the woman behind the counter greeted Ted with a broad smile.

‘Your usual, is it, Ted?’ ‘Nah, just two cups of tea this time, Mrs M.’ He glanced at Agnes and then added, ‘And a couple of toasted teacakes.’

A toasted teacake – Agnes’s mouth watered. She hadn’t been able to eat the egg sandwiches she’d brought with her for her dinner because she’d been so worked up and upset.

The café was only small but it was homely and looked clean and welcoming. It smelled of 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 by some lad who might not do right by her. There were plenty of that kind about, and she obviously hadn’t a clue about how to look after herself properly.

‘Look, I’ll tell you what,’ he offered. ‘How about you and me meet up every teatime when you come off work, and I teach you the names of the lines and their stations?’

‘You’d do that for me?’ Agnes didn’t even try to conceal her disbelief.

‘I’ve just said so, haven’t I?’

For a moment euphoria filled Agnes but then her ingrained lack of self-confidence swamped it.

‘It’s very kind of you but I just don’t think I’ll be good enough to learn them properly.’

‘Course you will,’ Ted assured her. ‘If my old man could teach me and I could learn, then I reckon I can teach you and you can learn.’

‘Does your father still drive the trains?’

Ted shook his head. ‘He’s dead. Got killed upsides in an accident six years back. It was a foggy night and he got hit by a bus. Didn’t stand a chance. Killed him straight off.’

He said it so matter-of-factly that Agnes could only stifle her shock to say politely, ‘How awful.’

‘Knocked us all for six when it happened, but we’ve got used to it now. Course, it’s meant that I’ve had to help Mum out with my own wages and take a bit of a firm line with the girls when they start giving her their cheek, and acting up.’

‘How old are your sisters?’ Agnes asked him shyly. She didn’t really know anyone who had a real family. She’d never met someone who was as frank and open as Ted was. His frankness enabled her to ask the kind of questions she would never normally have dreamed of asking.

‘Marie, she’s the eldest, she’s ten, and then there’s Sonia, who’s eight.’ He paused and then added, ‘In case you’re wondering how come I’m so much older, it’s because there was a couple of others – both boys – that died young. Talks about ’em still, Ma does, and then gets herself in a state about them, poor little tykes. Now, I’ve got to get on duty and you’ve got to get yourself over to – what was it? – Article Row, and get yourself sorted out. Then tomorrow teatime you and me will meet up here and get started off learning you your lines and stations.’

He was already standing up so Agnes did the same, telling him emotionally as they left the teashop, ‘You’ve been so kind coming to help me just when I thought . . . You’re like a Good Samaritan.’

‘Aw, get away with you, it was nothing,’ Ted told her, looking embarrassed. ‘I’d do the same for any kid that was in the state you’d got yourself into. Now you remember, tomorrow teatime here. Right?’

‘Right,’ Agnes told him.

The warm happy glow she felt from Ted’s kindness accompanied her as far as the entrance to Article Row, but once she could see how nice the houses in the Row looked, she felt her confidence start to slip away, and at the same time a feeling growing in her that if she couldn’t stay at the orphanage then this would be a lovely place to live. Out of the corner of her eye she could see two women walking on the pavement on the other side of the street, going in the opposite direction to her, both of them glancing at her, their curiosity making her feel self-conscious and awkward. Number 13, she’d been told; that was the next house. Now her tummy had begun to cramp nervously.

Inside her kitchen, Olive had just sunk down into a chair to drink the very welcome cup of tea Tilly had brewed for her. Although she was glad to have both her rooms let, she would really rather not have had a girl like Dulcie as one of her lodgers. Her maternal instincts told her that Dulcie was not likely to be a good influence on Tilly, who was just at that age when she wanted to be grown up and go out to dances, and, of course, meet boys.

The unexpected knock on the door surprised them both.

‘I hope that isn’t Nancy from next door coming round to complain about something,’ Olive sighed, getting up to go and see who it was.

The thin mousy-haired and obviously anxious girl, standing outside in her grey serge underground uniform immediately broke into nervous speech.

‘Please, miss, I’m Agnes and I’m ever so sorry. I was supposed to come yesterday only I didn’t. It’s about the room. Matron at the orphanage said that you had a room for me.’

Olive’s heart sank. The girl looked so on edge, and so much more the kind of lodger she had expected and wanted than Dulcie, who had now taken her room.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said with genuine regret, ‘but the room’s already gone, I’m afraid. When you didn’t come yesterday, I thought you didn’t want it.’

Olive’s words made Agnes feel as though a bucket of icy cold water had been thrown over her, drowning the hopes she had begun to build up and leaving her feeling as close to tears as she had done when Ted had found her on the stairs.

Poor girl, Olive thought, seeing the shocked despair on Agnes’s face. Tears weren’t very far away, Olive could tell.

‘Look, why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’ she offered kindly. ‘It’s a warm evening and you’ll have been working all day.’

‘Oh, no, you’re very kind but I don’t want to be a nuisance,’ Agnes began, but before she could turn to walk away, Olive was reaching for her arm and drawing her inside, guiding her down the hallway and into the kitchen, where a girl of her own age, but much prettier than she, with her dark curls and cherry-red lips, was standing in front of the sink, drinking a cup of tea.

‘Tilly, this is Agnes who was supposed to come yesterday about the room. Agnes, this is my daughter Tilly,’ Olive explained, adding, ‘I’ve told Agnes that I’ve already let the room, but she’s going to have a cup of tea with us before she goes home.’

Tilly nodded and set about removing a clean cup and saucer from the cupboard and filling the kettle with some water to make a fresh pot of tea, setting it on the stove and then lighting the gas.

The girl who her mother had brought into the kitchen looked dreadfully upset, and so small and thin that Tilly immediately felt sorry for her.

‘I don’t know what Matron is going to say to me,’ Agnes told them both once she had been coaxed into a chair and a fresh cup of tea put in front of her. ‘She’ll be ever so cross. I should have come yesterday, but all I really wanted was to be evacuated with them. You see, the orphanage is all I’ve got – the little ones and Matron and everyone – but like Matron says, they can’t take me with them because really I shouldn’t be there at all, me being seventeen.’

A tear rolled down her face and splashed onto her hand, followed by another.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, acting like this. It was just that I’d got my hopes up. And now I’d better go.’ Agnes looked agitated and even more upset as she finished her tea and then stood up. ‘You’ve been ever so kind.’

She was trying to be brave but Olive could see how upset she was. There was nothing she could do, though. Dulcie was the kind who would make a first-class fuss if Olive tried to persuade her to give the room up, Olive knew.

She walked with Agnes to the front door. Then, just as she was about to open it, Tilly called urgently from the kitchen, ‘Mum, can I have a word? Now!’

Olive frowned. It was unlike Tilly to be forgetful of her manners, and not wait to say whatever it was she wanted to say until their visitor had gone.

Agnes was waiting for her to open the door. Feeling desperately sorry for her, Olive did so, watching as she walked down the garden path, her head down, no doubt to hide her tears.

‘Mum!’ Tilly’s voice was even more urgent now.

‘Yes, Tilly?’

‘I’ve been thinking. There’s two beds in my room, and if Agnes doesn’t mind sharing with me then we could double up.’

Olive could almost feel her heart swelling with love and pride. Her wonderful kind daughter had not been rude; her impatience had been caused by her desire to help another girl whom she had recognised was desperately in need.

‘Well—’ she began.

‘Please, Mum,’ Tilly pleaded. ‘She hasn’t got anywhere else, and if she doesn’t like sharing with me then at least she’ll have somewhere until she finds another room.’

‘It won’t be easy, Tilly,’ Olive warned. ‘You’ve always been used to having your own room.’

‘I know, but I really want to, Mum. Can we?’

‘Very well. If you’re sure,’ Olive agreed.

‘I am sure.’ Tilly flung her arms round her mother and kissed her before running to the front door and pulling it open.

Agnes had almost reached the end of Article Row when she heard the sound of someone running behind her. She stopped and turned round, surprised to see Tilly, her black curls dancing in the early evening sunshine.

‘Agnes,’ Tilly called out breathlessly, ‘wait. I’ve got something to tell you.’

Silently Agnes waited.

‘I’ve spoken to my mother and, if you’re in agreement – that is, if you want to – you can share my room. There’s a spare bed, and it’s a good size. I know it won’t be the same as having your own room, but I thought that, well, for now, until you find somewhere better, it might do?’

Somewhere better than number 13 Article Row and Tilly and her mother? Could such a place exist? Agnes didn’t think so.

‘You really mean it?’ she asked, hardly daring to believe it. ‘You’d really share your room with me?’

‘Yes,’ Tilly assured her, taking her arm and leading her back.

* * *

Half an hour later, after another cup of tea in number 13’s kitchen, it was all arranged. Agnes would return to the orphanage to inform Matron that she was moving into Mrs Robbins’ house.

Her heart flooding with joy and gratitude, Agnes thanked her saviours, and this time when she headed back down Article Row she held her head high, her tears replaced by a smile.

Chapter Five

‘So you’re doing it then? You’re really going to go ahead and move out?’

Despite the fact that she could hear disbelief and censure in her brother’s voice, Dulcie tossed her head and demanded, ‘Yes I am, and so what?’

They were in the cramped shabby living room of their home, empty for once apart from the two of them.

‘So what?’ Rick repeated grimly. ‘Have you thought what this is going to do to Mum? We’re a family, Dulcie, and in case you’ve forgotten there just happens to be a war about to start. That’s a time when families should stick together.’

‘That’s easy for you to say when you’re leaving home to go and do six months’ military training. Have you thought about what that’s going to do to Mum?’ she challenged him, determined to fight her own corner.

‘I don’t have any choice. It’s the Government that’s said I’ve got to go,’ Rick pointed out.

‘And I don’t have any choice either, not with Edith treating my things like they belong to her and Mum backing her up.’ There was real bitterness in Dulcie’s voice now. ‘Mum always takes Edith’s side; she always has and she always will. All she wants me for is my wages.’

‘Aw, come on, Dulcie, that’s not true,’ Rick felt obliged to protest, but Dulcie could see that he was looking uncomfortable. Because he knew the truth!

‘Yes it is,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘Mum’s always favoured Edith, and you know it. It’s all very well for you to talk about families sticking together, but when has this family ever done anything for me? Mum hasn’t said a word to me about wanting me to stay. If you ask me she’s pleased to see me go. That way she can listen to Edith caterwauling all day long.’

There was just enough of a grain of truth – even though Dulcie had deliberately distorted and exaggerated it – in what she was saying for Rick to fall silent. During their childhood his sister had always been the one who seemed to get it in the neck and who had borne the brunt of their mother’s sometimes short temper, whilst Edith was indeed their mother’s favourite. Despite all that, though, he felt obliged, as the eldest of the family, to persist doggedly, ‘We’re family, Dulcie, and families like ours stick together.’

‘Fine, but they can stick together without me.’

‘You’ll regret leaving,’ Rick warned her, ‘and I’m only telling you that for your own good. Moving in with strangers – no good will come of it.’

‘Yes it will. I’ll not have a thieving sister helping herself to my clothes, nor a mother always having it in for me. Besides, it’s a really nice place I’m moving to, and you can see that for yourself ’cos I need you to give me a hand getting my stuff over there tonight.’

Rick sighed. He knew when he’d lost a fight, especially with Dulcie, who had her own ideas and opinions about everything, and who was as sharp as a tack when it came to making them plain.

‘All right, I will help you,’ he agreed, ‘provided you promise me that you’ll come home every Sunday to go to church with Mum.’

Dulcie was tempted to refuse, but she needed Rick’s help if she was to get her things to her new digs in one trip, and besides, something told her that her new landlady was the sort who thought things like families and going to church on Sunday were important. If she didn’t accept Rick’s terms she could end up finding herself dragged off to church by Olive. It would be worthwhile coming back once a week, if only to show off her new – unborrowable – clothes to Edith.

‘All right,’ she conceded.

‘Promise?’ Rick demanded.

‘Promise,’ Dulcie agreed.

Sally looked round her small Spartan room in the nurses’ home. The few possessions she had brought with her from Liverpool – apart from the photograph of her parents on their wedding day, in its silver frame – were packed in her case, ready for her to take to Article Row. As soon as she’d come off duty she’d changed out of her uniform, with its distinctive extra tall starched Barts’ cap, much taller than the caps worn by any nurses from any of the other London hospitals. Sisters’ caps were even taller, and even more stiffly starched, Sally guessed.

Workwise she’d fitted in quite well at Barts. She loved theatre work and had been welcomed by the other theatre staff, most of whom were down to be evacuated should Germany’s hostile advances into the territories of its neighbours continue and thus lead to a declaration of war by the British Government. Normally, of course, Sally would not have been allowed to ‘live out’ but these were not normal times.

Not normal times . . . Her life had ceased to be what she thought of as normal many months ago now.

She sat down on the edge of her narrow thin-mattressed bed, nowhere near as comfortable as the bed waiting for her in Article Row, and nowhere near as comfortable as the bed she had left behind her in Liverpool in the pretty semi-detached house that had always been her home. The house that she had refused to enter once she had known the truth, leaving Liverpool in the pale light of an early summer morning to catch the first train to London, with nothing but a recommendation to the matron at Barts from her own Hospital, and the trunk into which she had packed her belongings. Heavy though that trunk had been, it had been no heavier than the weight of her memories – both good and bad – on her heart.

She hadn’t told her father what she was planning to do. She’d known that he would plead with her and try to dissuade her, so instead she’d asked the taxi driver to take her first to her parents’ house, from her temporary room at the nurses’ home, where she’d put her letter to her father very quietly through the letter box, before going on to Lime Street station.

Her father would have read her letter over breakfast. She could picture him now, carefully pouring himself a cup of tea, sitting down at the blue-and-white-checked-oilcloth-covered table, with the paper propped up against the teapot, as he read the words that she had written telling him that she wanted nothing more to do with him.

Pain knifed through her. She had loved her parents so much. They had been such a happy family. Had been. Until the person she had thought of as her closest friend – close enough to be a sister – had destroyed everything.

A mixture of misery and anger tensed her throat muscles. The death of her mother had been hard enough to bear, but the betrayal of her closest friend; that had left a wound that was still too poisoned for her even to think of allowing it to close. As with all wounds, the poison must be removed before healing could take place, otherwise it would be driven deeper, to fester and cause more harm. Sally could not, though, see any way to remove that poison or to salve its wound with acceptance and forgiveness. She couldn’t. If she did she would be betraying her poor mother, who had suffered so dreadfully. She reached for her photograph and held it in both her hands as she looked into the faces of her youthful parents, her father so tall and dark and handsome, her fair-haired mother so petite and happy as she nestled within the protective curve of his arm.

Her mother had been such a happy, loving person, their home life in their comfortable semi so harmonious. Sally had grown up knowing that she wanted to be a nurse and her parents had encouraged her to follow her dream. Her father, a clerk working for the Town Hall, had helped her to enrol for their local St John Ambulance brigade as soon as she had been old enough. Those had been such happy days, free of the upsets that seemed to mar the childhoods of others. In the summer there had been picnics on the sands at Southport and Lytham St Annes; visits to Blackpool Tower and rides on the donkeys, trips across the Mersey, of course, in the ferry boats that plied between Liverpool and New Brighton, whilst in the winter there had been the excitement of Christmas and the pantomime.

And then when she had started her formal nurse’s training at Liverpool’s prestigious teaching hospital she had felt as though all her dreams had come true, especially when she had palled up with Morag, the pretty girl of Scots descent, whom Sally had liked from when they had first met up as new probationers.

Sally could still remember how awkward and excited at the same time she had felt when Morag had first introduced her to her elder brother, Callum, with his dark hair and piercing blue eyes. Callum, who looked as handsome as any film star and whose smile had made her insides quiver with delight.

Morag and Callum had become regular visitors at her parents’ home, welcomed there by her mother once she learned that they had lost their own parents, when the small rowboat they had taken out on Loch Lomond during a holiday there had sunk, drowning them both. That had been two years before she had met them, and before Callum’s job, as a newly qualified assistant teacher, had brought them both to Liverpool, where Morag had decided to train as a nurse.

They had all got on so well together, her father and Callum sharing an interest in natural history and often going off on long walks together, whilst Morag had shown Sally’s mother how to make the Scotch pancakes they all learned to love too much, small rounds of batter cooked on a flat skillet and then served warm with butter.

But then her mother had become ill, and had felt too sick to want to eat anything.

It had been Morag who had held her tightly after the doctor had broken the news to them that her mother had stomach cancer, Morag who had so willingly and, Sally had believed, lovingly helped her to nurse her mother through the long-drawn-out and heart-searingly hard to bear pain she had suffered in the last weeks and days of her life. Morag who had comforted Sally before, during and after the funeral, and not just Morag but Callum as well, both of them standing staunchly at her and her father’s sides to support them through the ordeal of her mother’s loss and burial.

In the weeks that had followed they had all become closer than ever, Callum calling regularly to spend time with her father, Morag too calling at the house to make hot meals for her father when she was off duty and Sally wasn’t.

Sally had been grateful to her then, loving her for her generosity in treating Sally’s father almost as though he were her own and helping to ease their grief.

Only it hadn’t been as another adopted ‘daughter’ that Morag had been comforting her father at all.

Sally closed her eyes and put the photograph face down inside her case before closing it, as though she couldn’t bear to have her mother ‘face’ the betrayal that still seared her own heart. It was time for her to go; her new life beckoned. It might not be what she had hoped for in those heady days when she had first felt the thrill of excitement that came from having her hand held in Callum’s, nor the warmth she had felt at believing that Morag was her best friend and as close to her as any sister, but it was her life and she had to live it, doing what she had been trained to do and remembering always what she owed to the mother she had loved so much and who had loved her. How her father could have done what he had she didn’t know, but she must not think of him. She must think instead of what lay ahead. There were those who had warned her that what she was doing was reckless when she had announced that she was leaving Liverpool to go to work in London, and right at its heart, the very place that would be most exposed and at risk if they did end up at war with the Germans. Sally had said nothing. What could she say, after all? That she didn’t care whether or not she lived or died, that part of her actually wished that she might die rather than go on living with the feelings that were now tearing her apart, the memories of her father’s voice, at first defensive and then angry when she had told him how shocked she was by his betrayal of her mother and the love they had shared? She had pleaded with him to change his mind and not to go ahead with his plans to marry Morag. How could her mother and she herself mean so little to him now when they had been everything to one another before? How could Morag actually expect her to ‘understand’, as she had pleaded with her to do? How could Callum – how dare Callum – have stood there and told her that she was being selfish and cruel and that her mother would have been ashamed of her?

Whilst she didn’t want Barts or its patients, or indeed anyone, to suffer the horrors of war, if there was to be war then she might as well be in the thick of it, she might as well risk her life in the place of another nurse who might have more reason to want to survive than she did. The truth was that she no longer cared what happened to her. Barts, like the rest of London, had laid its contingency plans for war. What could not be moved to a place of safety must stand and bear the onslaught of that war, and she fully intended to stand with it and to play her part. Better if anyone were to die that it was someone like her, with nothing and no one to live for.

‘And then when I told Matron what had happened she actually hugged me and told me that she was proud of me.’

After rushing headlong into her story the moment she had seen Ted waiting for her outside the café, now that they were inside sitting at ‘their’ table, their tea and teacakes in front of them, Agnes finally paused for breath.

‘You were right to tell me to go and see Mrs Robbins. She’s ever so nice, Ted, and Tilly, her daughter, has offered to share her room with me. She’s lovely, and so pretty. It was awful at first, me thinking that I’d lost the chance to have the room, but then when Tilly came running down the road after me, well . . .’

Ted listened sympathetically whilst Agnes told him yet again of her astonishment and gratitude. When she was all sparked up like she was right now, Agnes was a pretty little thing, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining.

He’d told his mother about her over breakfast this morning when he’d finally got in from his late shift. She’d pursed her lips and said that she wasn’t sure she held with orphans, on account of it being odd that someone shouldn’t have any family at all, but Ted had insisted that Agnes was all right.

‘Look I’ve done this for you,’ he told her after taking a bite of his teacake and chewing on it, reaching into his pocket to remove some sheets of folded paper. Spreading them out on the table, he explained, ‘See, this is a map of the underground, and these different colours, well, they’re for the different lines.’

Impressed, Agnes studied the complex interlinked coloured lines, all drawn so carefully.

‘This here dark blue, that’s the line I was telling you the stations for last night. And see, I’ve written down all the station names in the same colour as the lines.’

‘You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble on my account,’ Agnes said.

‘It wasn’t any trouble,’ Ted fibbed. His mother had had a real go at him, telling him off for missing out on his sleep to sit up and ‘draw lines for a daft girl who could be anybody’. But Ted had wanted to do it, and the look of delighted gratitude on Agnes’s face was more than enough payment.

‘See here,’ he continued, producing another sheet of paper and putting it down on the table on top of the first one. ‘I’ve listed all the stations again and I’ve written them down in the same colour as I’ve drawn the different lines, so as you can remember them better.’

‘I’ll never be able to remember them all,’ Agnes told him, shaking her head. ‘I got two tickets wrong again today and Mr Smith wasn’t at all pleased.’

‘His knees were probably bothering him. Suffers something rotten with his knees, old Smithy does. It comes of playing football when he was a youngster, so he says. He was a likely-looking junior for Arsenal before he went and broke a bone in his foot.’

Mr Smith, as wide as he was tall, had been a football player? Agnes’s eyes widened in amazement. Ted knew so much. He knew almost everything there was to know about the underground and those who worked there, she felt sure.

‘And here,’ Ted produced a third sheet of paper, ‘see these squares I’ve drawn over the map of the underground? Well, they tell you the different charging areas and where they change. Red’s the cheapest ’cos them’s the stations nearest to us, and them blue’s the next and then green . . .’

‘Ted, I’m ever so grateful to you. I don’t know what I can do to thank you.’

She was so earnest and so innocent, Ted thought protectively, well able to imagine what another lad, a lad who wasn’t him, might have to say to an offer like that.

‘Well, the best thing you can do is get them stations learned,’ he told her, mock reprovingly, finishing his teacake and then draining his teacup with noisy enthusiasm before saying casually, ‘So I’ll see you here again tomorrow so that we can run through some of them stations, shall I?’

‘Oh, yes, please – that is, if you’ve got time?’

‘Course I’ve got time. I’ll make time, but mind you look at them drawings and lists I’ve done for you and get learning them.’

‘Oh, I will,’ Agnes promised him fervently.

Later, hurrying along High Holborn towards the orphanage, Agnes acknowledged that somehow seeing Ted made the knowledge that this evening would be the last she would ever spend at the orphanage easier to bear. Matron had said that she would walk with her herself to Article Row to see her settled in. Agnes’s heart swelled with pride as she remembered how Matron had praised her for her honesty and her courage when she had told her that after initially being too cowardly to go and see the room when she should have done she had then gone back and been rewarded with Tilly’s generosity.

‘I can see already that you and Tilly are going to become good friends, Agnes,’ Matron had said.

Agnes certainly hoped so. She had never had a close friend of her own before, just as she had never had anyone like Ted in her life before, or a room she would have to share with only one other person, and in a proper house.

She hoped the two other lodgers would like her. Tilly hadn’t said much about them other than that one of them was a nurse, who worked at Barts, as Tilly herself did, and the other – the one who had claimed the room that was to have been Agnes’s – worked at Selfridges and was, in Tilly’s own words, ‘very glamorous and exciting’.

From her mother’s bedroom window Tilly surveyed Article Row eagerly, looking to see if any of their lodgers were on their way, even though it was only ten past seven. She had come upstairs using the excuse of needing to use the bathroom, knowing that her mother would disapprove of her hanging out of the window, so to speak, just as though they lived in some common rundown area where the inhabitants did things like that. Of course, her mother was being very matter-of-fact and businesslike about the whole thing, and because of that Tilly was having to pretend that she wasn’t excited, especially when it came to Dulcie, whose imminent presence in their home her mother was regularly verbally regretting.

Disappointingly, though, the only people Tilly could see were Nancy from next door, who was standing by her front gate with her arms folded and a scarf tied round her head, talking to the coalman. He had sent a message earlier in the week via the young nephew who worked for him that he had received an extra delivery of coal and that if his customers had any sense they would take advantage of this, though it was summer, and fill their cellars ‘just in case’.

There had been no need for anyone to ask, ‘Just in case what?’ The prospect of war was on every-one’s mind. Now, watching as his horse, obviously bored with his master’s delay, moved on his own to the next house, Tilly gave in to one of the delicious shivers of excitement she had been feeling ever since Dulcie had marched into number 13 and staked her claim on the back bedroom, imagining how much fun Dulcie was going to bring into their previously quiet lives.

Further down the road, right at the end, Sergeant Dawson was opening his front gate and stepping out onto the pavement, the buttons on his police uniform shining brightly in the evening sunlight. The Dawsons went to the same church as Tilly and her mother, and tended to keep themselves to themselves. They didn’t have any children, their only son having been sickly from birth and having died in his early teens. Tilly could only vaguely remember him, a thin pale boy several years older than her, in a wheelchair she’d seen being pushed out by Mrs Dawson.

The Simpson family at number 3 had four young children, two girls and two boys, and Tilly could see the boys taking turns riding their shared bicycle whilst the girls played hopscotch. Not that the children would be around for much longer. Barbara and the children were evacuating to Essex to stay with Barbara’s cousin, whilst Ian Simpson, who worked on the printing presses of the Daily Express in Fleet Street, would continue to live in the Row during the week and spend the weekend with his family.

Even so, if Nancy saw that the children had drawn on the pavement in chalk they’d be for it, Tilly reckoned. Nancy didn’t approve of children making the Row look cluttered and untidy, not when they had back gardens to play in.

Most of the inhabitants of Article Row were around Nancy’s age, with children who had grown up here and moved on, and some of the houses, mainly those further down from them, were all owned by the same landlord who rented them out to people who came and went, people who, in the main, worked at one of the local hospitals, the nearby Inns of Court, or the government offices on and around the Strand.

Downstairs, Olive’s thoughts were occupied with their lodgers every bit as much as Tilly’s, although in a different way. She’d spent the day, making sure that the house was immaculate, wiping a damp cloth over the insides of drawers and wardrobes, then leaving them open to the warm summer air to dry, before replacing inside the small bags of lavender she’d carefully sewn and filled at the end of the previous summer. The previous week she’d taken the last of her late father-in-law’s clothes down to Mr Isaac just off the Strand, carefully paying the money he’d given her for them into her Post Office book.

This morning she’d been up early to give her windows an extra polish with crumpled-up pages of the Daily Express dabbed with a bit of vinegar, and then this afternoon, she’d made up the beds with freshly aired sheets. She and Tilly had made do with a scratch tea of freshly boiled eggs, brown bread and butter, and some summer pudding she’d made earlier in the week. Now, as she surveyed her sparkling clean kitchen and smoothed a hand over the front of her apron she just hoped that she was doing the right thing, and that Nancy wasn’t right to disapprove and warn her that no good would come of her actions.

In the event Sally was the first of the lodgers to arrive, bringing with her only one small suitcase, her calm organised manner soothing Olive’s anxieties. For a girl still only in her early twenties, Sally had a very mature manner about her, Olive recognised, deciding that this must come of her being a nurse.

‘Yes, I’d love a cup of tea, please,’ she replied to Olive’s offer, ‘but I’d like to take my case up to my room and unpack first, if that’s all right with you.’

‘Of course,’ Olive agreed.

Upstairs in what was to be her new home, Sally unpacked quickly and efficiently pausing only to linger over and touch her parents’ photograph before making her way back downstairs to the kitchen where Olive was waiting for her with the kettle on the boil.

‘I’ve had keys cut for you all,’ Olive informed Sally. ‘My neighbour seems to think I shouldn’t have done but in your case especially, with you doing shift work, it seemed to make sense and I felt I couldn’t offer you your own key and not do the same for the two other girls.

‘Two other?’ Sally queried, smiling approvingly at Tilly as Olive explained what had happened.

Once they had their cups of tea they gravitated out into the back garden, Sally explaining, ‘It seems a shame not to make the most of this warm weather, especially as we don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to enjoy it. It was noticeable how many young men in uniform there are in London, as I made my way here, and of course no one can avoid noticing the sandbags and other precautions.’

‘No,’ Olive agreed unhappily. ‘I’ve already got my blackout curtains done. Me and Tilly did them together a few weeks back.’ She nodded towards the bottom of the garden. ‘As you can see, we’ve got an Anderson shelter in place. Sergeant Dawson from number one, and my neighbour from next door’s husband, came round and put it up for me. Sergeant Dawson said that I’ll be able to grow some salad greens on the top of it, with all the earth we’ve covered it with, but I don’t know the first thing about gardening, as you can see.’

‘My parents loved gardening,’ Sally smiled, ‘and I don’t mind having a go at turning part of the garden into a veggie patch, if you want me to?’

‘Would you?’ Olive was delighted. ‘I must say that I’ve been feeling a bit guilty that I haven’t got a clue when all the neighbours seem to be doing their bit and growing all sorts. There’s a small shed on the other side of the Anderson, and a bit of a greenhouse, but you can’t see them right now for the apple tree.’

Gardening had been something Sally and her parents had always done as a family, and although it would be painful to take it up again because of the memories it would bring back it would also be something she would enjoy, Sally knew.

‘I’d be happy to do what I can, although I dare say with Covent Garden so close you aren’t short of fresh veggies.’

‘Not normally,’ Tilly joined in, ‘but I overheard Sergeant Dawson telling Mrs Black from number fourteen the other morning that if we do go to war then it mightn’t be so easy to get fresh food. Smithfield Market has already been moved, and . . .’ Tilly hesitated and then, because Sally was after all a nurse and working at Barts herself, she continued in a small rush, ‘. . . and they were saying in the Lady Almoner’s office this morning that they wouldn’t be surprised if the evacuation of the hospital didn’t start soon.’

‘That’s true,’ Sally agreed, finishing her tea, which had been strong and hot, just as she liked it.

* * *

‘Are you sure you really need all this stuff? After all, you’ll be coming home every week,’ Rick complained as he was forced to sit on the bulging suitcase that Dulcie had borrowed from one of their neighbours in order to transport her personal belongings to her new home.

‘Of course I need it, otherwise I wouldn’t be taking it, would I?’ Dulcie responded scornfully.

Her brother was wearing his new army uniform, collected only that morning prior to him going off for his six months’ military training in a few days’ time. The heavy khaki clothes and sturdy boots, which often looked uncomfortable and unwieldy on other men, seemed to fit Rick quite well, but Dulcie certainly wasn’t going to boost her brother’s ego by telling him how surprisingly good-looking and well set up he looked. Even with his new short back and sides haircut.

When they went downstairs, the family were all gathered in the kitchen, her mother’s pursed mouth making it plain what she thought of Dulcie’s decision and her behaviour, whilst, typically, her dad had hidden himself behind his evening paper as he sat at the kitchen table drinking his cup of tea, whilst Edith, smugly virtuous as always, was doing the washing up.

‘That’s it, then, I’m off,’ Dulcie announced from the open kitchen door.

Her mother’s look of disapproval deepened, but then, at the last minute, just as she was about to turn away, her mother came over, telling her with maternal concern, ‘You just look out for yourself, Dulcie. You like to think you know all there is to know. It’s all right thinking that when you’ve got the support of a family behind you but it’s a very different matter when you’re all on your own. You just remember as well that we are your family, and if you aren’t back here on Sunday morning to go to church with us then I’ll have something to say about it, I can tell you, and so will your dad.’

It was the longest speech her mother had made to her in a good while, and to her own astonishment Dulcie discovered that there was an unfamiliar lump in the back of her throat as she tossed her head and pretended not to be affected by this unexpected display of affection.

It might not be a long distance as the crow flew from Stepney to Article Row, but just given that they were not crows or able to fly, and given, too, the bulging weight of Dulcie’s borrowed suitcase, Rick quickly discovered, as he manhandled the suitcase onto the bus, that he had been right to suspect that it would not be an easy journey. Dulcie, of course, had jumped on the bus ahead of him and was right now slipping into what looked like the last vacant seat, leaving him to strap hang and keep an eye on her case. Mind, there was one advantage to helping his sister, since the four girls squashed into the long seat at the back of the bus meant for only three people were now all looking approvingly at him.

Rick winked at them and joked, ‘How about making room for a little ’un, girls? One of you could always sit on my knee.’

The girls giggled whilst pretending to disapprove, and Rick was just on the point of taking things a bit further when Dulcie turned round in her seat to call out, ‘You can pay for me, Ricky, and make sure you keep an eye on that suitcase.’

Having realised that he was ‘with’ Dulcie, the four girls looked disapproving at him, obviously jumping to the conclusion that they were a couple, and were now studiously ignoring him.

‘Trust you to flirt with the likes of them,’ Dulcie told him scornfully, once they had got off the bus in High Holborn, Rick having to tussle with the case to get it past the queue of people pressing forward to get on the bus. ‘Common as anything, they were, and if you carry on like that you’ll end up having your name written against the name of a kid that might not be yours, on its birth certificate.’

Unabashed by this sisterly warning, Rick shook his head. ‘No way would I fall for anything like that. When I do write my name on a kid’s birth certificate, it will be my kid and its mother will be my wife. But I’m not up for that yet, not with this war, and plenty of girls fancying a good-looking lad in uniform. Fun’s the name of the game for me.’

Dulcie couldn’t object or argue since she felt very much the same, although in her case there was no way she was letting any chap think she was going to take the kind of risks that got a girl into trouble. Being tied down in marriage with an unwanted baby on her hip wasn’t what Dulcie wanted for her future at all.

Everywhere you went London’s buildings were now protected by sandbags, the windowpanes covered in crisscrosses of sticky brown tape, which the Government had said would hold the glass together in a bomb blast and prevent people from being cut by flying fragments.

Outside one of the public shelters a woman was haranguing an ARP warden, demanding to know whether or not Hitler was coming and when, whilst a gaggle of girls in WRNS uniform hurried past in the opposite direction, carrying their gas masks in smart boxes.

‘Cor, look at those legs,’ Rick commented appreciatively, taking a break from carrying the case, to flex his aching arm muscles as he turned to admire the girls’ legs in their regulation black stockings. Out of all the services, only the WRNS were issued with such elegant stockings, but Dulcie eyed them disparagingly.

‘You can get better than that in Selfridges’ hosiery department,’ she sneered.

‘Maybe so, but I’ll bet they cost a pretty penny.’

Dulcie nodded, feeling smug that she’d had the good sense to snap up half a dozen pairs from a consignment in which the boxes had been damaged, rendering them unfit for sale in Mr Selfridge’s opinion and so sold to his staff at a discount price.

Dulcie had heard that it wasn’t entirely unusual for some consignments of luxury goods to end up being ‘damaged’ thanks to an arrangement between the delivery drivers and the men who unloaded them, and that most of the damaged stock was then sold in one or other of the East End markets.

‘This way,’ she instructed Rick, indicating the turning that would eventually lead to Article Row.

She hadn’t said much at home about Article Row and so she had the satisfaction of seeing her normally unimpressable elder brother come to a halt and stare around himself to take in the well-tended line of houses.

‘Bit posh, isn’t it?’ was all he allowed himself to say, but Dulcie knew him and she knew that he was impressed.

Sergeant Dawson, leaning on his front gate and watching the world go by, spotted them and straightened up. He’d heard initially on the Row’s grapevine via its best gossip, Nancy, that Olive from number 13 was taking in lodgers; he’d seen Sally arrive, and then the thin little waif accompanied by the larger older woman, guessing that the girl must be the orphan recommended for a room by the vicar’s wife, but this young woman walking toward him confidently now, well, Nancy and the other old biddies would have something to say about her, the sergeant reflected, not altogether unappreciative of the slim length of Dulcie’s legs in her nylon stockings, or the way in which the skirt of her fitted poppy-red dress, with its white collar, just reached to her knee, its white belt showing off her narrow waist. He didn’t think, however, that Mrs Dawson would be equally appreciative, and he felt sorry for Olive, whom he knew and liked, having to deal with the kind of lodger this one looked as though she could turn out to be, and accompanied by a lad as well. The Row would not approve of that! Respectable single ladies was what Olive had advertised for, not too-pretty young girls of a type that would attract men like honey attracted bees.

He nodded a brief welcome in their direction though, causing Rick to respond with a smile, and gesture toward Dulcie’s case.

‘You’d think she’d got enough clothes in here to fit out the whole street.’

‘Row, lad,’ Archie Dawson corrected him. ‘You won’t be very popular round here if you call Article Row a street.’

‘See, I told you it was posh,’ Rick told Dulcie as she gave him a warning look and determinedly marched past the policeman.

It was Tilly who saw them first. The orphanage matron had left, her mother was showing Sally the garden, so she’d come upstairs to help Agnes unpack, feeling sorry for her when she saw how little she had, and all of it looking second-hand. Poor girl, Tilly thought as she watched Agnes hang her uniform and her other small collection of clothes in the half of the wardrobe Tilly had cleared for her. The dull brown dress Agnes was wearing didn’t do anything for her, making her look thinner than ever because it was too big for her, and turning her skin slightly sallow.

‘I’ll be downstairs, when you’re ready,’ Tilly had told her, thinking that Agnes might want to use the bathroom or perhaps unpack a few personal treasures in privacy, but then with her foot on the top stair, she’d turned back to go into her mother’s room and look down the Row again.

And that was when she saw Dulcie, in her smart red dress and her white high-heeled peep-toed shoes, followed by the best-looking young man Tilly had ever seen carrying a large suitcase.

As though he sensed that he was being studied, the young man looked up at the window, causing Tilly to step back, clasping her hands over her chest to calm her excited heartbeat as she did so.

Was he Dulcie’s young man? He must be, Tilly decided, racing downstairs and out into the garden to warn her mother breathlessly, ‘Dulcie’s nearly here.’

Although she smiled and turned to make her way back to the house, Olive wasn’t happy about her daughter’s obvious excitement. This was just what she had feared. Tilly was at an impressionable age. Because there weren’t any other young people in the Row of her age, and because her mother had been so busy nursing Tilly’s late grandfather, Tilly hadn’t had the opportunity to go out and have fun as much as other girls might. Olive was aware of that, just as she was aware of the increasing restlessness she had seen in her daughter over the summer months. There was fun and fun, though, and Olive did not want her quite naïve daughter getting involved in the kind of ‘fun’ she suspected someone like Dulcie enjoyed.

When Olive opened the door to Dulcie’s firm knock, though, it wasn’t the sight of Dulcie that set maternal alarm bells ringing inside her so much as the sight of the far too handsome young man standing behind her, one arm draped loosely around Dulcie’s shoulders. Her mouth firmed, her expression cooled, but before she could say anything Dulcie forestalled her.

‘It’s all right. Rick here is only my brother. He’s come to help me move in on account of my case being heavy. Rick, this is Mrs Robbins.’

Her brother and not a boyfriend. Olive allowed herself to relax a little. Rick’s smile was open and warm, his handshake firm and his uniform indicating that it was unlikely that he was going to be around very much, to Olive’s relief, as she recognised the effect having such a very good-looking and friendly young man in and out of the house could have on her daughter. Rick had the kind of smile, looks, and easy charm that would melt any girl’s heart.

‘I’ll show them up, shall I?’ Tilly suggested happily from the hallway, having just learned that the handsome young man was Dulcie’s brother and not her boyfriend.

But to her disappointment her mother told her, ‘I’m sure that Dulcie can remember which is her room and you’d only be in the way of her brother getting her suitcase up the stairs. Go and put on the kettle instead, please, Tilly, so that Dulcie and Rick can come down and have a cup of tea when they’re ready.’

‘Well, I have to admit that you’ve fallen on your feet here,’ Rick pronounced after he had dragged the heavy case up to Dulcie’s room and thoroughly inspected her new living quarters.

‘Told you,’ Dulcie reminded him. ‘I’ve got a whole room to myself and my own wardrobe, and there’s a bathroom on this floor that I only have to share with this nurse that’s taken the other room.’

‘All right, but don’t you forget that promise you made me,’ Rick warned her as he picked up the now empty case.

Olive was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, ushering them into the kitchen, ruefully aware of just how pleasant and charming Dulcie’s brother was in contrast to Dulcie herself. Pleasant and charming and far, far too good-looking for the peace of mind of the mother of an impressionable girl, especially when that impressionable girl was currently gazing at him with the kind of dazed expression girls her age normally reserved for matinée idols, Olive thought with a small sigh. She directed Tilly to fetch some milk from the larder, and then to go and bring Agnes and Sally in from the garden so that they too could have a cup of tea.

When the three young women returned Dulcie’s eyes widened at the sight of Agnes in her dull ill-fitting brown dress, and then narrowed with hostility when Olive told her pointedly, ‘This is Agnes, who should have had your room. Luckily she doesn’t mind sharing with Tilly. Come on and sit down, Agnes,’ Olive coaxed the hesitant-looking girl, her voice and expression warming as she welcomed her.

Her new landlady’s obvious approval of the shabbily dressed orphan and her equally obvious disapproval of her raised Dulcie’s hackles and brought out the same fighting instinct that her mother’s favouritism of Edith always aroused. The orphan was nothing compared with her so why should Olive make such a fuss of her? Deliberately and very disdainfully Dulcie brushed off the skirt of her own dress as Agnes’s shabby frock touched it, the pearl-pink nail polish she was wearing catching the light as she did so.

Little madam, Olive thought grimly, treating poor Agnes like that, although fortunately the other girl hadn’t noticed Dulcie’s deliberate slight. Dulcie, though, noticed Olive’s reaction and immediately her dislike of Agnes for her shabbiness hardened into dislike of the girl herself, because Olive obviously favoured her. Agnes was another Edith, ‘a favourite’ to be fussed over whilst she was pushed to one side and ignored.

‘Just been called up?’ Sally asked Rick, whilst Tilly looked on, envious of the older girl’s calm ability actually to speak to Rick whilst she could only stare at him in speechless awe.

‘Yes,’ Rick acknowledged. ‘I leave in a few days to start my training, and I reckon that we’ll be at war before I finish it, from what they’ve been saying in the papers.’

‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,’ Sally agreed.

‘The sooner we get Hitler sorted out and put in his place, the sooner life can get back to normal. I reckon we’ll give him the roundabout and boot him back to Germany in no time at all,’ Rick assured her confidently. ‘He’ll never get past the Maginot Line, even if he does dare to try and invade Belgium.’

‘That’s what the Government is saying,’ Sally confirmed.

Olive hugged her arms around her body. ‘I hate all this talk of war, after what our men went through the last time,’ she said, ‘but if it has to come then it has to come. Turn on the wireless, will you, Tilly? It’s almost time for the news.’

Obediently Tilly went to switch on the wireless, feeling all fingers and thumbs and very self-conscious as she did so, because Rick was sitting closest to it.

The announcer’s voice, when it did come through, was slightly fuzzy, and immediately Rick turned in his chair, leaning over to Tilly. ‘It needs a bit of tuning – want me to do it for you?’

Before she could answer, he was reaching out towards the control knob, so that his fingers brushed against hers as she moved away.

Scarlet colour dyed her skin, her heart flipping over like an acrobat whilst her pulses raced with excitement and delight, mixed with even more self-consciousness.

‘There, that’s it,’ Rick told her as his small adjustment brought the sound back in balance, his smile for Tilly warm and friendly. She was a very pretty girl, but very young, not much more than a school girl. Had she been a couple of years older he might have been tempted to tease her a little and really make her blush, before he asked her out and kissed her – had she not been Dulcie’s landlady’s daughter and had he not been about to leave London. Right now, as far as Rick was concerned, Tilly was just a nice kid.

All of them fell silent whilst they listened to the news, even Dulcie. Not that there was much to learn unless you were interested in the fact that Poland had mobilised all its reservists and France had called up all of hers which Dulcie wasn’t, not really She was more interested in wondering when she was next going to see David James-Thompson. When she was going to see him, not if, because she knew that she would. She really could do with getting hold of a decent bit of material and having a new dress made, Dulcie decided, because when David James-Thompson took her to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse she wanted to look her best, so that he’d know that every other man there was looking at him and envying him because he was with her. Dulcie loved that kind of admiration; that feeling of knowing that she was the best.

The newsreader was talking about Britain’s plans for evacuating children from the cities, and whilst Olive and Sally sighed and said how awful that was going to be for their mothers, Tilly sat with her chin in her hands pretending to listen intently, whilst in reality what she was looking at was Rick.

It had been such a busy evening she hadn’t had any time at all to study Ted’s lists, Agnes acknowledged, but she could start reciting them to herself in the morning whilst she walked to work. She’d expected her new surroundings to feel alien and a little bit frightening but Tilly and her mother had made her feel so welcome. It felt funny not to be in the large orphanage kitchen, washing up or helping cook. Tilly’s mother had stopped her when she had gone to wash their teacups earlier, saying that there would be time enough for that another day and that anyway, she was a paying lodger and not here to work.

Olive nodded as she listened to Sally whilst inwardly thinking that she would have a word with Tilly and see what she thought about passing on a couple of the dresses she was growing out of on to Agnes. Matron had more or less admitted to Olive before she had left that it was difficult getting second-hand clothes for Agnes because she was so much older than the other girls, and the clothes that people passed on to the orphanage were for younger children. Olive had decided there and then that she would do her utmost to make sure that poor Agnes had a few better things. She would see if she could get a decent bit of material from one of the markets, Petticoat Lane perhaps, to have something new made up for both Tilly and Agnes. She could afford it now that she was getting three lots of rent money in, even if she had reduced what Agnes had to pay because she was having to share with Tilly.

The news had finished. Rick got to his feet, having assured himself that his sister had indeed found somewhere comfortable. It had been daft of him secretly to worry about her. Trust Dulcie to fall on her feet. Not that he liked what she had done. Families should stay together – that was how people like them lived – but Dulcie had always been awkward, wanting to make things difficult for herself and for others.

Dulcie saw Rick to the front door.

‘And don’t you forget about going home on Sunday to go to church?’ he reiterated yet again.

‘Will you stop going on about that?’ she complained. ‘I’ve said I’ll come, haven’t I?’

‘Well, you just make sure you do,’ Rick warned her, as he set off in the direction of Stepney with the now empty case.

It was gone eleven o’clock, she could see from the tiny illuminated hands of her alarm clock, but Sally still couldn’t sleep. Being back in a proper bedroom in a proper house had brought back too many memories.

Memories of before the betrayal, when Morag had been invited home by her mother and had stayed overnight with them; memories of the laughter and happiness that had filled the kitchen as Morag easily and naturally fell into the household routine, helping with the chores; memories of the Christmas before her mother had fallen ill that they had all spent together, Morag, Callum, her parents and her. She could see herself now pulling a cracker with Callum and then wearing the silly hat he had put on her head before reading out the equally silly riddle that had been inside the cracker along with a plastic heart charm, which he had given to her with the words, ‘Here’s my heart, Sally. I want you to look after it for me.’ Silly words, and yet to her at the time they had had such meaning. It was pointless thinking about that now, she told herself, rolling over and punching her pillow as she reminded herself that she was on duty in the morning at eight o’clock, and that the ENT surgeon had a full list of tonsil-lectomies to get through, the final batch before the majority of the operating staff were evacuated. These urgent operations were now to be carried out in the basement theatres the hospital had organised, the top-floor theatres closed down because of the threat of war.

Liverpool . . . She would always miss her home city, Sally knew, but she would not miss the pain she hoped she had left behind there. A pain she was determined should not follow her into her new life.

Chapter Six

‘Come on and sit down, Mum. I’ve got the kettle on.’

Olive gave Tilly a grateful look as she sank down into the most comfortable of the kitchen chairs – the one that originally belonged to her father-in-law, and which had arms and a couple of cushions, and which she had re-covered in the spring at the same time as she and Tilly had run up the pretty kitchen curtains.

It was Friday afternoon and Tilly had been sent home early because the hospital was completing its evacuation programme ahead of the war that everyone was now not just dreading but also expecting. As Tilly was remaining in London, she would continue to work as part of the skeleton staff in the Lady Almoner’s office.

‘My feet,’ Olive complained as she eased off her shoes and surveyed what looked like the beginnings of a blister. ‘Although I shouldn’t complain, not when I think of those poor children and their mothers.’

In her role as a member of the WVS, Olive had been on duty all day today and the previous day, helping to get small children onto the evacuation trains organised to take them away from danger and into the country.

Newspapers were full of photographs of lines of children being marched away from their homes and their parents, many of them escorted by their teachers, ready to be handed over to waiting groups of volunteers once they reached their destinations. Only mothers with very young children and babies were being evacuated with their children. As Agnes had said the previous evening, after going straight from work to the orphanage to help with the evacuation, it really broke your heart to see the children’s tears as they were taken away from everything and everyone they loved, unable to understand that it was for their own sakes and their own safety.

Olive watched her daughter as she made the tea, worried about her safety.

As though Tilly had guessed her thoughts she said quietly and in a very grown-up voice, I’m glad we’re staying here, Mum. It would be awful if we all deserted London, and those who can’t get away were left on their own. And besides, if anything does happen, if Hitler does bomb us, then I want to be with you, because you’re the best mum in the world. When I listen to poor Agnes talking about growing up in the orphanage and being left on its doorstep, I try to think how I would feel if that was me; if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have you as my mother.’ Her voice broke slightly, causing Olive to blink away her own emotion.

‘Oh, sweetheart, we mustn’t blame Agnes’s mother too much. We don’t know what she might have gone through, poor girl. No mother gives up her baby willingly, I can promise you that, and as for us staying here in London, well, I hope I am doing the right thing, Tilly, and that I’m not just being selfish wanting to be here in this house. A home means a lot to a woman but it never means more than her children and those she loves.’

‘We’ll be all right, Mum, I’m sure of it. Besides, how could Hitler bomb London when we’ve got all those barrage balloons and anti-aircraft batteries, never mind everything else, and the RAF?’

Sally, coming into the kitchen in time to catch Tilly’s fiercely patriotic words, exchanged a brief look over her head with Olive, before agreeing firmly, ‘That’s right, Tilly. This city, and this country, are well defended and we’ll stand firm when the time comes, no matter what Hitler might try to do.’

‘Has everyone gone now?’ Tilly asked her as she removed an extra cup from the cupboard to pour Sally a cup of tea. ‘It seemed so strange when I left earlier, coming through the main hall and it almost being empty. It felt funny, sort of ghostly, making me think how old the hospital really is. I’d never felt it before today.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Sally agreed, ‘and yes, everyone who’s going has mostly gone now, and we’ve sorted out the operating theatres in the basement.’ She didn’t add that she’d heard that orders had been given for thousands of cardboard coffins to be made for the dead the authorities were anticipating should the city come under attack from Hitler.

‘I almost don’t want to do this,’ Olive announced as she switched on the wireless for the six o’clock news bulletin.

‘Come on, Dulcie, it isn’t like you to hang on after we’ve closed for the day,’ Lizzie teased good-naturedly. ‘We’re the last on the floor by the looks of it as well.’

The cosmetics floor was indeed deserted, and had been unusually quiet all day, allowing Mr Selfridge to order each floor to do a practice run of its fire-watching duties, a new regime instituted earlier in the week and which Dulcie loathed. Who wanted to go up onto the roof and act as a look out for non-existent fires started by equally non-existent bombs being dropped from nonexistent German planes? But Mr Selfridge had said they had to, just like he had said they all had to learn how to use a stirrup pump as well as know the correct evacuation procedure from the store, should that be necessary, and his word was law.

She couldn’t hang around here any longer, Dulcie admitted, even if this morning she had woken up feeling sure that today would be the day she saw David James-Thompson again. She had even planned how she was going to give him a big hint about how he could find her at the Hammersmith Palais tomorrow night, sitting at her favourite table, the one in the middle of the front row, facing the band. There was always a crowd of knowing girls who headed for that table, so there was no risk of her ending up sitting there on her own, and they were all there for the same reason: so that they could be seen to advantage by everyone else. Dulcie was so on edge she felt like smoking a cigarette, something she didn’t do very often. Ciggies cost money, and meant that if she bought them she’d have less to spend on her clothes, so normally Dulcie only smoked if someone else offered her a cigarette.

‘Oh, come on then,’ she said to Lizzie, who had now finished putting away her own stock, ‘I just hope we get a few more customers in tomorrow, otherwise I’m going to be dying of boredom. You’d have thought with all this fuss about there going to be a war on that every lad in the city would be coming in here with his girl to treat her to a bit of something, and that every woman without a chap would be coming in to get herself a lipstick so that she could get one before they all go off to war.’

Lizzie gave Dulcie a wry look. ‘I dare say that most people will have more on their minds than buying lipstick, Dulcie.’

‘Such as?’ Dulcie demanded as they walked towards the staff exit to the stairs that led down to the basement-level staff cloakroom.

‘Such as worrying about their children being evacuated if they are young enough, and worrying about their sons going to war if they are old enough. Same thing goes for courting couples. They’ll be wanting to spend what time they’ve got together, not coming in here. Ralph and I are going looking at engagement rings tomorrow,’ she added. ‘Funny but when I was growing up I imagined that when my boy took me to buy an engagement ring it would be the most exciting and happy thing in the world but now it feels like the most frightening and upsetting, because I know that we’re getting engaged now and married at Christmas, just in case.’

Dulcie heaved a bored sigh as they reached the cloakroom and she removed her overall and put it out for the laundry. Mr Selfridge insisted that his staff presented an immaculately clean appearance, which meant that a laundry service was provided for their overalls and uniforms. She was fed up with all this talk of war. Every night at number 13, when everyone else gathered round the wireless to listen to the news, she felt like stamping her foot and saying why didn’t they have some music on instead so that they could have a bit of a dance. Not that that suggestion would go down well with Olive. Dulcie reckoned her landlady would have her out of the house if she gave her the smallest excuse to do that. Well, she wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction. And she certainly wasn’t going to give up her comfortable room, or her big bed, and definitely not the wardrobe she had all to herself. Tilly was daft for going soft and sharing her own room with the orphan. She wouldn’t have done that, especially not with a plain dull girl like Agnes, forever creeping around in that shabby brown dress, making Olive feel sorry for her. Well, she didn’t feel sorry for her; if anything, she felt sorry for herself for having to put up with her.

‘So what is this blitzkrieg that everyone’s going on about?’ Dulcie demanded, the four of them – Agnes was still at the orphanage – sitting round the wireless that Olive had just switched off. Everyone apart from Dulcie herself had left their tea virtually untouched, and there was an almost palpable air of grim acceptance in the kitchen.

‘It means lightning war, Dulcie,’ Sally explained. ‘That’s the kind of war that Germany inflicted on Poland when the German army invaded Poland this morning.’ When it invaded Poland and swept all before it, she thought emotionally, including the brave but hopelessly outdated Polish cavalry, which still waged war on horseback. They had been utterly unable to stand against the might of the Wehrmacht force of over a million men with armoured and motorised divisions. The Luftwaffe had blown up Poland’s railways and blown its air force out of the sky. It was over: Poland’s defences lay in ruins, and Poland as an autonomous state had ceased to exist.

Seated across the table from Sally, Olive removed a handkerchief from the sleeve of her blouse and blew her nose firmly, blinking hard as she did so.

‘So why should we have to bother about Poland?’ Dulcie asked, apparently unmoved by the emotion gripping Olive, Sally and Tilly.

‘Why should we bother?’ Sally’s normally calm tone had sharpened to real anger. ‘Why we should bother, Dulcie, is because thousands of brave men have died trying to protect their country from an unprovoked attack; even more thousands of innocent women and children have also been killed or injured or taken prisoner. Even if we weren’t honour bound by treaty to support the Poles, even if there wasn’t the fear that Hitler might decide to attack us, as human beings we should bother about the cruelty to so many innocent people. As hard as it might be for you to lift your mind from such important things as selling lipstick, I would advise that you try to do so, Dulcie, because where Poland lies defeated and bloody today, we could lie tomorrow.’

When Tilly made a small sound of anguish Sally looked at her and apologised. ‘I’m sorry, Tilly, I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

‘It’s best that we all know and face the truth,’ Olive answered for Tilly.

‘Our Government can’t ignore what has happened.’

‘Does that mean that we’re going to be at war with Germany?’

‘I’m afraid so, Tilly,’ Olive answered quietly, brushing her hand over her daughter’s head. A sad smile touched her mouth when Tilly put her head on her shoulder, plainly overcome by her own emotions.

There was no need for Sally to get on her high horse and start lecturing her, Dulcie thought crossly. And besides, lipsticks were just as important as Hitler and his blitzkrieg. At least they were to her.

‘When do you think we’ll hear – officially, I mean?’ Olive asked Sally.

Somehow she had fallen into the habit of treating Sally as though they were closer in age than they actually were, finding it comforting to have Sally in the house to talk to. Secretly, in her heart, Olive was beginning to think of all of them here in her small all-female household as a sort of family. Already she felt protective of the girls – except of course Dulcie, who did not need anyone to protect her. Quite the opposite, in fact. In Olive’s opinion it was others who needed protecting from Dulcie.

‘I don’t know, but it’s bound to be soon,’ Sally answered.

There had been so much talk about war in all the newspapers, so much preparation for it, what with the Government producing so many leaflets about the dangers they would all be facing, that Tilly thought she had grown used to the fear that stalked them, but now, in her mother’s warm comfortable kitchen, with the sun still shining outside, she realised that she had not and that she had not known what fear was at all really until she thought about the fate of the poor Polish people and faced for the first time the true enormity of war.

Standing outside their church on Sunday morning, with everyone going on about the war, no one in her family would even have noticed if she hadn’t turned up this morning, Dulcie thought grumpily as she watched the worshippers leaving, all the young men in uniform grouping themselves together, passing round their cigarettes, not joking and indulging in horseplay as they had on previous Sundays, like children let out of school, but instead exchanging brusque words, spoken from the sides of their mouths, frowns replacing smiles. Even her own brother, Rick’s, normal smile was replaced by a look of determination. She hadn’t bothered going to the Palais last night after all. She hadn’t felt like it somehow.

Moving a little away from everyone else – in part because her mother was still going on about Edith’s singing and how she’d been clapped through three encores at a local working men’s club the previous night, and in part because she liked standing out from the crowd – Dulcie caught the now familiar words being spoken grimly into the warm September air, words like ‘devastation’, ‘POWs’, and ‘blitzkrieg’, mingling with phrases like ‘it will be us next’, ‘thousands left for dead’, ‘poor bloody bastards’. . .

Then one of the boy messengers that worked with the ARP men came cycling up full pelt, yelling out as loud as he could, ‘It’s happened. We’re at war. Mr Chamberlain has just said.’

Of course, uproar followed, with the ARP lot grabbing hold of the boy and hauling him off to question him, whilst the lads in uniform followed after them. Wives and mothers, sisters and sweethearts, clung together, whilst the older men, including her father, looked smaller and shrunken somehow.

‘Well, that’s all I need, isn’t it?’ Dulcie could hear Edith complaining. ‘A war, just when my singing career is looking like taking off.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry too much. Perhaps you’ll be able to sing to Hitler. Course, you’ll have to learn German first,’ Dulcie taunted her.

‘Dulcie, that’s enough of that,’ her mother stopped her, giving her an angry look. ‘There’s no need to go upsetting people more than they need to be upset.’ She looked across to where Rick was standing with a now much larger group of men.

A shiver of foreboding went through Dulcie. Thousands the soldiers had killed in Poland, thousands of young men just like her brother. For the first time since all the talk of war had started Dulcie felt its ice-cold fingers clutch at her heart and grip it painfully hard. She might argue with her brother, she might mock him and taunt him, but of all her family it was Rick to whom she was the closest, Rick who she secretly thought was the best brother that any girl could have, with his handsome looks and his easy-going charm, his way of somehow always being there to calm things down when she felt hard done by. Rick might look so tall and manly and indestructible in his army uniform, but he wasn’t indestructible, he was human flesh and blood, and vulnerable. A huge lump blocked her throat, feelings and thoughts she had never had to worry about before swarming through her head like wasps provoked by someone deliberately stirring up their nest.

‘The next thing we know, the ruddy Germans will be bombing us out of our houses and gassing us all to death,’ one elderly woman was screeching. ‘I can remember what it was like the last time, our lads coming back from the trenches with their lungs rotting from the Germans gassing them.’

Dulcie looked down at her own side. She’d tossed her gas mask to the back of her wardrobe, but of course Edith had hers and was now clutching the strap of its box tightly.

Rick came over. ‘Forget about dinner for me, Ma. Me and some of the other lads are going to see what we can find out. Sid Winters – you know, him whose cousin is a regular in the army – reckons that those who’ve already done their training will be shipped out to France pdq, and that our training will be rushed through now.’

Her brother seemed excited now that the initial shock of the announcement had faded, Dulcie recognised, her earlier concern changing to resentment that he could look so pleased when she was worrying herself sick about him. Her mother’s pinched expression became even more strained but she didn’t say anything, simply nodding and then turning to put her arm round Edith and draw her close to her in a manner similar to which Olive had drawn Tilly close the previous evening.

Mothers fussing over their favourites – well, let them, Dulcie thought acidly; she didn’t care.

‘I’ll have my dinner at Article Row,’ she told her mother tersely, turning on her heel without waiting for her to respond.

‘So it’s happened then?’ Olive found that she was automatically speaking in a lower voice as she asked the vicar’s wife the question to which she already knew the answer.

‘Yes. The Prime Minister has already made a formal announcement. I expect we’ll be able to hear what he said on the news at twelve o’clock.’ The two women exchanged tense white-faced looks.

The news that Britain was now formally at war with Germany hadn’t come out of the blue but it was still shocking, making the heart race and the stomach tense.

‘So many of our young men are already in uniform,’ Mrs Windle continued with a nod in the direction of the young men standing together outside the church in their khaki, their Royal Navy dark blue and their RAF blue serge. ‘And now thousands more will be joining them.’

Their small, well-attended church had been built at the same time as Article Row, by the same philanthropist, and stood on the site of a much older church, along with a neat little rectory, a church hall, and the orphanage, the congregation coming from Article Row and the surrounding area. Olive’s husband and in-laws were buried in its graveyard, and on the anniversaries of their deaths and at Christmas, Olive always made a special point of placing fresh flowers on their graves. She could see the graveyard from where she was standing, sunlight dappling through the shade of the yew trees standing sentinel over the dead. Her heart lurched, a shiver striking through her as she looked from the graveyard to the eager young men in their uniforms.

‘We lost so many in the last war, I can’t believe there’s to be another,’ she said sadly. ‘Look at them. They’re all standing so tall and proud, so determined to do their bit, but they’re so young.’

And so many of them would die, was what Olive was thinking but could not say, especially when one of those young men in air-force blue was Mrs Windle’s own nephew.

At her mother’s side, Tilly held on tightly to her gas mask in its smart box, which she and her mother had covered with some scraps of lace to make it look more attractive, a fashion that many young women in the country were adopting, according to Woman’s Weekly.

‘Everywhere is so quiet without the children,’ Tilly commented as they walked home together.

‘Their poor mothers were besides themselves with grief last week when they sent them away, but I dare say now that they will be feeling that they have done the right thing. Hitler is bound to target London.’

‘If you’re going to say that you wish that I’d been young enough to be evacuated, then please don’t,’ Tilly begged her mother. ‘I want to be here with you, Mum.’

As they passed the ARP station on the corner, Sergeant Dawson was standing outside it smoking a cigarette.

‘You’ll have heard the news, I expect?’ he asked.

‘That we’re at war? Yes.’ Olive shivered a little despite the warmth of the sun flooding between the buildings at the entrance to Article Row.

‘I never thought I’d say this, but right now I’m sort of glad that our lad’s already been taken,’ the sergeant told Olive quietly. ‘There’s many a young lad I’ve seen this morning proud to wear his uniform and do his bit for this country. It’s different for those of us who saw something of the last war. I was only in it for the last few weeks, but that was enough.’

‘Yes,’ Olive agreed, thinking of her own husband, his bravery and his death.

On Article Row, the leaves on the clipped privet hedges standing sentry between the low walls at the boundary of each front garden were beginning to look dusty and tired after a summer of exposure to London’s sooty air. Soon it would be autumn and the leaves would die and fall, just like so many of the young men who today were full of vigour and life. Tears blurred Olive’s vision.

A troop from the local Boys’ Brigade marched past the end of the road, their young faces shining with excitement and anticipation. For them war was something to excite them, whilst for those who had lived through the last war, it was something to fear.

‘Come on,’ she told Tilly firmly, increasing her pace as they headed down Article Row after saying goodbye to Sergeant Dawson. ‘I’ve got that joint in the oven that will need seeing to, and —’ Olive stopped speaking to stare up in horrified disbelief at the clear blue sky in response to the wave of sound that was rising to a deafening warning wail.

For a second neither she nor Tilly could move, simply standing staring at one another until Tilly broke their stillness by grabbing hold of Olive’s arm and yelling, ‘Mum, it’s the air-raid siren. Come on we need to get in the shelter.’

They were four doors away from number 13. Holding on to her mother’s arm and almost pulling her along, Tilly started to run, her heart thudding with dread, the wail of the air-raid alarm sending its warning to every part of her terrified body.

Dulcie heard the air-raid siren when she was walking along High Holborn and got caught up in the frantic rush of people reacting to its sound, the panic of the growing crowd as some ran one way and others another, squeezing her up against the sandbags protecting the walls of one of the buildings. The rasp of the sandbags against her legs made her feel grateful for the fact that she wasn’t wearing her precious stockings, but that relief gave way to fear as the crowd swelled and she was pushed again, this time half losing her balance in her high heels. She would have fallen if it hadn’t been for the male hand reaching out to grasp her arm, its owner hauling her to her feet and insisting, ‘The shelter’s this way.’ He was running so fast, his hand still holding her arm, that she was lifted off her feet.

‘Stop, I’m losing my shoes!’

‘Better that than losing your life,’ was his response, as he slowed his pace just enough for her to get her feet back in her shoes, before tugging her along again to where a crowd of people were trying to push their way into the concrete air-raid shelter she had walked past so often, deriding its presence and its ugliness, but which now had never been a more welcome sight. Not that she was going to admit it. Even as she edged inside, Dulcie was sniffing disdainfully as the scent of stale concrete, male sweat and female anxiety filled the air, ignoring the ARP warden’s instruction to, ‘Move down inside, miss. We don’t want people blocking up the entrance.’

‘Hitler hasn’t wasted much time, has he?’ a woman standing close to her observed in a cockney accent, causing several others to give way to the relief of shaky laughter.

Now that they were inside the shelter and safe, Dulcie had an opportunity to look at her rescuer properly for the first time. Around her brother’s age, and of middle height and square muscular build, and wearing an army uniform, he had mid-brown curly hair, hazel eyes and a plain but kind face. Not the kind of male looks to set a girl’s heart beating with excitement, Dulcie decided ungratefully, not like David James-Thompson. Now there was someone she would much rather have been rescued by.

In their Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, Olive and Tilly sat opposite one another on the garden chairs they’d put in there, along with an old card table, a pack of cards in its drawer, which stuck now because of the damp. Olive had lit the paraffin lamp, which had been on the list of ‘essentials’ Woman’s Weekly had advised all well-prepared housewives to have inside their Anderson. Spare bedding, warm clothes and food were things that should be kept close to hand in the home, ready to be carried into the shelter when needed, but the paraffin stove, matches, wrapped in a piece of waterproof material, and a waterproof box containing games, a couple of favourite books and some candles could be safely left in the shelter.

Olive had made sure that hers was kept swept and tidy, its door opened on sunny days to make sure it was aired, and the vexed question of ‘needing to go’ sorted out via a discreet curtain with a bucket and a wooden seat behind it.

‘Will we hear the German planes?’ Tilly asked Olive nervously.

‘I should think so, but they won’t get as far as London, Tilly, I’m sure, not with all the defences the Government has put in place.

‘I’m glad I thought to dash into the kitchen and turn down the gas, otherwise that nice piece of beef I’ve got in the oven will be ruined.’

It was easier to talk about mundane, everyday things than to let one’s mind be filled with the horror and fear of what was happening.

‘Oh, don’t talk about food, Mum,’ Tilly groaned. ‘I’m scared, but I’m still hungry. Do you think the others will be all right – Agnes and Sally and Dulcie?’

‘They’ll be fine, love,’ Olive reassured her. ‘Sally will be at the hospital and they’ve got a big shelter there, I’m sure.’

‘She’d probably have to go down into the basement,’ Tilly told her.

‘Agnes is helping tidy up the orphanage before they hand it over to the council to use for extra billeting for refugees and that, so she’ll be able to go into the cellar there,’ Olive continued, ‘and as for Dulcie, well, I’m sure she’ll find somewhere.’ Olive’s voice hardened slightly, the thought in her mind that Dulcie would be safe because she was that sort, the sort that always fell on their feet.

‘You don’t like Dulcie very much, do you, Mum?’ Tilly asked.

For a moment Olive was tempted to fib and say that she didn’t know what Tilly meant, but her daughter was growing up. She herself had been married at eighteen and a mother not long after, and although the last thing she wanted was for Tilly to grow up too fast, Olive knew that it wouldn’t be fair to lie to her and treat her as a child. So she admitted quietly, ‘No I don’t. She isn’t the sort of person I was thinking of when I thought of us having lodgers.’

‘You mean because she’s pretty and likes makeup and goes out dancing a lot?’

Olive could hear not just the questioning in Tilly’s voice, but also, more worrying, a hint of rebuke.

‘No, not because of those things,’ she defended herself. ‘After all, you are pretty and although young skin like yours doesn’t need anything more than a dash of lipstick and a brush of mascara on those lovely long eyelashes of yours, you too wear makeup and I dare say you would go out dancing a lot yourself if I let you. No, Tilly, it isn’t because of any of those things that I feel the way I do about Dulcie.’

‘What is it then?’

Moving closer to her daughter, Olive put her arm round her, smiling, filled with maternal love, when Tilly put her head on her shoulder just as she had done as a child.

‘It’s the way Dulcie speaks to Agnes, the way the things she says and does show that she doesn’t have the kind of . . . of consideration and compassion for others that I hope I have always encouraged you to have. There’s a . . . a selfishness about Dulcie that makes it hard for me to warm to her. Tilly, I know you find her exciting and glamorous – of course you do, and at your age I dare say I would have done as well – but think of this, sweetheart. Her own family live within walking distance of here and yet she’s chosen to turn her back on them.’

‘Because there isn’t enough room, and her sister borrows her clothes.’

Olive’s heart sank a little. Plainly Dulcie had had more of an effect on Tilly than she had realised if Tilly was already willing to take Dulcie’s side and defend her.

‘I do know what you mean though, Mum,’ Tilly acknowledged. ‘But don’t you think that Dulcie might be the way she is because people haven’t always been, well, kind and considerate to her?’

Hard on the heels of Olive’s jolt of surprise that Tilly could be so acutely perceptive in pointing out something she hadn’t yet recognised herself, Olive felt a surge of love and gratitude that she had been lucky enough to have such a special daughter.

‘I don’t know, Tilly, you might be right. We shall have to see,’ she answered.

‘Cigarette?’ Dulcie’s rescuer offered her, from the safety of the air-raid shelter, its dark interior illuminated by the lamps that had been lit by one of the three ARP wardens who had taken charge of the place. The lamps gave off a strong smell of paraffin, making Dulcie wrinkle her nose before she shook her head and started to turn away from her rescuer, but he refused to take her hint.

‘I’m Jim Andrews, Private Jim Andrews, 3rd Battalion The Rifles.’ He gave her a rueful smile. ‘I was supposed to be on leave but I reckon with this lot happening, we’ll be recalled before I’ve so much as got me feet back under me mother’s kitchen table, and be on our way to France.’

‘Regular soldier, are you then, son?’ an older man sitting on one of the narrow benches down the side of the shelter asked.

‘Joined up six months ago after I’d done me training,’ Jim confirmed.

He was looking at Dulcie as he spoke, and she suspected that if she gave him half a chance he’d end up asking her out, which wasn’t what she wanted at all. He looked the settling-down type, and Dulcie wasn’t interested in anything about settling down. To her relief, just as he opened his mouth to say something, the sound of the all clear reached their ears, causing a wave of relief to surge through the shelter. Then those inside gathered up their belongings and started queuing up to leave.

‘’Orrible place. You won’t get me going back in one. I’d as soon die in me own bed,’ one elderly woman was telling anyone who would listen as they started to file out past the ARP wardens, who were now trying to write down everyone’s names and addresses.

‘No point in giving him mine, seeing as I won’t be here much longer,’ Jim told Dulcie.

‘Me neither,’ she agreed, it being Dulcie’s nature not to want to oblige officialdom in any of its many forms.

‘You mean you’re going into uniform?’ Jim asked her as he stood back to allow her to step outside and then rejoined her, sticking firmly to her side.

‘No. I mean you’d never get me back in a place like that again even if you paid me,’ Dulcie informed him pithily. ‘It smelled to high heaven, and all them old women going on about the last war and us being gassed got on my nerves. Anyway I shan’t need to, seeing as we’ve got our own shelter in the garden. Thanks for looking out for me,’ she felt obliged to say, ‘but I’d better run, otherwise I’ll get what for, for missing dinner.’

‘I dare say you’ve already got a chap, a pretty girl like you,’ Jim was saying, but Dulcie pretended not to have heard him, deliberately turning away and plunging into the growing crowd thronging the pavement, and then hesitating. The siren going off like that would have given her mother a real fright. Perhaps she should take the bus back home just to check that everyone was all right, and to reassure them that she was too. Not that they’d care. Her mother would probably be too busy having palpitations worrying about ruddy Edith and her singing to even notice she was there. And besides, if there was to be another air-raid warning then she’d rather spend it in number 13’s Anderson shelter than in the public shelter her family would have to go in.

Turning on her heel, Dulcie headed for Article Row.

In the kitchen of number 13, Agnes was listening wide-eyed as Sally told them, ‘I saw the police sergeant who lives at number one on my way here.’

‘Sergeant Dawson,’ Olive and Tilly said together, Olive turning her attention from the potatoes she was putting into the hot roasting tin as she did so to look at Sally.

‘Yes, Sergeant Dawson,’ Sally confirmed. ‘He was standing by his gate when I walked past and he said that he’d heard that the sirens going off had just been a false alarm, that was all.’

‘A false alarm!’ Olive exclaimed. ‘Well, of all the things, nearly giving us a heart attack just for that. It’s just as well I dashed in here to turn the oven down. This piece of brisket wouldn’t have been worth eating otherwise. Is it twelve o’clock yet, only the Prime Minister’s announcement is bound to be on the news.’

‘Nearly, just a couple of minutes to go,’ Sally told her.

As Olive had guessed, Sally had sheltered at the hospital when the siren had gone off, thankful that because it was a Sunday no operations were scheduled, and no emergencies had come in. They’d had a busy enough night in the operating theatre with an appendix that had to be taken out, followed by a lad with a piece of glass from a broken bottle stuck in his leg, which had only just missed severing an artery, and another with a badly broken arm after a fight had broken out at a local pub.

‘It’s twelve now,’ Sally warned, as Olive slid the roasting tin back into the oven and closed the oven door, wiping her hands on her apron before slipping into her chair just in time to hear the wireless crackle and buzz as Tilly frantically adjusted the reception.

Then, after comment from the announcer, they could all hear the Prime Minister saying, ‘This country is now at war with Germany. We are ready.’

The sound of the kitchen door opening distracted them all, Dulcie coming in, saying crossly, ‘I’ve nearly ruined my best shoes and now I’ve just heard one of your neighbours saying that that ruddy air-raid warning was just a false alarm . . .’

‘Shush . . .’

‘The Prime Minister’s on.’

Dulcie glowered as both Olive and Sally spoke at once, demanding her silence. What was the point in listening to the Prime Minister telling them what they all already knew?

The announcer was back on the air, telling them that the King would be broadcasting to the country that evening.

‘So it’s really happening then?’ Agnes asked uncertainly. ‘We really are going to be bombed by the Germans?’

‘We’re certainly at war with them, Agnes,’ Sally answered her briskly, ‘but as for them bombing us, well, I dare say the RAF will have something to say about that.’ Her eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep with being on nights. Thank goodness she started back on days tomorrow. There was nothing like night duty to drain a person of energy. Yes, it was definitely lack of sleep that was making her eyes sting and her throat ache, nothing else, and certainly not the thought of three people in Liverpool who now mattered as little to her as she obviously did to them.

It was a sombre group of women that sat down to the Sunday dinner Olive dished up later than its normal time of one o’clock, thanks to everything that had been going on.

Afterwards, whilst Tilly and Agnes washed up and Dulcie perched on the edge of the kitchen table watching them, Sally and Olive went into the garden so that Sally could discuss with Olive her plans for starting up a vegetable garden.

‘Huh, growing veggies, is it?’ Nancy from next door demanded, popping her head over the fence, obviously having heard them talking. ‘My Arthur thinks it’s a daft idea trying to grow stuff when we’ve got Covent Garden so close by. He reckons that the Government’s got itself a load of seeds it wants to get rid of.’ She sniffed disparagingly as she spoke, causing Olive to suppress a small sigh.

Sally, though, shook her head and told her calmly, ‘I agree that you can’t get better veggies than those from Covent Garden, but the veggies have got to be got into the country and up to London, and that won’t be possible once this war gets going properly, so it makes sense for us all to do our bit and grow what we can for ourselves.’

‘Well, I suppose there is that,’ Nancy agreed grudgingly, after a brief pause, ‘although I hope you aren’t thinking of fattening a pig like some seem to be doing down on the allotments by the railway.’

Sally laughed. ‘I certainly can’t see us going that far, although I suppose we could think about having a few chickens.’

‘Chickens? Nasty dirty things. Bring rats, they do.’

‘Not if you keep their food out of the rats’ reach, and think of the lovely fresh eggs.’

Sally was dealing beautifully with Nancy, Olive recognised, treating her neighbour with the respect that was due to her seniority in years, but at the same time making it abundantly clear that she could and would stand her own ground. Nancy was inclined to be a bit of a bully and, like all bullies, if she sensed weakness or fear that only made her worse.

Changing tack, Nancy told Sally, ‘I saw you stop and talk to Sergeant Dawson earlier. I feel sorry for him, I really do, with that wife of his.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Mrs Dawson, Nancy,’ Olive protested. ‘I know she keeps herself to herself but that’s because of them losing their son. At least that’s what Sergeant Dawson hinted to me.’

‘Well, she won’t be the only one here with a son to mourn, now,’ Nancy predicted direly. ‘And have you seen how fast them houses further down that are let out to civil servants and the like have emptied? Cowards, they are, the lot them.’

‘Mrs Windle told me that the Government have evacuated lots of civil servants. I expect that’s why they’ve gone. They wouldn’t have had any choice. Not if they wanted to keep their jobs.’

‘Well, you would say that, you being the charitable sort. I’m not so easily taken in. Before you know where we are we’ll have them empty houses filled with refugees wot don’t know how to live amongst decent folk. It’s bad enough us having them Greeks or whatever they are living so close.’

‘They’re Greek Cypriots, Nancy,’ Olive explained patiently, ‘and they don’t do any harm. They keep themselves to themselves, you know that.’

Nancy, though, was plainly not in the mood to be appeased, her mood perhaps reflecting that of the whole country in its refusal to be appeased by Hitler’s offers and explanations of why he had invaded Poland, Olive thought.

‘How do we know them Greeks aren’t on Hitler’s side, that’s what I want to know. They could be spying for him,’ Nancy told Olive with the air of someone who was determined to have the last word.

‘Nancy can be a bit difficult, I’m afraid,’ Olive told Sally after her neighbour had returned to her own house, leaving them to continue their discussion about Sally’s vegetable bed. ‘She does tend to get a bit of a bee in her bonnet about things, so it’s best not to tell her too much.’

‘I know what you mean. We had a neighbour who was much the same. My mother always used to say that she loved finding fault with others. Sadly some people are like that.’

Such a sad look crossed Sally’s face that Olive instinctively reached out and patted her arm.

‘You must miss your own folk,’ was all she could think of to say, not wanting to pry.

‘Not really.’ Sally’s voice and expression changed and hardened. ‘My mother is dead, and . . . and my father remarried and has his own life now. I had the most happy childhood, thanks to my mother, but that’s in the past. Shall we have the veggie bed here, do you think? It’s a good spot with plenty of sunlight?’

Recognising that her lodger did not want to talk about her family, Olive nodded.

‘I noticed a decent-looking hardware shop a couple of streets away when I was walking back the other day,’ Sally continued, changing the subject. ‘I’ll call in there and get some string and some other bits and pieces so that we can mark the bed out.’

‘You might find there’s everything you need in my late father-in-law’s shed,’ Olive told her. ‘He was a keen gardener before he got too poorly to work. When we go back inside I’ll find the key and then you can have a look. Mind you, if you are going to call in at Hargreaves you might see if you can buy some extra torch batteries, if you don’t mind, and some more candles. I’ll give you the money.’

‘Good idea. We’ll all be needing them once the nights draw in and we’ve got to deal with the blackout.’

‘Yes. I’m going to sticky-tape the windows tomorrow now that it’s official and we’re at war. I got the tape a while back when the Government started sending out those leaflets about gas masks and evacuating the kiddies and all that.’

Whilst Olive chatted to Sally in the garden, in the kitchen the washing up had been finished and the dishes put away – by Tilly and Agnes. Dulcie, who had watched them without offering to help, was sitting on the table, swinging her long slim legs and eyeing them with a bored look.

‘I suppose your brother will go straight into service now, once he’s finished his army training?’ Tilly commented.

‘I suppose he will,’ Dulcie agreed. Agnes had removed the apron she’d been wearing whilst she helped with the washing up, and now what looked like several pieces of folded paper had fallen out of the pocket of her too large dress and onto the floor.

‘What’s this?’ Dulcie demanded, swiftly picking up the papers.

‘Oh. It’s what Ted gave me.’ Immediately Agnes reached out for the paper, her obvious anxiety making Dulcie taunt her, holding it up out of her reach.

‘Ted? So who’s he, then? A boyfriend? Been sending you love letters, has he?’

Dulcie was astonished that any male would show an interest in someone as drab and dull as Agnes, never mind write to her, as well as feeling just that little bit put out that Agnes, with her love letters, had stepped into territory that Dulcie considered to be more properly hers. It wasn’t that she wanted a boyfriend, especially not one who was keen on someone like Agnes, but it still aroused her competitive spirit and galled her a little that plain Agnes should be the first one of them in the house to have a male in tow.

Her face scarlet with anxiety and mortification, Agnes denied that as quickly as though Ted himself were there to hear Dulcie’s comments.

‘It isn’t like that. Ted isn’t my boyfriend.’

‘So who is he then, and why is he writing to you?’

‘He’s a driver on the underground, and he’s helping me to learn the names of all the different stations on each of the lines, so that I don’t get confused when people ask for tickets. Ever so kind and nice he is.’

‘So you are sweet on him then?’ Dulcie pounced.

‘No.’ Agnes could imagine how embarrassed Ted would be if he thought that someone as dull as her was getting ideas into her head that had no right being there.

Listening to their exchange, Tilly could see that Agnes was getting upset and couldn’t help wishing that Dulcie would stop teasing her.

‘Learn all the stations? Oh heavens, Agnes, I don’t think I could do that!’ Tilly exclaimed. Dulcie’s behaviour was making her feel uncomfortable. She admired the older girl but at the same time she felt protective of Agnes and didn’t like to see Dulcie making fun of her.

Giving Tilly a grateful look, Agnes explained, ‘Ted’s been teaching me this tune so that I can sing them ’cos that’s how his dad taught him to remember the stations. We have a cup of tea together every day just before he clocks on. He does the late shift.’

‘Well, you’d better not let Tilly’s mother know that you’re being so familiar with a man, otherwise you’ll be out on your ear, ’cos she doesn’t approve of her lodgers having gentlemen friends, does she, Tilly?’ Dulcie demanded, determined to have her pound of flesh.

‘Oh, no. It’s nothing like that,’ Agnes protested, looking even more distressed and anxious.

‘Dulcie’s just teasing you, Agnes,’ Tilly tried to calm her, insisting to the other girl, ‘Aren’t you, Dulcie?’

Dulcie gave a dismissive shrug, tossing the folded pages over to Agnes and laughing as she failed to catch them and had to scrabble on the floor for them.

‘If you say so.’ It irked her that Tilly had taken Agnes’s side. They were just a couple of know-nothing kids, the pair of them, who’d end up being ‘best friends’ and sticking to one another like glue. She’d left all that kind of thing behind her when she’d left school. In this life it was everyone for themselves, and them that put themselves first did best. Not that she’d actually had a best friend at school, she was forced to admit. But then that had been because the other girls had been jealous of her, and them that had palled up with her had only done so because they were soppy over her brother. Besides, once you started palling up with other girls they started wanting to know every bit of your business, and then they started threatening to tell on you if they didn’t like what you were doing. No, the last thing she needed was a best friend.

Chapter Seven

‘Six weeks we’ve been at war with Germany now, and I’m getting that tired of not being able to sleep properly at night for waiting for Hitler to bomb us that it would almost be a relief if he did.’

Automatically Sally nodded her head in agreement with the views expressed by the other nurse seated beside her in the canteen whilst they ate their lunch, but the reality was that for once her mind was not on the war. Her heart thudded against her ribs. She’d only come to London and Barts to get away from Liverpool, and until today, if anyone had suggested that she had become attached to Barts and would be unhappy at the thought of leaving, she would have told them soundly that they were wrong.

Now, though, to her own surprise she was forced to admit that she had developed a love for the old place. But it looked as though she was going to be asked to leave.

Just before she’d come for lunch, Theatre Sister had told her that Matron wanted to see her as soon as she’d eaten.

Of course, she hadn’t said why, and Sally was far better trained than to ask. She’d searched her mind and her conscience and so far had not been able to come up with anything she’d done wrong that merited a summons from Matron, and she was glad that Sister had waited until they’d finished work for the morning before telling her. Not that they’d had any serious ops this morning, just a girl who’d come out of the pictures in the blackout and fallen over a sandbag, breaking her ankle, which had had to be properly set, and a young, newly enlisted soldier who’d been fooling around with a friend and ended up with a bullet in his arm.

All she could think was that there’d been a change of plan and that her services were no longer needed, with most of the hospital being evacuated. She knew that she would be able to get another job – somewhere – but she’d just begun to settle in at Barts and at number 13.

There was no point in delaying things. She couldn’t finish her meal she was so apprehensive. Getting up, she made her way first to the nearest ladies’ where she stared anxiously at her reflection in the mirror, checking to make sure that her nurse’s tall hat was on exactly as it should be, with no wisps of hair escaping, before removing her cuffs from her rolled up sleeves and then unrolling them. She’d removed her apron before leaving the ward and now, trying to calm the nervous butterflies swarming in her tummy, she left the ladies’ and headed for Matron’s office.

Her hesitant knock was answered immediately by a firm, ‘Come.’

Sally went in. Officially Matron was now based with the evacuated Barts in the country, but she still made regular visits to London, and Sally, who greatly admired her, found that despite her nervousness there was something reassuring about the sight of her familiar figure.

‘Ah, Nurse Johnson. Good. I dare say you’re finding our ways here at Barts are different from those in your previous hospital, and I hope that you feel that you are benefiting from your time here.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ was the only thing that Sally dared allow herself to say. Had someone complained that because she wasn’t Barts trained her standards were not as high as they should be? Naturally her loyalty to her own training hospital in Liverpool had her mentally up in arms at the thought of it, or of her being found wanting, but of course she could not say so. All nurses, and no doubt matrons too, felt the kind of loyalty for the hospital in which they had trained as members of a family did towards that family. They might criticise and even occasionally find fault, but outsiders certainly must not.

‘Your employment here is, of course, only for one year.’

Sally’s heart began to sink. This was it. Matron was going to tell her that her services were no longer required. Well, at least she hadn’t done something so heinous that she was going to be called to order for it.

Matron was looking down at some notes on a piece of paper in front of her.

‘Although most of the hospital has been evacuated, that does not mean that we don’t have to maintain our traditional Barts high standards here. If London is bombed, then this hospital will be one of those at the forefront of dealing with the injured.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Sally’s muscles were beginning to ache from standing up so straight, but she dare not relax her pose, even had her training allowed her to do so.

‘You have been on duty in the operating theatre whilst our consultant plastic surgeon, Sir Harold Gillies, has operated.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sally agreed.

‘Sir Harold has extremely high standards and is very particular about the nurses who work in his operating theatre. He has made a point of informing me that he thought that you, Nurse Johnson, are a first-rate theatre nurse.’

Matron had summoned her here to her office to praise her. Sally felt so dizzy with relief and disbelief that she was quite light-headed.

‘Of course, it is my role as Matron to decide which of my nurses should be recommended for further training and responsibility, and mine alone. However, in this instance . . .’ Matron paused and looked directly at Sally. ‘The evacuation has created a lack of senior nursing staff. What I have in mind, Nurse, is to promote you to the position of theatre staff nurse, with a view – with further training – to you eventually taking on the role of sister.’

Sister! Back in the early days of their training she and Morag had talked of the impossibility of either of them ever doing well enough to become ward sisters. Fierce pain caught at Sally’s chest. Once Morag and her parents would have been the first people she would have wanted to share her news and her excitement with, knowing how well all three of them, but especially her friend, would understand what it meant to her.

‘If you wish to accept the post of staff nurse I shall require you to change from temporary to permanent staff here, Nurse. Do you wish to do that?’

‘Yes, ma’am, please. And . . . and thank you, ma’am.’

A small smile touched Matron’s mouth. ‘It is a great deal of responsibility that this hospital will be placing in you and, more importantly, so will its patients, but I have every confidence that you are capable of carrying that responsibility, Nurse, and carrying it as befits a Barts nurse. Thank you, Nurse. You may go. You will be informed of when you are to take up your new duties in due course.’

Not even once she was outside in the corridor did Sally dare to lean against the wall and give way to her own shaken exultation. She was going to be a staff nurse. And maybe ultimately a ward sister. She could hardly believe how wrong she had been about the cause of her summons to Matron’s office. And it was all thanks to Sir Harold Gillies, whose handiwork she had now had the opportunity to admire on several occasions as she watched him work on surgery in children born with cleft palates.

Sally knew that there were nurses who openly admitted that theatre work was not for them, but she truly loved it. Staff Nurse Johnson – how proud her mother would have been to learn of her success. Sally’s happiness was replaced by the familiar tight ball of mingled anger and pain that thinking of her mother, and the manner in which her former best friend had usurped her mother’s role, caused. She could never forgive Morag for what she had done. Her father’s loneliness she could understand but not her friend’s taking advantage of it.

She looked at her watch. Officially she should have been off duty from midday as she was due to start working nights from tomorrow, but of course Matron’s summons had meant that she had not been able to leave, and now that she was here she might as well look in on the ward where the patients operated on this morning would be recovering.

She was within sight of its doors when a young doctor, whom Sally recognised as being a would-be surgeon, came through them at speed, his white coat flying, his stethoscope dangling round his neck, one of the files he was holding escaping from his grasp and falling to the floor, dislodging its contents.

Sally bent to pick them up just as the doctor did the same.

‘It’s Nurse Johnson, isn’t it?’ he surprised her by saying. ‘I recognised you from the operation on that cleft palate patient last week. I was in the gallery watching Sir Harold operate.’

‘You’re from New Zealand, like Sir Harold?’ she guessed, recognising his accent.

He beamed her a warm smile. ‘Yes. My father is in general practice there. He trained here at Barts himself. I’m George Laidlaw.’

‘Sally Johnson.’

He was an attractive-looking, open-faced young man, with brown curly hair, blue eyes and a warm smile. Sally guessed that he was around her own age and he reminded her of a large gangling puppy, eager to make friends.

He was looking at her in a way that told Sally that he found her attractive. Normally this would have put her off him as the last thing she wanted was to get involved with a young man. She wasn’t looking for romance, and not just because there was a war on. Her heart was still bruised from her quarrel with Callum over his sister’s marriage to her father. However, there was something so hopeful and pleading about the look in George Laidlaw’s eyes that Sally found her defences melting a little.

She returned his smile, surprised to discover how easy it was and how pleasant to bask in the warmth of such easy and unaffected male appreciation.

‘Look, you can tell me if I’m out of order, and you’re either not interested or already hooked up, but I’d really like to take you out one evening. Just for a getting-to-know-one-another drink.’ When Sally hesitated, he added coaxingly, ‘I’ve seen how kind you are to the patients. How about taking pity on a poor lonesome and far-from-home Kiwi?’

‘It’s my duty to be kind to our patients,’ Sally pointed out mock severely, before adding truthfully, ‘Besides, I’m just about to start on nights.’

Even so, she couldn’t help remembering the fun she and Morag had had when they had first palled up as trainee nurses, especially at the Grafton Ballroom, where they had never been short of eager partners. Those days had been filled with so much youthful happiness. Barts and London were her life now and it was up to her what she made of that life. She rather liked George Laidlaw. He had a nice smile.

‘Well, it doesn’t have to be now,’ he was persisting. ‘Any night will do. I mean, I can fit in with you.’

He was flatteringly keen. Perhaps it would do her good to say ‘yes’. Her mother would definitely have thought so, Sally recognised with a small pang. Even so, in time-honoured female tradition she felt duty bound to test him.

‘If Sir Harold’s taken you under his wing, I’m surprised you’ve got time to take nurses out.’

‘Not nurses. Just one nurse – you,’ he responded simply, the look he was giving her making the colour rise up to turn Sally’s cheeks a soft pink. ‘And you’re right about Sir Harold, he does keep us busy. It’s a privilege to watch him operate. His protégé, Archie McIndoe, is working over here as well.’

‘Yes, I know.’

It was obvious to her that both Sir Harold Gillies and Archie McIndoe were much admired by the young doctor. George himself confirmed this to her when, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice, he told her, ‘During the World War, when Sir Harold first got the British Government’s permission to set up a plastic surgery unit, he used to send out labels with the ambulances going over to France so that potential patients could be sent back to him as quickly as possible. He did the most wonderful things for some of those chaps. I dare say if this war gets going he and Archie will be doing a lot more.’

‘Yes, I suppose they will,’ Sally agreed, with a smile.

‘So you’ll come then? Out for a drink with me? When we’re both free?’

He was persistent, Sally had to give him that.

‘Maybe.’

The answer seemed to please him because he gave her another beaming smile as they both stood up and went their separate ways.

Sally was still smiling when she eventually made her way out of the hospital and into the October sunshine, and not just because of the praise Matron had given her.

The newspaper vendors along Holborn Viaduct selling the early evening editions of the papers, were crying out, ‘British Expeditionary Force in France. Read all about it.’

Sally paused and glanced at the headlines. All young men of over twenty were now being called up, and everywhere one looked one could see men in uniform, the sound of their marching feet a warning, drumming in the war that so far had remained safely distanced from British shores. But for how much longer?

Sally hugged her uniform cloak tightly around herself. The leaves on London’s trees were already turning and soon they would fall. Please God that a similar fate would not befall the country’s fighting men.

Dulcie eyed the smart luxurious luggage on show on the luggage department’s floor: trunks and cases of every kind, hurriedly being bought by those wealthy enough to afford them, as they made plans either to leave the country themselves or to send their children away to somewhere like Canada for their own safety.

Dulcie was particularly attracted to a cream leather vanity case, bound with tan straps. Its lid was open to show off its interior, with its mirror, silver-topped glass jars and silver-backed hair-brushes. It was placed on top of a series of different sized matching trunks. She was sure she’d seen a similar case being held by Gracie Fields in a photograph in Picture Post. The vanity case cost more than she earned in a whole year, but Dulcie loved it. She’d come up here every day during her dinner hour just so that she could look at it and imagine herself parading around with it. She looked round assessingly. The department was very busy. It wouldn’t do any harm for her just to hold the case to see how it felt and how she looked with it. A girl could dream, after all. Quickly she reached out and closed the lid, securing it with its own special key, and then she reached for the case. The leather-covered handle fitted her palm perfectly.

There was a mirror not very far away. She’d slipped off her overall before she’d come up here, because you weren’t supposed to mingle with the customers. The tan woollen skirt she was wearing complemented perfectly the leather straps on the vanity case, just as its cream leather complemented perfectly her cream silk blouse. She’d had the skirt made up from a roll of fabric she’d spotted on a stall in Portobello Market, which the stall holder had told her with a nod and wink was French. More like fallen off a lorry, Dulcie suspected. The cream silk blouse had come from a second-hand shop in posh Kensington, which Dulcie had heard about by eavesdropping on a conversation between two of the other girls who worked in the perfume department.

Together with her brown leather shoes, she reckoned that she looked every bit as good as Gracie Fields. In fact, she thought she looked a good deal better, seeing as she was far prettier and much younger than the famous singer.

The mirror wasn’t very far away, but as she turned towards it Dulcie suddenly heard a sharp female voice exclaiming, ‘David, call the manager. That girl is trying to steal that case. I recognise her from the perfume department. She’s got no right to be up here.’

In the mirror Dulcie could see David James-Thompson standing behind her, a purse-lipped Lydia Whittingham at his side.

Angrily Dulcie turned round, but before she could defend herself David James-Thompson was saying calmly, ‘I’m sure, Miss . . . ?’ He looked enquiringly at Dulcie, who obliged with a pointed dagger look at her rival, ‘It’s Dulcie, Miss Dulcie Simmonds.’

‘I’m sure that Miss Simmonds has a perfectly good reason for being here, Lydia.’

‘That’s right, I have,’ Dulcie agreed.

Lydia Whittingham flashed her a venomous look of female dislike, insisting, ‘I doubt that. It was plain to me what she was up to. Another few minutes and she’d have been walking out of the department with that case. Not that she would have got very far. It’s perfectly obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that she simply isn’t the sort who could ever afford such an exclusive and expensive item. I’m going to call the manager, David. He can deal with her, and you can buy me that lizardskin handbag you promised me for my birthday.’

Never one to back down from a challenge Dulcie drew herself up to her full height and tossed her head, her confidence boosted by the appreciative look she could see David giving her behind Lydia Whittingham’s back.

‘You can call the manager if you like, and if you don’t mind making a fool of yourself when I tell him that I got sent up here officially to look in this here case to see how much makeup could be packed into it.’

‘You’re lying,’ Lydia proclaimed immediately.

‘No I’m not.’

‘So who sent you up here then – and be aware that I shall check.’

‘Mr Selfridge,’ Dulcie told her with aplomb and without the slightest concern for the fact that she was lying. ‘And you can go and ask him yourself if you want. He said that the case was a gift for a young lady of his acquaintance.’

To one side of her, Dulcie could hear David James-Thompson’s muffled laugh.

Lydia opened her mouth to challenge her and then closed it again, and Dulcie knew perfectly well why. It was an open secret to the staff that, despite his advancing years, Mr Selfridge was prone to passions that led to him indulging the current recipient of his feelings with expensive gifts from the store.

Delighted by Lydia’s heightened furious colour and obvious inability to refute her lie, Dulcie carried the case back to where she had got it, placing it carefully on top of the pile.

‘Come along, David,’ Lydia commanded her escort in a sharp voice, turning on her heel so that her back was towards both Dulcie and David.

Seizing her chance, Dulcie turned to him and told him nonchalantly, ‘If you was ever to feel like dancing, I go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais most Saturday evenings.’

The look he gave her in response was one of amused admiration. Miss Iron Knickers might think she’d got him well and truly hooked, Dulcie thought with some satisfaction, but she, Dulcie, certainly didn’t think so.

‘David . . .’

‘Coming,’ David answered as he turned to follow Lydia.

The little shop girl didn’t hold back when it came to putting herself forward, and there had been a look in her eye that he had liked. David had a weakness for girls like Dulcie, no doubt because his paternal grandmother had been a Gaiety Girl before she had ‘snared’, to use his own disapproving mother’s word, his grandfather. His paternal grandfather’s regrettable lapse of good taste was not something David’s mother approved of. Her family was stoutly county and rigidly proper. His father might be a judge and his mother’s family might have come over with William the Conqueror, but there was no money in the family, which was why his mother in particular was so keen to see him engaged to Lydia, whose father might be merely a director at Selfridges but whose mother came from a family of wealthy mill owners and was likely to inherit a very nice sum of money indeed when her own elderly father died.

The basket she had filled with the new season’s root vegetables from Covent Garden was beginning to weigh heavily on her arm as Olive headed for Article Row, so when Sergeant Dawson came out of the police station just as she was passing it and offered, ‘Let me carry that for you,’ she was rather grateful to hand the basket over to him.

‘I hadn’t realised how heavy the veggies would be. I got a piece of scrag end of mutton yesterday and I thought I’d make a nice tasty mutton casserole with it for the girls, and thicken it up with some veggies.’

‘Sounds good.’

Tall, well set up, and just turned forty, his dark brown, slightly curly hair now covered by his helmet, Sergeant Dawson looked very smart in his police uniform. Despite everything he and his wife had been through with the illness and then the loss of their son, Sergeant Dawson always had a kind look in his hazel eyes and a friendly word for everyone.

Olive felt very sorry for both him and his wife. Nancy might complain that it was unneighbourly of Mrs Dawson to keep herself to herself in the way that she did, but Olive felt that that was the sergeant’s wife’s way of dealing with the sorrow of her loss, and that they shouldn’t talk about her behind her back.

‘I must admit I’m partial to a good mutton casserole,’ Sergeant Dawson confided to her. ‘My ma used to make it. Thickened it with barley, she did.’

‘I do the same,’ Olive told him with a smile.

‘I miss Ma’s casseroles, but Mrs Dawson – well, she doesn’t see the sense of making a big bowl of casserole when there’s just the two of us to eat it. Working out all right, is it, having your lodgers?’

‘Very well,’ Olive answered. ‘My Tilly and Agnes – that’s the little orphan girl – get on really well together, and if Sally – that’s the nurse – has her way we’ll be eating our own veggies next year as she’s taken over the garden.’

‘The other one looks a bit of a flighty sort,’ the sergeant opined.

‘Dulcie.’ Olive sighed ruefully, appreciating the sergeant’s understanding tone. ‘I dare say she doesn’t mean any harm, but I do worry about the effect she might have on Tilly and Agnes. Tilly has already started hinting that she and Agnes are old enough now to go out dancing, but I’d rather see them going to dances at the church hall than the Hammersmith Palais, which is where Dulcie likes to go.’

‘It must be hard work for you, having the four of them to cook and clean for.’

They both paused to cross over the road and then Olive answered, ‘Not really. Tilly’s very good, and Agnes of course is used to helping out with being at the orphanage. I have to tell her off sometimes for wanting to do too much. After all, she is paying me to have her lodging with us. To be honest I like having the house filled up a bit; makes it seem more like a home than there just being me and Tilly there. And they’re no trouble really. Sally, with her being a nurse, keeps her room spotless, and even Dulcie is the tidy sort. Mind you, she is prone to taking more than her fair share of the hot water, especially on Saturday when she’s getting dressed up to go out.’ Olive sighed, remembering how envious Tilly had looked when she’d watched Dulcie setting off for her evening out. ‘I dare say that if I hadn’t got the girls lodging with me I’d have been asked to take in a couple of refugees. Not that I’d have minded that, although Nancy next door to me is dead set against them.’

‘No, she’s never liked foreigners, hasn’t Nancy.’

They exchanged smiles.

‘Tilly’s got Agnes going to St John Ambulance with her, so that should keep them out of too much mischief, although I have to admit that I do worry about them being out during the blackout. I’ve got them both little torches and warned them to keep away from the pavement edge. Sally says they’ve had several injured people come into the hospital since the blackout started, because of not being able to see where there’re cars coming, with them having to have their lights covered. It’s going to get worse as well at the end of this month when the clocks go back and we stop having British Summer Time.’

‘Had to attend a nasty accident myself last night, as it happens,’ Sergeant Dawson told her. ‘A young lady had driven straight into a cyclist and killed him. She was beside herself, of course, and had to be taken to hospital for the shock.’

‘Oh, what a dreadful thing to happen, and there Mrs Morrison from Floris Street and I were both wishing that we could drive when the vicar’s wife told us that we’ve been offered the use of a small van for the WVS, but as none of us can drive we’d have to pass up on it. There’s quite a bit of competing between the WVS groups to be the best equipped and of course those groups that have drivers and transport are very much top of the heap.’ Olive laughed. ‘Now, though, after what you’ve just said I’m rather glad that I can’t drive.’

‘You mustn’t say that. In fact, if this war gets as bad as some reckon it will, the Government will be wanting women to learn to drive.’ Sergeant Dawson paused and then said hesitantly, ‘If you and Mrs Morrison were wanting to learn to drive, and since you’re saying that you’ve been offered the use of a van, I could teach you, if you like?’

‘You can drive?’

A rueful smile curled his mouth, making him look younger and far more carefree. ‘Learned almost as a kid at the back end of the last war, and once you’ve learned it’s something you never forget.’

‘Well, it’s very generous of you to offer. Of course, Mrs Morrison’s husband would have to agree.’

‘Of course, but the offer’s there if you want it.’ They had reached Article Row now but instead of handing her basket back to her when they arrived at number 1, the sergeant shook his head when Olive made to take it from him.

‘I’ll walk you to your gate with it.’

‘I’ll send you and Mrs Dawson a bowl of the casserole, as a thank you, seeing as you’ve carried the veggies home for me,’ Olive told him with a smile of her own.

He was such a kind man, offering to teach her and Mrs Morrison to drive, Olive thought five minutes later as she went into her kitchen. Mrs Windle would be pleased if he did succeed in teaching them, Olive knew. She had been quite crestfallen at the thought of having to turn down the offer of the van.

From the kitchen window she could see Sally working in the garden and she went out to her.

‘I’m just going to put the kettle on and make a cuppa before I start on the veggies for the mutton stew. Would you like a cup?’

‘I’d love one,’ Sally admitted. It hadn’t felt particularly warm when she had initially come out into the garden but now, after lifting the turf from the plot she had marked out, she was feeling very warm – and very thirsty. ‘I’m ready for a break so I’ll come back with you.’

The minute Olive opened the kitchen door, Sally could smell the wonderful aroma, sniffing appreciatively as she removed her Wellington boots and left them outside.

‘I put the stew in this morning to let it cook slowly,’ Olive told her.

‘My mother used to make a delicious stew and she always swore by cooking it slowly all day.’ A sad nostalgic smile tugged at Sally’s mouth and to her own surprise she heard herself telling Olive, ‘I had some good news today. Matron is upgrading me to the position of staff nurse and she’s recommended that I train to be a sister. I’m thrilled, of course, but I couldn’t help wishing that my mother was still alive so that I could tell her.’

Lighting the gas beneath the kettle she had just filled, Olive turned to look at her. Sally, for all her maturity, wasn’t really that much older than her own daughter and she knew how she would have felt in Sally’s mother’s shoes, so it seemed completely natural to her to go over to Sally and give her a firm hug, before telling her gently, ‘That’s what your mother would have wanted to do, I know. I’m so sorry you’ve had such sadness to contend with, Sally.’

Olive’s unexpected tenderness brought tears to Sally’s eyes. It had been so long since she had felt the warmth of a caring maternal hug.

‘Your father is still alive, though, you said,’ Olive began carefully, but immediately Sally shook her head.

‘I know what you’re going to suggest but there’s no going back. I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand in the kitchen that used to be my mother’s and watch the person who was my best friend usurping my mother’s role. They didn’t even wait a decent length of time. I don’t know how they could do what they’ve done, but I do know that I don’t want anything to do with them any more.’

Poor Sally, Olive thought compassionately. The kettle had started to boil, the steam activating its shrill whistle. As she went to make the tea, tactfully Olive changed the subject.

‘I don’t know what you think but I’m to have driving lessons. Sergeant Dawson has offered to teach me. Our WVS group have been offered the use of a van. It belongs to the Lords, from the drapers in Norfolk Street, or rather it belongs to their son, Gerry, but he’s been called up. They don’t need it because Mr Lord has his own van that he uses for the business and Mavis, Mrs Lord, flatly refuses to learn to drive so Mr Lord has offered it to the WVS.’

‘I think it’s an excellent idea,’ Sally approved immediately.

‘Of course, it won’t just be me he’s teaching,’ Olive hastened to add, pouring them each a cup of tea. ‘There’ll be two of us. Me and Mrs Morrison.’

‘It’s a great opportunity – for you and for the war effort,’ Sally enthused.

* * *

‘Mum, can I have a word with you, just between us?’ Tilly asked her mother quietly as Olive checked on the dumplings she had added to the stew earlier.

‘Of course you can, love. Why don’t you go upstairs to my room and I’ll follow you up there in a tick?’ Olive told her daughter just as quietly.

With the wireless on and Dulcie complaining about the difficult customer she’d had in who’d insisted that Dulcie had sold her a shade of lipstick that didn’t suit her and that she wanted to change, Olive knew that the others wouldn’t have overheard, although what it was that her daughter wanted to discuss, she had no idea.

Wiping her hands on her apron, Olive went up and found her daughter, standing in front of the window in Olive’s own bedroom.

Sitting down on the edge of her bed, automatically smoothing the soft, slightly faded blue satin coverlet, she patted it and invited ‘Come and sit down here, Tilly. Is something wrong?’

When Tilly shook her head and answered firmly, ‘No,’ Olive admitted to feeling relieved.

‘So what is it that you want to talk to me about?’

‘It’s just, well, you know that there’s to be this dance at the church hall and you said that I could go, and Agnes is going to go too?’

‘Yes? Have you and Agnes fallen out and you don’t want her to go with you?’

Tilly laughed. ‘No, Mum, it’s nothing like that. I like Agnes, I really do. She’s so sweet and kind. No, what it is, it that . . .’ Tilly had bent her head and was plucking at the hem of her navy-blue cardigan – a little giveaway habit that was familiar to Olive from her daughter’s childhood and which meant that Tilly felt uncomfortable about something.

‘Well, it’s just that poor Agnes only has hand-me-down clothes. I know I’ve given her a couple of things, but what I was thinking, Mum, was how she is going to feel when we go to the dance and everyone else there is wearing something nice and she isn’t. And it isn’t because I’ll be with her and I’m bothered about what people think. Agnes is my friend now and it wouldn’t bother me if she went to the dance in that awful brown dress she first came here in. It’s for Agnes’s sake, Mum. I don’t want her to feel out of things and uncomfortable.’

What her daughter meant was that she didn’t want Agnes to be hurt, Olive recognised. Maternal love and gratitude filled her. She had been so lucky with Tilly. She’d grown from a happy loving baby into an equally loving young woman.

Modestly Olive gave no thought to the fact that she might have been instrumental in helping to form her daughter’s concern for others, instead taking Tilly’s hand in her own and giving it a loving shake as she told her, ‘You’re right, Tilly, and I’m cross with myself for not thinking of it.’

‘The thing is, Mum, I know that Agnes doesn’t earn very much and that she sends money to the orphanage because she feels she wants to help them for bringing her up, and I was wondering if we couldn’t perhaps get her a pretty frock as a bit of a present?’

‘Oh, Tilly . . .’ Olive hugged her daughter tightly. ‘You are so like your dad. He was generous to a fault and always thinking of others as well. Look, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll tell Agnes that I’m taking you out to get some material because you need a couple of new things since you’ve grown out of last winter’s clothes, which is true, and that I’ve been putting a bit of money to one side from Agnes’s rent because I thought that she’d probably need things as well but that she wouldn’t have thought of it with always having had the orphanage to provide clothes for her.’

‘Mum, can we really?’ Tilly’s eyes were sparkling as brightly as any stars, the delight and excitement in her expression melting Olive’s heart. The income from their lodgers was bringing in a modestly comfortable sum and, always thrifty, Olive had been putting money to one side just in case one or more of her lodgers left. She had more than enough saved to be able to afford to buy a couple or so lengths of fabric for both girls, and to get the clothes made up.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed with a smile, ‘we can.’ What she’d got in mind was a couple of lengths of woollen fabric, so that a nice costume could be made up for Tilly – perhaps with two skirts to make sure she got her wear out of the jacket – something she could wear for Sunday best now and for work next winter, along with a length for an everyday skirt for each of the girls, and then something pretty for winter frocks for them both, which they could wear to the Church’s socials and dances. If she went about it the right way she felt sure she could get Miss Thomas, the local dressmaker, who also attended their church, to give her a special price for such a good order.

‘We’ll go and have a look for the fabric tomorrow.’

‘Could we go to Portobello Market?’ Tilly begged her excitedly. ‘We could make a real day of it. That’s where Dulcie got the fabric for her skirt. She says you can get ever such a good bargain there if you know who to ask. We could ask her where she got hers.’

Olive forced herself to smile, pleased that, since Dulcie worked on Saturdays, Tilly would be unable to suggest that they asked her to go with them. ‘Well, I was thinking of somewhere closer. Portobello Market is a bit of a trek, I’d thought of somewhere like Leather Lane.’

Tilly’s disappointment was immediate and obvious as she pleaded, ‘Oh, please, Mum. I really would like to go to Portobello. We could set off early.’

Tilly’s plea tugged on Olive’s heart, and with a small sigh she amended, ‘Well, maybe, let me think about it and then we’ll see. Meanwhile,’ Olive stood up, ‘I’ll have a word with Agnes. I want to make it plain to her that it’s her own money that will be paying for her new clothes.’

When Tilly looked questioningly at her, Olive explained, ‘All Agnes has known all her life is charity, Tilly, and the need to be grateful to others for that charity. That was all very well when she was in the orphanage, but that sort of attitude in the wider world could lead to other people not treating her as respectfully as they should. It’s only right and fair that Agnes should be able to feel proud of buying her own clothes. Now, we’d better get back downstairs before those dumplings get too well done.’

Chapter Eight

Nearly six o’clock. At six Selfridges would be closing to customers, although it would be closer to half-past before she eventually got away, Dulcie knew. She was hungry and looking forward to her evening meal. One thing Dulcie could say for her landlady was that she was a good cook, who didn’t cut corners on their meals or the portions she served.

‘Lydia Whittingham was in here earlier with that chap of hers,’ Lizzie told Dulcie, coming over to her whilst Dulcie was tidying up her counter. ‘Arlene Watts from Elizabeth Arden makeup said that Lydia told her that they’re getting engaged on her birthday.’

Dulcie gave a dismissive shrug. ‘So what?’

‘So what? Have you forgotten that you said that you were going to get her beau to go dancing with you?’

‘Of course not,’ Dulcie answered scornfully, ‘not when I put a bet on it – and he will go dancing with me.’

‘You mean that you’d go out with an engaged man?’

‘I want to go dancing with him, not get married to him,’ Dulcie replied. It was the truth. And a large part of the reason she wanted to go dancing with David James-Thompson was because she wanted to rub Lydia Whittingham’s nose in it a bit.

She’d disliked the other girl, with her snooty airs, from the minute she’d set eyes on her and it would be amusing to know that she’d persuaded her fiancé to go out with her behind Miss Snooty’s back.

‘You mean you aren’t sweet on him? Why do you want to go out with him then?’

‘’Cos he looks like going dancing with him would be fun.’

That was the truth too. ‘If you aren’t careful you’ll get yourself a bad reputation and then no decent lad will want to marry you,’ Lizzie told her warningly.

Dulcie laughed. ‘There’ll always be lads who want to marry me, but they’ll have to prove to me that they’re worth marrying before they get to put a ring on my finger. Besides, I don’t want to get married for years yet.’

Lizzie was aghast. ‘Every girl wants to get married,’ she protested.

‘I’ve seen what happens to a girl when she gets married,’ Dulcie defended her intention. ‘She ends up running round after her husband, being told what to do, and then being lumbered with squalling kids. That’s not for me. When I do decide to get married it will be to someone who puts me first, not himself.’

Twenty minutes later, as she sauntered out of the store into the sharpness of the early evening, the camel coat she was wearing over her tweed skirt and silk blouse showing off her blonde hair, she was so busy mentally planning what she was going to wear for tomorrow night’s dance, that she didn’t see David James-Thompson until he stepped in front of her.

‘You’re taking a risk, aren’t you?’ she taunted him. ‘Waiting for me when you’ll soon be an engaged man.’

Unabashed, he laughed and bent his head to tell her quietly, ‘I like taking risks and something tells me that you like taking them as well.’

He was carrying a large Selfridges bag, and unwilling to let him see how impressed she was by both his nonchalance and his response, Dulcie pointed to it and demanded, ‘What’s in there, her ladyship’s lizardskin handbag?’

Again he laughed, shaking his head as he told her, ‘No. This is for you by way of apology for the fact that I’m afraid I won’t be able to accept your invitation – at least not this Saturday.’

‘It wasn’t an invitation. I was just saying that I go dancing of a Saturday,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘And what do you mean, it’s for me. What is it?’

‘Have a look,’ David smiled, handing her the large bag.

For all her confidence with young men, Dulcie was not used to receiving gifts from anyone outside her family. And even when presents were given and exchanged they were small modest things, that most definitely did not come in large Selfridges bags. When a man who wasn’t part of your family, or who you weren’t courting, gave you a present, though, Dulcie knew exactly what that meant. For all her enjoyment of riling other young women by flirting with their partners, Dulcie had neither the desire to nor the intention of allowing any man to take things further than that.

Looking David James-Thompson squarely in the eye she told him bluntly, ‘If you’re thinking that by giving me some kind of present I’m going to let you take liberties with me, then you’re going to be disappointed, because I won’t.’

‘That isn’t why I’m giving you this.’

Dulcie looked searchingly at him, and then, sensing that he was telling her the truth and after a brisk accepting nod of her head, she opened the carrier bag and looked cautiously inside. When she saw what it contained, though, her head came up and she looked speechlessly at David before looking back into the carrier again at the cream and tan leather vanity case she had coveted so much, and which now so unexpectedly was hers.

‘I told them not to gift wrap it because I wanted to see your face when you saw it.’

‘I wasn’t going to pinch it. I just wanted to see what it looked like. Gracie Fields has got one. I saw a photo of her in Picture Post carrying it,’ Dulcie defended her actions earlier.

She meant it, David recognised, contrasting her blunt outspokenness with the coy but unmistakable promise Lydia had made him earlier about showing him later, when they were alone, how pleased she would be if he bought her the handbag she wanted. A coyness that had repulsed him every bit as much as Dulcie’s bravado delighted him. Right now she was like a child at Christmas desperately trying not to look as excited as she felt, David thought, laughing as she immediately folded up the paper bag and then opened the vanity case to put the discarded bag and her own small handbag inside it, before triumphantly locking it and taking a couple of steps holding onto it.

Without having to discuss it they’d both automatically moved into the shadows away from the store as they spoke and out of view from anyone else leaving.

David had only bought the vanity case for Dulcie on impulse after Lydia had left him to go home with her father, but now he recognised that he was glad that he had.

‘I suppose you’re taking Miss Iron Knickers Lydia somewhere posh tonight, are you?’ Dulcie asked him.

He shook his head. ‘No. I’m going back to my rooms to study some briefs. It’s a legal term meaning papers,’ he explained when he saw her looking puzzled.

‘Does that mean that you’re a judge, like your dad?’ Dulcie asked him, remembering that Lizzie had said that his father was a judge.

David grinned. ‘No. I’m actually a barrister, a very newly qualified and junior barrister,’ he added wryly. He’d taken off his hat when he’d first greeted her, but now he put it on again.

‘A barrister? What’s that?’

Both her naïvety and her lack of self-consciousness about questioning him appealed to David. They spoke of a freedom from the constraints of ‘correct behaviour’ and a zest for life. Things sorely lacking in both his mother and Lydia.

‘Basically a barrister is someone who is instructed by a solicitor on behalf of that solicitor’s client to present and plead or defend a case that is put before a judge and jury. In my case it means grubbing around in a second-rate set of chambers, hoping that the clerk will throw me a few scraps in the form of a brief.’

‘You don’t like being a barrister then.’

She was sharp, David thought ruefully, he had to give her that.

‘It isn’t a matter of what I do or don’t like.’

‘Well, it should be,’ Dulcie told him stoutly. ‘Are you really going to get engaged to Miss Iron Knickers?’

‘It’s what my parents and hers expect.’

Dulcie gave him a look. ‘So you’re almost an engaged man but you’ve given me this.’

‘To make up for the unpleasantness this afternoon.’ He paused and then told her, ‘I’m sorry – about not being able to go dancing with you.’

‘Don’t be. I’ve got lads queuing up to dance with me,’ Dulcie told him truthfully, thinking gleefully to herself that being given the vanity case was far better than winning her bet with Lizzie. She just couldn’t wait to see the other girl’s expression when she told her about the case.

‘Where are you going now then?’ she asked him.

‘Like I told you, I’ve got to read some briefs. The senior partner wants my notes on them in chambers first thing on Monday morning.’

‘Chambers?’

‘That’s what they call the . . . the offices that barristers work from. Mine are at Gray’s Inn. ‘Look, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go.’

Before anyone saw them he meant, Dulcie recognised as she saw the quick look he gave over his shoulder. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to ask him to stay.

‘Suit yourself,’ she responded. Then giving him a dismissive shrug, Dulcie turned on her heel and walked away from him without a backward look.

Who’d have thought that he’d buy her the vanity case, she thought gleefully. She certainly hadn’t. Oh, she’d known from the look he’d given her this afternoon that he had a bit of an eye for her, but then she’d known that the first time she’d seen him. But buying her the vanity case . . . That would be one in the eye for Miss Stuck-Up Lydia Whittingham.

She wasn’t going to take her vanity case out with her when she went dancing tomorrow night, though, Dulcie decided, immediately protective of her new acquisition. All sorts went to the Hammersmith Palais and she didn’t want some other girl nicking it when she wasn’t looking. She would take it with her to church on Sunday, though. She couldn’t wait to see Edith’s face when she saw it, Dulcie thought happily, unconcerned both about the fact that a vanity case was hardly the kind of thing one would take to church and the fact that she wasn’t going to win her bet about dancing with David James-Thompson.

For much longer after he had left her than was wise or sensible David was still thinking about Dulcie and the way that talking to her had made him realise how little he wanted the future his parents had planned for him, and how constraining it felt, like wearing someone else’s clothes. But he had no choice; he had to wear them, just as he had to marry Lydia, or risk being labelled a complete cad – something his determined and icily proud mother would never tolerate or accept. Marriage was marriage, and if his was going to be a duty rather than a pleasure, well then, he’d just have to find his pleasure elsewhere. His parents moved in the same social circles as the Whittinghams. They were neighbours, living on the outskirts of the same small market town. He had known Lydia for ever, and his mother had made it plain that she wanted Lydia as her daughter-in-law. Or rather, that she wanted the money Lydia’s mother would inherit to come into their own family. His parents were comfortably off but not as well off as his mother would have liked. Her own grandmother had had country connections to the aristocracy, and she was an out-and-out snob, who never lost an opportunity to make it plain that she felt she had married down in marrying David’s father.

Until now David hadn’t really given much thought about whether or not he actually wanted to marry Lydia. Marriage was marriage, and marrying the right sort of girl was something a chap just did. When it came to having fun, that fun was something one found discreetly outside one’s marriage and away from one’s home. David was someone who liked living on the surface of life, skimming it like a pebble skimming across a flat calm pool. The emotional turmoil and danger of the depths that lay below that surface held no interest or appeal for him. He was obliging and easy-going, preferring to pay lip service to what he was supposed to do, rather than challenge the status quo. He preferred amusing flirtations to passionate affairs, risqué conversation to risqué relationships, going with the flow rather than swimming against it. Dulcie tempted him but she was a temptation he could easily resist because she was the sort who would cause him trouble. Meeting her this evening had merely been an impulse decision, his gift to her something that amused him, just as she did. As they went their separate ways David reflected cheerfully, that he would probably not even be able to recall her name in a month’s time.

It was gone midnight according to the illuminated face of Tilly’s alarm clock, and she and Agnes should have been asleep, but instead they were lying in their separate beds in the darkness facing one another as they whispered excitedly about their promised shopping trip. Olive, having given in to maternal love, had agreed that they could make the longer journey to the Portobello Road Market.

The Portobello Market. Tilly hugged her excitement and delight to herself, enjoying the grown-up feeling it gave her that her mother had accepted her argument that travelling to it could be cost effective in the end, given that they were bound to have a wider choice of fabrics, and possibly at better prices.

Typically, Nancy next door had nearly brought an end to Tilly’s hopes, when the proposed shopping trip had been mentioned to her and she had sniffed in that disparaging way she had and said that you wouldn’t get her travelling all that way just to get a length of fabric, adding for good measure that she’d heard that half the stalls in Portobello Road sold things that had been acquired illegally. Tilly had held her breath whilst Nancy had been sounding off over the garden fence to her mother but, to her delight, Olive had merely nodded her head and then told her and Agnes, once Nancy had disappeared, that they might as well take a look along the Portobello Market, even if in the end they ended up buying something from Leather Lane.

Tilly knew exactly what kind of new dress she wanted: one that was properly grown up. The kind of dress that someone like Dulcie’s brother, Rick, would see a girl wearing and immediately want to ask her out. Quite what shape and colour that dress would be Tilly hadn’t made up her mind yet, she just knew that it had to be a magical, special kind of dress that would transform her from a girl into a young woman.

Not that she’d said anything about that to her mother. Instinctively Tilly knew that Olive might not agree with Tilly’s own plans for her new dress, and that a certain amount of coaxing and pleading might be required in order for her to get what she wanted. One thing Tilly did know, though, and that was that it would be far more exciting and much more fun looking for fabric for her dress at the Portobello Market than it would be in dull familiar Leather Lane. Thanks to Dulcie the Portobello Market had taken on an allure of glamour and excitement, the sort of place, in Tilly’s vivid imagination at least, where all sorts of enticingly new things might happen. Like finding the perfect fabric for THE dress. The one that she would come downstairs in and that Rick, who would just happen to be visiting number 13 to see his sister, would see her in. He would look up at her with the kind of bedazzled expression she had seen on the faces of heroes at the cinema. She would smile graciously at him whilst she finished descending the stairs, and then . . . Tilly’s heart gave a thump of mingled excitement and apprehension at the romantic possibilities of such a scenario (her mother would, of course, be at a WVS meeting and thus not there to witness the scene and possibly banish Tilly back to her room), which was so intense that she had to cover her heart with her hand to calm it down.

Agnes’s ecstatic whispered, ‘Oh, Tilly, I’m so happy I could burst,’ echoed Tilly’s own feelings so exactly that she reached across the narrow space between their beds to find Agnes’s hand and squeeze it.

‘Me too.’

Agnes expelled a deep sigh of delight. ‘Your mum is that kind, Tilly. I was that worried and upset when Matron first told me that I’d got to leave the orphanage, but now, well, there’s no place I’d rather live than here at number thirteen.’

She could hardly believe it. She was going to have something new to wear. Something of her very own that no one else had ever worn. The very thought made Agnes tremble with humble delight. She’d never had anything that was her very own, excepting her underwear. She dare not even imagine how she might look. Not as nice as Tilly, who was so much prettier – that wouldn’t be possible – but if she could just look, well, not like an orphan, but like an ordinary girl who came from a proper home. Not that she wasn’t grateful to the orphanage, of course. She was. Matron had been ever so good to her, she knew that, but to have her own outfit . . . She scarcely dared to believe that it was really going to happen.

Chapter Nine

Early the next morning, before it got too busy and all the best bargains were gone, Olive and a very excited Tilly and Agnes set off for Portobello Road.

They’d decided to take the tube from Chancery Lane tube station to Nothing Hill Gate and then to walk the rest of the way. Agnes, of course, since she worked for London Transport, would be able to travel free.

‘Will we get to see your friend Ted?’ Tilly asked Agnes.

‘No, ’cos he’s on nights,’ Olive heard Agnes answering, as she increased her walking pace to keep up with the girls, who were so excited that they were almost running. Their excitement was infectious, Olive admitted, and she was beginning to feel quite excited herself. Treats like this one had been rare occurrences in her life as a widow who was virtually financially dependent on her in-laws. She and Tilly had never gone without anything, but she’d certainly never felt able to splash out on things, not even for Tilly, which made today’s outing all the more special and something to be enjoyed, she told herself, smiling at Tilly as her daughter linked arms with her on one side and Agnes on the other.

‘He told me on Thursday when we had a cup of tea together that he’s really proud of how well I’ve learned all the stations,’ Agnes continued.

She spoke a great deal about the young man who had been helping her, and although Agnes’s emotional and sexual welfare were not strictly speaking her responsibility, Olive couldn’t help feeling a maternal twinge of concern as she listened. Agnes was virtually the same age as Tilly, and she was naïve. It wasn’t her business to interfere, of course, but since Agnes had no one to stand as a caring parent for her, and since Olive felt morally obliged to keep a protective eye on her young lodger, listening to the two girls chatting she decided that she needed – discreetly, of course – to find out a bit more about this young man.

‘Since he’s been so kind and helpful to you, Agnes,’ she announced. ‘you’ll have to ask him to come and have his tea with us one evening, as a thank you.’

Immediately Agnes looked a bit uncertain. ‘I don’t think I could do that. You see, Ted’s mum likes him to go straight home from work when he’s on days so that he can give her a hand with his younger sisters, with her being widowed.’

Olive could only accept what Agnes told her, though it raised her concern. It sounded plausible enough but who knew if this Ted was telling the truth, and he wasn’t just leading Agnes up the garden path, her being such an innocent sort.

They’d almost reached the end of Chancery Lane. Olive pulled her warm winter coat firmly around herself as a sharp wind buffeted them when they turned onto Holborn, heading for Chancery Lane tube station.

It was definitely time that Tilly had something new, she acknowledged, as she looked at the hem of her daughter’s coat, which barely touched her knees. Tilly must have grown at least a couple of inches since she had bought her the dark green coat with its velvet collar in an end-of-season sale at a shop on Oxford Street.

The grumpy-looking individual from whom they bought their underground tickets, wasn’t as grumpy as he looked, Agnes told them in a whisper as they hurried along the tiled corridor, heading for their train.

‘Ted says he just gets a bit cross because of his gout,’ she explained, adding proudly, ‘Ted knows everything about everyone at the station, and all about the trains as well.’

Although she smiled, Olive sighed to herself. She definitely needed to find out a bit more about this young man that Agnes so plainly admired.

In her room at number 13, Sally tried to sleep, reminding herself that she was starting night duty this evening, but she’d been dreaming about Liverpool and her mother, and she didn’t want to go back into the dream from which she’d just woken herself. She turned over, thumping the pillow, knowing that she’d be cursing herself later on this evening if she didn’t sleep now. Sleep remained elusive, though, so she tried to focus her mind on something else. During a snatched meal in the nurses’ canteen earlier in the week, one of the ward nurses on men’s surgical, a girl called Rachel Horseley, who was around Sally’s age, had invited her to join a group of nurses who were planning to go to the pictures together. Sally had had to turn down the invitation because she would be on duty, but remembering the other girl’s overtures of friendship made her smile.

She had made the right decision in coming to London to have a fresh start. The loss of her mother and what had followed would always cast its shadow over her, she knew, but her mother would have wanted her to be as happy as she could be and to enjoy life. Slowly, something of her old joie de vivre was coming back. She had laughed out loud at a joke one of the other girls had told them all yesterday, and she had hummed to one of her favourite songs when it had been played on the wireless, her feet starting to tap in time to the music. She’d even begun to wonder if George Laidlaw was a good dancer. Smiling to herself, Sally settled down to sleep.

It was just over two and a half hours after they had first arrived at Portobello Market, and the whole street was now a seething mass of enthusiastic bargain hunters, the cries of the stall holders, trying to attract custom, mingling with bellowed warnings from porters bringing up fresh barrows of goods, and even the ring of bicycle bells from those cyclists brave enough to try to ride through the busy throng of people filling the narrow streets.

Tilly and Agnes had been almost beside themselves with excitement from the moment they had arrived, Tilly especially as she had dragged them from stall to stall, calling to Olive to look at some fresh marvel that had caught her eye.

Olive couldn’t really blame her. The market was far bigger and better than she had expected, and she was obliged to admit mentally, if somewhat reluctantly, that Dulcie had been right about the quality of fabric for sale. The problem was that the bargains were almost too tempting.

They’d agreed initially that they would walk round carefully and ‘just take a look’ but that discipline hadn’t lasted very long. That was her fault, Olive knew, but the discovery of the last precious few yards of the most beautiful warm bronze dress-weight wool that was perfect for Tilly’s colouring had been too good a bargain to risk losing, especially when the stall holder had confirmed that since Tilly was so slim there was just enough for a daytime dress and a matching jacket, which Olive had been able to bargain down to a truly unmissable price because it was the end of the roll.

Then, of course, Olive had wanted to get something for Agnes, and they’d soon found a lovely soft blue-grey wool on the same stall. Olive however, mentally scolded herself that there had not really been any excuse for her to let the girls persuade her to give in to a deep dark red for herself, even if the prices were good.

Despite the cold wind that was blowing, the press of the crowd and the excitement of their bargain hunting had brought a warm glow to their faces, and Olive acknowledged that she was enjoying herself far more than she had expected. It was such a pleasure to have enough money to be able to treat the girls, thanks to letting out the rooms.

And as if their bargain-hunting shopping hadn’t already been successful enough, when Tilly had complained how much she now disliked her ‘childish’ too-short coat, the stall holder reached beneath his stall and brought out the most beautiful rolls of what he’d explained was a blend of wool and cashmere.

‘It’s wot the toffs all have their coats made out of,’ he told them as they huddled together under the stall’s faded green and white striped awning. Olive could believe that. The wool was unbelievably soft and warm, and in the most beautiful jewel colours. Despite her habitual need to be frugal, in the end she wasn’t able to resist either the fabric or Tilly’s pleading look, though it was more than she’d planned to spend even after she’d haggled him down. And, of course, she then felt obliged to say that Agnes must have a new coat as well, so that they bought the coat fabric in a lovely warm brown colour for Tilly, and also in a soft air-force blue for Agnes. Both girls were thrilled to bits, despite the weight of the brown-paper-wrapped parcels they insisted were no problem at all to carry.

‘What we need now is to find some lining fabric, oh, and buttons. Tilly, have you got those swatches of fabric the stall holder gave us so that we can match the shades up?’ Olive asked.

Tilly nodded, but before they reached the stalls with the lining fabrics on them, Olive noticed a stall selling a range of pretty warm-looking tartans, fine enough for winter dresses.

‘That would make very pretty party dresses for you both,’ she pointed out to the girls.

Tilly pulled a face, wrinkling her nose as she objected, ‘We’ll look like schoolgirls in that, Mum. Oh, but look at that velvet.’

It was beautiful, Olive acknowledged, real silk velvet that slithered through her fingers when she touched it and in the most glamorous of colours: rich amber, warm rose, dark green, navy, and plum.

‘It’s a very good price,’ the stall holder told them. ‘French too. You’ll not see this quality anywhere else.’

‘Please, Mum,’ Tilly pleaded, her eyes shining.

‘I don’t know, Tilly. We’ve already bought more than I planned. It is lovely, but the pile on the velvet is bound to flatten.’

‘It’s silk velvet,’ the stall holder emphasised, overhearing her. ‘You just give it a bit of a steam and it comes up like new. This rose colour would be perfect for you, with them dark curls,’ she told Tilly.

‘We’ve got lining fabric to get yet for your coats and buttons and everything,’ Olive warned her daughter.

‘Coats, is it?’ the stall holder chipped in. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you was to have a length of this silk velvet each then I’ll throw in enough ordinary velvet for you to have a set of collars and cuffs made for your coats.’

‘Oh, Mum,’ Tilly breathed excitedly, and Olive acknowledged ruefully that she’d no chance of bargaining the stall holder down now, with her daughter looking so excited.

It was lovely fabric, though. Mentally she calculated how much they’d already spent. It would mean going over the budget she had set herself if they had the velvet, but she could afford to, thanks to the rent from the lodgers.

‘Very well,’ she agreed, ‘but we’ll need only two lengths,’ she told the stall holder. ‘Which colour do you like, Agnes?’

Agnes’s reaction was to gaze at her with disbelief. ‘Me? When you said two lengths I thought it was for you and Tilly.’

Poor Agnes – she had had so little, growing up, that she automatically expected to be excluded from treats, Olive thought.

‘Of course you must have a new dress too, Agnes,’ she told her firmly. ‘Now which colour? This dark green will suit you, I think.’ Holding the velvet up to Agnes, Olive saw that her whole face was illuminated with joy as, speechless with gratitude, Agnes could only beam at her. That look on Agnes’s face made her decision all the more worthwhile, Olive admitted to herself, even if that did make her a sentimental softie.

‘What about you?’ the saleswoman pressed. ‘I’ll give you thruppence a yard off if you have three lengths.’ She pointed to a roll of amber velvet. ‘Perfect for you, that would be.’

‘Oh, yes, Mum, do have it,’ Tilly cajoled her. Olive reached out and touched the fabric. It was beautiful and she knew the colour would suit her. She paused and then shook her head, saying firmly, ‘What do I need a party dress for?’ before telling the stallholder, ‘Just the two lengths, please.’

The velvet bought, they all agreed that a cup of tea and something like a nice fresh hot meat pie were needed to give them the energy to finish their shopping.

There were plenty of stalls selling food, but Olive insisted that they find a café. She didn’t really approve of eating in the street, and besides, her feet needed a rest.

They found a welcoming café down a narrow side street, the smell of the hot pies they were selling making Tilly declare that her mouth was watering already.

The pies turned out to be as good as they smelled, hot and tasty, warming chilled fingers and filling hungry stomachs.

The women didn’t waste much time in the café, though. The crowd milling around the market had grown throughout the morning, and Olive wanted to get their shopping done before it got even busier.

Once they had eaten their pies and emptied the generously sized pot of tea they’d had with them, the three of them headed for a stall Olive had noticed earlier that sold lining fabrics. The local dressmaker would charge her a little bit less, Olive was sure, if she provided her own lining fabric, thread and buttons, and make allowances for the time it would save her in not having to go out and buy them.

It was whilst she was carefully matching the swatches of fabric she had retrieved from Tilly that Olive suddenly realised that her daughter and Agnes had disappeared. Uncertainly she looked round. The market was busy; she didn’t want them getting themselves lost in the bustling crowd. Then to her relief she caught sight of them hurrying towards her.

‘You mustn’t go off like that,’ she scolded them vigorously. ‘What on earth were you doing?’

‘Oh, I just wanted to show Agnes some lace I’d seen earlier that would make a pretty collar,’ Tilly told her airily.

‘Just because you’ve persuaded me to let you have a velvet dress instead of a plaid one, that does not make you grown up enough to go wandering off without a by-your-leave,’ Olive warned. ‘There’ll be pickpockets and all sorts here.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ said Tilly obediently.

When Olive turned back to finish choosing the lining fabrics Tilly and Agnes exchanged secret smiles. When they’d gone to the ladies’ after they’d finished having their dinner Tilly had told Agnes that she wanted to go back to the velvet stall to buy the amber velvet for her mother, and immediately Agnes had said that she wanted to go halves on the cost with her. Now the amber silk velvet was parcelled up with their own and the two of them were excitedly anticipating surprising Olive with it when they got home.

* * *

The house was finally quiet, Tilly, Agnes and Dulcie all in their beds and Sally working at the hospital. Olive, lying in her own bed, was thankful to be able to rest her still aching feet. In the glow of her bedside lamp Olive could see the brown-paper parcels, open now, their string removed and carefully rolled into balls for future use, stacked on her dressing-table stool, including the amber fabric that Tilly and Agnes had surprised her with earlier in the evening. A tender smile curved her mouth, her eyes misting with emotion and maternal pride.

Of course she had remonstrated with Tilly, saying that she and Agnes had no business wasting their money on silk velvet for her when she had no need of a party dress. A party dress. The last time she had had one of those she had been Tilly’s age. It had been pale blue silk and she had been wearing it the night she had met her husband, at a dance she had gone to with some friends. Jim had loved her in that dress, begging her to have a photograph taken of herself wearing it for him. She had loved dancing. She had loved Jim too, but she didn’t want Tilly’s youth to be like hers, over almost before it had begun, her life filled with the responsibilities of being a wife and a mother. She already knew what war did to young hearts and how it urged their owners to seize the moment in case it was snatched away from them. For a moment Olive’s heart was filled with remembered pain. She had been widowed for so long that she rarely thought of how it had felt to be a wife any more, or how it felt to be loved by a man and to love that man back in return, and then to lose him.

This war would not be like that, she tried to reassure herself. Everyone said so. She hoped that they were right.

The papers were saying that the war would be over before Christmas, Hitler put in his place and the British Expeditionary Force brought back from France and Belgium. Mothers who had parted with their children, allowing them to be evacuated, fearing the worst and that London was going to be bombed, were now bringing them back, and Nancy next door was complaining that the streets were full of children causing mischief who should have been at school, except that the schools had been closed down when the children were evacuated, adding that she was glad that Article Row was free of children, and that Barbara Simpson hadn’t decided to move back to London with their four. Olive didn’t agree with her. She thought it was rather a shame that they could no longer hear the voices of the four young Simpson children.

Another week and they’d be at the end of October; two months and it would be Christmas. She’d have to start getting a few things in ready, and find out what her lodgers planned to do. Dulcie, she assumed – and hoped – would want to spend Christmas with her own family, but Agnes would be with them, and Sally possibly. She could get some wool and knit both Tilly and Agnes gloves and scarves for Christmas to go with their new coats. Perhaps she’d knit a set for Sally, as well, a nice bright red that would match the lining of her nurse’s cloak.

Christmas. She’d have plenty of shopping to do with her house so full, and perhaps the sooner the better. Nancy had been talking gloomily about the probability of food shortages and even rationing if the war continued. She needed to get started with making her Christmas pudding, Olive decided. Olive still used the recipe that had been her own mother’s, given to her by the cook of the family with whom Olive’s mother had been in service.

Somehow the thought of following her familiar routine helped to push away the fear that knowing they were at war brought.

War was such a small word with such a big meaning and overwhelming consequences. Olive reached out and switched off the lamp. It was church in the morning, and she’d be able to tell the vicar’s wife about Sergeant Dawson offering to give her and Mrs Morrison driving lessons.

Chapter Ten

‘It’s St John Ambulance this afternoon,’ Tilly reminded Agnes as they stood together outside the church after morning service. ‘I hope I don’t have to be injured again. Johnny Walton bandaged my arm so tightly last time it went numb.’

‘Learning first aid isn’t as bad as when we have to move all those sandbags that are supposed to be collapsed buildings, to get the injured out,’ Agnes reminded her. ‘Ted is on fire-watching duties for the street he lives in when he’s not working nights. He says when there’s a full moon he can see the barrage balloons as clear as anything, and right over to the river. Do you think that Hitler will really bomb us, Tilly?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tilly admitted. People talked a lot about the war, but so far nothing really bad had happened, and it was hard to imagine what war was like, even though she knew that Britain’s soldiers had been sent to France.

People were already complaining about the inconvenience of the blackout, and having bossy Air Raid Precautions wardens coming round threatening to fine you if you showed even the smallest chink of light. Plain daft, Nancy next door had said to Tilly’s mother when she had been grumbling about it, when there wasn’t a German in sight.

Where there had initially been a sense of purpose and determination because of the war, there was now almost a sense of anticlimax.

‘Mum said that she was going to have a word with the dressmaker and arrange for us to go to her so that she can take our measurements for our new things.’ Tilly gave a small sigh. ‘I do wish that Mum would let me go to the Hammersmith Palais. I’m not a child any more, after all.’

‘We’ll be going to the church’s Christmas Dance,’ Agnes reminded her. To Agnes, going to any kind of dance was thrillingly exciting. She couldn’t wait to tell Ted how kind Tilly’s mother had been to her, and about her new clothes.

‘Oh, the church dance!’ Tilly pulled a face. ‘That will just be boys and girls who are still at school. Dulcie said this morning at breakfast that the Hammersmith Palais is the very best dancehall in London and that it was packed with men in uniform last night.’

It wasn’t men in uniform who occupied Tilly’s most private thoughts, though, so much as one particular man in uniform – Dulcie’s brother. In bed at night, when she closed her eyes, Tilly thought about how exciting it would be to dance with Dulcie’s brother, picturing herself in her new dress whilst Rick swept her round the floor and told her how beautiful she looked. Of course, she couldn’t say anything to Agnes about those thrillingly secret thoughts. They were far too private for that. And she certainly couldn’t tell her mother. Tilly knew that her mother didn’t entirely approve of Dulcie, and Tilly suspected that would mean that she would not approve of Rick either. She certainly didn’t approve of Tilly wanting to go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, but Tilly was determined to persist in begging her to let her go until her mother gave way. She was, after all, seventeen now, working, and properly grown up.

Several yards away from the two girls, Mrs Windle, the vicar’s wife, was telling Olive, ‘Sergeant Dawson spoke to me earlier about his offer to teach you and Mrs Morrison to drive. I must say it’s a most generous and welcome offer. I believe he’s already had a word with Mr Morrison and he’s happy to agree. It will make such a difference to our WVS unit to have two drivers and a vehicle. I must confess I was beginning to have a most unchristian reluctance to listen to the bishop’s wife talking about their drivers. I can’t tell you how pleased I am, and how grateful too, to Sergeant Dawson and to you and Mrs Morrison, for giving up your spare time like this. This will make such a difference to our unit, and to those we’ll be able to help.’ Mrs Windle’s face was pink with excitement. The vicar’s wife was small and on the plump side, her grey hair tightly permed, her smile for Olive genuinely warm. Olive liked her, with her calm, practical manner, and her genuine concern for her husband’s parishioners. The Windles, who were in their early fifties, didn’t have any children.

‘I just hope that I don’t let Sergeant Dawson down and prove not to be able to learn,’ Olive responded worriedly.

Mrs Windle patted Olive’s arm and surprised her by telling her warmly, ‘My dear Olive, of all the women I know, you are the least likely to let anyone down. I noticed this morning how happy little Agnes looks.’

‘She and Tilly get on very well together,’ Olive agreed. ‘Tilly’s persuaded Agnes to join the St John Ambulance and go along with her.’

‘And of course they’ll be coming to the church Christmas Dance. We’ve invited some of the Polish refugee families billeted locally to come along. It must be dreadful to be forced to flee one’s home and country.’

‘Terrible,’ Olive agreed, slipping away from Mrs Windle’s side as another parishioner claimed her attention. She went to have a word with Peggy Thomas, the local dressmaker, who lived a couple of streets away with her elderly mother.

She’d just finished making arrangements for Tilly, Agnes and herself to go round to be measured on Monday evening when Sergeant Dawson came up to her.

‘I’ve had a word with the vicar’s wife about the driving lessons.’

‘Yes, she told me. It really is very generous of you.’

‘I’m on nights this week so I thought we might make a start. Perhaps Thursday, if you can make it? Much easier for you both to learn in the daylight.’

‘Thursday?’

‘You’re too busy?’

‘No . . . not at all. It’s just, well, I’m a bit apprehensive about it, I suppose,’ Olive admitted with a small laugh.

‘There’s no need. You’ll be a natural, I reckon.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better get back. Iris isn’t feeling too well at the moment.’ He paused and then added, ‘It’s the anniversary today, you see . . . of us losing our lad, and she still takes it hard. We’ll be going down to the cemetery later. She’d spend all day there if I’d let her.’

Olive gave him a sympathetic look. ‘I know how I felt when I lost Jim but losing a child must be so much worse.’ She glanced across at Tilly. ‘So very much worse.’

‘Iris still thinks that something could have been done – to save him, like.’ Archie Dawson shook his head. ‘I don’t. Poor lad, I reckon he was glad to go and be freed from his suffering. I used to lie in bed at night listening to him trying to breathe. Really struggled, he did, wheezing and coughing . . .’

Olive didn’t know what to say. Her throat felt choked with emotion. Had he been a woman she would have reached out and touched his arm but of course he wasn’t, so that was impossible. All she could bring herself to say was a quiet, ‘You must miss him dreadfully.’

‘I miss what he might have been if he’d not been born so poorly. There was many a time when I’d be sitting at his bedside lifting him up to get air in to his lungs as he struggled to breathe, when I wished it was me that was so poorly and not him. He was such a brave little lad. Never a word of complaint, except towards the end one night he said to me, “Do you think I will die soon, Dad, only it hurts so much to live, and I’m that tired.”’

Now the rules of convention had to be ignored as Olive gave in to her natural instincts and reached out to place her hand briefly and compassionately on Sergeant Dawson’s arm.

‘He’s better off where he is now,’ he told her simply, ‘but Iris can’t see that.’ He cleared his throat and then looked across to where Tilly and Agnes were talking with several other young members of the local St John Ambulance brigade.

‘Tilly’s growing up into a fine young woman. One minute they’re still at school and the next they’re all grown up.’

Grown up? The sergeant’s words jarred a little on her. Olive didn’t want to think of Tilly being grown up. Not with a war on and all the temptations and difficulties that could bring for a young woman. She’d seen what could happen for herself with the last war: girls caught up in the patriotism and urgency of the moment, getting involved with and then marrying young men who had gone away to war and then, if they were lucky, had come back, but not as the young men they had been. And that was just those young women who had been lucky. She wasn’t the only woman of her generation to end up widowed with a child to bring up. War gave young women freedoms they would not otherwise have been granted – she had seen that too – but those freedoms could exact a heavy price and she desperately wanted to keep Tilly safe from the pain she herself had known.

‘Young Agnes is lucky to have found a billet with you,’ the sergeant continued.

‘Well, I don’t know about that, Sergeant,’ Olive demurred. ‘I want to do my best for her, of course . . .’

‘Something’s troubling you?’

‘In a way,’ Olive admitted. ‘Agnes isn’t my daughter, of course, but I can’t help feeling some responsibility towards her. She’s become very friendly with a young man – Ted – she’s met through her work at Chancery Lane underground station. He’s a train driver. They’ve been meeting up at a café there. From Agnes’s side it’s all very innocent. So far as she’s concerned he’s simply teaching her the names of all the stations. He sounds respectable and well-meaning enough, but without knowing him or having met him . . .’ Olive paused, knowing from Sergeant Dawson’s expression that she didn’t need to explain her concern in more detail. ‘She’s very young for her age,’ she added, ‘having only ever known life inside the orphanage.’

‘Leave it to me, Mrs Robbins. Chancery Lane comes under our jurisdiction. It won’t be any problem for me to call round there and ask a few discreet questions about this young man. You don’t happen to have his surname, do you?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t, Sergeant, and you really mustn’t go to any trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble. I’ll have a walk round there during the week and see what I can find out. Meanwhile I’ll see you on Thursday afternoon for your first driving lesson. Ernie Lord says I can collect the van any time that suits me, so would half-past two on Thursday afternoon be all right for you?’

Olive nodded. Now that the driving lessons were actually going to take place she felt far more apprehensive about them than excited, dreading both making a fool of herself by not being able to learn, and wasting the sergeant’s time.

There was something about working nights that was intensely wearying, Sally thought as she suppressed a yawn. Maybe it was because the operations that took place on nights were emergencies, which meant that one was always somehow on the alert. Being on nights gave a person too much time to think because even on the ward, nights lacked the bustling busy routine of daytime shifts.

She had already been up to the ward to check on ‘her’ patients, and to make sure that they were recovering comfortably from their operations, talking quietly to the new junior nurse on the ward as she went with her from bed to bed.

‘What are you doing that for?’ the junior had asked her when Sally had leaned close to the bandaged stump of an arm that had had to be removed after being crushed when a barrel had fallen onto it from a brewery lorry.

‘I’m just checking to see how it smells,’ Sally had told her once they had moved away from the bed. ‘That’s something we can’t always do when the patient is awake in case it frightens them. Stumps that aren’t healing and are becoming infected smell of that infection,’ she had gone on to explain.

The junior nurse had shuddered and pulled a face. Sally suspected that she would be one of those who didn’t stick out her training.

‘Cocoa?’ Ward Sister offered. ‘I’m just about to make some.’

‘Yes, please,’ Sally replied.

On nights at home in Liverpool, Callum had often been there to meet her and Morag when they had come off duty, walking them home to make sure they were safe.

Callum. Even without closing her eyes she could picture his face with its high cheekbones and the blue eyes she had once thought possessed a gaze that was both understanding and kind. Kind! He certainly hadn’t been kind to her when he had called her selfish and cruel for refusing to welcome his sister’s marriage to her father. It was true that with Callum blood was thicker than water, his loyalty to his sister far, far stronger than the relationship she had thought that they were beginning to share. The blood tie between her and her father, though, had not been strong enough for him to understand the revulsion she had felt, and still felt, at the knowledge that he wanted to replace her mother with her best friend.

Olive hummed to herself as she hung out her Monday morning wash, pegging the sheets firmly to make sure they stayed on the line in the warm breeze. She’d just finished and was about to position the wooden prop to lift the line when Nancy’s head appeared over the fence.

‘Morning, Nancy,’ Olive called out, with a smile, ignoring her neighbour’s downturned mouth and disapproving expression.

‘Mrs Morrison was telling me after church yesterday that Sergeant Dawson is going to be giving you and her driving lessons,’ Nancy announced without any preamble.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Olive agreed, checking that the prop was fixed firmly into the lawn, before bending down to pick up her empty laundry basket. A couple of stray curls had escaped from the headscarf she wrapped round her head to keep her hair out of the way whilst she worked, and she stood up to tuck them out of the way, still smiling as she informed Nancy, ‘It was Mrs Windle’s idea. She had the offer of a van for the WVS to use but she didn’t have any drivers. It’s so kind of Sergeant Dawson to make the time to teach us.’

‘Kind, is it? Well I’ve got to tell you straight, Olive, that that’s not what I think and it wouldn’t be what your late ma-in-law would have thought either.’

‘What do you mean?’ Olive asked, bewildered.

‘What do you think I mean? Sergeant Dawson is a married man. And I don’t think it’s right or proper that he should be giving you driving lessons. It’s all right for Mrs Morrison, she’s got a husband to keep an eye out for her, but you haven’t, and you know how people talk.’

Olive didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry.

‘I’m only warning you for your own good, Olive,’ Nancy continued. ‘A woman in your position, widowed, and with a teenage daughter to look out for can’t be too careful about her reputation.’

‘Nancy,’ Olive protested, ‘it’s Sergeant Dawson who will be teaching me, not some stranger. And Mrs Windle has already said how pleased she is. It’s for the war effort that I’m doing it.’

Nancy gave a disparaging sniff. ‘You can say what you like, Olive, but I don’t think it’s right, a single woman like you spending time on her own with a married man, and I’m only telling you what your own ma-in-law would say.’

As Olive listened to Nancy’s warning a surge of uncharacteristic anger filled her. She knew what Nancy was trying to do. She was trying to bully her into backing out of having her driving lessons. And besides, what Nancy was suggesting – but not coming out directly and saying – about her being alone with Sergeant Dawson possibly leading to some kind of hanky-panky on his part towards her was ridiculous. Sergeant Dawson was a respectable and an honourable man. Anyone who was in his company for more than a few minutes couldn’t help but know that. Olive had come across her fair share of the other sort during her widowhood to know the difference. Oh, there had been nothing directly said by those men – some of them friends of her late husband and her in-laws, and most of them married – but it had all been there in the looks they had given her in private, the hints they had dropped suggesting that she, a young woman without a husband, must be ‘lonely’. She had made it plain to all of them that she wasn’t interested. The very idea was an insult! And Nancy’s hints about Sergeant Dawson were an insult to him. Olive felt angry with Nancy on his behalf when the whole neighbourhood knew what a decent sort he was. She certainly trusted him. But even so, Olive knew that once she would probably have given in and done what Nancy wanted simply to keep the peace. Things were different now: there was a war on, and that was what she had to think about, not Nancy’s disapproval.

She took a deep breath and then told her neigh-bour firmly, ‘You might not approve, Nancy, but I think that Jim would. He’d want me to play my part and do everything I can to help others.’ And with that Olive picked up her laundry basket and headed for her back door without giving Nancy the opportunity to come back at her. She was not a young girl like Tilly, she was a mature woman and one who was perfectly capable of judging for herself whether or not a man could be trusted, and what was and was not appropriate behaviour for her, without Nancy trying to tell her what to do, Olive decided determinedly, as she opened her back door and stepped inside without giving Nancy a backward look.

Chapter Eleven

‘That was a lovely smooth gear change. You’re really getting the hang of it,’ Sergeant Dawson praised Olive as she drove down Article Row, changing through the gears as she did so.

Pink with delight and pride, Olive remembered just in time not to look at her instructor but instead to keep her attention focused on the road in front of her.

It was just over a month now since she had had her first lesson. The ending of British Summer Time and the shortening days meant that there were fewer daylight hours in which Sergeant Dawson could give both her and Mrs Morrison their driving lessons. She had been right to follow her own judgement and not listen to Nancy, Olive congratulated herself, because Sergeant Dawson’s manner towards her had been all that she had known it would be: kind and friendly, but never ever stepping over the line that divided their relationship as neighbours and friends, mixed with a dash of professionalism from him as her driving instructor, from one that involved the kind of looks, comments and hints that would have warned her that he was looking for something else. She felt completely safe in his company, and knew that even her critical late mother-in-law could not have found anything to object to in his manner towards her.

Had things been otherwise she could not have relaxed and focused on learning to drive, Olive knew, as she waited automatically for that second when the clutch bit and depressed slightly when she pressed down the accelerator pedal, heralding the right moment at which to change gear. She could still remember how anxious she had been during that first lesson when Sergeant Dawson had demonstrated this all-important skill to her and she had sat next to him, privately unable to believe that she would ever understand the mechanics of changing gear, never mind actually driving.

Now she was familiar with such terms as double declutching, knew what the ‘bite’ point for changing gear was, could turn corners neatly and even reverse, and during their weekly WVS meetings she and Anne Morrison sat together exchanging tips and horror stories about their lessons, both ruefully admitting to each other how nervous they had been about that first lesson and how thrilled they were now that they were actually driving.

Olive hadn’t forgotten Nancy’s warning to her, but even though her response to it had led to a certain coolness between them on Nancy’s side, Olive didn’t regret her decision or her defiance. Learning to drive made her feel that she really would be able to do something useful, should the need arise. Times were changing and her sex was changing with it: today’s women, with their men going off to war, were having to take charge of their own lives, make their own decisions, and take on the jobs that now needed doing. Today’s women weren’t shrinking violets who never stepped outside their front door without needing to ask a man’s permission, and she certainly wasn’t going to allow Nancy to tell her what she could and could not do.

‘You can put your mind at ease with regard to young Ted, by the way,’ Sergeant Dawson broke the silence between them after they had reached the far end of Article Row and Olive had turned left into its neighbour, Merton Road, which led eventually onto Chancery Lane.

‘I’ve been making a few enquiries about the lad like I said I would and it turns out that he’s generally regarded as a decent sort. Just to be on the safe side I had a word with him myself.’

When Olive forgot his instructions not to turn to look at him, he shook his head.

‘All very discreet, I promise you. I’ve been into that café where he meets Agnes a few times now – thinks a lot of him, the owner of it does – so I arranged to be there one morning when he was coming off his night shift and I knew Agnes wouldn’t be around and I made it my business to fall into conversation with him, like.’

The sergeant gave a small sigh. ‘Lost his father when he was younger so now he’s pretty much the main breadwinner for the family. I reckon he’s a son any chap could be proud of.’

Guessing that he was thinking of his own lost son Olive felt a stab of sympathy for him but she was too tactful to say that she had guessed what had caused his deep sigh.

Instead she said. ‘I’m really grateful to you for going to so much trouble, Sergeant Dawson. You’ve put my mind at ease. Like I said when we first talked about it, it isn’t up to me to tell Agnes what she can and can’t do, but since she doesn’t have a mother or any relatives of her own I can’t help but feel responsible for her.’

‘It’s to your credit that you do. But you needn’t fear for her with young Ted,’ Sergeant Dawson assured her, noting approvingly how his pupil manoeuvred the van into position for the right turn that would take them onto Chancery Lane and from there onto Holborn itself, past Holborn Circus and then down to St Paul’s Cathedral, where they would turn round and make their way back.

A November chill was griping the air now, mist and even fog rolling in from the river early in the morning and then again when the afternoon faded into an early dusk. Winter was round the corner and with it the rationing of butter and bacon from mid-December. Olive shivered a little as she concentrated on her driving. The first bombs of the war with Germany had already been dropped on the Shetland Islands; the Royal Oak had been sunk at her base in Scapa Flow by a German torpedo with the loss of over eight hundred men. The papers were warning about the danger to British shipping from German submarines and their deadly torpedoes. The red double-decker London bus in front of them pulled into the kerb at a bus stop, causing Olive to change down and wait for it to set off again because the road was too narrow and too busy for her to risk overtaking it. She didn’t like overtaking, but Sergeant Dawson said that she was going to have to get used to doing so. The bus set off eventually, the rank smell of the diesel coming from its exhaust making Olive wrinkle her nose and think longingly of the comforting warmth of the vegetable soup she’d made earlier in the day for their tea tonight.

‘I do wish that Mum would let us go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, and stop treating me like a child, especially now that we’ve got our new frocks,’ Tilly said wistfully, repeating a now familiar complaint as she and Agnes sat listening to the wireless whilst Dulcie read Picture Post. Olive had gone out straight after tea to a WVS meeting, and the three girls were on their own in the house as Sally was working nights.

‘If you don’t want your mother treating you like a kid, Tilly, then you should show her that you aren’t and stop behaving like one,’ Dulcie told her.

‘What do you mean?’ Tilly asked.

Dulcie gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Well, for a start I’d never let my ma tell me that I couldn’t go out dancing if I wanted to. I’d just tell her I was going.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Tilly protested.

‘Then go without telling her,’ Dulcie told her.

Tilly gazed at her. ‘You mean go to the Hammersmith Palais without Mum knowing?’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, Tilly, you can’t do that,’ Agnes protested, shocked.

‘Course she can, if she wants to,’ Dulcie argued. ‘That’s if she’s got the guts to do it and she isn’t really too scared. All she’s got to do is tell her mother that she’s going somewhere else, like the pictures, and then go to the Palais instead.’ Dulcie gave another shrug. ‘Simple.’

‘You mean lie to my mother?’ Tilly asked uncertainly.

It would serve Olive right if Tilly did go to the Palais behind her back, Dulcie decided. She was well aware of the fact that her landlady disapproved of her and was determined to protect her precious daughter from what she saw as Dulcie’s influence. It would be amusing to persuade Tilly to go behind her back.

‘What do you want to do, Tilly? Only be allowed to go to boring church dances for the rest of your life whilst other girls are having fun at proper dances? If you ask me I’d say that it’s your mother’s fault if you have to lie to her to do what any other girl your age can take for granted. Of course, if you want to stay tied to your mother’s apron strings all your life and never be allowed to make your own mind up about what you want to do, then that’s up to you.’

Dulcie’s challenging words were fanning the flames of Tilly’s resentment of her mother’s refusal to let her go to the Hammersmith Palais. Dulcie was right: her mother was wrong to keep on treating her like a child. She thought yearningly of how much she wanted to be allowed to be properly grown up. As Dulcie had said, other girls her age went to proper dances and their mothers didn’t treat them as though they were still schoolgirls. A reckless determination took hold of her.

‘Dulcie is right, Agnes,’ she announced. ‘We’ll go this Saturday. We can tell Mum that we’re going to the pictures, and then when we get back and she can see that we’re perfectly safe then we can tell her where we’ve been. Everything will be all right then because Mum will understand that I’m old enough to go to proper dances,’ Tilly insisted when Agnes continued to look uneasy.

Agnes was looking at her uncertainly but Tilly knew the other girl wouldn’t go against her. Agnes was too gentle for that.

‘It’s the only way to make her see that we’re properly grown up,’ she insisted, adding, ‘You don’t want our new dresses to be wasted on church socials, do you, Agnes?’

‘But how can we wear them to the pictures?’

Agnes had a point, Tilly recognised. But thankfully Dulcie had a solution for the problem.

‘You’ll just have to take them with you in a carrier bag and then change into them in the ladies’.’

Carried away by the excitement of fulfilling her ambition, Tilly nodded enthusiastically. It was wrong to deceive her mother, she knew, but something had to be done to prove to her that she wasn’t a schoolgirl any more. Dulcie was right about that. The end justified the means, Tilly assured herself, soothing her conscience.

Later that night, when she and Tilly were in bed, Agnes whispered across to her, ‘Do you really think it’s all right for us to go to the Hammersmith Palais without telling your mother, Tilly?’

‘Of course it is,’ Tilly assured her. ‘Like Dulcie said, if we let her, Mum will keep on treating us like schoolgirls for ever.’

Agnes admired Tilly too much to doubt her, but the thought of lying to Tilly’s mother, who had been so kind to her, was an uncomfortable weight on her conscience. At the orphanage lying was considered a very serious sin indeed.

She was still feeling worried and uncomfortable about Tilly’s plans for Saturday night the next day, when she found Ted waiting for her at the entrance to the station, after work.

‘Thought we’d have a cuppa together, if you’ve got time,’ Ted told her gruffly.

‘Of course I’ve got time,’ Agnes told him as he fell into step beside her.

The familiar warmth of the café was a welcome relief from the cold wind outside, and Agnes nodded her head when Ted asked her, ‘Cuppa and a teacake?’ before making her way to ‘their’ table next to the window, from where they could look out and watch the world go by. Not that they could look through it now with the blackout in place. And even if they had been able to, there wouldn’t have been much to see, Agnes acknowledged, as she waited for Ted to rejoin her. Not with it going dark by teatime, and no lighting of any kind allowed on the streets.

It wasn’t long after Ted had given their order over the counter before they were served, and Ted had poured them each a cup of tea.

‘Summat’s up,’ he announced after noting the way Agnes’s head drooped as she stirred her tea. ‘Old Smithy’s not been getting you upset, has he?’

Agnes shook her head. ‘No, he’s really nice to me now. Well, most of the time. Sometimes he shouts when his feet are bothering him.’

‘So if it isn’t old Smithy that’s making you look so glum, what is it?’ Ted pressed.

Reluctantly Agnes unburdened herself to him.

After he had heard her out Ted gave a soft whistle. ‘That Dulcie’s a one, isn’t she?’ he announced. ‘Persuading Tilly to lie to her ma.’

‘Tilly’s been wanting to go to the Hammersmith Palais for ages,’ Agnes told him, not wanting to portray her friend in a bad light. ‘She says that once we’ve been and we get home safely then her mother will stop worrying and let us go without us having to pretend that we aren’t doing.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Ted told her. ‘Mas don’t take kindly to being lied to.’

‘Tilly says it isn’t exactly lying. It’s just pretending that we’re going to the pictures, ’ Agnes defended her.

Ted could see that Agnes was getting upset so he didn’t pursue the subject any further but inwardly he had already made up his mind that on Saturday night, come hell or high water, he intended to be at the Hammersmith Palais to make sure that Agnes didn’t come to any harm. Poor kid. He could see that she didn’t like the idea of deceiving her landlady but that she was too good a friend to Tilly to betray her.

He did have some sympathy with Tilly, though. There was, after all, nothing like being told you couldn’t do something to make a person want to do it. But lying to her ma in order to do it – that wasn’t a good idea at all – and Ted had a strong suspicion that it would all end in tears. In his home, had his dad still been alive, it would have ended up with his dad’s belt being applied to the back of the offending child’s legs.

All day Friday, Tilly’s excitement grew. She dare not think about Saturday night when she was at work in case she went off into her favourite daydream – the one in which Dulcie’s handsome brother suddenly materialised at her side and asked her to dance – and someone noticed and she got told off.

Of course she felt bad about deceiving her mother, but she tried not to think about that. Instead she thought about how exciting it was all going to be and how wonderful she and Agnes were going to look in their new frocks. A small pang of guilt did strike her when she thought about their new dresses. Mum had been so good about letting them have that velvet instead of the plaid, and the new clothes they’d had made from the fabric they’d bought at Portobello Market made both her and Agnes look ever so grown up. Even her mother had said so when they’d shown them off to her. Instead of feeling guilty she had to think instead about being grown up, like Dulcie had said, and proving to her mother that they were old enough to be treated like adults.

Whilst Olive put Tilly’s growing air of tension and excitement down to the fact that her daughter would be wearing her new dress at the coming church dance, Dulcie, who knew better, observed it with slightly malicious glee.

Oh, it was going to be one in the eye for Tilly’s mother, who treated her, Dulcie, as though she didn’t really want her there, when she found out that Tilly had defied her. Olive’s protective manner towards Tilly still irked Dulcie, reminding her as it did of her own mother’s favouring of Edith. Well, let Olive go around with her nose in the air, thinking that her Tilly told her everything and thought she was wonderful; she’d soon find out that she was wrong. Dulcie knew instinctively that Olive would be hurt by Tilly’s deception but she didn’t care. Olive needed bringing down a peg or two. The fact that Dulcie’s machinations might cause a rift between mother and daughter wasn’t something that weighed on her conscience. Why should it? It was plain daft of Olive to try and keep Tilly a kid for ever. In a way she was doing them both a favour.

On Friday evening, when Tilly announced casually that she and Agnes were going to the pictures on Saturday night, Olive didn’t think anything of it. Her head was full of all the things she needed to do for Christmas, only a month away now. She’d got a goose on order, and luckily she’d been able to get in a bit of a supply of butter from the grocer she always used, ahead of the rationing.

‘I expect you’ll be going home for Christmas, Dulcie?’ she asked, her question causing Dulcie to frown. She hadn’t really given much thought to Christmas, but now that Olive had mentioned it and made it plain that she expected her to go home because no doubt she didn’t want her here, Dulcie felt like digging her heels in and being awkward.

‘Well, I’d like to, of course,’ she agreed, giving an exaggerated sigh as she added, ‘especially with my brother expecting to be coming home from France on leave, but I don’t think there’s going to be room for me. Of course, if you don’t want me here . . .’

‘Of course we do, don’t we, Mum?’ Tilly immediately jumped in. ‘It will be more fun if you’re here, Dulcie. We always have a bit of a party on Boxing Day, don’t we, Mum?’

‘I’d hardly call it a party, Tilly, at least not the sort of party Dulcie would enjoy,’ Olive responded pointedly, giving Dulcie a sharp look as though she guessed what she was up to. ‘It’s just a few of our neighbours, that’s all.’

The news that Dulcie’s brother would be home on leave over Christmas had brought a pink glow to Tilly’s cheeks. She could hardly wait for tomorrow night and being able to ask Dulcie more about her brother without her own mother listening in and giving her that disapproving look.

‘Well, I wouldn’t want to put you out,’ said Dulcie with pretend concern.

‘You won’t be putting me out, Dulcie,’ Olive felt obliged to deny. ‘I just thought you would want to be with your own family.’

‘But, Mum, Sally’s going to be staying, and Agnes, of course, and it wouldn’t be the same if Dulcie wasn’t here,’ Tilly protested.

It certainly wouldn’t, Olive thought grimly, but with Tilly such a staunch supporter of Dulcie there was nothing she could say or do other than allow the subject to be dropped, and rework her shopping plans to make sure that she bought in enough to feed all of them.

As she said to Sally later, if it wasn’t for all the inconvenience of the blackout rules, the ugliness of sandbag buildings, and the sight of so many ARP posts and air-raid shelters everywhere you wouldn’t think there was a war on at all.

‘It’s no wonder people are calling it a phoney war.’

‘It may be phoney for us here in London,’ Sally agreed, ‘but we had a young merchant seaman in today whose arm had to be amputated thanks to the wound he’d suffered when his ship was torpedoed by the Germans. He was telling us that the Germans are inflicting serious losses on our merchant fleet, and that the Government aren’t letting on how bad the situation is. He reckons that it will be much more than butter and bacon that goes on ration soon, with so much having to be brought in to the country by sea.’

‘Poor boy,’ Olive sympathised.

‘Yes,’ Sally agreed. The young seaman had been visibly shocked when he’d been told that he would have to lose his arm or risk losing his life because of the gangrene that had set in to the crushed limb. He’d told her worriedly that merchant seamen, unlike men in the Royal Navy, did not get paid when they weren’t actually working at sea, and she had really felt for him, his situation making her aware of how lucky she was, which reminded her . . .

‘I’ll be going out straight from work tomorrow afternoon,’ she told Olive. ‘One of the other nurses has got tickets for several of us for the matinée of the ENSA Drury Lane show. Apparently the theatres are really good about letting nurses have seats at a cheaper rate and when she asked me if I’d like one of them it seemed silly not to say yes.’

‘I should say so,’ Olive agreed. ‘It will do you good to go out and have a bit of fun.’

‘Yes, I think it will,’ Sally agreed happily.

Chapter Twelve

‘Tilly, I don’t think I want to go dancing after all.’

They were in their bedroom after what had felt like the longest day Tilly had ever known. So tense with nerves and excitement was she that she’d barely been able to eat her tea.

Agnes’s words, along with the distinct tremor in her voice, had Tilly putting down the hairbrush to give Agnes an anxious but determined look as she told her firmly, ‘Of course you want to go.’

‘But what about your mother? She’s been so kind to me.’

‘Mum will be fine about it once we’ve been. We just aren’t telling her because she doesn’t understand yet that we’re grown up. Once we’ve been then everything will be all right. You wait and see.’

Tilly had convinced herself of the truth of what she was saying and her belief in it propped up Agnes’s wavering courage, although she did protest, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. If I wasn’t then we wouldn’t be going, would we?’

Her hair brushed, Tilly dipped her forefinger in her precious pot of Vaseline and then, with her tongue tip protruding slightly as she concentrated, she smoothed her dark eyebrows down and then very carefully Vaselined the ends of her long dark eyelashes as well.

Watching her, Agnes was impressed. Her own eyelashes and eyebrows were a plain mouse brown and she shook her head when Tilly offered her the jar of Vaseline.

‘Knowing me, I’d probably end up sticking my finger in my eye.’

Her eyebrows and lashes done to her satisfaction Tilly reached for the Tangee lipstick that her mother had only allowed her to wear once she had started work. The lipstick looked orange but once on Tilly’s lips it gave them a satisfyingly rosy-pink lustre that Tilly was convinced made her look much more grown up.

‘Here, you have some,’ she invited Agnes.

Hesitantly, Agnes took the lipstick. Living at the orphanage, she had been denied the opportunity to experiment with growing up in the way that other girls did and the movement of her hand as she applied the lipstick to her own mouth was shaky and uncertain.

‘We’d better get a move on,’ Tilly warned, turning to their shared wardrobe and opening its doors. ‘Here’s your bag and your dress.’ She thrust both at her so that Agnes had no alternative other than to take them from her whilst Tilly removed her own dress from its hanger and quickly folded it up to put it into her own bag.

‘Your mother is bound to ask what we’ve got in these,’ Agnes warned Tilly as she eyed the over-filled bags.

‘Not if we take them down into the hall and leave them there whilst we say goodbye. She’ll be listening to the radio so she won’t get up to see us off. She said how tired she was at teatime after Sergeant Dawson had her driving through the afternoon traffic. Come on,’ Tilly urged. ‘We’ve got to get changed yet into our skirts and jumpers as though we were going to the cinema.’

Upstairs in her own room on the top floor, Dulcie was also getting ready for the evening ahead, surveying her appearance in the full-length mirror. The dress she was wearing – pale blue silk, its V neck trimmed with a slightly darker shade of velvet ribbon, the same ribbon trimming its puffed sleeves – was cut on the bias, skimming her curves but not clinging to them. Dulcie knew where to draw the line and which side of that line she intended to stay. Other girls might make the mistake of dying their hair a too brassy blonde and wearing clothes that were too tight, but Dulcie never would. They could make themselves look cheap but she was certainly not going to. That sort of girl more often than not ended up having to get married quickly with a baby on the way and a life of hardship ahead of her.

Piling her curls up on top of her head and securing them there with some Kirbigrips that she’d been holding between her teeth, Dulcie paused to admire her own reflection. Classy, that’s how she looked, she decided triumphantly. Her smile widened as she reflected on her other triumph of the evening – Tilly and Agnes’s illicit attendance at the Palais. Olive might think that her precious daughter wouldn’t listen to anyone but her, but Dulcie was going to prove her wrong.

‘That’s Dulcie going downstairs now,’ Tilly told Agnes as she heard the tap of Dulcie’s heels crossing the landing outside their room. ‘Come on.’

‘I can’t go yet. I need the lav,’ Agnes protested.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Olive too heard the tap of Dulcie’s heels on the stairs and then the sound of the front door opening and closing, and frowned to herself. Tilly and Agnes were cutting it fine if they weren’t going to miss the beginning of their film. She’d better go upstairs and hurry them along, Olive decided. Tilly could be such a daydreamer at times.

In her room, Sally hummed one of the tunes from the review to herself. She’d really enjoyed her outing with her fellow nurses, right from the moment at the hospital in the room where they’d all changed with Sister’s permission, when Rachel had complimented her with a teasing, ‘Well, don’t you scrub up well?’ as she admired Sally’s appearance in her pretty hyacinth-blue dress, with its neatly fitted bodice closed by tiny pearl buttons and its softly gored full skirt.

‘If I do I’m not the only one,’ Sally had laughed in response.

It had been true. Eight of them had gone to see the show, and seeing her fellow nurses out of their uniforms, with their hair down, anticipation of a happy afternoon out adding a soft glow to their skin and eyes, and wearing pretty clothes, made Sally think how attractive everyone looked.

‘It should be a good show,’ Rachel told Sally, linking up with her after they had all pulled on their coats and were heading for the door. ‘Of course, some of the jokes will probably be a bit warm . . .’ She paused and Sally laughed.

‘Yes, I expect they will,’ she agreed.

‘Thank heavens you aren’t the stuffy sort,’ Rachel told her with evident relief, adding, ‘Since the tickets haven’t cost us anything I reckon we can splurge a bit and go by taxi. You go and hail a couple, Brenda,’ she commanded one of the other girls. ‘That blonde hair of yours is bound to have them stopping. A London cabbie never misses a blonde.’ Rachel had been proved right a couple of minutes later when two cabs pulled up a few yards from them.

‘What’s this then?’ one of the cabbies asked cheerfully. ‘Nurses’ day out? Matron know you’re escaping, does she?’ he joked as they split into two groups of four and piled into the cabs.

The show had turned out to be excellent, the comedian so funny that Sally had laughed until her insides ached. Best of all, though, had been the music and the dance routines, and Sally had itched to be twirling on a dance floor herself when the music had got her feet tapping.

After the show had ended all of them had agreed that the afternoon had been a success and that they should go out again together. Now, Sally hummed a few more bars of one of the songs . . .

The first thing Olive saw when she walked into Tilly and Agnes’s bedroom was the bags on the beds. An attempt had obviously been made to fold the girls’ new party dresses up small enough to fit inside them but it had not been successful, the dresses easily visible and recognisable.

The second thing she saw was the expressions on the girls’ faces. In Agnes’s case that expression was one of anxiety and guilt, but on Tilly’s . . .

Disbelief followed by a pain as sharp as if someone had stabbed a knife into her heart gripped Olive as she looked in her daughter’s face and saw defiance and, yes, the angry resentment.

Olive could hear her heart racing and pounding. She badly wanted to sit down, so great was her shock and distress, but she knew she mustn’t, just as she knew she must not let Tilly see not just how shocked she was but how devastated and wounded. That her daughter to whom she had always been so close, whom she loved so much, should look at her now as though they were enemies shocked Olive to the core of her being. A part of her wanted to beg Tilly to tell her that it was all a mistake, to see her daughter smile at her and to feel her arms close round her, but another part of her reminded her that she was Tilly’s mother and that she had a duty to her and to their relationship that must not be shirked.

So instead of pleading with Tilly not to look at her as she was doing, she asked coldly instead, ‘Would you like to explain the meaning of these to me?’ gesturing to the dresses but without removing her gaze from Tilly’s face.

Whilst Agnes gulped with distress, Tilly showed no sign of guilt or remorse as she answered her boldly, and with some hostility.

‘We were going to take them with us to the Hammersmith Palais and change into them there.’

Olive wanted to recoil as though she’d been struck, but she forced herself to say instead, ‘So, you were lying to me when you said that you were going to the cinema tonight?’

‘Yes,’ Tilly told her, continuing fiercely, ‘we had to. It’s your fault for not seeing that we’re grown up enough to go. Dulcie said.’

Now the pain inside Olive had turned to white-hot lava burning through her as she stopped Tilly with a sharp, ‘Dulcie said? I see. And what Dulcie says is more important than what I say, is it?’

She had known all along that Dulcie would be trouble and now she had been proved right.

On the other side of the room Agnes had started to cry quietly.

When Tilly didn’t answer her but instead gave her a sulky challenging look, Olive told her, ‘I’m ashamed of you, Tilly. Ashamed of you because you lied to me and ashamed because you no doubt forced poor Agnes to enter into your deceit with you.’

‘It’s your fault,’ Tilly flashed back at her defiantly. ‘I’m seventeen, I’m not a child any more. After all, I’m old enough to go out to work and do my bit so I can’t see why you won’t let me go to the Palais and why you want to stop me from having fun.’

Sidestepping her daughter, Olive went over to the beds and picked up the bags, her hands shaking a little as she did so.

‘I am very disappointed in you, Tilly,’ was all she could trust herself to say. How could Tilly, her Tilly, her beloved daughter, have done something like this? Tears tightened Olive’s throat. She had never felt more alone, or more at a loss to know what to do. Automatically, as she turned towards the door, she announced emotionlessly, ‘You will both stay here in your room, and you, Tilly, I hope will reflect on your behaviour.’

Standing beside her bed, Sally chewed on her bottom lip. The row going on below had been perfectly audible to her, and had filled her with disquiet. She liked and admired Olive, and of course what Tilly had planned to do was wrong, but the person who was really to blame, in Sally’s view at least, was Dulcie, who Sally suspected had deliberately played on Tilly’s vulnerability as she went through the natural youthful process of wanting to be ‘grown up’ and in charge of her own life.

In the hallway the clock still ticked and in the kitchen, the wireless was still on, Vera Lynn’s voice spilling out into the empty room, familiar sounds in a familiar setting. But their familiarity could not offer Olive any comfort in the alien world she felt she now occupied. Tilly had lied to her, and not just lied to her but justified that deceit by blaming her for being the cause of it. Tears filled Olive’s eyes. Agitatedly she brushed them away and went to the sink, reaching for the kettle and then putting it back. What comfort could a cup of tea give her? None. She sat down at the kitchen table and then stood up again, pacing the floor, wanting to go upstairs to beg Tilly to tell her that she was sorry, that she regretted what she had done and said, she wanted . . . she wanted Tilly to be a little girl again, running to her for the security of her embrace. But Tilly wasn’t a little girl any more. Fresh pain filled her. Was Tilly right? Was she to blame for her daughter’s deceit?

Upstairs in her bedroom Tilly sat down heavily on her bed, the exhilaration that had led to her outburst against her mother draining from her so quickly that she felt as though her legs wouldn’t support her.

Had those really been tears she had seen in her mother’s eyes just before she had left the room? Tilly had to swallow hard against the fear that suddenly loomed up inside her, the shock of it like running into an unexpected towering brick wall. She must have imagined it. Her mother never cried. Not ever.

On the other bed Agnes was gulping back sobs between demanding anxiously, ‘Do you think your mum will send me away now because of us lying to her?’

‘It wasn’t you who lied to her, Agnes, it was me,’ Tilly tried to comfort her. How awful to be afraid that you might be sent away. Tilly couldn’t imagine how that must feel. Not really. Slowly, beginning like a drip of water that turned into a trickle and from that into a stream, Tilly felt the recognition of what she had done seep through her, and with it her guilt and remorse.

The house had settled down into an uncomfortable silence. Sally knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She felt too upset, both on Olive’s behalf and Tilly’s. What had happened wasn’t any of her business, and she didn’t want to interfere, but . . . Sally could remember how it felt to be Tilly’s age and so desperately eager to be grown up. There had been an incident, over a tennis club dance she’d wanted to attend, and then another over her desire to be allowed to go out cycling with a quite unsuitable young man, during which she remembered hot words being exchanged.

‘Darling, it’s because we love you that we want to protect you,’ she could remember her mother telling her gently. ‘I know you can’t see or understand that now, but I promise you that one day you will, and when you do you will thank us. You may think you are grown up but to us you are just as in need of our care as you were when you were a child, only in a different way. Imagine if, as a baby first learning to walk, we had let you walk without watching your every step, what kind of parents would we have been? It’s the same now.’

Sighing to herself, Sally got up off the bed and opened her bedroom door. The house was still silent. The door to Dulcie’s bedroom was closed. Dulcie had not acted well in encouraging Tilly to lie to her mother, Sally thought, and their landlady was bound to hold that against her.

When Sally opened the kitchen door Olive was sitting at the table, her eyes betrayingly redrimmed, the handkerchief she had been holding in her hand pushed quickly into the sleeve of her jumper when she saw Sally.

‘I suppose you heard me having words with Tilly?’ Olive felt obliged to say.

‘Yes,’ Sally confirmed.

‘I can’t believe that Tilly would do something like this – lie to me.’ Olive had to bite her lip to stop it from trembling.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Sally offered, going over to the stove without waiting for Olive’s agreement, and then saying calmly, once she had checked that it was full of water and had lit the gas beneath it, ‘I remember having words with my parents about wanting to do things they didn’t think I was old enough to do.’

Olive gave her lodger a weak but grateful smile when she poured the boiling water on the tea leaves and then brought the pot over to the table, before returning to the cupboard to remove two mugs, cream ones with blue spots on them, and blue handles, which reminded Sally of some her own mother had bought one year at Preston’s annual Pot Fair.

Automatically Olive got up and went to the larder to get the milk jug, but it was Sally who poured their tea and who passed her mug to her.

‘Tilly said it was my fault and that she’d had to lie because of me.’ The words, so painful to say, felt like sharp pieces of flint tearing at Olive’s throat and her heart.

‘I dare say she was so shocked at being discovered that she didn’t really know what she was saying,’ Sally offered comfortingly.

‘Perhaps I have been too protective. But it was only for her own sake. She’s so young. She doesn’t know how hard life can be. I want her to have her youth whilst she can. I don’t want to stop her from having fun, I just want her to be safe and to take her time growing up.’

‘Would it help if I went to the Hammersmith Palais with them? Not immediately, of course, but if you wanted to let Tilly know that you do trust her to be properly grown up?’ Sally offered.

Despite the angry words that had been exchanged upstairs, the kitchen still had the lovely comforting and comfortable atmosphere that Olive had created throughout her home, but especially here at its heart, its cosiness reaching out to warm the heart.

‘I’d certainly far rather she and Agnes went with you than with Dulcie,’ Olive admitted, absently tracing one of the lines that made up the checks on the kitchen tablecloth with the tip of her fore-finger. Was Sally trying to say tactfully that she had treated Tilly like a child instead of recognising that she needed to know that she, her mother, trusted her? ‘You get all sorts going to the Palais, from what I’ve heard, and Hammersmith itself has a bad reputation,’ she defended her decision.

‘I know nurses who’ve been to the Palais and they say it’s just about the best dancehall in London. I think they’d say if they thought it wasn’t the kind of place one would want to go,’ Sally offered tactfully, pausing to take a sip of her hot tea before wrapping her hands round her mug and then continuing carefully, ‘Tilly is young, but she’s not the sort of girl to have her head turned by the wrong kind of young man, or the sort of girl who would behave in the wrong way.’

Silently Olive digested what Sally had said, moving slightly in her chair and pushing it back a little from the table, its legs making a small scraping sound on the linoleum as she got up and began pacing the floor. Sally had offered her a face-saving way out of what was a miserable situation and she’d be silly not to take it, Olive acknowledged, stopping her pacing to turn to Sally.

‘You’re right. She isn’t. And that’s just as well with this war, and young people being what they are. Perhaps I have been too hard on her, but the last thing I want for Tilly’s own sake is for her to meet some lad in uniform and then fancy herself in love with him and want to get married when he will have to go off to war and might not come back.’ Olive sighed. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you like this, Sally. You’re only a girl yourself, and a very kind girl as well.’ She sighed again. ‘If you’re sure you don’t mind going with Tilly and Agnes, that would ease my mind an awful lot.’

‘Of course I don’t mind. I wouldn’t have offered if I did,’ Sally returned promptly. ‘In fact, it will probably do me good. It’s ages since I last went dancing and, by all accounts, the Hammersmith Palais is the place to go.’

‘So Tilly keeps telling me,’ Olive acknowledged ruefully.

From her favourite seat at her favourite table next to the dance floor, Dulcie was able to keep a close eye on everyone coming into the ballroom, and when an hour after her own arrival there was still no sign of Tilly and Agnes she gave a dismissive mental shrug and told herself that if Tilly was too soft to take her advice then that was her lookout, and more fool her.

Three girls she knew from school had taken the other seats at the table, the four of them exchanging nods of recognition, Dulcie well aware that the other three were covertly examining her appearance. Well, let them. It wasn’t her fault if she looked better than they did.

‘That good-looking brother of yours still in France with the army, is he?’ one of the girls – Ida Walton – asked Dulcie.

‘As far as I know he is,’ Dulcie replied. ‘Last time he wrote home he said how he’d been on leave in Paris.’

‘Huh, Paris.’ Rita Stevens, who was sitting next to Ida, joined the conversation. ‘My brother Harry was there before he got sent home on compassionate leave when his wife died having a baby, and he reckoned that the women in Paris are all tarts and that any British soldier who goes with one of them is a fool.’

‘Well, Rick certainly isn’t that,’ Dulcie said smartly, ‘’cos if he was he’d have ended up married to Beatie Sinclair from Brewer Street, she’s been chasing after him that hard.’

The other girls all laughed and the one sitting furthest away from Dulcie – Bettie Fields – asked her, ‘Still working at Selfridges, are you?’

‘Yes,’ Dulcie confirmed.

‘We’re all thinking of going working in munitions,’ Bettie told her. ‘They reckon the pay’s the best there is. Oooh, here’s that lad coming over that danced with you three times last week, Rita.’ She nudged her friend. ‘And he’s got a couple of pals with him.’

When she saw the three young men swaggering over to join them, Dulcie deliberately moved her chair away from those of the other girls. The young men were of a type and class familiar to her from her own family life, and Dulcie immediately mentally and somewhat scathingly dismissed them as being men she wouldn’t want to dance with. For a start their suits were shiny and ill-fitting, they were wearing boots, not shoes, and their stridently cockney accents made her grateful for the fact that she had learned to speak in a much more refined way since going to work at Selfridges. Neither Olive nor Tilly, nor indeed anyone she had spoken to in Article Row, spoke with a cockney accent, and when Rita flashed her a look and apologised insincerely, ‘Oh, sorry, Dulcie that there isn’t anyone for you to dance with,’ Dulcie was relieved rather than displeased.

Not that she wouldn’t have minded someone buying her a drink, mind. It came to something when a girl as good-looking as she was had to sit all alone at a Saturday night dance without so much as having a drink bought for her.

The band was on form, playing all the popular numbers with a lively beat, the dance floor already a crush of couples – young women wearing their best frocks, the men – many of whom were in uniform, eager to take their partners onto the floor. A group of Italian-looking young men stood together at the edge of the dance floor, the dark-haired good looks catching Dulcie’s attention. Not that there was any point in encouraging their attentions. Italian men wanted only one thing from non-Italian girls and it wasn’t a discussion about ice cream, Dulcie thought witheringly. There’d been a couple of young Italians attending the same boxing club as her brother, and Rick had soon set her straight about them.

‘They’re only allowed to marry girls of their own sort,’ he’d told her when the son of an Italian couple who ran a little shop round the corner from their parents’ house had started waiting for her after school and offering to walk home with her. ‘So you make sure you don’t let them muck around with you, Dulcie.’

There’d been no need for her to ask him what he meant by ‘muck around’, nor any resentment on her part at his warning. After all, it had been Rick who had seen what was going on when their uncle Joey had started lying in wait for her at family get-togethers so that he could try to feel her up, pushing her into the darkest corner of the passage and then putting his hand on her budding breasts, before squeezing one of them so hard that it had hurt. Nothing had ever been said between them after Rick had come into the passage and seen what was going on, but later that week she’d seen her uncle in the street and he’d had a whopper of a black eye.

Ted looked round the packed dance floor of the Hammersmith Palais, the heat generated by the dancers bringing him out in a sweat that beaded his forehead. He shouldn’t be here really. His ma had played holy heck when he’d told her that he was going out, because she’d wanted him to sit in with the kids whilst she went to the pictures with her sister, Ted’s aunt Dottie. He’d stuck to his guns, though. He’d had to after what Agnes had told him. The poor kid had been in a real state over coming here tonight. Left to herself, Ted reckoned that she’d funk it, but from what she’d said about her, that Tilly was another matter and hellbent on defying her ma. In Ted’s experienced view there could be only one outcome to the whole sorry mess and that was an all-out row and a lot of tears. One thing he was decided on, though, was that his Agnes wasn’t going to get the blame, and if that landlady of hers tried to blame her – or worse still, turf her out – then Ted was going to have to set her straight.

His Agnes. Quite how it had happened that keeping an eye out for Agnes because she was so obviously wet behind the ears and incapable of looking after herself had turned into him starting to look forward to their teatime chats together, and then outright missing her when he couldn’t see her, Ted didn’t quite know. But it had happened, and although nothing had been said between them, Ted had decided that when the time was right, when she’d found her feet properly, and if she was willing then, Agnes was going to be his girl.

A little awkwardly he looked over his shoulder. Ted felt a bit iffy about Hammersmith. Not the Palais itself – that had a good enough reputation, and the management were certainly keen on checking who they let in. They’d given him the once-over with a bit of a sharp eye. No, it was the reputation that Hammersmith itself had that had made him feel wary. The East End of the west end of the city, some called it. Ted didn’t know about that but he did know that to those who knew the city, who really knew it and had grown up knowing it at street level, Hammersmith was a hotbed of radical talkers, always wanting to stir up trouble. They’d had the IRA trying to bomb the bridge earlier in the year, and the only reason they hadn’t got away with it was because someone had seen the bomb and chucked it into the river. Then there was the river itself, or rather the pathway along it. Got a real reputation, that had, for all sorts of goings-on and was a favourite haunt for the cheapest types of prostitutes. The Palais itself, though, was removed from all of that. People came from all over the city to dance there. It had one of the best in-house orchestras in the country – the famous Joe Loss Orchestra.

Ted had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that he didn’t stick out like a sore thumb when he got here. He’d been down to the public baths after work and had a really good soak, and then he’d gone home and dressed in his Sunday shirt and the tie that matched his one and only suit – his suit, like his tie, brown with a bit of a stripe in it. He’d Brylcreemed down his mousy hair and polished his shoes until he could see his face in them.

It took him an hour to crisscross the whole of the interior of the Palais, and then, and only then, when he had decided to his own satisfaction that Agnes wasn’t there, did he make his way to the exit.

If she wasn’t here then that meant that either Tilly had lost her nerve and changed her mind or something had gone wrong, by which Ted meant that Tilly’s ma had rumbled Tilly’s plot to deceive her.

Standing on the pavement outside the Palais, Ted reflected on what to do. There was no point in him going home. His ma had missed her weekly trip to the pictures now, and besides, if Tilly and Agnes were in trouble then he wanted to know about it, for Agnes’s sake. Removing his flat cap from the pocket of the overcoat he had retrieved from the cloakroom, turning up his collar and pulling on his cap, Ted then shoved his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders against the dank fog-laden November air, as he set out for the underground.

Chapter Thirteen

Olive was alone in the kitchen when she heard the knock on the front door, Sally having gone out to meet her friends, and Tilly and Agnes still upstairs and very quiet.

Blowing her nose on the handkerchief she retrieved from her sleeve, Olive guessed that her visitor would be Nancy, who sometimes came round on Saturday evening for a chat whilst her husband went down to the pub on the next street. The last thing she wanted was to have Nancy, who was such a gossip, guessing that something was wrong and asking her a lot of questions.

Only it wasn’t Nancy she could see standing outside her front door, when she switched off the hall light to keep the blackout, and then opened the door. It was a man.

Unable to make out his face in the darkness, Olive was wary about opening the door any wider, but whilst she hesitated a slightly nervous and young male voice told her, ‘I’ve come to see if Agnes is all right. She was supposed to be going to the Hammersmith Palais. Agnes and me work together,’ he ploughed on desperately into the silence.

Immediately Olive guessed, ‘You must be Ted then?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Ted was relieved to get a response.

‘And Agnes told you, did she, that you would find her at the Palais tonight?’ Olive’s voice hardened.

‘Oh, no, nothing like that,’ Ted denied. ‘Agnes isn’t the sort to go saying anything like that.’

Softened by this response, Olive opened the door properly. ‘You’d better come in.’

Taking off his cap, Ted stepped into the hall, glad of its warmth. Olive closed the front door and then switched on the light.

‘Agnes is all right, isn’t she? Only, she was a bit upset when she was telling me about what . . .’

‘About what my daughter was planning to do,’ Olive finished for him as she led the way to the kitchen.

‘Well, I didn’t want to say nothing about that,’ Ted told her, ‘’cos it’s none of my business, but I wouldn’t want to think of Agnes getting into trouble, and there not being anyone to stick up for her.’

‘Agnes is upstairs with my daughter,’ Olive told him, going automatically to fill the kettle and then light the gas beneath it, waving Ted into a chair as she did so.

He looked a decent enough sort, and Sergeant Dawson had spoken well of him. Olive liked the fact that he was concerned about Agnes.

‘I found out what Tilly was planning and I refused to let them go. I’m sorry if you are disappointed at not being able to see Agnes there,’ Olive told Ted as she made the tea.

‘No. I mean, I only went there ’cos I was a bit worried about her. I told her it was a daft idea and that they were bound to get found out,’ Ted announced with male scorn for an ill-thought-out female plan. ‘Told her too she should say summat to you about it and get it knocked on the head, but she said she couldn’t on account of her and your Tilly being friends. Ta,’ he added gratefully when Olive poured him a mug of tea and handed it to him.

Wrapping his cold hands round the mug, he told Olive, ‘Once I’d seen that they weren’t at the Palais I remembered how Agnes had said that she was feared that you might send her packing, her being only a lodger here, so I thought I’d come round just to make sure that you knew what was what.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that Agnes isn’t the sort of girl to break the rules, Ted,’ Olive assured him, touched by his obviously genuine concern for her lodger. ‘I’ve made my feelings about what she’s done very plain to Tilly and there’s no doubt in my mind about where the blame lies.’

‘Well, I dare say it’s natural that she wants to go, it being the best place in London for dancing and everyone going there. I was a bit iffy about it meself until I got inside, Hammersmith being what it is, but the management there know what’s what and there wasn’t any trouble going on inside, that I could see.’

‘That’s very reassuring to know, Ted,’ Olive thanked him gravely, hiding a small smile. Sergeant Dawson had said that Ted helped to look after his younger siblings and she could see that sense of responsibility in him when he talked about the Palais.

Ted drained the last of his tea and stood up.

‘I’ll be on my way then now that I know that Agnes is all right. Thanks for the tea.’

Dulcie tapped her foot irritably on the floor as she watched the three other girls dance off yet again with their partners. Not that she’d have wanted to dance with any of them, not for one minute. She could have been up there on the floor dancing. She’d been asked but she certainly wasn’t going to waste her blue silk frock or herself on any of the no-hopers who’d come up asking her for a dance.

It wasn’t in Dulcie’s nature to question her own actions, never mind find fault with them. It was other people’s fault that she wasn’t dancing, not her own – because there was no one there good enough for her to dance with.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and braced herself, turning round impatiently, the words of sarcastic rejection dying on her lips, her eyes rounding as she looked up into a familiar face, her heart thudding so hard it took her several seconds to vocalise her recognition in an uncharacteristically stunned voice. She stared at the handsome man wearing an RAF uniform, and said in disbelief, ‘You!’

It was David James-Thompson. For a minute she was as shocked as a naïve girl who knew nothing might have been. But, of course, she wasn’t a naïve girl and she had always known that Lydia’s beau was the sort to break the rules, just as she had always known that eventually he would seek her out, she assured herself.

Suddenly the evening was full of promise and excitement, the glitter from the mirror ball twirling over the dance floor and the spotlights reflected in the sparkle of her eyes.

All she allowed herself to say was, ‘You’re in uniform.’

‘You noticed then,’ he teased her. ‘I signed up for the RAF a week ago. Decided I couldn’t bear to stand on the sidelines any longer. Pilot training begins next week.’

The RAF. Far more exciting than if he had joined the army, Dulcie thought approvingly.

‘Thought I’d come on the off chance that you’d be here so we could celebrate together.’

Dulcie was over her shock now, and that fast beating heart had been firmly restored to its normal beat. There was no way she was going to allow him to know how thrilled she’d been to see him.

‘Shouldn’t that be something you’re doing with your fiancée?’ she taunted him instead.

‘Possibly,’ he agreed, unabashed, as he came to sit down beside her, taking the seat that had been Rita’s and turning it round so that he was sitting facing her, his knees brushing against her thigh. ‘Although at the moment she isn’t very pleased with me for joining up. She and my parents think I should have arranged things so that I claimed exemption from military duty. Awfully boring doing that, though, especially when so many other chaps seem to be having so much fun. We like having fun, don’t we, Dulcie?’ he asked her with a knowing smile, reaching for her hand as he did so and then sliding his fingers through hers so that their hands were laced together with an expertise that told her that this wasn’t the first time he had done something so intimate. The very fact that he knew what he was doing made David all the more of a prize and all the more exciting.

‘We’re two of a kind, you and I,’ he told her, his eyes brimming with amusement and appreciation as though he knew what she was thinking.

David watched the battle going on inside Dulcie’s thoughts and reflected in her gaze as caution fought with triumph. He hadn’t intended to come here, after the row with Lydia about him joining up. He’d planned to have dinner with a couple of other chaps who’d enlisted at the same time, and then go on to a nightclub with them, but then suddenly he’d thought of Dulcie and before he’d really known what he was doing he was on his way over here.

She was a looker all right, and classy too, nothing cheap or common about the way she looked. David toyed with the idea of persuading her to leave the dancehall with him. He could take her to one of the quieter and more discreetly managed clubs he knew, somewhere where they could sit in the darkness together, but before he could say anything Dulcie was standing up and tugging impatiently on his hand as she demanded, ‘Well, now that you’re here we’d better dance, hadn’t we?’

At the other end of the dance floor, on the elevated stage with its red curtains, the Joe Loss Orchestra swung into a waltz, and the lights were dipped.

The floor was packed with dancers, giving them no option but to hold each other close. He was a good dancer, leading her confidently, but then he would be, him being posh, Dulcie thought. Really, the two of them looked so good together that they could have had their photographs in one of those gossip columns in the newspapers, which showed you photographs of lords and ladies and the like. She looked far better with him than Lydia would, with her sallow skin and her bad-tempered face with its thin mouth. She wasn’t surprised that David wanted to escape from his fiancée to be with her.

His fiancée. Dancing with another girl’s fiancé was one thing, especially when she disliked that girl as much as she disliked Lydia, but once David was married to Lydia then things would be different. Girls who went out with married men were putting themselves on the wrong side of the respectability line and Dulcie had no intention of ever doing that.

Tilly couldn’t sleep. She knew her mother had come up to bed. She’d heard her familiar footsteps on the stairs and then the opening and closing of her door, followed by the further equally familiar sounds of her mother going to the bathroom and then returning to her room. She’d also heard Sally coming in, humming some tune under her breath, her firm nurse’s tread on the stairs. Only Dulcie was still out, but it wasn’t because of that that Tilly couldn’t sleep. Unlike Agnes, who was now making the small whuffling sounds she always made in her sleep.

Had those really been tears she had seen in her mother’s eyes earlier? Tears caused by her? The weight of Tilly’s guilt oppressed her. Being grown up wasn’t just about doing what you wanted to do, she was beginning to recognise; it wasn’t all about good things, it was about the consequences of those things as well. She had made her mother cry, and now that mattered far more to her than the fact that they had been found out and prevented from going dancing. There was a tight miserable pain inside Tilly’s chest, and with it a fear. Previously she had believed that whatever happened in her life to upset her – like when the Benson sisters at school had started lying in wait for her and making fun of her – her mother could and would make everything all right again. But that had been before she had seen her mother’s tears, before she had known that her mother was vulnerable.

The pain and guilt was too much for her. Throwing back the bedclothes, and trying not to shiver in the room’s chill, Tilly felt in the darkness with her feet for her slippers, burrowing her toes into their warmth in relief. She didn’t want to turn on the lamp in case she woke Agnes, but she was still able to retrieve her dressing gown from the post at the foot of the bed, quickly pulling it on and wrapping its cord round her. Her mother had been talking about making her and Agnes proper siren suits with hoods on them, to protect them from the cold should the air-raid siren go off and they had to spend the night in the Anderson shelter. Tilly had seen one of the suits in the window of Swan and Edgar. Bright red, its hood trimmed with swansdown, it had looked very warm and Christmassy, the pretty cosy image it portrayed very different from the reality of war rationing looming, and the increasing shortages of everything. All the best shops had their Christmas displays in their windows now: hampers with their lids thrown back to show what was inside in Fortnum and Mason; toys, of course, in Hamley’s; women’s clothes in the expensive dress shops in muted shades to tone with men’s uniforms. Christmas had always been such a special time at number 13. Her mother had made sure of that. Quietly and quickly Tilly made her way from her own bedroom to her mother’s.

Olive heard her bedroom door open. She had come to bed in the hope that sleep would stop her from brooding on the events of the evening, but sleep had proved to be impossible. Tonight, for the first time since she had been able to wrap her baby arms round her, Tilly had not kissed her good night. Olive had wept silently over that.

Tilly’s mother’s bedroom was filled with the familiar scents, which, blended together, became the scent that to Tilly was her mother: Pear’s soap, freshly ironed laundry, the smell of clean rooms and a warm kitchen, lavender polish, and baking – her mother’s scents. Tears of guilt and shame blurred Tilly’s eyes but she didn’t need to be able to see to find her way across the room.

‘Mum, are you awake?’ she asked hesitantly.

Olive turned to her daughter. ‘Yes, Tilly.’ She felt her bed depress under Tilly’s weight.

‘I’m sorry about what I said earlier, and about what I was going to do. It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have done.’

The wretchedness in Tilly’s voice tore at Olive’s heart. Sitting up in bed, she reached for her daughter and put her arms round her, her cheek resting on Tilly’s downbent head.

‘I’m sorry too, Tilly. Sorry that I haven’t treated you, trusted you, as I should.’

Her mother’s apology made Tilly feel even worse. Turning, she flung her arms round Olive and told her fiercely, ‘You don’t have anything to feel sorry for. It was me who . . . who lied.’

Stroking her hair back from Tilly’s forehead, Olive told her sadly, ‘I’ve been selfish, Tilly, trying to keep you as a little girl, when you aren’t. I never wanted to stop you having fun, I just wanted to protect you. War makes people anxious to take what happiness they can, Tilly, when they can, especially the young. When we think someone we care for might be snatched from us, and with them our future happiness, it makes us all do things and take risks we wouldn’t normally take. For young people that often means falling in love, being hurt.’

‘I just wanted to go out dancing, but you’re afraid that I might meet someone and fall in love and that they might be killed and then . . . I’d be like you were when Dad died. Oh, Mum . . .’

They held each other tightly.

‘Sally has offered to go with you and Agnes to the Palais, just to help you find your feet there the first time you go.’

‘You mean . . .’ Tilly swallowed hard. This generosity on the part of her mother was too much for her to bear. Fresh tears fell.

‘You’ll have to take care of Agnes, Tilly. She isn’t as used to thinking for herself as you are.’

‘Can I stay here with you tonight?’ Tilly asked.

Olive smiled in the darkness and drew back the bedcovers.

They were almost the last to leave the Palais and now, in the foggy darkness outside the dancehall, they stood facing one another on the pavement.

‘Next time,’ David told Dulcie, ‘I’ll take you somewhere a bit more exciting than this.’

So there was going to be a next time. A thrill of pleasure surged through Dulcie; not that she was going to let him see how she felt. Instead she demanded, ‘Who says there’s going to be a next time?’

‘Not who but what,’ David answered, ‘and this is what says there will be.’

When he cupped her face in both his hands and gently drew his thumbs along her cheekbones, gazing down into her eyes as he did so, Dulcie could only gaze back at him. She’d been kissed before but never like this, like she’d seen people kissing in films, and no cheeky fumbling with her clothes either. David was a true gentleman. And awfully good at kissing. The only thing that could make right now any better would be being able to boast to Lizzie about it, but of course she could never do that.

‘There’ll be no seeing me again after you get married to Lydia,’ Dulcie felt bound to warn him, but David merely laughed.

‘Giving Lydia a wedding ring isn’t going to stop me enjoying life, Dulcie.’

Deep down inside, Dulcie felt unexpectedly shocked. She knew that David didn’t love Lydia, but to hear him speak so casually and uncaring made her wonder how serious he could ever be about any girl.

‘It might not stop you enjoying life, but it will stop me from going out with you,’ Dulcie insisted.

David was frowning now. ‘If you’re trying to persuade me not to marry Lydia, then I should tell you—’

‘I’m not trying to persuade you to do anything,’ Dulcie defended herself heatedly, not letting him finish. ‘What I’m doing is telling you that I won’t cheapen myself by providing a bit of fun for a married man. I think more of myself than to do that, even if you don’t.’

David looked crestfallen. ‘I’m sorry, Dulcie,’ he said immediately. ‘I didn’t mean . . . That is, you know how it is with me and Lydia. She doesn’t want me, she just wants who I am. You and I, we’re two of a kind, I know it.’

‘We aren’t two of anything, and we aren’t going to be.’

She meant it, David could see, and part of him admired her for her determination, even whilst most of him wished that she was more malleable. He might not have spent much time with her, but there was a quality about Dulcie that touched something in him that Lydia would never be able to reach. Perhaps it was a trait he had inherited from his Gaiety Girl grandmother that made him feel so at home with Dulcie, and if things had been different . . . But his parents, and especially his mother, would never accept Dulcie. And it was through his mother that ultimately he would inherit his wealth, just as it was his mother who was insisting on him marrying Lydia. David gave a brief inner shrug. Dulcie was a pretty girl but London was full of pretty girls. It wasn’t in his nature to fight for what he wanted; it was easier instead to want something else, and more within reach, so he gave Dulcie another smile, and nodded in acceptance of Dulcie’s decree before telling her, ‘I’ll get us a taxi,’ and then stepping out into the road.

Almost by magic a taxi materialised through the fog, and within seconds David was helping her into it, whilst Dulcie battled against the dangerous temptation to wish that she hadn’t closed the door quite so firmly on she and David getting together again.

She wasn’t in any danger of falling for him, Dulcie assured herself as she let herself into number 13 – she’d made David tell the taxi to stop at the entrance to the Row because she didn’t want Olive to hear the taxi and look out of her window to see what was going on – she wasn’t that daft, or that soft. And she’d meant what she said about not seeing him again.

When she reached the top landing she saw that the door to Sally’s room was open, a narrow oblong of light thrown by the bedside lamp. Then Sally appeared in the open doorway, wearing her dressing gown.

‘I just thought I’d warn you that Olive caught Tilly and Agnes trying to sneak out earlier this evening,’ she told her quietly

‘So what if she did?’ Dulcie hissed back. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me what Tilly does.’

‘Except that you encouraged her. Olive was very upset, Dulcie. It wasn’t a very nice thing to do. Olive is a decent sort and this is a good billet.’

‘Look, it’s not my fault if Tilly wants to go dancing. Serves Olive right, if you ask me, the way she carries on, fussing over that Agnes and treating me as though I’m something the cat brought in.’

Sally gave a small sigh. She’d only stayed up to warn Dulcie, thinking that the other girl might want to prepare an apology for Olive, but far from being remorseful Dulcie seemed to relish the trouble she had caused.

Chapter Fourteen

Tilly thought she was the happiest she had ever been – at least, she would have been were it not for the war. The new grown-up status now conferred on her by her mother meant that Tilly now felt she had to take her adulthood very seriously. That meant that whilst, of course, she was excited at the thought of going dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, she must also think about the war and all those who were involved in it.

Mr Salt, who was in charge of their St John Ambulance brigade had actually praised her at their last meeting for the attention she’d paid to his lecture about the correct way to use a stirrup pump, in case they were called upon to deal with any incendiary bombs.

It was Sally now whom Tilly admired and looked up to rather than Dulcie, although she had begged her mother not to say anything to Dulcie.

Reluctantly Olive had refrained from taking Dulcie to task, although she now felt even cooler towards her lodger than she had already done, and would have been very much happier if Dulcie had decided to leave.

Agnes, who had heard from Olive about Ted’s visit and his concern for her now thought that Ted was even more heroic and had started blushing for no reason at all when he looked at her when they were having tea together in the café. Ted had told her to let him know when they were going to the Palais so that he could, in his own words, ‘Go along as well and keep an eye on things.’

They were only a week away from Christmas and it had been decided that the girls would attend the Hammersmith Palais’s Saturday night dance the day before Christmas Eve, since on Christmas Eve itself they would be going to the dance at the church hall.

All the shops had made a brave show of putting up their decorations in their windows, but of course there could be no Christmas lights because of the blackout, and it seemed to Olive as she did her Christmas shopping, queuing up with other housewives, that there was an atmosphere of weariness and irritation rather than of anticipation. And no wonder. So many of the shops seemed to have sold out of things, which meant shopping around to find increasingly elusive necessities.

Olive was glad that she had stocked up early. Her mother, having been in service, had instilled in Olive the importance of keeping a well-stocked kitchen cupboard, a habit also favoured by her late mother-in-law. Olive took it for granted that her own cupboards were always filled with fruit bottled in season, jams and pickles made from ingredients she’d bought from the barrow boys at bargain prices, and a good supply of tinned things, just as she knew to a nicety how to make a joint last from Sunday until Wednesday and how to make a tasty meal out of leftovers.

She’d heard several women complaining that they’d been unable to buy jars of mincemeat for their mince tarts, but she had plenty in her store cupboard. She just hoped that the goose she’d ordered would be big enough to go round. She’d got some sausagemeat on order for the sausage rolls she intended to make for her Boxing Day party, and she planned to cook a ham as well.

Her local greengrocer had promised her a nice bushy Christmas tree. Sergeant Dawson had offered to get her one from Covent Garden when he got one for the police station. Mrs Dawson wouldn’t have a tree in the house since they’d lost their lad, he told her. She’d thanked him but explained that she’d already ordered her tree, and then on impulse she’d told him about her Boxing Day get-together and said that he and Mrs Dawson would be welcome if they fancied coming along.

They’d been busy in the Lady Almoner’s office with patients who were well enough to get home in time for Christmas, which meant that there’d been lots of coming and goings. Most of their patients were in hospital insurance schemes, which paid their bills when they were in hospital. This meant extra administration for Tilly and her colleagues at this busy time of year.

When the tall dark-haired man in naval officer’s uniform came in at lunch time, Tilly was manning the office on her own, having volunteered to do so. First sitting in the canteen was always more popular than second because the food was hotter and you got bigger portions.

The officer was carrying his cap and smiled warmly when Tilly asked if she could help him.

‘I hope so,’ he answered. ‘Only I’m trying to trace someone, a nurse, a friend from Liverpool, by the name of Sally Johnson, who I think might be working at St Barts. I’ve already tried St Thomas’s and Guy’s without any success.’

Tilly nearly fell off her chair. She was deeply conscious of the debt she owed Sally for offering to go with them to the Palais, and she was delighted at the thought of being able to do something for her in return, especially when it meant putting her back in touch with such a handsome and friendly-looking man. Of course, they weren’t really supposed to give out people’s addresses, but in this instance that surely didn’t matter. Tilly couldn’t imagine Sally not wanting her friend to be able to find her, especially when he had gone to such a lot of trouble to do so.

She gave him a beaming smile, unable to stop herself from bursting out, ‘I know Sally. In fact she lodges with us. Oh, fancy you coming in and asking for her and me being here.’

‘A happy coincidence indeed,’ he agreed with another smile.

‘Sally’s on duty at the moment, but I’ll give you the address. Although you’d be better not to call until this evening. Around seven o’clock would probably be best. It’s number thirteen Article Row,’ she informed him happily, only realising once he had thanked her and left that she’d been so excited that she hadn’t thought to ask him his name.

Tilly hummed happily to herself as she got on with her work. She couldn’t wait to tell Sally about her impending visitor.

Tilly didn’t get the chance to tell Sally about the naval officer until they were both back at number 13, Tilly positively bursting with delight when she came in to find Sally in the kitchen with her mother.

‘You’ll never guess what, Sally. A man came into the office today asking for you, and he’s coming round to see you tonight. At least, I think he is.’

Sally, who had been standing up, sank down into one of the kitchen chairs, the colour draining from her face, leaving her skin the colour of milk.

‘A man, you say? Did he give you his name?’

Tilly shook her head. She could see that something was wrong and that Sally looked upset. Conscience-stricken, she told her lamely, ‘He was ever so nice. Good-looking too. He said he was from Liverpool. I thought . . . I thought you’d be pleased to see an old friend.’

Somehow Sally managed to produce a wan smile although it was an effort. It wasn’t Tilly’s fault. Tilly was desperate to show her how grateful she was over her intervention with her mother with regard to the Hammersmith Palais visit. At Tilly’s age she would probably have done the same thing.

‘Oh, Tilly,’ Olive shook her head reproachfully, ‘you shouldn’t have given him Sally’s address without checking with Sally herself first.’

Callum. It had to be him. It couldn’t be anyone else. Sally felt acutely sick. There was no point in upbraiding poor Tilly, though. She was now looking distressed enough as it was.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve done the wrong thing,’ Tilly said, looking flustered and guilty.

‘No . . . it’s all right,’ Sally told her unsteadily, feeling obliged to explain, ‘Callum’s sister married my father after my own mother’s death.’

Olive’s breath escaped in an understanding sound of compassion whilst Tilly looked confused.

‘I left Liverpool because I . . . didn’t approve of the marriage. I dare say Callum hopes that time and distance have softened my feelings.’

‘You don’t have to see him,’ Olive told her. ‘I am quite willing to tell him that you don’t wish to, Sally.’

Sally was tempted to accept Olive’s offer. Seeing Callum was bound to be emotionally painful. But what if something had happened to her father? Anxiety speared through her.

‘No. It will be better if I see him. That way I can make it plain to him that I haven’t changed my mind.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Tilly looked even more guilty and miserable.

‘You weren’t to know, Tilly. Callum is a very decent and respectable man. There would be no reason for you to suspect him of anything unpleasant. He’s a schoolteacher.’

‘He was in uniform,’ Tilly blurted out. ‘Navy. An officer’s uniform, I thought.’

Sally disliked the reasons that her heart was bumping along the bottom of her ribcage even less than she liked the uncomfortable breathless feeling it was giving her. Callum meant nothing to her now. She didn’t care what danger he might put himself into.

‘When he comes, Sally, you can see him in the front room. You can be private in there, and I’m here if you should need me.’

Sally smiled her thanks to Olive, shaking her head when her landlady continued, ‘We’ll have tea now, I think. That way Sally’s visitor isn’t likely to arrive when we’re halfway through it.’

‘There’s no need to change things for me,’ Sally told Olive. ‘I’m really not hungry at all, I’m afraid.’

Upstairs in her bedroom she looked towards the window, covered with its blackout cloth, as the law decreed. When she had first moved to London she had been afraid that someone from home – her father, Callum or even Morag herself – might try to get in touch with her, but as the weeks had gone by she had begun to feel safer. Nothing could protect her from the pain of what had happened, but at least she had felt protected from fresh misery. Until now.

It was just gone seven thirty when Callum knocked on the door to number 13.

Unable to stay on her own in her room as she had intended, Sally had gone back downstairs to the kitchen where Olive had been putting the final coat of icing on her Christmas cake. Watching her, Sally had immediately been transported back to her childhood and her own mother’s kitchen. Tilly didn’t realise how lucky she was to have her mother, but at least Sally knew what it was to have a mother’s love, unlike poor Agnes, who was perched on a kitchen stool happily helping to cut out red berries and green Christmas trees from the marzipan to which green and red colouring had been added by Tilly as the two girls did their bit towards decorating the cake.

‘I’ll go,’ Olive announced when they all heard the door, putting down in a bowl of hot water the palette knife with which she had been smoothing the royal icing, then removing her apron before heading for the door.

Sally let her go. It was going to take all the emotional and mental strength she had to face Callum.

When Olive opened the door to Sally’s visitor, she felt very much as Tilly had done when she’d first seen him, liking his strong manly features and feeling reassured by his friendly smile. The uniform did its bit to establish him as someone to be trusted, of course. But then Sally had never said that he was someone who could not be trusted, and Olive could well understand why her lodger did not want to see him. She admired Sally’s love and devotion for her late mother and sympathised with her feelings.

Callum’s, ‘I’d like to see Sally if she’ll see me,’ received a small inclination of Olive’s head and a calm, ‘Yes. She is expecting you. If you’d like to come this way . . . ?’

He wasn’t wearing an overcoat, and since she wasn’t sure what the etiquette was with regard to the naval officer’s cap that he was carrying, she didn’t like to offer to relieve him of it.

She showed him into the front room, its gas fire hissing warmly and its green, fern-print curtains drawn over the blackout fabric to give the room an air of cosy warmth.

Olive was very proud of her front parlour. She had redecorated it herself, painting the walls cream, with the picture rail painted the same green as the curtain pelmet. A stylish stepped mirror hung over the fireplace. The linoleum was patterned to look like parquet flooring and over it was a cream, dark red and green patterned carpet. The dark green damask-covered three-piece suite had been a bargain because there’d been a small tear in one of the seat cushions, and on the glass and pale wood coffee table, which was Olive’s pride and joy, was a pretty crystal bowl that had caught her eye in an antique shop just off the Strand.

A radiogram in the same pale wood as the coffee table stood against the back wall behind the sofa, and Olive couldn’t help but give a very satisfied glance around her front room before telling Callum that Sally would be right with him and then whisking through the door.

When Olive opened the hall door into the back room, Sally was already getting up from her chair, her face set and tense.

‘I haven’t offered him a cup of tea or anything,’ Olive began anxiously.

‘No, please don’t,’ Sally begged her. ‘I don’t want to encourage him to stay.’

In the hall outside the front-room door Sally took a deep breath and smoothed her damp palms against the pleats in her neat flecked tweed skirt. She’d bought the skirt on a shopping trip with Morag early on in the autumn before her mother had died. Morag had said how much the heather colours had suited her, bringing out the colour of her eyes, and had persuaded Sally to buy a pretty violet twinset to go with the skirt. She wasn’t wearing that twinset now. Instead she had chosen a plain dark blue blouse.

She took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

Callum was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, his hands folded behind his back. Seeing him in uniform was disconcerting. In her memories of him he was always wearing his patched tweed jacket softened by wear, a Tattersall checked shirt worn with a sleeveless pullover, and a pair of cavalry twill trousers. In his naval uniform he looked taller, stood straighter, the slight scholarly stoop she remembered gone. She looked away from him, aware of the pulse beating in her throat and the unwanted pang of longing seeing him brought her. His cap was on the coffee table.

‘You’re in the navy.’

It was stupid thing to say, but somehow the words had formed and were spoken, sounding, to her own dismay, almost like a reproach, as though she had the right to reproach him for doing something without her knowledge.

‘Yes. Sublieutenant. I’ve just finished my training at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, and I should receive orders as to which ship I’m to join pretty soon.’

He paused and then came towards her, saying, ‘Sally . . .’ Immediately she stepped back from him, holding up her hands as though to ward him off, relieved when he moved away.

‘Your father misses you,’ he told her abruptly, ‘and so too does Morag.’

‘He’s all right?’ Sally couldn’t hold back her anxiety.

Immediately Callum’s smile deepened, as he said reassuringly, ‘Yes, apart from the fact that he misses you.’

Sally stiffened and turned her head away as she told him fiercely, ‘I miss my mother and I always will.’

‘Sally, you aren’t a child,’ he told her in a sharp voice. ‘I can understand your loyalty towards your mother but do you really feel she would want this? For you to cut yourself off from your father?’

‘He cut himself off from her and from me when he married Morag.’

‘You’re being unfair.’

‘I’m being unfair?’ She made a small bitter sound. ‘Morag married my father three months after my mother’s death.’

‘Your mother would never have wanted your father to be alone; she would have understood.’

‘Understood what? That your sister, and my best friend, whom she had treated as another daughter, was offering him the . . . the comfort of an intimate relationship whilst she lay dying? And as for my father being alone, he would have had me. I’d like you to leave. Now. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know why you came here. After all, I’ve made my feelings plain enough. Your sister betrayed our friendship and the kindness my mother showed her.’

‘Your mother encouraged them to be together.’

‘Not in that way! You say that because it’s what you want to believe, because Morag is your sister, but it isn’t the truth.’

‘Because you don’t want it to be the truth? Your mother wanted your father to be happy, to be cared for and loved as she had cared for him and loved him. She told Morag so.’

‘Do you really expect me to believe that? Well, I don’t.’

‘I thought better of you than this, Sally, I really did.’

Now his voice had become colder, sharper, critical, stabbing into the soft vulnerability of her emotions.

‘Just as I thought better of your sister,’ Sally defended herself. ‘Now we’ve both been disappointed. How would you have liked it, Callum, if our positions had been reversed? It’s all very well for you to come here and tell me how I should feel; you’re bound to take Morag’s side.’

‘Sally, it isn’t a matter of taking sides. Your father loves you and misses you. I know you were upset and shocked by their marriage, but surely out of your love for your father – and I know that you do love him – and the friendship that you and Morag shared, you can find it in your heart to accept that they genuinely want to be together?’

‘What, and betray my mother, like Morag betrayed our friendship?’ She shook her head. ‘No. Never.’

‘Sally, it’s almost Christmas. A time for families to be together, to stand together, especially when we are a country at war. And besides . . .’ He paused and looked at her and there was something in that look – a mixture of sadness and pity – that ripped at her defences and made her want to cry out to him, ‘What about your loyalty to me and what we could have had? What about taking my side? What about understanding me?’ But of course she didn’t; couldn’t when he had put himself so clearly on Morag’s side.

She saw his chest rise and fall as he took a deep breath. Then he told her, ‘I was hoping that you would agree to see your father and Morag before I had to tell you this, but obviously you won’t. There’s to be a child, Sally, due in May. Your father and Morag desperately want you to share in their joy.’

The room spun wildly round her, nausea clawing at her stomach, the sound of her vehement denial echoing inside her own head.

Callum caught hold of her, his hands gripping her upper arms as she fought against the faintness threatening to overwhelm her.

Above her she could see the once beloved face of the man she had hoped to spend the rest of her life with, a man she had thought so morally superior, so kind, so everything she could ever imagined wanting in a man and more; but who was now her enemy, and the pain inside her was so strong she thought it would break her apart.

‘Sally?’

Was that yearning she could hear in his voice? If it was then it was a brother’s yearning for her to uphold a sister, not a man’s yearning for her love.

Bitterly, she shrugged off his hold.

‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ she told him. ‘I don’t ever want to see you again, Callum, or them.’

‘Have you no message for your father, Sally? He loves you and misses you.’

‘Does he? Well, he will soon have another child to love in my place, won’t he?’

She turned to the door and held it open, telling him, ‘I want you to leave, Callum.’

Silently, his mouth grim, he collected his cap and walked past her to the front door where he paused to say, ‘I thought better of you, Sally, I really did.’

‘Maybe I thought better of you as well, Callum,’ was the only response she allowed herself to make as he opened the door and disappeared into the darkness beyond it.

A child. Her father and Morag were to have a child. Revulsion filled her. Revulsion and anger, and pain. If things had been as they should, then it could have been her and Callum announcing the conception of their child this Christmas. Not only had her father and her once friend stolen her past and belief in the devotion of her parents to one another, like swans partnering for life; they had also stolen her future. She would never ever forgive them.

Chapter Fifteen

‘So you’re not coming home for Christmas then?’

Even as her mother asked the question, it was Edith she was watching, Dulcie thought resentfully as she observed her sister talking animatedly several yards away to a group of admirers, who had halted her progress across the crowded floor of their local working men’s club where she had been singing.

Dulcie hadn’t wanted to come to listen to her sister and she certainly hadn’t wanted to listen to her mother praising her so dotingly for doing so, but she’d got caught out on Sunday after church when her mind had been on the previous evening and not what her mother had been saying to her, and too late she realised she’d agreed to join her family to listen to Edith’s debut as a professional singer.

The club was a rectangular room with a bar occupying the full length of the wall at one end, apart from a door that led into a narrow passageway containing the ladies’. The gents’ was outside in the yard where the brewery loaded the beer barrels into the cellar. Behind the bar was a kitchen where volunteers, who sometimes included Dulcie’s mother, made up sandwiches sold at the bar under a glass cover. The distempered walls were stained with the cigarette smoke, which wreathed round the room, gradually rising toward the ceiling.

Behind the bar, with its mirrored back and glass shelves, the club’s manager, overweight and sweating, was pulling pints whilst his wife and the barmaid washed glasses at the small sink.

Dulcie hated the place as much as the rest of her family seemed to love it. It was where the whole neighbourhood came to celebrate weddings, births and deaths, after going through the formal church proceedings attendant upon such occasions.

Since tonight was a ‘social’ night, which meant that the all-male membership was allowed to bring along their other halves and families, the place was packed, whole families, including grandparents, aunts and uncles, in some cases, crowded round the cheap shabby tables on equally cheap, shabby and mismatched chairs. A harsh light beamed down on the small stage, where Edith had performed, at the opposite end of the room to the bar. The whole place stank of stale beer, male sweat, and cheap cigarettes, Dulcie thought, fastidiously wrinkling her nose. A door in the middle of one of the long walls opened into the pool room – a holy of holies that women were not allowed to enter – and it was plain from a few all-women tables that some of the men had already taken advantage of that embargo to escape into it.

‘No,’ Dulcie answered her mother’s question.

‘Are you sure this landlady of yours wants you staying there over Christmas? It seems a rum do to me. You’d think she’d want her house to herself and not filled with lodgers. I know I would. Christmas is for being with your own folk.’

Her mother’s words hit a nerve but Dulcie wasn’t going to let her see that. Olive had been very cool with her since the night Tilly had rebelled, and Dulcie knew that her landlady blamed her, even if she hadn’t said so. The truth was that hers was probably as welcome a presence at number 13 over Christmas as it would have been at her own home, Dulcie thought bitterly. Just as her mother would be fussing over Edith, so her landlady would be fussing over Agnes, making a big thing of her not having a family of her own. Not that Dulcie was going to tell her mother that.

Dulcie tossed her head, her blonde curls caught back in a pretty diamanté bow-shaped hair clip that she’d managed to get reduced, after she’d discovered that it had been slightly damaged. Dropping it on the floor earlier in the week and deliberately twisting the clip so that it didn’t fasten properly had been easily done whilst Miss Timmins, whose eyesight wasn’t very good, and who was really supposed to be retired but who worked one day a week had been in charge of the hair ornaments counter. Poor old Timid Timmy, as they all called her, had looked confused and blinked desperately, her thin, veined hands trembling slightly as she tried to examine the faulty catch. She had been easy for Dulcie to manipulate, and the departmental floor manager when summoned had agreed that the clip could be reduced. He might have given Dulcie a sharp look as she had paid for her purchase but she had felt triumphant rather than guilty. Just like she had felt triumphant that Saturday night at Hammersmith Palais, knowing that David would rather be with her than with his stuck-up fiancée-to-be.

Feeling triumphant was very important to Dulcie. It made her feel she was in her rightful place in the order of things.

‘Actually,’ she told her mother untruthfully, ‘my landlady asked me especially as a favour to her if I would stay there over Christmas.’

‘Oh, well, if she wants you there . . .’ her mother responded, using a tone of voice that suggested to Dulcie that her mother couldn’t understand why that should be the case. Immediately Dulcie’s combative spirit was aroused.

‘She does. She told me that she thinks of me as another daughter and that she doesn’t know how she’d manage without me there to give her Tilly a few words to the wise when it’s needed, me being older than Tilly and everything. Of course, I told her that I’m pleased to do my bit. Treats me ever so well, she does, just like I was her daughter really, always getting me little bits of treats.’ Warming to her deception, Dulcie started to embroider the fabrication she had created.

‘She took us all shopping to the Portobello Market the other week and she bought me ever such an expensive blouse, pure silk and French design, and—’

‘Oh, here comes Edith now.’

The warmth for her younger daughter in her mother’s voice as she interrupted her infuriated Dulcie, causing her to say unkindly, ‘I don’t know where Edith got that dress from but she’s certainly not dressing anything like as well now that she hasn’t got my wardrobe to raid any more. It doesn’t suit her at all.’

‘She looks lovely in it,’ Dulcie’s mother protested indignantly. ‘Pink always was Edith’s colour. I remember when she was born I had this lovely pink layette that I’d saved ever so hard for. The first new baby clothes I’d had. I had to make do with hand-me-downs for you and for Rick.’

‘Oh, Mum, I thought I was never going to get over to you, so many people wanted to stop and tell me how well I’d done,’ Edith enthused, laughing happily as she hugged her mother.

‘More like they couldn’t believe what you were wearing and wanted to get a closer look,’ Dulcie told her nastily, causing the smile to disappear from Edith’s flushed face as she turned back to their mother, looking tragic and upset.

‘Take no notice of Dulcie, love,’ their mother comforted Edith. ‘If you ask me, Dulcie, it’s just as well you aren’t coming home for Christmas, the way you’re always upsetting poor Edith.’

‘It’s just because she’s jealous, Mum, because I can sing and she can’t,’ Edith trumped Dulcie’s earlier insult.

‘Call that singing?’ Dulcie returned, not to be outdone. ‘It sounded more like someone was trying to kill a cat. And you missed that top note in your last song.’

‘No I didn’t.’

‘Yes you did.’

‘Dulcie, why do you always have to upset poor Edith?’ their mother demanded.

‘Why do you always have to take her side?’ Dulcie shot back, taunting her sister, ‘Mama’s little girl who can’t do any wrong.’

‘Here comes Frank, Mum. I’ll have to go. We’ve got to talk with the manager and the band leader about some future bookings,’ Edith announced, ignoring Dulcie as she jumped up hurriedly.

Watching her sister walk away with the man who had swaggered up to them, a cigar stuck in his mouth, his thinning hair greased back from his beefy florid face, Dulcie asked, ‘Who’s that?’

‘His name’s Frank Lepardo, and he’s Edith’s agent,’ her mother told her with obvious pride. ‘He saw her singing the other week and went backstage to sign her up there and then, he was that pleased with her. He’s a real impresario and he reckons that Edith is going to be big – bigger than that Vera Lynn everyone raves about. He’s had one of the top ones from ENSA pleading with him to let Edith go on the wireless. Your sister is going to end up famous.’

Dulcie gave the two departing figures a cynical look. She knew men and she certainly knew what kind of man Frank Lepardo was. He had spiv and chancer written on him in letters as wide as the white stripes in his navy-blue suit.

‘If you ask me, the only place Edith is likely to end up with him, is underneath him,’ Dulcie told her mother bluntly, earning herself a furious look.

‘I’ll not have you talking about your sister like that. Frank Lepardo is a gentleman. Came especially to see me and your dad to get our permission to represent Edith, and he gave your dad ten pounds as an act of good faith.’

‘And I’ll bet Dad’s lost it already down the dog track,’ Dulcie said cynically.

It was more than likely that the real reason Frank Lepardo had gone to see her parents was to find out how naïve they were, she thought grimly, but she knew there was no point in continuing to warn her mother about Frank Lepardo. Anyway, why should she? It would serve Edith right to get what she deserved, the way she continually showed off and made out she was so special. Why was it that everybody was always against her, Dulcie? It wasn’t right and it certainly wasn’t fair.

The Christmas tree was up, decorated by Tilly and Agnes with the decorations that had been collected over the years and which Olive kept so carefully.

Agnes had gazed in delight at the pretty painted tin bird with its feather tail, amazed when Tilly demonstrated to her how it was also a whistle. Olive watching them had remembered the Christmas she had bought the novelty decoration from a street market. Tilly had been only little then, entranced by the whistle herself.

This year there were no new decorations to add but they had no need of any. There were plenty to fill the Christmas tree, which they’d put up in the front room. Pretty electric lights of various colours shaped like flowers illuminated the tree, the fairy in her sparkly costume placed at the top. They’d even clipped on the old-fashioned metal candle holders, with their candles, a reminder of long-ago Christmases before electric lights had come in and, Olive had always thought, potentially very dangerous, especially around children. These, though, would not be lit; they were just there for decoration now.

Multicoloured paper garlands had been strung from the central light fitting in both rooms to the corners, adding to the festive décor.

Tonight, whilst the girls were out dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, she’d finish wrapping their presents and put them under the tree, once she’d made the pastry for her mince pies. The news that Dulcie was planning to stay had caused Olive to panic slightly over the fact that she had knitted sets of gloves with matching scarves and hats for the other three but not for Dulcie. Luckily, she’d been able to get some more wool and, by knitting frantically every spare minute, she’d managed to produce a set for Dulcie as well.

On her way back to the shops this morning, where she’d gone to collect her goose, her sausage-meat and the ham, she’d paused outside Holborn’s famous bookshop, said to be one of the oldest in London, remembering the set of Beatrix Potter books she’d bought there for Tilly. She’d saved so hard for those books, and Tilly had been thrilled with them, even if Olive’s mother-in-law had scorned what she considered to be a waste of money. Olive had been determined right from the start that her Tilly would have a proper education, so that she could hold her head up in the world.

There were sweets to put in the stockings she made for the girls from some cheap felt she’d bought, a sugar mouse for each of them, and some sugared almonds.

Upstairs the girls were getting ready for their night out. Tilly had almost been bursting with excitement over tea, and so had Agnes, who had told Olive shyly earlier in the week that Ted had mentioned that he might as well go along to the Palais, seeing as Agnes was going.

Guessing that Agnes was seeking her approval, Olive had nodded and told her, ‘I think that’s a good idea, Agnes, and very kind of Ted. There’s nothing worse than going to a big dance, for the first time and then feeling left out because the other girls seem to know lots of boys and have partners.’

One member of the quartet from number 13 probably wouldn’t lack partners or confidence, Olive thought wryly. She suspected that Dulcie would never be behind the door when it came to putting herself forward. She had convinced herself now, though, that it was better for Tilly to discover what Dulcie was for herself, instead of her criticising her and then having Tilly jump to her defence.

She could hear the girls clattering down the stairs. Tilly was first into the room, the air around her positively crackling with excitement and energy.

‘Will I do, do you think, Mum?’ she demanded, doing a swift twirl, the panelled skirt of her new velvet dress swirling round her.

Olive’s breath caught in her throat. She’d seen the dress on before, but now tonight, looking at Tilly wearing it, she was filled with maternal emotion – pride combining with anxiety. The dress, with its sweetheart neckline, long sleeves and nipped-in waistline showed off Tilly’s slender figure, the sweep of its panelled skirt making her look taller, revealing a hint of the woman that Tilly would become. Olive’s heart ached with love, but of course she wasn’t going to tell Tilly how beautiful she looked. Instead she told her calmly, ‘I should think that dress would more than do for any dancehall, Tilly, even the Hammersmith Palais. The dressmaker really has done an excellent job with that velvet.’

The pretty gold locket that Tilly’s father had given her mother as a wedding present gleamed softly against Tilly’s skin. Her eyes had filled with tears when Olive had suggested she should wear it.

‘Your dad would have been so proud of you, and it’s right that you take a bit of him with you tonight to look out for you,’ Olive had said.

Agnes’s dress was just as pretty but a slightly different style to Tilly’s, with a gathered skirt that added a bit of a curve to Agnes’s thinness.

Olive shifted her attention from the two younger girls to Sally and Dulcie. Sally was wearing a quietly elegant silk dress in dark green that suited her colouring, whilst, predictably in Olive’s opinion, Dulcie’s dress, which was also silk, was very glamorous with a wrap round V-necked bodice and a straight skirt that flared out at the knee. The silk, a pretty pale green, was sprigged with soft pink roses with darker green stems and leaves, and a fabric covered belt cinched in Dulcie’s narrow waist. A double row of fake pearls and matching pearl earrings in Dulcie’s neatly shaped ears finished off her ensemble and she did look good in it, Olive was forced to admit – very elegant and stylish although the look was rather older than Olive felt suitable for a girl so young.

Olive didn’t miss the challenging tilt of Dulcie’s chin as they exchanged looks. There was nothing she could say, though, not without risking spoiling Tilly’s night, and of course she didn’t want to do that.

Instead she hugged her daughter and then Agnes, telling them truthfully, ‘You all look lovely.’

Within minutes the girls all had their coats on and were going out of the front door, leaving the house feeling very empty and quiet without them.

An hour later Tilly was gazing round the interior of the Palais, still half unable to believe that she was actually here. The packed ballroom had been decorated for Christmas and everyone was in high spirits.

There was a large Christmas tree illuminated with multicoloured fairy lights in the entrance foyer, but well back from the doors so as not to break the blackout laws. Red and green paper garlands decorated the ceiling, coming from the walls to the huge glittering mirror ball suspended over the dance floor, whilst the male bar staff were wearing red waistcoats, and a cheery-looking Father Christmas, escorted by a bevy of pretty girls wearing short red dresses trimmed with white swansdown, went from table to table selling raffle tickets. The whole atmosphere was so exciting and filled with Christmas goodwill and fun that at first Tilly and Agnes could only stand and stare as they tried to take it all in.

‘I never thought it would be like this,’ Tilly gasped in delight. ‘I mean, I knew it would be wonderful . . .’

When she stopped, lost for words, Dulcie informed her knowledgably, ‘Well, it is the best dancehall in London,’ before leading them all speedily to ‘her’ table, a move that Sally recognised was a good one, half an hour later as she looked to where some people were standing watching the dancing and reflected that she herself wouldn’t have fancied standing up all evening. But then, aching feet were something she was familiar with, being a nurse.

Sally was used to the atmosphere of Liverpool’s Grafton Ballroom, but she still had to admit that the Palais was impressive. No one could be here on a night like this and not be infected by the atmosphere of fizzing excitement and energy.

For Tilly, the atmosphere in the ballroom was almost magical, and she gazed round at her surroundings in thrilled delight, half unable to believe that she was actually here. The church hall could never compare with something like this. Her eyes widened as she watched prettily dressed young women and their partners take to the floor. She felt so . . . so grown up and special just being here.

‘Oh, isn’t this wonderful?’ she mouthed to Agnes above the sound of the Joe Loss Orchestra.

‘I hadn’t realised it would be so big or that there’d be so many people here,’ Agnes mouthed back, her own feelings tending more towards apprehension than excitement. She didn’t much like crowds.

A waiter stopped at their table, asking if they wanted drinks.

‘Lemonade for us,’ Sally said firmly, indicating Tilly, Agnes and herself.

‘Yes, and for me as well,’ Dulcie surprised her by agreeing.

The reality was that whilst Dulcie would have a shandy if one was pressed on her, she had seen enough of what too much alcohol could do in her own neighbourhood to want to end up the worse for drink herself. There was Ma Bowker, who lived round the corner from her own parents, the whole family crammed into three rooms they rented in a tenanted house. Ma Bowker liked nothing more than rolling up her sleeves and laying into both her kids and her husband, giving them a real battering when she was in drink. Then there were the husbands who regularly knocked their wives about, and then ‘up’ after too much to drink; men who drank so much of their wages that there wasn’t enough left to feed their families. Dulcie wanted no part of that. Her own father thankfully wasn’t a big drinker. He liked his pint on a Friday and a Saturday, just as he liked his bet at the dogs, but that was all.

There were plenty of women dancing together, Tilly noticed, but when she suggested to Dulcie that they did the same, Dulcie shook her head firmly.

‘It looks like you can’t get a proper partner if you do that, and besides, we won’t be sitting here long. The best-looking girls always get asked to dance.’

As though to prove her point, just as she finished saying this four young men approached their table. However, before they could so much as open their mouths, Dulcie was saying firmly, ‘No, thanks, we aren’t dancing right now. We’re just waiting for our drinks.’

Dulcie’s manner was rather different from what she had expected, Sally had to admit, ruefully.

‘We can do better than that,’ Dulcie explained. ‘Much better. You’ve got to make sure that lads know how lucky they are when you agree to have a dance with them,’ she informed Tilly and Agnes firmly.

Their drinks arrived, delivered by a smiling redwaistcoated waiter, and Sally paid for them using the money Olive had given her for that purpose when she’d asked Sally to keep an eye on what Tilly and Agnes had to drink.

Dulcie had told herself not to expect to see David. She’d achieved her goal and that was that. David might have said that they were two of a kind but Dulcie disagreed. He was posh – a toff – and he’d marry Lydia. To him she was just a bit of fun, a way of breaking the rules before he knuckled down to the right kind of marriage. Dulcie knew that, but she also knew where her own boundaries lay and she wasn’t going to let David cross them. Besides, it made her feel good to realise that he’d rather be with her than Lydia. Lydia might look down her nose at her, but Dulcie could feel she had one up on her because Lydia’s fiancé secretly fancied her. There was no way, though, that she was going to end up as David’s bit on the side. That wasn’t how Dulcie envisaged her future at all. Ultimately she would marry, and the kind of respectable man she wanted as her husband – a man with a good job, perhaps even in an office, who could afford to buy them a house like those in Article Row, or perhaps even in one of those new suburbs she’d seen advertised – would not want a wife who’d been carrying on with other men. Dulcie viewed her planned future without sentiment. All women had to marry – how else could they manage financially? But she was determined that her marriage would give her a better life than her mother and their neighbours had. Dulcie had no illusions about herself. Men would always be attracted to her because of her looks, more the wrong kind of men than the right kind. It was up to her to make sure that when she let the wrong kind, like David, treat her to the good things in life, they did so on the understanding that she was merely trading with them the right to enjoy having a pretty girl on their arm, but not the right to expect sexual favours.

Living in Article Row, like working in Selfridges, was for Dulcie a step in the direction she wanted her life to go. Both conferred on her a certain status that, for all her mother’s boasting about Edith’s singing, allowed Dulcie to feel that she had moved ‘up’ socially from her background. She might milk these benefits for all that she could but there was no way she was going to risk losing them by going too far.

She looked at Tilly, flushed and excited. She had almost pushed Olive too far with that business of Tilly lying to her, Dulcie knew, which was why tonight she intended any report that Sally made back to Olive to be one that showed her in a good light and not a bad one.

To Tilly, filled with the excitement of the evening, simply being at the Palais was initially enough to fill her with happiness, but then eventually, tapping her foot in time to the music became a longing to be up on the floor and dancing.

Then Ted arrived, coming over to their table, to be welcomed by a shyly delighted Agnes, who introduced them.

Dulcie cast one look over Ted’s plain honest face and shiny clean appearance, and immediately dismissed him as unimportant, whilst Sally duly registered Ted’s discreetly protective manner towards Agnes and politeness to everyone else, and mentally agreed with Olive’s judgement that Ted seemed a decent sort.

Ted, for his part, was glad to draw up a seat next to Agnes, and take charge of ordering the girls second drinks, rather than having to suggest that he and Agnes had a dance. He wasn’t much of a dancer. He preferred to sit and watch, and it seemed to him that Agnes was of much the same mind.

The sensation of someone tapping on her shoulder, just as the band struck up for a new dance, had Dulcie stiffening, fighting against the betraying race of her heart, and trying to deny the name that immediately sprang to her lips.

Only the voice in her ear saying, ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ belonged not to David but to her brother, Rick.

‘Rick, you’re home!’ Genuinely pleased, Dulcie turned round to find, not only her brother, but a whole group of other young men in army uniform clustered behind her.

‘Got back this afternoon,’ Rick told her, adding cheerfully, ‘Is it OK if we join you?’ and then calling for his comrades to collect some chairs, without waiting for Dulcie’s reply.

There were five of them all together; Rick; a tow-headed young man with a northern accent, called Ned, who came from Manchester and who Rick said was their corporal; two boys from London, named Ian and Fred; and, a little to Dulcie’s surprise, John Dunham, whose father was the builder for whom her own father sometimes worked.

‘I thought you were going to join the navy,’ she commented when John sat down next to her.

‘I was, until Rick persuaded me to enlist in the army then as luck would have it we ended up in the same regiment – the Middlesex, 7th Battalion,’ he said proudly, ‘and the same company.’

From the minute she had seen Rick, Tilly’s heart had been thumping with excitement and teenage self-consciousness. If anything he looked even more handsome than he had done before, bigger somehow, broader, and very manly and grown up in his uniform, with his dark hair cut close to his scalp. The other men looked shorn and rather forlorn with their short back and sides army-regulation haircuts, but in Rick’s case the short cut only served to emphasise his well-shaped head.

‘Mum won’t be very pleased when she hears you’ve come down here. Not with Edith singing with ENSA,’ Dulcie said somewhat sarcastically as she mimicked their mother’s voice for the last few words.

Typically, though, Rick merely grinned. ‘Yes, I heard all about that the minute I got through the door. Ta, yes, John, I’ll have a beer, thanks,’ he broke off as John was asking what everyone wanted to drink. ‘Ma says that Edith’s got an agent now.’

John was asking what Dulcie wanted to drink now but before she could show off her sophistication by announcing that she’d have a gin and it, Rick was telling his friend cheerfully, ‘She’ll have a shandy, John.’

‘I was going to have a gin and it, ’ Dulcie told him crossly. ‘And as for Edith’s agent, he’s a real spiv, and I told Mum that she was a fool for letting Edith take up with him, but of course she wouldn’t have it. You know what she’s like. She’s always thought that the sun shines out of Edith’s backside and now she thinks the same about this agent.’

‘Ma said that you’re having your Christmas dinner at your lodgings instead of coming home.’

‘Yes. My landlady asked me in particular to have my dinner with them,’ Dulcie fibbed, turning away so that none of the other girls could hear her.

Sally thanked the young corporal who was handing her her drink. She’d been a bit worried at first when Dulcie’s brother had proposed that he and his friends join them, but the respectful manner in which the young soldiers were behaving towards them had calmed her fears. Dulcie’s brother was a very good-looking young man, and it was no wonder that Tilly was looking at him with such admiration, Sally acknowledged ruefully. Once she had probably looked at Callum like that. The pain that thought brought her was swift and savage.

‘What are we doing sitting here when we could be dancing?’ Rick demanded jovially, giving Tilly an appreciative smile. She really was a looker, even if she was a bit on the young side. ‘John, you dance with Dulcie,’ he instructed, ‘but mind she doesn’t step on your toes; she’s got two left feet,’ he teased his sister, before holding out his hand to Tilly.

‘Do you want to take pity on a poor soldier who hasn’t seen a pretty girl in months and dance with him?’ he asked with a warm smile.

Did she? Tilly was speechless with delight.

The corporal asked Sally up, causing Ted to reach for Agnes’s hand and give it a little squeeze when she confided in him, ‘I’m glad it’s you that’s asked me to dance, Ted, because I’m not very good at it at all. Because I was one of the oldest at the orphanage, I always had to be the boy when we did any dancing.’

Two minutes later they were all on the floor, Dulcie proving that she was as light on her feet as a proverbial feather, her steps confidently in perfect time with the music.

When Agnes whispered to him happily, ‘Oh, Ted, you are ever such a good dancer,’ Ted’s chest swelled. Agnes felt so fragile and delicate, like something precious that he wanted to protect from harm. She looked a treat too in her new dress. He just hoped that one of those army lads didn’t step in and catch her eye.

Tilly was in heaven, dancing on clouds of delirious excitement and delight. Never had there been such a wonderful Christmas gift, she thought giddily as Rick swung her expertly through the dance. But all too soon it came to an end, the light dimming to signal the interval between the orchestra’s sessions. Then, just as the dancers were starting to disengage from their partners and drift off the floor, a young man wearing an RAF uniform jumped onto the stage and said something to the band leader, who nodded and then made an announcement.

‘As a special request we’re going to play the last waltz before the interval so that the flight lieutenant can share it with his new fiancée before he has to catch his train and get back on duty.’

Above the laughter and cheers of the crowd, the first strains of a waltz began. Rick had started to move back to their table, but since Tilly was still standing looking at the orchestra, he too stopped moving. The lights were still dimmed, couples swaying together, locked in their own personal worlds. Silently Tilly went into Rick’s arms, trembling slightly when they closed round her. This was beyond heaven, this was . . . there were no words to name it, no previous experiences in her life with which to compare it. This was special, wonderful, a time out of time that would remain with her for the rest of her life, Tilly promised herself fervently as she instinctively moved closer to Rick.

The girls in Paris, at least the ones Rick had met, had been available – for a price – but dancing with them had not proved as tempting as dancing with Tilly, Rick acknowledged. He had felt her small betraying tremble when he had taken her in his arms, and now he was beginning to wonder if she would tremble as sweetly if he kissed her. And he did want to kiss her. The first time he had met her he had dismissed her as a pretty young girl, little more than a schoolgirl, really, but tonight when he had looked at her sitting with Dulcie he had seen a very desirable young woman. The music was offering him an opportunity to get closer to her that it would be a crime to ignore. A girl’s head was surely designed to rest on a chap’s shoulder, her soft curls brushing his chin. The low lights and romantic music were certainly designed to allow a man to whisper softly in his partner’s ear that she looked lovely and that he was glad that she had chosen to dance with him.

Rick’s breath against her ear sent desperately exciting shivers racing through Tilly’s body, his compliment swelling a heart already tender with youthful adoration. Tilly lifted her head and looked up into Rick’s face.

As Rick looked back at her the dim light seemed to enhance the delicacy of her profile and the shine in her eyes. He guided her arm around his side and then released his hand to lift it to her face to cup it as their movements slowed to a barely there sway. Enclosed by the crowd, lost in her own disbelieving delight, Tilly swallowed against the tension seizing hold of her.

Rick was going to kiss her.

Her heart gave a gigantic thump and then a series of flurried excited beats as he lowered his head toward her.

He was going to kiss her!

‘The orchestra has stopped playing, in case you two hadn’t noticed.’

Dulcie’s sharp voice sliced into their privacy and its promise, shattering their intimacy. Instead of kissing Tilly, Rick drew his fingertip the length of her nose and then released her, guiding her back towards the table.

Sally, who hadn’t seen what was going on between Tilly and Rick on the dance floor, was still concerned enough just by Tilly’s now besotted expression to take hold of the younger girl’s hand and pull her gently down into the empty seat the young corporal had just vacated to go to the bar, so that Tilly was sitting safely between her and Agnes and not therefore able to cosy up with Dulcie’s handsome brother. Sally didn’t need to ask herself what Olive would think of her vulnerable young daughter falling for Rick. Olive would not like it one little bit.

Dulcie, whilst equally aware of Olive’s probable reaction to any burgeoning romance between Tilly and Rick, was less tactful with her brother than Sally had been with Tilly and a good deal more forceful, grabbing hold of Rick’s arm to prevent him from following Tilly off the floor and then out of earshot of the others, hissing at him, ‘And you can stop flirting with Tilly, and getting her all baby-eyed over you.’

‘I was just dancing with her, that’s all.’

‘You were not just dancing,’ Dulcie told him forthrightly. ‘You want to watch out, Rick, because she’s daft enough to fall head over heels for you.’

‘So what if she does?’

Knowing what Olive’s reaction would be if she could hear Rick, and guessing she’d blame Dulcie herself for sure, and probably throw her out, Dulcie asked her brother, ‘That’s what you want, is it, some daft kid getting soppy over you and then perhaps you ending up married with a baby on the way?’

Rick’s horrified expression told its own story.

‘I danced with her, Dulcie, that’s all,’ he defended himself.

‘Yes, well, you’d better make sure you don’t do any more dancing with her, ’cos I promised her mother that I’d keep an eye on her and that’s exactly what I intend to do.’

That was a lie, of course, but it fitted too neatly into the story Dulcie had told her mother for her to be able to resist it.

‘In fact, if you know what’s good for you you’d better make sure she knows that you aren’t available, because if she thinks you’re messing with her Tilly, then her mother will be after you to put an engagement ring on her finger,’ Dulcie insisted.

‘I danced with her, that’s all,’ Rick repeated.

‘Her mother won’t see it that way. Not if Tilly goes home and starts telling her mum that she’s falling for you,’ Dulcie warned him.

Rick wasn’t the sort to push himself onto a girl. He didn’t need to. He normally had to fight them off, and he’d soon find someone else to flirt and dance with, Dulcie told herself as they both made their way back to the table.

Rick had taken his sister’s words to heart. He liked Tilly, and her girlish and obvious hero worship had swelled his chest and increased his appreciation of her. However, Dulcie’s warnings about the dangers of having Tilly fall in love with him had hit home. There was a lad in their platoon who’d got a girl into trouble just before he’d enlisted, and now he was a married man at nineteen and bitterly resented being tied down. Rick certainly didn’t want that to happen to him. He’d have to cool things down between him and Tilly and keep his distance from her for the rest of the evening.

All Tilly’s joy in the evening had gone. Rick was ignoring her. He hadn’t even looked at her since they’d sat down after their dance, despite the imploring looks she’d given him. Now he’d actually turned his back on her to laugh with his friends as he sat two chairs away from her next to the quiet soldier who was sitting next to Dulcie. Tilly’s misery was as intense as her earlier happiness had been, and threatened to overwhelm her.

Normally the sight of Tilly’s unhappy face would have been enough to have Rick’s resolve slipping. He liked Tilly, after all, and hated to see her looking so miserable, but Dulcie’s warning about the likely reaction of Tilly’s mother, coupled with his knowledge of the fate of his army mate hardened Rick’s resolve. Flirting with a pretty girl, dating her, and even getting a bit sweet on her was one thing, but marriage – that was something different altogether. The last thing Rick wanted to do right now was tie himself down and become a family man. It wasn’t easy, though, for him to ignore Tilly’s distress when he asked other girls to dance. The poor kid couldn’t hide what she was feeling. That was his fault for having encouraged her like he had, of course. Part of him wanted to act the big brother with her and warn her that it wasn’t in her own interests to let any lad see her feelings so plainly, and that she should take a leaf out of Dulcie’s book and act cool and dismissive around lads, but of course he couldn’t do that. All he could do was make it plain to her that he wasn’t the going steady or settling down type.

Agnes felt ever so happy. She was comfortable with Ted. He didn’t make her feel awkward and shy. He understood without her having to say anything that she was content simply to sit at his side, and drink her lemonade whilst they exchanged snatches of conversation.

‘Got anything fixed up for New Year’s Eve?’

The feigned indifference in John’s voice didn’t fool Dulcie. John had always been a bit keen on her, but she wasn’t particularly interested in him. Her dad might go on about how lucky John’s father was having his own business to hand on to his son – if you could call repairing chimneys and fitting new windows and doors and doing general repairs a business, which Dulcie did not – but Dulcie wasn’t impressed. In her view John didn’t have enough backbone about him. He was too willing to go along with others – his dad, her brother, Rick, and of course her, if she had wanted him to do so.

In response to his question she gave a dismissive shrug. ‘I’ve had a couple of offers, but I haven’t made up my mind which one I’m going to accept yet.’

John nodded. Dulcie could see that he was disappointed but she didn’t really care. The last thing she wanted was to be tied to someone as dull as John for New Year’s Eve. If Rick was still on leave, then he could come here with her, she decided. That way she’d have a partner and the freedom to exchange him for someone else, if someone better came along.

The MC was announcing the final dance of the evening, an end that couldn’t come fast enough, as far as Tilly was now concerned. Every bit as much as she’d longed to be here, she now longed to be at home. Especially now, with the last dance having been announced, and with it her last hope of Rick dancing with her again gone as he remained on the floor with the girl with whom he’d had the last two dances.

Tilly’s heart ached with envy. Rick’s partner was petite and blonde and full of confidence. Tilly had seen that from the way she’d showed off her dance steps when she’d first danced with Rick, twirling round so that the full skirt of her bright blue spotted dress rose up to show off her slim legs. She was pretty too, and fun. Tilly had seen the way Rick had laughed at something she’d said to him. It was obvious to Tilly that Rick preferred the blonde girl’s company to her own and all she wanted to do was get home and give way to her tears.

Chapter Sixteen

Olive glanced anxiously at Tilly. Her daughter had been very subdued all day. At first Olive had put this down to the excitement of going to the Palais combined with her late night, but as the day had worn on and Tilly had showed no signs of reverting to her normal cheerful self, Olive’s anxiety had grown.

Tilly had always loved Christmas so much, wanting to be involved in all the preparations for it, but today, when Olive had been busy baking and cooking, it had been Agnes who had done the most to help her, her excitement in sharp contrast to Tilly’s withdrawal.

Now Olive, Tilly and Agnes were sitting in the church hall, watching the dancers enjoying themselves to music provided by the vicar’s loaned radiogram. Several times Olive had urged Agnes and Tilly to get up and dance, but Agnes had protested that she wasn’t a good dancer, and Tilly had simply shaken her head and said that she didn’t feel like dancing.

Tilly saw her mother looking at her and bit her lip. If she wasn’t careful her mother was going to guess that something was wrong and then she would start asking questions and then . . . The last thing Tilly wanted was for her mother to know how silly she had been. Seeing her mother’s face creased with anxiety made Tilly feel very guilty. There was no point in her continuing to make herself miserable over Rick, she told herself. He certainly wouldn’t be sitting somewhere thinking about her and feeling miserable because she wasn’t there, would he?

Just as she was thinking that, Mrs Windle came over, leading a young man wearing a St John Ambulance uniform.

‘Tilly, Christopher is new to our congregation. He and his parents have just moved into number forty-nine Article Row, next to Mr Whittaker,’ she announced. ‘He doesn’t know many people yet, so it would help him to make friends if you’d be kind enough to dance with him.’

He wouldn’t get to know many people living next to Mr Whittaker, a veteran of the last war who was something of a recluse. Tilly’s grandmother had always said that it was the disappearance of his wife and the gossip that had caused that had led to Mr Whittaker retreating into himself. The talk had been that she had run off with another man she had got involved with whilst Len Whittaker had been in France fighting for his country.

Now, with the vicar’s wife smiling at her, Tilly got to her feet. She didn’t want to dance but she was far too polite to refuse. The newcomer – Christopher – was pleasant enough looking, with his thick heavy fairish hair, and hazel eyes, but he was very quiet, and Tilly thought that he must be shy.

Trying to put him at his ease, she smiled and said, ‘Are your parents here this evening?’

‘No, my father isn’t very well. He has a bad chest. The last war. He did have a job but he’s retired now.’

Tilly was immediately sympathetic. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ She paused, then told him, ‘My own father died because of that war. I can’t remember him because he died when I was very young.’

They’d reached the dance floor and Tilly turned to him but he stood back from her, his face going bright red as he told her fiercely, ‘Before you dance with me there’s something I have to tell you, and then if you don’t want to dance with me you don’t have to.’

‘If you’re going to tell me that you’ve got two left feet,’ Tilly began to joke, brought out of her own misery by his obvious awkwardness and her own desire to help others.

‘No.’ He looked at her and then blurted out, ‘I’m a conscientious objector – to the war you know. I won’t fight. I don’t believe in it.’

Tilly stared at him, and then said uncertainly, ‘But you’re in uniform.’

‘Only to help those who need help. People call me a coward, and I suppose you’ll think the same. But I don’t care. I’ve seen what war can do.’

Tilly didn’t know what to think. The music started up – a barn dance; she couldn’t just walk away and leave him.

‘I don’t think you’re a coward,’ she told him truthfully. ‘In fact I think you must have to be fearfully brave to refuse to fight.’ She reached for his hand, pulling him into the dance, a protective feeling similar to the one she felt for Agnes filling her.

‘Sergeant Dawson.’ Olive gave the sergeant a warm smile when she saw him approaching her, his helmet under his arm.

‘I’ve just come off duty and since I had to pass by on my way home I thought I’d call in and make sure that there wasn’t any trouble. Sometimes young lads get a bit too full of themselves at this time of year.’

A bit too full of drink, the sergeant meant, Olive knew, but he was too discreet to say that.

‘I’m surprised to see you sitting out instead of dancing,’ he added.

‘Oh, my dancing days are over. I’ve only come tonight because of Tilly and Agnes.’

Although she was smiling, Olive suddenly and unexpectedly felt a small pang of sadness. She used to love dancing; Jim had always said that she was as light as a feather on her feet.

‘Me and Mrs Dawson used to really enjoy going dancing,’ Sergeant Dawson told her, ‘but that was before we had our boy, of course.’

Christmas must be a very sad and lonely time for the Dawsons, Olive thought, her sympathy for them driving away her own momentary sense of loss.

Sergeant Dawson was standing up, announcing, ‘I’d better get on.’

‘Oh, yes. You won’t want Mrs Dawson worrying.’

‘She’ll have gone to bed. She doesn’t sleep well and she says my snoring keeps her awake if she doesn’t get off first. She prefers it when I’m working nights.’ He was holding out his hand to her so Olive extended hers so that he could shake it, her hand almost engulfed by his, the feel of his skin against her own warm and roughly male. How long had it been since she had felt the touch of a male hand against her flesh in a caress of intimacy and love?

Quickly Olive snatched her hand free, guilt and confusion staining her face with hot colour. What on earth had got her thinking like that? She’d been a widow for sixteen years and never once during that time had she so much as thought of another man. She hadn’t had the time or the inclination. And she didn’t now, Olive assured herself, as she made herself focus on the dancers.

It was getting dressed up in her new frock that had done it, Olive decided. She knew she shouldn’t have given in to Tilly’s pleas to have something ‘nice’ made from the velvet she and Agnes had bought her.

On the dance floor Tilly tried to draw Christopher out of his shyness. Concentrating on him was far less painful than thinking about last night and the way Rick hadn’t so much as looked at her after their dance, never mind asked her to stand up with him again. It must be as Dulcie had told her on their way home: Rick preferred older girls who knew what was what and that he’d only danced with her because Dulcie had asked him to do so.

In the papers conscientious objectors were often vilified and labelled as cowards. But Tilly felt more sorry for Christopher than contemptuous of him for not joining up.

‘What made you become a conscientious objector?’ she asked him curiously as they stood together in the queue for the buffet table.

‘I don’t agree with wars and fighting, and killing people. Not after what the last war did to my father.’ His gaze burned with intensity as he spoke.

‘But the country has to be defended from Hitler,’ Tilly told him.

He didn’t make any response, turning away from her.

‘Mrs Windle said that your family had only recently moved here, but most people are moving out of London, not into it,’ Tilly persisted, trying to engage him in conversation.

‘We used to live with my grandmother, but she died six months ago, and with me being in the civil service Mum said it made sense for us to move over here.’

Tilly nodded. There were a lot of Government offices in the Holborn area, including Somerset House.

‘Mr Ryder from number eighteen, who’s retired, used to work at Somerset House,’ she informed Christopher, ‘and Mr King, who owns six of the houses lower down the Row, used to have several tenants who worked in the civil service. Most of them have moved out now because of the war.’

When Christopher made no response Tilly suppressed a small sigh. She was a sociable girl who enjoyed the company of others and meeting new people, but trying to get him to talk was like drawing teeth, she decided ruefully. But good manners meant that she had to keep trying.

They’d almost reached the buffet table so she changed the subject and told him proudly, ‘You must have one of the mince pies, and a sausage roll. My mother made them.’

He nodded and then blurted out, ‘I’d prefer it if you call me Kit, not Christopher, and thanks . . . for dancing with me. I don’t think the vicar really approves of me being a conscientious objector, only, being a man of God, he can’t really say so.’

‘You’re still doing your bit,’ Tilly told him stoutly, indicating his St John Ambulance uniform.

The dance finished early, in time for the midnight carol service. As Tilly told her mother, linking arms with both her and Agnes as they set off for number 13 afterwards, there was something special about singing carols on Christmas Eve.

At St Barts, Sally shared Tilly’s feelings, her eyes stinging slightly with emotion when she left the chapel where one of the chaplains had just finished conducting the Christmas Eve midnight service.

‘We never did get to manage that meal out together,’ George Laidlaw told her, catching up with her as she walked down the corridor.

She’d seen the young doctor only briefly since his return from his posting with their evacuated colleagues, their only exchange brief nods of recognition, and sometimes a few words as they went about their duties.

‘The theatre lists have been busy,’ she told him. ‘With most of the staff evacuated and a reduced number of operating theatres, there’s been more pressure on those that there are, especially with all the blackout accidents that have been coming in.’

‘If you haven’t already got a partner for the hospital’s New Year’s Ball, and you aren’t on duty, perhaps you’d consider letting me take you to that?’

Automatically Sally opened her mouth to refuse and then closed it again. What was the point in looking backwards to what might have been?

‘I’m not on duty, and yes, I’d like that,’ she answered.

‘You will?’ George looked delighted.

Ten minutes later as she stepped out into the cold night air, her cloak wrapped warmly round her, Sally discovered that she was still smiling at George’s obvious pleasure in her acceptance.

Part Two

June 1940

Chapter Seventeen

‘Is there any more news about Dunkirk?’ Tilly asked Olive anxiously, having raced home from work to change into her St John Ambulance uniform, ignoring the discomfort of its heaviness in the heat of the early June afternoon. Like the rest of the country, she had far more on her mind than herself.

‘No real news, but according to Mrs Windle the troop trains are still full when they reach London, which must mean something.’

Dunkirk. How quickly the name had become familiar, so that over the space of a handful of days it was on everyone’s lips, the echo of its horror and bravery the beat of everyone’s heart.

Dunkirk – the beach beyond which the British Expedition Force had retreated until they could retreat no further, after the Germans had smashed through the supposedly unsmashable Maginot Line.

Dunkirk – from where not just the might of the British Establishment but the love and bravery of Britain’s ordinary citizens, in their small vessels, had plucked the waiting men to safety, bearing them home across the Channel in voyage after voyage.

Olive and Tilly had seen what Dunkirk had done to once-proud fighting men. Olive manned one of the many WVS tea urns, and Tilly helped the walking wounded when they arrived at St Pancras station, one of the London stations into which troop trains came pouring to disgorge weary retreat-scarred men from the British Expeditionary Force; men who had left behind in France not only their guns and equipment but also their pride.

In three short days Tilly felt she had left her own youth behind her, just as those men had left behind them their dead comrades and their self-belief. The sight of grown men with blank expressions and eyes that constantly looked beyond her, as her St John Ambulance unit worked amongst the wounded, no longer shocked her as it had done that first day.

Men in dirty mud-spattered uniforms, rank with the dried sweat of fear, who couldn’t look her in the eye; men with dirty bandages wrapped around wounds; men who broke down and wept with shame and relief when they were greeted with a hot cup of tea and a warm smile – Tilly had seen them all.

Because it was her turn to drive the WVS van, Olive said that she would take Tilly to St Pancras along with the members of her WVS unit she was due to pick up from the vicarage. Crouched in the back of the van, Tilly was filled with admiration for the way her mother drove, manoeuvring it with the new confidence the last few days had given her. Olive had even been co-opted into ferrying some of the walking wounded to various London hospitals for out-patient treatment.

The most seriously injured men and the stretcher cases had been sent to hospitals closer to the coast, Sally had told them. The London hospitals were only dealing with the more minor cases; cleaning up wounds, before the men travelled onward to take advantage of the two weeks of home leave they had all been granted.

One of Tilly’s jobs had been to check with those arriving at St Pancras that they had sent off one of the postcards they had been issued with on arrival on British shores, to tell their relatives they were safe.

It was as she handed out postcards to those who, for one reason or another, had not already sent them that she had a glimpse of what was concealed behind the men’s blank expressions, as though the thought of those waiting for them at home was the key that turned the lock on their emotions.

This evening the number of men filling the platforms seemed larger than ever.

Craning her neck, Tilly tried to see where the milling mass ended, as she and Agnes stood together with their bag of postcards and their instructions to send those men who looked most in need of medical attention to the St John Ambulance post behind them on the station’s main waiting area, where they would be checked over and dealt with or sent on to hospital for further medical treatment.

Men were caked in a mixture of mud from the retreat across France, sand from the beaches, salt from the Channel and, in some cases, oil as well. After three days Tilly had learned enough to know that oil meant the men had been rescued from torpedoed ships.

Down at the other end of the concourse, closer to the exit, her mother, along with various other WVS groups, would be serving the men tea and biscuits, the first drink, some men told her, they had had since leaving France.

A soldier, grey-skinned and dead-eyed, standing in the line a couple of yards away from them caught Tilly’s eye. He was being supported by the man next to him, who looked equally done in.

‘Grab these two,’ Tilly told Agnes, the two girls stepping up to the men, and only just in time, Tilly recognised as the soldier being supported stumbled, and almost fell into her arms.

‘Sorry, miss,’ his companion, hollow-cheeked with exhaustion, his face grimy with oil and dirt, apologised. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken,’ Tilly assured him, gesturing to her uniform. ‘That’s what we’re here for. Has he got any injuries, do you know?’

She could almost see the soldier, who had been looking defensive and wary, relax a little at her words, as Tilly gently set the semi-conscious man back to his feet so that his companion could once again support him.

Tilly had learned that every soldier seemed to have a pal, a mate, someone from his unit who stood by him and for him, and who took charge of him when he was injured.

‘Shrapnel in his leg. They wanted to hospitalise him when we came ashore but he refused. He’s from up north – Newcastle – and he wants to get home. His brother’s bought it, see, and he wants to tell his mam and dad himself. Doesn’t want them to hear from anyone else.’

Tilly nodded and swallowed back her pity, telling the soldier, ‘That’s all very well but his parents won’t thank him if he makes his own wounds worse. That leg needs attending to.’ They both looked down at where fresh blood was seeping through the grimy bandage wrapped round the other soldier’s thigh.

Tilly could see both relief and gratitude in the companion’s eyes. ‘Just as well he’s out of it,’ he told Tilly with an attempt at a grin. ‘That’s the trouble with these ruddy North-Easterners, they don’t know when they’re down.’

‘Got to get home,’ the injured man suddenly muttered, pulling away from his friend. ‘Got to tell me mam and dad about our Tommy.’

He lurched forward and then stopped his eyes widening with shock before he looked down at his own thigh. Bright red blood was now soaking through the bandage. He put his hand on it and then removed it, staring at his own bloodstained hand.

He was haemorrhaging, Tilly guessed.

‘Quick, Agnes, go and get Mr Ogden. Tell him we’ve got a haemorrhage. We need to lie him down and lift his leg up.’

Almost before she had finished speaking soldiers were moving into action, clearing a space, lying their comrade down. Tilly had her first-aid kit with her, but it contained only the basics, she was reluctant to apply a makeshift tourniquet when there might be shrapnel in the wound that her actions could push in further.

The soldier had opened his eyes, and Tilly could see the panic in them.

‘It’s all right,’ she told him softly. ‘You’re home now, and you’re safe.’

‘Gotta see me mam. Don’t let me die before I’ve seen her,’ he pleaded, tears filling his eyes and running down his cheeks, making clean runnels in the dirt.

‘We won’t let you die,’ Tilly assured him. He had reached for her hand and she held it tightly, and kept holding it just as she held his gaze as Agnes returned with the leader of their brigade and two of the more senior members.

‘It might be a shrapnel wound,’ Tilly told the brigade leader quietly. ‘He wouldn’t let them hospitalise him when he came ashore. He wants to get home to tell his parents about the loss of his brother.’

The other members of the brigade were working quickly and efficiently to stem the bleeding as Tilly spoke, sliding a stretcher beneath the young soldier.

It wasn’t until the soldier was being stretchered away that Tilly looked up and realised that one of the men who had assisted with him was Dulcie’s brother, Rick, although she had to look twice before she could be sure that it was him. There was no sign of the good-looking charm on his face now. Even his curt nod in her direction in confirmation of his recognition of her was a world away from the easy manner she remembered. Not that she had any fondness for Dulcie’s brother now. He had led her on, no doubt to boost his own ego, without thinking how she might feel about his behaviour. She had been such a naive girl then, she thought ruefully with the benefit of nearly six months of extra maturity behind her. An idiot, really, to be taken in by someone as vain as Rick, and not worth wasting her tears on. Well, she knew better now. She was a popular girl, with young men eager to take her out, but Tilly had learned her lesson in one sharp and very painful evening. She would never allow herself to be so gullible or easily hurt again. Nor would she ever be naive enough again to fall for a handsome face. In fact, she was off men, full stop, and had decided that instead of risking getting her heart broken she was going to concentrate on putting her energy into helping as much as she could with the war effort.

Her glance at Rick was cool and professional, letting him know that she wasn’t the silly young girl who had quivered with delight just to be in his arms. Then she saw in his expression and bearing what she had seen in so many returning soldiers. It wasn’t just the loss of friends and comrades that marked them, it was the loss of pride and confidence as well. They had been saved from potential death and imprisonment not by their own endeavours but by the endeavour of others, rescued from France’s beaches like helpless children, as one soldier had already described it to her.

‘You stand there in line waiting, not knowing if you’re even going to make it to the boats. Three days we were standing there waiting. It does something to you inside your head,’ he had told her. ‘It takes something from you that you know you’ll never get back.’

Nodding brusquely at Tilly – how could a girl like her possibly understand the hell that had been Dunkirk? – Rick still felt raw and shocked by what he had experienced. Raw and shocked and shamed by the way they’d had to turn tail and run. It didn’t matter how often he’d heard older, more experienced soldiers saying, ‘He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day,’ his pride, not just in himself but in his country, had been put through a firestorm from which he had emerged harder, angrier and determined to defeat the Germans . . .

Rick turned away from Tilly to rejoin the remnants of his unit. The lad who’d been stretchered away was seventeen. He’d lied about his age so that he could enlist with his older brother, the brother they’d had to leave behind in the mud with his head shot off and his brains splattered all over the road, after an aerial attack by the Luftwaffe. Rick had yelled out a warning but Tommy had been helping a young mother with her children, carrying a young boy too exhausted to walk, as they fled along with others, because the Germans were invading their country.

The mother and her children had died with Tommy, and the dozens of others the Luftwaffe had sprayed with gunfire.

Tommy’s brother had insisted on burying what was left of Tommy, after he had finished throwing up. Rick suspected that the boy had half hoped to be killed himself, watching the risks he had taken afterwards.

It wasn’t glorious and heroic: it was dying on the roadside with your head blown open; it was blackened arms and legs separated from rotting bodies strewn along the road to the coast like lifesize dolls’ limbs; it was fear and sickness, and screams of agony, both physical and mental; it was the fury and frustration of standing in line on the beaches whilst the Luftwaffe blew you apart and the sky above you remained empty of the RAF. It was seeing grown men cry for their mothers, seeing men die slowly over the long hours they waited for rescue; it was feeling that you would die of thirst but knowing you couldn’t risk losing your place in the line.

And after that, being back here in London, seeing people who were clean and not injured and safe, and knowing that they were as alien to you now as though they belonged to a separate race.

It was knowing that nothing ever could or would be the same.

Rick couldn’t risk speaking to Tilly because if he did he was afraid that he would tell her these things that could not be told to anyone, least of all a young girl like her.

It was gone eight o’clock in the evening before the flood of men was reduced to a trickle, and Tilly and Agnes were free to leave their posts and make their way over to where Olive was handing over responsibility for the tea urns to a new group of WVS.

‘We saw Dulcie’s brother,’ Agnes announced as they headed for the parked van, ‘didn’t we, Tilly?’

‘Yes. I had to look at him twice before I was sure it was him,’ Tilly told her mother. ‘All the soldiers look so defeated. It really tears at your heart. It isn’t their fault, after all,’ she defended her countrymen fiercely. ‘Everyone said that the Maginot Line would hold Hitler back. So many of them are angry with the RAF and blame them for not doing more to hold the Luftwaffe at bay whilst they were retreating.’

‘I know,’ Olive agreed. ‘I suppose it’s because the Government feel they need to hold back the RAF to defend the country.’

Tilly saw the looks her mother exchanged with the other WVS members she was taking back to the church hall.

‘You mean in case Hitler tries to invade?’ Tilly pressed her.

There was a brief silence and then Olive admitted tiredly, ‘Yes.’

It had to be faced after all, Olive acknowledged as she drove back to the church hall. Hitler had smashed through the defences of every country he had invaded, and now France too had fallen, something that no one had expected to happen. What was to stop them being next?

‘The Germans will target London first,’ Hilda Blackett, one of the WVS, warned them all, her voice sounding prophetically through the cramped stuffiness of the back of the van, where Tilly and Agnes were sitting hunched up to occupy as little space as possible.

‘Well, if he does let’s hope we’re better protected than the BEF,’ another woman said grimly.

No one challenged her because they had all seen and heard too much to do so, Olive recognised.

It seemed ironic now that she had worried so much that going dancing at the Hammersmith Palais might encourage Tilly to grow up too soon, when over the last four days she had had to grow up so brutally fast with what she was having to witness. Tilly couldn’t be protected from the cruel realities of war, though, not when men not much older than she was herself were returning from Dunkirk with the horror of what they had seen and experienced stamped so clearly on them.

On previous occasions Tilly had enjoyed the drive back to the church hall, happy in the knowledge of a job well done, secretly marvelling at her mother’s skill and very proud of the fact that she was the driver, but tonight the events of the last few days and what they meant weighed too heavily on her for that. The expressions on the faces of Rick and the young injured soldier refused to be ejected from her memory. Such grimness and pain couldn’t be forgotten or dismissed. Tonight she would say a special prayer to add to all her other prayers for the young man she had tended, in the hope that he would live to see his mother.

* * *

News of the British Expeditionary Force’s retreat and the desperate efforts to bring home as many of them as was possible might have the rest of the household at number 13 scurrying around and doing their bit, but Dulcie wasn’t going to allow it to change any of her plans.

Tonight was Saturday night and she was dancing at the Palais just as she would have been on any other Saturday night – especially since Arlene at work had read out to them all the news of David’s marriage with Lydia.

Not that she had ever expected anything else. He had as good as said himself that he had no choice, and it wasn’t as though she had ever tried, or wanted to try, to change his mind. She had done what she wanted to do, proved what she had wanted to prove, and that was an end to the matter. If Arlene thought that it meant anything to Dulcie to have his engagement announcement read out to her then she was wrong. Nevertheless, the fact that Arlene had made a point of showing it to her had rubbed against Dulcie’s pride, as had the sly, almost knowing look that Arlene had given her when she had made a comment about like always marrying like. Dulcie had longed to tell her that David might have married Lydia but he certainly didn’t love her, but she had held her tongue. After all, she hadn’t wanted David herself. Not really. Because if she had done then Dulcie knew she would have made sure that she got him, Lydia and marriage or no Lydia and marriage.

Even so, her pride demanded that the girls she worked with now needed to be shown that she could get a beau who was even more handsome than David. She wasn’t going to have them gossiping about her behind her back and laughing at her, just because David had paid her a bit of attention. That meant having a new and, of course, adoring beau she could flaunt in front of her work colleagues.

A couple of young Australian soldiers caught her eye, but Dulcie speedily dismissed them. They might be tall but they were also gangly. No, her new beau had to be handsome and stand out as special, someone better-looking than David and more eye-catching. She studied the groups of men clustered close to the bar, but they appeared too ordinary for her purpose.

She looked away and then tensed as a familiar group of Italian men came in. They always hovered on the edge of the dance floor, eyeing up the girls, but those in the know were wary of dancing with them, knowing perfectly well what they were after and that they were all destined at some stage to obey their mothers and marry a girl of their own sort. Tonight, though, there was a man with them whom Dulcie didn’t recognise, and she knew she would have done if she had seen him before. For a start he was taller than the others – at least six foot, she reckoned – and broader shouldered too. He even held himself differently, standing tall with his head up, not surveying the dancers surreptitiously but instead focusing on listening to the other man who was talking to him Best of all, though, he was good-looking. Very good-looking, matinée idol good-looking, Dulcie thought with growing satisfaction, and smartly dressed as well. He stood out against the group he was with like a silver coin in a handful of copper, and Dulcie made up her mind there and then that he was ideal for her purpose.

Confidently she got up from her seat at the table, saying over her shoulder to the girl sitting next to her, ‘Save my seat, will you, only I’m just going to the lav.’

Opening her handbag as though in search of a handkerchief, her head down, it was easy for Dulcie to stage manage accidentally bumping into her target and then dropping her handbag in supposed shock.

Of course he would pick it up for her, that was what men did and what Dulcie expected, but what she hadn’t expected was that he would also give her a level look from amused brown eyes, as though he knew perfectly well that what had happened was no accident.

Dulcie, though, didn’t respond to the knowing gleam in his eyes. Instead she thanked him prettily for helping to collect the powder compact and brush that had fallen from her handbag and then, as they both stood up, Dulcie making sure that she was close enough for him to be aware of the scent she was wearing – a tester she had ‘borrowed’ from Selfridges and which she would have to return – before saying in a deliberately husky voice, ‘How kind of you to help me. I don’t know what I can do in return, except offer to dance with you. I’m Dulcie, by the way. What’s your name?’

No red-blooded man could possibly resist her. Dulcie waited confidently for his delighted response.

But instead he bent his head and told her calmly, ‘Raphael – Raphael Androtti, and I must say, Dulcie, that I’m surprised that an attractive girl like you needs to pull a trick like that in order to get a dancing partner. What was it? A bet with your girlfriends?’

Dulcie was stunned into momentary silence. No man had ever spoken to her like that before. By rights he ought to be falling over his own feet with gratitude, and what did he mean, describing her merely as attractive? She wasn’t attractive, she was beautiful.

‘No,’ she denied his allegation, telling him crisply – after all, she had nothing to lose now so there was no point in being sugary sweet with him – ‘I don’t need to make bets about getting someone to dance with me, especially not one of your sort.’

‘One of my sort? What’s that supposed to mean?’

His manner was now as hostile as hers was dismissive.

‘You’re Italian,’ she told him, not mincing her words. ‘Everyone knows that the only reason Italian men come down here is because they’re hoping to get from one of us what they know they’d never get from an Italian girl. That’s why no one wants to dance with them.’

‘Except you.’

‘I was just trying to be kind.’

‘How charitable of you, if that were true. But it isn’t, is it? I saw the way you looked at me when you were sitting down. You targeted me deliberately. Why?’

‘No, I did not,’ Dulcie denied furiously.

The Italian gave an exaggerated sigh that lifted and then lowered his impressively broad chest and then told her very slowly, ‘In Liverpool, where I come from, the only reason a girl drops her handbag in front of a man is because she wants him to notice her, and if you’re going to try to convince me that it isn’t the same here, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell you that I don’t believe you.’

‘I don’t care what you believe,’ Dulcie snapped.

‘But you did want me to dance with you.’

‘No.’

‘So then why the dropped handbag trick?’

He wasn’t going to stop questioning her until he’d got the answer he wanted, Dulcie recognised, and the only way she was going to get rid of him was by telling him the truth. That way she could satisfy her own pride by making it clear to him that it wasn’t him she was interested in.

‘Someone I work with has recently got married. Her husband – before they were married – was showing a bit too much interest in me, and I thought she’d feel better if she thought I was involved with someone else,’ Dulcie lied smoothly.

‘By seeing you dancing with me?’

‘No,’ Dulcie corrected him. ‘By coming to Selfridges, which is where I work, on the makeup floor. If you’d danced with me and asked to see me again then I could have suggested that you come into the store.’

‘Funny how wrong you can be about a person,’ he told her. ‘Somehow you don’t strike me as the kind of girl who puts another girl’s feelings before her own.’

‘Well, that just shows what a poor judge of character you are,’ Dulcie informed him, before stepping past him and marching back to her chair, her back stiff with disdain.

No one had ever spoken to her as the Italian had done, and now Dulcie was angry with herself for telling him as much as she had done. Still, she’d rather have him knowing the truth, or at least a fictionalised version of it, than have him thinking that she had actually been interested in him as a man. The girls in Liverpool could do what they liked, but at least she’d made clear that in London things were different and that she wasn’t in the least bit interested in getting his attention.

At Barts Sally prepared to finish her shift. She had already worked two hours longer than she should have to help with the influx of wounded soldiers. Of the supposedly walking wounded, many had turned out to have far more serious injuries than they had wanted to admit to.

There’d been an awful lot of cleaning of hastily bandaged wounds to do, a lot of removing shrapnel from men who had borne the probing of tweezers with stoic silence, their tears only coming when they spoke in the darkness of the night about fallen comrades and those who had not made it.

Sally was supposed to have been going to the pictures with George Laidlaw after his own shift finished but when they finally met up in the main entrance to the hospital it was so late and they were both so exhausted that they agreed that a cup of tea at Joe Lyons was all they felt up to.

Their friendship had grown over the months. Sally enjoyed George’s company and, of course, they had a shared interest in talking ‘shop’ and a shared understanding of what it meant to be dealing with young men whose battle scars weren’t always only from their physical wounds.

Sally loved her job and the extra responsibility she had been given, but she wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t grieved for those boys who came into the theatre and then left it with their lives saved but far too often without a limb. It would have been hard to talk as openly with anyone else as she could with George about her professional pride in being part of a team that saved lives, but her distress at this being at the cost of an arm or a leg.

‘It’s their acceptance of what they’ve been through that does it for me,’ George told Sally as she poured them each a cup of tea. ‘Some of the tales they have to tell . . .’ He paused and shook his head. But Sally knew what he meant.

‘I had to remove half a dozen pieces of shrapnel from a sergeant tonight who swore that all he’d got was a bit of a cut. He never made a sound, but afterwards he cried like a baby when he was telling me about having to leave a dog he’d befriended behind on the beach.’

‘I had a young lad in, leg badly damaged, and I reckon we’ve been able to save it. He reckons he’d have bled to death but for the medic on the naval vessel that picked him up after the boat he’d been in had been shot to pieces.’

Sally nodded, and then picked up her cup so that she could avoid looking directly at him whilst her heart was still thudding so fast. She was a fool to react like that simply because he’d mentioned a naval vessel. Callum could be anywhere, and anyway, what did it matter to her where he was?

‘Some date this is,’ George was saying ruefully as he reached for her hand.

Sally let him take it, but her thoughts weren’t really with him. His mention of the navy had been as effective at holing her defences as Germany’s torpedoes were at holing British ships. Now the unwanted thoughts she had thought successfully blocked were pouring in. And not just thoughts about Callum. She was acutely aware that the baby Callum had told her about would have been born by now. Her father’s child. Her half-brother or -sister. The child of betrayal and adultery.

No one in Olive’s household was more aware of the number of lives that had been lost than Sally. The newspaper lists of shipping losses were something she made herself avoid. After all, why should she worry about Callum when he didn’t mean anything to her any more? She had been out on several dates with George now, and she enjoyed his company. They shared similar tastes in music, both great admirers of Dame Myra Hess and her lunchtime piano recitals at the National Gallery, preferring to attend a concert rather than go out dancing, just as they preferred the theatre to the cinema. George had a good sense of humour, and a manner that made Sally believe that he had the makings of a first-class consultant, although she knew that ultimately his plans were to return to New Zealand and follow in his father’s footsteps as a GP. George hadn’t said anything to her about them putting their friendship on a ‘going steady’ basis, but Sally suspected that he would. And if he did, what would she say to him, Sally asked herself as she entered the hospital, ready to start night duty.

Sally exhaled painfully. The truth was that she liked George, but she didn’t think that right now, with a war on, was the time to get involved in a serious relationship. She had seen the strain and anxiety on the faces of those girls who had serious boyfriends, fiancés and husbands. She’d miss his friendship if she turned him down and he left her life, she knew, but was she really ready to start going steady?

Chapter Eighteen

‘Come on, Agnes, we’d better hurry otherwise we’ll be late,’ Tilly exhorted.

It was one of their St John Ambulance evenings and, having spent an hour in the garden removing weeds from Sally’s vegetable plot, they were now later than they had planned setting out for the brigade’s meeting in the church hall.

With the return of the BEF from France, the WVS, the St John Ambulance and various other voluntary organisations were all working at full stretch, with volunteers being asked to put in as many hours as they could. This meant that Tilly and Agnes were returning home from work to quickly eat the meal Olive had cooked for them, before all three changed into their uniforms and dashed out of the house to join their respective voluntary groups. Olive was in particular demand because of her driving abilities and had even been called upon to drive a temporary ambulance to and from St Pancras to St Thomas’s Hospital one evening when the normal driver hadn’t turned up. Tilly and Agnes had gone from practising first aid to actually doing it, and as Tilly said to Agnes as they hurried to meet up with other members of their group, after the first few real wounds they’d had to check and dress, they’d been so busy that she’d forgotten to be nervous.

Christopher had reached the church hall before them and was checking through their main first-aid box.

Tilly nudged Agnes, telling her, ‘Let’s go and give Christopher a hand rolling those bandages.’ He was standing with his back to them, dressed in stone-coloured cavalry twill trousers and a checked shirt with a Fair Isle-patterned sleeveless pullover on top. Tilly had noticed how some of the other members of their group avoided Christopher, turning their backs and refusing to speak to him, and their attitude made her feel sorry for him and protective towards him. He might be a conscientious objector and not prepared to fight but at least he was doing something towards the war effort.

‘I didn’t have time to change into my St John Ambulance uniform because Mum needed me to give her a hand setting up a bed downstairs for Dad. He’s been bad with his chest these last few days and the doctor said that he didn’t want him going up and down the stairs.’

Tilly knew from her mother that Christopher’s father’s health was declining, and Nancy next door had said that she reckoned he wouldn’t see Christmas. Tilly hoped that Nancy was wrong. She knew how close Christopher was to his father, and she knew too how she would be feeling if it was her mother that was so seriously ill.

Half an hour later, when everyone had arrived and the tea urn had been filled, Lucy Higgins, whose father was an ARP warden came round with a tray of tea for them all, but when Christopher reached for a cup she deliberately jerked the tray away from him, so that he couldn’t get a drink.

‘Here, Christopher, this is for you,’ Tilly announced, firmly handing him her own cup, before heading for the small kitchen to get a clean cup for her own drink.

Lucy Higgins appeared in the doorway, blocking her exit as she told her with contempt, ‘You want to watch it, you do, making friends with that coward. Otherwise people will begin to think that you’re just as bad as he is.’

‘Christopher is not a coward.’ Tilly immediately countered.

‘Course he is. He’s a conchie, and he’s refusing to fight.’

‘He objects to the war on moral grounds, not fears for his own safety.’

‘Oh ho, moral grounds, is it?’ Lucy mocked. ‘He’s a coward and a traitor, and he ought to be strung up. That’s what my dad says.’

Lucy’s unkindness and bullying manner towards Christopher left a bad taste in Tilly’s mouth.

She was still feeling sorry for him when the three of them walked home together later in the evening, both her and Agnes having to walk a bit faster than normal in order to keep up with him, his speed no doubt because he was anxious to get back to his father, Tilly guessed.

She, on the other hand, would have liked to linger. The long daylight hours and June sunshine were a relief after the winter nights of blackouts and absolute darkness.

It had been a severe winter, with the loss of many, many sailors and a great deal of shipping, due to the successful attacks of Hitler’s submarines on the navy-escorted convoys crossing the Atlantic and bringing much-needed supplies to the country. The convoys and the goods they carried were a vital lifeline for the country.

Despite the warmth of the June evening Tilly gave a small shiver. Everyone had been so confident when the war had first started, that they would have Hitler beaten within months, his army retreating back to Germany with its tail between its legs. The reality, though, was that it was the BEF that had been driven into retreat and now the whole counry was aware of how vulnerable Britain was. The fear of invasion was gripping everyone. Tilly knew that her mother was worrying about it, even though she wasn’t saying so, and Tilly knew too that her worry was for her.

She felt afraid herself sometimes listening to people talking about the horror stories the refugees who had made it safely to London had to tell, especially those from Poland. Another shiver gripped Tilly. There were two Polish refugee families sharing a house in Article Row, two women with children, and an older woman.

According to Nancy, who made it her business to know everything that went on in Article Row, the two women were sisters, and the elderly woman was their mother. Their husbands had been killed fighting against Hitler, whilst the eldest son of one of the women, a boy of fourteen, had been shot through the head by a German soldier for trying to protect the cousin the soldier had then gone on to rape, and who had shot herself with the soldier’s gun rather than bear the shame of what had happened to her.

Tilly had guessed from the look exchanged between her mother and Sally when Nancy had told them all this story that it was both true and not an isolated occurrence.

She didn’t dare let herself think about what might happen here in London if the Germans did invade and ended up marching on the city like they were now marching on Paris.

Sally wasn’t the only one concerned about the important matter of ‘going steady’. It was an issue that had been on Ted’s mind since Christmas, and now, his feelings heated by the June sunshine and the sight of couples walking and sweet-talking together in London’s streets and parks, he ached to tell Agnes how he felt about her and to ask her to be his girl.

There were problems, though. Ted was the sole breadwinner in his family, his earnings desperately needed to supplement the small income his mother received as a cleaner. The need for her services, and thus her income, had decreased since the start of the war with many well-to-do families leaving London for the safety of the country for the sake of their children.

There was no way Ted could move out of the family home, a tiny rented flat provided by the Guinness Trust, and no way either that he could move Agnes into it as his wife, as he suspected it would be against the rules, and besides, his bedroom was no bigger than a cupboard and had room for only a single bed, whilst his mother shared the single bedroom with his two young sisters.

Agnes was a lovely girl and a very special person, who had blossomed from the shy shabby girl he had first met to a confident happy young woman. Even old Smithy was now putty in her hands, mellowed by her smile and her genuine kindness. Ted was happy that Agnes had found her feet – of course he was – but at the same time he was also worried that some other chap with better prospects and more to offer her might win her heart and steal her from him. For that reason he longed to be able to declare himself but how could he when all he could offer her was the prospect of a long engagement?

Rick downed his pint of beer. It had been a mistake coming here to the working men’s club where his father’s friends wanted to talk about the war and ask him questions. He still felt too raw for that. Dunkirk had left him feeling as though a layer of skin had been ripped from his body, leaving him sensitive to the lightest touch.

He had seen and experienced too much that his mind and body wanted to forget and couldn’t. Men – his comrades, his friends – left dead and dying during their retreat; good brave men, far braver and better than he. And then Dunkirk itself.

The dead and dying everywhere, like the tension that gripped them all as they stood in line waiting . . . waiting. He’d given up his chance of being the last onto one boat to allow an injured comrade to take his place. Rick reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. That act of generosity had saved his life, because the boat had been attacked by the Luftwaffe. He had seen it hit as he stood on the beach. He had heard the screams of the men dying in the hail of fire, or burned alive in the fuel it discharged as it caught fire. He should have been on that boat . . . His hands started to shake, making it impossible for him to light his cigarette.

He ordered another pint, drinking it quickly, trying to drown out his memories, but they refused to leave him in peace. The heat of the packed club brought him out in a sweat, the stale beer and cigarette smells filling his lungs and making him long for fresh air. Finishing his drink, he left the club, taking a deep breath of the mild late evening air as he headed homewards, his stomach heaving as he drew level with the chip shop and breathed in the smell of the cooked food.

Someone hailed him from inside the shop – Rita Sands, a local good-time girl. She had a reputation in the neighbourhood for being the girl that most of the local lads had had their first sexual experience with. Rick didn’t stop.

Making his way home through the warren of backstreets of the East End, he was just about to cut down a narrow alleyway that was a bit of a shortcut, when he heard someone running after him, and Rita’s voice calling, ‘Hey, Ricky, hang on a minute, will you?’

Grimly Rick turned round, demanding, ‘Leave me alone, will you, Rita? I’m not in the mood for company.’

Unabashed she told him, ‘Bet I could get you in the mood.’ She moved closer to him, putting her hand on his arm. Her hair smelled of grease and fish and chips. Rick wanted to recoil from her. Just as he had recoiled from the sight of his dead comrades? Bile filled his throat as he fought to stand where he was, just as he had done in France.

‘Oooh, them’s ever such strong muscles you’ve got there, Ricky,’ Rita cooed. ‘I’ll bet it isn’t only there that you’ve got them neither, is it? There’s something about a man in uniform that makes a girl go weak at the knees, if you know what I mean.’

Rick knew what Rita meant all right. It was still light enough for him to see the way her breasts strained against her too-tight top.

He started to turn away from her, repelled by her sexual obviousness, but instead of letting him go Rita moved closer, flinging her arm round his neck and kissing him wetly on his mouth, her free hand moving to his groin.

‘Come on,’ she said, ‘you know you want me really.’

Filled with revulsion, Rick shrugged her off, ignoring her outburst of insults and anger as he pushed past her, intent on putting as much distance between them as he could.

‘Coward,’ she called after him, jeeringly. ‘Running away from me just like you ran away from the Germans.’

Rick stopped dead in his tracks. A red mist of rage descended on him, a desire to turn round and shake Rita until she took back her insulting words, not for his sake but for the sake of the men who would never come home, men who knew more about bravery and courage than someone like Rita could ever grasp.

His anger left him as abruptly as it had seized him. All the anger in the world wouldn’t bring those men back, but he would damn well make sure that when he was eventually facing the Germans it would be those fallen men he would be fighting for.

Chapter Nineteen

Dulcie eyed the neat row of lipsticks on the counter in front of her impatiently. It was Monday. They were always quiet on Mondays, her working day seeming to drag, not that there was anything interesting to look forward to for the evening at number 13, not with Olive trying to get them all to give Sally a hand with her vegetable plot. She’d rather go home and listen to her mother praising Edith than do that. And tomorrow night that was what she would be doing, she reminded herself, since tomorrow was her mother’s birthday. She’d got her mother a lipstick for her birthday present, a pretty soft pink, and some powder as well. Her mother never took the trouble to make the best of herself, and having some decent cosmetics was bound to cheer her up. Her present was bound to be more expensive than whatever Edith bought her, Dulcie decided with some triumph. That should show her mother how wrong she was to favour Edith all the time. At least with Rick still at home on his post-Dunkirk leave, there’d be someone there to have a bit of a joke with.

Dulcie frowned as she looked down and noticed a small wrinkle in one of her stockings. Automatically she bent to smooth it away.

As she did so, from the other side of the counter she heard a male voice asking, ‘So what exactly is it you’d want this boyfriend who isn’t a real boyfriend to do?’

The voice and its amused tone were immediately recognisable. They had Dulcie standing up so quickly that she felt dizzy, which was no doubt why her face felt flushed, she decided as she stared up into Raphael Androtti’s brown eyes.

Normally quick off the mark with a retaliatory comment, Dulcie for once was lost for words, finally managing only a defensive. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’

‘A joke? I thought we were supposed to be acting as lovebirds, not clowns. Of course, if you’ve changed your mind, and you’ve found someone else to play the role of doting boyfriend . . .’

He was turning to walk away. Caught off guard, Dulcie reached across the counter to stop him, protesting, ‘No. I mean . . .’

‘I’ve missed you.’

The smile and the not-so-softly spoken words were good enough to have come from the lips of any matinée idol worth his salt, as was the way in which he lifted his hand, about to touch her face, and then dropped it again as though realising where they were.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Dulcie demanded.

‘You said you wanted me to.’

‘Yes, I know that,’ she hissed, ‘but . . .’

‘But what?’ His voice became slightly louder as he demanded urgently, ‘Have you changed your mind about me? About us? Please tell me that it isn’t true and that you haven’t.’

Somehow or other he had taken possession of her hand and was clasping it between his own.

He was enjoying this, Dulcie could see. ‘You’re overdoing it,’ she told him. A quick look round the cosmetics floor showed her that the other girls were goggling at them from behind their counters, and that Arlene was looking astounded – astounded and envious!

Oddly, though, Dulcie felt less triumphant than she should have. That was because she liked being in control. She did not like someone else grasping the upper hand and directing the things she had planned to direct herself. It made her feel . . . Dulcie didn’t want to think about how it made her feel or about being taken over by someone else, controlled by someone else. Didn’t he realise that he was going too far? All she’d wanted was for him to come in and give the impression that he was keen on her, not act like they were already an item. Now she’d end up having to come up with a reason for them breaking up.

‘The shop will be closing in couple of minutes,’ she told him, wanting to get rid of him so that she could manage the impression he was giving when the other girls asked her the questions she knew they would ask.

His warm, ‘I’ll be waiting for you outside,’ wasn’t the response she’d wanted, but she couldn’t say anything, not with Lizzie standing within hearing distance.

Now he was giving her an openly languishing look, before turning on his heel and heading for the exit, just as the warning bell to customers to leave the store started to ring.

‘Well!’ Lizzie announced as soon as the bell had stopped. ‘Who is he and why haven’t you said anything about him?’

But before Dulcie could answer her, half a dozen of the girls were clustering round her, demanding, ‘Where did you meet him, Dulcie?’ ‘Has he got any brothers?’ ‘Cousins?’

Then Arlene came and joined in, her nose in the air, malice in the look she gave her, before she said, with what Dulcie knew was mock concern, ‘I don’t want to spoil things for you, Dulcie, but your young man looks awfully foreign.’

‘He’s Italian,’ Dulcie responded with a small shrug of her shoulders, as though she herself had never for a moment shared the thoughts she suspected were going through their heads. ‘So what?’

‘An Italian!’ Arlene pretended to marvel, before adding mockingly, ‘I suppose you met him when he sold you an ice cream.’

One of the other girls began to laugh.

‘And the way he speaks . . .’ Arlene rolled her eyes.

‘He’s from Liverpool,’ Dulcie defended Raphael.

‘An Italian from Liverpool.’ Arlene dissolved into fits of laughter. ‘Poor Dulcie, but then I suppose you won’t mind. Sometimes I do wish that my own standards weren’t quite so high.’

‘Don’t pay any attention to Arlene, Dulcie,’ Lizzie said stoutly after she and the others had gone. ‘I thought your young man looked lovely.’

‘He isn’t my young man. He’s just someone I know,’ Dulcie told her crossly. Her plan seemed to have backfired on her, and that was his fault, not hers. If she did find him waiting for her outside then she’d give him a piece of her mind.

Only when she did find him waiting for her outside the staff entrance to the building, Dulcie discovered to her own surprise that her curiosity about why he had turned up in the first place was stronger than her desire to blame him for Arlene’s mockery of her.

However, when he told her in response to her question, ‘I was at a bit of a loose end, so I thought I might as well do you a favour,’ Dulcie was more incensed than grateful.

‘You overdid things,’ she said, ‘and now I’ve had to put up with the Miss Snotty Nose looking down on me even more because of you being Italian.’

They had been walking away from the building as she delivered this attack but now he had stopped walking so that Dulcie was forced to do the same, and the look in his eyes was far from warm as he demanded, ‘Why should the fact that I’m Italian make her look down on you?’

‘Because you aren’t British,’ Dulcie replied irritably. Surely it was obvious to him that him being Italian and foreign, an immigrant, meant that he could never be considered as good as someone who was really British. After all, everyone knew that was how things were.

‘Actually I am British,’ he informed her. ‘I was born in this country, to parents who were also born here, and who, whilst being part of Liverpool’s Italian community, have taken British nationality.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ Dulcie said dismissively. ‘You look Italian, and you were with Italians when I saw you.’

‘So I can’t look Italian but be British is that what you are saying?’

Dulcie gave an exasperated sigh. ‘This is boring and I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘It isn’t boring to me,’ he told her grimly. ‘This is my country, a country I have enlisted to fight for and to die for, if necessary, but according to you because of my Italian ancestry I am not good enough for Britain – or for you? My grandfather would enjoy listening to you. It would validate and vindicate everything he believes.’

They had to stop walking for a minute to allow the crowd of people coming the other way to surge past them, giving Dulcie the chance to demand, ‘Your grandfather?’

‘Yes. It is to see him that I am here in London, to see if I can mend a family feud. You see, he abhors the thought of me being British just as much as you abhor the thought of me being Italian.’

‘I don’t abhor it,’ Dulcie defended herself. She’d never heard the word ‘abhor’ before, but she could guess what it meant and she certainly wasn’t going to let him know that it was new to her, she decided. She had to hurry to catch up with him as he strode off. ‘But everyone knows that a girl who isn’t Italian would be plain daft to get involved with an Italian chap when they always marry their own kind. Why doesn’t your grandfather want you to be British?’

A shaft of sunlight beaming down as they crossed a road, highlighted the warm olive tint of Raphael’s skin, catching Dulcie’s attention. Here in the city, its buildings shutting out the sunlight, its dust filling her nose and its war-ready grimness all around her to be seen, that sudden glimpse of healthy vitally alive male flesh brought her an emotion she didn’t understand. And because she didn’t understand it, Dulcie refused to countenance it.

‘Because he believes, as so many of his generation do, that our presence here in Britain is temporary,’ Raphael told her. ‘When he came here it was to work and send money home, to save up so that one day he too could return home. That was his belief and his dream. He and his contempararies do not consider Britain to be their home and their country because in their hearts Italy is that. They are fiercely proud of being Italian and they cling together in their communities because they are afraid if they do not, that they might forget and lose their traditions and their way of life. To Italians, family is all important, and family means not just husband and wife and children, but their whole community, to which they owe their loyalty along with their loyalty to Italy itself.’

He paused as a bus that had stopped to pick up passengers set off noisily, disgorging fumes that made Dulcie fan the air with her hand, continuing once it had gone, ‘When my father decided to become a British national my grandfather disowned him. He wanted my father to do as he had done and work to send money home to Italy but my father wanted to build a life here for my mother and for me. My father doesn’t say so, but my grandfather’s disowning of him hurts him. I would like to see them reconciled.’

‘It won’t please your grandfather to know that you’ve enlisted then, will it?’ Dulcie pointed out practically.

‘No,’ Raphael agreed. There were deeper and more complex reasons why he wanted to speak to his grandfather, but he didn’t intend to discuss those with Dulcie. He and his father had had several concerned discussions about the Italian Fascist movement in Britain, to which so many Italians belonged without really understanding the position in which it could put them in the eyes of the British Government, especially now with the country at war with Germany.

They had to stop to cross another road, the warmth of the sun making Dulcie begin to feel hot, hemmed in by the press of people on the busy street.

The movement provided Italian lessons for the children of Italians born in Britain, it provided meeting halls, schools, a place for Italian communities to be together, a small part of Italy and home in a foreign land. Only a small proportion of those who belonged to the movement were politically motivated and true fascists, and Raphael wanted to warn his grandfather against placing himself in that small group, especially as increasingly it looked as though Mussolini was about to ally himself to Hitler, and thus declare war on Britain.

He wasn’t sure himself why he had elected to do what he had done with regard to Dulcie. It was true that he had had time on his hands, but he could have filled that time doing other things. It had surprised him to discover how much his pride had stung to hear Dulcie announce that he wasn’t good enough for her, when her comment should have amused him. She was a shop girl, sharp enough when it came to her own wants, and ambitions, but oblivious to the political and social situations that were so important to him. If one of them should look down on the other then he should be the one looking down on her.

He stopped walking as they came to another crossroads.

‘I’m sorry but I must leave you here.’

It was only after they had gone their separate ways and Dulcie was almost ‘home’ that she allowed herself to give vent to her feelings. Of all the cheek, him apologising to her for leaving her as though he thought that she had actually wanted his company, and would be disappointed at being deprived of it. Well, she wasn’t. She didn’t need anyone’s company, much less that of a ruddy Eyetie. She was forced to admit to herself, however, for all that Arlene had affected to sneer at him, she’d seen the look in her eyes when they’d first clocked him. Eyetie or not, he was still a well set up and good-looking chap.

Chapter Twenty

Sally pushed her hair back off her face, shading her eyes from the June afternoon sun as she looked up from the row of lettuces she had just been weeding around, leaning on her hoe as she did so.

‘Looks easy hoeing, but it isn’t.’ The voice of Nancy’s husband, Arthur, reached her from the other side of the garden fence. Arthur was a kindly gentle man, the complete opposite of the image of him that Nancy held up to others with her frequent references to Arthur’s dislike of all those things that Nancy had decided were to be disliked. Now, as he filled and then lit his pipe, Sally laughed and agreed.

‘Much harder. I’ve never been in full charge of a veggie plot before, although I helped my father with his.’

‘Tea leaves is what you need. Soak them in vinegar overnight and then put them round your lettuces, and you won’t get no slugs coming after them.’

Nancy’s, ‘Arthur, come and get a cup of tea,’ over the hedge dividing the two gardens, had him giving Sally a farewell nod of his head before he dutifully headed for the back door where Sally could see Nancy standing with her apron on over her floral-patterned summer frock, her hands on her hips.

‘Poor Arthur,’ Olive commented, coming down the path with a tray of tea and two scones from the batch she had just baked, just in time to hear her neighbour calling out to her husband. ‘He is rather henpecked. No butter for the scones, I’m afraid, but luckily I’ve got plenty of jam left from the batch I made last year. I’m really glad now that we’ve got rationing that I decided to sort out a stock cupboard last summer.’

‘I’ve been thinking that perhaps we could get half a dozen hens,’ Sally began five minutes later when the two of them were settled under the shade of the apple tree, enjoying their tea and scones. ‘There’s room for them, and I noticed a sign in the hardware shop as I came past the other day, advertising hen coops.’

‘Well, I can certainly use the fresh eggs,’ Olive agreed, ‘but you can’t be expected to look after the gardens and some hens, Sally. I feel a bit guilty as it is, watching you working so hard.’

‘I enjoy it,’ Sally told her truthfully, ‘and you and Tilly and Agnes all give me a hand.’

‘Well, if you really want to take it on, I’m all for it,’ Olive approved. She looked up at the sky through the leaves on the apple tree.

‘I can’t imagine what it will be like to be invaded by the Germans, but that’s what everyone says Hitler will try to do now that he’s got France.’

‘It won’t be as easy to invade us as it was to invade France,’ Sally said stoutly.

Olive gave her a wan smile. ‘That’s what everyone said about the Maginot Line – that he’d never cross it – but he did. I keep thinking of all those people who tried to escape.’ She put her hand to her mouth and Sally knew that she was thinking of the women and children who had been killed by the Luftwaffe. She herself had heard the most graphic and awful stories from some of the injured soldiers they’d got at Barts, the words bursting from them as though they couldn’t contain the horror of what they’d witnessed.

‘If they do invade, they’re bound to march on London.’

‘We’ve got the RAF to hold them back, don’t forget,’ Sally tried to comfort her.

Olive gave her a troubled look. ‘I worry for Tilly and Agnes, and you too, Sally. You are young with your whole lives in front of you, and I can’t help thinking that if Hitler does invade you’d all be safer out of London.’

‘If he succeeds in invading,’ Sally told her gently. ‘I personally don’t think he will. If those of us who live and work here did desert London then what kind of message would that send out to him, and to our boys who are fighting for this country and for us? The BEF have taken a terrific blow to their pride. We need to show them, as well as Hitler, that we have faith in them.’

Olive looked at her lodger, taking in Sally’s determined expression. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed, adding, ‘You have such a wise head on your young shoulders, Sally.’

‘My mother’s head, or rather her teaching.’ Sally’s smile softened and then disappeared, to be replaced by a look of sadness. ‘I miss her so much. The trained nurse in me knew that she couldn’t survive and that she would die, but as her daughter I couldn’t bear to lose her.’

‘Your father is still alive,’ Olive began, but Sally shook her head.

‘Not for me. I have no father any more. My father ceased to exist for me the day he married Morag. The man I knew and loved as my father could not have performed such a betrayal. I must finish this weeding before I have to go in and get changed for work. Arthur has recommended that I put tea leaves soaked in vinegar round the lettuces to keep the slugs off. I’ve never heard of that remedy before.’

Recognising that Sally had changed the subject because she did not want to talk about her father, Olive began to gather up their empty cups and plates. She couldn’t really, after all, expect someone who had been as close to her mother as Sally had obviously been to understand the ache of emptiness and the fear of aloneless that came with the loss of a husband or wife, or to accept that sometimes the widowed partner felt driven by a need to fill that empty gap in their lives, especially when it was a man who had been widowed. Women were expected by their own sex to wear their widow-hood as a form of respectability; men, on the other hand, were seen by that sex as poor creatures in need of the comfort that only a new wife could give. A widow’s respectability was a fragile garment, easily tarnished and damaged, her behaviour constantly under the eagle-eyed inspection of other women. Olive could still remember the lectures she had been given by her mother-in-law in the months following her own widowhood, about the need to preserve her ‘respectability’ and that of her late husband’s family. She had had no desire to marry again, though, Olive admitted. All she had wanted to do then was pour her love into her precious daughter. Then? What she meant was that all she had ever wanted to do was pour her love into Tilly, Olive told herself firmly.

‘Well, I don’t know why you’ve wasted your money on giving me this stuff, Dulcie, I really don’t. Mind you, Edith can probably make use of it.’

Dulcie stared at her mother in outrage, opening her mouth to tell her that if she didn’t want her present then Dulcie would take it back because there was no way that Edith was going to have it, her angry words converted to a yell of pain when Rick very deliberately nipped her arm.

‘I’ll have a bruise on my arm now,’ she complained to him half an hour later as they left the house together, Dulcie to return to Article Row and Rick heading for the local lads’ boxing club to meet up with his friends, ‘What did you have to go and pinch me like that for anyway?’

‘You know why,’ Rick told her.

‘Mum had no right saying she was going to give my present to her to Edith,’ Dulcie objected. ‘Why does ruddy Edith have to have everything? Mum said that she was going to give her that scent you gave her as well.’

‘That’s Mum’s way, and making a song and dance about it won’t change anything,’ Rick advised as they set off down the street. ‘Edith’s always been her favourite.’

‘Well, I don’t know why,’ Dulcie complained, still aggrieved.

‘Ma’s proud of Edith, Dulcie, because of her singing. Remember how when we were kids Ma used to tell us about how she’d won a prize for singing herself when she was at school?’

Dulcie nodded.

‘Well, I reckon Ma favours Edith because of that. She wants Edith to have what she never did.’

‘A greasy-hands-all-over-you agent, you mean?’ Dulcie asked cynically.

Rick sighed and gave her a rueful look. ‘You know the trouble with you, Dulcie, is that you can’t just let things be. You’ve got to make your point, and have the last word, even if it means getting folks’ backs up.’

They’d crossed the road and turned into another street whilst they’d been talking, any attempt Dulcie might have made to respond to Rick’s accusation made impossible by the growing volume of noise.

‘What’s that?’ Dulcie protested, raising her voice.

‘Sounds like someone’s having a bit of a set-to,’ Rick told her unnecessarily as they both heard the sound of breaking glass joining the chants and jeers of angry raised voices.

Street fights weren’t an uncommon occurrence in their neighbourhood, so Dulcie shrugged. Then they turned the corner and she could see the gang of youths up ahead.

‘That’s Mr Manelli’s ice-cream shop they’re throwing bricks at.’ Dulcie stopped walking. ‘They’ve got no right doing that. Ever so nice to us when we were kids, Mr Manelli always was, giving us an extra scoop of ice cream when we took Ma’s baking bowl round on a Saturday to get it filled up for tea.’

As several more bricks were thrown into the broken window they heard a woman’s screams from inside the shop.

‘Come on, Rick. We’ve got to stop them.’

The sight of Dulcie, of all people, advancing on the jeering violent crowd of boys held Rick motionless for a second. But then he set off after her, calling out to the attacking mob, ‘Come on, lads, what’s going on?’ The firm sound of his voice and the fact that he was in uniform were enough to bring a momentary halt to the attack. The youths turned to look at him, whilst Dulcie, to his bemusement, marched in between them and the shop front, her hands on her hips.

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, doing summat like this to Mr Manelli,’ she told them. ‘What’s he ever done to you?’

‘He’s an Eyetie and a traitor, that’s what,’ the largest of the youths told Dulcie glowering at her. ‘A ruddy Fascist, and him and his family want running out of the street and putting in prison like all the rest of his kind.’

‘Give over, lads,’ Rick counselled. ‘We all know Mr Manelli – he’s no traitor.’

‘Well, if that’s the case then how come the police have took him and the other Eyeties off to prison?’ one of the other youths demanded, giving Rick a challenging look. ‘My dad heard it from the police themselves. They’ve had orders to round up all the Eyeties and shove them in goal on account of them being Fascists and spies. ’Oo knows what’s bin going on inside there?’

The mood of the mob was turning ugly, Rick recognised. If they chose to go on the attack again he certainly couldn’t stop them by himself, and anyway, his first duty was to protect his sister, who was still standing in front of the smashed shop window.

Mentally Rick cursed Dulcie for getting them involved. He had no quarrel with the Manellis, but he couldn’t hold the mob off by himself if they chose to turn their anger against him and Dulcie. Out of the corner of his eye he saw their local policeman crossing the top of the street. Quickly he hailed him, relieved to see him stop in mid-stride.

The sight of a burly policeman coming towards them at the run was enough to frighten off the mob, who quickly dispersed, leaving Rick to explain to Constable Green what had happened.

‘That’s the trouble when feelings start running high. Folks start taking the law into their own hands,’ was his verdict on Rick’s explanation of the mob’s attack on the ice-cream shop.

Over an hour later, when Rick and Dulcie were finally on their own again, a still visibly terrified and sobbing Mrs Manelli having been handed over by Constable Green into the care of her neighbours and fellow Italians, Rick was finally free to ask his sister, ‘What was that all about?’

‘What do you mean?’ Dulcie affected not to understand him.

Rick heaved a patient sigh and pointed out, ‘We could have had those young idiots turning on us. Why take that risk?’

‘Because I felt like it,’ was the only answer Dulcie would give him.

Women and sisters – especially this particular sister, Rick thought in bewilderment – he would never understand them.

As she made her way back to Article Row, Dulcie was no more inclined to answer Rick’s question to herself than she had been to him, other than to think that it had been high time she proved to a few people who thought they were so much better than her that they weren’t. People like Edith, and Olive, and some of the girls at work, who thought they could look down on her and get away with it. And him too, that Raphael, who had tried to make out he was so much better than she was. Well, they weren’t ’cos it was her that had had the guts to stand her ground and helped old Mrs Manelli, and not them!

Rick was just about to leave the boxing club and make his way home, when Raphael found him, having heard the story of Mrs Manelli’s rescue whilst he’d been at the headquarters of the Italian Fascist Organisation.

He’d gone there in the hope of picking up some information about what had happened to the men who had been arrested in the early hours on 10 June, taken from their homes without warning under suspicion of being active Fascists. One of those men had been his grandfather, and naturally Raphael was concerned for him, an old man of eighty-one who was stubborn enough and foolish enough to cling to Fascism out of sheer cussedness.

The Italian communities, in Britain’s main cities were all in shock over the night-time raids on their homes, their men being removed by the police, taken from their homes in the clothes they’d pulled on after being woken from their sleep, with no information being given about what was going to happen to them except that they were to be interned as enemy aliens.

Raphael had telephoned his father in Liverpool to discover that the situation there was even worse than it was in London. In London it was only those who were believed to be active Fascists who had been arrested. In Liverpool there had been a wholesale taking into custody of a huge swathe of the entire Italian adult male population. Only those, like his father, who had naturalised and become British citizens legally had escaped arrest.

Naturally the Italian community had flocked to their Fascist clubs, both for information and for comfort, especially those women whose husbands or fathers or sons had been taken.

In the heightened atmosphere within the club, the tale of Rick’s heroic bravery spread like wild-fire, causing Raphael to ask where he might find him. Since the Manellis were distant relatives and had no son of their own, it fell to him to thank Mrs Manelli’s rescuer for his timely intervention.

Armed with the information, from a couple of young Italians who knew him, that he would more than likely find Rick Simmonds at his boxing club, and instructions about which bus he would need to catch to get there, Raphael headed for the bus stop, recognising only after he had left the club that Mrs Manelli’s rescuer had the same surname as Dulcie. Raphael shrugged. Perhaps Simmonds was as common a surname to the East End as his own was to the Italian community. He had no intention of wasting time allowing someone like Dulcie to take up residence in his thoughts.

The warmth of the light June nights had brought people out into the city to stroll in its parks and see its shows, perhaps, Raphael suspected, aware of what was happening to France and thinking that they might as well enjoy their freedom whilst they could, although it was obvious that the people’s mood was sombre. Everyone you talked to spoke in hushed or anxious voices about their belief that Hitler would try to invade Britain, often without admitting to their unspoken fear that he might succeed.

Like all those who had been rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, Raphael had been granted two weeks’ leave. That leave was already half over and in another few days he would be rejoining his unit of the Royal Engineers. He just hoped that before that happened they would know what had happened to his grandfather, not only for his grandfather’s sake but, more importantly, for his father’s. Raphael knew how desperately worried his father would be and how guilty he would feel, even though in Raphael’s opinion his father had no reason to feel any guilt. He had, after all, over the years made endless attempts to be reconciled with his father, and it was the older man who had stubbornly refused all Raphael’s father’s attempts to make peace.

In the boxing club, Rick let the conversation going on all around him wash over him, as he stood at the bar. The club was busy tonight with young men in shorts and singlets working on the club’s three punch bags, or lifting weights whilst the club’s hopeful bantam weight contender for a local title was sparring in the ring under the stern eye of one of the ex-professional boxers who trained the young talent.

The building was run down, with chunks of plaster missing from the walls here and there, left like that, so the story went, by a pro from before the Great War, who’d had a habit of punching the wall if one of his sparring bouts hadn’t gone well. Worn dark brown linoleum covered the stone floor, and in the winter the club got damp from the leak in the roof, which had been repaired with a sheet of corrugated iron.

It was here that deals were done that weren’t always strictly on the right side of the law, from matches that were fixed to the selling of black market cigarettes. There was a small room off the bar that everyone knew not to go into when the door was closed because that meant that there was a ‘meeting’ going on that involved ‘business’.

Rick still came to the club because he had boxed there for a while as a boy, and it was where his friends gathered, but his membership was merely a social one now. Tonight, though, Tom, his comrade in arms who had joined up with him and who had also gone through the hell of Dunkirk, wasn’t in, and Rick wasn’t in the mood to join in the speculation and talk of the possibility of Hitler invading England. Unlike him the other lads here hadn’t tasted the reality of war as yet, some of them still raw recruits who had only just finished their basic training, others still waiting for their call-up papers and several in reserved occupations. How could they know how it felt to have been driven back by the Germans – to have to retreat as the BEF had done, abandoning its weapons and its artillery as it did so.

Rick knew he would never forget the silence that had greeted them when they had finally been put ashore in England, or the way that those dealing with the practicalities of their repatriation had avoided looking directly at them, as though ashamed of them. A shame they had all shared.

And if the shame of the retreat was hard to bear then the memories of what that retreat had involved were even harder to endure.

Rick was just about to leave when Raphael walked into the club, heading straight for the bar where he asked after Rick.

‘Rick Simmonds?’ the barman repeated. ‘He’s over there, heading for the door,’ nodding his head in Rick’s direction, and then adding warningly, ‘If you’ve come here looking for trouble, mate, you’ve chosen the wrong place and the wrong man. Well thought of hereabouts, Rick is.’

‘It’s nothing like that – quite the opposite,’ Raphael assured him, the sound of his Liverpool accent causing a couple of the regulars who were in the Merchant Navy to glance across at him in recognition of a voice from a well-known port.

Rick was outside before Raphael caught up with him, turning round when Raphael called out, ‘Wait up, mate.’

Like the merchant seamen, Rick recognised Raphael’s Liverpool accent. A quick glance at Raphael revealed a tall dark-haired broad-shouldered man with a soldier’s bearing and stride, wearing army uniform and the badge of the Royal Engineers. Rick wasn’t really in the mood for company but something about the other man’s determined stride made him wait.

‘Rick, Rick Simmonds?’ Raphael asked. When Rick nodded, Raphael extended his hand to shake Rick’s.

‘Raphael Androtti. I just heard down at the local Italian club about what you did tonight for Caterina Manelli, and I wanted to thank you. She’s family – a distant cousin.’

‘It isn’t me you should really be thanking,’ Rick told him. ‘It’s my sister Dulcie. She was the one that got in between the mob and the shop.’ Rick shook his head, betraying his continuing disbelief that Dulcie of all people should have done such a thing and taken such a risk.

So Dulcie was related to Rick. Now there was a coincidence.

‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw what she’d done,’ Rick admitted. ‘She’s not exactly the type to put herself at risk for someone else, isn’t Dulcie.’ He spoke openly, somehow finding the sight of Raphael’s uniform making it easy for him to do so. Raphael might be Italian but he was a soldier, like Rick himself, and right now that formed a bond between them that meant Rick could speak frankly to the other man.

‘Of course, once she’d got herself involved I’d no option other than to do the same. She is my sister, after all.’ Rick shook his head. ‘Women. I’ll never understand them, doing something as risky and daft as that, just because old Mr Manelli used to put an extra dollop of ice cream in our bowl when we were kids.’

‘I obviously owe your sister my thanks as well then,’ Raphael told Rick. ‘It’s a bit late for me to call round at your home now, but—’

‘You wouldn’t find her there anyway,’ Rick stopped him. ‘Dulcie doesn’t live at home. She’s got digs in Holborn and a landlady who doesn’t take too kindly to men she doesn’t know turning up on her doorstep asking for her lodgers. Your best bet would be to go to Selfridges. Dulcie works there in the cosmetics department.’

Now was the time for him to come clean and tell her brother that he already knew Dulcie and where she worked, Raphael knew. That would be the right and honest thing to do. He battled with his conscience. He liked what he’d seen of Rick, and as a man honesty was important to him. However, he knew that Rick wouldn’t like hearing about how he had come to know his sister – as her brother he was bound to be protective of her; that was only natural. In the circumstances it was best that he didn’t say anything, Raphael decided, but that didn’t stop him feeling guilty.

‘I’ll go and see her at Selfridges, as you suggest.’

‘Will Mr Manelli be all right?’ Rick asked him.

‘I hope so.’ Raphael reached into his tunic pocket to remove a packet of service-issue cigarettes, offering the pack first to Rick, who took one, and then lighting Rick’s cigarette for him before lighting one for himself.

‘Been in the army long?’ he asked Rick.

‘Joined up just in time to be sent out to France with the BEF. And you?’

‘Same. We were working on an airfield down near Nantes when the order came to pull out. We were lucky. We got taken off the beach at St-Nazaire by a Finnish vessel and taken to Falmouth. Not that we thought we were going to be lucky at first, not when we’d seen all the RAF lot being given preference to get on board this warship they’d got at St-Nazaire, packed with women and children as well as the RAF. Poor sods. There wasn’t any room for us.

Raphael narrowed his eyes and looked into the distance before telling Rick, ‘The warship got bombed by the Luftwaffe – those on board didn’t stand a chance.’

Both men drew heavily on their cigarettes in shared silence, each knowing why the other didn’t speak.

Olive was in the kitchen when Dulcie came in. The girls had already gone up to bed taking their cocoa with them, but Olive had hung on downstairs. Not because she was concerned about the fact that Dulcie was still out, like she would have been had she been Tilly or Agnes. It was no business of hers what time Dulcie came in or where she’d been, only she had said that she was going over to her parents’ because it was her mother’s birthday, and the look on her face had said that it wasn’t a visit she was particularly looking forward to.

Her walk back to Article Row took Dulcie around forty-five minutes and had given her time to think about what she had done, and once the euphoria of feeling that she’d triumphed over all those who thought they could look down on her by doing something brave had worn off, Dulcie had started to recognise the risk she had taken and to feel a bit shaky. The last thing she wanted as she walked into the kitchen, intent on making herself a spirit-strengthening cup of tea, was Olive, and the sight of her sitting in a chair as though waiting for her return brought Dulcie to an abrupt halt. No one had ever waited up for her. It was Edith her own mother worried about and sat up anxiously for, refusing to go to bed until she knew she was safely home. When Dulcie had pointed out that she had never waited up for her, her mother had simply said that there wasn’t any need for her to do that because she knew that Dulcie was perfectly capable of looking after herself. Not that Olive would be waiting up for her to get in, of course. It would be Tilly and Agnes she was sitting there for.

‘Tilly and Agnes not in yet?’ she asked Olive, as she headed for the kettle. Her mouth felt dry and her head ached painfully.

‘Yes. They’ve gone up,’ Olive told her, adding without intending to, ‘You’re later back than I expected.’

Dulcie had turned towards her, the kettle she had just filled in her hand, the light falling sharply onto her, causing Olive to gasp in shock when she saw the dried blood on Dulcie’s cheek where a sharp-edged pebble – one of a handful thrown by one of the mob – had caught her and cut her skin. There were other marks on her clothes, dusty marks, and another cut on her leg.

‘Dulcie, what on earth’s happened to you?’ Olive demanded, getting up to go and take the kettle from her.

Immediately Olive got close to her Dulcie recoiled, telling her abruptly and dismissively, ‘There’s no need to make a fuss. It’s nothing. Just some lads who’d had too much to drink.’

When Olive’s eyes widened in shock, Dulcie realised that her landlady was jumping to the wrong conclusion and she told her fiercely, ‘It wasn’t anything like that. I’m not daft enough to let any lads try doing something they shouldn’t with me. It was all this fuss about the Italians being Fascists and being taken away. A group of lads were throwing stones at the Manellis’ shop window. Me and Rick told them to leave it out. Mr Manelli wasn’t even there. The police had already taken him away.’

Olive had heard about the mobs going round attacking the premises of Italian businesses whilst she’d been at her WVS meeting and had been horrified by their behaviour, but somehow she hadn’t expected to hear that Dulcie had stepped in to prevent one of those attacks.

Dulcie’s mouth thinned when she saw Olive’s expression and guessed what she was thinking.

‘That’s the trouble with people like you,’ she told her sharply. ‘You think that unless a person goes running around wearing something like a St John Ambulance uniform they’re nothing, and you can look down on them.’

‘Dulcie, that’s not true,’ Olive denied, but even as she spoke she recognised that there was a grain of truth in what Dulcie was saying.

‘Yes it is,’ Dulcie told her flatly.

‘The doctor’s been again this morning to number forty-nine,’ Nancy announced over the hedge.

Olive paused on the steps to her back door, balancing the weight of the washing she had just been to collect from the local Chinese laundry more securely on her raised knee.

‘It can’t be long now, not with the doctor coming nearly every day. I said to my Arthur when they moved in that I didn’t reckon the husband would last very long.’

Olive felt that sometimes Nancy took too keen an interest in such morbid subjects, almost relishing it when one of her dire warnings became true.

‘Mr Long is very poorly at the moment,’ she felt obliged to agree, whilst pointing out, ‘But his son, Christopher, has told Tilly that they have every hope that he will rally and make some recovery. Apparently this has proved to be the case on more than one occasion in the past.’

Nancy merely shook her head, adding darkly, ‘And that’s another thing. If I was you I wouldn’t let your Tilly get too involved with that boy of theirs, not with him being one of the conscientious objects. There’s no saying where it might lead. Folk like them like putting the wrong ideas into other folk’s heads, and you don’t want your Tilly getting them kind of wrong ideas.’

‘I don’t think for one minute that anything like that is going to happen, Nancy. Tilly and Agnes have simply taken Christopher under their wing a bit because they are being good neighbours.’

‘Well, you can say that, but—’ Nancy began.

Her neighbour was like a dog relishing a particularly juicy bone it did not want to give up, Olive thought ruefully as she determinedly changed the subject.

‘Has Linda settled in with her in-laws in Sussex now?’

Linda, Nancy’s daughter, and her son-in-law, Henry, had evacuated themselves and their seven-year-old son to Sussex to live with her in-laws shortly after war had been announced.

‘Oh, yes. Ever so glad to have her there, Henry’s mother is, and Henry’s got a job working in partnership with an electrician that’s already set up there. Mind you, Linda says that it’s Henry that’s bringing in most of the work, not this other chap, and she reckons that it’s Henry who should be the senior partner. Henry’s mother’s lucky to have them living with her. There’s nothing Linda doesn’t know about running a house like it should be run. Of course, she’s got me to thank for that. I have to say that Henry’s mother doesn’t have the same standards I’ve taught Linda. When we went and stayed with them the Christmas before last, there was that much dust on the picture rail in her hallway that she couldn’t have dusted up there all year.’

Olive nodded. She knew from experience that there was nothing Nancy liked more than boasting about her daughter, but the weight of the laundry was beginning to make her arms ache so she excused herself and unlocked her back door.

Once inside she made her way straight upstairs so that she could put the clean linen in the airing cupboard, ready to change the beds on Monday.

When Nancy had first found out that Olive was sending her sheets and pillowcases to the Chinese laundry instead of washing them herself, she had affected to be shocked, but Olive didn’t care. With five beds to change it would have been impossible for her to get all the bedding washed, dried and ironed every week, on top of everything else she had to do, including her WVS work.

Once she’d put the clean laundry away, Olive glanced at her watch and, seeing that it was almost half-past ten, she hurried back downstairs so that she could make herself a cup of tea and then sit down and enjoy it whilst she listened to Music While You Work on the wireless.

It was whilst she was listening to that that Olive found her thoughts wandering to the Longs. She wondered if she should call and ask Mrs Long if there was anything she could do to help, such as fetching her shopping for her. She didn’t want her to think that she was being nosy, though, especially when Mr Long was so obviously poorly. Olive had no fears that Tilly might be getting too involved with Christopher in the way that Nancy had tried to imply. She knew her daughter and it was perfectly plain to her that Tilly thought of Christopher only as a friend. She certainly wasn’t attracted to him in the way that she had been to Dulcie’s handsome brother. Thinking of that reminded Olive of her exchange with Dulcie. She hadn’t intended to get Dulcie’s back up, and in fact she had actually, to her own surprise, felt concerned for her when she’d seen her cuts and bruises, but Dulcie wasn’t someone who made it easy for others to be sympathetic towards her, Olive thought wryly. Quite the opposite.

She would go and see Mrs Long after she had had her dinner, she decided. It wouldn’t be neigh-bourly not to do so. Olive could still remember how she had felt during the final weeks of her own husband’s life. Of course, she had been younger than Mrs Long, and they had been living here with her in-laws, but you never forgot the awfulness of knowing someone you loved was going to die. She would certainly never forget the hours she had lain awake at night listening to his racking cough, and then the silences that had followed it, hardly daring to breathe herself as she listened desperately in the darkness for the sound of his breathing and only relaxing when she heard it.

Olive had decided to do a ham salad for every-one’s evening meal, seeing as it was so warm, so she opened the tin of ham she intended to use, taking a thin sliver off the ham to make herself a sandwich for her lunch. The thin scraping of margarine she put on the bread didn’t look very appealing, but Olive knew that with a bit of mustard and some lettuce her sandwich would be nice and tasty.

Once she’d eaten she checked the larder to make sure that there were enough boiled potatoes left over from the previous evening’s meal for her to make some potato salad to go with the ham.

After removing her apron, Olive went upstairs to comb her hair and make sure that she looked tidy, setting her neat off-white straw hat on top of her newly brushed curls, and then opening her dressing table drawer to remove a clean pair of white gloves.

As she opened her front door, the Misses Barker from next door were walking up the Row, and naturally Olive stopped to speak to them. Spinster sisters and retired teachers, they always looked spick and span. Physically the sisters were very different. Miss Jane Barker, the elder of the two, was tall and thin, with a long bony face, whilst Miss Mary Barker was smaller and plump. Olive’s late husband, who had been taught by them at the local church school before they had retired, had often said that whilst Miss Jane favoured the stick, Miss Mary favoured the carrot, and that between them they had ensured that even the most unruly of boys along with the shyest of girls learned their ABC and their times tables.

Once ‘good afternoons’ had been exchanged, it was Miss Mary who told Olive excitedly, ‘We’ve just seen the vicar and he’s asked us if we’d like to think about helping out at the junior school. It seems that with so many families bringing their children back from evacuation, the Government is having to open some of the schools they closed at the beginning of the war.’

After they had parted company Olive reflected that the thought of going back to teaching had brought a definite spring to the sisters’ steps.

When she reached number 49 she could see that the curtains were half drawn across the windows of the front room. Rather hesitantly she knocked on the front door, wondering if she had done the right thing when Mrs Long opened it and Olive saw how tired and distressed she looked.

‘I’m sorry,’ Olive apologised. ‘Perhaps I’ve called at a bad time. I won’t stay. I heard that Mr Long isn’t very well and I just wanted you to know that if there’s anything I can do to help – collect your shopping for you, that kind of thing.’

‘Please do come in,’ Mrs Long urged her, holding the door open wide, so that Olive felt obliged to step inside.

The immaculately clean hallway possessed a smell that Olive instantly recognised: the smell of carbolic and sickness and a certain fetid lack of air that came from trying to keep an invalid warm and a house clean.

Olive followed Mrs Long to the back parlour, in shape and size the same as her own but, because this house was tenanted, slightly shabby and down at heel. Dark curtains hung at the window, making the room dim and depressing. The small leather settee under the window had shiny patches on its arms where the fabric had worn thin, and the cupboards either side of the fireplace were painted dark brown, like the skirtings and doors. A table covered in a chenille cloth was pushed up against the wall adjoining the two rooms, three chairs tucked into it so that there was just enough room for the old-fashioned winged armchair with a leather footstool in front of it drawn up close to the fire: Mr Long’s chair, Olive guessed.

‘I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I’m expecting the doctor any minute,’ Mrs Long told her. ‘It’s kind of you to offer to help but Christopher, our son, is very good and he calls and gets the shopping for me on his way home from work.’ An expression of sadness shadowed her face as she spoke.

Poor woman, she was no doubt as anxious about her son as she was about her husband, albeit in a different way, Olive thought compassionately. Christopher’s views on the war were bound to make life difficult for him, and what mother wouldn’t wish for a happy easy path through life for her child? Olive felt so sorry for Mrs Long. Thin and careworn, with an anxious expression and grey hair pulled back into a bun, she was looking into the hallway through the door she’d left open the whole time she was talking to Olive, her voice barely raised above a whisper. Olive, who had once been in her position herself, knew exactly what she was going through but was reluctant to say anything about her own experience. Mr Long was, after all, still alive, and Olive knew how desperately one clung to that and how desperately one hoped for a recovery. Telling her that she had lost her own husband might not be a tactful thing to do.

‘Yes, this is the very latest colour,’ Dulcie assured the customer who had spent the last half an hour hesitating over which lipstick to choose.

‘And you can assure me that this lipstick was made here in England and not America? Only my husband wouldn’t approve at all if I’d bought a lipstick that had taken up space in one of our convoys that could have been used for something much more essential to the war effort. He has a cousin in the navy, you see, and he’s very conscious of the dangers to our brave sailors in crossing the Atlantic.’

‘Our buyer would never countenance buying stock that risked sailors’ lives,’ Dulcie assured her customer without having a clue as to whether or not what she was saying was true, and privately thinking that her husband must be mean if he hadn’t ever bought a bit of something to carry in his pocket and bring home for his wife.

Her reassurance seemed to convince her customer, who told her, ‘Very well then, I’ll take the lipstick.’

Last night’s attack on the Manellis’ shop had left Dulcie with several bruises and the angry cut on her face, which she’d done her best to disguise with some powder. Of course, the other girls had been curious about it, so she’d lied and said that she’d been scratched by a cat.

What had happened to the Italians was all over the papers, and at dinner time there’d been some snide comments from Arlene about the likelihood of ‘Dulcie’s Italian’ being picked up by the police and imprisoned as an enemy alien.

For her own part, Dulcie had pretended not to notice, whilst talking to Lizzie in a very firm voice about how Raphael was in the Royal Engineers and how he was only at home because he’d been at Dunkirk. Not that she had done that for Raphael’s sake, of course; she had done it for her own. She certainly wasn’t going to have Arlene making out that she was romantically connected to an enemy alien.

The staff entrance to Selfridges was a dark shadowy place that seemed always to smell of oil and exhaust fumes, from the delivery vans and cigarette smoke from the workmen who hung around the entrance, snatching quick fags, and the late afternoon heat of the city emphasised those odours.

London’s air as a whole smelled and tasted dry and dusty to Raphael. For him it lacked the bracing salt tang of Liverpool’s air, blown in over the Liverpool bar on winds from the Atlantic.

He’d arrived here well before six, determined not to miss Dulcie, knowing this was his last chance to see her and that he had a train to catch this evening to Liverpool, where his parents were waiting for news of his grandfather. Now he was leaning against a wall in the shadows opposite the store, waiting for her. He had managed to telephone his parents to discuss the dawn raids and they in turn had told him what had been happening in Liverpool. Not to them – Raphael’s father was a British citizen, after all. He worked as warehouse manager down on the docks, a good job and one he had wanted Raphael to follow him into until he had realised how determined Raphael was to train as an engineer. That was how he had come to be in the Royal Engineers instead of the regular army.

Raphael saw Dulcie emerging from the building. He pushed himself off the wall, straightening up as he strode purposefully towards her.

Dulcie saw him and stopped walking, a surge of triumph and vindication reinforcing what she told herself she had already known: that although he had pretended not to find her attractive, he had been drawn to her all along. Irresistible, that was what she was, Dulcie decided smugly. Well, if he thought that all he had to do was turn up here to persuade her to grant him the favour of a date, he was quickly going to learn that it wasn’t.

She waited for him to approach her, smiling a triumphant smile when he reached her, but instead of pleading with her to go out with him, he told her instead, ‘I haven’t got much time. I’m leaving for Liverpool this evening, but before I go I just wanted to thank you for what you did for Mrs Manelli. She’s my father’s second cousin, and since she doesn’t have anyone of her own to thank you I’m doing it on her behalf.’

Raphael looked down at his feet in their polished army boots. Coming here like this was a duty he would rather not have had. Dulcie wasn’t the type of girl he admired, and yet last night she had done something he admired very much indeed. He could see his own face in the gloss he worked into his boots.

He exhaled and raised his head, telling Dulcie, ‘I’m not going to pretend that you weren’t one of the last people I’d thought would do something like that, and I’m not going to apologise for thinking it either, but I am grateful to you.’

He hadn’t come here to ask her out, and far from finding her irresistible he was practically insulting her. Dulcie glared at him.

‘Grateful is it?’ she challenged him. ‘Well, you don’t sound very grateful, and as for not apologising for thinking I was one of the last people you’d thought would do what I did, that just goes to show that you shouldn’t go judging people and thinking things about them that aren’t true. Just because I don’t go round acting all holy and soft, that doesn’t mean I don’t know right from wrong. Those lads had no call to go acting like they did. Always kind to us when we were kids, Mr Manelli was, even if he was an Eyetie.’

Raphael inclined his head in acknowledgement of her comment and then pushed back the cuff of his tunic to look at his watch.

Dulcie watched him. He was impatient to leave and she certainly didn’t want to prevent him from leaving, so why, as he started to turn away from her, did she have to stop him by asking, ‘Did you get to see your granddad?’

His, ‘No,’ was terse, and a signal that he didn’t want to waste any more time talking to her, Dulcie suspected.

Well, that was all right by her; she didn’t want to waste her time talking to him. She hadn’t asked him to come here. He’d chosen to do that himself. She turned away in angry indignation.

‘He refused to see me, and then yesterday morning he was rounded up with the others. They’re keeping them at Brompton Oratory School for now.’ Raphael paused and then said bitterly, ‘He’s eighty-one and for all his fiery Fascist talk, he’s about as much danger to this country as a day-old child. They took them all before it was light; most of them were bundled off so fast they weren’t even allowed to get dressed. I took some clothes down to the police station where they were holding my grandfather but they refused to let me see him.’

‘What will happen to them?’ She wasn’t really interested, Dulcie assured herself. She wasn’t so soft that she cared what happened to them, and yet deep down she knew that she did feel something that was more than mere curiosity.

He had no idea why he was talking to Dulcie in so much detail, Raphael acknowledged, unless it was simply because he needed to get what he was feeling off his chest to someone whose own emotions wouldn’t be lacerated by what had happened.

‘We don’t know officially as yet. Although we have heard that the London detainees will be transferred to a camp at Lingfield racecourse in Surrey, prior to being interned. I must go otherwise I shall miss my train. Thank you again for what you did.’

‘I don’t want your thanks. I didn’t do it for you.’ The words were out before Dulcie could stop herself from saying them, causing her to hold her breath in case Raphael challenged her.

But to her relief he simply said, ‘You may not want my thanks and my gratitude but you have them anyway.’

And then he was gone, striding away from her, tall and broad-shouldered in his military uniform, quickly caught up in the bustle and the crowds of Oxford Street.

She’d definitely go to the Palais this coming Saturday, Dulcie decided. She hadn’t gone last Saturday – for one thing her mother’s birthday present had left her a bit short of money, and for another she hadn’t really felt like it. Not because Tilly and Agnes had shaken their heads when she’d asked them if they wanted to go with her – she’d been doing them the favour, not the other way around and if they chose not to accept it then that was their loss, not hers. Personally she’d thought them daft for going on duty with that St John Ambulance lot they’d got so involved with. In their shoes she’d have come up with an excuse rather than miss out on a good night’s dancing.

Chapter Twenty-One

‘Tilly, Agnes seems very quiet. The two of you haven’t had a fall-out, have you?’ Olive asked her daughter, taking advantage of the fact that the two of them were alone as Agnes had been asked to stay on at work a bit longer because they were short-handed.

‘No, of course not,’ Tilly assured her mother. She had noticed herself that Agnes seemed a bit low but she had put that down to all the bad news in the papers. It made Tilly feel low herself.

The kitchen was warm with the smell of ironing, the kitchen door open to let in some fresh air. Tilly was helping her mother by folding the ironing, the two of them working companionably together. Sally was working nights and Dulcie had gone home to see her brother, who would be rejoining his regiment once his leave came to an end. Tilly gave a small sigh. She had really liked Dulcie’s brother and when she had first seen him she had created all manner of romantic fantasies inside her head, most of which involved her doing something really brave, like saving his life, after which he clasped her to his chest and gazed deep into her eyes, telling her how wonderful she was.

Dunkirk, and what she had seen and heard from the soldiers rescued from France’s beaches, though, had driven such silly school girlish daydreams right out of her head. Men weren’t fairytale princes; they were human flesh and blood, marked by the things they had witnessed.

‘I went to see Mrs Long today,’ Olive told Tilly.

Tilly put down the petticoat she had been folding. ‘Christopher’s mother?’

Olive nodded, testing the heat of her iron on a damp handkerchief. Some women might spit on their irons to test their heat, but Olive’s mother, having been in service, thoroughly disapproved of such common habits and had taught Olive to dampen a handkerchief and iron that instead. Having satisfied herself that it was hot enough to iron her smart cream linen summer skirt, she turned it inside out and slipped it on to the ironing board, carefully straightening its pleats.

‘Is Christopher’s father going to die?’ Tilly asked anxiously. ‘Christopher thinks he is. He doesn’t say so but I can tell.’

‘I think it’s possible that he may, Tilly,’ Olive answered her honestly, ‘although naturally one hopes that he will not. It will be very hard for Mrs Long and Christopher if he does.’

‘It must have been hard for you, Mum, when Dad died.’

They rarely talked about Jim’s death. Although Olive had always made a point of talking to Tilly about her father, she had tried to talk about him in a light-hearted happy manner, wanting Tilly to know the best of her father rather than the dreadful final weeks of his life.

Standing at the sink, dampening the clean tea towel she was going to use to press her skirt with Olive then turned round and looked at her daughter. Tilly was growing up so quickly now. The war had done that.

‘Yes,’ she said simply, ‘it was hard. I had your grandparents, of course. Your grandmother took your father’s death very hard. I understand now much better than I did then how she must have felt. To have raised a child to adulthood and then to lose them is an unthinkable, an unbearable pain.’

‘You must have missed Dad so much.’

‘Yes I did. But I had you and that made it easier for me, Tilly. I had you to love and look after and I knew that your dad would want me to concentrate on you and not on his death. It will be harder for Christopher’s mother than it was for me because they have been together so much longer, and hard for Christopher too.’

‘Poor Christopher. His life is already difficult, with him being a pacifist. You have to be very brave to stick to your beliefs when other people don’t always agree with them. I don’t really agree with them myself, but that doesn’t stop me being friends with Christopher.’

Her daughter definitely wasn’t in any danger of falling in love with Christopher Long, no matter what Nancy might want to think, Olive acknowledged as she pressed the iron down hard on the pleats, filling the kitchen with sizzling steam and the smell of damp cloth.

Agnes felt so wretched. Even more wretched than she had felt when she had been told that she’d have to leave the orphanage, as she sat in the small back room off the booking office, hidden from public view, eating the fish-paste sandwiches Olive had made up for her lunch. She hadn’t seen Ted for days, not since he had told her that he didn’t think there was any need for them to have tea together any more now that she had settled in at the booking office. And she suspected that he was deliberately avoiding her.

Les, the new driver, on the other hand, she seemed to be bumping into all the time, but Les wasn’t Ted. He didn’t have Ted’s kind smile nor his cheery whistle. She’d never thought that this would happen and that Ted wouldn’t want to see her again. They had been such good friends – the best of friends – and Agnes missed him dreadfully. She couldn’t sleep properly at night for thinking about him and worrying that he might have guessed that what she felt for him was more than just friendship.

Agnes didn’t know when she had first realised that what she wanted most of all was to spend the rest of her life with Ted. She’d certainly known there was something at Christmas when he had hugged her and then kissed her quickly before releasing her. She’d wanted him to kiss her again but he hadn’t and now he never would. A hard lump of emotion filled her chest, making it ache. She felt so ashamed of herself, feeling like she did about Ted when he didn’t want her to. That was a fine way to repay his kindness to her. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Tilly how she felt. Tilly was full of plans for what they could do together if the war continued, and once they were old enough. They could join the ATS or the WRNS, Tilly had said, and properly do their bit for their country. Agnes didn’t want to go into uniform; she wanted to stay here where she could at least be close to Ted, but of course she hadn’t told Tilly that, because she knew that Tilly would worry about her if she thought that she was unhappy over Ted. Tilly was like that.

She was so lucky to be living at number 13, Agnes acknowledged. She’d even got used to Dulcie’s sharp tongue and had grown to realise that it didn’t really mean anything and that it was just Dulcie’s way. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere where she could be happier, except of course if she was married to Ted and living with him. But that was never going to happen, Agnes acknowledged sadly.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Lying on the lawn under the shade of the apple tree in the back garden of number 13, taking a break from heeling in the new raspberry canes and blackcurrant bushes for Sally’s fruit garden, Tilly looked up through the leaves towards the brilliant blue, early evening August sky. In the distance towards the south she could see white vapour trails and tiny barely discernible planes. Tilly’s heart thudded with pride at the sight of them even though her stomach was churning with anxiety.

July had heralded the beginning of Hitler’s attempt to destroy the RAF and thus leave the South Coast defenceless and ready for his invasion, and now, in mid-August, what was being called the Battle of Britain had begun in earnest, with aerial ‘dogfights’ taking place in the skies night and day, whilst the ground-based gun batteries did their bit to try to help the RAF.

The noise of heavy gunfire had now become almost as familiar to Londoners as the cries of its barrow boys and newspaper sellers.

There couldn’t be many people who wouldn’t now recognise the heart-thrilling shape of an RAF Spitfire – or the fear-inducing sight of an enemy German plane, so familiar was the almost daily battle in the skies over the South of England between the RAF and the Luftwaffe.

London, especially Drury Lane and Piccadilly, were filled with men and women in uniform, especially RAF uniforms from Fighter Command’s men based in the South of England, coming to the city to enjoy their leave by visiting the theatre and nightclubs.

British uniforms weren’t the only ones to be seen either. In addition to the Free French of General de Gaulle, there were also Polish and Czech fighter pilots. And now that official military support from the colonies had arrived, there were servicemen from Australia, wearing their uniform hats pinned up at one side, from New Zealand, from Canada and, most recently, a contingent of airmen from Southern Rhodesia.

The Aussies were the most friendly and cheerful, and Tilly had been stopped more than once in the street by a smiling Australian wanting to know if she would ‘show him where Buckingham Palace was’, or making some other excuse to flirt with her. Such men though always took her refusal in good part, and Tilly had danced with some of them when the four of them – herself, Agnes, Dulcie and Sally – had gone to the Hammersmith Palais to celebrate Agnes’s birthday in early July.

It was her own birthday on 7 September, a Saturday, and it had been agreed that since her mother would be on duty with the WVS that afternoon, her ‘birthday tea’ would be put off until the Sunday, and the four girls would have tea out together in London before going on to the Hammersmith Palais.

Tilly had felt quite envious of her mother earlier in the month when she had seen George Formby, who was filming Spare a Copper at the Ealing Studios, helping with the collection of scrap metal, something that Olive’s WVS group took very seriously indeed. So seriously in fact that each member of the group had given one of their pans to the collection.

Tilly and Agnes had a St John Ambulance meeting this evening. Christopher wouldn’t be going, though. He hadn’t attended the last couple of weeks’ meetings following the death of his father, feeling that his mother needed his presence at home. Poor Christopher. He had loved his father so much, and his death had increased his loathing of war.

As she left work for the day, Dulcie’s thoughts were occupied with whether or not she was going to allow the good-looking Canadian, who had danced with her at the Palais the previous Saturday, to take her to the cinema, and admiring the nice tan the summer sunshine was giving her legs, meaning that she didn’t have to wear stockings, so that she didn’t see the man waiting for her until she had walked past him. He had called her name in a low urgent voice that had her spinning round in a mixture of disbelief anger and excitement, unable to stop herself from exclaiming, ‘David!’

He was in uniform and it suited him, adding to the devil-may-care manner that secretly she found so attractive. Not that she would ever admit that to him or anyone else, of course, especially now that he was married.

‘Dulcie.’ His delight at seeing her was obvious as he laughed and caught hold of her round the waist, swinging her off her feet and into his arms.

The unexpectedly familiar smell of him enveloped her – after all, his cologne was one they sold in Selfridges – further weakening her resistance. David, with his air of danger and excitement, appealed to a part of herself she had to struggle to control. But she did have to control it, she reminded herself.

‘Put me down,’ she demanded. ‘Someone might see us, and tell your wife, and she certainly wouldn’t approve of you being here, would she?’

‘I don’t care whether Lydia approves or not. She has her life, and I have mine.’

‘The life of an RAF pilot who wants to do things that a married man isn’t supposed to do,’ Dulcie challenged him as he released her.

Her comment made him look deep into her eyes and tell her in a husky voice, ‘There are so many things I’d like to do with you, Dulcie. I’ve thought about you a lot. We could have had a lot of fun together . . . we still can.’

Things like skulking around at the back of Selfridges, as though it were a back alley. Well, she wasn’t the back alley type, and she wasn’t going to be sweet-talked by David into becoming one, no matter how many jerky little bumps her heart gave just because he was here with her.

‘Like I’ve already told you, I don’t go out with married men,’ Dulcie reminded him, before asking sharply, ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

‘I’m on leave and in London – where else would I be but here hoping to see you whilst I still can. We’ve lost four pilots from our squadron this week, and two the week before. We have to live as much as we can whilst we can, Dulcie, because who knows which of us will be the next? I know what you said but I had to come and see you.’

He had moved out of the shadows now and it gave Dulcie a shock to see how the sunlight revealed harsh new lines either side of his mouth and a grimness to his expression. It shocked her even more to see how his hand trembled as he removed his cigarettes from his pocket and lit them each one.

Unfamiliar feelings of fear and panic turned her own body weak and cold. David was the last person she would have expected to talk about death.

‘I’ve got only tonight here. Lydia’s arranged some ruddy party she wants me to attend tomorrow – I should have gone straight home. I’ve got only a forty-eight-hour pass, but I told her I needed to come to London on RAF business. I have just this evening, Dulcie. Spend it with me. We could go out for dinner and then on to a club,’ David urged her.

To her own shock, for a heartbeat of time she was almost tempted to agree, but David was a married man now even if he had claimed to her before his marriage that marrying Lydia would never be anything more than a duty he had been obliged to perform. David meant nothing to Lydia as a man, Dulcie suspected, it was his suitability and his connections she had married.

It wasn’t because she felt she had a moral responsibility to recognise and protect their marriage that Dulcie was hesitating, though. It was because her instincts urged her to protect her own reputation. Once a girl crossed that line of respectability there could be no going back. Especially not when the man concerned was married. To Dulcie her reputation and her respectability were just as valuable assets as her beauty – important bargaining counters when the day came when she did want to get married and she had selected the husband she wanted. Just as Lydia and David’s marriage was founded on her family’s wealth and his family’s country connections, she would be in a better position to get the kind of husband she wanted if she had something of value to trade with herself.

Dulcie knew all this by instinct, so that it only took a moment’s hesitation before she was shaking her head and saying, ‘I can’t.’

‘Yes you can. Oh, Dulcie, please,’ David begged her reaching for her hand.

On the other side of the road, unobserved by either of them, Raphael, who had given in to an impulse to call and say ‘hello’ to Dulcie whilst he was in the area, saw David take Dulcie’s hand.

He was in London on family business – Enrico Manelli, like his own grandfather and along with over seven hundred other Italians, had lost his life when the Arandora Star, the ship transporting many of the Italian ‘aliens’ from Liverpool to Canada for internment, had been sunk by a German U-boat.

Some families had lost whole generations of male relatives, since, during their incarceration at Warth Mills near Bury in Lancashire, fearing that they would be separated, families had privately swapped papers so that family groups could stay together.

The trauma of so many deaths had affected everyone in the Italian community. Raphael’s own father had been consumed with guilt about Raphael’s grandfather and the fact that he had died without them being reconciled. Raphael had come to London during his leave to see Caterina Manelli to offer her his condolences. He didn’t know where the sudden impulse to come here to Selfridges to see Dulcie had come from, and had excused his behaviour to himself by telling himself that Dulcie might want to know what had happened to the Manellis.

Watching her now, though, he could see that his presence was hardly likely to be welcomed. So he turned and walked away.

Tugging her hand free from David’s, Dulcie repeated, ‘I can’t,’ adding, ‘I’m already seeing someone this evening.’ It wasn’t a complete lie, because she was anticipating seeing the Canadian. ‘I must go.’ She didn’t want to stay in case David tried to persuade her to change her mind.

‘Dulcie, please.’

There was real anguish in his voice but she refused to listen to it, walking away from him so quickly that she was almost running, the flared skirt of her summer dress swirling round her legs in the speed of her retreat.

Agnes had been lingering so long outside the steps to Chancery Lane underground, that she was beginning to feel sick with anxiety and the fear of disappointment. She was waiting here after work in the hope of seeing Ted, whom she knew would be coming on duty. Agnes knew that what she was doing was ‘wrong’, and that it wasn’t acceptable for a girl to lie in wait for a man, especially when that man had already made it plain that he didn’t want anything more to do with her, but not knowing what it was she had done wrong and why Ted was ignoring her was making her feel so miserable that she had to see him.

It was a busy time of the evening, with people going home from work and others starting evening shifts, in addition to all the people in uniform, so many more of them now than there had been at the start of the war. Even Mr Smith had joined the Home Guard, as the Local Defence Volunteers were now called.

Agnes stiffened as she caught sight of Ted. He hadn’t seen her – yet. Determined not to lose the opportunity to speak with him she screwed up all her courage and plunged into the mêlée of people, her heart pounding so heavily she thought it would burst through her skin. She reached the door to the café at the same time as Ted, the colour leaving his face when he saw her.

Already he was turning away from her. Desperately, Agnes grabbed hold of his arm, pleading with him, ‘Ted, please, what’s wrong? Why don’t you want to be friends with me any more?’

The sight of Agnes’s pale pleading face made Ted want to take her in his arms and hold her tightly, not something he would normally have even considered doing in public and in full daylight, but such was the effect of seeing her after all the weeks of avoiding her that his emotions threatened to get the better of him. But he couldn’t and must not let them, he reminded himself. Things weren’t good at home. His younger sister had been poorly all summer, coughing and wheezing so badly that they’d had to have the doctor, and that had cost money, even though they were in a hospital savings plan. The doctor had said that it was the dry dusty air in London that was affecting little Sonia’s lungs and that she’d be better off living in the country, but there was no way Ted’s mother would allow her two young daughters to be evacuated without her, and they were over the age at which she could have been evacuated with them, so all they’d been able to do was to buy the medicine the doctor had recommended and keep Sonia inside as much as possible. Ted’s sister’s illness meant that his mother needed his wages even more. Only the previous night, lying awake in bed listening to Sonia coughing, Ted had known that the door had finally closed on any chance he might have had of courting Agnes.

Now, manfully, Ted put his own feelings to one side.

‘The thing is, Agnes,’ he began carefully, ‘when you and me used to get together you was still finding your feet at work, so to speak. It was like, well, a sort of business relationship. I couldn’t stand back and see you get yourself in a mess and perhaps leave the underground. I reckoned it was my duty to help you out a bit.’ He could see Agnes’s face crumpling, and he had to harden his heart and deny his own feelings, telling himself that it was better this way and that he was doing it for her. There was no sense in him starting something between them that could never go anywhere. Better to be cruel now to be kind to her for the future.

A business relationship? Did Ted mean that they had never really been friends at all? He must do.

‘It’s different now. You’ve settled in, and there’s no call for you and me to get together any more. I reckon you’re a real credit to what I’ve taught you and to yourself,’ he added, trying to soften the blow. He was hurting her, he knew, but it was surely better to hurt her now?

So now she knew. Ted hadn’t fallen out of friends with her, because he had never thought of them as friends in the first place. Agnes felt mortified. She wanted to run away and hide, but of course she couldn’t. She could only nod her head and accept what Ted was saying to her, and then let him go.

She cried all the way home. In fact she cried so much that she could hardly see where she was going, only managing to stop just before she reached Article Row, extracting her handkerchief from her pocket and doing her best to rub away the signs of her misery.

Olive wasn’t deceived, though. She was alone in the kitchen when Agnes came in, her head down and her shoulders bowed in defeat.

Down at the bottom of the garden the greenhouse door was open and she could see Tilly inside it, picking the tomatoes Olive had told her they needed for tea. Knowing that she would be several minutes, Olive seized her chance, going over to Agnes, taking hold of her hands and telling her gently, ‘I know that something’s upsetting you, Agnes. You haven’t been yourself for weeks now. Why don’t you tell me what it is?’

Olive’s sympathy was too much for Agnes’s fragile composure. Fresh tears started to fall as the story of her feelings for Ted and his lack of them for her came flooding out in fits and starts.

Once Olive had discreetly established that nothing that shouldn’t have happened between them had happened, and that Ted had not taken advantage of Agnes in any kind of way, Olive led Agnes to a chair and pushed her gently into it.

Young love could hurt so much. She could still remember the pain she had felt when she had discovered that the boy she had secretly admired for weeks had sent another girl a Valentine card.

‘I know what’s happened hurts dreadfully, Agnes, but it will get better, I promise you. Why, I shouldn’t be surprised if this time next year there’ll be another boy in your life who makes you forget Ted completely.’

‘No one could ever make me forget Ted,’ Agnes sobbed, crumpling her already damp handkerchief into a wet ball.

‘Oh, Agnes . . .’ Olive kneeled down in front of her and took her in her arms, rocking her as though she were a small child. There was nothing she could say or do to make things better, Olive knew. Compassionately, she stroked Agnes’s head.

Poor child. She was so young and so vulnerable. Somehow Olive couldn’t see her own Tilly being so overwhelmed and cast down with misery in the same situation, but then Tilly hadn’t experienced the same loss and childhood that Agnes had. She’d have to have a word with Tilly, and Sally too, to warn them not to mention Ted to Agnes.

‘Tilly will be coming in, in a minute,’ she told Agnes, releasing her and getting up. ‘Why don’t you go up upstairs and bathe your eyes with some cold water, Agnes, and then when you come down again I’ll have a nice hot cup of tea waiting for you?’

The day did bring some good news, though. Well, sort of good news, Olive thought as they all listened to Winston Churchill’s wireless broadcast to the nation that evening, silence between them as they concentrated whilst he spoke, Olive’s eyes filling with tears as he thundered the words.

‘The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All our hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day . . .’

When the speech finally came to an end, all of them exchanged looks, the emotional silence between them, as they digested what Mr Churchill had said, broken by Olive saying firmly, ‘I think we should have a cup of tea.’

Sally was still thinking about Winston Churchill’s speech the following day at work. His words stiffened one’s spine and lifted one’s spirits.

All the serving men on men’s surgical were talking about it and Sister had had to issue a ban on them discussing it for an hour to calm things down in the ward before the consultants’ morning rounds.

Privately all the nurses knew from the evacuated staff that one harsh reality of the RAF’s fierce defence of the country was the number of young men in military and other hospitals with the most dreadful kinds of wounds, not just missing limbs but terrible burns and disfiguring facial injuries. She herself this morning, when Matron had called for volunteers willing to go down to help out when needed on the now busy wards of the evacuated main hospital, had added her name to the list.

She told George about this later in the day as they left the British Museum together, George having asked Sally if she’d like to attend one of Myra Hess’s lunchtime concerts there.

‘I’ll be on duty down there as well,’ George told her.

Sally wouldn’t be leaving London permanently, of course; relief staff would only be called upon for short periods of a couple of days or so when necessary, and Sally hoped it wasn’t too selfish of her to feel glad about that. She had settled in so well at number 13 that it felt like home to her now and she would have been reluctant to leave.

The music had been uplifting and, combined with her existing feelings, had Sally surreptitiously wiping the betraying signs of emotion from her eyes as she and George stepped out into the afternoon sunshine.

She saw that George had noticed, though, and as they became part of the crowd walking away from the British Museum he reached into his pocket and produced an immaculately clean handkerchief, which he handed to her with such an understanding smile that Sally warmed even more to him, that feeling growing when he confessed, ‘I’ve never been able to listen to Beethoven without being in danger of disgracing myself and being overcome with my feelings, and Myra Hess does play so very well.’

‘Doesn’t she just,’ Sally agreed, carefully patting her eyes, before handing George’s handkerchief back to him with her thanks. After that somehow it seemed perfectly natural and right that he should take hold of her hand, and that when he suggested that we hop on a bus and take advantage of our time off and the good weather to walk in Hyde Park,’ Sally had no hesitation in agreeing.

‘This is what I miss about home,’ George told her later when, still hand in hand, they were walking through the park. ‘Greenery, fields and the countryside.’

‘Hyde Park is hardly the countryside,’ Sally laughed.

‘No it isn’t, but at least it’s green,’ George smiled.

The park was busy with others doing exactly what they were doing – strolling in the sunshine – in the main groups of young men and women in various uniforms.

‘I do so admire the young men who’ve come from the Dominions and the Commonwealth to fight for Britain,’ Sally told George, as a group of Aussies with their distinctive hats strolled past, obviously off duty.

‘We come because we want to, because we do love our Mother Country,’ George told her solemnly, stopping walking, his own voice low as he stared into the distance, perhaps seeing, Sally thought, a different landscape of green fields halfway across the world.

Unable to stop herself, she squeezed his hand, her eyes full of the emotion she was feeling as he turned back to her. They were standing in the shadow of one of the trees, and when, after a brief look round, George bent his head and kissed her, Sally didn’t push him away. It was a tender kiss, a sweet kiss full of hope and promise, she recognised, as she nestled closer to him and he took advantage of her movement to take her properly in his arms, a new beginning for her, for them both, with the birth of a new relationship.

George’s kiss was firm but respectful, and it touched Sally’s heart that she could feel his heart thudding so fast and the faint tremble of his arms. He was such a genuine, likeable, nice man, so easy to be with. And easy to love?

‘I’ve been wanting to do that since I first saw you,’ George confessed after he stopped kissing her, which made it easy for Sally smile and easy too for her to put serious thoughts of love to one side.

Their kiss had changed things, though. Now, as they continued their walk, they moved much closer together, George’s arm now round her waist, holding her to him, and when they stopped to watch some young naval ratings rowing on the Serpentine, it felt natural and right to Sally to put her head on George’s shoulder.

‘I’ve enjoyed today,’ George told her as they made their way back to the hospital.

‘So have I,’ Sally told him.

They looked at one another and smiled, and Sally felt her heart lift.

The future suddenly looked much brighter, despite the threat of war, and the sadness she had felt for those poor wounded boys.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Things had changed an awful lot since the first time Tilly and Agnes had gone dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, Olive reflected ruefully, as she watched all four young women giving their appearances final checks in the hall mirror. In the small space the rustle of their party frocks mingled with the sound of high heels on the linoleum either side of the hall runner.

‘How do we look, Mum?’ Tilly demanded, twirling into the back room, her face alight with happiness and excitement.

‘You all look lovely,’ Olive assured her truthfully. She had been so anxious that first night she had watched them leave; now her concern was more for the young men who would have to deal with three stunning-looking confident young women, all intent on dazzling them, and one shy one whose quiet sadness was almost bound to draw their compassion.

Tonight would be Tilly’s first really ‘grown-up’ birthday, and the first she would not be celebrating at home, although of course they were having a traditional birthday tea tomorrow, at Tilly’s request. Today, though, the four girls would be having their tea at a Joe Lyons restaurant before going on to the Palais, and Tilly was as excited about that as though they were dining at somewhere like the Ritz. If Olive suspected that Sally might have preferred to spend her Saturday off with her doctor friend, who she mentioned increasingly in her chats, Olive wasn’t going to spoil either Tilly’s evening or Sally’s generosity by saying as much. Even Dulcie seemed to have made an effort on Tilly’s behalf, as Tilly had told her that Dulcie had instructed the young Canadian airman she had met at the Palais to make sure he brought plenty of his pals along with him, informing Olive earnestly, ‘so that we have lots of dashing partners. Dulcie says the Canadians are best, Mum, because they look smart in their uniforms, and they’re very respectful. Dulcie says they don’t flirt like the Australians, or the Poles, so we won’t have to worry about them making a nuisance of themselves.’

Tilly and Agnes were wearing the pretty floral sateen cotton dresses Olive had had made for them after another trip to the Portobello Market. This time there had been several characters there who Olive had thought distinctly shady, a sign, so Sergeant Dawson had told her when she had mentioned this to him, of the increase in black market trading.

Sally’s dress was pale blue with darker blue polka dots, the colour suiting her auburn hair and pale skin, whilst Dulcie was wearing a pink cotton skirt, the cotton embroidered with small black bows, and a black fine-knit top with pink bows at the neckline and on the puffed sleeves.

It was a warm enough night for the girls to insist that they didn’t need heavy coats and that their simple stoles would do.

Tilly looked so grown up in her new dress, wearing the pearl clip-on earrings she had persuaded Olive to let her borrow. The war was changing their lives, making the girls grow up so fast.

‘You know what to do if the air-raid siren goes off?’ Olive couldn’t help saying, forced into a rueful smile when four voices chorused together, ‘Yes, run for the nearest shelter.’

It had been a shock at first when German bombers had been seen over London on the night of 24 August, but the RAF had seen them off and bombed Berlin in retaliation. Although there had been plenty of scares since then, with the air-raid sirens going off at night with increasing frequency, disturbing everyone’s sleep when they all had to troop out of their beds to the nearest shelter – which in the case of Olive’s household was the Anderson shelter in the garden – after the first shock Londoners had begun to take the air raids in their stride. After all, they had the ground batteries with their heavy-duty ‘ackack’ guns, and the RAF, to protect them.

The girls had decided to have their tea at the Joe Lyons in Leicester Square but two buses had gone past them without stopping, obviously full already.

‘Here’s another, and it’s slowing down,’ Tilly cheered.

‘It’s going to Covent Garden, though, not Leicester Square,’ Agnes pointed out.

‘Never mind, let’s just get on it,’ said Dulcie, giving Tilly a push in the direction of the now stationary bus. ‘We can walk the rest of the way.’

Tilly hesitated but the conductor was getting impatient and called out, ‘Are you girls getting on or not?’

‘We’re getting on,’ said Sally, stepping forward, the others following on behind her, clambering onto the platform and holding on tight.

‘It’s standing room only down here,’ the conductor told them, reaching for his ticket machine. ‘Upstairs, if you want a seat.’

Taking care to keep her skirt away from the stairs, Tilly went up first, followed by the others, half gasping and half groaning in protest as the bus lurched to an unwieldy halt at the next stop to allow more passengers to get on.

Agnes gave the café where she and Ted used to meet a forlorn look from the seat where the four of them had squashed up together at the back of the bus, and Tilly, who knew from her mother what was causing Agnes’s low spirits, affected not to notice, trying to distract her by pointing out a group of French military on the other side of the road, insisting that one of them had definitely looked like General de Gaulle.

‘Pooh, the French, they’re nothing. The Canadians are much better,’ Dulcie announced as their bus came to a halt at a stop just short of Covent Garden.

Covent Garden was relatively quiet as it was too early for the evening’s ballet-goers. The girls decided to cut across to Leicester Square via the backstreets to avoid the crowds Dulcie had warned them would be filling the square.

‘You should have seen it yesterday. You could hardly move for uniforms, most of them RAF. I suppose they deserve a bit of time off after all this fighting they’ve been doing.’

They had already walked down one street, when Sally broke into Dulcie’s conversation to demand, ‘What’s that?’ She looked upwards towards the sound they could all now hear – a sound that was growing louder and more ominous by the second, its dull droning now becoming a rumbling roar.

Up above them the sky was darkening, the light shut out by the mass of aircraft swarming towards the city.

‘Oh Gawd, it’s them. It’s the Germans,’ Dulcie gasped, reverting to the cockney accent she was normally so careful to keep hidden.

Tilly gulped in shocked silence, feeling Agnes’s arm trembling against her own.

Sally continued to stare upwards in horror. There must be hundreds of them: black bombers surrounded, escorted, protected by fighter planes, too many of them to count, the noise they were making as they flew over making conversation impossible. It was like a nightmare, so unbelievable and unthinkable that surely it couldn’t be happening. Not here in London. The Germans could not be here overhead in such a huge force that they almost blocked the light out of the sky. Where was the RAF? Why were the ack-ack guns silent?

In disbelieving terror the girls stood rooted to the spot as though shocked into a trance.

‘They’re heading for the docks,’ Dulcie, who knew her East End, broke the silence, mouthing the words to them, the four of them wincing as, hard on her words, they heard the sound of an explosion quickly followed by another and then another, huge plumes of smoke billowing up toward the skyline.

Never had the wail of air-raid sirens sounded so unnerving and doom laden.

‘Come on,’ Sally yelled. ‘The nearest shelter will be the one in Leicester Square.’ They started to run, their speed hampered by their heels and the summer-heat-greasy cobbles of the pavementless alley.

‘Oh, ruddy hell,’ Dulcie swore as her heel caught between two cobbles. The air around them was thick with the acrid smell of smoke drifting in from the bombed docks, the sound of sirens filling the air. Dulcie tried to free her heel with an impatient movement of her foot and then gasped in shock when the heel refused to come free, her own violent movement pitching her forward onto the cobbles. She put out her hands to save herself but it was too late.

It was Tilly looking back who saw her, calling out to the other two, ‘Stop. Dulcie’s fallen over.’

Sally tried to catch hold of her, all too aware of their danger, but Tilly had already turned back, Agnes going with her, leaving Sally with no option but to do the same. They were so vulnerable out here in plain view, and she was thankful that it was the docks and the East End the bombers were attacking, and not the city itself.

‘Dulcie, are you all right?’ Tilly dropped down on her knees at the same time as Dulcie struggled to get up.

There was blood on her forehead and what looked like a large bruise already swelling above her eye.

‘Of course I—’ she began, her sudden gasp of pain slicing off her words, as she sank down again.

‘I think Dulcie’s hurt,’ Tilly said to Sally, who had just reached them. ‘There’s blood on her forehead and—’

‘Dulcie?’ Sally queried, immediately the professional trained nurse.

‘It’s my ankle. I must have turned it when I fell. I’ll be all right once I’m standing up.’

‘We’ll help you,’ Tilly began, but Sally shook her head, her heart sinking as she looked at the unnatural angle of Dulcie’s foot, and saw the bruise on her forehead.

‘Well, come on then,’ Dulcie demanded impatiently. ‘Help me up.’

‘Dulcie, I need to look at your ankle. I think you may have broken it, and you’ve hurt your head. Do you feel sick, at all, or dizzy,’ Sally asked her crisply. There was no point in her mincing her words, but she didn’t want to frighten Dulcie more than was necessary by telling her that the bump to her head could result in delayed concussion.

‘No, I don’t feel sick,’ Dulcie told her crossly. ‘I just want to get out of here.’

The sound of another bomb exploding was so loud that she had to stop speaking.

‘You can’t,’ Sally had to tell her. ‘You won’t be able to walk on that ankle. We’ll need to get you some proper medical help.’

As a nurse Sally could recognise from the look on Dulcie’s face how shocked and frightened she was, even though she was trying not to show it, but there was nothing she could do to help her.

It was too late now to regret coming down this empty back alley with no sign of either a shelter or an ARP post. Normally Sally would have stayed with Dulcie and sent Tilly and Agnes to get help, but she was very much aware that Olive, even though she had not said so, expected her to keep the two younger girls safe. As she worried about who needed her the most, a fighter plane screamed overhead, causing them all to duck and Dulcie to wince with fresh pain.

Tears were rolling down Agnes’s face, and for once even Tilly was subdued and quiet.

But then it was Sally’s turn to be shocked when Dulcie told her in a thin but determined voice, with a jerk of her head towards Tilly and Agnes, ‘You’d better get those two to safety, ’cos if anything were to happen to them Olive would have my guts for garters. I’ll be all right here until you can send some help. Jerry isn’t going to come dropping any bombs down this back alley when he’s got the whole of the docks and the East End to bomb.’

They would leave her anyway, Dulcie reasoned to herself as she spoke, so she might as well be the one to send them away as lie here and wait for them to say they were going to leave her. In their shoes she wouldn’t waste a minute – not even a second – in running for safety, so why should they? And she certainly wasn’t going to have them thinking she was scared, even though she was. So scared that she secretly felt like begging them not to leave her, but of course she couldn’t do that. Her pride wouldn’t let her. If her own mother was here right now she probably wouldn’t stay with her because she’d be worrying about her precious Edith. She was nothing to these girls, just like they were nothing to her. She’d be daft to think that they’d care about her feeling frightened and alone.

What Dulcie said made sense, Sally knew, but before she could say anything, Agnes, who up until now had been crying silently, suddenly stopped and said fiercely, ‘We can’t leave Dulcie here. It wouldn’t be right. I’m staying with her.’

Dulcie stared at Agnes. Agnes wanted to stay with her. Agnes, who she had tormented and, yes, bullied and who was so unsure of herself that she never said a word, was standing there telling Sally that she was staying. Dulcie couldn’t believe it. Agnes’s face became a tearful unfocused image she had to blink her eyes to get back into focus. She wasn’t crying, or if she was it was only because of the pain in her ankle and because her head hurt, and not because of the aching pang of emotion she could feel inside her heart.

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Tilly agreed. ‘If Dulcie has to stay then we’re staying with her. We’re all in this together, friends together, and friends don’t go and leave each other, they stick together.’

Friends! Dulcie had never wanted friends. She’d never believed in them. Friends was just a word that meant palling up with someone because they were useful to you, and then dropping them when they weren’t. It didn’t mean risking your own life to be with them when you were free to walk away from danger and they weren’t.

‘It’s best if you go and get help, Sally,’ Tilly added. ‘’Cos you’ll know what to say, and me and Agnes will stay here with Dulcie.’

Tilly plonked herself down on the cobbles next to Dulcie as she spoke, the skirt of her dress billowing out around her.

She wasn’t going to be able to budge Tilly and Agnes, Sally recognised. Dropping down on her haunches she demanded, ‘Let me have another look at your ankle, Dulcie.’ Perhaps it was only sprained and not broken. But another closer inspection showed Sally that Dulcie’s ankle was quite definitely broken.

‘Should we try and get Dulcie’s shoe off?’ Tilly asked, eyeing the now swollen flesh puffing over the strap on Dulcie’s shoe.

Sally shook her head. ‘No, her shoe will help to give the broken bone some support.’

In the immediate anxiety of worrying about what to do, the ongoing bombing was something that Sally had pushed to the back of her mind, but now it couldn’t be ignored. Over towards the docks and the East End, they could still hear bombs exploding. It felt as though they’d been here in the alleyway for hours but a glance at her watch told Sally that they had actually been there only just over fifteen minutes.

‘We can’t stay here, it’s too dangerous.’ The words were spoken before Sally could halt them. ‘I’ll stay with Dulcie. You two run for the shelter.’

‘No,’ Tilly refused firmly. ‘If we can’t all go, then we should all stay. We’re in this together, and we should stick together.’

There was a moment’s silence, during which they all looked at one another, and then winced as another bomb exploded.

‘If me and Tilly made a chair with our hands, perhaps we could carry Dulcie and you could run on ahead, Sally, to get help. We used to make chairs that way at the orphanage,’ Agnes suggested

Sally’s training told her not to risk moving a patient until they had been assessed by a doctor but with the lives of three other young women to worry about, she knew Agnes’s suggestion made sense.

‘We could try,’ she agreed. The three of them could try to get Dulcie to her feet and if they succeeded then she could support Dulcie whilst the other two formed their chair.

Sally took a deep breath, warning Dulcie, ‘It’s going to hurt when we get you upright. Whatever you do don’t try to move your foot or put any weight on it.’

Dulcie nodded, resolving inwardly that no matter how much it hurt she would manage to deal with the pain. And not just for her own sake, she recognised with a stab of shock; she wanted to do it for the sake of the girls who had offered to stay with her.

Five minutes later, sweating and feeling sick from the pain, like a knife slicing into her, that had been beyond anything she had ever had to bear, Dulcie was standing up, her head and her ankle pounding. Sally supported her on the side of her broken ankle, whilst Tilly and Agnes stood behind her carefully forming a seat for her with their hands.

Dulcie had more guts than she had expected, Sally admitted as she lowered her patient onto the makeshift ‘seat’ as gently as she could. She knew how much pain Dulcie was in from her broken ankle, and she was concerned too about that bump on her head, but Dulcie had not uttered one word of complaint or one protest when they had lifted her up. Sally’s estimation of her had risen a great deal as she witnessed this stoicism.

They could make only slow progress, Dulcie’s arms round Tilly and Agnes as they carried her, all three of them urging Sally to go on ahead, Tilly calling out to her that they would be fine, before telling Dulcie, ‘It’s a pity we haven’t got some of those Canadian airmen here to help us.’

‘What, and let them see me looking like this?’ Dulcie joked back. ‘No, thank you.’

It couldn’t be far to the nearest ARP post, surely, Sally reasoned as she ran to the end of the alleyway following the dogleg of a slightly wider empty street round until, to her relief, she could see where it opened out into Leicester Square.

The bombing seemed to have stopped, and wasn’t that an ARP post at the bottom of the road?

‘Hey, you, miss. What are you doing out here? Can’t you see there’s a bombing raid going on? Didn’t you hear the sirens going off?’

The man confronting her was wearing a tin helmet, an ARP band on his arm, his face and voice both evidencing his irritation.

‘There’s been an accident. My friends need help. One of them has broken her ankle. I’m a trained nurse but we need help,’ Sally told him breathlessly.

‘What the devil . . . ?’ The ARP man turned back to the post, with its covering of sandbags, and shouted into it, ‘Hey, Fred and Bert, get out here, will you?’

Two men emerged, one of them cramming his tin hat onto his head as he did so, the other finishing a cup of tea.

‘We’ve got some girls needing help. What . . . ?’ he ducked automatically as up above them the sky darkened as the German bombers turned for home. The sound filling the air now was of their engines and thankfully not the explosion of more bombs.

The other girls had just reached the first part of the dogleg and had paused for a minute because Tilly had a bit of a stitch in her side, when they too saw the German aircraft overhead.

They’d just started off again, Tilly and Agnes both ignoring the pull on their now aching muscles from the effort of carrying Dulcie, when suddenly one of the fighters escorting the bombers peeled off, screaming from the sky to head directly toward them.

For a second they all froze, and then Dulcie told the other two to run. ‘Go, leave me . . . just run.’

‘Quick,’ Tilly urged Agnes, ‘that doorway over there.’

It wasn’t easy to run and carry Dulcie but somehow they managed it, sheltering in the narrow doorway as best they could whilst machine-gun fire from the fighter plane rat-a-tat-tatted over the cobbles in flares of bright burning flames. The plane had come down so low that they could see the pilot in his helmet as the fighter’s guns fired another burst of bullets, the girls wincing as some struck the side of the building, narrowly missing the doorway.

‘What are we going to do if he comes back?’ Agnes asked.

‘You two are going to run, now, before he does,’ Dulcie answered ruthlessly.

‘We aren’t leaving you,’ Tilly told her. She was more frightened than she had ever been in the whole of her life, but there was no way she was going to leave Dulcie here on her own to be gunned down by that German pilot.

‘He’ll get us if he turns back,’ Dulcie told her grimly. ‘He knows we’re here.’

‘Then he’ll just have to get us, won’t he, Agnes?’ Tilly declared. ‘Because we aren’t leaving you.’

Agnes nodded. She was surprised how calm she felt. But then what did it matter if she was killed? Not having Ted in her life any more was worse than being killed. At least that only hurt you once. Not seeing Ted hurt her every day.

‘Tilly, Agnes, where are you?’

‘That’s Sally,’ Tilly said unnecessarily, poking her head round the corner of their protective doorway to call back, ‘We’re here.’

At the other end of the street, the German plane banked and turned, with menacing intent, but then unexpectedly, and to their relief, instead of coming back it rose up and turned again before heading south at speed, leaving the sky clear for the girls to see the Spitfire following it, chasing it across the sky.

Thankfully, the three girls exhaled, no words necessary as they clung together. The smoke-tainted London air had never tasted sweeter.

Sally and the three men ran down the street, Sally offering up thanks for the girls’ safety. When she had seen the deathly bulk of that plane filling the other end of the street, she had been so sure that they would be killed. Now the relief was making her feel shaky and weak, but she was a nurse and she still had a job to do. She pushed her own feelings to one side, as they reached the girls and the men took charge, making a fresh, stronger chair for Dulcie.

‘We’ll need to get her to hospital,’ Sally told the men. ‘Barts will be best. I work there.’

‘We’ll try and get an ambulance sorted out for you once we get back to the post, although you’ll probably have a long wait. The docks and the East End have taken a real hammering. There’s hundreds been left dead, we’ve heard.’

Now that it was over the girls were silent, simply looking at one another with marvelling gazes, too filled with relief at their escape to be able to speak, other than to thank their rescuers. Besides, there was no need for words now. The bond that had been formed between them all in those terror-filled moments when they thought they would die, meant that they each knew exactly what the others were thinking and feeling.

In the air-raid shelter with the other WVS workers, Olive prayed that the girls would be all right. The Germans were bombing the docks and the East End, not Hammersmith, she tried to reassure herself. Mrs Weaver, the oldest member of their group, got out the knitting she always seemed to have with her. Olive envied her, wishing that she too had something to occupy her hands, even if the only thing occupying her thoughts was the safety of her daughter.

The girls had just reached Barts, Sally having decided that she would feel happier if Tilly and Agnes were with her rather than leaving them to make their way from the ARP post to the air-raid shelter and from there to home on their own, when the second wave of bombs were dropped on the docks and the East End.

The hospital was busy with the constant arrival of casualties from the bombing, and although strictly speaking Sally did not work in the Emergency Department, and was not on duty anyway, she insisted on being allowed to go there with Dulcie, pushing her wheelchair herself, to save the overbusy porters having to do so.

‘What’s going to happen to me?’ Dulcie demanded.

‘A doctor will examine you and then you’ll have to have that ankle set and put in plaster. They’ll take a look at that bump on your head and keep you in for a day or so to make sure that you aren’t suffering from concussion,’ Sally told her, handing her over to the ward sister. ‘Don’t worry, Dulcie. Everything will be all right. I’m going to offer to go on duty now, so I’ll be here and I’ll see if Sister will let me come down and see you later once they’ve made you comfortable.’

Dulcie, her defences weakened by pain, turned to Tilly and Agnes and told them emotionally, ‘What you two have done for me tonight, I’ll never forget. Never.’

Each of them holding one of her hands, they looked at one another whilst Sally looked on. They all knew that what had happened, what they’d shared, had forged a very special bond between them.

‘I’ve never been bothered about having friends,’ Dulcie continued. ‘I’ve never seen the point ’cos you always know that when it comes down to it someone who says she’s a friend will put herself first. I’d do the same myself. But tonight, well, you’ve taught me different; you’ve shown me what friendship really is. You’ve given me something that no one else has ever given me and I won’t ever forget that. From now on the three of you come first with me, and that’s a promise.’

Facing danger together bound people in a very special way, Sally acknowledged, listening to Dulcie. Tonight they had all individually and together shown a strength and a desire to put one another first that was the very best of human nature. Tonight a relationship had been forged between them that would last for the rest of their lives.

‘Friends?’ Dulcie asked gruffly.

‘Friends,’ Agnes, Tilly and Sally answered her, all four of them reaching out to place their hands one on top of the other.

It was daylight before Tilly and Agnes arrived back at number 13 to find Olive waiting anxiously for them. They had spent the night in a large public shelter close to Barts Hospital and had had to wait for the all clear to go off before they could leave.

Over hot strong cups of tea, Tilly told her mother what had happened, her daughter’s matter of fact, ‘Dulcie wanted us to run for safety and leave her but, like Agnes said, we couldn’t do that,’ leaving Olive torn between surprise that Dulcie of all people should have shown such selflessness, pride in Tilly’s bravery and shaky relief that they had all made it to safety.

‘Dulcie will have to stay in hospital until they say she can leave,’ Tilly continued, ‘and Sally said that when she is allowed out her leg will still be in plaster.’

‘Has anyone told Dulcie’s family what’s happened?’ Olive asked. ‘Only if they haven’t, I’d better go round and let them know.’

‘No one’s sent a message, as far as I know,’ Tilly answered her, hesitating before adding, ‘Dulcie’s family live on the edge of Stepney, and by all accounts that got badly bombed.’

Olive nodded. ‘I know. We heard about it last night after the all clear.’

What Olive didn’t want to say was that the ARP official had also said the devastation in the East End was beyond description and had spoken of stumbling across bodies, so many people had been killed.

The plain unvarnished truth was, according to the ARP official, that those in charge of areas like Stepney had simply not done enough to make plans in the event of a serious bombing raid.

‘You and Agnes have had a tiring night – why don’t you try and get a couple of hours’ sleep instead of going to church this morning, and I’ll try and call round on Dulcie’s family? I’ve got their address from when she first came here.’

‘Me and Agnes thought that we’d go up to the hospital this afternoon, Mum, and see how Dulcie is. We felt really bad about leaving her there last night, didn’t we, Agnes?’

Agnes agreed.

‘Of course, Sally will be there to look out for her,’ Tilly acknowledged before adding, ‘Dulcie was ever so brave, Mum, telling us to go and leave her.’

‘Yes, she was,’ Olive was forced to admit.

* * *

Later that morning, though, setting out to tell Dulcie’s family what had happened, Olive felt more concerned about the danger her own daughter had been in than she was about Dulcie. Not that she wished any harm on the girl, she assured herself as she headed for Stepney, but there was no getting away from the fact that helping Dulcie had put her own daughter’s life at risk and that was something Olive didn’t like at all.

Even though, mercifully, Holborn and the City of London beyond it had escaped the ravages of the bombing, the Germans having concentrated on the docks and the East End, there was still a pall of smoke hanging in the air, as Olive set out on what she knew would be a long walk, the pavements busy with ARP wardens, firemen and the police, as well as some of the more adventurous Londoners themselves, come to see the damage inflicted on their city.

Olive didn’t want to risk catching a bus, though, even if she could find one that was running, in case it couldn’t take her very far.

Not knowing what to expect, she found the sight of familiar buildings still standing, their sandbags still in place, reassuring. Her route took her past St Paul’s, thankfully untouched, but when she paused to look at the cathedral an elderly shabbily dressed woman standing close to her said, ‘St Paul’s might be standing now but them Germans will be back, you mark my words. Practically done for Stepney, they have. I was lucky I’d gone to the Tilbury shelter, off the Commercial Road, ’cos our whole street’s bin flattened.’

Olive made a small sound of sympathy.

‘My daughter reckons we’d be better off sheltering in the underground, but we was barred from doing that last night at Liverpool Street station. I’m off out of here this afternoon. Putting us on coaches, they are, to take us somewhere where they can rehouse us, so I thought I’d come have a look at St Paul’s just in case it ain’t standing when they bring us back.’

Already apprehensive about what she might find in Stepney Olive was now increasingly anxious at the old lady’s words, especially when she got closer to the area and saw how many people were trudging around in family groups, carrying bundles of possessions, the blank look on some of their faces giving a hint of what they might have been through.

Olive had almost reached Stepney when she had to stop because of the ARP men turning people back, and explaining that it was too dangerous for them to go into the area because of the number of bombed and collapsed buildings.

When Olive told them where she was heading, though, after consulting a street map she was told she could go ahead, and given instructions of how to get there.

It seemed that because Dulcie’s family’s home was in a street on the city side of the area, the houses were still standing, although by the time she got there Olive felt that she was almost choking on dust and smoke.

It was Dulcie’s mother who opened the door to Olive’s knock, her facial resemblance to Dulcie plain, despite her careworn appearance. However, the relief on her face when she opened the door changed to apprehension when she saw Olive standing there.

Thinking that her anxiety was on Dulcie’s account, Olive made haste to tell her, ‘It’s all right; Dulcie’s all right. I’m her landlady . . .’

But to her surprise, instead of greeting her news with relief, Mrs Simmonds simply said sharply, ‘Oh, yes, of course Dulcie would be all right, knowing her.’ She was looking past Olive now and out into the street. ‘It’s our Edith I’m worried about. She’s a singer, you know, and she’s going to be famous. She’s got a top agent looking out for her,’ she told Olive proudly, fresh apprehension colouring her voice as she added, ‘She was singing last night at a club up the West End. I just hope she’s all right.’

‘I’m sure she will be,’ Olive tried to comfort her. ‘The West End wasn’t bombed at all, according to what I’ve heard. But about Dulcie . . .’

‘What about her? She’s been causing trouble, I suppose. That’s Dulcie all over. She’s always been difficult and hard work.’

Although privately Olive might have agreed with the other woman’s comments, somehow hearing them spoken by Dulcie’s own mother made her feel unexpectedly protective of her lodger so that she said firmly, ‘I think I’d better come in.’

‘Well, if you must, but this place won’t be what you’re used to. Always singing your praises, Dulcie is, and telling us what a lovely house you have and how much at home you’ve made her; how you think so much of her and treat her like a daughter, asking her to look out for your Tilly.’ Mrs Simmonds gave a sniff of disdain. ‘Always going on about Tilly and Agnes and Sally, she is, saying what good friends to her they are and how much they think of her. Of course, she only does it to upset Edith, and why I don’t know. I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter than Edith, good from the minute she was born, Edith has been, and sing – she’s got the voice of an angel.’ Fresh anxiety showed on Mrs Simmonds’ face. ‘Worried to death about her, I am, and I shan’t have a second’s peace until I know she’s safe.’

Olive’s thoughts were whirling after Dulcie’s mother’s revelations about what Dulcie had said to her. Normally Olive would have wondered what on earth had made Dulcie create such a fabrication, but after listening to Dulcie’s mother praising her younger daughter whilst criticising her elder, Olive suspected that she knew the reason for Dulcie’s behaviour. Against her will she felt sympathetic toward Dulcie, her compassion aroused at the thought of a child – any child – being rejected by its mother in favour of a sibling. It was no wonder that Dulcie was the way she was.

Mrs Simmonds showed Olive into a small, cramped and dark back room, lifting some clothes off a chair and putting them down on the table so that Olive could sit down.

‘Them’s our Edith’s stage clothes. Course, they cost a fair bit, they did, but then like she says, she’s got to look the part if she’s to get the good jobs. Her agent reckons she’s going to be bigger than Vera Lynn. I just wish I knew she was safe.’

‘Of course you must be worrying,’ Olive agreed. ‘That’s the price we mothers have to pay for loving our children, isn’t it? I don’t like to add to your worries, but I thought you’d want to know that Dulcie had a bit of an accident last night. She ended up with a broken ankle, and they’re worried that she might have concussion.’ Olive paused, waiting for Dulcie’s mother to express alarm and concern and then, when she made no comment, continued quietly. ‘She’s in hospital – Barts – I expect she’s told you that Sally is a nurse and works there. You’ll want to go and see her, of course.’

‘Well, ordinarily I would, I suppose, but I can’t go anywhere now, not when I’m so worried about Edith. It’s a pity our Rick isn’t here. He could have gone to Barts and seen her.’

Olive stood up. She had felt sorry for Dulcie’s mother before she had met her, and in some ways she still did now that she had seen how careworn she was, but it went against all Olive’s own feelings about motherhood to hear the other woman speaking so unkindly and uncaringly about her elder daughter. It was surely a mother’s duty to love all her children, because if she did not then who would?

Despite her feelings, Olive still managed to say politely as she left, ‘I hope you have some news of Edith soon.’

‘They say there’s dozens dead in Stepney, and even more in Silvertown, and they’ve hit the Woolwich Arsenal and the Docks. Dulcie’s dad was summoned first thing this morning to go and help clear some of the buildings that got blown up. He’s a jobbing builder.’

Olive nodded her head and then turned away. There was nothing she could say that would lighten the burden of anxiety the other woman was carrying. Only the safe return of her daughter Edith could do that. Olive knew how it felt to love one’s daughter but Dulcie’s mother had two daughters, not one.

It was with some troubled thoughts in her head that Olive made her way home, glad to have them interrupted when Sergeant Dawson called out to her when she walked past the church hall. He was wearing his Home Guard uniform rather than his police uniform and he told her that he and some of the rest of their local Home Guard had gone over to the East End as soon as it had come light, to do what they could to help.

‘Some of the houses in Silvertown have come down like a pack of cards,’ he told Olive as they walked towards Article Row together, ‘There’s whole families just walking around with nothing but the clothes on their backs and nowhere to go to. And they’re the lucky ones.’

‘We just weren’t prepared,’ Olive said unhappily, ‘and these poor people have paid the price for that.’

Her ankle still ached but the pain was nowhere near as bad as it had been, even if the plaster cast on her leg was driving her mad already, just like Sister, who had told her that she was to stay in bed and not move, and who had said, when Dulcie had told her that she wanted her handbag because she wanted to put her lipstick on, that she was in a hospital, not a dance hall, where she’d be staying until they were satisfied that she wasn’t going to suffer from delayed concussion.

Last night, racked with pain, her emotions overwhelmed by the relief of being alive and the kindness the other girls had shown her, and despite the flood of injured bomb victims being rushed into the hospital and filling the ward, Dulcie hadn’t really been aware of what all those injured people had meant.

This morning it was different. This morning her mind was as sharp as a knife, picking up on the conversations going on all around her as the occupants of the other beds talked about what they had experienced. And the more she heard the more anxious about her own family Dulcie became.

It wasn’t until Sally, on her tea break, came into the ward to see her that she was able to ask the question uppermost in her mind.

‘How can I find out which streets have been hit?’ she asked Sally urgently. ‘Only I’ve heard people saying that Stepney got it pretty badly.’

‘I can’t help you, Dulcie; I wish I could,’ Sally was forced to admit. She’d been in the operating theatre virtually all night as patient after patient was wheeled in, all of them victims of the bombing and most of them badly injured. There had been one little baby boy they’d had to operate on. He’d been eighteen months old and his right leg had been so badly crushed that they’d had to amputate it. Sally had seen the surgeon wiping away tears as he looked at him. She had cried herself afterwards. It was impossible not to be affected by such things.

Worst of all, George had told her, were the people who came in asking if their loved ones had been brought in, hoping desperately to find them alive when George knew that they were in the morgue.

Such had been the shock of the night’s bombing that Winston Churchill himself had been in the East End this morning to reassure people and praise them for their courage, so Sally had heard from another nurse.

‘I expect we won’t know properly which streets have been hit until we get tomorrow morning’s papers. How are you feeling? How’s your ankle? Is it giving you much pain?’

‘Just a bit of a twinge, and I’d be feeling a lot better if Sister would tell me where my handbag is and let me put my lipstick on.’

Sally laughed. ‘I’ve got your bag. I took it with me when I went on duty to keep it safe. I’ve got to get back on duty now, but I’ll get it for you when I have my next break.’

‘There’s no point in us all going,’ Olive had told Tilly and Agnes. ‘They’ll only let Dulcie have one visitor, and you’ll be able to see her tomorrow, Tilly, when you’re back at work. Besides,’ she’d reminded them, ‘you’ve both got St John Ambulance this afternoon, haven’t you?’

Olive had her own reasons for wanting to see Dulcie on her own.

From her bed in the middle of the ward Dulcie was able to watch when visiting time came and the ward doors were opened to admit the surge of anxious relatives waiting to see their loved ones.

Although she pretended she wasn’t doing so, Dulcie’s gaze searched quickly amongst the visitors, looking for Tilly and Agnes’s familiar faces. Not that she expected to see them, just because last night she’d gone and made a fool of herself, saying what she had.

The stream of visitors turned to a trickle, and Dulcie told herself that she wasn’t in the least bit concerned that hers was the only bed without a relieved relative standing next to it.

And then Dulcie saw Olive coming towards her, carrying a copy of Picture Post, which she dropped on the bed, to lean over, take both of Dulcie’s hands in her own and say emotionally, ‘Dulcie, that was so generous and selfless of you last night to tell Tilly and Agnes to save themselves and leave you. I do thank you for that, my dear.’ As she spoke Olive squeezed Dulcie’s hands gently in her own. For a moment neither of them spoke and then, to Olive’s own shock as much as Dulcie’s, Olive leaned down and gave Dulcie a hug, telling her fiercely, ‘I’m glad they didn’t leave you, Dulcie, and I’m glad that you’re safe. Number thirteen wouldn’t be the same without you.’

‘You mean it would be a lot better,’ Dulcie couldn’t resist quipping as Olive released her to smile ruefully.

‘I might have thought that once, I admit, but I don’t think it any longer. I’m sorry about your ankle. Oh, and your mother sends her love.’

‘You’ve seen Ma? Are they all right? Everyone’s been saying that Stepney got hit badly with the bombs.’

Olive’s heart ached anew for Dulcie when she saw her genuine concern.

‘Your parents are fine and the street hasn’t been touched. Your mother is a bit anxious about your sister, though, because she was out singing somewhere last night and still hadn’t come home.’

‘Oh, yes, Ma would be worrying about her.’

There was a raw ugly animosity to Dulcie’s voice now. Instinctively Olive reached for her hand again and held it, telling her, ‘We’re all looking forward to you coming home. We can put a bed up in the front room for you until you can manage the stairs. Nancy next door has a spare single we can borrow and I’ll ask Sergeant Dawson if he’ll give her Arthur a hand moving it round.’

Home? That was what number 13 was to her now, Dulcie recognised, with a stab of shock.

‘I know that things haven’t been all that good between you and me,’ Dulcie told Olive, determined to clear the air between them, ‘but they’re going to be different now that me and the others are going to be friends.’

‘I’m very glad to hear that, Dulcie, because after what you did last night, I can’t think of anyone I’d want Tilly to have as a friend more than you.’

‘Dulcie says she’s like a second daughter to you,’ Dulcie’s mother had told her, so as she stood up when the bell rang to signal the end of visiting time, Olive leaned forward and kissed Dulcie on the cheek and then gave her another hug.

‘We’ll all be thinking about you, and Tilly will be in to see you tomorrow.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

The first thing Agnes heard about on Monday morning when she got to work was that people had tried to shelter in the underground, despite the fact that the Government had said that the underground was not to be used as a shelter.

‘Had some poor souls here from the East End,’ Smithy told her. ‘Bin walking around all day, they had, on account of their own houses being blown up and them having nowhere to go. It will be even worse tonight after last night’s bombing. I’d heard there was four hundred at least killed last night.’

Agnes shuddered and went pale. ‘We saw them on Saturday night, the bombers. We were going out for our tea and we saw them come over, then Dulcie got her heel stuck in the cobbles and broke her ankle and this German plane saw us helping her.’

‘Sounds like you had a lucky escape.’

‘We did,’ Agnes agreed in a heartfelt voice, thinking no more about what she had said as the queue built up at her ticket window and she got to work.

By the time Ted finished his shift at five o’clock that afternoon, though, the story about Agnes’s lucky escape had been passed on amongst the staff, its details embroidered with each telling so that when Ted heard it from one of the other drivers, the story was that Agnes had been badly hurt when a bomb had blown up in front of her.

The shock and despair that gripped him as he listened to the other driver was like no pain Ted had ever experienced. Agnes, his Agnes, was badly injured, and could be lying in hospital at death’s door. In that moment Ted knew that he would give up his own life willingly if only Agnes could be saved. Knuckling the tears from his eyes he made his way up the steps and out of the underground station into the smoke-tainted late afternoon air. He’d go round to where she lived, ask them, beg them, to tell him which hospital she was in and then he’d go and see her and he’d . . . Ted lifted his downbent head to blink back his tears and then came to an abrupt halt, because there, less than three yards in front of him and walking away from him was Agnes. He blinked, thinking he must have conjured her up from his own imagination, but then she dodged a group of commuters coming the other way, and he knew she was real. His heart surged and bounded with joy and relief. He ran after her, catching hold of her arm so that she turned toward him.

‘Ted!’

‘You’re safe! I thought . . . I heard that you’d been badly injured.’

‘No, Dulcie broke her ankle when we got caught up in the bombing, but I’m all right.’

All around them the tide of moving humanity ebbed and swelled but they were both oblivious to it, oblivious to everything and anything except one another.

Agnes told him disjointedly, ‘I thought, that is . . . I didn’t think you wanted to be friends with me any more.’

‘No! Agnes.’ Ted was reaching for her hand and holding it, clasping it tight in his own, his face working as emotion gripped him. ‘You mean the world to me, Agnes,’ he told her hoarsely. ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You’re the best girl a chap could ever meet.’

They stood on the pavement looking into one another’s eyes, still holding hands.

‘Then why haven’t you wanted to see me?’ Agnes asked him.

‘It was for your sake, because . . .’ Ted paused and shook his head, fighting to control his emotions, ‘. . . it was for you, Agnes, because I wanted you to be free to find someone who could give you all the things that I can’t.’

When she looked bewildered, he explained bleakly, ‘You know how we live. Mum couldn’t manage without my wages. The girls are only nine and eleven. It will be years before they are earning. I haven’t got anything to offer you, Agnes.’

‘You’ve got your love. I don’t mind waiting, Ted. Not for you.’

When he didn’t say anything she told him practically, ‘It won’t be that long before the girls are grown up, not really, and then when they’re bringing in a bit of money, you and me can marry and we can find somewhere a bit bigger, so that we can all live together.’

‘You deserve better than that, Agnes.’

‘There couldn’t be anyone better for me than you, Ted. I’ve been that upset and miserable, thinking that you didn’t want me. Last night, when that fighter plane came straight at us and Dulcie told us to run and leave her, all I could think was that I didn’t care about living if living meant being without you.’

‘Agnes.’

She raised herself up on her tiptoes and very daringly kissed him full on the mouth.

‘Agnes!’

The rough note of emotion in his voice made her tremble with happiness and then he was kissing her back, and telling her how much he loved her, and Agnes knew that this was the happiest day of her life.

‘Does this mean that we’re going steady now?’ she asked Ted breathlessly once he’d stopped kissing her.

‘It could be years before we can get married,’ Ted warned her.

‘I don’t care,’ Agnes told him. ‘Just as long as you love me.’

‘Of course I love you. How could I not do when you’re the best girl in the world?’ Ted told her emotionally.

* * *

Of course, Olive had to be told, Agnes’s face so alight with love and happiness as she explained what had happened.

Agnes was very young but Olive suspected that she was the kind of girl who, once her heart was given, would stay true to that first love all her life.

‘Ted wants us to get engaged. He said it will tell other lads that I’m spoken for, but he’ll have to save up for a ring first, so we thought we’d get engaged at Christmas. He’s going to tell his mum that she’s not to worry and that he’ll still be handing his wages over to her for her and the girls.’

‘I’m glad that Agnes isn’t going to marry Ted yet,’ Tilly told Olive later when they were on their own. ‘I wasn’t so sure how it was going to be when you first said about taking in lodgers, Mum, but now I’d hate it to be any different. Agnes and Dulcie and Sally – well, they’re like family now.’

Family.

Tilly was right, Olive thought. The girls she had taken in originally as lodgers as a means of earning some money had now all found and made their own special places in her heart: Agnes, who had been so vulnerable and in need of love; Sally, so practical and hard-working and yet with such a terrible sadness to bear; Dulcie, whose influence on Tilly she had feared and resented and who she had judged on Dulcie’s challenging manner, and who now, she had discovered, beneath that outer defensive attitude hungered for a mother’s love.

They were her girls now. Her London Belles, Olive thought with a surge of maternal love. The girls, her girls, reminded her of the joyous sounds of the many different bells of London’s churches, and how that sound lifted the spirits of those who heard them, just as the sound of the girls’ laughter and happy chatter lifted her spirits. Life had brought them together, and Olive prayed that life would keep them together and safe through the darkness that lay ahead, and that their hearts would always ring true.

Acknowledgements

Susan Opie, and Victoria Hughes-Williams, my editors at HarperCollins. Yvonne Holland, copy editor extraordinaire, who, as always, has done a magnificent job.

All those at HarperCollins whose hard work enabled this book to reach publication.

Tony, who contributes so much to my books via the research he does for me.

About the Author

Annie Groves lives in the North-West of England and has done so all her life. She is the author of Ellie Pride, Connie’s Courage and Hettie of Hope Street, a series of novels for which she drew upon her own family’s history, picked up from listening to her grandmother’s stories when she was a child. Her most recent novels are Goodnight Sweetheart, Some Sunny Day, The Grafton Girls, As Time Goes By, Across the Mersey, Daughters of Liverpool, The Heart of the Family, Where the Heart Is and When the Lights Go on Again, which are based on recollections from members of her family who come from the city of Liverpool. In London Belles, the first in a new series, she introduces a new set of characters that live in Holborn, London. Her website, www.anniegroves.co.uk. has further details.

Annie Groves also writes under the name Penny Jordan, and is an internationally bestselling author of over 170 novels with sales of over 84,000,000 copies.

Also by Annie Groves

The Pride family series

Ellie Pride

Connie’s Courage

Hettie of Hope Street

The WWII series

Goodnight Sweetheart

Some Sunny Day

The Grafton Girls

As Time Goes By

The Campion series

Across the Mersey

Daughters of Liverpool

The Heart of the Family

Where the Heart Is

When the Lights Go on Again

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © Annie Groves 2011

Annie Groves asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-00-736150-2

EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007384563

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

PAM WEAVER

Pack Up Your Troubles

This book is dedicated to my brother, Barrie Stainer. After a whole life-time apart, it was wonderful to discover your existence. Thank you for your warmth and generosity even though I was such a surprise!

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

VE Day 1945

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Read on for two exclusive short stories from Pam

About the Author

Copyright

VE Day 1945

One

By the time they reached Trafalgar Square, the sheer weight of the crowd forced the bus to a standstill. As the passengers turned around, the conductor gave them an exaggerated shrug and rang the bell three times. ‘Sorry folks, but this bus ain’t going no fuver.’

Irene Thompson and Connie Dixon had planned to go on to Buckingham Palace but they had to get off with the rest of the passengers. The bus couldn’t even get anywhere near the pavement but nobody minded. Today, everybody was happy; everyone that is except Connie who couldn’t hide her disappointment.

She had planned to be here with Emmett but he had written a hurried note, which she had stuffed into her shoulder bag as she left the billet. It was terse. ‘Can’t make the celebrations. Mother unwell and she needs me.’ She knew she shouldn’t be annoyed. Emmett was always keen to help others, and he was devoted to his aged mother but it was very galling that he should pick this moment to be noble, just when the celebrations were about to begin. He had said he would telephone her that evening but even if she got back to the barracks in time, she had made up her mind to be ‘out’ when he called. She frowned crossly. Why couldn’t he be like the others? Betty Tanner’s boyfriend brought her flowers all the time and Gloria’s man friend had given her a brand new lipstick. Emmett never did anything like that. It really was too bad.

‘Cheer up, Connie,’ Rene chided as she took her arm. ‘We’re making history. Don’t let Emmett spoil it for you. Be happy.’

As they stepped onto the road, Connie had never seen so many people all in one place. Soldiers, sailors and airmen, from what seemed like every country in the world, had been drawn here to join the people of London to welcome this much longed for day. After five years of war and hardship, peace had come at last. It was rumoured that Churchill and the King had wanted Monday, 7 May to be called VE Day, but the Yanks had insisted that it should be today, Tuesday, 8 May. Connie supposed it was because they were cautious enough to make sure that everything was signed and sealed before enjoying the victory. The German troops had capitulated and signed an unconditional surrender at Eisenhower’s headquarters at 2.41 a.m. Whatever the reason, the grey war-wearied faces had gone and Connie was met with smiles and handshakes from complete strangers. Ever since the news had broken that Adolf Hitler and his mistress had committed suicide, the whole nation finally believed what they had not dared to, that the war in Europe was over at last. The war in the Far East was still raging but the smell of victory was in the air.

The bus had come to a halt because an Aussie soldier, waving the Australian flag, his arm linked with a merchant seaman, was leading a group of revellers down the middle of the street. They were being watched by a couple of eagle-eyed Red Caps but there would be no trouble today. No one was in a fighting mood. The military police were in for a lean time. Even the US MPs – ‘Snowdrops’ as they were known because of their white caps, white Sam Browne belts and white gloves – were redundant. The joyful crowd following in the Aussie soldier’s wake was made up of American GIs, WAAFs, ATS girls and civilians all singing at the tops of their voices.

‘Bless ’em all, the long and the short …’

‘Come on,’ cried Rene as Connie held back, ‘let’s join in.’

An American GI caught Rene’s arm and pulled her into the body of moving people. ‘… this side of the ocean, so cheer up my lads bless ’em all.’

‘Oh Rene,’ cried Connie, ‘it’s really, really over.’

Picking up the lyrics, they lurched with the crowd towards Nelson’s column, the base of which was still covered in hoarding to protect it from bomb blasts even though the last air raid warning had been sounded on 19 March. Someone had stuck a poster on it with ‘Victory over Germany 1945’ on one side and ‘Give thanks by saving.’

Connie nudged Rene in the ribs and jerking her head, shouted over the noise, ‘Give thanks by saving? I should cocoa!’ and they both laughed.

After so much hardship and sacrifice, did the government really think everyone was going to keep on being frugal and sensible with their money? Some might, but not her. She was twenty-one and she’d already spent the best years of her life scrimping and making do, first in the munitions factory and then, after a spell of sick leave, in the WAAFs. Now that the war was over, Connie had no idea what she wanted to do but she was sure of one thing. She was in no mood to save for the future. Hadn’t she just blown all her coupons on her new outfit, a lovely pale lemon sweater and some grey pinstriped slacks? And then there was Emmett. She had hoped he would have asked her to marry him by now, but he hadn’t, presumably because he was anxious about his mother’s health. He’d asked her a few times to go further but Connie had told him she wasn’t that sort of a girl. Still, Rene was right. This was no time to nurse her disappointments. Today was the day to enjoy herself.

In the press of the crowd, Rene was standing on tiptoe to see if anything was happening. ‘We should have got away earlier,’ she grumbled good-naturedly. ‘There’s too many people here.’ Despite the noise all around her, Connie heard a distinct tap-tapping sound just behind her and froze. Someone was tapping his cigarette on a cigarette case. Her blood ran cold and her heartbeat quickened. A surge in the crowd made the woman beside push her and she apologised. ‘Sorry, luv.’

‘Has Churchill given his speech yet?’ Rene asked.

Connie listened hard. The person behind her clicked a cigarette case closed. It couldn’t be … could it? No, it was impossible. It would be far too much of a coincidence.

‘It was supposed to be at nine o’clock this morning,’ the woman went on, ‘but we’re still waiting.’ She rolled her eyes towards the lions. ‘They’ve been putting up speakers so that we can hear him but as for when that happens, your guess is as good as mine.’

‘You all right, Connie?’ said Rene. ‘You look a bit peaky.’

‘Three o’clock,’ said a man’s voice behind them. Connie turned sharply to look at him. Sure enough, he was putting his cigarette case into his inside jacket pocket and was reaching for a lighter. He lit the fag between his lips and took a long drag. ‘That’s what the copper on the steps told me,’ he went on. ‘Three o’clock.’

A wave of relief flooded over her. The man was old, forty or maybe fifty with greying hair and a tobacco-stained moustache. It was all right. It wasn’t him. Connie relaxed and looked at her watch. It was quarter past ten. A group of Girl Guides gathered together at the base of Nelson’s column and were turning around to face the crowd. If the authorities were planning to entertain them, the man must be right. Churchill wouldn’t be giving his speech for ages yet.

‘Rene!’ A girl’s voice rang out above the noise. ‘Rene Thompson, it’s me, Barbara.’

Rene searched the sea of faces and eventually spotted her friend waving as she came towards her. ‘Barbara Hopkins. Well, as I live and breathe. Fancy seeing you here!’

Laughing, the two girls hugged each other. Barbara, dressed in her WAAF uniform, was thickset with very dark curly hair. The girl with her was dressed in civvies and hung back shyly.

‘I haven’t set eyes on you since our training,’ Rene cried happily and Barbara hugged her again. ‘Oooh, it’s so good to see you.’

They stepped apart and introduced everybody.

‘This is Eva O’Hara,’ said Barbara. Eva was tall but with an almost elfin-like face, and a lot of laughter lines around her eyes. She wore dark slacks and a pale blue hand-knitted jumper.

‘And this is Connie,’ said Rene. ‘We share the same billet.’ The hand shaking was soon over and somehow or other the girls had reached one of the fountains in the middle of the square. The day was warm and the water inviting and while Rene and Barbara caught up with old times, Connie, unable to resist, began to roll up the legs of her slacks. ‘Come on,’ she laughed. ‘Which one of you is game for a paddle?’

After a feeble protest from the others, Eva rolled up the legs of her slacks as well. As she climbed in, a sailor gave her a hand and then he rolled up his trouser legs and stepped in. The water was cold, but not unbearable, and it came just above their knees. The sailor and his mate, who joined them, were taller than Connie and Eva so there was less chance of them getting their clothes wet. The sailors were nice looking lads. One had brown Brylcreemed hair and a ready smile and the other one had fairer hair and slightly bucked teeth. He plonked his cap on Connie’s head as they stood together. The blond one carried a knobbly walking stick and Connie wondered if he had some sort of injury, but she didn’t like to ask. They all had to hold on to each other because the bottom of the fountain was covered in algae and a bit slippery. If they weren’t careful, they’d all be under the water and soaked. The singing grew louder.

‘There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover …’ The two girls swayed with the sailors as they sang and after a few minutes, the sailor’s cap began to push Connie’s rich chestnut-coloured hair out of place. She wore her hair with curls on the top of her head and pulled away from her face. When her comb landed in the water, her hair fell in attractive loose tendrils around her face. The sailor bent to pick the comb up and at the same time spotted a newspaper photographer taking pictures.

‘Here you are, mate’ he called. ‘Two pretty girls and two good looking sailors. What more could you want for the front page?’

The photographer came over and the sailor planted a kiss on Connie’s cheek as the shutter came down. Connie wasn’t offended but she gave him a playful shove before he was tempted to take any more liberties. She didn’t want Emmett or her own mother to see a picture of her kissing someone else on the front page of the paper and despite the improbabilities, she found herself scouring the faces in the crowd.

‘Which paper are you from?’ laughed Eva as the four of them posed again.

‘Daily Sketch,’ said the photographer before moving on.

Connie heaved a sigh of relief. None of her family read the Daily Sketch and with a bit of luck, her great aunt (they called her Ga) had never even heard of it.

Their legs were getting cold so the four of them climbed out of the water and Connie gave the sailor his cap back. She and Eva only had handkerchiefs to dry their legs but they didn’t care. They held on to each other because in the surging crowd it was difficult to keep a balance on one leg while drying the other. Someone shouted a name, and waving, the two sailors merged back into the crowd.

‘You in the WAAFs as well?’ Connie asked Eva. It seemed very likely considering that her friend Barbara was in uniform.

Eva nodded. ‘And you?’

Connie nodded too.

‘Did you and Rene come on your own?’

‘Actually my boyfriend was meant to be here but he couldn’t come.’

‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’

Connie shook her head. ‘He’s got a sick mother.’

‘I hope it’s not too serious,’ Eva remarked.

Connie shook her head. It was funny that Mrs Gosling always seemed to be ill whenever she and Emmett had something planned but as soon as the thought went through her head, she scolded herself for being so churlish. Nobody could help being ill, could they?

‘No doubt my lot will all be back home and listening to the radio,’ Eva said. ‘My parents are at home and my brother is in the Royal Engineers. He’s still being kept quite busy, and will be for a long time, I’m afraid. He’s in the bomb squad.’

Connie frowned sympathetically. ‘That must be tough on you.’

‘I try not to think about it,’ Eva smiled. ‘What about you? Do you have brothers and sisters?’

‘A brother two years older than me,’ said Connie with a sigh, ‘and a little sister called Mandy. She’s just coming up for six.’

‘What about your brother? Is he in the army?’

Connie shook her head and willed her voice not to crack as she said matter-of-factly, ‘We lost touch.’

Eva stopped what she was doing and looked up. ‘I’m sorry.’

Connie looked away, embarrassed. It wasn’t bloody fair. Families should be together, especially at times like this. Her emotions were all over the place. After her scare of a few minutes ago, now she was fighting the urge to cry. She looked around. ‘Have you seen my other shoe?’

Eva shoved it towards her with the end of her foot.

‘Thanks,’ Connie smiled, glad that Eva hadn’t asked any more questions. She looked at her watch. It was still only 11.30 a.m. If they stayed here, they were in for a long wait and it wasn’t as if Churchill would be coming in person. He was only going to speak over the loudspeakers. Connie blew out her cheeks. She was bored. She wanted something more memorable to happen. Something she could tell her children and grandchildren about when she was old and grey.

‘Let’s go to Buckingham Palace,’ she said suddenly.

Barbara looked around helplessly. ‘Where will we get a bus?’

‘We can walk from here,’ said Eva. ‘It’s not that far.’

They pushed their way back through the crowd and when they finally reached the fringes, all four of them struck out for Buckingham Palace. Rene and Barbara linked arms and walked on ahead so Connie walked with Eva. With a lack of anything else to say, they shared their war experiences.

‘So, where do you come from?’ asked Eva dodging a drunk man staggering along the pavement in the opposite direction.

‘Worthing. It’s on the south coast, near Brighton.’

‘Really?’ Eva laughed. ‘How weird. My folks live near there.’

They could hear the sound of a mouth organ playing, ‘When the lights go on again, all over the world …’ and all at once, an American airman grabbed Eva around the waist and waltzed her into the middle of the road. His companion held out a bottle and leaned into Connie’s face. ‘Hey babe, want some beer?’

Laughing, she pushed him away and another serviceman, this time a jolly Jack Tar, danced Connie into the street next to Eva and the two of them spent a hilarious few minutes with their newfound dance partners. As suddenly as they’d grabbed them, the two men hurried off to join their companions, blowing kisses as they went.

‘Where’s Rene?’ said Eva as they came back together, laughing.

Connie shrugged. ‘No idea,’ she said. ‘I can’t see Barbara either.’

They stayed where they were for a few minutes but as there was no sign of either of their friends, Connie and Eva struck out on their own. All the way to the palace, they were craning their necks and calling out occasionally but it was hopeless. The crowd was every bit as big as it had been in Trafalgar Square but thankfully, because the area in The Mall was much bigger, they didn’t feel quite so much like sardines. After a while Connie said, ‘This is stupid. We haven’t a hope of finding them.’

‘I think you’re right,’ said Eva, linking her arm through Connie’s. ‘It’s time to give up and enjoy ourselves.’

‘I second that,’ Connie laughed. She suddenly liked this girl. ‘It’s a pity we never got stationed together. I’ve been in Hendon for a while, after I was re-mustered from Blackpool. Were you ever there?’

‘I was stationed along the south coast mostly,’ said Eva shaking her head. ‘Poling, Ford and Rye. That’s where I met Barbara.’

‘I was hoping to be posted to those places,’ said Connie wistfully.

Eva looked sympathetic. ‘Why? Did you have it bad where you were?’

Connie shrugged. ‘Not really.’ It wasn’t that. ‘It was closer to home, that’s all.’

‘We didn’t have too many bombs,’ said Eva, ‘but we were on the front line for the invasion. They were bombed in Poling just before I got there.’

‘I suppose,’ Connie said with a broad grin, ‘as soon as ol’ Hitler heard you were coming, he pushed off elsewhere.’

Eva chuckled.

‘What do you do in the WAAFs?’ Connie continued.

‘Telephone operator,’ said Eva. ‘Mum seems to think it’ll hold me in good stead when I get demobbed. She says I could join the GPO as a telephonist but I’d much rather join the police or something.’

‘Oh no,’ cried Connie. ‘I can’t wait to get out of uniform. I hate it. All those damned buttons to polish, no thank you!’

Eva chuckled.

‘I mean it,’ Connie said defensively. ‘When I went for training in Blackpool, our billet was so damp that every single one of my buttons was green by the morning and that was even after I’d used the button stick and a duster. I had to polish the darned things up again with my uniform cuffs before parade.’

By now, Eva was laughing heartily.

‘You may well laugh,’ Connie continued, ‘but I was forever getting into trouble. There was a constant film over them.’

‘I trained in Blackpool as well,’ said Eva wiping her eyes. ‘1942. I had the choice of factory work or the WAAFs.’

‘I was there in September 1943,’ Connie said. ‘Blowing half a gale on the seafront, it was.’

‘And if your hat blew off while you were marching, you weren’t allowed to stop and pick it up,’ laughed Eva.

‘Yes, and how daft was that?’ Connie remarked.

‘Did you have old Wingate?’

‘You, that gel over there,’ Connie said mimicking Sgt Wingate, the WAAF officer who presided over new recruits, perfectly. ‘Head up, chhh … est out.’ And they both roared.

‘So, what will you do when you get demobbed?’

‘I want to be a nurse,’ said Connie.

‘And they don’t have a uniform?’ Eva teased.

‘Yesss,’ Connie conceded, ‘but it’s much sexier,’ and they both laughed again.

Even after the long walk down The Mall, the crowd outside Buckingham Palace was every bit as good-natured as the crowd had been in Trafalgar Square. People milled about, meeting old friends and new faces with equal enthusiasm. The area around the Victoria Memorial was so overwhelmed with people, you could hardly see the mermaids, mermen or the hippogriff. People sat on the plinths beneath the great angels of Justice and Truth either side of Victoria herself. The statue depicting Motherhood was just as beautiful but it was facing the wrong way. Nobody was interested in what was happening down The Mall. Today all eyes were on the palace.

‘At least he’s home,’ said Eva, rolling her eyes upwards.

Connie turned her head and glanced at the royal standard on the roof, fluttering in the breeze. ‘Oh good-o,’ she grinned as she put on a posh voice. ‘Shall we knock on the door and ask for tea?’ and Eva laughed.

According to one woman in the crowd, the King and Queen had already come out onto the balcony four times so Connie and Eva didn’t hold out much hope that they would be lucky enough to see them. An impromptu conga snaked its way through the crowds and Connie and Eva joined in until they were breathless with laughter.

‘What do you reckon?’ said Eva eventually. ‘Do you want to wait a while?’

‘May as well,’ said Connie with a shrug, ‘now that we’ve walked all this way.’

‘What if we don’t see them?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Connie. ‘At least we were here.’ In her heart of hearts she was hoping they’d be lucky. Two disappointments in one day was too much to bear.

All at once, the cry went up, ‘We want the King, we want the King.’

As it gathered momentum, Connie and Eva joined in. The volume of noise reverberated all around and it felt as if the whole world was stilled by the cry of the crowd. ‘We want the King.’

Dodging one of the few cars still travelling in the area, they crossed the road and joined the people nearer the railings. Connie stared at the imposing building beyond the iron gates and especially at the red- and gold-covered balcony.

‘They say Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms,’ said Eva.

Connie wrinkled her nose. ‘Just think of all that dusting. You’d hardly be bloomin’ finished before you had to start all over again!’

‘Look!’ Eva nudged her arm and Connie’s heart nearly stopped with excitement when a small door within the great centre door opened and a tiny figure in naval uniform came out onto the balcony. The King! King George VI, King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and here she was, looking right at him! He raised his arm and with a circular motion of his hand began to wave to the crowd. The Queen in a pale green hat and matching coat and dress had followed him out onto the balcony and when she began to wave as well, the crowd opened its throat and roared. A sea of waving hands and cheering people in front of them, Connie and Eva were carried along with the thrill of it all. In a moment of sudden frustration, Connie stamped her foot. Damn it, Emmett! You should have been here with me, she thought.

Two more figures had joined the King and Queen. Princess Elizabeth in her ATS uniform and Princess Margaret Rose, not yet fifteen and too young to join up, was in a pretty aqua-coloured dress. From where Connie and Eva stood, they were no more than tiny dolls behind the long red- and gold-covered balcony but it was enough. Connie and Eva cheered themselves hoarse.

When eventually the royal family went back inside, the two girls looked at each other with satisfied smiles.

‘I’m starving,’ said Eva. ‘Fancy something to eat?’

‘I’ve got a couple of fish paste sandwiches in my bag,’ said Connie taking it from her shoulder. ‘They’ll be a bit squashed but you’re welcome to share them with me.’

‘Thanks for the offer,’ laughed Eva, ‘but if you don’t mind, I think I can do a bit better than that.’

‘But where are we going to get anything around here?’ Connie cried.

Eva tapped her nose and pulled Connie towards Green Park. When they reached the road, they turned into a side street. Connie hadn’t a clue where she was, but she didn’t feel the least bit nervous. Presently they came across a small crowd laughing and dancing outside a café.

‘Is this where we’re going?’

Eva nodded.

‘How on earth did you know this was here?’

‘My husband’s family has been here for quite a while,’ she said matter-of-factly.

Connie was taken by surprise. Eva had never mentioned a husband. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring either. She was about to mention it when she was swept up with hugs and kisses and handshakes as the family welcomed Eva’s new friend. Someone called out, ‘Queenie, Queenie luv, look who’s ’ere.’

Queenie, a small woman, middle-aged, with a lined face, hair the colour of salt and pepper and wearing a wrap-around floral apron, came out of the kitchen. The two women looked at each other, unsmiling, then Queenie opened her arms and Eva went to her. Such was the difference in their height, Queenie had to stand on tip-toe and Eva had to lean over, but there was a moment of real tenderness and, Connie supposed, if Queenie was Eva’s mother-in-law, a sense of shared grief. For a moment, Connie felt like an intruder so she looked away. Eva and Queenie went into the kitchen and shut the door.

Another woman sitting at one of the tables touched her arm. Connie looked down and smiled thinly.

‘Why don’t yer sit down, ducks,’ said the woman indicating a vacant chair opposite. ‘They’ll be back in a jiffy.’

Connie nodded her thanks and sat down.

‘Been to the celebrations?’ asked the woman fingering a pearl necklace she had around her neck.

‘To the palace.’

The woman lifted what looked like a glass of milk stout. ‘Here’s to His Majesty, Gowd bless ’im. Did you see him?’

As they talked, Connie discovered that Eva’s mother-in-law, Queenie O’Hara, had lived in London all her life. She and her late husband, an Irishman, had taken over the small café in 1941 after their dockland home had been bombed out of existence.

‘Queenie used to clean ’ouses for the nobs round ’ere,’ said the woman, ‘but when she saw this place was up for sale, it were an hoppertunity too good to miss. He died in ’44 just before her son got married.’ She pointed to a photograph over the counter of an Irish guardsman in his Home Service dress of scarlet tunic and bearskin. ‘That’s her Dermid. The light of her life.’

So this was Eva’s husband. He was certainly a striking man.

‘How long have they been married?’ Connie asked.

The woman shrugged. ‘No more than a couple of weeks.’

Connie frowned. Only a couple of weeks and already Eva had taken off her wedding ring?

‘This damned war,’ muttered the woman. ‘The day he died the light went out of Queenie’s face.’

Connie was appalled. Dead? She looked at the picture of the handsome young man in uniform again. How could it happen? Now she realised that she’d been so concerned to avoid talking about her own troubles that she hadn’t even asked Eva about herself. Losing touch with Kenneth was bad enough but to lose a husband so soon after marriage seemed grossly unfair. And yet coming down The Mall, Eva didn’t seem to be that upset. She was more like the life and soul of the party. Was she callous or was it bravado? But when she emerged from the kitchen and came over to join them at the table, Connie could see that Eva’s eyes were red and she’d obviously been crying. ‘Queenie’s going to rustle something up for us,’ she said matter-of-factly to Connie and then turning to the woman with the pearl beads and the stout, she said, ‘And how are you, Mrs Arkwright?’

Connie’s table companion leaned over and squeezed Eva’s hand. ‘Mustn’t grumble, ducks. Mustn’t grumble.’

Someone in the café had a piano accordion. He squeezed the box and one by one, the songs, especially the one penned during the war to end all wars, the same one which had meant so much to the country for the past five years, filled the air.

‘Pack up your troubles …’

Yes, that’s what the whole world wanted but for the first time that day, Connie felt uncomfortable. The war might be over but people like Eva had to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives. Her mind was full of unanswered questions. How did Eva’s husband die? Was it really only a couple of weeks after they’d been married?

‘What’s the use of worrying?

It never was worthwhile …’

Of course, she couldn’t ask. She hardly knew the girl and it seemed far too intrusive.

‘Pack up your troubles in an old kit bag and

Smile, smile, smile …’ they sang.

Connie could hardly bear it.

All at once, Queenie bustled in from the kitchen and put two plates of meat and veg pie, mash and gravy in front of them. Despite the fact that Connie had to search for a piece of meat in her pie, it was hot, delicious and very welcome.

‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ said Connie as Queenie went off to get them both a cup of tea. Her remark felt lame but she felt she had to say something.

‘You weren’t to know,’ said Eva.

Connie smiled awkwardly and Eva looked away. ‘Not much to say really,’ Eva said, addressing the brick wall. ‘We met in Hyde Park, got married by special licence and he was killed six weeks later.’

Connie stopped eating. ‘But I thought …’ She glanced sideways at Mrs Arkwright who was stubbing out a cigarette. Two weeks or six, it was still terrible. ‘God, Eva, that’s awful.’

Eva ran her fingers through her shoulder-length blonde hair and shrugged her shoulders. ‘It happens.’

She’d only known the girl for a few hours but Connie wasn’t fooled. She might be trying to sound tough but Connie could see that Eva’s eyes had misted over. Connie had obviously reopened an old wound and now she didn’t know what to say. Rescue came once more in the form of Eva’s mother-in-law who reappeared with the tea. Planting a kiss on the top of Eva’s head she said to Connie, ‘Isn’t she lovely? My Dermid picked a real gem. Like a daughter to me she is.’

Connie nodded vigorously and embarrassed, Eva shooed her away with, ‘Get away with you, Queenie.’

‘Now that it’s all over, my gal,’ said Queenie earnestly, ‘you mind you keep in touch.’

‘Of course I will,’ said Eva, looking up and squeezing her hand.

As they finished their meal the man with the accordion struck up ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ and they all sang along. Or at least, Connie mouthed the words. Her throat was too tight with emotion to sing but the jolly songs had the others dancing and clapping and the more poignant ones brought a sentimental tear to the eye.

‘I presume you’ve got a SOP,’ said Eva. ‘If you need a place to sleep, I’m sure Queenie will put us up, won’t you Queenie?’

‘’Course I can,’ smiled Queenie.

Mrs Arkwright frowned. ‘What’s a SOP?’

‘Sleeping Out Pass,’ laughed Eva.

Connie’s jaw dropped and she gasped in horror. ‘Oh Lord, no! Since we started double summer time, these long light evenings make such a difference. Whatever’s the time?’

‘Eight forty-five.’

‘Oh hell,’ cried Connie grabbing her handbag from the floor. ‘I never gave it a thought. I haven’t even got a late pass and I’ve got to be in by ten.’

‘Where are you billeted?’ asked Eva.

‘Hendon. Can you tell me how to get to the nearest tube station? I shall be all right once I get there.’

‘Doug is going near there,’ said Queenie balancing the empty plates up her arm. ‘He’ll be here in a minute. He can take you in the pig van if you like.’

Connie raised an eyebrow. ‘Pig van?’

‘He collects pig food from all the restaurants around here,’ said Queenie. ‘If you don’t mind the smell, I’m sure he’d give you a lift.’

Connie looked at Eva and they laughed. It was hardly ideal but at least she had the chance to be back to the camp on time.

Connie stood to go. ‘Thanks Eva,’ she said giving her an affectionate hug. ‘I’ve had a wonderful day.’

‘Me too,’ said Eva. ‘We must keep in touch.’

‘I’d like that,’ said Connie.

Her new friend purloined two pieces of paper and gave one to Connie. ‘I’ve no idea where I’ll be when I get demobbed,’ she said, ‘so I’ll give you my mother’s address. She’ll always know where I am.’

‘That’ll be good,’ said Connie writing her own name and address down. ‘I guess it won’t be too hard to meet up. You started to tell me that we lived near each other.’

‘I come from Durrington,’ said Eva handing her details over to Connie. ‘It’s near Worthing.’

‘I know where that is,’ Connie smiled.

Queenie leaned over the counter and interrupted them. ‘Doug’s here, darlin’.’

‘Thanks Queenie,’ said Eva.

‘I’ll tell him you’ll be out in a minute, shall I?’

‘Thanks Queenie,’ said Eva once more. Her mother-in-law went out through the kitchen door.

‘My folks live in Goring,’ Connie smiled. ‘That’s a small village the other side of Worthing.’ She handed Eva her slip of paper and glanced down at the name and address Eva had written down.

Beside her, her new friend gasped. ‘Connie Dixon? You’re not one of the Dixons from Belvedere Nurseries, are you?’

‘Yes,’ said Connie. She stared disbelievingly at the address Eva had just given her. Mrs Vi Maxwell, Durrington Hill. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. She’d spent the day with a girl her family heartily disapproved of. ‘When we met,’ she accused, ‘you said your name was O’Hara.’

‘Of course,’ said Eva, tossing her head defiantly. ‘That’s my married name. I was born a Maxwell, and I’m proud of it.’

‘I had no idea,’ said Connie quietly.

‘I can’t quite believe it either,’ said Eva. ‘And we’ve had such a lovely day.’

Connie nodded. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Tell you one thing,’ said Eva. ‘I don’t think my mother would be too happy if you turned up on the doorstep.’

Connie’s heart began to bump but she wasn’t sure if she was angry or deeply offended. How could this girl be a Maxwell? She had been so nice. ‘After what your family did to mine …’ she began.

‘After what my family did?’ Eva retorted. ‘I think you’ll find the boot is on the other foot.’

‘Now hang on a minute,’ said Connie, her hand on her hip. ‘I don’t want to get into a fight but get your facts straight first.’

They glared at each other, their jaws jutting.

‘What’s up with you two?’ said Queenie, reappearing in the café. ‘You both look as if you lost half a crown and found a tanner.’

‘She’s been buttering up to me all day and it turns out that she’s a bloody Dixon,’ spat Eva. She turned away and Connie thought she heard her mutter, ‘Cow.’

Connie was livid. ‘It’s hardly surprising,’ she said to Eva’s receding back, ‘that the Dixons and the Maxwells have nothing to do with each other, especially when one of them is so bloomin’ rude.’

Queenie O’Hara looked helplessly from one girl to the other. She seemed confused. ‘I don’t understand. A minute ago you two were best friends. How come things have changed so quickly?’

Connie recovered herself. ‘Buttering up to you all day? What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You know perfectly well what it means,’ Eva countered huffily. ‘My folks would have leathered me with a strap, if I’d have had anything to do with the Dixons.’

‘Would they really?’ said Connie putting her nose in the air. ‘Well, mine would do no such thing. I’m lucky enough to come from a loving family.’

‘If I had known you were a Dixon, I never would have invited you here,’ cried Eva.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Connie. ‘If I had known you were a Maxwell, I would never have come!’

‘Girls, girls,’ cried Queenie, ‘don’t let this spoil a lovely day. For Gowd’s sake, you’re like a couple of bickering schoolkids. Doug has to get going and you have to say your goodbyes.’

‘Goodbye,’ Eva snapped, carefully avoiding Connie’s eye.

Connie put her nose in the air. ‘Goodbye.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Queenie, shaking her head. ‘Here we are with the first day of peace and you two are at war. Whatever it is, can’t you bury the hatchet?’

‘After what her family did to mine? No, I can’t,’ said Eva. ‘Don’t keep Doug and the pig van waiting, Connie.’ And with that she swept out of the room.

Furious, Connie followed Queenie through the kitchen and out of the back door. Her stomach was in knots. She had really liked Eva and she’d had more fun today than she’d had in a month of Sundays but Eva was a Maxwell. Her emphasis on the word pig hadn’t gone unnoticed either. For a time back there, she had seemed really nice. She could have fooled anyone with that dear friend act she’d put on. Ah well, at least Eva had shown her true colours before it was too late and besides, Connie knew only too well that if she stayed friends with a Maxwell, there would be hell to pay. Hadn’t she been brought up with her great aunt’s stories about the Maxwells? Cheats, liars and vagabonds, the lot of them, according to Ga.

When Queenie hugged her before she climbed into the passenger side of the lorry, Connie hugged her back. It wasn’t Queenie’s fault and her full stomach reminded her that she had been more than generous. Doug turned and gave her a toothless smile as she sat down. He turned out to be a fifty-something in a greasy looking flat cap and leather jerkin.

‘Straight over to Hendon now, Doug,’ said Queenie, closing the passenger door. ‘The girl has to be back by ten.’

‘Right you are, missus,’ said Doug, starting the engine.

As the lorry moved off, Connie caught a glimpse of Eva’s pale face at an upstairs window before she let the curtain drop. At the same moment, Connie screwed up the piece of paper with Eva’s name and address on it and deliberately dropped it out of the van. Queenie’s eyes met hers and Connie felt her cheeks flame. Thankfully, that second, Doug put his foot on the throttle and the van lurched forward.

Doug wasn’t very talkative and Connie was too upset to make much conversation. What a perfectly rotten end to a lovely day. It had started out disappointingly because Emmett couldn’t be with her, but from the moment they had paddled in the fountain, she had had a wonderful time. When Eva had said her family came from Worthing, Connie had no idea of the bombshell that was to come. Her mind drifted back over the years. Now that she came to think about it, her great aunt had never been that specific about the rift between the two families. In fact, Connie hardly knew anything about the Maxwell family, but whenever Ga spoke of them, the contempt in which she held them was written all over her face. She never had a good word to say and when Ga voiced an opinion, no one dared argue. Connie had grown up believing that the Maxwells were dishonest, conniving, deceitful wretches who were to be avoided altogether. Eva was the first Maxwell Connie had ever spoken to and look how nasty she had been when she’d found out who Connie was. She’d certainly shown her true colours, hadn’t she? Ah well, good riddance to bad rubbish.

The cab smelled musty and a bit like a compost heap on a sunny day. After a while it made her feel queasy so Connie was more than relieved to see the gates of her camp looming out of the darkness. She thanked Doug profusely and walked the few hundred yards to the sentry post. She fancied that the guard wrinkled his nose as she walked by and her only thought was to have a good strip-down wash or if she was lucky, a small bath before lights out.

‘Connie! There you are,’ Rene sounded really pleased to see her as she walked in their Nissen hut. ‘Where did you and Eva get to? We looked everywhere for you both but you’d completely disappeared. I’m so sorry. Did you have a terrible time? I mean, you don’t know London at all, do you? Oh, I feel perfectly dreadful about it. How on earth did you get home?’

‘If you’ll let me get a word in edgeways,’ Connie laughed as she threw her bag over her iron bedstead, ‘I’ll tell you.’

As Rene sat on the bed beside her, Connie told her some of what had happened. Listening to her friend’s abject apologies, Connie felt a twinge of guilt. She’d been having such a good time, she hadn’t given Rene and Barbara a moment’s thought since they’d lost sight of each other on The Mall. ‘Please don’t worry,’ she smiled as Rene apologised yet again. ‘It wasn’t your fault. I had a great time anyway.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ said Rene, pulling a face, ‘you don’t smell too good.’

‘Neither would you if you’d sat in that awful van,’ Connie laughed. ‘Let me go to the bathroom.’

Sitting in the regulation five inches of water, Connie sponged away the smell of the pig food, but somehow she didn’t feel clean. She’d already gone over some of the things Eva had said to her, and now she was remembering the unkind things she had said in return. She shouldn’t have been so sharp with her. After all, Eva was a war widow and being with her mother-in-law again had obviously brought back some painful memories. Hadn’t she suffered enough?

She climbed out of the bath and towelled herself dry. What could she do about it? The Dixons and the Maxwells had been at loggerheads for donkey’s years. She pulled the plug and watched the dirty water swirl around the plughole before disappearing. Wrapping herself in her dressing gown, Connie sighed. There were some stinks that needed a lot more than soap and water to wash them away. Ah well, it was done and dusted as far as she and Eva were concerned. She’d never see her again anyway.

The dream came in the early hours. It was one of those strange moments when you are asleep and you know it’s only a dream and yet you are powerless to wake yourself up. She struggled to make sense of it but as the moving forms in front of her grew darker, the overwhelming fear reached panic proportions. The tap-tapping of the cigarette on that case grew louder. Wake up, Connie. Wake up. Oh God, he was coming for her. Her eyes locked onto his and she couldn’t get the door shut. The door … the door … Now he was inside the room … coming closer and closer. She could smell his breath, feel his hand pinning her shoulders down. Connie, wake up. She was screaming but no sound came from her lips. His rasping voice filled her ears. You’ll like it … He opened his mouth and beyond his yellow teeth she saw his fat, pulsating tongue. She felt that if he came any closer, he would devour her whole. The weight of his body suffocated her. She thrashed her arms to push him away and the rushing sound in her ears grew louder.

‘Connie, it’s all right. It’s just a dream.’ The moment Rene’s voice penetrated the terrifying sounds, they vanished as quickly as someone turning the radio off. Her eyes sprang open and she saw a torch on the pillow beside her. Rene was leaning over her, her hands as light as a feather on her shoulders but she had obviously been shaking her to wake her up. Connie sat up suddenly and blinking in the half light, saw a dozen anxious faces gathered around her bed. At the same time, she became aware that her nightdress was drenched in perspiration and her hair stuck to her forehead.

‘You had a bad dream,’ said Rene. ‘You were shouting out.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry I woke you all up.’

The girls began to move away and get back into their own beds.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ said a disembodied voice in the darkness.

Connie lay back on the pillow and shook her head. ‘No, thanks. It was only a dream.’

Two

As Connie staggered through the front gate of Belvedere Nurseries with her suitcase two months later, the dog opened one eye. He was lying across the path, snoozing in the early July sunshine. A mongrel, he had a black and white coat, a feathered tail and more than a touch of the sheepdog about him. When her father had bought him as a pup for her thirteenth birthday, they were told that he was a Border collie, cross retriever but his legs were too short and his mouth lopsided. Connie didn’t care what he looked like; she had loved Pip at first sight. ‘You always did go for the underdog,’ Ga had mumbled in disgust when they brought him home. As soon as the puppy was placed on the mat, he peed a never-ending stream, never once taking his coal black eyes from the old lady’s face. Hiding her smile, Connie knew that like her, Pip had a rebellious streak and they became inseparable. Later on, it was Pip who helped her get over the loss of her father and her brother Kenneth going away like that. She took him for long walks and unloaded her brokenness onto him. When she sat on the grass to cry, he would lick her tears away and wag his tail in sympathy. Although she was careful to obey Ga and never mention ‘that business’, Pip seemed to understand exactly how she was feeling. Pip was her adored companion until she was nineteen years old and joined the WAAFs and he had never quite forgiven her for leaving home. As the gate clicked shut behind her, Connie called out, ‘Here, boy. Here, Pip.’

He rose to his feet, yawned, stretched lazily and she noticed that he was getting quite a few grey hairs around his muzzle. He was nine years old, much more than that in doggie years. She watched him turn around and walk ahead of her to the front door where he waited. When she got to him, Connie reached down and patted his side before ringing the doorbell. ‘Silly old dog,’ she said softly.

As the door opened and her mother stood on the step, Pip came to life, panting and jumping in the small porchway like a thing demented. ‘Connie!’ Gwen laughed as Pip’s joyful barks obviously delighted her. ‘What a wonderful homecoming Pip is giving you.’

‘Warm welcome my eye,’ Connie laughed. ‘He hasn’t even come to my call. He’s doing all that jumping about for your benefit.’

Her mother smiled uncertainly. ‘Well, come on in, darling, let me look at you. I like your new hair.’

‘They’re called Victory curls,’ said Connie patting the back of her head. ‘I have to curl them up with Kirby grips every night and wear a scarf in bed but I think it looks quite nice.’

‘It certainly does,’ her mother enthused.

Gwen Craig was small with high cheekbones and an oval face. Her hair was still dark but Connie could see a few grey hairs and she had tired eyes. It alarmed her to see that her mother had lost weight. Her clothes positively hung on her. Gwen had married Connie’s father Jim Dixon in 1919 when she was only eighteen and bore him two children, Kenneth, now twenty-three, and Connie aged twenty-one. 1936 was an eventful year. First she’d had Pip, then soon after their father had died after a long illness, and Kenneth had left home abruptly. Her father’s illness had sapped them of all their money and because they were living in a tithed cottage, Gwen and Connie would have been homeless if Ga hadn’t come to the rescue. In exchange for housework, Gwen and Connie moved in with her in her small cottage in the same village. A couple of years later, and much to Connie’s surprise, Gwen had married Clifford Craig, a man she had thought was only a nodding acquaintance. Their union had produced Mandy now aged six and the exact image of her mother. Gwen held out her arms and, dropping her case on the mat, Connie went to her.

Behind her, a commanding voice boomed out of the sitting room. ‘Gwen? Is that Constance?’

Connie grinned and ignoring her great aunt’s calls, she deliberately stayed in her mother’s warm embrace for several more minutes. ‘It’s sooo good to see you, Mum.’

‘And you too,’ said Gwen. ‘Where’s Emmett? I half expected him to be with you.’

Connie shook her head. ‘I’m not with him anymore, Mum.’

Her mother looked concerned.

‘It’s all right,’ Connie said quickly. ‘It wasn’t very serious and we lost touch soon after VE Day.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gwen shaking her head sadly. ‘I thought he seemed like a good man.’

Connie couldn’t argue with that. She had wanted Emmett to get in touch again but it never happened. She had eventually written to his last known address only to have her letter returned to her unopened. Someone had written in the top left-hand corner, ‘Unknown at this address’. Connie had been upset, of course, but what could she do? She had cried. She had gone over and over their last date in her mind, Saturday night at the pictures followed by a fish and chip supper on a park bench, but there was nothing to say why he hadn’t contacted her again. Maybe his mother had taken a turn for the worse, or, perish the thought, maybe she had died. Connie had no idea where she lived so there was little point in fretting about it. ‘Well, it’s all over now,’ she said again.

‘If that’s you, Constance,’ Ga called imperiously, ‘come in here where I can see you.’

Gwen kissed her daughter and let her go, the two of them rolling their eyes in sympathetic unison.

‘Come on,’ her mother smiled, ‘or we’ll never hear the last of it.’

Connie advanced but her mother caught her arm. ‘Shoes.’

Connie bent to unlace her shoes. Pip watched her and Connie patted his side again.

‘You certainly fooled Mum,’ she whispered, ‘but you don’t fool me. We’ll go for a walk later, okay?’ Ignoring her, the dog yawned in a bored way and sauntered towards the kitchen where he flopped into his basket.

‘Hello Ga,’ Connie said cheerfully as she walked into the sitting room.

‘What took you so long?’ said Ga, feigning her disapproval. ‘And what were you whispering about out there?’

‘Mum was asking me about Emmett, that’s all,’ said Connie, ‘and I was explaining that it’s all off.’

Connie kissed her proffered cheek. ‘I can’t say I’m sorry,’ she said into Connie’s neck. ‘I didn’t really take to him.’

Olive Dixon was a formidable woman. She was solidly built with spade-like hands from working the small market garden, which brought in the lion’s share of the family income. Unlike most women of her age, her sunburnt face was relatively free of wrinkles and she wore her steel grey hair piled on the top of her head in a flat squashed bun.

‘What the devil have you done to your hair?’ she frowned.

‘Don’t you like it?’ said Connie.

‘Indeed I do not,’ said Ga. ‘With all those silly curls you look like something out of a Greek tragedy.’

Connie chose to ignore her. Usually when Olive said jump, everybody said, how high. Ever since Gwen and Connie had come to live with her after Jim Dixon died, she had quickly established herself as the undoubted head of the family. When Clifford and Gwen married in 1938, he had tried to exert his authority, but at a mere five feet, Olive towered over everybody by the sheer force of her personality. They had moved from Patching to Goring to make a completely new start but because Ga had bought the Belvedere Nurseries and the house they all lived in, Gwen and Clifford were expected to run everything, while she remained firmly in charge.

‘I’ll get the tea,’ said Gwen, leaving the room.

Ga was sitting at her beloved writing bureau and Connie noticed for the first time that her right leg was raised up on a pouf. Her knee was very swollen.

‘Ouch, that looks painful,’ said Connie reaching out.

‘Don’t touch it!’ Olive cried. ‘I’m waiting for Peninnah Cooper.’

Connie took in her breath. ‘The gypsies are here?’

‘They turned up about a week ago,’ said Olive. ‘Reuben parked the caravan down by the lay-by near the field.’

‘And Kez?’

Ga pursed her lips. ‘I never did understand why you wanted to hang around with that ignorant girl. Yes, she’s here too. She’s married now, with children.’

Connie was thrilled. She couldn’t wait to see her old childhood friend. Kez a wife and mother … Imagine that …

The gypsies had been a part of her life as far back as she could remember. When the family lived at Patching, they had turned up at different times of year to work in the fields.

The Roma like Kez and Peninnah had no time for other travellers like the fairground showman, the circus performer or the Irish tinkers, because they felt they had given them a bad name. The Roma were in a class of their own. Normally they didn’t even mix socially with Gorgias, a name they gave all house dwellers, which is what made Kez and Connie’s friendship all the more unusual. They had met as children during the short periods of time that Kez went to Connie’s school. Because Kezia’s parents always kept to the familiar patterns, Connie would wait in the lane in early May when the bluebells came out in profusion in the local woods. Kezia and her family would pick them by the basketful, tie them into bunches held together by the thick leaves and hawk them around Worthing. Connie was allowed to help with the picking and tying but her father drew the line at selling what God had given to the world for free. It was always a bad time when the season was over, but Kez would be back in the autumn to harvest in the local apple orchards.

Everything changed in 1938. Kezia’s mother had died, old before her time. Then there was that business with Kenneth, after which Connie’s mother married Clifford and they had moved to Goring.

‘Why is Pen coming?’ Connie asked.

‘She’s bringing a couple of bees.’

Connie raised an eyebrow. ‘A couple of bees?’

‘For my knee,’ said Olive impatiently. Ga feigned disapproval of the gypsies until it suited her to call upon them.

Peninnah Cooper, Kez’s grandmother, was well known for her country cures and many people swore by them. They may have been part of a bygone era but funnily enough, Pen’s ‘cures’ often worked. All the same, Connie couldn’t imagine how bringing some bees could help Olive’s bad leg.

She heard the sound of tinkling cups and her mother came in with the tea trolley. Connie took off her coat and sat down. Teatime in the Dixon household was always a cosy affair and today her mother had tried to make it a bit special. She had got out the willow pattern tea service and the silver spoons Ga had kept in the top drawer. Connie appreciated her mother’s effort. ‘Thanks Mum,’ she smiled.

Whenever she was homesick, Connie used to picture this little ritual. Gwen put the tea strainer over the cup and poured the tea. When the first cup was full, Connie handed it to Ga.

‘So,’ said Olive, ‘now that you’re finally out of it, we’ll be glad of your help in the nursery.’

Connie winced. She had stayed on in the WAAFs for an extra couple of weeks because there had been a lot to do in the aftermath of the war. As well as doing her usual general office duties, her work had mainly been making sure that war-damaged RAF personnel were being followed up and getting help from the right channels. Not that there was a lot she could do. Most men were simply discharged and left to get on with it, something which left her with a yearning to do something constructive with her life.

‘Actually,’ said Connie taking a deep breath, ‘I’ve made some plans of my own. I’ve decided that I want to be a nurse.’

She knew they’d be surprised but Gwen almost dropped her teacup and Ga’s mouth fell open. ‘A nurse?’ she said in a measured tone. ‘Do you think you have the stomach for it?’

‘I’ve toughened up a lot because of the war,’ said Connie.

‘We really need another pair of hands on the smallholding,’ said Ga, glancing at Connie’s mother.

‘We’ll manage,’ Gwen smiled.

‘Manage?’ Ga challenged. ‘It’s hard enough to cope now. Your mother and I are not getting any younger and we’ll need every pair of hands we can get.’

The nurseries weren’t large by the standards of other nurseries in the area. They grew seedlings and vegetables and her mother kept hens for the eggs. There were a couple of stretches of waste ground which had never been developed but there was plenty of work to be done. Connie knew that if she stayed at home she would be expected to work in the small lean-to shop attached to the side of the house or in the greenhouse. She didn’t mind helping out, but she certainly didn’t want to do it for the rest of her life and besides, she wasn’t sure the nursery could support so many people.

Connie sipped her tea. She’d always known it would be a bit of a job persuading Ga and her mother that she wanted a career of her own. She wasn’t afraid to go ahead with or without their blessing, although she would much prefer them to be happy to let her go. She was determined to stand her ground, come what may. She was nearly twenty-two for heaven’s sake. The war had changed everything. Girls had more opportunities than they’d ever had before, and besides, now that Emmett was out of the picture what else was there? She didn’t want to leave it any longer. The training took four years. By the time she’d finished, she would be twenty-six … quite old really. Ga’s reaction was predictable but it took Connie by surprise that her mother didn’t put up more of a fight.

Pip barked.

‘That’ll be Mandy, home from school,’ said Gwen as the dog hurried outside. Connie’s younger sister Mandy had been at infants’ school for about a year. ‘Mrs Bawden, next door, and I take it in turns to take Mandy and Joan to school. It’s her turn this week.’

Connie stood up as Mandy burst through the door and threw herself into her arms. ‘Connie, Connie!’ Laughing, Connie twirled Mandy around in a circle.

‘How many times do I have to tell you, Mandy?’ Olive grumbled petulantly. ‘No outdoor shoes in the house.’

Connie let her go and Mandy slid to the floor. Obediently the little girl retraced her steps to the back door and took off her shoes, placing them next to the umbrella stand. Connie caught her breath. With her hair in plaits and wearing a grey pinafore and white blouse her little sister looked so grown up.

A couple of minutes later, Pen Cooper knocked on the door and stepped into the house. She had a jam jar in her hand. Inside the jar, an angry bee knocked itself against the glass. Pen was not only a gypsy but she was also a bit of an eccentric. She wore a long flowing dress and plenty of beads. She had make-up too, which was unusual for a traveller. Thickly layered powder and some kohl around her pale mischievous eyes. When she saw Connie she stopped and held out her arms. ‘’Tis good to see ye.’

‘It’s good to see you too, Pen,’ Connie smiled. ‘I’ll come up later and see Kez if that’s all right.’

‘You knows it is,’ Pen beamed, ‘and welcome.’ She turned her attention to Olive. ‘Now, are you ready, dear?’

‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ said Olive. ‘It’s killing me and someone’s got to get the ground ready for the calabrese and winter cabbages.’

Connie saw her mother’s back stiffen.

‘Yoohoo.’ They heard another voice call from the front door and Aunt Aggie came into the room. Aunt Aggie wasn’t really a relation but she was Ga’s oldest friend. A rather prim woman, Aggie never had a hair out of place. She always seemed to be dressed in her Sunday best and today was no exception. She wore a yellow floral dress, white peep-toe shoes, newly whitened, and she carried a white handbag. She and Olive had been friends since they were at school together. Peeling off her white crochet gloves, Aggie offered Connie a cold cheek to kiss. ‘How nice to have you home again.’

‘I’d better make a start,’ said Pen and Gwen took a protesting Mandy away from Connie’s arms and upstairs to get changed out of her uniform. ‘But I want to see, Mummy. Why can’t I watch?’ They could hear her complaining all the way to her room.

Connie watched fascinated as Pen took some tweezers from her pocket. ‘Ready?’ she said again and slid the lid from the jar.

‘Are you sure about this Olive, dear?’ Aggie asked.

‘Pen knows what she’s doing,’ Olive snapped.

Aggie poured herself a cup of tea and sat down with one leg swinging as she crossed it over the other. The bee continued to bang itself against the jar until eventually Pen caught its wings with her fingers and put it onto Olive’s swollen knee, holding it there until thoroughly enraged, it stung her. Olive winced. Pen removed the dying bee and eventually the sting it had left behind.

Gwen reappeared at the door. ‘While Mandy is getting changed, I’m going outside for a bit.’

Connie left the three women to watch Ga’s swelling knee and followed her mother outside to where she found her picking runner beans.

‘There’s so much to do this time of year,’ she said matter-of-factly as Connie made a start on the broad beans in the next row. Their smallholding was very popular and the shop was always busy. Their customers knew everything was very fresh, perhaps only just picked. Olive kept the prices down while Gwen did her best to keep the supplies from running out, in between the housework and looking after Mandy. Connie knew how hard her mother’s life was and the unease slipped in.

‘You don’t mind me not working in the nursery, do you Mum?’

‘I’m pleased you’re going to make a career for yourself, dear,’ said Gwen. ‘You’ll make a good nurse.’

‘Ga was a bit cross,’ said Connie. ‘I don’t want to leave you in the lurch.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ said Gwen.

The nursery was hardly making its way when Olive bought it but Clifford was such an excellent nurseryman that he had pulled it back from the brink and made it a going concern. When he was called up in 1943, the two women took over. Gwen used to serve in the shop, but these days she preferred to work on the land, leaving Ga to look after the business side of things. It was never voiced, but the arrangement was so much better since Olive’s knee started playing up. On bad days, Olive could sit in the shop, which was little more than a glorified lean-to, and let the customers serve themselves.

Although the family managed to lift the early potatoes themselves, they generally hired casual labourers to help with the main crop in September. They mostly used the locals because the gypsies didn’t often come this way. When Connie was a child and the gypsies came to Patching, she and Kenneth were invited to share in their communal meal. Connie loved it, especially when Peninnah, Kez’s grandmother, would take her pipe out of her mouth and tell them about the old days. She had an encyclopedic knowledge when it came to family and some of them sounded such wonderful people. ‘They called ’e Red shirt Matthew on account as he always wore a red shirt …’ ‘So they stuffed the two rabbits under ’is big ol’ hat and legged it all the way ’ome …’ ‘She’d stolen ’is trousers, so when ’e got out of the lake, ’e was as naked as the day he were born. He had to walk ’ome without a stitch on ’is back.’ Pen would stop to chuckle. ‘That learned him not to mess about with a gypsy girl …’ Connie and Kenneth would roar their heads off even though they hadn’t a clue who she was talking about. Nobody minded the gypsies being there back then. They were hard workers, the women and children selling handmade pegs and bunches of flowers around the centre of Worthing and the men doing any kind of manual labour on offer.

The war had changed everything. The government had created the Land Army pushing the gypsies further to the fringes of society perhaps, but the hope was that if the powers-that-be disbanded it, farmers would use gypsy labour once again. However, the fate of Kezia and her family was not Connie’s main concern right now. As they worked side by side, she noticed how tired her mother looked.

‘I’m fine,’ said Gwen when Connie remarked on it. ‘I’ve had a bit extra to do with Ga being laid up but things are easing up a bit now. We’ve taken on a local girl to work in the shop, and Clifford will be demobbed soon.’

‘Have you been to the doctor?’

‘Connie, I’m fine,’ Gwen insisted.

Connie knew better than to argue. ‘When’s Clifford coming home?’

‘At the end of the month.’

Connie breathed a silent sigh of relief. With Clifford back, he could take some of the workload off Mum and she could begin her training at the hospital in September as she had planned. She relaxed as she carried on picking. ‘What’s she like?’ Connie asked.

‘Who?’

‘The girl in the shop.’

‘Sally? She’s a bit scatty at times but a good worker,’ said Gwen, her bowl now full. ‘The runner beans have been really good this year.’

Mandy had come out of the house and begun skipping. Connie watched her half-sister and was impressed.

‘She’s only just learned how to do it,’ said Gwen proudly. ‘I think she’s quite good for someone not quite seven, don’t you?’

There was a movement by the back door and Peninnah appeared with Ga. Olive was limping and she had to hold on to the doorposts to keep herself steady but at least she was mobile again. Her leg was heavily bandaged. The two women said their goodbyes and Pen blew a kiss to Mandy.

As she watched her great aunt turn around in the doorway and walk painfully back indoors, Connie turned back to the job in hand. The two boxes were full, one with runner beans and the other with broad beans in the jackets as they headed towards the shop. As they took the supplies inside, Connie met the girl working there.

Sally Burndell was a pretty girl with dark hair and full lips who made no secret of the fact that she was going to go to secretarial college later in the year and was only in the shop for a short while. Connie liked her directness. They arranged the fresh beans underneath the beans already in the boxes to make sure the older beans picked the day before were sold first. Gwen went round picking out failing fruit and vegetables and making sure the supplies were topped up. Connie fetched some fresh newspaper from the storeroom and showed Sally how to make it into bags by folding them a certain way. She also got her to fan out the paper wrapped around the fruit in the orange boxes.

‘Press them flat and put them in a pile,’ said Connie.

‘Whatever for?’ said a voice behind them.

Connie turned to see Aunt Aggie watching them from the doorway.

‘They could be used as toilet paper,’ she said. ‘It’s a lot softer than newspaper. It’s a tip I picked up from the WAAF.’

‘Huh!’ Aunt Aggie scoffed. ‘What’s wrong with newspaper?’

‘I must go in and get the tea,’ said Gwen, wiping her hands on a towel.

‘And I’m off for the bus,’ said Aggie turning to leave. ‘Olive said I could have some beans. Not too many. There’s only me.’

Sally wrapped a few runner beans in newspaper and handed them to her. Aunt Aggie took them without a thank you.

‘See you soon, Aggie,’ Gwen called.

They watched her go.

‘When you’ve got a bum as big as hers,’ Sally said, ‘I guess you’d need a newspaper as big as The Times.’

‘Shh,’ Connie cautioned. ‘She’ll hear you.’ But she and her mother couldn’t help giggling.

Thankfully, Aggie hadn’t heard the remark because she walked on.

‘Play with me, Connie,’ Mandy pleaded as Connie followed her mother outside.

Gwen turned around. ‘No need for you to come into the house,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve made a sausage in cider casserole. All I have to do is take it out of the oven. Stay here and play with Mandy.’

The two sisters grinned. Mandy flicked her plaits over her shoulder and before long, Connie was holding the rope and they were skipping together. Connie hadn’t done this for years. She was a bit out of breath but she hadn’t lost her touch. Pip wandered outside.

‘When I was little,’ she told Mandy, ‘I used to tie the rope on the down-pipe like this and when I turned it, Pip would join in.’

As soon as she said it, and much to Connie’s delight, he joined in. Mandy clapped her hands in delight. By the time their mother called them for tea, she, Pip and Mandy had become great friends.

Three

Teatime over, Connie tucked Mandy up in bed and after a bedtime story they sang her favourite song, ‘You Are My Sunshine’. It was a precious time for both of them and one that Connie had started when her little sister was very young. Every time she’d come home on leave, Mandy had begged her to sing it as she said goodnight. Connie crept out of Mandy’s room and had what her mother would call a cat’s lick in the bathroom and changed her clothes. She put on the pale lemon sweater and same grey pinstriped slacks she had worn in Trafalgar Square and after calling out her goodbyes, headed in the direction of Goring-by-Sea railway station. Pip invited himself along with her, sometimes running on ahead, occasionally stopping to sniff something. She watched him scenting a blade of grass, a telegraph pole and the postbox and marvelled at his carefree love of life.

They reached the Goring crossroad and walked up Titnore Lane. All at once the dog stopped and motionless, sniffed the air, then he took off at breakneck speed. A few minutes later she could hear him in the distance barking joyously. Connie quickened her step and as she rounded a small bend in the lane, she saw them – the gypsies. By now Pip was hysterical with delight, jumping from one to the other, his tail wagging as he let out little yelps of pleasure. Connie was surprised. The dog had only been a puppy when he’d last seen the gypsies but he clearly remembered them.

Connie could pick some of them out even from here. Peninnah Cooper, Kez’s maternal grandmother was stirring something in the black pot hung over an open fire, and was that Kez’s cousin sitting on the caravan steps? Reuben Light, Kez’s father, his frail old body bent low with arthritis and it seemed that he had developed an unhealthy cough. Reuben spotted her and stood up to wave but where was Kez?

Connie recalled how devastated she had been when her mother and Ga moved to Goring in 1938. How would Kez know where she was? Writing a letter was hopeless. For a start, what would she put on the envelope? ‘To the gypsy caravan somewhere near Patching pond in May’ hardly seemed appropriate and besides, Kez couldn’t read. Connie had wept buckets at the injustice of it all, which was why the fact that Kez was just down the road from where she now lived after all this time was so amazing.

There was a movement by the caravan and there she was. She had a baby in her arms but as soon as she saw Connie, Kez called out her name and pushed the child into Pen’s arms. Connie broke into a run. The two women met in the lane and flinging their arms around each other they danced in circles, laughing as they went. Kezia smelled of rosemary and lavender, her flaming red hair tied untidily with a green ribbon flapped behind her as they spun together. She was wearing a long floral dress with a tight bodice and loose unlaced boots. They broke away and held each other at arm’s length to look at each other and the questions flew. How are you? You look great. Is that your baby? How long has it been since we met? It must be eight, nine years … Where have you been all this time? A little boy had joined them and was tugging at Kezia’s skirt. She bent to pick him up, settling him comfortably on her hip. As they wandered towards the caravan a delicious smell of rabbit stew wafted towards her.

‘Stay and eat with us,’ said Kez.

Connie linked her arm in Kezia’s. Oh, it was good to see her again. ‘I’ve just eaten but I’d love to share a cuppa.’ She smiled at the child on Kez’s hip. ‘And who is this?’

‘This is my son, Samuel,’ Kez beamed. ‘He’s nearly three. Say hello Sam.’ But the child turned his head shyly into his mother’s neck.

‘Pen told me you had kids,’ said Connie. ‘But two?’

‘I had three,’ said Kezia, her voice becoming flat. ‘Pen is holding the babby but my little Joseph went to be with the angels.’

‘Oh Kez, I’m so sorry,’ said Connie suddenly stricken for her.

When they reached the caravan, there were more greetings and now that she was up close to him, Connie could see that Reuben was but a shadow of his former self. All the same, he was delighted to see her. ‘It must be ten year since I laid eyes on ye,’ he smiled, his gold tooth flashing in the failing evening sun.

‘Nine,’ Kezia corrected.

‘It does seem a long time ago, doesn’t it?’ said Connie shaking the old man’s hand.

Behind Reuben’s traditional gypsy caravan, she caught a glimpse of a long motor trailer, an ex-army vehicle. Kezia explained that using his army pay, her husband, Simeon, had just bought it for the family and now he was converting it into their home.

‘He says it’s the way of the future,’ said Kez proudly.

Other members of the family, including Kezia’s husband, Simeon (how they all loved their Old Testament names) tumbled out to greet Connie respectfully. If they seemed a little surprised that a Gorgia would be joining them as they ate, they said nothing. Reuben offered Connie an upturned box and as she sat down a sullen-faced lad came out of the trailer.

‘Isaac!’ Connie cried. There was about six years between them so Kezia’s baby brother was about fifteen or sixteen now. She remembered how when he was a year or so old, the two girls had taken it in turns to hoick him on their hip as they played together. He looked a lot like Kez. He had the same flaming red hair which was tousled and untidy but he was fresh-faced. He wore a kerchief at his neck and his shirt was open to reveal his hairless chest. Isaac’s greeting was polite but nowhere near as enthusiastic as his sister’s. As always, the men ate first.

As she sat by the campfire, Connie couldn’t help reflecting how different their lives were. Kez looked much older than her twenty-two years. Her hands were calloused from potato picking and Brussels sprout harvesting in the winter. At this time of year, her fingers were already stained bright red from picking strawberries and raspberries.

As is the custom with Romani gypsies, Kez had married young. The strict ethics of their culture demanded that all girls marry between sixteen and eighteen. She had to be a virgin and according to the code, she was only allowed a maximum of four suitors. Any more and she would be considered too flighty. Simeon, Kezia’s husband, had been her one and only suitor and she’d married him just before her seventeenth birthday.

As the baby finished feeding Kez looked up, giving Connie a shy smile. She sat her baby up to wind her and then handed her to Connie. ‘What did you call her?’

‘Blossom.’

‘I don’t recall a Blossom in the Bible!’

‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong, Connie Dixon,’ said Kez. ‘The day my daughter first drew breath Pen told Simeon, “It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing,” and that’s in the Bible that is.’

‘You’re kidding,’ Connie gasped.

‘Isaiah 35, Verse 2,’ said Kez adopting a superior tone.

Connie burst out laughing and Kez joined in. Looking down at this pretty green-eyed baby with wisps of bright red hair, her name suited her perfectly. She was small but sturdy. She would need to be. The life of a gypsy was hard. Kezia and her family were constantly on the move. They had always gone wherever there was picking to be done, setting up camp in some field belonging to the farmer in question. As each season came and went, they went on to the next place. It sounded idyllic, waking with the dawn and hitching the horse to the wagon to head towards the next source of work, but Connie didn’t envy them.

Sam had found a ball and he and Pip began a game of toss and fetch. The gypsy dogs, tied to the fence post, could only look on enviously and the pair of them giggled and barked together. Connie sighed. If only life were always this simple, this pleasurable.

Connie had been around Kez and her family enough times to know that contrary to a commonly held belief, the true gypsy was not dirty. She watched as Kez scrubbed her little boy before getting him ready for bed. She worked so hard on him the child began to protest. After changing her baby’s nappy, one of the other women took them both inside the long trailer to put them to bed, giving the two friends time together to catch up with their news.

As soon as he had eaten, Reuben was ready to sleep. He never slept inside the caravan because that was purely to house his possessions. Instead, he crawled inside a small tunnel tent pitched on the grass verge beside it and said his goodnight. As he laced the front of the tent, Connie listened to him coughing.

‘He’s not so good,’ said Kez quietly, as if reading her thoughts. Connie nodded. What could she say? Life on the road was hard on them all. Sleeping out in the open when you’re unwell wasn’t ideal but it was no good suggesting that he should go indoors. The open air and the freedom of the road was all Reuben knew.

‘Has he seen a doctor?’ Connie asked.

‘He won’t go to a doctor,’ said Kez with a shrug. ‘He says all doctors are Gorgias and not to be trusted.’

‘Doesn’t it get any easier?’ Connie asked. ‘Being on the road, I mean?’

Kezia shook her head. ‘Sometimes, even before we unhitch the horse, the village bobby comes along on his bicycle to tell us to move on.’

‘Couldn’t you refuse?’

‘If we do they threaten to take our children away and put them in a home.’

Connie was appalled. ‘Can they do that?’

Kez shrugged. ‘So they say.’

Connie shivered. The sweater only had short sleeves and she was getting cold now. She wished she’d brought a cardigan. ‘I’d better be getting back,’ she said.

‘You didn’t get your tea yet,’ said Kez.

Connie sat back on the caravan steps and sipped the scalding hot tea. Kez must have noticed her shivering because she threw a shawl over her shoulders. As Kezia ate, Connie told her about life in the munitions factory and the WAAF. Kez told Connie about the day her mother died and the loss of her little Joseph. On a happier note, she told Connie about meeting Simeon and of their marriage. Simeon, who had joined up during the war, had only just returned to her. He had adjusted to life with the Gorgia and, she said proudly, ‘He did his bit.’

‘Simeon talks of buying land,’ Kez went on. ‘He wants us to settle down.’

Connie was sceptical. ‘But you’ve always enjoyed moving around. Will you be able to settle in one place?’

‘Simeon managed in the army right enough,’ she smiled. ‘The kids and I will get used to it. I want Sam to go to school. I want him to read and write.’

Connie nodded and the two friends looked at each other with the same unspoken thought in her head. Reuben coughed again.

‘I want a better life,’ said Kez quietly. ‘The Frenchie says Simeon has a real talent.’

Connie was puzzled. ‘The Frenchie?’

‘I don’t know his name,’ Kez shrugged, ‘but he says if I learn to read proper, we could go into business and I can help Simeon.’ She sighed. ‘We never stayed long enough in one place for me to learn at school.’

‘If you’re going to stick around here for a while,’ said Connie, ‘I could try and teach you to read if you like?’

‘Would you?’ cried Kez.

They hadn’t noticed Isaac coming up behind them. ‘What’s the point?’ he glared. ‘Waste of time, a girl learning to read.’

‘I want to read books,’ said Kez defiantly. ‘There’s some good things in books.’

‘Pah!’ said Isaac. He had some fishing gear in his hand. ‘You can’t eat books.’

They watched him walk away and Connie smiled. ‘You stick to your guns, girl.’

‘I intend to.’

‘You said the Frenchie says Simeon has a talent but what does he do for a living?’

Kez shrugged. ‘Odd jobs, scrap metal, driving, that’s all that’s on offer for the likes of us.’

‘So what is his talent?’

Kez led the way round the hedge to where the motor trailer stood. Connie gasped as she saw the beautiful wooden carvings he had put on the side. It wasn’t to Connie’s taste, too garish for that, but she could see that he had a real eye for it. Fleurs-de-lys, scrolls and arches were everywhere and Simeon was up a ladder decorating them with gold leaf.

‘This is amazing!’ Connie cried.

‘And he done the whole thing from scratch.’ Kez smiled in a satisfied way as she touched her husband’s leg and they exchanged a loving glance.

‘What about you, Connie?’ asked Kez. ‘What do you do now?’

‘Didn’t I tell you, I’m going to be a nurse?’ said Connie.

‘A nurse,’ cried Kezia. ‘Don’t you want to get married?’

Connie thought fleetingly of Emmett. ‘Maybe. When the right man comes along.’

Kez grinned. ‘Good for you.’

They went back to the fire and sat down to reminisce. It was getting dark by the time Connie made a move to go home. ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right walking back on your own?’ Simeon asked as he cleaned his brushes.

‘Fine,’ said Connie. ‘I have Pip with me. He won’t let anybody touch me.’

‘Don’t forget to put the clocks back an hour,’ Kez reminded her. ‘Double summer time ends tonight.’

‘So it does,’ Connie smiled.

As she said her goodbyes and left, Connie felt loved and accepted by all of them. Everyone except Isaac. He had been less pleasant. In fact, he seemed to have a giant chip on his shoulder.

The house was in darkness when Connie got back home. She gave Pip a drink of water and the few scraps her mother had saved him from the evening meal.

‘Silly old dog,’ she said softly as she fondled his ear. ‘I didn’t abandon you, you know. I still love you.’

Leaving him in his basket, Connie crept upstairs. She had thought everyone was asleep but then she heard Ga call her from her room. Connie only ever went in there when invited. It was a cluttered place with piles of leaflets and papers all over the dressing table and the chair. As soon as she walked in the door, Connie could tell by the expression on Ga’s face that something was wrong. She was sitting up in bed, her handbag beside her and her bad knee resting on a pillow. She had a lacy bed-shawl around her shoulders and her hair was in steel pins. How on earth did she sleep in those? Connie wondered.

Olive motioned for her to sit on the bedside chair so Connie moved the mound of papers onto the floor.

‘I want to talk to you about this nursing business,’ said Ga. Connie opened her mouth straight away but her great aunt put up her hand to silence her. ‘You might not be worried about how this will affect me …’

‘And you don’t seem to be bothered that I have a right to my own life,’ Connie interjected.

‘But,’ Ga continued loudly and clearly not listening, ‘have you thought of what this will do to your mother?’

Connie faltered. ‘Mother? In what way?’

‘Can’t you see how she looks?’ said Ga accusingly. ‘The poor woman is exhausted.’ She paused as if to let the words sink in. ‘We need you, Constance. We need you to help share the workload. Gwen cannot carry on much longer.’

There was a short silence. ‘But Clifford will be coming home shortly,’ said Connie.

‘And what sort of a state do you think he might be in?’ Ga retorted. ‘Besides, he’s not getting any younger either. I already told you, we need a young pair of hands.’

Connie looked away. She felt sick with disappointment. She didn’t want to admit it but Ga was right about one thing. Her mother did look worn out. And thin. Connie chewed her bottom lip helplessly. Did she really have to give up the idea of nursing? Surely there had to be another way? It was so bloody unfair. She had a right to live her own life but if she walked out on her mother now, she would just be plain selfish.

‘You don’t have to give me your answer now,’ said Ga. ‘Just think about it.’

‘All right,’ she said quietly, loathing the look of triumph in Ga’s eyes.

Ga nodded. ‘Good girl.’

Biting back her tears, Connie stood up. ‘If I do stay,’ she said stiffly, ‘it will only be for a while. I intend to be a nurse, no matter what you say.’

Ga’s mouth set in a tight line.

‘Oh, one more thing,’ said Ga, as Connie turned to leave. She opened her cavernous handbag, and pulled out a newspaper cutting. Connie took in her breath. It was the picture from the Daily Sketch, the one of her and Eva standing in the fountain at Trafalgar Square with the two sailors. The caption above it read, Playtime for English Roses. She remembered how she’d rolled up her slacks and stood in the water before the two sailors climbed in beside them. The picture was quite flattering too. Connie grinned.

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Ga snapped. ‘I am absolutely disgusted.’

‘Why?’ Connie challenged. ‘It was only a bit of innocent fun. You were young yourself once, Ga.’

Olive’s face clouded.

‘Come on, it was VE Day,’ Connie protested mildly. ‘We were all happy. The war was over.’

‘And so you took it upon yourself to climb into a fountain with Eva Maxwell.’

For a minute Connie was thrown. She had thought she was going to get a lecture about flaunting herself with two strange men. She hadn’t forgotten the rage she’d felt herself when she’d realised who Eva was, but it didn’t seem that important now. ‘At the time, I didn’t know who she was,’ Connie said with a shake of her head. ‘She was a friend of a friend and she said her name was O’Hara.’

‘Typical,’ Olive sneered. ‘They’re all liars, that lot.’

For some reason, Connie felt the need to defend Eva. ‘O’Hara is her married name,’ she said haughtily. ‘And just for your information, I met her family. It was all very sad. Her husband was killed in the war and I didn’t know who she was until much later in the day.’

Their eyes locked together in a common challenge. Connie refused to look away but it was clear that Olive wasn’t beaten yet. ‘Perhaps that is why Emmett disappeared,’ she said cuttingly. ‘I wonder what he thought when he saw a picture of his fiancée cavorting about with other men? I should have thought you would have learned your lesson by now, my girl.’

Connie’s heart began thumping in her chest. ‘For a start, Emmett was never my fiancé,’ she snapped angrily. ‘And secondly, I have never cavorted with other men, Ga, no matter what you think.’

‘I have a long memory,’ said Ga pointedly.

Connie froze. ‘You always have to bring that up again, don’t you,’ she snapped. ‘I was only a child. It wasn’t my fault.’

Ga looked down her nose. ‘Huh. Seems to me you haven’t changed much,’ she said, waving the newspaper cutting in the air. ‘Most men can sniff out a loose woman a mile off and you’ve got Gertrude’s blood in you, that’s for sure.’

Gertrude Dixon had scandalised the family first by getting herself tattooed and then by running away with a man from the fairground. It might have only raised a few eyebrows now, but fifty years ago, it was so shocking the family had never spoken of her again. Only Ga was determined to keep her memory alive.

Connie felt her face grow hot. ‘The whole of Trafalgar Square was packed with people,’ she said from between her teeth, ‘and they simply climbed in with us.’

‘You’ve got your arms around them,’ said Olive looking at the cutting again. ‘Not to mention the fact that both of you were half undressed …’

‘We were not! We rolled our slacks up so that they wouldn’t get wet.’ Connie’s face was flaming with anger. ‘Anyway, you never read the Sketch. How did you get this?’

‘You’re right. I never look at such trashy papers,’ said Olive with a deep breath. ‘And I certainly don’t expect members of my family to be on the front page but you see, someone sent it to me.’

She pulled an empty envelope from her bag. Connie could see it was addressed to Ga and in the left-hand corner someone had printed in bold letters the words, CONSTANCE AND EVA MAXWELL.

That added insult to injury. Connie was furious but with one quick move, she snatched the cutting from her hand. It tore as she did so but she still had most of the picture. Screwing it into a tight ball, she swept angrily from the room.

Olive lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. She couldn’t sleep. She glanced at the clock beside her bed. One thirty. It wasn’t her leg that kept her awake, it was Constance. How dare she cavort in that fountain with Cissy Maxwell’s granddaughter? Everybody knew how she felt about that family. Constance should have known better.

Olive turned out the light and her mind drifted back some forty years ago, to a time when she herself was twenty, and the century was only five years old. Arthur was coming home. It had been a bleak time. The Boer War hadn’t been as terrible as the Great War nor as bad as the one they’d just gone through, but war is war. The enemy may be different and the weapons more sophisticated, but being wounded far from home and facing the prospect of dying in a foreign field was just as terrible whatever the age. Damn these ambitious men and their thirst for power, she thought. Most people simply wanted to live their lives in peace and safety. Why couldn’t they do the same?

She remembered how it was when the troops came back, all that marching in the streets, the parades, the flag waving and the cheers. She smiled when she thought of Arthur. Dear Arthur. How handsome he looked, so tall, so suave with his new moustache and smart uniform. It hadn’t been easy for him. She could tell that the moment she’d looked into his eyes. There was a weariness there that belied his twenty and six years. He never talked about what he’d seen but Pa had read about the war and what was going on in the papers at the breakfast table. He must have had a terrible time.

Life for Olive and her family had gone on as usual while they were away. They had been well off. Pa’s greenhouses were renowned for their beautiful grapes and cucumbers. There had been no need for her to work back then so she had grown up taking long walks on the downs where the musky scent of wild flowers, pink and blue and yellow mingled with the dainty call of skylarks and the curlew. She still recalled the spicy scent of honeysuckle and gorse and the more rancid odour of the sheep allowed to roam free. Back then, the silence of the countryside was only broken by the sound of bleating sheep or the occasional dog barking and on Sundays, the peal of church bells. How times had changed. When was the last time she had heard the sound of the coachman’s horn as he entered the village bringing much needed goods from Worthing three times a week and in all weathers? Not since the 1930s. Now it was all army lorries thundering along the lanes and coupons and going without.

Arthur had been part of the final stages of the Boer War, a time of ignoble victory. Frustrated by the constant skirmishes and guerrilla tactics, the British had adopted a scorched earth policy, destroying farms, homesteads and poisoning wells to prevent the Boers re-mustering. Any women and children left behind on their farms by their menfolk were rounded up and put into camps and because the supplies were hard to come by, tens of thousands of them died of malnutrition and disease. Much to his disgust, Arthur and his unit were left to guard them. How he’d hated it. He had even written to say that he would have much preferred to fight the enemy rather than take it out on women and children. Peace came with the Treaty of Vereeniging. The irony was, just as he was about to embark for home, Arthur was terribly injured.

She’d carried on writing to him of course, but the thought of a man with half a leg missing turned her stomach. If she was his wife, she would be expected to look at it, or even worse, dress the wound. She had confided in Aggie and wept on her shoulder. Dear Aggie had been wise beyond her years and such a comfort. After a few months, Olive had put her mind to doing the best she possibly could. When Arthur came out of hospital, she would make herself love all that horror away. It was her duty. He would soon be better, strong again. She would do whatever he asked. This time she wouldn’t hold back. She would give herself to him … even though the thought of that leg still made her shudder, she would nurse him back to health. But it wasn’t to be and it was all that Maxwell woman’s fault. It was humiliating enough having to stay an old maid all her life but having a grandniece jumping into fountains with the granddaughter of the woman who had caused her all that heartache was too much to bear. It wasn’t right. A tear trickled down her cheek and she brushed it away angrily before she turned over to sleep.

Sleep didn’t come easily for Connie either. She lay on her back, hot tears of anger, disappointment and frustration trickling down the sides of her face and into her ears. Anger because Ga made her so. There had always been a flashpoint between them and it didn’t take much to make Connie flare. The woman was impossible. What did it matter if Connie had been in a fountain with Eva Maxwell? Ga treated the incident as if it were some sort of treason. The feud was between Ga and the Maxwells. Connie didn’t fully understand what it was all about, so why should she be expected to carry it on? And why did Ga constantly make snide remarks about her morals?

The disappointment was because of Emmett. Life would have been so different if they had got married. It was a mystery to her why he hadn’t contacted her again after the war. They had had some good times together and she’d done all the ‘right’ things to make him like her. She’d flattered him, laughed at his awful jokes, worn pretty clothes so that he would admire her – all the things other girls did to trap their men but Emmett hadn’t responded the way he was supposed to. Now all her ex-pals from the WAAFs were married but she was still on the shelf. It wasn’t fair.

The frustration was worst of all. She had taken a long time to think about nursing and had been so excited to be accepted for training but now she was being asked to put it on hold. Of course, this time Ga was right. Her mother did look haggard and worn out and she was not yet fifty. Connie had seen the way it was but she had chosen to pretend it would be all right. Her mother was such a wonderful person. ‘I’m pleased you’re going to make a career for yourself,’ she had told her. ‘You’ll make a good nurse.’ How much must it have cost her to say that and yet Connie knew she’d meant every word. She had given her the freedom to make her own life but much as she wanted to go, Connie knew she couldn’t walk out on her.

The door clicked open and she raised her head to see Pip come into the room. He came to her bedside and laid his muzzle on the sheet beside her. Funny how he always sensed when she was upset.

‘You’ll get yourself into a heap of trouble if Ga finds you upstairs,’ she whispered and she heard his tail thump against the chest of drawers as he licked her tears away.

Four

The atmosphere between Connie and Ga remained frosty for a couple of days. They avoided talking to each other any more than they had to, although they made polite conversation whenever Gwen or Mandy were around. Left to her own thoughts, Connie went over and over what Ga had said until there came a moment when she told herself she had to stop. It was beginning to make her feel ill. If only she had a close friend she could confide in, but Rene Thompson was living in Scotland now and recently married. She would have her mind on other things, and besides, it was difficult to write everything down in a letter.

‘Clifford is coming home,’ said Gwen as she sat at the breakfast table with a letter. Her voice was choked with emotion. ‘He’s being demobbed at last.’

‘Oh Mum, I’m so pleased for you,’ said Connie. Pip was standing next to her resting his head on her lap. Connie fondled his ear as her mind went into overdrive. If he got back before September she could still go to nursing school.

Gwen pulled a handkerchief from under her watch strap and dabbed her nose.

‘About time,’ said Ga rather pointedly. ‘You and I can’t keep the place going forever on our own. And get that dog away from the table, Constance. You know I can’t stand it.’

Pip slunk into his basket but Connie ignored the jibe. Ga could be insufferable at times, making mountains out of molehills and keeping up her hostility for days.

‘It’ll be good for Mandy to have her dad back,’ said Gwen. ‘She’s missed him dreadfully.’

Being an older man, Clifford wasn’t called up until the final big push. His regiment ended up in Holland supporting the Canadian troops who had surrounded Amsterdam. After VE Day, he was sent to Germany itself.

‘Do we know when he’s coming?’ Connie tried to sound casual but her voice was a little tremulous with excitement.

Gwen shook her head. ‘“Soon”, that’s all he says.’

Connie was aware of Ga’s eyes boring into the side of her face. ‘I can pick Mandy up from school when he comes, Mum,’ Connie said. ‘That way you can meet him at the station on your own.’

‘Thank you, darling. That would be nice.’

‘And what about the shop?’ said Ga.

‘We’ll manage,’ said Connie throwing her a look and Ga jutted her chin defiantly.

‘Perhaps when he gets back, you and Clifford could have a little holiday, Mum. A bit of time to yourselves. I could look after Mandy for you.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said her mother coyly.

‘Well, think about it,’ said Connie. ‘Wait until you’ve talked to Clifford before you say no.’

Ga stood up with a harrumph. ‘People never bothered with holidays in my day,’ she announced as she gathered her plate and cup and saucer and put them in the sink with a clatter. ‘They just got on with it.’ She didn’t see Connie and Gwen share a secret wink behind her back. ‘There’s plenty to do today,’ Ga said as she limped to the door. ‘Connie, you can plant the leeks and some winter cabbage in the plot by the fence and Gwen, we need to get the carrots up for winter storage.’

The back door slammed as she left the room. ‘No rest for the wicked,’ Gwen sighed good-naturedly.

At the weekend, the pattern of life at home was slightly different. The shop closed at noon on Saturday and normally on Sunday the whole family went to church in the morning. They were Anglicans but preferred to go to the Free Church which, because the war had interrupted their building programme, met in the local school. The services were bright and cheerful and it had a large Sunday school.

‘After Sunday school,’ Connie had told Mandy when she’d tucked her up the night before, ‘if you’re good, I’ll take you to see the gypsies.’

They ate their Sunday roast, and while Gwen sat with her knitting listening to the radio and Ga sat at her writing desk, Connie and Mandy and just about every other child in Worthing set off for Sunday school. In the main it was fun and the hour was precious to parents because it was the one time that they could have an hour to themselves with no interruptions. Pip went along with them but Connie made him wait outside. The class was held in a small room at the back of the church. The teacher, Miss Jackson, was a little older than Connie but they had both gone to the same school.

‘Connie!’ Jane Jackson, an attractive brunette, was now a librarian. ‘How good to see you. Are you back for good?’

‘Looks like it,’ Connie smiled.

‘We must get together sometime,’ Jane smiled. ‘No, William, stop hitting Eddie with that hymn book. That’s no way to behave in church.’

The children sat in a semi-circle on a large mat on the floor. There were about thirty of them in Jane’s class, nearly all of them the children of church members although there were a few who had been sent along by their parents so that they could have a bit of peace and quiet and a little time to themselves. They began with a prayer and then some choruses. Jane and her fellow teachers were ably assisted by Michael Cunningham, the son of the church treasurer, a pimply faced youth who was waiting to go to university. Michael hammered out the tune on the school piano.

The choruses brought back memories of her own childhood. They were as timeless and as meaningless as they had ever been. ‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam …’ ‘Bumble bee, bumble bee, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz …’ and ‘I am H-A-P-P-Y …’ The Bible story was based around the woman with the issue of blood. Connie wondered if five- to seven-year-olds had any idea what ‘an issue of blood’ meant, but she was surprised to see that the children listened enraptured. Apparently Jane was a gifted storyteller. One more chorus, this time one relating to the story itself, ‘Oh touch the hem of His garment and thou too shalt be whole …’ and Sunday school was over. At the end of the session, as they said their goodbyes, Jane produced a box of sweets. Each ‘good’ child, namely the ones who had sat still while they’d had the story, was allowed to take one. Connie permitted herself a wry smile. Clever old Jane. No wonder the children sat still and listened.

‘There’s a dance at the Assembly Rooms on Saturday,’ said Jane as they were leaving. ‘A few of us from the village are going. Sally Burndell comes. You know her, don’t you?’

‘She works part time in our shop,’ Connie nodded.

‘Do come to the dance,’ said Jane. ‘They’re great fun.’

A couple of days slipped by but at the earliest opportunity, Connie climbed upstairs to the attic with a torch. It was hot and musty but she’d only been there for about ten minutes before Gwen came to see what she was doing.

‘It’s chock-a-block up here, Mum!’ Connie gasped. ‘I had no idea we had all this junk.’

Her mother looked a little surprised too. ‘I suppose it’s years of saying, “Oh … put it in the attic for now”,’ she smiled. ‘What are you looking for anyway?’

‘My old school books,’ said Connie. ‘I’m teaching Kez to read.’

‘Try that box over there,’ said her mother.

The first of the boxes contained an old photograph album. Connie flicked through and smiled. The box Brownie had recorded so many happy occasions but it was a shock to see her father’s face again. Out of respect for her new husband, her mother had moved his pictures up here when Clifford came into the family. She turned a page and there was Kenneth. Her heart missed a beat and she sighed inwardly. He looked about twelve. He was bare-chested and wearing short trousers. His fair hair was tousled and he had obviously been looking for something in the pond. He was proudly holding up a jam jar tied with a string handle and something lurked in the water. She stared at her long lost brother and wished he was here. Memory is selective, she knew that. She’d forgotten the times when they had been at loggerheads, or the times when he’d thumped her for getting in his way. All she could recall were the picnics on the hill and her mother reading them endless stories, or fun and laughter at the beach and being pushed on the swings until she was so high it was scary. She ran her finger over Kenneth’s face and slipping the photograph from its stuck-down corners, she palmed it secretly into her pocket.

Her mother was rummaging through a different box. ‘These are all books,’ she said.

Putting the album down, Connie went to join her. Her mother had found an old school book but it looked very babyish. Connie didn’t want to embarrass Kez because she knew that she wouldn’t bother to practise if the book looked like it was for a child. In the end she chose two of her own books to take. Grace Darling’s Tales, a book she had been given by an aunt when she was about nine. It had two girls in swimsuits on the front cover. They were standing on the rocks with their dog. It was a bit more advanced than Connie would have liked but it was a start. The other book was her all-time favourite when she’d been a girl. She’d bought the Stories from the Arabian Nights for thruppence in a jumble sale. Connie knew she would enjoy hearing the stories again; The Porter and Ladies of Baghdad, Caliph the Fisherman and Ali Baba, who adorned the front cover. She’d always loved the romantic illustrations of the men in their flowing robes and dark smouldering looks. Now she and Kez could begin her long uphill journey to literacy.

As they pushed the box back against the wall, it was hindered by something underneath. Connie bent down and picked up a stuffed giraffe, Kenneth’s toy from when he was a baby. It was in a sorry state now, lopsided and some of the stuffing had come out of one foot. The two women stared at it in silence.

‘Do you ever think of him, Mum?’ Connie asked quietly.

Gwen straightened her back. ‘He is my son,’ she said simply. ‘There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t think about him.’

Connie could feel the tears picking at her eyes. She pushed the box right back and stuffed the giraffe down the side. That’s when she spotted her old doll’s pram. ‘Oh, look! I bet Mandy would like to play with that,’ she said deliberately changing the subject. She raised the hood and fingered the holes along the crease.

‘It could do with a bit of repair,’ said Gwen uncertainly.

‘And I know just the man,’ smiled Connie. ‘Don’t say anything and we’ll get it done for Christmas.’

Armed with her books, Connie made for the stairs. Her mother hesitated. ‘You don’t know why Kenneth left like that, do you?’

Connie froze. Her face flamed. She dared not look back or her mother would have seen. ‘Haven’t a clue,’ she said brightly as she ran down the stairs.

The nurse pulled the curtain around his bed and leaned over to undo the buttons on his pyjama top. Kenneth didn’t look down. He didn’t want to see the livid redness, the uneven skin and the scars. He’d looked at himself in the mirror once and it had turned his stomach. His own body and he couldn’t stand to look at it. They had done what they could and the ice packs on his hand relieved the awful pain. Hands. That was a joke. He didn’t have hands anymore. One of them was little more than a shapeless stump.

The doctor and his entourage swept in, each pulling the curtain closed until they were all cocooned together. Now there were six of them standing around his bed. Six and the nurse. Nobody spoke. He looked at each man in turn. He knew what they were thinking. Poor sod. Got right through the war unscathed and then, while the rest of the world is dancing in the streets, he comes down in flames to this … He thought of some of those who didn’t make it. Pongo Harris and Woody Slade and little Jimmy. At least they’d gone out intact. He might be still alive, but look at the state he was in. It would have been better if he’d died along with the rest of his crew.

The doctor leaned towards him. ‘I’m putting you up for transfer, Dickie,’ he said.

Kenneth snorted and turned away. That’s right, he thought. Out of sight, out of mind. Not my problem.

‘Listen, son,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ve done all we can for you here, but there’s a place where they are brilliant at helping boys in your position. It’s in East Grinstead, the Royal Victoria Hospital. They’ve got this man there called McIndoe and he’s pioneered some wonderful treatments for burn victims.’

‘The chaps who’ve been there are proud of what they’ve achieved. They called themselves The Guinea Pig Club,’ said one of the others.

Kenneth closed his eyes in disgust. ‘I’m not going somewhere to be experimented on. Just give me a gun and I’ll finish the job for good.’

‘That’s enough of that kind of talk,’ the doctor snapped. ‘Look,’ he added softening his tone, ‘what if I get someone to come and see you? Maybe even the big man himself. It’s up to you, but surely it’s worth a try.’

Kenneth sighed. He didn’t want this but they’d keep on and on until they had their way and he was too tired to argue. ‘All right,’ he said wearily.

‘Good man.’ The doctor leaned towards him again. ‘You know, it’s time you thought about contacting your loved ones.’

His patient’s eyes blazed. ‘No, absolutely not. I’m not ready for all that.’

Connie kept herself busy for the rest of the day and did her best to avoid working with her mother. After tea, Connie worked in the shop with Sally. They usually had a bit of a laugh together but Sally wasn’t her usual chatty self which suited Connie for now. Her mind was filled with thoughts of Kenneth. If all went to plan, she would join Kez in the evening and begin her lessons. Perhaps she should talk to Kez about Kenneth, and yet even as the thought crossed her mind she knew she wouldn’t. It was embarrassing and shameful and she couldn’t bear the thought of Kez knowing such awful things about her. She had struggled for years to put it all behind her, but what with Ga and her constant reminders and the fact that her brother was estranged from the family, what hope had she? At least by keeping busy, she wasn’t thinking about having to lie to her mother. How she wished she could just up sticks and go for her training. Being a nurse seemed to be so right for her but by being stuck here in the nursery, she’d probably end up like Ga, an old maid with nobody to love. Life was bloody unfair sometimes.

Five

It didn’t take long for Saturday evenings at the dance hall to become a routine. Connie joined up with Jane Jackson, Sally Burndell and a couple of other girls to go to the Assembly Hall in Worthing. Their dresses were all homemade. There was so little material to be had but Connie was good with a needle. She was wearing a pretty blue and white dress with a full skirt and a scooped neck with a trail of white muslin draped attractively across the shoulders. She’d found the material in another form in a jumble sale. The dress was far too big so she was able to take it to pieces and start again.

The dance was up some steps in the next road to the New Town Hall. The place was packed although as time went by, there were fewer men in uniform. Demob suits were very much in evidence. The Assembly Hall was a beautiful building. They entered a large foyer, bought their tickets and went to the cloakroom to hang up their coats. Connie loved the Art Deco reliefs, the star-shaped light fittings and the proscenium arch which was flanked by seahorses. It spoke of an age long since gone and yet somehow the building seemed as fresh and exciting as it must have done when it was built in the 1930s.

The band was already playing as they walked in and a small glass orb glittered from the ceiling. Connie and her friends found a table and sat down. The dances were done in threes. It might be a foxtrot or a rumba or a waltz when the lights were dimmed right down. As the band struck up, the men circled the seated area looking for a partner. Jane was always popular but Connie and Sally had to wait a little while before someone asked them to dance.

It had taken Connie a while before she’d got to know the other girls. At sixteen, Sally’s secretarial course was due to start towards the end of September. She may have been a lot younger than the rest of them, but she fitted into the group well. Jane was the joker. Having heard of Sally’s ambition to be a private secretary rather than ending up in the typing pool, Connie had asked Jane about her ambitions. Jane had looked thoughtful and then said, ‘I think I’ll marry a man with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin,’ and they’d all laughed.

‘How’s your boyfriend in the army?’ said Connie making small talk while they waited.

Sally had just refused to dance with a tall, lanky man with buck teeth. ‘Terry? Fine,’ she nodded. She picked up her handbag and rummaged inside. ‘He’s still in Germany. He says he’ll be stuck there until he’s demobbed next year.’

‘What rotten luck,’ said Connie. ‘A year is a long time.’

‘I’ll wait for him,’ said Sally, pulling out a dog-eared photograph. ‘That’s my Terry.’ He looked about twenty and was tall with round-rimmed glasses.

‘He doesn’t mind you coming to dances?’

‘Well, he can’t expect me to live like a hermit,’ Sally retorted, ‘but I shall always be faithful to him.’

A good looking man with slicked-down hair came up to the table and gave the girls a short bow. ‘May I?’

‘And what the eye doesn’t see …’ said Sally, taking his hand.

Connie went back to the gypsy camp whenever she had a spare minute. Kez was a willing pupil even though some of her relatives teased her when they saw what she was doing. She had been right about the books. Kez had loved the Stories from the Arabian Nights and who could blame her. All those handsome, dark-eyed men fighting for the women they loved and looking at the girls in their pretty Eastern dress made enjoyable reading.

‘The way you two sit like that,’ Reuben remarked one day, ‘you could be sisters.’

Connie smiled. She would have liked to have had a sister like Kez. Simeon was a nice man too. He sat close to his wife and a couple of times, as Connie traced the words with her finger on the page, she caught him mouthing the words along with her. So he was illiterate too? Connie was amazed. He had created a real work of art in wood on the outside of the trailer. He clearly had a good eye because the few times she had watched him at work, she’d noticed that he didn’t have a pattern to follow. It was all in his head. Eventually Connie plucked up enough courage to ask him about the pram.

‘Bring it with you next time,’ Simeon smiled, ‘and I’ll see what I can do.’

People labelled gypsies as stupid but Kez and her family were far from that. They may have lacked formal education but their skills and knowledge in other areas were second to none. Isaac was always turning up with a river fish or a couple of rabbits, and at one time a couple of pigeons for their supper. Kez invited Connie to stay but most times she declined, preferring to be home in time to read Mandy a bedtime story.

When Connie got back home on 24 July, her mother and Ga were glued to the radio. At the beginning of the month the whole country had been full of election fever. Most people thought it a foregone conclusion that Mr Churchill would get back into Downing Street but there was also a groundswell of opinion that the country couldn’t go back to the old ways. It was time for radical change. All the same it came as an enormous shock when the final count was declared after the overseas votes had been collected by RAF Transport Command. The Labour Party headed by a rather weedy looking man called Clement Attlee had won a landslide victory.

‘God help us all,’ Ga said darkly as she turned the radio off. ‘It’s going to be just like Churchill said. We beat the Gestapo in Germany and now they’ll come here, you mark my words.’

‘I’m sure it won’t be that bad, Ga,’ said Gwen good-naturedly.

‘And you can hardly blame us for wanting change,’ said Connie tartly. ‘Look what’s on offer, full employment and a free health service.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Ga retorted. ‘Anyone with half a brain could see that’s all rhetoric and empty promises. A welfare state from the cradle to the grave? It’ll never happen in my lifetime.’

It had taken a bit longer than they’d thought but Clifford came home with the minimum of fuss. Connie and her mother were anxious about him because they had no idea what kind of state he might be in. Immediately after the war, the newsreels at the pictures showed some harrowing sights coming out of Germany. Whole cities flattened by Allied bombing, women and children picking their way through the ruins and of course the opening up of those terrible concentration camps. It was a lot to take in and it must have been even worse for those who saw it at first hand. Joan Hill from the village found a wreck of a man waiting on the platform when her Charlie came home and he still wasn’t right in the head.

Clifford was due to come back on a Saturday and so Connie took Mandy out for the day in order to give her mother a little space. They went to Arundel on the bus and on to Swanbourne Lake. Pip invited himself too and had been as good as gold on the bus, lying by their feet until it was time to get out. Mandy fed the ducks with some crusts of bread and then they walked right around the lake. Pip loved it. He didn’t chase a single duck but enjoyed his freedom to scent and smell as he pleased. They stayed until late afternoon and Connie treated them to tea in a little tea rooms while Pip lay on the pavement outside and waited for them.

As it turned out, Clifford had come through his experiences with little evidence of trauma. A clean shaven man with a strong jawline and firm resolve, he looked a little too small for his demob suit but he was still good looking enough to cut a dash. His Brylcreemed brown hair had retained its colour although there were a few grey hairs at either side of his ears. When he spotted Connie and Mandy walking up the road, he ran to meet them, and catching Mandy into the air he swung her up. Pip barked and jumped at his legs and Connie laughed. Clifford’s daughter was a little more reserved in her greeting and wriggling out of his arms, as soon as he put her down she ran and hid behind Connie’s skirts.

‘She’ll be all right,’ Connie whispered when she saw the look of disappointment on his face. ‘Just give her time.’

Clifford put his hand lightly on her shoulder and kissed Connie on the cheek. ‘Is it good to be back?’ she asked.

Her mother was standing by the front door, looking on. ‘I’ll say,’ he smiled, adding out of the corner of his mouth, ‘although your mother looks a bit pasty.’

‘I’ve tried to persuade her to go to Dr Andrews,’ Connie whispered as she smiled brightly, ‘but she won’t go.’

‘I’ll get her to make an appointment as soon as I can,’ he said as they turned to walk back to the nurseries.

‘She probably won’t tell you,’ Connie said while they were still far enough away from the door to be out of earshot, ‘but I’ve offered to look after Mandy if you want to go away for a holiday.’

‘Can I go on holiday too?’ Mandy piped up.

‘Oh my, what big ears you have,’ laughed Connie and Clifford ruffled Mandy’s hair.

‘Was Ga all right with you?’ Connie asked as her sister skipped up the garden path.

‘Same as usual,’ said Clifford grimly. ‘I swear that woman looks more miserable than Queen Victoria with every passing year.’

Connie put her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

The rest of the weekend was good because everyone was on their best behaviour. Clifford insisted her mother go to the doctor on Monday. A touch of anaemia, that’s all it was, and she was prescribed a tonic. ‘Take a rest if you can,’ he advised and so Clifford went ahead with his plans for them to go to Eastbourne for a few days.

A week went by and slowly the family readjusted itself back into some sort of normality. Aunt Aggie turned up as usual and although she probed Clifford with questions, thankfully she wasn’t too intrusive. It was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about his experiences. He’d lost too many friends and three years of his life. Ga continued making her barbed remarks, the worst being one day when the four of them were in the shop.

‘It’ll be hard for you to settle down,’ Ga told Clifford. She was smiling but her eyes were bright with insincerity. ‘No pretty girls throwing themselves at the liberators here.’

‘Ga!’ said Connie, shocked.

‘Don’t tell me he didn’t enjoy the attention,’ Ga went on. ‘Sailors have a girl in every port so I don’t suppose the army is much different?’

‘Not everybody is sex mad, Miss Dixon.’

They turned to look at Sally who was clearing overripe fruit from the display. They’d all forgotten she was there. Sally straightened up and blushed deeply, realising at once that she had overstepped the mark and been too familiar with her employers.

‘And I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of other people’s conversations, Sally,’ said Ga haughtily. The girl turned back to her work and said no more.

Clifford walked away, the door banging against the wood as he left.

‘Pay no attention, dear,’ said Aggie when she saw the crestfallen look on her friend’s face.

‘Some people just can’t take a joke,’ said Ga.

As Connie walked with Mandy to the gypsy camp the day after her mother and Clifford had gone away, she already felt more relaxed. She might not have met anyone at the dance, but each week she’d had a bit of fun, something singularly lacking in her life up to now. It was incredible that Kez and her family had spent so long in the lane and there was always that sinking feeling that they might be gone when she turned the corner.

‘Susan Revel says gypsies are smelly and shouldn’t be allowed here,’ said Mandy, taking Connie’s hand as they came to the lane. Pip came bounding along to join them. ‘She said they steal people’s babies and turn them to stone.’

‘Does she now?’ said Connie.

‘And Gary Philips says they are short in the arm and thick in the head.’

Connie suppressed a smile. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t repeat what someone else says,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll tell you what, after we’ve been there, you tell me what you think.’

Mandy nodded gravely. ‘Can I share my sweeties with Sam?’

So that was why Connie had seen her squirrelling away a couple of farthing chews from her sweetie box. Mandy hadn’t asked if she could have one but Connie hadn’t said anything. Why not let her have them? They were her sweets after all. She had no idea Mandy was planning to share them with Kezia’s son. ‘I’m sure he’d love that,’ said Connie, ‘but ask his mummy first.’

Somewhere along the lane, Pip joined them again. ‘Where have you been?’ said Connie, patting his side.

The two sisters were very close. Connie adored Mandy and it was plain to see that Mandy enjoyed being with her. Kez took to her straight away especially when Mandy began to mother little Samuel.

The women spent the rest of the afternoon rubbing down handmade clothes pegs and putting them into bundles. On Monday, Kez and some of the other women would take them around the big houses in Goring and sell them. As they worked, Pen told them tales about the old days … ‘Little Mac took the tattooed lady’s mare then Abe gave Little Mac a piece of bread and a quart of ale but there was none for ’e so he died …’ Mandy listened spellbound and for Connie it felt just like old times. Peninnah always used the same form of words and if anyone interrupted her, she’d go back a bit and start again.

While Connie helped Kez with the meal, Reuben let Mandy feed the horse tethered in the field. By the end of the afternoon, they’d both had a wonderful time and it was time to go home.

‘Where’s Isaac?’ said Connie, suddenly missing him.

‘He’s with Simeon and the Frenchie,’ said Kez. She was putting Blossom to the breast.

‘What are they doing?’ Connie frowned.

‘Go and see for yourself,’ said Kez mysteriously. ‘It’s on your way home.’

Connie was curious. It was unusual for a gypsy to be working with a non-Romani. She wondered how the Frenchie got on with someone like Isaac who was so surly. They said their goodbyes and Connie and Mandy set off for home with Pip.

‘I like Auntie Kez and Sam,’ said Mandy as they walked towards Goring Street. ‘And Uncle Reuben.’

‘So what do you think about gypsies then?’ Connie asked.

Mandy thought for a bit and then said, ‘Just because you are different, doesn’t mean you’re bad, does it?’

Connie squeezed her hand. ‘I think you’ve got the right idea, darling.’

‘Can we sing my song?’ Mandy asked.

Connie smiled. ‘I’m amazed that you still like it so much.’

Mandy nodded and holding her sister’s hand, they swung their arms as they sang ‘You are my sunshine …’

The dog had run on ahead and was surprised to see them turn away from Goring Street and towards Jupp’s barn. As Connie approached Sam Haffenden’s blacksmith’s forge, she craned her neck. So where were the men? Beyond the forge and the two thatched cottages, everything melted away into farm land. It was then that she noticed a corrugated iron shed to the right of the forge. She’d never noticed that before even though it was obvious it wasn’t new. It was just off the road, and the only access was via a short lane entrance littered with old bits of wood. The potholed pathway opened out into a weed-filled yard. There was no sign of Isaac or Simeon but Connie heard the sound of raised men’s voices coming from inside the shed. She reached for her little sister’s hand and held on tight. Perhaps she should leave it for now and come back another time. She was about to turn around but Pip sped past her barking excitedly.

Six

The Frenchie’s workshop, cluttered, untidy and littered with bicycle parts, doubled as an artist’s studio. She and Mandy stopped singing as they went through the door. There were pencil drawings and paintings everywhere. Connie spotted a fantastic drawing of Reuben sitting on the steps of his caravan smoking his pipe. High on the wall she saw a watercolour of two local fishermen she recognised from the beach at Goring from where they sold their fresh fish from the jetty. She looked at their rugged faces and rheumy eyes and knew that whoever had painted them had caught their likeness exactly. Kenneth had been good at drawing but nowhere near as good as this. The room itself smelled of engine oil and paint.

As she and Mandy walked in, it was obvious that the men had reached a crucial stage of their work. There were about four of them in the large open area in the middle of the building, Isaac, Simeon and two other men. Which one was the Frenchie? They were all working together using a series of pulleys and chains to lower a large wooden frame onto a chassis on wheels.

Calling the dog to heel, Connie stood in the corner by the door and drew Mandy into a protective embrace. One man was acting as instructor and guiding their every move. ‘Steady, steady. Keep that end nice and straight. Take your time, steady … Right, that’s it.’

Someone let go of the chains and they clattered across the roof.

‘Careful,’ said the man. ‘Don’t damage the bodywork.’

Once the bulky frame was secure, Simeon began screwing it into place. It was a very solid piece of work and she could see that with the door at one end, it would be like a small house on wheels.

‘Well, I’d best be off,’ said an older man Connie had never seen before.

‘Thanks for your help, Bob,’ said the one who had been giving the orders.

Isaac grabbed his jacket and turned with a scowl on his face. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded when he saw Connie and her sister. Pip growled.

Connie jumped. ‘I-I’m sorry,’ she spluttered. ‘Kez said you and Simeon were here and I thought … Sorry.’

‘That’s no way to speak to a lady.’ The instructor had come out of the shadows and into the light. Connie’s heart skipped a beat. He was broad shouldered and muscular. She could tell by the bulge at the top of his rolled-up sleeves that this man was used to heavy work and yet he moved fluidly and effortlessly. This must be the Frenchie. His brown hair was curled, not with tight curls but with more of an attractive wave. His face was streaked with perspiration. He glanced at her and Mandy and smiled. The smile transformed his whole face, revealing a long dimple on his left cheek. ‘Good afternoon, Madam,’ he said, bending to stroke the dog. His voice was like deep velvet, and he spoke like a Canadian with just a hint of a French accent. Connie felt her face flush and her heart began to beat a little faster.

‘She ain’t no lady, Frenchie,’ said Isaac bringing Connie back to the here and now.

Connie’s jaw dropped but Mandy interrupted before she could say something.

‘We came to see where Simeon works,’ she piped up.

The Frenchie waved his arm expansively and smiled. ‘And here it is!’

Emboldened, Mandy started asking questions. ‘What are you doing? What’s that for? Why did you put that in there? Is that a picture of Mr Light?’ He answered all her questions patiently and with good humour, explaining that they had just repaired the van and were reconstructing it onto a new chassis. ‘That’s a very solid looking thing,’ Connie remarked.

‘It used to be called a living van,’ he explained. ‘It was the sort of thing road menders used to use when they stayed on the job. This one dates back to the turn of the century.’ He patted the wooden sides as he looked down at Mandy. ‘Back then you would see a steam engine on the front, then the living van, followed by a cart with all the equipment and finally the water cart to top up the engine, so the old timers tell me. It was a bit like a road train.’

Connie was puzzled. ‘But what are you going to use it for now?’

‘This mush is full of ideas,’ said Simeon coming around the vehicle with a smile. ‘This is a travelling shop.’

Connie was impressed. She could see it now. They were obviously going to put shelving along the sides and with the driver’s cab at the front, it would be ready to go.

‘And these paintings,’ Connie said with a wave of her hand, ‘did you do them as well?’

The Frenchie glanced at Connie and gave her a shy smile. ‘Yes, I did. A hobby of mine.’

‘They’re very good,’ said Connie.

‘Thank you,’ he said, wiping his hands on an oily rag.

‘And now I have to go,’ he told Mandy. ‘I have to get ready to go out. It was nice to have met you and your mummy. I hope you’ll come again.’

Mandy glared at him crossly. ‘She’s not my mummy. She’s my sister.’

The Frenchie turned to Connie. ‘I apologise,’ he said quietly. ‘My mistake.’

Connie’s heart was beating fast. She had never felt quite like this before. It was both alarming and exciting. ‘That’s quite all right,’ she said feebly. ‘I hope we didn’t intrude.’

As Simeon reached for his coat, she and Mandy stepped back towards the door. The artist turned his head and their eyes met once again. ‘My name is Eugène Étienne but around here they all call me the Frenchie,’ he said extending his hand. Her small hand was all but swallowed by his. The grip was firm but gentle, warm and sincere. As he released her, he apologised and took a cleaner looking rag from a nail driven into the post and gently wiped her fingers.

‘Why do they call you the Frenchie?’ Mandy asked.

‘Mandy,’ Connie scolded.

‘It’s all right. You see, I never met him but perhaps you can tell by my name that my father was French,’ he said without a trace of bitterness. ‘I was brought up in an orphanage in Québec.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Canada,’ he smiled. ‘I came over here during the war and forgot to go back.’

Connie’s eyes widened. ‘They let you do that?’

‘Not actually,’ he laughed. ‘I was ill and I decided to stay here when the army discharged me.’

‘Nothing serious I hope,’ said Connie.

The Frenchie shook his head. ‘Enough to keep me at the military hospital in Shaftesbury Avenue for a few months. I ended up falling in love with Worthing. I’ve only been here a little while but I want to make it my home.’

A shadow fell over them. Someone was standing in the doorway. The Frenchie stepped back and looked up. ‘Darling,’ he said. ‘I am sorry. Is it that late already?’

Connie was faced with the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen. She was blonde and tall and wore a pink floral dress with a straight skirt and a small white belt. She had the daintiest white peep-toed high heels and she carried a small clutch bag. Connie recognised her instantly. Mavis Hampton, the daughter of one of the richest men in town and Worthing’s very own beauty queen. Pip wagged his tail and headed towards her.

‘Oh no!’ she cried. ‘Don’t let that thing jump up at me.’

Connie grabbed Pip’s collar just in time and although he never would have jumped up, Mavis eyed the two of them anxiously. There was no mistaking the curl of contempt on her lip. As Simeon walked past her on his way out, she shrank away as if he was poisonous.

‘I knew it,’ Mavis said frostily. ‘You’re going to make us late.’ The Frenchie had walked towards her to kiss her cheek. ‘No,’ she trilled. ‘Don’t you dare kiss me. You’re filthy.’

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said again.

Connie took Mandy’s hand and tried to slip away. ‘Excuse me.’

Mandy turned her innocent face towards them. ‘Bye, Mr Frenchie.’

‘Goodbye,’ he said.

Mavis only scowled and as Connie reached the lane she heard her saying, ‘I know you like helping these ungrateful wretches but really darling, do you have to do it every day?’

‘For me?’

Sally Burndell was surprised when her mother came into the shop and handed her a letter. ‘I knew you couldn’t wait,’ she smiled. ‘It’s from them, isn’t it?’

‘In a minute, Mum,’ said Sally drawing her mother’s attention to the woman standing by the till. ‘I’ve got customers.’

‘Sorry, luv,’ said Mrs Burndell stepping to one side. ‘My Sally is going to college. The first girl in our family to get a real education.’

‘Mum …’ Sally protested.

‘Well, I can’t help being proud, can I?’ said Mrs Burndell turning to go. ‘See you later.’

The customer smiled indulgently and Sally rolled her eyes.

It was mid-morning before Sally had the chance to open the envelope. She had to wait until the old lady had gone back to the house and the shop was empty before she dared to take it from her apron pocket.

The letter from the college was brief and because of her tears, Sally had a job focusing her eyes properly to read it. Nine words stood out from the rest. ‘… unable to offer you a position at this time …’ Why? What had happened? They’d seemed so sure about her at the interview. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and began again. ‘We regret that due to certain facts coming to light we are unable to offer you a position at this time …’ She pushed the letter back inside the envelope and sniffed loudly. What facts? Had somebody said something bad about her? She heard the back door of the house slam. Old Miss Dixon must be coming back. Could this be something to do with her? Had the old bag given her a bad reference? Sally looked up but it wasn’t the old woman coming.

‘Time for a cuppa,’ Connie called as she walked into the shop with two cups of tea on a tray. Sally pushed the letter back in her pocket.

‘You all right, Sally?’ Connie asked casually.

‘Fine,’ said Sally a little too quickly but to Connie it was obvious she wasn’t. Her eyes were puffy and she refused to meet Connie’s gaze. She busied herself with the apple box, taking out the damaged ones and giving the good ones a bit of a polish with a duster.

‘Coming to the dance this week?’ Connie persisted.

‘No.’ Sally shook her head. ‘I’m washing my hair.’

‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘If you’re feeling a bit down, it’ll do you the world of good.’

‘Terry’s coming home,’ said Sally. ‘People might talk.’

Connie shrugged. If Sally didn’t want to come anymore, there was little she could do.

*

The Japanese surrender came suddenly. When the announcement came over the radio, Ga called from the back door. ‘Constance, Sally … leave that and come inside.’ They closed the shop door and walked across the yard. The radio was turned up enough to let the people in the next county hear it but when Connie mentioned it, Ga said, ‘Shhh. Listen.’

‘This is London,’ the announcer Alvar Lidell began. ‘The Prime Minister, the Right Honorable C.R. Attlee.’ The radio crackled and then his deep slow voice was followed by the more reedy tones of Clement Attlee.

‘Japan has surrendered. The last of our enemies is laid low …’

It all seemed to be a bit of an anti-climax but even though she was still a little distant, Connie hugged Sally. It seemed that the horrors inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bomb had brought a swift end to all hostilities. She took a deep breath. This was the first day of peace in the world for nearly six years.

As the day wore on, Ga insisted on listening to every news bulletin on the radio. In the evening Connie took the bus into Worthing to be with her friends. She’d asked Sally to come but she was met with the same response. Connie shrugged inwardly. There was clearly something wrong but Sally wouldn’t talk about it. Ah, well, if the girl wanted to be on her own she could but after all the misery of the past few years, Connie wanted to let her hair down. She met up with Jane Jackson near the pier. The country had been given two days’ holiday and there were to be fireworks later on but there were fewer flags than on VE Day and only the usual holiday crowd along the seafront. She was missing Kenneth again. What sort of war had he had? Had he survived? No, she wouldn’t even think about that. Of course he was alive … somewhere. Connie struggled to be glad. A grey veil of disappointment seemed to hang over everyone until a hastily formed band of amateur musicians gathered and the young people took over. The two girls gave a wonderful display of the jitterbug and before long, everyone was joining in. For Connie, it wasn’t the same as being in the crowds in London on VE Day but she and Jane had made a valiant attempt to get the party going.

Despite their high hopes, the end of the war hadn’t brought change. There were still petrol shortages, little in the way of coal and supplies and rationing had actually been increased. Aunt Aggie came to see Ga on the Thursday for their weekly game of whist but elsewhere there was little in the way of celebration at the nurseries.

‘You should have seen the queue outside Potter and Bailey’s today,’ she told them at supper. ‘Someone said there was a shipment of bacon but by the time I got there, there wasn’t a rasher to be had.’

‘I noticed that the butcher in the village has a sign in the window,’ Aunt Aggie said. ‘I can’t remember the exact words but it was something like, “Wanted: magician for next week’s stock”.’ And they all laughed.

‘So much for the Labour government,’ Ga muttered darkly.

When Clifford and her mother got back from their week’s holiday, Gwen looked rested and actually sported a bit of a suntan.

‘It was simply heavenly being able to walk along the seafront without all that barbed wire and concrete,’ she said. ‘The shops were a bit bare but we had fireworks when the Jap surrender was announced.’

They’d managed to pick up a couple of sticks of rock for Mandy, a perpetual calendar covered in shells and a present from Eastbourne on it for Ga, and a pretty headscarf for Connie.

Clifford had bought a roll of toilet paper. When he put it on the table Ga wrinkled her nose. Connie burst out laughing. It was called Nasti Toilet Roll and had a cartoon picture of Adolf Hitler on the wrapper.

‘Guaranteed non-irritant,’ grinned Clifford. ‘Good, eh?’

Gwen had even thought of Sally Burndell and Sally seemed quite touched by the box of three handkerchiefs from Woolworths.

‘They’re very pretty,’ said Sally, ‘but you shouldn’t have.’

‘You look as if you need a bit of cheering up,’ smiled Gwen. ‘That boyfriend of yours will soon be home.’

August was drifting towards September. Double summer time finished its first stage in July when the clocks went back one hour. Clifford had eased himself back into position but there was a tension between him and Ga. Even so, the nurseries were being run efficiently and smoothly. The next time Connie went into the lane, Kez and her family had gone. There were no goodbyes. When she saw the pitch was empty, Connie wondered about the pram she had given Simeon. Nothing had been said about it and she was a bit annoyed that he’d apparently taken it with them. She’d trusted him and it would have been nice to give it to her little sister for Christmas.

Mandy and Pip had played outside with her friends during the long school holiday. Connie would miss the lazy afternoons when she took her little sister down to the beach for a swim. The rough ground at the bottom of Sea Lane was ideal for hide and seek and if it got too hot, they could sit among the bushes for a picnic. There were times when her heart ached for what might have been but she knew she was doing the right thing. She had to put her family first.

‘When is it you start at the hospital?’ Gwen and Connie were changing the beds together. It was the beginning of September and Mandy was back at school.

Connie couldn’t look at her mother. ‘I’m not going.’

Gwen was putting the bolster case on. It was always a struggle because the thing was the length of two pillows and very unwieldy. ‘What do you mean, you’re not going?’

‘I thought I’d leave it a year, Mum,’ said Connie trying her best to sound casual. ‘By next year, everything will be back to normal.’

‘Everything is back to normal now,’ Gwen frowned. She stopped what she was doing and looked at her daughter. ‘This sounds like Ga talking.’

Connie picked up the dirty sheets and made for the door.

‘Connie?’ said Gwen. ‘You were so excited when you told us. What’s this all about?’

‘You looked a bit off-colour when I came home,’ said Connie without looking round. ‘It seemed best to wait a while, that’s all.’ Her hand went out to the door latch.

‘Connie, look at me,’ said her mother. ‘Look at me.’

Connie turned slowly, knowing that there was no hiding the tears already glistening in her eyes. ‘Oh Mum …’ Connie said quietly. ‘I really didn’t want to come back to the smallholding. I had already enrolled at the hospital.’

‘I know you had,’ said her mother.

‘But Ga thought …’

‘That bloody woman!’ snapped her mother. ‘Why does she have to stick her oar in every time?’

Connie’s jaw dropped. She’d never heard her mother speak like this before. Gwen smiled encouragingly. ‘Connie, it’s your life and we, Clifford and I, both want you to have the best you possibly can. The world is a much bigger place now. We all need to put the past behind us and start again. Don’t let your opportunities pass you by.’

Connie’s chest constricted. Her mother was an amazing person and she longed to tell her how much her approval meant to her. ‘I wish you had a better life, Mum.’

Gwen carried on struggling with the bolster case. ‘My life is fine,’ she smiled. ‘Now that Clifford has come home, we are making plans of our own.’

‘Plans? What plans?’

‘I can’t talk about it yet but Clifford has some wonderful ideas for the smallholding,’ said her mother. ‘One thing is absolutely certain, you mustn’t waste your life hanging around for us.’

Impulsively, Connie hugged her. ‘Thanks, Mum.’ As they parted, Gwen’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. Put the past behind us … the words echoed in Connie’s head. Ga never let her forget the past … but could she do it? Could she forget the shame and guilt that awful man had brought on her family and actually make something of her life? Could she make it up to her mother for her brother going away? Was there still time? ‘I may not be able to do it now anyway,’ Connie said uncertainly. ‘I haven’t replied to any of their letters.’

Gwen looked at her, horrified. ‘When were you supposed to start?’

‘On 10th September,’ said Connie.

‘Then you’d better leave that and get on the bus straight away,’ she cried. ‘Go down there in person. Blame the war, blame me. Say I’ve been really ill and now I’m better … say anything you like, but whatever you do, make sure you get that place again.’

Connie hesitated.

‘Go on girl!’ her mother cried. And Connie fled.

*

The bridegroom stood up and turned to see the small procession make its way down the aisle. The church was small and even in these difficult times, little used. It smelled dank and musty as he’d walked into the door. He would have preferred a registry office himself. All this preamble – the reading of the banns and talks with the Vicar made him nervous but she’d had her heart set on a proper wedding so he’d given in. The usher, some old fossil who looked as old as Methuselah, showed him to the front pew. His best man, a chap he’d met in the pub a week before, rose unsteadily to his feet as he arrived and gave him a watery smile. His teeth were tobacco stained but he had scrubbed up well enough. They sat down together and waited. After a while he said, ‘Got the ring?’ and the best man nodded. There was a rustling sound by the door of the church and the Vicar came down the aisle. ‘Please stand.’

The organist struck up the tune, ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and his heartbeat quickened. No getting out of this now. He had made a decision which had surprised even himself. He had never really had a close relationship before. Only the one with his mother. Would he be able to cope with marriage? He swayed a little at the thought and wiped his open palms down the side of his suit as he slowly turned to look. The congregation, such as it was, was already standing; only one relative on his side and a spattering of people on hers. Every head was turned in anticipation of the coming bride but his eye was immediately drawn to her. She was wearing a white satin dress with a pretty pink bow at her waist. Someone had put her hair into golden ringlets and she had a halo of roses, the last roses of the summer, on her head. He took in his breath. She was nothing short of an angel sent from heaven. She carried a posy and she watched his face as she walked purposefully towards him. She returned his smile with a gappy grin and then closed her mouth as she remembered her missing milk teeth. He laughed softly and looked up at his bride, her mother, coming on behind her. Yes, he had done the right thing. Everything was perfect, just perfect.

Seven

It was weird. Pip had been following Connie around all day with his tail between his legs. It was as if he knew she was going.

‘I’ll be around until the 9th but after that I shall move into the nurses’ home,’ Connie told everyone at the tea table.

She had managed to see someone in management and after an hour of being moved from one person to another, had persuaded them that she was ready to start her training.

‘Why can’t you live here?’ Ga sat tight-lipped and frowning at her great niece. ‘You could catch the bus from the end of the road.’

Connie knew that was just a ruse to make her feel that they couldn’t cope without her. Before long Ga would be dumping ‘would-you-just jobs’ into her lap. Oh, Connie while you’re doing that, would-you-just pick out a few of those seedlings, or before you catch the bus, would-you-just take that into the shop for me.

‘I have to be on the ward at seven and you know me first thing in the morning, Ga,’ she said brightly. ‘It’ll be better if I’m in the nurses’ home.’

But Ga wasn’t about to give up that easily. ‘What about all the books you’re supposed to have? You needn’t expect …’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Connie, knowing perfectly well what was coming. ‘I’ve already saved enough to buy everything.’

‘Perhaps it’s just as well things didn’t work out for you and Emmett then,’ Ga remarked acidly. ‘You wouldn’t even be allowed to train if you were married.’

The mention of Emmett made Connie’s heart lurch, but then Ga had meant to upset her, hadn’t she? Why did she keep saying stuff like that? For the sake of her mother, Connie bit her tongue.

‘Why can’t you just be happy for the girl?’ Clifford snapped, ‘and for once, say something encouraging.’

‘Well!’ Ga glared.

‘It’s all right, Clifford,’ Gwen soothed.

Clifford helped himself to some more potatoes. ‘No, it’s not, Gwennie,’ he said.

‘I’m only trying to make her see that it won’t be easy,’ Ga protested.

‘I know it won’t be easy, Ga.’

The atmosphere at the table soured. Her great aunt was probably right, or she would have been right if it was still 1939. The unwritten rule for nurses had always been that women who married would give up the profession but the war had left hospitals alongside many other institutions with severe shortages of manpower. Connie felt sure that by the time she’d gained her nursing badge, the ‘no married women’ edict would be a thing of the past anyway. Not only that, but the new government was pressing ahead with a country-wide health service which would be free to all, regardless of income or status, at the point of need. Things were changing. They were indeed entering a brave new world.

Now that she was really going, Connie was thrown into a hive of activity. She’d found the list of things she was supposed to bring with her to the hospital and set off into town. Ga said nothing when Connie came back with her purchases but she shot her one of her dark looks. As a child, they had terrified her and even now they made Connie feel a little uncomfortable, but she was determined not to let the old lady spoil her excitement.

‘So you’re going to run out on your mother after all,’ said Ga when the two of them were alone in the kitchen. Connie was making a pot of tea and when Ga walked in she’d asked her if she wanted one.

‘I’m not running out on anyone,’ said Connie calmly. ‘Mum’s given me her blessing.’ Her great aunt tightened her mouth disapprovingly. ‘It’s time to think about me,’ Connie pre-empted. She hated herself for feeling the need to justify her own actions. She was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake, but she knew what Ga was like.

‘Me, me, me,’ Ga taunted. ‘Never mind about anyone else.’

Her cheeks flaming with anger, Connie shoved the cup in front of her, slopping some of the tea into the saucer. As she poured her own cup she could hear Ga rubbing her knee and letting out little sighs of pain and discomfort. It took everything Connie had not to stalk out of the room or to round on Ga with some cutting comment but she didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of a fight. She wasn’t going to allow Ga to spoil her last few days at home so there would be no more rows. Ga could harrumph and disapprove as much as she liked but Connie was going to be a nurse no matter what she damn well said.

Sally Burndell blinked at the piece of paper in her hand. She turned over the envelope and looked at the postmark. Worthing 6.30 p.m. Posted last night and locally. She could feel the tears pricking her eyes as she read it again. There was no name at the bottom of course, but whoever sent them seemed to know an awful lot about her. It had been bad enough when she’d got that awful letter from the secretarial college but when she’d applied to the one in Brighton and been refused there as well, she’d been devastated. As the panic rose within her chest, her heartbeat quickened. She lowered herself into a chair. And read it again. ‘I do not wish to cast aspersions …’ What did aspersions mean? Sally wasn’t sure but it didn’t sound good. ‘Do you think it wise to flirt with other men while Terry is away? If I wrote and told him what you were up to, he’d realise you are a tart.’ They were all signed ‘a well-wisher’. How could someone be a well-wisher and yet write such nasty things? What if this person wrote to Terry? Going to the dances had only been a bit of fun. She never even let another boy kiss her and she always went straight home after they’d finished, either with Connie or Jane. If only she knew who had written such hateful things she would have it out with them. The letter trembled in her hand and as she gave way to her sobs, she was so glad her mother was out shopping. She couldn’t bear it. How could anyone be so cruel? It was all lies. Wicked, wicked lies!

Connie missed Kez. Jane was a good friend but there was something about Kez … She walked up to the lane with Pip most days in the vain hope that they might be back, but she was always disappointed. And what about that pram? Then it crossed her mind that Simeon might have told the Frenchie about it so on her way back from the shops, she headed towards his workshop. She knocked on the door even though it was already open. ‘Hello …’

‘Nearly done,’ said a voice deep inside. He stood up from behind an upturned bicycle frame, and spun the wheel. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought you were the owner come back for the bike. Connie, isn’t it? What can I do for you?’

Already her heartbeat was gathering speed. His sleeves were neatly rolled up to his biceps and his shirt was open to the waist. She could see at once that he had an athletic build. He was as attractive as ever, despite his dirty clothes and oil-smudged face. ‘I – I wondered if you knew when Kez and Simeon would be coming back?’ she flustered.

He shook his head and taking a piece of rag from his pocket began to wipe his hands. ‘I don’t think they know themselves.’

Connie nodded and turned to go. ‘It’s just that I’m moving away for a bit.’

‘If I see her, shall I tell her where you’ve gone?’

Connie quickly explained about her nursing. The Frenchie seemed impressed. ‘Good for you. If I see them, I’ll tell them,’ he promised and their eyes locked.

‘There seems to be no end to your talent,’ she laughed nervously, waving her hand towards the mobile shop taking shape at last. ‘Now here you are mending bicycles.’

‘This is my proper job,’ he smiled. ‘I was only helping Simeon out. It was a good idea, wasn’t it?’

‘Your idea, so he said,’ Connie grinned.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten. Brilliant, wasn’t it?’ and they both laughed.

Connie was suddenly distracted by her old doll’s pram hanging on a hook by its handle on the wall behind him. It had been painted a lovely shade of maroon and the hood seemed new.

‘Oh yes,’ said the Frenchie following her eye. ‘Simeon said you wanted that for your little sister. Simeon painted it and put on a new hood. I’ve repaired the wonky wheel and he asked me to paint something nice on the sides. I’m afraid I haven’t got around to it yet. Sorry.’

‘No, no,’ she smiled. ‘That’s fine. I wanted it for Christmas, so there’s plenty of time. How much do I owe you?’

‘I’m not sure yet,’ he said. ‘I’ll send the bill around to the nurseries if that’s all right?’

She nodded.

‘I suppose I’d better cover it up,’ he said. ‘In case your sister comes to the workshop.’

‘That might be an idea,’ she said. She was getting flustered again.

‘Will you call for it?’

‘I don’t want to put you to too much trouble,’ she said breathily. Their eyes met and the spell it cast was only broken when they both heard a footfall beside the door.

‘Ready yet?’ said a man’s voice.

‘Almost,’ said the Frenchie, returning to his bicycle repair. Connie turned to go and as she reached the door he called after her, ‘All the best, Connie.’

The hospital had a very distinctive smell, a cross somewhere between strong disinfectant and boiled cabbage.

Her first task when she’d arrived at the nurses’ home was to go to the central stores and be kitted out with her uniform. She was given three dresses, all pale blue, with detachable buttons which were fastened through a button hole with a split pin. She had two belts the same colour as the dresses; three white aprons, stiffly starched, two plain white caps and two pink laundry boxes each with a leather strap. The sister giving out the uniforms, a gaunt looking woman with thin grey hair, explained that laundry day was Tuesday.

‘The box has to be taken to the front hallway of the nurses’ home by 8.30 a.m. for collection,’ she said. ‘Inside your box is a pink book. In it you have to record what you put into the box and when your clean laundry is returned, make sure that you check that everything is correct. Any mistakes have to be reported at once.’

Connie was given the keys to Room 13 on the first floor of the nurses’ home, a room she would share with another girl she had yet to meet. ‘After you have taken your uniform and your case up to your room, report to Room 6 in the main hospital.’

The room was better than she expected. It had two beds, each with a bedside locker, a chest of drawers and a sink in the corner. The other girl wasn’t in the room but some of her things were. Some clothes were thrown untidily across the bed, a set of keys lay on the dressing table and a suitcase was standing on its heel beside one of the wardrobes. Connie put her single suitcase onto the bed and carefully laid the contents into the remaining empty drawers before putting the empty case on top of the other wardrobe. She stored the two laundry boxes under the bed, the same as the other girl had done. She had brought two photographs from home which she put on her bedside locker. One was of Mum and Clifford with Mandy when her sister was small. Pip sat on the ground between them. The other photograph was the one of Kenneth she’d taken from the album she’d found in the loft. Connie ran her finger across the glass. ‘Welcome to your new home, Kenneth,’ she smiled.

Connie took her time changing into her uniform. This was something to be savoured. It wasn’t comfortable, everything was too heavily starched, but as she caught sight of herself in the mirror she felt a frisson of excitement. Her crisp white apron crackled as she walked along the corridor making her feel elated, as if she was walking on air. She now had a completely new identity. For the next four years, she would be student nurse Dixon. She liked the sound of that. It had a nice ring to it.

When she finally opened the door of Room 6, Connie felt as if she had stepped back in time. It was just like school. Four rows of desks, each with its own inkwell, stretched for the length of the room. There was a blackboard and a teacher’s desk complete with a pile of books at one side and a register in the middle. The noise level in the room was extremely high and although a few people looked up as she came in, one or two sharing a shy smile, her entry made no difference at all. Hardly anyone was sitting down. The girls had draped themselves over the desks, or huddled together in groups, all talking nineteen to the dozen. Connie looked around. They appeared to be roughly the same age as her, although one or two looked younger.

One girl, plump with short dark curly hair and a ready smile stepped forward with a friendly greeting. ‘Hello. You’re number twenty. We’re quite a big group, aren’t we? Have you got any spare hairgrips?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Connie. ‘My name is Connie, by the way.’

‘Betty Wellman,’ said the girl. ‘I’m supposed to wear this hat thing but I can’t put it on. I never use hairgrips.’

She was interrupted when a woman in a plain dark blue uniform with long sleeves sailed into the room on a waft of lavender water.

‘Good afternoon, nurses,’ she said with an air of authority. She was followed by two others dressed the same. They each wore a frilly cap but no apron. Everyone responded raggedly and sat down. Three other students hurried into the room behind her and sat right at the back with Connie.

‘My name is Sister Abbott. Sister Brown and I are your home sisters,’ the first woman announced. She extended her hand towards the woman next to her and looked around. ‘In response to your puzzled expressions, let me explain that we supervise you throughout your training. If you have any questions, any queries about anything, Sister and I are your first port of call. Sister Hayes is your head tutor and will be in charge of your lectures.’

The third woman gave everyone a curt nod of her head.

Connie began to relax. Home Sister Abbott seemed strict but there was an air of fairness about her.

‘You have all been allocated rooms in the nurses’ home?’ she said and there was a murmur of agreement. ‘There is a cleaner on each floor, but I expect every nurse to keep her room clean and tidy. Laundry day is Tuesday. Strip your bed and put your dirty sheets in one of the pillowcases and leave it outside for collection.’

Should be easy enough to remember, thought Connie. It was the same day as the uniforms had to go out.

‘You will find your clean sheets outside your door after 2 p.m.,’ Home Sister continued. ‘Failure to leave your dirty sheets outside means the cleaner will not leave any clean ones.’ She began to walk up and down the aisles looking at each girl. ‘The nurse’s uniform is something to wear with pride. No cardigans.’ She had drawn level with a girl wearing a pale blue knit. The girl blushed a deep red and took the cardigan off. ‘No jewellery,’ Sister continued and the girl beside her removed her engagement ring, ‘and wear your cap at all times.’

‘I haven’t got any hairgrips,’ Betty Wellman whimpered.

‘I haven’t got any hairgrips, Sister,’ Sister Abbott corrected. ‘Can anyone help this girl out?’

‘I can.’

Connie’s head spun round at the sound of her voice. The girl rose to her feet and walked to Betty’s desk, handing her two Kirby grips. As she turned back to her seat, their eyes met and Connie’s face flamed as she registered the same shocked surprise on the other girl’s face.

It was Eva.

Eight

‘Has anyone seen Pip?’

When Connie had walked to the bus stop that morning, they’d seen the dog following her but now he’d disappeared. Gwen picked up his dog bowl. The food was uneaten. Clifford shook his head and Ga looked blank. ‘Isn’t he down by the gate?’

It was getting dark but there was still no sign of him. Clifford and Mandy walked right round the nursery calling and calling while Gwen stood by the back door and banged a spoon on his dog bowl. Ga didn’t join in but every time someone came back indoors she would look up from the letter she was writing at her desk and say, ‘Any sign?’

The family ate their supper but there was little conversation at the table. Nobody wanted to voice their fears. When Gwen put Mandy to bed, Clifford went outside for one last time. The whole time she read her daughter’s bedtime story, they could hear Clifford calling the dog’s name.

Back downstairs, when Clifford came in, Gwen didn’t need to ask. His face said it all. ‘I do hope he hasn’t run off altogether,’ she sighed.

The new nurses had spent the rest of the afternoon putting together their timetables. Their day would begin at 8.30 a.m. and finish at 6 p.m. They would have an hour for lunch and two short tea breaks, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Most of their first six weeks would be spent in the classroom but after a month, they would be spending some time on the wards. ‘I’m sure that you all know you have to pay for your textbooks,’ Sister Tutor said. ‘If you haven’t already collected them, please go to the office by tomorrow morning. It’s twenty pounds. If anyone has a problem with that, we can make arrangements for it to be deducted from your wages.’

Connie had thought it was grossly unfair that she should have to pay for anything at all. There had been a vague possibility that she could have started her training straight after VE Day but by starting now it had given her enough time to save up. It had been a struggle because money was tight and Ga hadn’t given her much money for helping in the nursery. Never mind, she was here now.

‘You will be having lectures on various subjects,’ Sister Hayes continued. ‘Anatomy, nutrition, physiology and the care of patients.’

Connie shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It was beginning to sound rather daunting. What on earth was physiology? Was she up to this? Sister Hayes had been talking for some time and several of her fellow students looked bored. One girl had closed her eyes. ‘You will be learning about hygiene,’ said Sister. ‘Especially personal hygiene.’ She paused. ‘For instance, as soon as I walked into this room I immediately knew that someone has not changed her knickers today.’

The effect of her words was electrifying. Everyone sat bolt upright, their faces speared by embarrassment and horror. Sister Abbot had singled out the girl wearing a cardigan, and the one without her cap. Surely Sister Hayes wasn’t going to draw attention to somebody’s lack of clean underwear?

‘And what’s more,’ Sister continued relentlessly, ‘someone in this room has underarm odour.’

Even though she had no reason, Connie, along with the rest of the girls was thrown into a blind panic as Sister Hayes walked slowly up and down the silent aisles, all the while heading in her direction. Even though Connie was always careful to wash and never left the bathroom without putting talc under her arms, she could feel her face heating up.

‘There is nothing worse,’ Sister Hayes continued, ‘than a helpless patient having to put up with a nurse leaning over them if she has underarm odour.’

When she finally reached her desk and picked up the register, the class heaved a silent collective sigh of relief. ‘You are all dismissed,’ she said, ‘be back here at eight thirty sharp tomorrow morning and your training will begin.’

Careful to avoid Eva, Connie headed for the door. The only remaining thing for them to do tonight was unpack, which she’d already done, and to find the dining room for their meal. Connie didn’t think she could eat much. She already had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Not only did everything seem to be alien but there was the question of which girl was her roommate. Please God, she silently prayed, don’t let it be Eva. What was she doing here anyway? She said she was going to join the GPO or the police, hadn’t she? So why had she enrolled on this class?

They accidentally bumped into each other near the door. Connie heard the beginning of Eva’s mumbled apology as it choked in her throat but she didn’t look at her.

‘Flippin’ ’eck,’ said Betty catching up with Connie in the corridor. ‘That woman was a bit near the knuckle with her knickers and underarm stuff, wasn’t she? My mum got the tin bath out for me before I came but I was terrified that she was going to point the finger at me.’

‘She does it to get your attention,’ said another girl. ‘My sister did this training course a couple of years ago and she says she does it with every new group.’

Connie grinned. ‘It certainly got our attention.’

Betty was going through her pockets. ‘Oh, blimey,’ she groaned. ‘I’ve left my keys in my room. I’ve locked myself out. Anybody here in Room 13?’

‘I found him, Mummy.’

Mandy had been tucked up in bed when she remembered that her favourite storybook was in Connie’s room. She’d left it there last night when her sister read to her. When she opened the door, she’d found Pip lying on one of Connie’s cardigans which had fallen to the floor. He looked the picture of misery.

With a little gentle persuasion, the family got him downstairs and in his basket, but only when they took the cardigan too. He wasn’t interested in his food, although he did drink a little water before lying back down.

‘Looks like he’s going to pine for her like he did the last time,’ said Gwen anxiously.

‘He’ll get used to it,’ said Ga. ‘She’ll be back every week for her day off, won’t she?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Gwen.

‘What do you mean, perhaps?’ Ga challenged.

‘What she means is that the girl needs a life of her own, Ga,’ said Clifford.

Olive scowled.

Mandy knelt by the dog’s basket. ‘Don’t worry, Pip,’ she said gently. ‘Connie’s coming back.’ She stroked the dog’s head. ‘You don’t have to be lonely. I’ll be your special friend, if you like.’

Connie sat in the nurses’ school room day after day, taking notes and trying to remember how to spell difficult names like Tincture of Guaiacum (used to test for blood in the urine), gonococcus (a bacteria which causes gonorrhoea) and encephalitis (inflammation of the brain). After lectures they got to spend an hour or two on the wards, usually doing the food trolley or the bedpan round. Some of her fellow students were a little disappointed to be doing such menial tasks but the ward sister had pre-empted any grumbling behind her back by stressing how important it was to make the patients feel warm, comfortable and safe when they were in difficult circumstances.

‘All nursing care is of equal importance,’ she told them.

So Connie learned to rub the stainless steel bedpan with a cloth before putting it underneath the patient because it could be very cold on the skin. She enjoyed helping the helpless to eat and when she was asked to do the temperature round, writing the results on the chart at the foot of the patient’s bed, it made her feel like a real nurse.

She went home for her day off and pottered around in the nurseries. Pip followed her everywhere but after a while she noticed his growing attachment to her little sister. Connie had been worried when her mother told her the dog was pining, but perhaps he was adjusting to another change in his life. She certainly hoped so. Connie was having to make some big changes herself. There was little chance of going to dances with Jane Jackson. Connie could only have two late passes a month, and half the time, she was down to work part of Saturday evenings on the wards. They met for the pictures a couple of times which had to be a poor substitute for dancing with a real live man.

The tension at the house was sometimes palpable. Clifford and Ga couldn’t see eye to eye about where the future of the nurseries lay and most of the friction between them centred around the use of the top field. Ga wanted to grow potatoes on a much larger scale but Clifford wanted to diversify.

‘We haven’t got the wherewithal,’ Ga insisted. ‘Not if we have to pay that dozy girl in the shop. I don’t know why I bother to keep her on. She’s always got a face like a wet week these days.’

‘You know yourself the ground is poor,’ he said. ‘Potatoes don’t bring in a lot so if we sold the land for building …’

‘Over my dead body!’

‘We could build something ourselves,’ Clifford persisted. ‘A factory or a shop. That would make a lot more sense than breaking our backs over a few stupid spuds.’

‘So now you’re calling me stupid?’ Ga retorted.

‘Did I say that?’ Clifford challenged. The rows became more unreasonable as time went on and there seemed to be no middle ground.

Connie began her nursing proper on the men’s ward. She was a little nervous when she reported for duty and the first day seemed extremely long, but she got through it without any mishap. She was working with another student nurse, thankfully not Eva.

Every day began with prayers on the ward. Sister would read the collect for the day from the Book of Common Prayer and they would all recite the Lord’s Prayer together. Connie knew that some of the girls resented this but she found it a pleasant experience and it brought with it a sense of calm.

Her calm on her second day on the ward was soon shattered when she heard the night sister’s report.

‘The doctor has asked for a urine sample from Mr Dunster.’

Connie’s heart sank. She wanted to say, whatever you do, don’t ask me, but she knew a good nurse would never refuse to withhold treatment from her patient, no matter how obnoxious they were. She’d had a run-in with Mr Dunster when she was on the ward one day after lectures and he was nothing more than a lecherous old beast. She’d had to take a urine sample then and when she’d taken the bottle to his bed, he had pretended he wasn’t feeling up to doing it himself. She’d had a suspicion that he was up to no good because as she drew the curtains around the bed, she spotted Mr Elliot and Mr Thomson nudging each other as they sat at the patients’ table.

In the privacy of his bedside, Mr Dunster left Connie to undo his pyjama cord and he closed his eyes as she guided his flabby member into the neck of the bottle. As soon as she touched it, she felt it stiffen. Her hand was trembling and she was starting to feel hot and embarrassed. Don’t think, she told herself. Don’t think about it. Then she felt his hand creeping around her buttock. She’d hit him away angrily, her face flaming and glared at him, tight-lipped, until he passed water. When it was done, he smiled and sighed, ‘Thank you, nurse. You’ve got a lovely touch.’

Connie had been furious of course, but she didn’t say anything. She was convinced that if she’d made a fuss, especially on her first time on the ward, Sister would have made her life a misery, and the other men on the ward would have had a good laugh at her expense. But she simply couldn’t face the dirty basket again.

As the day sister thanked the night sister for her report and the night staff left, Connie prayed a silent prayer. ‘Oh God, please don’t let Sister ask me to deal with Mr Dunster …’ But before her prayer was even finished, she heard Sister Brown saying, ‘After breakfast, Nurse Jefferies can do the drugs trolley with Staff Nurse Harris and Nurse Dixon, can you get the sample from Mr Dunster?’

Connie’s heart plummeted. Alone in the sluice room she took a bottle from the shelf and put it in the autoclave. While she waited for it to sterilise, her gaze fell upon a treatment trolley some nurse had abandoned without clearing it up and an idea slowly formed in Connie’s mind.

Sailing down the ward towards Mr Dunster’s bed, Connie prayed her second prayer that morning. ‘Oh God, please don’t let Sister see me …’

‘Good morning, Mr Dunster,’ she said loudly and cheerfully as she reached his bedside. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you for another sample.’

‘That’s quite all right, nurse,’ he grinned.

As she pulled the curtains around his bed, Connie was aware of the other patients watching and heard one of them whisper, ‘Lucky dog.’

‘I’m glad it was you who came to help me, nurse,’ said Mr Dunster wanly. ‘I just don’t feel up to it today and you’ve got such lovely long fingers.’ He closed his eyes and leaned against the backrest with a sigh.

‘That’s what I’m here for,’ said Connie, tying on a face mask.

Someone on the other side of the curtain sniggered. Connie pulled on a pair of thick rubber gloves making sure that they snapped loudly against her wrists. Mr Dunster’s eyes flew open.

‘I’m afraid I owe you an apology,’ she said crisply. ‘I’m new here and the last time we did this, I didn’t know the correct procedure. I’m sorry about that.’ She whipped off the green cloth from the top of the tray to reveal a urine bottle and a large pair of flat bladed forceps. Mr Dunster’s eyes grew large.

‘Now I want you to relax, Mr Dunster,’ said Connie brightly. She heard another snigger from the other side of the curtain. ‘This won’t hurt … much.’

The silence seemed to grow as she guided Mr Dunster’s member towards the bottle, careful to keep a very firm grip to avoid any accidental spill. Moments later after sailing back down the ward with the sample, her head held high, she bumped into Sister by the door of the sluice room. Her heart went into her mouth. Oh Lord, now she was in trouble …

‘Well done, nurse,’ said Sister Brown and it was then that Connie noticed the twinkle in her eye. ‘You’re learning. He won’t be doing that again, and while you’re doing your own sterile tray, would you clear up this trolley? I think the night staff must have forgotten it.’

The door swung for a moment or two as she left and Connie set about clearing up the sluice room. How did Sister Brown know what she was up to? The woman must have the eyes of a hawk. One thing was for sure. Mr Dunster wouldn’t be wanting her help again, especially as she’d held the forceps for a very long time under the cold water tap before she’d used them to hold his member.

Sally Burndell had had a letter from Terry. As soon as the letter fell on the mat, she’d recognised his writing. She’d planned to read it in her lunch break at work but she couldn’t wait. She’d opened it on the bus. After that, she didn’t remember much about the journey. The next thing she knew, she was at the terminus in Littlehampton. She’d been crying and she was as white as a sheet. The conductor had been so concerned he’d taken her to the First Aid room at the bus station.

‘I think she might have had some bad news,’ he told the nurse.

Sally heard them talking but it didn’t seem important. She was still clutching Terry’s letter in which he’d told her it was all off. The conductor put her off at the bus stop where she’d originally got on. She thanked him but she still seemed to be in shock. He worried as he watched her making her way back home again.

A couple of hours later, Mrs Burndell staggered up the garden path with her shopping.

‘You look well loaded,’ said her neighbour Mr Keen. He was on a stepladder and clipping the privet hedge.

‘Donkeys go best well loaded,’ she joked and he smiled. Her arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets and of course Sally wouldn’t be there to help her. She was working her notice at the nursery. Next week she would be starting her secretarial course and she was so proud of her. Sally was the first girl in the family to have a proper career of her own. She was a bright girl, a bit lippy at times but she had a good head on her shoulders. Sally was destined to go far and Mrs Burndell could only hope she would give herself the chance to see a bit of the world before she settled down with Terry.

Mrs Burndell fumbled for her back door key.

‘It’ll be open,’ said Mr Keen. ‘Your Sally’s home.’

Mrs Burndell frowned, puzzled. She put down her bags and opened the back door. It was difficult bringing in the bags and keeping the door open at the same time. The door slammed and Mrs Burndell stumbled over something on the floor. As she looked down, all the colour drained from her face. Sally was crumpled up on the floor.

‘Sally?’ There was no response at all. Mrs Burndell fell to her knees and held her daughter’s wrist. Thank God, there was a reedy pulse. She had to get help, but what had happened? Opening the back door again, Mrs Burndell screamed out, ‘Mr Keen, Mr Keen help me! Get a doctor. My Sally’s been taken bad.’ She turned back into her kitchen and tried to make sense of what she was looking at. The washing pulley was in bits on the floor. Sally must have been hanging the washing and it all fell down. She pushed the bits of wood out of the way and glanced up at the huge hole in the ceiling. Mrs Burndell turned her daughter slowly and that was when she saw the rope around her neck.

Nine

Connie was on top of the world. By the time the last vestige of double summer time had been eradicated by the clocks going back the final hour in the middle of November, she had realised that she had truly found her vocation. There was a strong feeling of camaraderie between the student nurses. They supported each other when things went wrong and applauded each other when some milestone of achievement had been met. At first she and Eva avoided each other but things finally came to a head on their first night duty together and ironically, thanks to two dead men, the girls finally became friends.

Mr Ockley still hadn’t been taken to the mortuary when Mr Steppings passed away. Sister Brown rang the porter’s office only to be told that no one was available for at least another hour. There was a bit of a flap on somewhere.

‘Nurse Dixon,’ she said as Connie came by the night sister’s desk with a full bedpan, ‘when you’ve finished that, I want you and Nurse O’Hara to take Mr Ockley and Mr Steppings to the morgue. We’ll be starting the morning round soon and I can’t have the patients waking up to two dead bodies on the ward.’

Connie chewed her bottom lip anxiously.

‘Yes, I know it’s not very pleasant walking across the grounds in the dark,’ said Sister completely misunderstanding Connie’s hesitation, ‘but if there are two of you, you can look after each other.’

Eva didn’t look too thrilled when Connie told her. They put the two men on the trolley, one in the box underneath and the other on the top covered with a sheet. It was a tidy walk to the morgue and there wasn’t time to do two trips.

They worked in silence until they got to the lift. As Connie pulled the trolley in, she bumped it and an arm slipped from under the sheet and bopped Eva on the bottom. The shock made her cry out and for a second Connie wondered if she’d be accused of doing it on purpose, but Eva clutched at her chest and said breathily, ‘He scared me half to death.’

‘I guess it was his last chance to touch a pretty girl,’ Connie grinned and the atmosphere between them lightened.

The lift went down and shuddered to a halt. They opened the doors and walked along the corridor through the swing doors and out into the night. They were glad of their cloaks because the mortuary was at the other end of the hospital grounds. It was very cold. There was a light breeze and the moon was full. Even though she was with Eva, Connie felt nervous and a bit spooked up.

When they got to the morgue, there was only one porter in the office, having a tea break. He wasn’t very pleased to see them, throwing his sandwich back into his lunch box and scraping his chair in annoyance as he stood up.

‘No peace for the wicked,’ he grumbled. ‘We haven’t stopped all bloody night and even when I gets five minutes to meself, you comes down.’

‘Sorry,’ said Eva, ‘but Sister wants them out of the way before the rounds start.’

‘Well, you’ll have to help me,’ he said grudgingly. ‘I can’t put him to bed on me own.’

He walked ahead of them, switching on the light. It was the first time Connie had ever been into a morgue. Inside it was almost as cold as out of doors. They laid Mr Steppings on the only free slab (someone else lay on the other one) and covered him again with the sheet. The porter turned to go. ‘There’s another one in the box,’ said Connie matter-of-factly.

‘You what?’ the porter demanded.

‘We’ve got two bodies,’ said Eva. ‘Mr Ockley is underneath, in the box.’

‘But we ain’t got no more room,’ the porter said.

‘Well, you’ll have to put him somewhere,’ said Eva, her hand on her hip. ‘We can’t take him back.’

The porter made a great show of his irritation and went back into the office to get a clipboard and another trolley. Together they checked the paperwork and laid Mr Ockley on the top of the porter’s trolley and covered him with another sheet. ‘Turn out the light when you goes,’ said the porter going back to his sandwiches.

Connie flicked the switch and the two of them were just turning to go when Mr Ockley let out a long sigh. Connie froze.

‘You all right?’ said Eva.

Connie put her hand to her throat. ‘Is he still breathing?’

Eva shook her head. ‘It’s only trapped air coming out of his lungs,’ she said.

Connie put the light back on and stared at the sheet.

‘You’ve gone deathly white.’ Eva went back to the trolley and pulled back the sheet. ‘Check for yourself, Connie, or you’ll always wonder.’

Connie went back and looked at the old man. There was no doubt. Mr Ockley was definitely gone. Already rigor mortis was setting in. She looked up at Eva.

‘Okay?’

Connie nodded and pulled her cloak around her. On the way back to the lift, she glanced across at Eva. ‘Exhausting, isn’t it?’ Eva turned and gave her a quizzical look. ‘All this not speaking to each other, it’s exhausting.’

Eva nodded. ‘You’re right.’

‘I really liked you that day in London,’ Connie went on.

‘And I you,’ said Eva. ‘It was good fun.’

Connie sighed. ‘Whatever the quarrel is between our families, it’s not ours.’

They had reached the lifts. Eva pressed the button. ‘You know what? You’re right.’

They smiled at each other shyly. ‘I think Ga would skin me alive, if she knew,’ said Connie. ‘Someone sent her that newspaper cutting of us in the fountain with those sailors and she went mad.’

‘Who would do that?’ Eva frowned as they stepped out of the lift.

Connie shrugged. ‘I thought she’d be annoyed that I was in the water with two strange men, but she was far more upset that I was with you.’

Eva giggled. ‘Oh dear.’ She linked her arm through Connie’s. ‘I’d better be careful not to let my bad reputation rub off on you then.’ And laughing, they pushed open the ward doors to begin the morning rounds.

Jane Jackson wrote to tell Connie that Sally Burndell had lost her place in the secretarial college. Apparently she had been very upset about it and so her mother had sent her to stay in Oxford with her grandmother for a while. Connie told everybody at home, and Ga, after a little persuasion, agreed to have her back in the shop when she was well enough. Sally came back to work in the nurseries just before Christmas.

Connie had been dreading Christmas because she was so close to home and yet unable to be with the family but in the event, it turned out to be rather special. On Christmas Eve, she and her fellow students put on their blue and red cloaks and went round the wards singing Christmas carols. Eva managed to get hold of an old-fashioned oil lantern and the rest of them carried torches. Sister Curtis was wearing angel wings on the back of her uniform. On the women’s ward, a patient who had spent most of the day in theatre had just come round from the anaesthetic for the first time. Seeing Sister Curtis and her wings, her eyes grew as wide as saucers.

‘Bloody ’ell! Looks like I’ve died,’ she whispered and then relaxing added, ‘Well, at least I’m in the right place.’

On Christmas Day, every patient was given a gift from the management committee while Father Christmas (thanks to the hospital porter) turned up to give them out. He and the mayor toured the wards spreading their unique brand of goodwill. Throughout the hospital, the visiting hours were extended. Later in the day, the staff put on a concert and on Boxing Day the patients were allowed to invite their visitors to tea. The Hospital Bees Christmas party raised a much needed £29 for hospital funds and the week-long festivities ended on Saturday, 29 December with the nurses’ dinner and dance. Connie loved every minute of it.

She managed to go home for the day on 30 December, her day off. Pip and Mandy were overjoyed when they saw her coming down the path, and to Connie’s delight, the family had saved their Christmas meal to have it with her. Gwen had saved a few presents for everyone to unwrap and a box of crackers from Woolworths, so Connie felt very spoiled.

She discovered that late on Christmas Eve, the Frenchie had called by with Connie’s old pram although it didn’t look like her old pram any longer. Apart from Simeon’s attention to the bodywork and the hood, the Frenchie had painted Snow White in her rags on one side and with her handsome prince on the other. The two pictures were linked together by trailing rose buds and Mandy had been thrilled to have it. She showered her sister with kisses. Before she left for the hospital again, Connie dashed off a note of thanks but when she went round to the workshop, she had to make do with putting it under a brick on the doorstep. There had been no bill sent so she put £3 in the envelope and asked the Frenchie to tell her if the work cost more than that.

‘Are you enjoying nursing?’ Gwen asked when she got back. They were alone in the kitchen doing the drying up.

Connie hugged her mother. ‘Mum, I just love it,’ she smiled. ‘And this has been the most amazing Christmas of my whole life. The girls in my set are wonderful. It’s hard work and there’s a lot to remember, but honestly, Mum, I’ve never been happier.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Gwen. She sounded a little wistful and at once Connie knew why. Her mother was remembering the one person in the family nobody spoke of. She was thinking of Kenneth.

Connie slipped her arm around her mother’s waist and gave her a squeeze. ‘He’ll come back home one day, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sure of it.’

He mother nodded. ‘I just wish I knew where he was.’

The door burst open and Ga came into the room carrying some dirty plates. ‘What are you two plotting?’ she demanded.

‘Nothing,’ said Gwen. She turned back to the sink and began the washing up.

Ga stared at her for a moment. ‘Don’t spoil a lovely day,’ she challenged.

Gwen and Connie shared a knowing look together as Ga threw the plates into the washing up bowl. Ga hated talking about Connie’s brother, but no matter how strongly she felt, it didn’t alter the fact that Connie and her mother missed Kenneth, especially at times like this.

It was easier for Connie and Eva to keep their friendship from both families for the time being. Connie was glad of a friend like Eva. Here at last was someone she could trust and confide in, although she wasn’t ready to talk about Kenneth yet.

Eva, on the other hand, was desperate to talk about her problems. She had met and was greatly attracted to one of the doctors in the hospital but so far she had refused to go out with him. Through Connie’s gentle probing Eva began to understand her own reticence to embark on a romance. Hadn’t she loved Dermid and when she’d pledged her life to him, hadn’t he died? It was irrational but she was angry with him for getting himself killed and she was afraid to risk having her heart broken again. But Connie had seen the way Steven Mitchell looked at Eva and was convinced she had no reason to fear another broken heart.

‘If Dermid was here,’ Connie told Eva one night when they were having a deep and meaningful conversation, ‘don’t you think he would tell you to grab life by the scruff of the neck and enjoy it?’

Eva sighed and stared down at her fingernails. ‘Yes, but …’

‘Supposing it were the other way around,’ said Connie interrupting with another tactic. ‘Supposing you had died and Dermid was still here. Would you want him to stay faithful to your dead memory until he died an old man?’

‘Of course not!’ cried Eva.

‘Then let him go,’ said Connie. ‘He belonged to 1944 but you’re still alive in 1946.’

Her counsel didn’t fall on deaf ears. By Whitsun the following year, Eva and Steven were secretly engaged. That wasn’t the only engagement. When July came, the town was buzzing with the news that Mavis Hampton had just got engaged. The local papers had her picture on the front pages and there was a feature article on the inside pages of the Worthing Gazette. The girls in the nurses’ home drooled over the dress Mavis was wearing but Connie found her attention was on the man she was to marry, Eugène Étienne. The Frenchie looked so different in his formal suit and tie; like a different person altogether.

Sally Burndell carried on working throughout the year but she was a very different girl. She was much quieter and less cheeky but the customers still liked her. Terry still refused to answer her letters so by the middle of May she gave up trying. Connie encouraged her to apply for the secretarial course again in July, this time at a different college, and to her absolute delight, she was accepted. Ga was a little put out that once again Sally was leaving, but the family gave her a little leaving party and by 3 September, she was on her way.

The continuing blot on the landscape was the relationship between Ga and Clifford. It had never been an easy one but now it was full of angst and anger. The atmosphere at home was so bad, they could hardly bear to be in the same room as each other without a tetchy argument. Clifford had made plans for the nurseries but Ga disapproved of everything he suggested. With the advent of Worthing Borough Council’s grand plan for the regeneration of the town, came the need of land for housing. Clifford still wanted to sell off part of the nurseries to raise capital. Using that money, he planned to build a series of glasshouses and intensify his growing power. Strawberries, tomatoes and cucumbers were the way to go, he was sure of it. With the close proximity to the railway, he could get his produce up to Covent Garden within a couple of hours and if they could establish themselves with the top restaurants in London, the world would be his oyster, but Ga, as holder of the purse strings, was having none of it.

‘This nursery serves the people of this area,’ she said tartly. ‘We don’t need to look any further.’

‘Times are changing,’ Clifford said. ‘If we think small, we’ll stay small and eventually we’ll be swallowed up by a much bigger fish. We’re only just scraping by as it is. You can’t stand in the way of progress.’

‘May I remind you,’ said Ga getting onto her high horse, ‘that this is my place, not yours.’ And the argument ended in the usual slanging match. Whenever she came home on her day off, Connie could see how much it was getting her mother down, but what could she do?

The year hadn’t been without its flash points between Ga and Connie. The old woman made a beef about her sore leg every time she saw Connie coming even though she was quite capable of digging potatoes, humping boxes and even running for the bus when she thought no one was looking.

‘If you’re not going to help in the nursery,’ she told Connie in the summer, ‘you should at least pay for your keep.’

Connie gasped. She was on her way to the post office on an errand for Clifford. ‘Excuse me?’

‘We can’t afford freeloaders,’ said Ga maliciously. ‘Food is short and it costs money.’

Connie felt her face flame. Her great aunt put her nose in the air and walked into the house. As Connie stared at her receding back, for a moment she really hated her. She may not be putting money on the table but she paid them in kind. Wasn’t the rabbit they’d all eaten last night for supper bought from a butcher in Worthing by her? And didn’t she often put a few shillings in the electric meter when nobody was looking? Just because she didn’t make a song and dance about it, didn’t mean she wasn’t helping out when she could. Ga was impossible. In fact, the only person who thought she could do no wrong was her old friend Aggie.

*

He came downstairs quickly. She was unloading the shopping onto the kitchen table.

‘You’re back early,’ he smiled.

‘I caught the earlier bus,’ she said flatly. ‘You been in bed?’

‘No,’ he said, offended.

‘Your hair is all flat,’ she said.

‘Well, I did have a bit of a lie down,’ he admitted. ‘A bad headache. It’s gone now.’

‘Did you take an aspirin?’

‘No.’ He took out his cigarette case and tapped a cigarette on the closed lid.

There was a footfall on the stairs and the child came down one by one. His wife turned her head and stared at him uncertainly.

‘She was playing in her bedroom,’ he said defensively as he struck a match.

The child came into the room and without even looking at her mother, sat down by the fire. She drew her cardigan around her body and hugged herself tight.

‘You all right, luv?’

‘Yes Mum.’

‘Well, I’ll be off to the pub for a bit,’ he said snatching his cap from the nail on the back door.

‘What, at this time?’ she said glancing at the clock. ‘They don’t open until six.’

He kissed his wife on the cheek and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Christmas is coming and I’ve got to see a man about a dog.’

She grinned knowingly. ‘Make sure it’s a lovely surprise, won’t you?’ she whispered.

The child didn’t move. The back door banged and she continued to stare into the fire as her mother carried on unloading the shopping.

Ten

It was a bit of a shock to see Sally Burndell on the ward. Connie, who was on a split shift, listened with growing alarm as the ward sister read the report.

‘Miss Burndell is a seventeen-year-old female with no history of mental illness. She was admitted from the emergency ward where she was treated for an overdose of barbiturates.’ Sister leaned forward to the junior student nurse sitting next to Connie and added, ‘That means she’s had a stomach wash-out.’ Connie was feeling uncomfortable. Should she tell Sister that Sally was a friend of hers? As the report continued, she decided against it. If Sister knew, she might stop Connie from nursing Sally.

‘Miss Burndell is to be kept in overnight for observation and then the police want to question her,’ Sister added with a sniff.

As the report was finished and they separated to their various duties, the other student nurse touched Sally’s arm. ‘Why do the police want to speak to Miss Burndell?’ she whispered anxiously. ‘Has she done something bad?’

Connie shook her head. ‘Probably not, but attempted suicide is a criminal offence. The patient is at risk of being charged and imprisoned.’

The junior nurse went on her way satisfied, but just saying the words had sent a chill through Connie’s heart. At the earliest opportunity she went behind the curtain screen separating Sally from the rest of the ward. Her friend turned her head away in shame as she entered. Connie rubbed Sally’s arm sympathetically.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sally choked.

‘It’s all right,’ Connie whispered. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help …’

‘My mum is so cross with me,’ Sally wept.

‘She’s had a fright, that’s all,’ said Connie. ‘She’ll come round.’

Sally shook her head. ‘I feel so miserable.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ said Connie but she quickly realised that this was neither the time nor the place. Explanations would have to wait a while. ‘Look, you get some sleep and we’ll talk again later.’ Sally’s temperature was slightly raised but her heartbeat was normal.

‘Listen,’ said Connie as she entered the results on her chart at the foot of the bed, ‘I don’t know if they’ve told you, but the police want to talk to you.’

Sally nodded.

‘Is there any chance you made a mistake?’ Connie went on. ‘I mean, could you have taken an accidental overdose?’

‘That’s what Mum told me to say,’ said Sally. ‘The silly thing was, it really was a mistake, but because I tried it before, she thinks I’ve done it again.’

‘You tried it before?’ Connie gasped. ‘Oh Sally, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I was an idiot,’ said Sally, ‘but …’

The screen clattered back and the ward sister came in with a scowl. ‘That’s enough chattering, nurse,’ she said tartly. ‘I’ll deal with this patient.’

‘Yes, Sister,’ said Connie and smiling encouragingly she left Sister to it. For some time afterwards, Connie found herself shouldering some of the responsibility. Sally hadn’t been her usual self at the beginning of the year but she honestly thought she was all right now. Connie had no idea it was so serious. Why hadn’t Sally told her what was troubling her?

Sister cornered Connie about an hour later on her way back to the sluice room after having shaved Mrs Tucker in preparation for her operation the next day. ‘Miss Burndell tells me you are a friend of hers, Nurse Dixon.’

‘Yes, Sister,’ Connie nodded.

‘Then leave her to the other members of staff,’ said Sister. ‘You know the rules. You should not nurse any relative or friend.’

Sister bustled away leaving Connie feeling even worse. She hoped Sally wouldn’t think she was deliberately avoiding her. Some friend you were anyway, Connie Dixon, she told herself crossly.

Christmas 1946 was moving ever closer. In the Sty, as the patients of Mr McIndoe called their ward at East Grinstead’s Royal Victoria Hospital, they were making a go of putting up the decorations. They were a motley crew, some with injuries which they had sustained during the war and others, like Kenneth, who had been wounded in peacetime. Membership of The Guinea Pig Club which had been formed by thirty-nine injured airmen in 1941 was now closed. Members could only join the club if they had had at least ten operations and it lasted until 1945, so Kenneth had been a latecomer. He had been in the Sty for just over a year and he still faced several more months if not years of further treatment. Fortunately, the Royal Victoria wasn’t as rigid as most hospitals. Kenneth was allowed to wear his own clothes or his service uniforms instead of ‘convalescent blues’ and he was able to leave the hospital whenever he wanted to. The trouble was, he never wanted to, and that was giving cause for concern.

‘You never come to the pub with us, Dickie,’ said Bunny Warren.

‘Why bother when there’s a free barrel on the ward?’ Kenneth joked. He looked away. He knew what his companion was thinking. Bunny had overcome his disabilities but Kenneth still struggled with his own appearance. He’d never get his face back although the Maestro, as they called McIndoe, had made a valiant attempt. He had eyelids now and the eye sockets had been strengthened by bone from his thigh. He had no eyebrows but a couple of operations around the eyes had given him a small ridge on his forehead. Although he had been left with a slightly surprised expression, it was a lot better than before. Now that the area had settled down, the next step was to rebuild his nose and as soon as Christmas was over, Kenneth would be back on the operating table. The state of his hands meant that the RAF had no further use for him which came as a bitter blow during the year. It took all the help he could get from the other chaps to pull him out of the black depression which threatened to engulf him. And even though East Grinstead had gained the reputation of being ‘the town that did not stare’, Kenneth still couldn’t bring himself to venture out.

Bill Garfield had been coming back to the Sty for almost three years. A dashing pilot at twenty-two, he’d crashed in flames but the Maestro had rebuilt his eye socket, both cheekbones and his jaw. If anyone knew how Dickie felt about himself, it was Bill. Hadn’t he gone through just the same? And yet this chap couldn’t seem to lift himself up out of the pit. Dickie’s reluctance to go out was more than simply because he’d lost his looks. It was as if he was carrying some great weight on his shoulders. Bill had probed and hinted but it was hopeless. Dickie kept himself to himself. He never had visitors or letters. Could he have been brought up in an orphanage? Bill fancied himself as a bit of an amateur sleuth and so he and Bunny decided to try and find Dickie’s family.

They got into the office fairly easily. Of course they knew they’d be for the high jump if they got caught, but it was worth the risk for a pal. While Bunny kept watch, Bill riffled the patients’ notes and then bingo, he’d found something.

Sally Burndell was discharged later that day. Her parents came to take her home and Connie made a point of asking if she could visit her. She went in her next off duty, taking a couple of apples with her. Sally was in her bedroom and her mum had lit a fire in the grate. She had dark circles under her eyes and as Connie came into the room, she pulled herself into a sitting position. Connie helped her put a bed jacket around her shoulders and they made small talk until finally Connie had to say something.

‘Why did you do it, Sally?’

‘I told you,’ said Sally. ‘It really was an accident this time.’

‘I didn’t even know about the last time,’ cried Connie.

Sally’s eyes filled immediately. Connie leaned forward and squeezed her hands. ‘Tell me. You can trust me. I can keep a confidence.’

‘In the end, they got me down,’ she said brokenly.

‘What got you down? I don’t understand.’

‘The letters,’ said Sally. She leaned over and, opening a drawer in the dresser beside the bed, she took out a couple of envelopes. ‘Mum burned the others,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t know I’ve still got these.’

Connie opened one already torn envelope. ‘Some go with one man but a whore like you would entertain a football team. What will your boyfriend say?’ The other contained a picture of a delicious looking apple tart cut from a magazine. Someone had scribbled, ‘I’m still watching you, tart’ across the top.

‘This is awful,’ said Connie. ‘Have you told the police?’

Sally shook her head. ‘At first I thought it was someone’s idea of a sick joke,’ she said, ‘but now I think whoever sent these has been writing to my college and to Terry. He stopped answering my letters ages ago. I didn’t do anything wrong, Connie.’

‘I know,’ Connie soothed. ‘You must show this to the police.’

‘I can’t,’ said Sally. ‘If I do, they’ll think I intended to kill myself and I’ll end up in prison. I know I was being dramatic but you see I tried to hang myself about a year ago.’

Connie was appalled. ‘Oh, Sally …’

‘I know,’ Sally said dejectedly. ‘I just felt so miserable. I made a complete mess of it anyway. I tried to do it on the clothes pulley but of course as soon as my whole weight was on it, the screws came away from the ceiling. I knocked myself silly and then Mum found me.’

‘Thank God she did,’ Connie gasped.

There was a footfall outside the door. Sally said ‘Shh,’ and quickly shoved the letters under the eiderdown as Mrs Burndell brought them some tea.

‘I’ve just been telling Sally that as soon as she’s better,’ Connie said brightly, ‘we’ll be off to the Assembly Hall dance again.’

‘That’ll be nice, dear,’ said Mrs Burndell. ‘It’ll do her good to get out and about again.’

Kez decided to move her pitch. She had been selling holly wreaths by the market cross in the middle of Chichester. Made from Caen stone, the octagon structure was built four hundred years before at the junction of four roads and in plain sight of the cathedral. It was still doing what it was intended for, namely to provide shelter for poorer people as they sold their wares. Had she bothered to read the inscription above her head, which thanks to Connie’s help she was now well able to do, Kez would have seen that it was put up by Edward Story 1477–1503, who was at one time bishop of Chichester.

Kez and her family had been in the area for about a fortnight. They’d camped near Slinden where she had trudged through the woods to find holly and mistletoe. The holly she’d made into wreaths and the mistletoe into bunches. They had sold like hot cakes and she only had six wreaths left but by now the crowds of Christmas shoppers were beginning to thin out. Simeon wouldn’t be bringing the trailer back to pick her up until six so there was still time to try and sell them.

By now, people were heading back towards the station so Kez gambled that if she sat by the entrance, a few might buy a last minute holly wreath once they were sure they still had plenty of time to catch the train. She had just put the few she had left in her basket, when someone in a tearing hurry bumped into her and everything fell back onto the cobbles. The person who had done it was full of apologies but didn’t stop to help. One wreath went into the road and a passing car ran over it. When she picked it up, it wasn’t too badly damaged so Kez sat on the stone bench inside the cross to repair it.

A man and woman were arguing behind a pillar on the other side of the building. She could see them but it was obvious they didn’t know she was there.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ the man said angrily. He began tapping his cigarette on its case and Kez froze. No, it couldn’t be … could it?

‘Oh, I think it was,’ the woman snapped. ‘Even on our wedding day, you couldn’t take your filthy eyes off her.’ She threw back her head and laughed sardonically. ‘Dear God in heaven, what a fool I’ve been.’

‘Eleanor,’ the man said, trying to placate her. He put the case in his pocket and put out his hand.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she cried. ‘Admit it. You only wanted me to get your hands on my Rosemary, didn’t you?’

‘How can you even think such a thing?’

‘That’s what you were doing the day I came home early, wasn’t it?’ the woman insisted.

Kez stood to leave. Her stomach churned and she felt sick.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ The man was getting annoyed.

‘They tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen,’ the woman snarled. ‘Well, you won’t get away with this, Stan. I’m going to the police.’

‘No one will believe you,’ he said coldly and behind them Kez was struggling to breathe normally. Her heart was pounding and she was shaking.

She shoved the repaired wreath into her basket and stepped away. There was a bus coming so she was forced to wait until it passed. Kez didn’t intend to look back but her eye was drawn to him. And that’s when she saw what happened next. Stan made what looked like a grab at the woman. A grab and then a push. The woman flung her arms into the air and fell into the road. The next few seconds were horrific. First a squeal of brakes and then a sickening thud. Kez was rooted to the spot, her heart pounding, her mouth dry and gaping. People came running from all directions but from where she stood, Kez could already see that it was far too late.

The bus driver climbed ashen-faced out of his cab. ‘What did she do that for? She jumped right out in front of me. I didn’t stand a chance. Is she all right?’

‘She’s dead,’ said a voice, and the driver staggered backwards holding his head and dislodging his cap to the back of his head. Someone caught him and made him sit down inside the market cross. The poor man was shaking his head and he’d begun to cry. ‘Oh God, Oh God, why did she do it?’ he wept. ‘One minute she was on the pavement and the next she was under me wheels.’

Kez glanced at the man who had been with her. Stan was staring down at the woman’s lifeless body, partially hidden under the wheel of the bus. He held his gloved hand to his mouth. Someone in the crowd turned towards him. ‘Was she with you?’

He nodded. ‘She’s my wife.’

Immediately the crowd turned its attention towards him, each person doing his or her best to comfort a man who had just seen his wife die. Kez could hear the whispers all around her. ‘He’s in shock.’ ‘Someone get a doctor.’ ‘What a dreadful thing to happen.’ ‘And on Christmas Eve too.’

Kez turned away. She had no stomach to sell holly wreaths now. No one would want them anyway. Christmas was spoiled. She’d never be able to get the image of that poor woman out of her mind. She wouldn’t forget the woman’s husband either. Even though she hadn’t seen him since she was a little girl, she’d recognised him at once. He wouldn’t have known her of course. She was all grown up now. A married woman too. She hurried away, only glancing back the once. That’s when she noticed that the gloved hand Stan kept so close to his mouth hid a small smile on his lips.

Eleven

That second winter of her training, beginning on 21 January 1947, the weather deteriorated. Outside the relative warmth of the hospital wards, the country was at a virtual standstill. The bitingly cold winds which came to the south moved up country and brought blizzard conditions which in turn caused huge snow drifts. In the chaos which followed, schools were closed and because it was impossible to get around, just about every business in the country was hit hard. It seemed that every news bulletin on the radio was even gloomier than the last. Old people, particularly those living alone, died of hypothermia in their own homes. Livestock had been found frozen to death in the fields, wild birds and animals fell to the ground and starved to death.

Connie had nearly always gone home on her day off. She enjoyed helping around the house and looking after Mandy while her mother and Clifford went out for the afternoon. Sometimes she would have a lazy day and lie in bed until mid-morning (much to Ga’s disgust) and then take Pip for a long walk up to Highdown Hill. It was lovely up there and if she was well wrapped up, Connie didn’t mind the cold winds. As the relationship between Clifford and Ga had soured and following her own disagreement with Ga, going home wasn’t nearly as pleasant. Her great aunt was still a bit frosty towards her but Connie pretended not to notice. Kez was still on the road but Connie did manage a couple of Saturday dances at the Assembly Hall with Jane Jackson when she had the night off duty. Sally Burndell was still convalescing with her aunt in Hampshire. Connie enjoyed herself at the dances even though she didn’t meet anybody special but she loved the twinkling globe and the swishing of the dance dresses. Whenever someone asked her to dance, as she walked onto the dance floor, Connie was whisked away on a dreamy cloud of romance, usually until the man in question opened his mouth.

Once the snow came, she had made no attempt to brave the bus journey to Goring. She knew her mother would understand why. Even if she had found a bus going that way, there was no guarantee she would be able to get back to the hospital. Several nurses were stuck at home, unable to get back and three of her set had heavy colds, making the wards very short of staff. The intake was already down to twelve, seven of the girls already having decided that nursing wasn’t for them, or they wanted to get married and stop working altogether.

By February, with the weather conditions terrible the hospital was bulging was at the seams, mostly with people breaking legs, hips and arms, all with complications, after falling in the icy conditions. When a serious road accident added to the problem and five people were admitted in one night, extra beds had been put down the middle of the wards. After that, everyone had their fingers crossed that the stores wouldn’t run out of beds, or the wards run out of space.

With such awful conditions outside, Connie was surprised to find three letters in her pigeonhole in the foyer of the nurses’ home. She couldn’t imagine how the GPO managed to deliver any letters at all! As she sat on the stair to read them, Connie heard a low rumble in the distance. She frowned. Not thunder, surely? It was far too cold and yet it had been a very distinct sound. Perhaps it was a movement of snow somewhere, maybe falling off the roof. She drew her nurse’s cloak around her body and sighed. What next?

Someone came down the stairs and she had to move over to let them pass.

‘Off out?’ she said to the girl.

‘Going to phone my mother if I can,’ came the reply. ‘I haven’t heard from her for a week.’

Connie sympathised. Finding out what was happening at home was difficult. The Dixons weren’t on the telephone at Belvedere Nurseries but in the case of a real emergency Connie knew she could always make a call to the Frenchie and he would pass any message on. Connie hadn’t heard from her family for a couple of weeks either. She’d written herself but she had no real hope of her letters getting through. There were power cuts, with domestic electricity reduced to nineteen hours per day and industrial supplies were cut completely. Radio broadcasts were reduced, and television, only owned by the wealthy few anyway, was suspended altogether. Even the newspapers were a lot smaller in size. To add insult to injury, the country faced another food shortage because the vegetables were impossible to get out of the ground.

Connie shivered. The treacherous road conditions not only prevented food supplies getting through, but also much needed coal. Stocks had been low since the end of the war but now there was a chronic shortage. Even though the authorities used some of the remaining German POWs still in the country to shift the snow on the railways by hand, the coal stored at railway depots was frozen to the ground and impossible to move anyway. When coal supplies did get through, naturally the Hospital Committee put the patients first. That meant there was precious little left for the nurses’ home. Someone had put a blackout curtain over the back of the door in the staff sitting room and they were still at the windows of the room, but even so, the fire in the grate struggled to bring the temperature anything close to cosy. The radiators were switched off in the bedrooms which meant that Connie and the other girls woke up to frost on the inside of the windows and icicles, some as long as three inches or more, hanging on the outside. She already had three blankets and sometimes she had to throw her winter coat over the bed to keep warm. She hated getting up in the morning. Her bed felt warm and cosy and it took every ounce of courage to throw back the covers and wash and dress in such freezing temperatures. It was hardly surprising. Snow had fallen on twenty-six consecutive days and as the temperatures plummeted, Worthing managed to get in the record books with 23 degrees of frost with the sea frozen too!

She was surprised to see that one of her letters was from Ga. It was dated a week ago … a week to get from Goring to Worthing, a distance of about four miles.

‘Your mother had blisters on her hands, even though she’d worn thick gloves when she and Clifford tried to lift some turnips,’ she wrote. In view of the way Ga behaved when she was at home, Connie was surprised that the letter was both friendly and chatty. ‘Clifford says it will take a pneumatic drill to get them up.’

Connie shook her head despairingly. If they couldn’t get the food out of the ground, they couldn’t eat. They couldn’t sell anything either. Whatever were they going to do?

The lack of everything from food to fuel made everyone so depressed it came as little surprise to hear that Manny Shinwell, the Minister for Fuel and Power, the man who had allowed the stockpile of coal to dwindle to only four weeks’ supply at the beginning of winter, had received death threats and had to be put under police guard.

Did Mum and Clifford have enough coal?

‘Of course,’ Ga went on, ‘if we had some young blood, a stronger person to help us, perhaps we could manage to get something out of the ground, but Clifford does the best he can.’

At this point, Connie was tempted to screw the letter into a ball and chuck it into a bin. Why couldn’t the woman let it drop? She’d been nursing for fifteen months now and still Ga was doing her best to make her give it up and come home. Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Connie began again.

‘Mandy is off school,’ Ga’s letter continued, ‘because there’s no heating. Clifford’s friend, the Frenchie, has been helping people out with logs but he’s given that much away, I don’t think he can do it much longer.’

Connie shook away the memory of the Frenchie and yet, she was glad he was keeping an eye on everyone in the village.

‘Take care of yourself,’ Ga said on the last page. ‘As soon as you can, let us know how you are.’

With that last statement, it sounded as if she was mellowing at last and surprisingly Connie was left with a twinge of guilt. Of course, she’d thought about her family every day, but what with her studies and the crisis which seemed to go on and on, the thought of struggling to the postbox again with a letter which might never get there, was too much. Connie decided there and then, that even if it took hours and hours, she would try to get home on her next day off.

There was a PS. ‘You mustn’t go worrying about us,’ Ga wrote. ‘We’re all alright. Everyone is well. We have plenty of logs if the coal runs out and your mother has a good store cupboard so we won’t starve.’

Connie smiled. That was a relief anyway. She folded the letter only to find another postscript. ‘I put my teeth in the glass by my bed and when I woke up in the morning, they were frozen solid.’

Connie chuckled. Perhaps Ga had forgiven her at last.

The second letter was in one of Ga’s special envelopes. Connie knew the old lady only used her best writing paper occasionally and only for important letters which was why she was so surprised to see it. Why not put the letter in with the one she’d just read? She tore open the envelope and gasped. It contained what looked like a newspaper cutting. Connie spread it out and the fury rose in her chest. The cutting had come from Tit-Bits and was about a female dancer whose body was covered in tattoos. At the top of the page, Ga had printed the words Like Gertrude? Damn Ga and her nasty insinuations. She hadn’t changed one bit.

The wartime spirit hadn’t died. People did their best to help each other so Clifford and the Frenchie were not unique. As the weather conditions grew worse, neighbours banded together, sharing their meagre supplies whenever they could. Most people could only afford to heat one room in their house anyway so the whole of family life was reduced to that. The blackout curtains came in useful again. If they weren’t at the doors or windows, they were sewn together and used as draught excluders. The power cuts compounded everything. The Frenchie and Clifford took what extra candles they could find to the old, the sick or the frail who couldn’t get out themselves. Of course, they couldn’t help everybody and Aggie’s nose was out of joint when the Frenchie refused her some logs even though he had pointed out that she had the best part of ½ cwt. of coal in her bunker while other people had nothing at all. She eventually accepted the decision with tight-lipped resignation and the Frenchie kissed her on both cheeks.

All this took time. No one was earning any money and as the weather conditions continued to deteriorate, everyone had a sense that the whole country was in the grip of a catastrophe.

‘Some Valentine’s present,’ said Ga turning off the radio.

‘What’s that?’ Gwen was trying to dry the washing. She hung a clothes horse by the fire and she was busy turning things around. Staying damp for too long and there was a danger it would start to smell.

‘It’s now illegal to use electrical appliances,’ said Ga.

Gwen gasped. ‘They can’t do that can they?’

‘They can and they have,’ said Ga grimly. ‘I just heard it on the radio. Failure to comply can result in a £100 fine or two years imprisonment.’

‘For switching on an electric fire?’ Gwen gasped. ‘This place is getting more like a police state every day.’

Mandy was under the table playing with her dollies. She liked it under there. Sometimes the adults forgot she was there and talked about things she wouldn’t normally be allowed to hear. Of course, she didn’t always understand what they were talking about … a police state, for instance, what was that?

Pip was with her. He was lying with his head on his front paws. She’d put a dolly’s hat on his head and he swallowed against the ribbons under his chin.

‘He’s nice, that Frenchie,’ her mother mused.

Ga harrumphed. ‘If you say so.’

‘Come on, Ga,’ said Gwen. ‘You must admit he’s certainly got us all helping each other and that can’t be bad. Poor old Charlie Walker would have been a goner if he and Clifford hadn’t checked up on him. The poor man didn’t have a stick of food in the house.’

Mandy peeped through the fringes on the tablecloth and saw Ga’s mouth tightened. ‘It’s that Mavis Hampton I can’t stand. The way she bosses everybody about. What he sees in her, I’ll never know.’

‘He rents that workshop of his from Councillor Hampton,’ said her mother, ‘and he’s a very talented artist. I think the Frenchie is going places and she knows it.’

‘Changing the subject,’ said Ga, ‘have we got any more spuds out of the ground?’

Her mother shook her head. ‘The ground’s too hard. Shame really. Everyone is complaining about the supplies. Apparently, they had some in the greengrocer’s but they were all diseased and there was half a ton of dirt in the sack as well.’ Mandy watched as her mother wiped the condensation on the window with a dry cloth. ‘And there’s us with a field full of them and we can’t get them out!’

‘Never mind,’ said Ga, ‘once the thaw comes we’ll have a gold mine out there.’

‘But when is it coming?’ said her mother. ‘That’s what I want to know. It’s been like this since January.’

The two women stopped talking. In the distance they could hear a speaker van coming. ‘We’d better listen to what that says,’ said Ga. ‘It wouldn’t be able to go much further than the bottom of the lane. The council only clears the main roads.’

They reached for their coats and opened the back door. The sudden draught of cold air made Mandy lift the heavy tablecloth which hid her beneath the table, but she didn’t come out. Pip did. He seized the opportunity of freedom and pushed between the two women and bounded outside. Luckily for him, Mandy’s mother had the presence of mind to snatch the doll’s hat from his head as he went.

‘You are reminded that it is your duty to clear the front of your premises of snow,’ said a disembodied voice in the distance. ‘Please do not use any electricity for domestic purposes between the hours of nine and twelve and two to four. Failure to comply …’

‘I really don’t want to hear any more of that,’ said Mandy’s mother shutting the door. ‘At least Connie’s all right. They’ll be nice and warm in the hospital.’

‘It would be nice to hear from her,’ Ga grunted. ‘Surely it wouldn’t take five minutes to drop us a line?’

There was a pause and her mother sighed. ‘I wonder where Kenneth is. Don’t you ever want to know what happened to my boy?’

‘Now, now,’ said Ga firmly. ‘Don’t go upsetting yourself over him. He’s not worth it.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,’ said her mother. ‘I know he was a bit of a tearaway but what young lad isn’t? I never understood why he went off like that without so much as a by-your-leave.’

Under the table, Mandy held her breath as she heard her mother choke back a small sob. She knew she had a brother called Kenneth but she’d never seen him. Connie told her about him sometimes, about the games they’d played when Connie was young and the things he’d got up to. Her favourite story was the one when Kenneth and his friend pulled up all the For Sale notices in the village and stuck them in the vicarage garden. Apparently the vicar was furious. Connie showed her a picture of him once but this was the first time she’d ever heard her mother and Ga talking about him.

‘It was for the best,’ said Ga.

‘What was for the best?’ said Gwen rounding on her. ‘Did you see him go then? You never told me. Do you know more than you’re telling me?’

‘No, no of course not,’ said Ga. ‘What I mean is that the boy gave you nothing but grief all the time. Without a father’s hand, he was running wild.’

Mandy could hear her mother blowing her nose. ‘I suppose so. All the same, I wonder where he went, what sort of war he had and where he is now.’

‘Perhaps it’s just as well we don’t know,’ said Ga.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ her mother snapped.

‘Well,’ said Ga uncertainly, ‘he could have been injured or killed.’

Mandy heard her mother take in her breath. ‘No, no,’ she said pressing her hand on her chest. ‘If he was dead, I would know it.’

‘He could have been injured,’ Ga insisted.

‘I don’t want to think of him that way,’ said her mother.

They could hear Pip barking, and then Clifford called from the lane. ‘Gwennie love, come and give us a hand will you?’

‘Well, if you’ll take my advice,’ said Ga, as Mandy’s mother reached for her coat again, ‘you’ll forget all about him.’

‘I can never do that, Ga,’ said Gwen. ‘However old he is, he’s my child.’ And opening the door, she called, ‘What is it?’

Mandy went back to her tea party until she heard a rather odd scrabbling sound. She peeked again and saw Ga searching through her cavernous handbag. A second later, she took out some papers and looked at them. Then using the portable handle, she lifted the lid on the range and dropped them onto the fire. One fell to the floor and floated under the table. Mandy picked it up and put it into the dolly’s cradle.

‘It’s for the best,’ Ga whispered as bright red and yellow flame leapt above the hole and she slipped the lid back over it.

Connie put Ga’s letter back in the envelope and looked at the third. She expected it to come from home as well but the headed envelope told her it was from another hospital. The Royal Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead. Her stomach tightened. Had her mother been taken ill? No, it couldn’t be that. The postmark was even older than the one from Ga and she’d finished up by saying everyone was well. So who was in hospital?

The girl who had pushed past her on the stairs was back. ‘All right, luv?’

Connie nodded. ‘Did you contact your mother?’

‘Nah, her telephone line is down,’ she called. ‘But I got through to a neighbour and they’re all right.’ In the distance a door banged and it went quiet again.

Connie stood up. This wasn’t the best place to read bad news, if it was bad news. Shoving the unopened letter into her pocket, she made her way upstairs to her room.

Connie was halfway up the stairs when Sister Hayes burst through the door. ‘I need three nurses immediately,’ she called out. ‘There’s been a serious accident and we’re expecting a great many casualties.’

Connie turned round and ran down the stairs after her. Two other girls were coming into the nurses’ home.

‘What happened?’ Connie called.

‘An unexploded bomb has gone off,’ said Sister. ‘Quickly now, girls. Go straight to the main entrance.’

And as she flew out of the door, Connie could only imagine what horrors lay before her.

Twelve

Stan sensed something was wrong as soon as he came in through the front door. He turned sharply as he went to close the door as if someone was watching him but there was only the inky darkness of night. A cat ran across the path behind him and he jumped. Pull yourself together, he thought, and he slid the bolt across.

He’d spent the evening in the pub. He’d sat in the corner by the bar and drank alone. They refused to talk to him but they were whispering behind his back. Part of him was annoyed and the other part thought to hell with the lot of them. He knew they were upset about the inquest but he had no regrets. He swirled his glass and thought back to the events in the week before Christmas, or to be more exact, the day his wife died.

‘She was walking in front of you?’ the coroner had asked.

He’d looked down at the floor. ‘Yes.’ He had thought it best to say as little as possible. The less people knew, the better.

‘What happened then?’

He shrugged. ‘She suddenly rushed out into the road.’

‘Have you any idea why?’

‘No.’ There had been a murmur in the court room but he’d kept his head down. Let them think what they bloody well wanted to. There was no proof.

‘You see, I can’t understand what made her run out like that,’ said the coroner. ‘Surely she must have seen the bus coming? The previous witness said that he thought her action was part of a joke. He thought that you and your wife could have been indulging in some kind of horseplay when she fell. You, on the other hand, say it was deliberate.’

Stan had raised his head and looked the silly old fool right in the eye. ‘That’s right, it was deliberate. She meant to do it.’

The whole place erupted as her relatives shouted down from the back of the room. ‘Liar!’ ‘Bastard.’

The coroner struggled to make himself heard over the din. ‘Any more disruptions like that and I shall have no other alternative than to have you all forcibly ejected from this room.’

Stan knew perfectly well why they were upset. They were Catholics. She couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground and there would be no Mass said in her memory if the verdict was suicide. He didn’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, but they did. She did too and she was planning to tell the whole world about him. That wasn’t right. A wife should never betray her husband. He did his best not to let them take the kid away from him but now that the grandparents had got hold of her, they were fighting tooth and nail to keep her. Never mind, he would have his revenge.

The coroner had been very thorough in his summing up and it had been music to his ears when he finally said, ‘It had been suggested that what happened could have been caused by laughing and joking, but her husband’s testimony flies in the face of that. There is no reason to believe that the deceased had intended to take her life, but I can only draw my conclusions on the circumstantial evidence.’ There had been a howl of protest from the seats at the back when the verdict was announced. ‘Suicide while mentally unbalanced.’

The police had advised Stan to stay within the court until the family had gone. They were baying for blood. Perhaps he should move again. They’d never let him forget. They’d already poisoned half the town against him.

*

Connie was sent to the medical ward so that the more trained staff could be in Accident and Emergency. In the event, there were few casualties because the weather had kept most people in their homes. Connie had finally come off duty at ten past midnight. She was dog tired and hardly able to put one foot in front of the other. Sister Curtis had given both her and the other two nurses extra off duty but it didn’t amount to much.

‘You can come back on duty at twelve noon tomorrow,’ she told them. ‘I’ll clear it with the day staff. You can have a bit of a lie-in.’

They were grateful of course, but it would have been better if they’d had the whole day off. If she had, she might have risked going home.

Connie got undressed without putting on the light and crawled into bed, careful not to wake Betty who was snoring nicely. As soon as she hit the pillow she went out like a light and only woke up at 10.15 a.m. Starving hungry, she was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch.

Betty had tidied the room and Connie’s laundry box was gone. Good old Betty, she thought. She’d have to have the same sheets for another week but at least her uniforms had been sent to the laundry. It was only then that she remembered the letters. Connie searched everywhere, hoping against hope that Betty had looked in the pockets and taken them out, but she couldn’t find them anywhere. Why, oh why hadn’t she opened that third letter? Connie had tried to take a sneaky look on the ward a couple of times, but Sister had spotted her and made sure she had something else to do.

One look out of the window told her that the snow was as bad as ever but she had to find Betty and ask her if she’d put them somewhere safe. If Betty hadn’t found them, they would have gone to the laundry and that didn’t bear thinking about. Connie decided if she couldn’t find the letter, she would have to ring the Frenchie after all. Perhaps there had been some sort of emergency at home and someone had ended up in hospital. What other explanation was there? She looked at her watch. She had exactly one hour to do all that and get back on duty.

When she found Betty, she was full of apologies. ‘What a stupid clown I am,’ she said, looking around to make sure Sister hadn’t seen her creeping outside the ward doors. ‘I should have gone through your pockets but I never gave it a thought. The letters must still be there. Were they very personal?’

‘It’s not that,’ Connie said. ‘Where do they take the laundry boxes?’

‘Oh, they’ll be long gone now,’ said Betty. ‘The laundry is round the back of the hospital. You could try and see if they’ll let you look for your things, I suppose.’

Connie groaned. If she went there right now, she’d probably have to get permission in triplicate before they would even let her in. She hadn’t a hope of managing all that before her shift began.

‘I’m really sorry,’ said Betty.

‘It’s not your fault,’ said Connie. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t just go to the toilet and read them. Everybody seemed to be in such a flap what with the bombing and all I didn’t want anyone to think I was skiving.’

The ward door burst open almost knocking them over. ‘What do you think you are doing out here, nurse?’ said an angry voice. ‘This is no time for a mothers’ meeting.’

Betty hurried back into the ward with a, ‘No, Sister, sorry Sister …’

*

Stan had been jumpy, opening doors cautiously and looking around the rooms before he went in. The fire was almost out in the sitting room. He threw on another log and poked the embers back into life. Reaching for the whisky bottle, he’d poured himself a stiff drink and flopped down in the chair. He must have slept soundly and only woke when he heard a sound in the hallway. His heart began to thump wildly in his chest. He got up and opened the sitting room door. A vivid tongue of flame leapt to the ceiling and a rush of hot air came towards him. He felt it burn his skin. He made a dash towards the kitchen and the back door but he couldn’t open it. The handle was wedged in some way. The flames were coming towards him. He couldn’t stay here. He glanced wildly at the stairs but even if he could make it, it would be the height of stupidity to go up. He had to get out. He made his way back to the sitting room and immediately slammed the door, took off his coat and threw it across the doorway. Somewhere inside his head he remembered someone saying that fire feeds on oxygen. Cut off the supply and it would be contained. He’d obviously fed the fire as he opened the door but he could stop the steady draught of air under the door adding more fuel. He ran to the window and tried to open it but someone had nailed it shut. It was only then that he realised that his only way of escape was cut off. His hands hurt but he managed to grab a chair and smash the window. He laid cushions over the jagged edges and hauled himself coughing and gasping for air, into the garden.

The eight minutes it took the fire brigade to get to him seemed like a lifetime. He’d lain in the garden listening to the small explosions beyond the window as his beautiful home burned.

The firemen did what they could but he had lost everything. The hallway was a shell and elsewhere the walls were streaked and the carpets sodden. The smoke damage was everywhere. Everything stank and the whole house was grimy, smudged and blackened.

Of course the police asked a lot of questions. It was clear that someone had tried to murder him, but he was in a difficult position. He didn’t want them probing too deeply. Who knows what they’d find out? He’d move away. Back to his mother’s or something.

‘You’d better get that face seen to,’ someone said.

That’s when he’d looked down at his hands. They were burned. The skin hanging from his fingers as if he’d been peeled like an apple. Now that he thought about it, his face was beginning to throb. ‘It’s off to hospital with you,’ said a voice and all at once, the ground rushed up to meet him as he fainted clean away.

*

Belvedere Nurseries wasn’t on the telephone but Clifford had made an arrangement with the Frenchie, the only person in the area with a telephone, that if there was an exceptional emergency, Connie could ring the workshop and he would pass on the message. Connie hurried to the public telephone box. There had been talk of the GPO putting a phone box inside the nurses’ home but so far it was only talk. The call box was on the main road but at least someone had cleared the footpaths of snow and thrown salt down to prevent it from re-freezing.

When she picked up the receiver, Connie was relieved to hear the operator ask, ‘Number please.’ She heard the dialling sound and then the pips went. Connie pressed the money home and a deep velvet voice said ‘Goring 529.’

She felt her knees go weak. ‘Oh, hello.’ Her voice sounded ridiculously high. Connie cleared her throat and began again. ‘This is Connie Dixon. My mother lives at Belvedere Nurseries. I don’t know if you remember me.’

‘I certainly do, Connie Dixon. How are you?’

‘I-I’m fine,’ said Connie, ‘but I’m worried about my family. Do you know if they are all right?’

‘As a matter of fact, Clifford is here,’ said the Frenchie. ‘I’ve got a bit of an emergency and I have to go. Do you want to speak to him?’

Connie was so relieved but why on earth was Clifford there? ‘Oh yes, yes please.’ As she waited she remembered that Ga had told her they were helping the neighbours.

‘Everybody is fine,’ Clifford assured her and went on to tell her what they had been doing. It was much the same as she remembered from Ga’s letter. ‘We’re organising ourselves to go round to some of the old folks and the people with very young families to make sure they are okay,’ he went on. ‘Mandy has her sled and we’ve got blankets and spare hot water bottles and some food. We’re having to dig some of them out. Nobody can remember snow as bad as this.’ She heard someone calling in the background and Clifford said, ‘There’s a small bottle of brandy in that brown bag, just in case.’

The money didn’t last long but Connie didn’t mind. Everybody at home was well and that was all that mattered. The letter from East Grinstead must have been about somebody else entirely. But who? If it wasn’t about Ga or Mum or Mandy, who else could it have been? Her mind drifted to old friends. What about Irene Thompson? No, she told herself, don’t be ridiculous. Why would a hospital contact her about Irene? She was as fit as a flea, and living in Weston-Super-Mare, a million miles from East Grinstead, and besides, there was no reason to contact Connie, she had her own family.

Then the thought hit her like a sledge hammer. There was only one other person it could be. Emmett Gosling.

‘I’m afraid you’ve drawn the short straw,’ Sister said when Connie finally got back on the ward. ‘There’s a private patient in Room 2 who has just been admitted and I’ve assigned you to look after her.’

The accident ward was still overflowing with people, mostly with broken legs, ankles and wrists from falling on the ice. On the whole, their patients took it in good spirits, probably glad to be in the warm for a bit and so long as the Friendly Society or the assurance company picked up the bill, they didn’t have to worry about the cost.

Connie recognised her patient as soon as she opened the door. Mavis Hampton had a bandage on her ankle. She lay back on the pillow with a lace handkerchief to her lips. She had been doing her make-up.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Hampton,’ Connie said pleasantly. ‘I’m Nurse Dixon and I shall be looking after you until the night staff come on duty.’

Mavis gave her a cold stare. ‘Then get me some tea. I’m dying of thirst in here.’

Connie bristled with indignation but she had no alternative but to go. Room 2 was usually reserved for Mr Nankeville’s private patients and he was very particular. When she came back with the tea tray, the Frenchie was sitting beside Mavis’ bed. Connie put the tray down and turned to go.

‘Thank you, nurse,’ said Eugène and Connie gave him a shy smile. Already her heart was racing. ‘Oh, it’s you, Connie. How nice to see you.’

As he stood up to open the door for her, Mavis burst into tears. ‘No one cares that I’m in such awful pain.’

Connie was surprised. Mavis had seemed all right when she’d first come into the room but then she realised that she disliked the woman so much she hadn’t really given a thought to her nursing needs. ‘Would you like me to ask the doctor to see you again, Miss Hampton?’

‘Well …’ said Mavis fluttering her eyelids at the Frenchie, ‘I hate to be a nuisance …’

Connie let the door close quietly behind her as Eugène went back to his fiancée’s bedside. Her first port of the call was the Sister’s desk where she reported Miss Hampton’s pain and Sister sent for Mr Nankeville.

The rest of Connie’s shift was a complete nightmare. Mavis rang the emergency bell for her flowers to be put in water, for Connie to rearrange her pillows, for more tea when her visitors came and for a bedpan. Connie struggled to keep smiling and to be pleasant especially when there were patients who were far more seriously ill on the ward.

‘That woman,’ Sister complained when Connie came to tell her Mavis said her bandage was a little too tight, ‘I’ll swing for her, so I will.’

The bell rang again. ‘Remind her that bell is only for emergencies,’ Sister called as Connie dashed down the ward.

‘But this is an emergency,’ Mavis snapped when Connie relayed the message. ‘I asked you ages ago to put my flowers in a vase and you still haven’t done it.’

Eugène smiled apologetically which set Connie all at sixes and sevens again. Oh why did he have to be so gorgeous looking? she thought bitterly. And why were all the nice men taken?

Clifford seemed preoccupied about something. Gwen put Mandy to bed and suggested he take them to the Bull for a drink. It was the only place where they could be sure of being alone. Gwen was grateful to Ga for giving them a home and the business, but the trouble was, she was always there. She never went out with friends, Gwen wasn’t even sure she had any, apart from Aggie and even she only turned up once a week. Ga never went to Aggie’s house. Ga had become more and more demanding and the atmosphere between Ga and Clifford was getting worse all the time. They had little money from the nurseries because Ga was always talking about investing everything in the future.

‘When I’m dead and gone,’ she would say, ‘it’ll all be yours.’

Gwen sighed. She was tired of waiting for jam tomorrow. She wanted to live for today. Who knew how long they would have to wait? Ga was hale and hearty and besides she didn’t like to think about somebody dying before they could enjoy their lives. How much longer they could put up with it, Gwen didn’t know. She and Clifford never had a moment to themselves. Gwen wouldn’t have minded so much if Ga had offered to babysit now and again, but the thought never seemed to cross her mind. The only chance they had to go out was when Connie came home and since the bad weather started, they hadn’t been out at all. Usually Worthing was well protected by the South Downs. The terrible weather they had in the east of the county and Kent seldom reached Worthing and the surrounding villages, but this year the town had enough snow to cover the top of a wellington boot.

Mandy was asleep and Ga downstairs so rather than ask her to babysit and have her refuse, Clifford told her they were going out. She looked a bit put out but Gwen and her husband wrapped up warmly and made their way to Goring Street. The Bull Inn had been built around 1770 and was near the old post office. Because of its thick walls, the building had been used as a mortuary and an extension built in the late eighteen hundreds was used as a butcher’s shop. In a more sombre mood, Ga had a picture of a funeral procession leaving the Bull in 1907 when two of her acquaintances, Sid Orchard and Fred Wadey were killed by a bolt of lightning on Highdown. They were only nineteen and twenty-two years old.

They opened the door and were greeted by a warm fire and an equally warm welcome from a few of the locals gathered at the bar. After swapping a few snowbound stories, Gwen and Clifford made their way to the fire, sat next to each other and held hands. As bad as things were, Gwen thanked God every day that Clifford had made it through the war. They all had. At least, she hoped they had. Whatever happened to Kenneth?

Clifford pushed her glass of sherry towards her. ‘Drink up,’ he smiled, seeing her sad expression. ‘A couple more days of mild weather and maybe I can get to those root vegetables still in the ground. That’ll bring in a bit of an income.’

‘We still have a bit of savings,’ said Gwen. She kept the books and she was a shrewd woman. ‘I’ve always put a bit by in case of bad times and this is the first time we’ve used it.’

‘I should be paid a proper wage,’ he said acidly.

Gwen looked away. He was right and she was embarrassed for him. ‘I wish I’d never persuaded you to stay,’ she said.

‘It’s not your fault, Gwennie,’ he said squeezing her hand. ‘If the old lady would only agree to sell the end plot, it would make all the difference.’

‘She doesn’t like change,’ said Gwen.

‘We have to move with the times,’ said Clifford. ‘The nursery is too small to make a decent living. We have to diversify if we’re going to make a go of things.’

‘I know.’

‘I want to provide well for you and Mandy,’ Clifford went on, ‘not pinch and scrape all our lives.’

‘I know, darling.’

‘If she won’t sell it,’ Clifford went on, ‘the Frenchie suggested putting up a workshop on the land. If we rented it out, that would bring in a good income. Regular too.’

‘Do you want me to try and talk to her?’ said Gwen.

Clifford looked uncertain. ‘I’d like to say yes, but I don’t want her sending you to Coventry as well. One person in the family is enough.’ He took a sip of his beer and sighed. ‘You and Mandy deserve better than this, Gwennie.’

‘We’re fine,’ she said reassuringly.

The lapsed into silence and then she said, ‘You’re worried about something else, aren’t you?’

‘Me? No.’

Gwen looked him in the eye. ‘Clifford, we promised we would never lie to each other or hold anything back. What is it you’re worrying about?’

He sighed. ‘Not much gets past you, Gwennie,’ he smiled. He took another swig of his drink as if to give himself some Dutch courage. ‘We’ve been helping a lot of people since the snow came …’

‘Yes.’

‘And now it seems that some things are going missing.’

Gwen frowned. ‘Gone missing?’

‘Aunt Aggie told me that Mrs Wright has lost a pearl brooch, Granny Morrison says her late husband’s watch is missing and Reverend McKay in St Mary’s says someone has tampered with the collection box at the back of the church.’

Gwen took in her breath. ‘But who would do such a thing?’

‘It’s not always the same people who go out at the same time. That leaves us with three distinct possibilities,’ said Clifford. ‘The Frenchie, Isaac Light and me. The only certainty is that it wasn’t me.’

‘I can’t believe either of them would steal.’

‘Nor can I,’ said Clifford, ‘but it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.’

‘And you are worried that if this gets out it could ruin our reputation?’ said Gwen.

‘I think it may already have damaged the Frenchie,’ said Clifford. ‘Two of his biggest customers have gone elsewhere.’

‘That could be down to the weather,’ said Gwen.

‘Could be, I suppose,’ said Clifford but he looked far from convinced.

‘What are you going to do?’ said Gwen.

Clifford drained his glass. ‘I don’t know,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Thank God the thaw is on its way.’

As he made his way back to the bar for another drink, Gwen chewed her cheek thoughtfully. What sort of person took advantage of people in dire straits? These were hard times and they couldn’t afford to lose the goodwill they had built up over the years. She’d better tell Clifford to steer clear of the Frenchie and Isaac until this had all blown over.

Thirteen

As soon as Connie came off duty, Eva drew her attention to the notice board in the nurses’ home. ‘Have you seen this?’

Home Sister had stuck a memo on the board. Staff will please note that because of the present situation, the hospital laundry is operating a three day week. This means delays in getting clean uniforms and sheets are inevitable. Nurses may be required to wash their own dresses if necessary. Collection of pink boxes are as follows … There followed a list of numbers. Connie’s box wasn’t due for collection until next week.

‘At this rate, I’ll never get my letter,’ she groaned.

‘What letter?’ asked Eva and Connie explained.

‘You might be in luck,’ said Eva. ‘What with all the power cuts, they might not have got around to washing the nurses’ uniforms yet.’

‘I suppose,’ said Connie cautiously.

‘I’m on an early tomorrow,’ said Eva brightly. ‘I could go over there in person and ask for you if you like.’

‘Better still,’ smiled Connie. ‘We could both go together. I’m on an early too.’

As soon as they’d finished their duty they’d met up at 2.15 p.m. and wrapping up warmly, set out for the laundry.

‘When the laundry comes in,’ said the supervisor after Connie told her why they’d come, ‘the girls go through every box.’ She led them into a heat-filled room. There were several large presses and a long bare wood table. In the middle of the table was a large pile of sheets. Two girls were folding the sheets while a third woman eased them through the press. Every time she brought the heavy pad down to press the sheet free of creases, a hiss of steam filled the air.

‘You’d be surprised what we find in the pockets,’ the supervisor said, not stopping for any introductions. The women looked up as Connie and Eva walked through the steam room but nobody smiled. ‘Bus tickets, hankies, pocket books, pens,’ the supervisor was on a roll now. ‘We found a bottom set of teeth once,’ she cackled and turned around.

‘What did you do with them?’ Connie asked anxiously.

‘Everything gets sent back,’ said the supervisor with emphasis. ‘It gets put into a brown paper bag and left in the laundry box.’

‘That’s why Betty had that half a sandwich in her laundry box,’ Eva said behind her hand and into Connie’s ear.

Connie smiled. They’d all had a laugh when Betty showed them. It was rock solid and going mouldy. Betty binned it.

‘The trouble is,’ said the supervisor going deeper and deeper into the building, ‘everything has got out of kilter. We’ve got far too many boxes and not enough room.’

They had arrived beside a brown door. The supervisor flung it open and Connie took in her breath.

‘Lummy Charlie,’ gasped Eva.

The room was packed floor to ceiling with pink boxes. ‘We not only do the laundry from this hospital but Swandean and Courtlands as well,’ said the supervisor. She took a tally book from a shelf. ‘What was your number?’

‘Triple seven,’ said Connie faintly. It would take hours to go through all this lot.

‘It’s in here somewhere,’ the supervisor said cheerfully. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

It took them twenty minutes before Eva found Connie’s box because the number was facing the wall but a second later, all her letters were in her hands. Connie tore open the envelope while Eva rearranged the boxes back into place. ‘Why don’t you wait until we get back to the nurses’ home?’ she cautioned.

‘Because I can’t wait a second longer,’ said Connie turning the upside down paper the right way up. As she read, she could feel the colour draining from her face.

‘Connie? Whatever is it? You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

The supervisor walked back into the room. ‘Ah,’ she smiled. ‘You’ve obviously found it. Not bad news, I hope?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Connie, knowing that the woman was concerned that there had been a death in the family. ‘Someone I thought I would never see again has been terribly injured.’

They walked back to the nurses’ home in silence. Connie was desperately trying to absorb what the letter had said.

‘Come to my room,’ said Eva. ‘I’ve got some cherry brandy. It’s not much but you look as if you could do with something.’

Connie sat on the bed and took out the letter again while Eva found a glass and washed her tooth mug. ‘If there’s anything I can do …’ Eva began.

Connie swirled the dark liquid a couple of times and then downed it in one. It was heavy and sweet, not exactly pleasant to her palate and it burned on the way down. She shuddered involuntarily.

‘I know,’ said Eva. ‘It tastes pretty ghastly but it does the trick.’

‘Dear Miss Dixon,’ Connie read aloud, ‘I am writing to you about your brother Kenneth Dixon. I am sorry the writing is so lousy, but it’s the best I can do. I know the hospital has been in contact with your mother but she has never replied. We made contact through a local charity which helps ex-servicemen and they gave us your address.’

‘What on earth does that mean?’ Eva interrupted.

Connie shrugged. ‘I can’t believe that Mum has never replied to their letters. She wants nothing more in the world than to find my brother.’

‘I remember you said you’d lost touch,’ said Eva sitting on the bed beside her.

‘It’s a long story,’ said Connie, ‘suffice to say that he walked out of our lives in 1938 and we’ve never heard from him since.’

Eva pulled a face. ‘Do you think this letter is on the level?’

Connie shrugged again.

‘Go on with the letter,’ said Eva jerking her head.

‘We are both at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead,’ Connie continued. ‘We are looked after in an ex-army Nissen hut at the back of the main building. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Matron is a thoroughly good egg and turns a blind eye to our grogging parties and Mr McIndoe, or the Maestro as we call him, gives the chaps their lives back again. We enjoy the Sussex countryside and those who are well enough can play tennis and squash. Your brother hasn’t quite made it to the courts yet. He still has a bit of work to be done on his hand. He is making really good progress but I know he longs for some contact with you or any member of your family. The Skipper on our ward seems to think it would speed up his recovery if you could find it in your heart to forgive him. We have no idea what it’s all about but the guilt he carries weighs him down. If, for any reason, you find it too hard, I should like to offer myself as a mediator. Could you please contact me at the above address? Kenneth has no idea that I have written to you. Yours Sincerely, William Garfield.’

‘East Grinstead,’ Eva mused. ‘That’s where they nursed badly burned airmen during the war.’

‘The Guinea Pig Club,’ said Connie. She had seen the story in the Tit-Bits magazine, how a young New Zealand surgeon had pioneered skin graft operations on young men who had escaped from burning bombers and Spitfires. ‘I wonder if that means Kenneth was in the RAF during the war?’

‘You’ll go, of course,’ said Eva.

Connie stared down at the words again. ‘I want to but I’m forbidden even to speak his name.’

‘Good Lord!’ cried Eva. ‘What on earth did he do?’

‘It didn’t seem so dreadful at the time,’ said Connie, ‘but Ga insists no one is to mention his name.’

‘The more I hear about your great aunt,’ said Eva, ‘the worse she sounds. She must be a real tartar.’

Connie sighed. ‘It’s never really bothered me before. When you grow up with someone, you sort of accept that that’s the way things are but I know she’ll go loopy if she finds out.’

‘So what happened?’ Eva persisted.

‘He let someone into the house and I was attacked,’ said Connie cautiously. She still wasn’t comfortable talking about it.

‘Blimey,’ said Eva. ‘Were the police involved?’

‘It was all hushed up,’ said Connie.

Eva shook her head. ‘But you can’t hold grudges forever, can you? Your brother wasn’t very old, was he? I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose.’

Connie hesitated. Eva was right. Kenneth couldn’t have done it on purpose. He was little more than a child himself when it happened. Somehow, the fact that he’d always been her big brother had made her forget that.

‘Are you going to see him?’

‘Too right I am,’ said Connie, suddenly finding courage. ‘He’s my brother.’

There was a sharp knock on the door. ‘There’s someone downstairs wants to see you,’ said a timid voice when Eva opened the door.

‘Send them up then,’ said Eva.

The girl looked this way and that before whispering conspiratorially, ‘I can’t. It’s a man.’

Eva pulled a face at Connie. ‘I won’t be a minute. Help yourself to another cherry brandy if you want.’ The door closed softly as she left.

Connie didn’t want any more brandy so she read the letter again instead. It was wonderful and worrying at the same time. Wonderful to know Kenneth was alive and where he was but worrying that he might be horribly injured. Mum would be pleased to have news of him … or would she? He had been such a handsome young man. How would Mum feel if he was permanently disfigured?

She thought back to that last day, the day Kenneth left home. She had blanked it out for so many years now that it was hard to think about it again. She remembered afterwards and the point when her head had finally stopped spinning and she was in her bed with a clean nightdress on. Ga was by her bedside sponging her hot forehead with a cold flannel.

She remembered that she’d moaned a little and Ga had said, ‘How do you feel?’

‘Awful. I want to die.’

Then Ga had said something really odd. ‘Good. Constance, I want you never to forget how you feel right now.’

And that’s exactly what she’d done. She had never forgotten that her mouth felt like gravel and her tongue seemed far too big. She remembered that her head was pounding and her stomach felt as if someone had hit it with a fence panel. She could recall that the light in the room was subdued and yet it was too strong for her eyes. She could also remember Ga lifting her head as she took a sip of water from the glass she was holding. It was one of the very few intimate moments she’d ever had with Ga.

Eva bounced back into the room. ‘You’ll never guess what?’ she cried. Her eyes were alive with excitement. ‘This is so weird. My brother is downstairs. He’s offering to take both of us out for a meal.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Connie. ‘You’ll want to be alone, to talk.’

‘Come on,’ said Eva, taking her uniform off. ‘It’ll be fun. You’ll like him. He’s very dashing.’

‘Is he the bomb disposal man?’

‘The very same,’ said Eva. She was standing in her petticoat as she went through her wardrobe looking for something to wear. ‘I didn’t realise that he was the one they sent for when that bomb went off.’

Connie shook her head. ‘I need to be on my own for a bit. I need to do some thinking.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Eva pulling on her high heels. She pulled Connie to her feet and pushed her towards the door. ‘You’ll only brood and get depressed. Go. Get changed. I’ll call for you in ten minutes.’

Connie walked down the corridor to her own room with mixed feelings. Eva was probably right. She would have brooded and made herself feel miserable about Kenneth, but she wasn’t sure she wanted a jolly night out either. When she got to her room, Connie picked up the picture of Kenneth on her locker and stared at his face. She put her finger to her lips, kissed it and then placed it over her brother’s cheek. Brushing away a tear, she opened her wardrobe and surveyed the contents. She had nothing to wear. Even her uniform looked better than some of the stuff hanging there. She opened Betty’s wardrobe. Most of her things looked as dull as Connie’s, except for one dress. It was a brightly coloured paisley dress in pinks and purple with a sweetheart neckline. Connie pulled it out and held it against herself. Would Betty mind if she borrowed it? She should really ask her first but there wasn’t time. Connie slipped it over her shoulders and it fitted her perfectly. She fluffed up her hair and put on a bit of make-up. She felt a bit guilty about Betty’s dress, but she looked fabulous even if she said so herself. What was Eva’s brother like? Heavens, she didn’t even know his name.

Fourteen

Roger Maxwell took them to Mitchell’s in the Arcade. The restaurant which was on two floors had become a symbol of resilience during the war. Its sister restaurant near the New Town Hall in Chapel Road had been bombed out in September 1940, the direct hit also taking out the shop next door. Mercifully, the New Town Hall got off lightly with no structural damage and only minimal damage from two other bombs which fell in the car park at the back and in the road at the same time.

Mitchell’s in the Arcade was hugely popular. Food was rationed but not in restaurants and cafés. At lunchtimes they often had a queue of people reaching out into Montague Street, but at this time of day, 4.30 p.m., there were few customers. Eva, Connie and Roger sat next to the window so that they could enjoy watching the passers-by. It was a bit early for tea but they were all hungry and hadn’t eaten since lunchtime so they ordered the fish and chips.

Once the waitress had gone, Connie had a chance to have a good look at Eva’s brother. He wasn’t exactly handsome but he had a pleasant face. He looked about thirty, with long fingers, some heavily stained with nicotine. His eyes were grey and he had the same laughter lines on his face as his sister. He took out a packet of Players Navy Cut and offered them round. Connie shook her head.

‘You smoke too much,’ said Eva.

‘It helps me with my nerves,’ Roger smiled playfully and pretended that he had the shakes. ‘It keeps me steady when I do the bombs.’

‘Don’t,’ said Eva looking down at her hands.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said remorsefully, ‘and you’re right. I should give up. I’ll try. I will, I promise.’

Placated, she smiled again.

‘So tell me,’ he said stubbing out the half-finished cigarette, ‘how’s the training going?’

Eva and Connie spent the next few minutes telling him about the events of the past year and a bit and Roger laughed heartily at some of the tales they had to tell. ‘I’m surprised that you have such fun,’ he said. ‘I always thought of nursing as a demanding and difficult job.’

‘It is most of the time,’ said Connie, ‘but we can have a laugh now and then.’

‘We’re the same as you,’ said Eva. ‘We have a black humour too. It’s the only thing that keeps you going at times.’

Roger nodded sagely.

Their tea arrived. The portions were small, but they all enjoyed their meal and a round of bread and butter served with it made it go a little further.

‘Are you staying with the bomb squad?’ said Eva and Connie could tell she was dreading his reply.

‘It suits me at the moment,’ said Roger. ‘I’ve no ties, no family, and no children to worry about if anything should happen … so why not?’

Eva avoided eye contact.

‘I am very careful, sis,’ he said.

‘Mum and I worry about you,’ she said dully.

‘Well, don’t,’ he said firmly.

‘Will you stay in the army?’ Connie asked.

He smiled. ‘At the moment, I like what I do. In fact, the day I start worrying about myself is the day I pack it in. Changing the subject, when can you girls get an evening off?’

‘Saturday,’ said Connie glancing at her friend to confirm it. ‘With a late pass we can be out until 11 p.m.’

‘Why?’ said Eva.

‘Do you enjoy dancing?’ he said looking directly at Connie.

Connie grinned.

He looked thoughtful. ‘Ah, but do they have any decent dances around here?’

‘There’s one every Saturday in the Assembly Hall,’ Connie said. ‘They’re quite good. I used to go with Jane Jackson but I haven’t been for ages.’

‘Good,’ said Roger. ‘Then it’s all settled. We’ll do it this coming Saturday.’

‘You’re a fast worker,’ Connie laughed. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Roger taking a sideways glance at his sister. Eva was giving Connie a quizzical look.

‘Do you know anything about the burns unit at East Grinstead?’

Almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Eva shot her a wounded look and Connie realised she had been thoughtless and crass. Thankfully, Roger seemed completely unfazed.

‘I’m told it’s the best damned unit in the country,’ he said. ‘Why?’

Connie took a deep breath and told him about the letter and Kenneth.

‘You’ll go and see him of course,’ said Roger.

Connie nodded. ‘My family won’t like it but, yes, I will.’

‘If you’re nervous about seeing him,’ said Roger, ‘I’ll take you.’

Connie was surprised to realise her heart had skipped a beat.

‘That’s all right, Roger,’ said Eva. ‘I’ve already offered.’

Roger looked concerned. ‘Some of the chaps look a bit odd,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about your brother but you must be prepared that you might see some terrible injuries.’

Connie nodded gravely.

‘Having said that,’ Roger went on, ‘you’ll be amazed at their courage. They don’t let what’s happened to them stop them enjoying life and the whole town has taken them to their hearts. They go dancing, and to the pubs and pictures just like anybody else. The doctors do their best to get them back to normal. There’s no question of shutting them away somewhere.’

The waitress came and offered them ice cream. They didn’t take much persuading and she hurried away to fetch some.

‘Right,’ said Roger when she’d gone. ‘After ice cream the night is still young. Who fancies coming to the pictures with me?’

‘What’s on?’ Eva shrugged.

‘Great Expectations with John Mills at the Rivoli, Notorious, that’s an Alfred Hitchcock film with Cary Grant at the Odeon and The Postman Always Rings Twice at the Dome, with Lana Turner,’ said Roger reeling them off.

‘Notorious,’ said Eva and Connie together.

‘Cary Grant it is then,’ Roger grinned.

Their ice cream was delicious and the bill came to a whopping £1/13/- but Roger wouldn’t hear of taking anything from them. As they settled into their cinema seats, although Connie was glad she’d asked him about the hospital at East Grinstead, a deep sense of foreboding had settled onto her shoulders. She would write to William Garfield when she got back to the hospital and arrange to go and see Kenneth on her next day off.

It wasn’t until lunchtime that Connie realised something was wrong. It had been two days since she and Eva had gone to the pictures with her brother. The film was excellent and Cary Grant was wonderfully handsome. When Eva popped out to the toilet, Roger had asked Connie again if she would like him to go with her to East Grinstead. She dearly wanted to say yes but was afraid of offending Eva.

‘I can’t get away until next week,’ she said.

‘Well, let me know,’ said Roger quickly as he saw Eva coming their way, ‘and I’ll drive you there.’

Connie remembered thinking how kind he was and wishing it was Eugène, the Frenchie asking her. She’d have jumped at the chance to be alone in a car with him and as soon as the thought ran through her head, a wave of guilt washed over her. What was she thinking about? She wasn’t going to East Grinstead on a jolly for heaven’s sake. She was going to see her brother and who knows what sort of a state he’d be in. And besides, Eugène wasn’t available. He belonged to Mavis Hampton.

Right now, she had other concerns. Eva hadn’t come onto the ward this morning and nobody seemed to know where she was. Connie kept looking over her shoulder as the staff did morning prayers together and after Sister had read the night report but still there was no sign of Eva.

Connie began her day by getting the remaining bed-bound patients washed. Without Eva, she had to manage the breakfast trolley on her own but luckily there were only two patients who needed help with eating. She couldn’t help looking at the ward doors, because she thought that at any minute Eva would fly through them all apologies and embarrassment, but they remained firmly shut. Although she had to hurry her patients a little more than she would have liked, Connie was able to get everything done before the ward round. Sister was on her tail to make sure all the beds were tidy and the lockers wiped before Matron appeared, so what had happened to Eva had to wait.

It wasn’t until her mid-morning break that Connie had time to ask around. Nobody seemed to have any idea where Eva was and by now Connie was getting worried. She knew Eva had gone out with her boyfriend for a drink but she hadn’t got a late pass so she should have been in by ten. Connie also knew Phyllis had gone to the pictures last night but when she asked her if she had seen Eva, Phyllis looked blank.

‘When I got in,’ she said, ‘I heard the porter say, “You’re the last one,” so she must have come in before me.’

Connie frowned. ‘So why didn’t she come on duty?’

Phyllis shrugged. ‘Perhaps she has a hangover.’

Connie’s morning dragged slowly. As soon as Sister sent her to lunch, she headed for the nurses’ home and tapped lightly on Eva’s door. No one came. Where was she? Standing close to the wood, Connie could hear an odd rattling sound. Eva must be in there, she thought. So why doesn’t she answer the door?

‘Eva?’ Connie knocked a little louder. But still no one came. She tried the door handle and the door wasn’t locked. As she opened it, she was hit by the rank smell of vomit.

Eva was still in bed. She made no attempt to get up and the iron bedstead was rattling violently against the wall. Connie moved anxiously towards the untidy heap of bedclothes and saw at once that Eva was far from well. Her face was ashen and there was dried vomit all over the pillow, on her face and in her hair. She had her eyes half open but they were unfocused. When Connie said her name, there was no reaction at all. She looked as if she was frozen to death but when Connie touched her forehead, she was burning up.

Connie raced from the room and downstairs where she rang Home Sister on the internal phone. By the time Sister Abbott arrived, Connie had already fetched a bowl of warm water from the bathroom and was washing Eva’s face. Sister Abbott took charge immediately and Connie was told to go for a doctor.

Dr Greene came straight away. Connie hovered by the door but Home Sister shooed her away. ‘There’s no need for you to stay, nurse,’ she said curtly.

‘Is she going to be all right?’ Connie was really worried. Dr Greene was listening to Eva’s chest.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Home Sister. ‘A touch of flu, that’s all. Off you go now.’

Outside in the corridor, Connie looked at her fob watch. It was too late to go to the canteen; she had to get back on duty. She’d have to go without lunch. She stayed outside until Eva was stretchered to the nurses’ sickbay and then ran all the way back to the ward.

Connie’s first thought when she came off duty was Eva but the nurse on duty in the sickbay was reluctant to let her come in. ‘Sister will kill me,’ she said looking nervously over her shoulder. ‘She said no visitors.’

‘But she’s my friend,’ Connie protested mildly. ‘I was the one who found her.’

The girl relented. Eva was just as pale but she had stopped trembling and looked more rested.

‘How are you feeling?’ Connie whispered.

‘Terrible,’ Eva croaked. ‘My head is banging and my mouth feels like the bottom of a parrot’s cage.’

‘I thought you might be suffering from a hangover.’

‘Fat chance,’ she said. ‘We’re saving every bean we can to get married.’

‘Does he know you’re here?’

Eva shook her head. ‘Don’t tell him. He’ll want to come and nobody must know about us.’

‘He’ll be devastated if I don’t tell him.’

Eva sighed. ‘Then tell him not to come.’

Connie nodded and thought that there was no way Steven would stay away once he knew. He was potty about her. ‘Get some sleep,’ she said touching Eva lightly on the shoulder. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’

‘Connie,’ Eva whispered as she turned to go. ‘Tell my mum I’m here. I want …’ her eyes filled with tears. ‘I want to see my mum.’

Connie’s heart constricted. Talk to the Maxwells? Being best friends with Eva was one thing but making contact with the family was quite another. But one look at Eva’s face and she knew she couldn’t refuse. The girl looked so ill.

‘Have you got someone I could telephone in an emergency?’

Eva shook her head. ‘We’re not as organised as you are.’

Connie swallowed hard. So she’d have to go in person. A tear rolled down Eva’s cheek and Connie’s heart went out to her. The poor girl had already suffered so much losing the love of her life and it was obvious that for just this once, she wanted to be a little girl again. She wanted her mum.

‘Don’t you worry about a thing,’ said Connie. ‘I’ll get the bus over there as soon as I’ve changed.’

‘Thank you,’ Eva mouthed.

Connie patted her arm. ‘Now you get some sleep. I’ll come back tomorrow.’

Connie went back to her own room and changed quickly. She put on a smart hand-knitted twinset her mother had made and livened it up with a string of pearls from Woolworths. She wanted to create a good impression. As soon as she was ready, Connie wrote a note for Steven telling him to be cautious. ‘Eva will be fine with rest,’ she told him. ‘She sends her love.’ After that, Connie left the note in the pigeonhole Eva and Steven used.

The snow was receding all the time now and the bus services were back to normal. She didn’t have to wait long. The house was part way up Durrington Hill, a Victorian cottage with grey flint work on the walls. The garden, although bare at this time of year, was neat and tidy and as she walked up the tiny path, she could hear someone playing the piano. Eva knocked on the door. When it opened a small rotund woman who looked like a much older version of Eva stood on the step.

‘Mrs Maxwell?’ Connie began cautiously.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m a …’ she almost said friend but drew back in case Mrs Maxwell took exception, ‘a work colleague of Eva’s.’

Mrs Maxwell’s face broke into a wide and welcoming smile. ‘Come in, come in, dear,’ she said hurrying ahead of Connie. ‘Please excuse the mess.’ She led Connie into the front room, taking off her wrap-over apron as she went. ‘Can I offer you some tea?’

An older woman came out into the hallway and followed them to the door.

‘This is one of the nurses Eva works with,’ Mrs Maxwell said and turning back to Connie she said, ‘Sit down, dear. Would you like some tea, or I can make coffee if you prefer it. I know you young girls prefer coffee, don’t you? We never had it much in my …’

Her words died on her lips as the older woman put her hand on her arm. ‘Something’s happened, Vi. That’s right, isn’t it, something’s happened to our Eva?’

Mrs Maxwell’s hand flew to her mouth.

‘It’s not that bad,’ Connie said quickly. She pulled her scarf away from her neck and lowered herself onto the chair. ‘But you’re right. Eva’s not well. She’s in the nurses’ sickbay.’

The older woman came right into the room and sat opposite Connie. She was about the same age as Ga but she looked a lot fitter. Her white hair had been cut in a bob and she had deep finger waves. Her lined face was full of concern but she made no sound.

‘This is my mother, Eva’s grandmother,’ said Mrs Maxwell.

‘Cecilia,’ said the older woman, ‘but everyone calls me Cissy.’

‘How do you do?’ Connie flustered. ‘I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but I think she may have the flu.’ She went on to describe how she’d found Eva and what had happened.

Mrs Maxwell sat down. ‘Is she going to be all right?’

‘I’m sure of it,’ said Connie, ‘especially as Home Sister didn’t see the need to inform you. She would have told you if it had been something serious.’

Their relief was almost palpable but Mrs Maxwell frowned crossly. ‘She should have told me anyway. I’m her mother.’

Connie couldn’t argue with that.

‘Would you like me to take your coat?’ said Cissy.

‘I’ll get the tea,’ said Mrs Maxwell suddenly as if remembering her manners. As she left the room, the older woman rearranged her cushions to give herself more support.

‘You’re Gwen Dixon’s girl, aren’t you?’ Cissy spoke casually and when she saw the alarm in Connie’s eyes, she put her hand up. ‘It’s all right. I know how your great aunt feels about this family.’ She paused and added thoughtfully, ‘It must have taken quite a bit of courage for you to come here. I appreciate what you have done.’

Connie felt her face flush as she looked down at her hands.

Mrs Maxwell brought in a tea tray and the best china cups. ‘What time are the visiting hours, dear?’

‘Six thirty until seven fifteen,’ said Connie automatically glancing at the clock. It said ten past six. She would never make it tonight. ‘But Eva’s not on the wards. She’s in the nurses’ sickbay. You could take a chance if you wanted to. They’ll probably let you in if you ask.’

‘I shall go to see her tomorrow,’ said Mrs Maxwell.

‘Did you come on the bus?’ the old lady asked.

Connie nodded.

‘Have you had your tea?’

Connie took her cup. ‘Not yet. I’ll get some fish and chips on the way home.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said Mrs Maxwell. ‘You can have your tea with us. I was just about to dish up when you knocked on the door.’

‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ said Connie realising for the first time just how hungry she was and remembering that she hadn’t had a thing since the mid-morning break.

‘No trouble at all, dear,’ said Mrs Maxwell getting up and going back out of the room. There was an awkward silence. Connie looked around the room and was startled to see a picture on the dresser. It was an identical picture to the one Ga had in her bedroom. A handsome young man in army uniform stood sedately next to an aspidistra plant in a formal pose. Without stopping to think, Connie blurted out, ‘Who’s that?’

‘Arthur,’ said Cissy. ‘My late husband.’

Connie was stunned into silence. The old lady scrutinised Connie’s face. ‘How is Olive, by the way?’

‘Fine,’ said Connie brightly but she could see that the brevity of her answer wasn’t enough so she added, ‘She has trouble with an arthritic knee but apart from that …’

‘She and I used to be best friends, you know.’

Connie blinked in surprise. No, she didn’t know that. Ga had never once told her they’d been friends.

‘Agatha, Olive and Cissy,’ the old woman mused. ‘We were inseparable.’

Connie frowned. If they were all such good friends, what on earth could have happened to pull them apart? It must have had something to do with Arthur. And if he was Cissy’s husband, why would Ga keep his picture by her bedside and put a red rose next to it twice a year? She was about to ask when Mrs Maxwell returned to tell her dinner was dished up. They both stood up and as Connie stepped back to let the old woman go first, she noticed that Cissy had put her bony finger on her lips. She obviously didn’t want Eva’s mother to know what they had been talking about, so Connie knew the questions would have to wait.

Fifteen

Eva made slow progress. Her mother came to see her the next day, much to the annoyance of Sister Abbott who was hoping to get her back on the wards as soon as possible.

‘You had no right to interfere,’ Sister Abbott told Connie. ‘It’s my responsibility to speak to parents. You’re getting above yourself, nurse.’

‘I only did what Nurse O’Hara asked me to do, Sister,’ Connie protested mildly.

‘And don’t answer back,’ snapped Sister Abbott.

Someone with a car had brought Mrs Maxwell to the hospital so she took her daughter home. As Connie watched her friend go, she had no regrets. Sister Abbott might give her a black mark and Ga would have an apoplectic fit if she knew Connie had gone to Eva’s house, but Eva would be in the best place.

Alone in her room that night, Connie found herself going over a few of life’s puzzles. What could have happened between Aunt Aggie, Ga and Cissy Maxwell to break their friendship? And why did Ga have the same photograph of Cissy’s husband in her room? Could it be that they were both in love with the same man? Ga had never married. Surely two women in love with one man was hardly enough to split two families?

Her thoughts turned inevitably to the Frenchie. He was engaged to someone else but Connie couldn’t stop thinking about him. Over time she’d realised that she was hopelessly in love with him but of course she would never act on it. He belonged to Mavis. She was very beautiful but if he married that awful woman … well, it didn’t bear thinking about. How simple life would have been if she’d stayed with Emmett. Funny, but she could hardly remember what he looked like now, except that she’d once told Rene that he was very handsome and reminded her of Gary Cooper.

The evening before she went to see her brother, Connie took the bus up to Durrington. Eva was already looking rested and relaxed after being pampered by her mother. The three women greeted her warmly.

‘I wish I could come with you tomorrow,’ said Eva. She was lying on the sofa with her feet up. ‘I feel badly letting you down like this.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Connie. ‘You can’t help being ill and besides, I think you should know, your brother has agreed to come with me.’

‘Roger?’ cried Eva. ‘Connie Dixon, you are a dark horse.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing like that,’ Connie protested. ‘He telephoned to check when I was going and said that although he couldn’t come and fetch me, he’d meet me off the train.’

‘Who is meeting you off the train?’ Mrs Maxwell interrupted them with a tray of tea.

‘Roger,’ teased Eva.

Vi Maxwell beamed. ‘That’s nice, dear.’

The same scenario was repeated with Eva’s grandmother, Cissy. ‘It would certainly be a turn up for the books if you and Roger get together,’ she smiled.

‘He’s only meeting me from the train,’ cried Connie. Heavens above, they were hearing wedding bells already!

‘Does Olive know?’ and when Connie shook her head, Cissy added, ‘I didn’t think so.’

They were interrupted by a knock on the door and Eva’s fiancé, Dr Steven Mitchell stood on the doorstep. He was tall with a lean body and long artistic fingers. He wore glasses and his hair was slightly receding. After introductions, Connie, Vi and Cissy went into the kitchen and left Eva and Steven alone. ‘Don’t bother with the bus back,’ she called to Connie. ‘Steven says he’ll drive you.’ Connie was secretly pleased. A car ride was always preferable because it was door to door. She was tired after the long day and didn’t fancy the walk from the bus stop especially when she had to be up early the next day. While they waited, Vi offered her some sponge cake and they sat at the kitchen table.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Connie ventured, her cheeks bulging.

‘What happened between Olive and me?’ Cissy pre-empted.

Connie nodded and pushed a stray crumb back into her mouth with her finger.

‘It was because of Arthur,’ Cissy sighed. ‘He was the love of my life, but he was with Olive to begin with.’

Connie raised an eyebrow. ‘So that’s why she has his picture on her dressing table,’ she blurted out. A hurt look flicked across Cissy’s face and Connie immediately regretted what she’d said. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that. Please forgive me.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ said Cissy. ‘When Arthur came back from the Boer War, he only had one leg. It never bothered me, after all, he was the same person. She tried to make a go of it but Olive couldn’t bear him to touch her. We were all friends together. We grew up together and when he turned to me for comfort, I fell in love with him.’

‘I see,’ said Connie.

Cissy shrugged deeply. ‘I don’t regret what I did and I did my best to make him happy. We had a good life together.’

‘He always loved you, Mum,’ said Vi.

Connie was still struggling to understand. ‘Is that why Olive, I mean Ga, is still upset with you, because you married Arthur?’

Cissy nodded. ‘But there was something between our families long before then. She and I went against the grain by being friends.’

‘A bit like Eva and me, then,’ said Connie.

‘Exactly like you and Eva,’ smiled Cissy.

‘So what was it that tore the families apart in the first place?’ said Connie, intrigued.

Cissy shrugged. ‘I never knew what it was but it went all the way back to the last century. Something to do with Little Mac.’

Eva frowned. ‘Little Mac? Who was that?’

Cissy pouted her bottom lip and shook her head. ‘Some long-dead relative or other.’

*

‘I’ve got nowhere to go, Mum.’

Stan was standing on the doorstep in the pouring rain with only the clothes he stood up in.

Her heart was already racing but how could she refuse? He was her son. She knew the rumours, she’d heard the gossip and she’d read the newspapers but she couldn’t turn him away, could she?

‘I did everything properly, just like you wanted. I looked after her, Mum. She was happy, I swear it.’

‘If she was happy,’ she snapped, ‘how come she did what she did?’

‘We can’t talk on the doorstep, Mum,’ he said looking around. ‘Let me in and we’ll talk about it.’

She hesitated. A woman walking her dog peered in at the gate.

He glanced behind him and then leaned towards his mother and whispered, ‘You don’t want all the neighbours hearing our business do you?’

She stepped back and let him through. He made his way to the only warm room in the house and flopped into a chair. ‘Make us a cup of tea, Mum?’

Reluctantly she filled the kettle and put it onto the New World gas stove.

‘If you could let me have my old room,’ he was saying, ‘just for a while. I’ll keep out of your way.’

She kept her back to him. ‘I can’t go through all that again,’ she said cautiously.

‘You won’t have to, Mum,’ he said rising to his feet and putting his arm around her shoulder. ‘I’ve changed. Doesn’t the fact that I got married prove that I have changed?’

She said nothing.

‘I’m sorry I hurt you, Mum.’ He had both arms around her now. ‘It won’t happen again, I promise.’

She found herself relaxing. He wasn’t a bad boy. That first time he didn’t realise what he was doing. That stupid girl was just as much to blame. Mud sticks, that’s all. And he’d kept out of trouble since, hadn’t he?

The kettle whistled and he let go of her so that she could make the tea.

‘I’ve got to start all over again, Mum. These past few weeks have been awful.’

Her heart constricted. She turned towards him. He was sitting back at the table with his head in his hands. His shoulders were shaking. She sat opposite him and took his hands in hers. ‘Oh! What happened to your hands?’

‘Burnt.’ He looked up at her, his face streaked with tears. ‘Someone set fire to my house, Mum. I’ve only just come out of hospital. I’ve been in there for nearly two weeks. What did I do to deserve all this?’

She was so moved she almost cried with him. Her boy. Her poor boy.

‘Help me, Mum,’ he said brokenly. ‘Please.’

‘Promise me,’ she began, ‘promise me that what your wife did had nothing to do with you.’

‘Absolutely not, Mum. How can you even think …’ he broke off and reached in his pocket for a handkerchief. He blew his nose noisily. ‘What can I say to make you believe me?’

‘I want to, son,’ she earnestly. ‘I really want to.’

‘We were happy,’ he said. ‘We were trying for a baby. I have no idea why she ran out in front of that bus but I swear if I could have stopped her I would have done. They torched the house because they don’t want me to have Rosemary.’

She looked up sharply. ‘You really think someone burned your house deliberately? But who? Who would do such a thing?’

‘Her family of course. I know Rosemary is not my child but I’m the only father she has ever known. She loved me, Mum,’ and seeing her expression added quickly, ‘like a father. Her grandparents don’t want me to have custody, so they set fire to the place, hoping to get rid of me too.’

She’d put her hand to her mouth. ‘What do the police say? Surely …’

‘They’re investigating,’ he said with a shrug. ‘But there’s no doubt, Mum. Someone poured petrol through the letterbox and if I had been asleep, I would have been a goner.’

‘What will you do now?’ She was putting a knitted cosy over the teapot.

‘Claim on the insurance and then fight them through the courts to get Rosemary,’ he said.

She handed him a cup and saucer. ‘Do you think it’s wise, considering your past history …?’

‘I’ve changed, Mum,’ he snapped. ‘I keep telling you that. Dear God, when your own mother …’

‘I’m sorry,’ she cried, reaching out for him. ‘You’re right. This is not your fault. You’re not a bad boy.’

‘So I can stay?’

‘You can stay as long as you like.’

He sighed. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

When he’d finished his tea, he yawned. ‘I’m dog-tired, Mum.’

‘Your bed is all made up,’ she said.

He went upstairs. As she watched his receding back, all the old nerves came flooding back. Had he really changed? She’d have to keep a close eye on him until she was absolutely sure. But then he turned at the top of the stairs and smiled and her heart was lifted. He was such a good looking boy, just like his father had been. It wasn’t his fault girls threw themselves at him. She made her way back to the kitchen to wash up the cups. Stan was back. Her precious boy was home at last.

Sixteen

Connie stared out of the window of the train. Her only travelling companion, a middle-aged woman was engrossed in a book. It was a week since she had had a reply from William Garfield and she was already on the way to the hospital. It was a shame Eva still hadn’t fully recovered from that very nasty bout of flu. Much to Sister Abbott’s disgust, Mrs Maxwell told her that Eva was still under the weather because she had a bad chest and wouldn’t be back at work until next week at the earliest.

Connie hadn’t told the family what she was doing. Ga would have forbidden her to go and her mother would have wanted to go with her. Connie wanted to see her brother first. She had no idea how badly injured he had been and she couldn’t let her mother go unprepared.

Connie had dressed carefully. Under her winter coat, she wore a grey pinstriped dress with a white peter pan collar. Her dress had maroon piping down the side seam and so she had matched it with maroon shoes and a maroon bag. The bag, which had come from a jumble sale, was a bit ancient but it made an attractive ensemble. Her hair was caught up in curls and she wore a grey beret on the side of her head.

The English countryside looked beautiful at this time of year. After the terrible winter, the signs of spring were on their way. The snow had been followed by severe floods in some areas, but along the south coast, the weather was much milder than up country. The fields were newly ploughed and the spring lambs frolicked on the downs. The sun glistened on the rivers and already the birds were beginning to nest. Whenever they went through a village or hamlet, Connie saw children playing, ramblers in country lanes and mothers pushing their well wrapped up babies in their coach-built prams. At one railway crossing, three boys on bicycles waited for the train to pass and at another, two children leaned over the crossing gates and waved to the train. Every now and then she would catch sight of something which would bring back a stark reminder that the country had just come through five years of war and misery. It may have been a man with only one leg getting about on crutches, or someone in a wheelchair or a bombed-out building. The scars were ever present.

She leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes. It was a miracle the letter had reached her. Connie could only suppose that Ga must have intercepted all the others. She had always been adamant that they should have nothing more to do with Kenneth.

Connie relaxed and let her mind drift back to that day, the day Kenneth left home. She didn’t mind thinking about the stiffness of clean white sheets and the smell of the lavender talc Ga had put on her body afterwards. What she didn’t want to remember was the fact that her arms hurt and that for a time she had been held against her will. Not that she’d had much sympathy.

‘Don’t you ever,’ Ga had said angrily and through gritted teeth, ‘ever let a man get you drunk again.’

Connie’s eyes flew open. At the time, she’d been too scared to say anything but now she realised that it wasn’t her fault. She’d hardly had anything to drink. There must have been something in that cider he’d given her. It made her feel funny almost as soon as she’d tasted it. Kenneth had had some too. In fact he’d had so much he’d passed out but he wasn’t drunk like everyone said.

She became aware that the woman sitting opposite was giving her a concerned look. ‘You all right, dear?’

Connie took a deep breath and smiled. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said.

‘You look as if you’ve had a bit of a shock.’

‘Really,’ said Connie shaking her head. ‘I’m fine.’

The woman went back to her book and Connie looked out of the window. She’d never really bothered to analyse what happened that day but Ga had been so wrong, hadn’t she? And because of what she thought had happened, she had hated Kenneth.

Her mother was different. Kenneth had always been her blue-eyed boy. She didn’t talk about him but Connie knew her heart was broken. She never gave up hope that he would come sailing back into her life again. Every Remembrance Sunday her mother would put a red poppy next to his photograph in her bedroom. Kenneth had always wanted to join the RAF and Connie supposed that when the war came he had done just that. Nobody was too fussy about age back then and she liked to think of him over the skies, protecting the country. It was a bit scary when the Battle of Britain was raging but seeing as how they had never been informed that he had been shot down or anything like that, Connie had always supposed he had survived the war intact.

The journey took less than an hour. From the station she had to find her way to Holtye Road and the Queen Victoria Hospital. East Grinstead was famed for two things, one which was horrific and the other brought a ray of hope to the victims of war. On a Friday evening in July 1943, a German bomber had targeted the Whitehall Cinema. It was early evening and schoolchildren were enjoying a Hopalong Cassidy film when the bombs fell. As well as the cinema, several shops were hit and then the plane returned to machine gun survivors. In total, 108 were killed and 235 people were injured, a large number of them being the children in the cinema. The whole town, indeed the whole country was devastated by the pictures of helpless fathers searching the rubble for their lost boys and girls. Everyone in East Grinstead knew someone who had been affected by the terrible loss of life.

The other reason why East Grinstead was on the map was because of the pioneering work being done at the East Grinstead burns unit, the place where Connie was heading. After the Battle of Britain, hospital wards were littered with young men in their early twenties who, in their heroic efforts to save the country, had suffered horrific burns. Modern medicine meant that they survived their ordeal but the consequences were unimaginable.

The building itself turned out to be two storeys and long. It had a round tower at one end and was set in green lawns. Roger was waiting by the double doors and shook her hand warmly as they met. His hair was slicked back and he looked smart in a dark blue suit, white shirt and grey tie. She’d noticed his eyes before but today they looked particularly kind and friendly making her feel much more relaxed now that he was here. Connie was shown into a small visitors’ room and after a short wait, a well-dressed man with an open face and enigmatic smile entered the room. He introduced himself as Mr Archibald McIndoe. He had a clean shaven face and wore round glasses. He was tall with thinning hair and looked for all the world like a college lecturer.

He shook her hand. ‘Have you seen your brother since his accident?’ He had the faintest trace of an accent but Connie couldn’t quite place it. Australian or South African? She shook her head.

‘Then I think you must brace yourself for a shock, Miss Dixon,’ he said indicating that they should all sit down. ‘We are keen that our boys come to terms with what’s happened to them but until they do, we do our best to help them feel as comfortable as possible. Do you understand?’

Connie nodded but she wasn’t really sure that she did understand.

‘It is important that you try to behave as normally as possible,’ the doctor went on. ‘Please don’t register your shock or surprise when you see him.’

Connie’s heartbeat quickened. What was he saying? What exactly was wrong with Kenneth?

‘Has he been badly affected, sir?’ Roger asked.

‘Flying Officer Dixon was trapped in his aircraft when it caught fire,’ the doctor continued. ‘He had extensive burns to his face and arm.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid you may not recognise him.’

Connie felt sick. Oh Kenneth … Roger reached for her hands resting on her lap and squeezed them.

‘Are you all right, Miss Dixon?’ Mr McIndoe asked not unkindly.

‘I’m fine,’ Connie smiled.

‘The men here have already had several skin grafts,’ Mr McIndoe continued. ‘Flying Officer Dixon, we call him Dickie, has had a few more than most. He’s been here over a year and we’ve already given him new eyelids and new cheekbones. We now have to restructure his nose. I understand you are a nurse, Miss Dixon.’

Connie nodded. ‘I’m training to be a nurse.’

Mr McIndoe looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Your brother has got what we call a walking stalk skin flap on his nose.’

Connie looked puzzled.

‘It’s skin and soft tissue which we have formed into a tubular pedicle,’ said Mr McIndoe waving his hands from his nose to his chest. ‘It’s joined to two parts of his body, his nose and his chest, so that it retains the blood supply from the source, his chest, until it’s fully taken. I’m afraid he looks as if he’s got an elephant’s trunk at the moment.’

There was a pregnant silence and then Roger asked, ‘Is that all that needs to be done?’

Mr McIndoe shook his head. ‘It’s his hands that are the problem. I’m afraid it’s going to take a few more operations before he can use them again.’

Connie was numb with shock. She had guessed it must be bad but she had never expected anything as bad as this.

‘As a matter of fact, he’s out there on the terrace,’ the doctor went on. ‘You can see him from here and I should like you to do that. I warn you again, it may be a shock. Once you have recovered yourself, I will take you to see him. I hope you will find it in yourself to treat him as if he is perfectly normal. Although in the early days we tried our best to persuade him otherwise, we had to respect his wish not to inform his family. It’s taken him a long time to pluck up the courage to agree to see you.’

‘Does he know I’m coming today?’ Connie asked.

‘I have to confess I was annoyed when his friends told me what they had done,’ he said. ‘But Dickie has come round to the idea. You must know that we wrote first to your mother but she chose not to reply.’

Connie rose to her feet and walked unsteadily to the window. ‘I’m sure if my mother had known Kenneth was here,’ she said, ‘she would have been on the very first train. I think my great aunt, for reasons best known to herself, must have intercepted the letters.’

Roger came to stand with her. There were several men on the terrace. Some were playing cards, one had his arm in some sort of brace which held it extended outwards and another was apparently practising some lines from a play.

‘The men have come on in leaps and bounds since we formed The Guinea Pig Club,’ Mr McIndoe continued and he came to join them at the window. ‘Of course when the war ended they stopped taking on members but it helps them no end to feel that what we do here is of great help to others.’

‘I can’t see my brother,’ she said eventually.

Also as soon as she said it, a Lancaster bomber rumbled overhead in the sky and the man with his back to the window turned around and looked up. Connie gasped in horror and stepped back from the window. Her eyes immediately filled with tears. Half of his face was a mass of livid scars. His left eye drooped and part of his nose was an odd shape. The doctor was right. He did look as if he had a long skinny elephant’s trunk. The hair on the left side of his face stood up in untidy tufts. Now that he had moved, she could see the hand that held his cards was also damaged. The fingers were no more than stumps although the other hand, his left, was not nearly so deformed. His card playing companion said something and Kenneth turned back to the table. Laying down his cards he laughed heartily. Clearly, he had won the game.

Connie reached for Roger’s hand and he held her tightly.

The doctor glanced at Connie who was wiping her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly, her voice thick with emotion. ‘Just give me a minute, will you?’

Roger produced a clean white handkerchief.

‘It’s a perfectly normal reaction,’ said Mr McIndoe. ‘I’ll arrange for you to have some tea.’

Connie sniffed. ‘No, no. I’ll be fine. In fact, I should like to take tea with my brother if that’s all right? After all, that’s what I came for. Is there somewhere I could powder my nose?’

Alone in the ladies room, Connie allowed herself a short cry and then splashed her face with water. ‘Pull yourself together,’ she told her reflection. She was a professional. A nurse. She dealt with this sort of thing every day, but, oh dear, it was so very different being on the other side of the fence. This was agony … her chest hurt and her eyes were stinging with unshed tears. She shivered involuntarily. On the wards, she could be sympathetic but remain detached. She had a reputation for being a gentle and considerate nurse, someone people could talk to, but this was different. This was her brother. Her Kenneth. Connie took a deep breath, several in fact. After that, she powdered her nose and put on some lipstick. Her last move was to rearrange a curl or two and then taking one last look at herself in the mirror, she practised a bright smile and then she knew she was ready.

Seventeen

The police were outside the Frenchie’s workshop. Had he seen them before he came down the little lane, Isaac would have ridden straight past the entrance and gone back to his caravan still parked behind the hedge in Titnore Lane, but one of them had spotted him. Isaac had never liked the police but if he made a run for it now, whatever they’d come for, they’d decide it was him. He’d have to take a chance.

Isaac had enjoyed the winter months. For the first time in his life he felt he had a purpose. He’d stayed because his father had wanted to stay. The old man had become nostalgic in his old age. He wasn’t well either. The rest of the family had moved on but Isaac had decided to take up the Frenchie’s offer to learn about motors. Actually, it wasn’t the Frenchie who taught him. An ex-soldier from REME was in one end of the workshop helping ex-servicemen get on their feet and the Frenchie had persuaded the bloke to take Isaac on as well. Isaac had had little formal schooling but young as he was, he had a sound business head on his shoulders. Since the end of the war, there were a lot of ex-service vehicles available. Plenty of people were buying and he had a shrewd idea that before long, once things started to pick up, everybody would want their own car. Reuben had worked in the fields, his uncle was a dealer in scrap metal, and his brother-in-law was good with wood so Isaac decided to become a mechanic. To his surprise, he found he enjoyed it. That was a bonus.

The freezing cold weather had put a bit of a dampener on things. He had no income and had to rely on his wits for a few weeks, trapping the odd pheasant and fishing in the river Rife, but he avoided anything illegal and stuck with it, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before they could get back to fixing motors.

Isaac parked his bike against the wall and sauntered into the garage whistling a tune. Perhaps the police car had come in for repairs. The Frenchie and the two burly policemen turned towards him and Isaac’s whistle died on his lips. ‘What’s up?’

‘Someone has complained,’ said the Frenchie.

‘Complained? About what?’

‘There have been some thefts,’ said the copper with the sergeant’s stripes. All three of them stared at him hard.

‘This is Sergeant Palmer,’ said the Frenchie. ‘He wants to ask you some questions.’

‘Why me?’ Isaac protested.

‘Oh, I know all about you lot,’ said the sergeant with a sneer, ‘so don’t you go getting on your high horse, my lad.’

Isaac felt a rage creeping up into his chest. For the first time in his life he’d done nothing wrong but he knew what was coming. He was the gypsy. The man of ‘no fixed abode’. If somebody was thieving, it had to be him. His eyes narrowed. It wouldn’t matter what he said, they’d pin it on him anyway. He made a split decision, one he would forever regret. Turning on his heel, he legged it. He didn’t get far. The copper he’d seen just outside the door stuck his foot out and Isaac went flying.

‘Looks like we’ve found our culprit,’ said the sergeant with a satisfied smirk.

The Frenchie shook his head. ‘No, no. I cannot believe it. He wouldn’t …’

‘When you’ve been in the job as long as I have,’ interrupted the sergeant, ‘you get a nose for this sort of thing.’

The police officers had dragged Isaac to his feet and cuffed him. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he cried helplessly. ‘I ain’t done nothing.’

The Frenchie watched him being bundled into the police car and turned back into the garage. Isaac had been at the workshop every day helping out and learning whatever he could about motors. They slipped Isaac the odd pound or two and gave him a pie at lunchtime but there wasn’t enough money coming in to pay him a wage. True, Isaac had helped them with the old folks when the weather was really bad, but stealing from them? Eugène couldn’t believe it. But what had happened to Isaac wasn’t the end of his troubles. Because he had few customers, the mechanic who shared part of his workshop couldn’t pay his share of the rent. The terrible weather had meant that Eugène was losing money hand over fist and he couldn’t keep going much longer. Nobody was buying luxuries like Simeon’s carvings or his own paintings and the bicycle repairs he usually did completely dried up because of the bad weather. He’d got a few odd jobs but even though he was engaged to his daughter, Councillor Hampton was already breathing down his neck for a good return on his investment. Mavis didn’t seem to care that he had no money. She spent it anyway. Eugène had ploughed everything he’d got into the workshop. He had built up a sizeable bit of goodwill by helping the locals in the snow, but now the thefts had left an unwelcome blight on his good deeds. All that mattered now was racking up some more business. Pity about Isaac. The boy could have made his way in life. He was a damned good mechanic, a natural. Then it occurred to him that the police would be searching Isaac’s caravan before the day was out. The boy’s father didn’t look too good the last time he saw him and would be needing a hot meal. He’d better get up there and check on things.

‘Hello, Kenneth.’

As he heard Connie’s soft greeting, Kenneth leapt to his feet knocking his chair over in the process. ‘What are you doing here?’ He had flung his arm across his face. ‘No, I don’t want you here. Go away, Connie. Leave me alone.’

Roger righted the chair and Kenneth sank into it, his head in his hands. His shoulders were shaking.

‘Shhh,’ Connie soothed. ‘It’s all right, Kenny.’

The rest of the men melted away. They’d seen reunions like this before. Some of them had even had their own. They were painful, but once everyone got over the terrible shock, they were usually therapeutic.

Someone tapped Roger on the shoulder. ‘Fancy a drink, mate?’

‘I thought he’d agreed to her coming,’ Roger accused.

The scarred man looked a little sheepish. ‘He’ll be fine in a minute. You look as if you need a stiff one and this place is famous for its grogging parties.’ His benefactor was about twenty-three with a deeply scarred face. His eyebrows were missing and his hairline began somewhere near the crown of his head. ‘So, what’s your poison?’

Roger followed the others indoors.

Connie was crouched down in front of Kenneth, with one hand on his knee and the other on his arm. ‘I’m here now, Kenny,’ she said softly. ‘I’m here.’

Eventually he regained control of his emotions and lifted his head. Connie stood, bending over him with her arms around his shoulders, her forehead to his forehead.

‘Oh, Connie,’ he wept, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

It took a while before either of them could talk. She drew a chair close to him and put her hands over his poor scarred hand and the stump. She kissed his cheek and smiled up at him as if he were the same handsome brother who had left home all those years ago. To her, he was. To her he might be damaged but he was her perfect brother, her Kenny, and she had him back at last.

A nurse put a tea tray on the table beside them. Connie looked up and mouthed a thank you.

‘Is there anything else I can get you?’ she asked.

Connie shook her head. Kenneth tried to get something out of his pocket and the nurse anticipated his movement. Pulling out a neatly folded handkerchief, she shook it and handed it to him. ‘Do you want me to ask someone to come and look at your pedicle?’

It was only then that Connie really looked at the long trunk-like skin hanging from his nose. She guessed crying must make it feel uncomfortable.

‘You do it,’ Kenneth told the nurse, and while the nurse busied herself cleaning him up, Connie turned her attention to the tea. There were three cups and saucers on the tray but Roger had disappeared. She could hear the sound of laughter coming from inside. No need to worry about him. He was obviously all right.

‘How did you find me?’ said Kenneth when the nurse had gone. ‘Did Mum ask you to come?’

Connie shook her head. It took a while to explain that most likely Ga had prevented their mother from knowing where Kenneth was. ‘You know we’ve moved to Goring-by-Sea?’ she said.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Kenneth. ‘Was that because of me?’

Connie grasped his fingers. ‘Of course not!’ she cried. In truth she’d never put the two things together but this wasn’t the time to go into all that. ‘Mum got married again and Ga bought the nurseries.’

Kenneth was staggered. ‘Mum got married?’

‘To Clifford Craig,’ said Connie. She wished she hadn’t blurted it out like that. It must have been a shock to hear their mother had married again.

Kenneth beamed. ‘I remember him. He was a really nice bloke.’

‘He still is,’ Connie laughed in relief. ‘They have a little girl now. Mandy.’ She opened her bag and took out the photographs she had brought especially to show him. Kenneth studied them carefully. ‘You can keep them if you like,’ said Connie. He gazed lovingly at the family picture with unshed tears glistening in his eyes. They talked for ages. Kenneth wanted to hear all about the WAAFs and now her nursing experience.

‘I love it,’ smiled Connie. There was a lull in the conversation and then Connie said, ‘What happened to you?’

‘You may not think so to look at me,’ he said, ‘but I’m lucky to be alive. I lost the undercarriage in ’45. We thought we’d be all right but as soon as we realised we were on fire, God alone knows how it landed. I can hardly remember what happened except for the bloody flames. They came between my legs and were twenty feet above me. My hand was burnt straight away and it seized up altogether. Funnily enough, I didn’t even feel my face.’

‘Oh, Kenny,’ said Connie.

‘I vaguely remember them dragging me out of the cockpit,’ he went on. ‘I was on fire and they rolled me in the grass to smother the flames. The rest of the crew …’ he faltered and swallowed hard. Connie squeezed his hand again and he took a deep breath. ‘They took me to the local hospital and they did the best they could, but eventually, I got sent here. Best thing that ever happened to me.’

‘Mum will be so relieved to know you are still alive.’

His head jerked up. ‘You mustn’t tell Mum,’ he said.

‘But Kenny …’

‘No,’ he cried. ‘Absolutely not. I don’t want her to see me like this. Please Connie, you’ve got to promise me you won’t tell her.’

Connie stared at him helplessly. ‘She wouldn’t care, Kenny. So long as you’re alive and on the road to recovery, she’d look past all this.’

‘No!’ Kenneth insisted. ‘I’d sooner top myself than let her see me like this.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Connie cried. ‘Please don’t say such things. I can’t bear it. All right, I won’t tell, but please don’t ask me to keep it a secret forever. Mum would never forgive me.’

‘Just let me get this thing sorted out first,’ said Kenneth pointing to his nose.

Connie nodded bleakly. This wasn’t what she was expecting. She’d wanted a fairy-tale reunion and for Kenneth to come home. He looked exhausted.

‘Do you need to rest?’ she said. ‘I’ll go if you’re tired.’

‘I am a bit,’ he said.

‘I have a train to catch anyway,’ she smiled.

Kenneth rang a little bell the nurse had placed on the tea tray. ‘Who’s the chap you came with? Is he your beau?’

Connie shook her head. ‘Just a friend.’ Out of the corner of her eye she could see Roger hovering near the doorway. She nodded for him to come out on the terrace.

‘I’m glad you’ve got someone, Connie,’ smiled Kenneth. ‘I did wonder after that business with Stan Saul.’

Connie shot to her feet. Hearing that name again after all this time still made her feel physically sick. She staggered and would have fallen had not Roger reached her and grabbed her arm. Kenneth had risen from his seat as well. ‘I’m an absolute idiot,’ he said. ‘I never should have mentioned him … sorry.’

Connie’s mind was a complete jumble. Those horrible memories she’d spent so long pushing away came rushing back. Stan kissing her on the mouth, sucking her lips into his own mouth and pushing his tongue between her teeth. It was horrible and his smoky breath was disgusting. She hated it. Her head was spinning. Now she could still see Stan flying down the stairs dressed only in his shirt, his hands covering his modesty and when he reached the bottom, his clothes hit him on the back of his head. Then he’d looked up at her and pointed his finger. She shuddered. Even now, just the thought of him scared her half to death.

‘She’s going to faint,’ cried Kenneth. ‘Do something. Dear God, I never meant for this to happen. I only said his name.’

Roger forced Connie back onto the chair and the nurse who appeared in answer to the bell took charge. ‘Breathe slowly,’ she told Connie as she made her put her head between her legs. Roger stood over her with quiet and puzzled concern. Someone gave Connie a glass of water and she gradually stopped trembling and regained her composure.

‘We’ve put Kenneth on his bed,’ the nurse said eventually. ‘It’s probably best if you say goodbye to him now. He’s very upset about what happened.’

Now recovered and leaning on Roger’s arm, Connie went to say goodbye to Kenneth. Roger waited at the foot of the bed as brother and sister whispered together.

‘It was because of Stan that you left home, wasn’t it?’ said Connie.

Kenneth hung his head and nodded. ‘Ga blamed me for what happened,’ he said, ‘but I promise you, that bastard hoodwinked me just the same as he did you.’

‘I know,’ said Connie. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

Kenneth squeezed her hand. ‘You have no idea what that means to me,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming.’

‘Let me tell Mum …’

‘No,’ said Kenneth, his eyes blazing once more. ‘If she comes here, I shall make them send her away.’

Connie sighed. ‘I’ll come and see you when I can,’ she said, pushing her hospital address into his hand. ‘I’ll write but I can’t come every week. Mum expects me to go home on my days off.’

Kenneth nodded. ‘But you will come?’

‘Just try and stop me,’ she smiled.

Roger took her to a small café in the town. They were the only customers and as they walked in the radio was playing ‘You Are My Sunshine’. Connie was emotionally exhausted and was glad of a few minutes in which to gather her thoughts and relax.

‘My little sister’s favourite tune,’ she smiled at Roger.

‘I like that one too,’ he said. In truth he didn’t know what to say.

The waitress, a rather bored looking girl with plain straight hair and buck teeth, took their order. Connie stared out of the window. She was glad of Roger’s company but she wished she was with someone she could talk to. He was kind and considerate but she didn’t know Roger well enough to offload her family secrets. He reached for her hand on the table and gave it a squeeze.

‘This has been one hell of a day for you,’ he ventured.

Connie nodded. ‘Thank you for coming. It made it a lot easier having someone with me.’

‘My pleasure,’ he smiled.

‘I never got around to telling you that Eva has been unwell.’

She told him about his sister’s illness and meeting his family for the first time. ‘Your grandmother and my great aunt used to be friends.’

‘Apparently,’ he agreed. ‘I think Gran always wanted to patch it up but Olive and Agatha wouldn’t wear it. They never forgave her for marrying my grandfather.’

Connie was curious about the man loved by two women. ‘What was he like?’

Roger smiled. ‘Just about the best grandfather a chap could have.’ By the time their pie and mash meal arrived he had waded into childhood memories ranging from catching tiddlers in the local pond to ferreting for rabbits and bareback riding on the downs, all done with a dearly loved grandparent.

‘I greatly admired him because he never let his war wound hold him back,’ said Roger.

‘Oh yes, his war wound,’ said Connie faintly.

‘He only had one leg and he’d lost the sight in his right eye,’ said Roger. ‘They were a tough lot back then. Once they set their minds on something, they’d go for it.’

‘What did your grandfather do for a living?’

‘He carried on with the family tradition,’ said Roger. ‘He was a stonemason.’

Roger looked thoughtful as he played with his spoon on the table. ‘Connie, who was Stan Saul?’

‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ Connie said quickly.

Roger nodded. ‘Well, if ever you do …’ he began.

‘I won’t,’ said Connie firmly.

After their meal, Roger took her to the station and they said their goodbyes. When he kissed her, it was as soft as a butterfly’s wing brushing her lips and something within her was aroused. Connie closed her eyes waiting for the next kiss but it never came. He had left her wanting more.

‘Even though it was a difficult day for you, Connie,’ he smiled, ‘I’ve enjoyed being with you.’

‘And I with you,’ she said shyly. ‘Thank you for being there.’

‘Take care,’ he said kissing her on the cheek. ‘I’ll write.’

She leaned out of the carriage window until the train moved off. He waved and then he was gone. She liked Roger. He was a kind man.

Eighteen

Eva was dying to hear all about it. She was fully recovered from her bout of flu and as soon as she’d checked back into the nurses’ home, she came looking for Connie who was in the laundry washing her smalls. Connie dried her hands and the two friends embraced warmly.

‘Are you sure you’re well enough to come back?’ Connie asked anxiously.

‘There’s only so much soup and chocolate cake a girl can have,’ she laughed. ‘It was lovely to be home, but Mum drove me nuts with her fussing. Your friend Jane Jackson came with an orange. Did you tell her I was ill?’

Connie nodded and turned her attention back to the sink.

‘She tells me she’s met someone. He goes to her church and she says he’s lovely.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Connie. ‘She deserves someone nice. Did she say anything about Sally Burndell?’

‘Only that she’s staying with her aunt for a bit longer,’ said Eva, making herself comfortable on the laundry table. ‘She found out that her boyfriend has left the army but he’s never got in touch. She thinks he had some poison pen letters.’

‘Yes, I heard that too,’ said Connie. ‘I ask you, who would do a thing like that?’

‘There are some really sick people out there, Connie,’ said Eva. ‘Now, tell me about your brother.’

Connie was glad of someone to talk to about Kenneth. Roger had wanted to know all about him but she was reluctant to say too much. She had written to Kenneth a couple of times since she’d got back and she was due to go home to Belvedere Nurseries on her next day off. ‘I’ve never been good at keeping secrets,’ she told Eva, ‘and he flatly refuses to let me tell Mum he’s alive and well.’

‘Why doesn’t he want her to see him?’ Eva asked.

As Connie wrung her things out and put them on the draining board she explained about the walking stalk skin flap and Kenneth’s ongoing rhinoplasty. ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘it makes him look as if he has an elephant’s trunk and he hates the idea of Mum seeing him like that.’

‘Perfectly understandable,’ said Eva.

Of course it was. How silly of her not to realise. Connie hadn’t really thought about it from Kenneth’s point of view. Her whole focus had been on how difficult it would be keeping the secret. Yes, Kenneth was right. It would be much better to wait for a while and then see Mum when he had some semblance of a normal face. ‘He must be an amazing man to work for,’ Connie observed.

‘Who, Kenneth?’

‘No, Mr McIndoe,’ said Connie plunging everything back into the rinsing water. ‘In the way he’s pioneered the way people with terrible burns are treated. They say he even got the Ministry of Aircraft Production down there to see what damage their aircraft can do to the men trapped inside.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘He was trying to get them to build safer aircraft.’

‘I can’t say I would have even thought of that,’ Eva nodded. ‘I wish I’d brought my ironing down while we talked.’

‘How is Steven?’ Connie was surprised that Eva hadn’t yet mentioned the love of her life.

Eva grinned and looked a little coy. ‘He’s lovely. Oh Connie, he’s such a wonderful man. I never thought I would say this about anyone after Dermid but I love him so much.’

‘I know you do,’ Connie laughed. She tipped the rinsing water away and took her things to the mangle. ‘It’s in your eyes.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Eva. ‘Does it really show? It’s so important to keep it a secret. You know going out with the junior doctors is strictly off limits. Sister Hayes would go loopy if she found out.’

Connie squeezed her friend’s hand. ‘Your secret is safe with all of us,’ she said. ‘You two were made for each other so just enjoy it.’

Eva mouthed a silent thank you. ‘I’ve made arrangements to go and see Queenie. I hope she won’t be too upset.’

‘She’ll be fine,’ said Connie and her friend nodded.

‘Your brother was so kind,’ Connie said and Eva listened starry eyed as she told her of Roger’s gentleness when she had collapsed. ‘He took me for a meal afterwards. I’m afraid I wasn’t up to much by the end of the evening but he had me laughing.’

‘He’s like that,’ Eva smiled. ‘Could there be …?’

‘Eva, don’t,’ Connie interrupted. ‘What with training and worrying about Kenneth …’ She hung everything on the overhead pulley. She didn’t say so, but with all this Stan business being raked up, Connie was in two minds about everything. She didn’t tell Eva that Roger had already written to her. It was a chatty letter, telling her that he was going up to Yorkshire for a refresher course for a few days and asking her to write. ‘It gets a bit lonely for a chap in a strange place,’ he’d written, ‘so it would be nice to have the odd letter from a friend.’ She hadn’t replied but it sounded as if he was keen on her. ‘I don’t even want to think about romance right now …’

Eva put her hands up in mock surrender. ‘All right, all right, keep your hair on,’ she laughed.

While Connie cleared up, Eva told her about her illness. ‘My granny had me inhaling Friar’s Balsam and Mum kept me in bed for ages …’ But by now, Connie was only half listening. She was thinking about her nightmare journey home from East Grinstead. She’d been totally exhausted, both physically and mentally drained and yet every time she’d tried to relax, that awful face would push its way into her thoughts. She hadn’t really thought about Stan Saul for years but ever since Kenneth said his name, she could almost smell his sweaty body above her and feel his breath on her cheeks.

Eva jumped down from the table. ‘Connie, you’re miles away. Something is wrong.’

‘Umm? Oh, sorry,’ said Connie. ‘Go on. I am listening.’

‘No,’ said Eva. ‘I can tell by your face that you’ve got something on your mind. Come on, out with it.’

‘I was thinking about something that happened when I was thirteen,’ she began, ‘and it’s not a pretty story.’

‘Go on,’ said Eva uncertainly.

‘It’s the reason my brother left home.’

Eva sat back on the table and gave Connie her full attention. ‘I’m listening.’

‘I was with my brother at a place called Long Furlong near Patching where we used to live and we’d met up with another lad called Stan Saul,’ she said leaning against the wall. ‘Kenneth and I had been out on our bikes all day with a few other boys and girls from the village. We’d taken a primus stove and cooked some sausages in the frying pan.’

Eva smiled. ‘Nothing like cooking out of doors. Go on.’

‘Kenneth is two years older than me but Stan was already grown-up. He was seventeen and nobody could understand why he hung around with us kids all the time.’

‘Does sound a bit odd,’ Eva agreed.

‘Anyway, he’d brought some bread and he had some sweets which of course made him everybody’s mate that day,’ Connie went on. ‘It was a lot more fun having a slice of bread to wrap around a boiling hot sausage, although it did pose a bit of a problem having to cut the slices with only Curly Bishop’s penknife.’ She laughed briefly.

Eva listened as she recalled what happened. She told Eva that she wasn’t very happy when Stan had invited himself back to their place afterwards and was even more anxious when she’d realised that no one else was at home. Mum and Ga were out but she’d consoled herself that Pip, although still only a pup, was there to protect them.

‘That’s when Stan produced the cider.’

‘Cider?’ Eva remarked.

‘It was very strong and the bubbles gave me hiccups. Stan told me to “Drink up,” and he kept tipping the glass back every time I put it to my lips.’ Connie put her trembling hand to her forehead as she remembered. The gathering gloom outside gave the window a mirror effect and she studied herself in the glass. The jumble in her mind was clearing and she shuddered as she remembered Stan running his tongue over his dirty teeth.

‘Connie?’ Eva jumped down and put her hand on Connie’s shoulder. ‘Did something awful happen?’

Connie thought of Roger again. He was a nice man but if Eva told him about Stan, would he want to write to her again? As she felt her eyes smarting, Connie pulled herself together crossly. The past was the past. She couldn’t alter it and the only way it could hurt her was if she dwelt on it. Stan was out of her life forever and the chances of ever seeing him again were remote. They’d just come through a war for heaven’s sake. There was a fair chance that Stan Saul had perished on the battlefield anyway. She picked up her empty laundry basket. ‘Nah,’ she said brightly. ‘A silly memory of a rubbish first kiss, that’s all.’

*

His mother wouldn’t like it but he’d have to tell her. No point in beating about the bush. He’d come right out with it. Best way.

‘I’m changing my name, Mum.’

She almost dropped a stitch. ‘Change your name. Whatever for?’

‘I told you, didn’t I? I want a new start. As soon as people hear my name, they remember what happened to my wife and they’ve already made up their minds, haven’t they?’

She had no answer to that.

‘I’m going to use my second name instead,’ he went on. ‘It might bring me better luck.’

‘Oh, son,’ she said cautiously. ‘I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. People are bound to think you’ve got something to hide.’

She saw something flicker in his eyes and his mouth took on a sinister sneer. ‘I didn’t ask for your opinion, Mum,’ he said coldly. ‘I told you what I’m going to do, so you’d better get used to it.’

As he left the room, he slammed the door so hard the cups rattled on the sideboard. She could feel the panic rising inside her chest. It was starting all over again, wasn’t it? He hadn’t changed at all.

*

Matron was doing her ward rounds and Sister had asked Connie to clean Room 1 in preparation for an incoming patient. She had spent the morning wiping the locker, the iron bedstead and the mattress with disinfectant. She’d checked the curtains on the screen and changed one of them because it had a splash of some sort on it. She’d cleaned the thermometer holder on the wall and changed the mouthwash solution. When she had finished, Sister deemed it a job well done.

As Matron sailed onto the ward, Connie was just taking a bedpan to Mrs Meyer in bed four. She whipped the curtains round and hidden from view, she dealt with her patient. Mrs Meyer was lovely. She’d come in for an operation on her stomach but when the surgeons had opened her up, they’d found out that there was nothing more they could do. They’d stitched her back up again and when she came around, told her the bad news. Mrs Meyer knew she didn’t have long to live but it never seemed to dampen her spirit.

Connie had just taken the full pan from under Mrs Meyer when Matron swept the curtain aside. ‘Everything all right here?’ she bellowed.

The sudden movement made Connie jump and she accidentally spilled a little urine on the bed sheet. Matron’s eyes narrowed. ‘Scandalous waste of bed linen, nurse.’

‘Yes, Matron, sorry Matron.’

‘You cleaned Room 1, didn’t you, nurse?’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘Then when you’ve cleaned that up come and stand outside.’

When Connie had finished changing Mrs Meyer’s sheet, she stood outside the door of Room 1 and waited. A minute or two later, Matron came and took a pair of white gloves out of her pocket. Putting the left one on, Matron went inside and closed the door. They could hear her moving around and then it all went quiet. A couple of seconds later she came out with her hands in the air. On the right hand, the index finger of her white glove had a black smudge on it.

‘Not good enough, nurse,’ she said curtly. ‘Do it again.’

‘But where did you find it?’ Connie blurted out.

‘That is for you to find out, nurse,’ snapped Matron sweeping out of the ward. ‘I shall be back in one hour.’

Connie could have wept. Her face was flaming with rage. She went to the sluice room to fetch her cleaning things again. She was supposed to be off duty in half an hour.

As she hurried to Room 1 for the second time, Mrs Meyer called her over. Pulling Connie down to the bedclothes she whispered conspiratorially, ‘Don’t let the old witch get to you, darling. Remember we all look the same with our knickers around our ankles first thing in the morning.’

Connie laughed and somehow that thought kept her going as she began again.

*

The reporter yawned. Not much excitement in court today, a couple of non-payments of fines, a chap accused of harassing his ex-wife and someone being prosecuted for not having a gun licence. It was all pretty boring stuff, only fit to go on page nine and column four. What he wanted was a page two or three piece or better still, a juicy front page story.

The last case of the day involved a gypsy. Who cares about gypsies, he thought as the boy stood in the dock, and then he realised he’d seen him before. As the case unfolded it dawned on him that this was the kid who had been in the paper a few weeks ago. He was the do-gooder who had been helping people out in the cold weather. Helping himself more like. The headlines were already turning over in his head. Good neighbour turns bad. That sounded quite good. Or, bearing in mind the boy’s name, how about, Light-fingered Light.

Isaac Light stood glum-faced in the dock as the judge passed sentence. ‘You will go to prison for six months.’

He had expected no less; after all, the police had found some stolen items, a pearl necklace and a valuable ring, in his caravan. The prosecution made much of the fact that there was other stuff missing and even though the police had searched the caravan thoroughly, it was still missing. Isaac was told to come clean and say where it was if he wanted a lighter sentence but how could he? He hadn’t stolen it in the first place. Everything seemed very circumstantial until the crown produced its most damning piece of evidence, eighty-six pounds they’d found under the floorboards. ‘No doubt the proceeds from your ill-gotten gains,’ the judge decided as he confiscated it for police funds. ‘Take him down.’

His father, Reuben, had leapt to his feet to shout but instead struggled to control his cough. As Isaac was escorted down the steps, the reporter’s lip curled. The old man was in no fit state to look after himself. It was obvious to everyone in the courtroom that he was on his last legs. Another man, vaguely familiar but the reporter couldn’t place him, was sitting next to the old man.

‘I’m innocent, Dad,’ Isaac called from the bottom of the stairs. ‘I didn’t do nothing.’

There was another case coming up but the reporter dashed out to get to the telephone and the news desk. With a bit of luck, the story of Light-fingered Light would be in the morning paper.

The other spectators in court shrugged and exchanged sceptical looks as Isaac called out from below the dock but Reuben was a broken man. Everyone in his family cut corners and bent the rules a bit, but this was the first time anyone had been jailed for theft.

‘It wasn’t him,’ he croaked.

Sitting next to him, the Frenchie patted his back. ‘I, for one, don’t believe it either, Reuben,’ he whispered and the old man looked up at him with hope in his eyes.

Nineteen

Connie had the weekend off and on her way back home, she planned to post another letter to Roger. He’d only written a couple of times but she wasn’t too worried. He’d told her in one of his letters that he wasn’t very good at letter writing.

As soon as she walked in the door, the family showed off their new telephone. It had been a mammoth task to persuade Ga to have it installed and Connie was thrilled.

‘We’ll be able to take orders over the phone now,’ said Gwen.

‘A great deal of expense for nothing if you ask me,’ Ga murmured.

‘It’s time to join the twentieth century, Ga,’ Connie said light-heartedly and was rewarded with a cold stare.

Connie had hardly settled in the door before Clifford wanted her to come and see Reuben. To her surprise, the old man wasn’t in his caravan in Titnore Lane. Clifford took her instead to the Frenchie’s workshop. Eugène opened the rickety door and stepped back to let them in. He looked as handsome as ever and Connie’s heartbeat quickened as soon as she saw him. He smiled and held his arm out to indicate where Reuben was. Connie looked up and saw the old man lying on an old horsehair sofa at the back.

‘What’s he doing here?’ she asked. She hurried to him and touched his forehead. It was cold and clammy. His skin was grey and he was struggling to breathe. She listened with mounting horror as Clifford told her about Isaac going to jail and the police search of his caravan. ‘I’m really annoyed that they did nothing to help him,’ said Clifford. ‘They must have seen the state the old boy was in.’

‘Then it’s a good job he has friends nearby,’ said Connie, taking Reuben’s pulse.

‘That was all down to Pip,’ said Clifford. ‘He kept sloping off and we couldn’t find him for hours. Then a couple of nights ago we could hear this dog howling in the distance. Mandy knew it was him straight away so I went to look for him.’

‘No sign of Kez and the others then?’ said Connie.

‘Moved on some time ago.’ Clifford shook his head. ‘I found Pip outside Reuben’s canvas tent howling his head off. If I hadn’t turned up, the poor man would have been dead by now. He hadn’t even had a drink for God knows how long.’

‘But Kez usually turns up this time of year,’ said Connie, clearly puzzled.

Clifford nodded. ‘And when someone’s ill, somehow or other, they all turn up from nowhere but not this time. With Isaac locked up, the poor old boy was on his own. He refused to let us take him to the doc. We didn’t know what to do for the best.’

Reuben’s eyes were fixed on the wooden wall and it didn’t take Connie long to realise he was staring between the planks where the daylight made its watery way inside. His chest sounded awful and she could see that he had been coughing up blood. One thing was obvious. He couldn’t stay here. The Frenchie stood beside him with his hands in his pockets and chewing his lip anxiously. Connie willed her heart not to pound so when he was so near.

‘Eugène, I know you mean well,’ Connie began, ‘but we really must get him to hospital.’

‘He knows he is dying,’ Eugène said quietly. ‘He doesn’t want to be indoors.’

Connie moved a little closer to him and laid her hand on his arm. ‘I’m afraid he has no choice,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing I can do and especially not here.’

Eugène shook his head. ‘But I promised.’

‘The authorities will make it difficult for you if he dies here,’ Connie went on. ‘They may decide that your failure to get him medical help is neglect … or something far worse. After all, you have no written proof that this was his wish, and Reuben won’t be around to explain.’

Eugène’s nostrils flared slightly and he nodded his head reluctantly.

‘Go and ring for an ambulance, Clifford,’ Connie said taking charge, and then looking at Eugène, she said, ‘Can you get me a bowl, a towel and some water please?’

By the time the ambulance came, Connie had cleaned Reuben up a bit. He’d managed to go to the toilet which was outside, but the two men had to virtually carry him. When they laid him back down, his breathing was laboured and clearly painful. Connie went with him in the ambulance and he was admitted straight away into isolation on the men’s ward. She sat with him for a while and even though he was definitely more comfortable and had less pain because of the drugs they’d given him, Connie couldn’t help feeling guilty. Reuben had been denied the one thing he had always wanted – to die under the open sky.

As she sat in the peace and quiet, Connie chewed over what had happened to Isaac. It was hard to believe. It was true, he was surly and bad tempered, and he had a chip on his shoulder. He was sometimes guilty of illegal fishing or shooting the odd deer for food, but stealing from old ladies? Somehow that wasn’t his style and yet Clifford had told her the police had found stolen goods in his caravan. After all the Frenchie had done for him, she didn’t know whether to be angry or to pity him.

Towards the end of the evening, the door flew open and Connie leapt to her feet with a cry, ‘Kez!’

She had the baby on her hip. Connie took Blossom from her arms and Kez went to her father’s bedside. Outside the door, Connie could see the corridor was swarming with people. Dressed in black, the gypsies had come to say their farewells. Ward Sister was frantic. ‘Only two visitors at a time,’ she was shouting, but the endless stream of people totally ignored her. She appealed to Connie, but there was nothing she could do, except to implore Sister to let them do what they came for and then they would go. By ten o’clock there was only Kez and Connie left. Someone had taken the children so that Kez was free to be with her father during his final hours.

‘How did you find out?’ Connie asked.

‘Pen has the gift,’ she said mysteriously and seeing Connie’s raised eyebrows, she grinned. ‘The Frenchie came to look for us.’

Eva turned up as soon as she’d finished her duty. ‘Someone in the canteen said you were here,’ she said. ‘Anything I can do for you?’

There was nothing but Connie was glad to have her two best friends meet at last although she wished it could have been under less difficult circumstances. The two girls seemed to get on well. As the rest of the ward settled for the night, Connie motioned to Kez and Eva and between them they manoeuvred Reuben’s bed towards the window. Connie pulled back the curtain but of course it was pitch black outside. She opened the window a crack and he seemed to know that he was breathing fresh air. At midnight, Eva left, promising to come back first thing in the morning.

As the night wore on, Reuben’s death rattle was very loud. The nurses kept an eye on him and plied Kez and Connie with cups of tea, but they made their appearances as unobtrusive as possible. Connie’s heart went out to Kez. Her friend behaved with dignity but it was obvious that she loved her father deeply. They didn’t talk much. Somehow it was enough to be together. Reuben Light passed away just as the dawn was breaking on Easter Sunday, 6 April, 1947. He was fifty-six years old.

Eva telephoned and Clifford came to take them both home, Kez to her own trailer parked next to Reuben’s caravan and Connie to Belvedere Nurseries. ‘Makes a hell of a difference having a car,’ he told Connie. Clifford had seen it in an old lady’s garage when they were helping her out with some coal during the cold snap. It had belonged to her late husband and no one had driven it since 1937. Clifford paid her a fair price and, before he’d left the workshop, the mechanic had fixed it up.

The family had planned to have a day out but Connie had been up all night. Mandy couldn’t hide her disappointment. ‘It’s not fair,’ she complained. ‘We never do anything together anymore.’

‘I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time with Mum and Dad,’ said Connie. ‘We’ll do something another time.’

‘But I wanted to be with you,’ Mandy pouted.

‘How would it be if Connie slept this morning,’ Gwen suggested, ‘and then we go out this afternoon?’

Connie was desperate for some sleep but even she didn’t want to be in bed all day, so it was agreed that they’d wake her at two. It took her a while to come round. Her head felt heavy and she felt a little sick. She couldn’t stop yawning either but once she was in the car, Connie felt a lot better. The family motored onto the South Downs using the London Road which went past Sompting church. It was a bit of a squash in the car especially as Pip had squeezed himself in as well. When they got there they parked on the hill and taking out the picnic things, set off for some trees in the distance. Even though it was early in the year, it was a beautiful day. Pip ran on ahead, scattering wild pheasants hiding in the hedgerows.

Connie looked up at the big sky and felt small. The rolling Sussex downs with their patchwork fields dotted with sheep made a beautiful backdrop. Coming here was a good choice. The sadness of yesterday was somehow put in its place. Reuben was gone, but others, his children and grandchildren would take his place. Life moved on. Nothing stayed the same. She was in maudlin mood. She thought of the brevity of life, of the people she’d nursed in hospital, cut down in the prime of their lives. She thought of the importance of friendships, especially of her friendship with Kez. They didn’t see each other for months, sometimes years on end and yet they were able to pick up exactly where they’d left off as if there had been no time between. She thought of Eva and the friendship they’d had to keep under wraps in case they upset the family and she wondered again about Ga and Cissy. They had both loved the same man but Cissy had said the family were at loggerheads long before she married Arthur. Something about a man called Little Mac. Connie knew she’d heard that name before, but where? It seemed so sad that for all these years, Ga had denied herself a friendship, because of someone else’s fight. Why hold a grudge for all that time? Apart from Aggie, Ga had no friends now. She relied on the family for her socialising, which was why she was with them now, but she had little in common with any of them. It occurred to Connie, for the first time, that Ga wasn’t actually related to any of the people who still lived at Belvedere Nurseries. She and Kenneth were her great niece and nephew, but Ga was only related to her mother through marriage. How different it had been for Reuben. It seemed like he was all alone in the world and yet all those people had turned up as he lay dying. What was the point of that? How much better to enjoy a friendship or relationship with that person while they were still alive. Then there was Sally Burndell. Rumour had it that Sally was coming back home. Connie purposed to drop her a line and find out how she was doing. Thinking of Sally made her think of Jane Jackson. Their friendship was more casual and yet she valued Jane as a friend. She smiled to herself. She still hadn’t met this wonderful man of Jane’s yet!

‘You’re quiet, dear,’ said her mother, breaking into Connie’s thoughts.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ she smiled. ‘Just enjoying the peace and quiet.’

Mandy ran on ahead of them all, picking the first of the wild flowers as she went. Primroses danced along the pathway and Connie could hear skylarks and stone chats calling in the open. A grey partridge ran across the field making his grating sound as he went and Pip looked up, sniffing the air as he sensed the presence of rabbits. There were a few other families around and occasionally they would nod to a passing rambler going along the same pathway.

Her mother had chosen a lovely spot for their picnic. Connie helped her put the blanket down and get out the food. Ga sat on a nearby log until Clifford had returned from the car with her folding stool. A few minutes later they were all eating egg sandwiches and drinking tea from the thermos flask. Mandy had found a tree she could climb and so she made the fork in the branches her table and chair.

‘I suppose they’ll give Reuben a right royal send off,’ Ga remarked. ‘The rest of the world and his wife turn up when a gypsy dies.’

‘There were loads of them in the hospital last night,’ Connie remarked.

‘What did I tell you?’ said Ga. ‘At least they were spared having that little toe-rag Isaac around.’

‘Can’t we all talk about something a little more cheerful?’ said Gwen.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ said Connie. She stretched herself out and took some writing paper from her bag. She penned a quick note to Roger and then lay back and looked up at the sky. Her mind drifted towards Eugène Étienne and the way he had got everyone pulling together during the bad weather. He was so much nicer than Mavis Hampton. Connie frowned. Was her leg all right now? Yes, of course it must be. Poor Eugène. She was probably still leading him a dog’s life. How handsome he was. She loved the way he’d stood with his hands in his pockets as she talked about Reuben. With his tousled hair flopping over his forehead he looked like a schoolboy. Her heart lurched with desire. Now if only Eugène was hers …

‘Ah, now you’re smiling,’ said her mother. ‘Penny for them.’

‘I like doing this sort of thing,’ Connie said quickly. ‘If Reuben’s death has taught me anything, it’s been a timely reminder that family is important.’

‘It would be even more lovely if we were all here,’ her mother remarked and Connie felt her face burn. She rolled onto her stomach in case anyone noticed. How she wished she could tell her mother about Kenneth but he’d made her promise to say nothing.

Her mother passed around some of her sultana apple cake and Connie sat up. They could hear someone shouting in the distance. ‘Help me, oh help me please …’ It was a woman’s voice. Pip, who had been resting with his head on his paws, leapt to his feet and growled. Clifford, who had been lying with his newspaper over his face, sat up too. ‘What was that?’

Gwen shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Shall I go and see?’ said Connie, jumping to her feet. Pip ran ahead of her and disappeared.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Clifford.

‘Me too,’ cried Mandy from the tree.

‘No,’ said her father. ‘You stay with Mummy.’

The two adults hurried towards the clump of trees. A woman, frantic and panicking, ran around like a headless chicken imploring the other walkers in the area, ‘Have you seen a little girl? She’s seven. She’s got blonde curls and blue eyes. She’s wearing a pink polka-dot dress?’ A man, clearly the child’s father was running through the trees calling, ‘Janice, Janice, where are you?’

The woman saw Connie and Clifford coming and hurried towards them. Pip bounded towards the trees and in a short while, they could hear him barking furiously and presently they heard him yelp. Connie caught a glimpse of another person running and then a voice called to them from the pathway. Connie’s heart lurched. The child. Someone had found the child.

‘Excuse me,’ Connie shouted towards the woman who was walking away from them. ‘I think she’s here.’

He had come out onto the path holding a little girl’s hand. The child spotted her mother and ran to her. Connie’s throat constricted as she watched the child’s mother scoop her up into her arms and burst into grateful tears. The child clung to her. Then Connie’s heart did a somersault as she turned back and saw the child’s rescuer. It was Emmett Gosling.

The child’s father ran up to him and pumped his hand. ‘Thank you. We’ve been looking everywhere. One minute she was there and the next she was gone. Where was she?’

‘We heard a dog barking,’ said Emmett, ‘and then all of a sudden she came stumbling out of the undergrowth. I don’t think any harm is done.’ He turned and saw her for the first time. ‘Connie!’

‘Hello, Emmett,’ she said shyly. Her throat had gone dry and her heart was bumping. This has to have been fate, she thought. I never thought I would see you again and now here you are appearing right out of nowhere. He wasn’t quite as handsome as she’d remembered but he still had that gentle look in his eyes. He was dressed in tweeds and was wearing knee-length socks on the outside of his trousers and heavy walking boots.

‘How nice to see you again,’ said Emmett rather formally.

A woman came up beside him and slipped her arm through his. ‘Was she the missing child?’ she purred.

‘Yes, darling.’ Emmett smiled down at her and turning to Connie he added with a cheesy grin, ‘You must meet my wife, Lucy. We were married Easter Saturday.’

Married? Connie almost choked. ‘Congratulations,’ Connie smiled as graciously as she could. ‘I hope you both will be very happy.’

‘Oh, we will,’ Lucy assured her.

‘Connie and I went out together a few times during the war,’ Emmett told his new wife. ‘It was good to have someone to help while the time away.’

Connie’s heart sank. Someone to help while the time away? Surely she meant more to him than that?

He turned back to Connie. ‘Lucy was an absolute brick when Mother died.’

‘I’m sorry to hear she died,’ said Connie, regaining her composure. ‘I know you were fond of her.’ So fond of her that you stood me up on VE Day, she wanted to say.

‘Is this your husband?’ Emmett asked.

Connie and Clifford laughed. ‘Heaven forbid,’ Clifford said. ‘But I am married to her mother.’

The other walkers had already dispersed. In the distance, they heard a motorbike starting up. The tearful family were packing up their things. Clearly losing their daughter albeit for a short time had affected them deeply.

‘I didn’t like the nasty man, Mummy,’ said Janice.

‘He isn’t a nasty man, darling,’ said her mother glancing at Emmett. ‘He’s a nice man. He brought you back to us again.’

The parents shook Emmett’s hand again and they left.

‘Well,’ said Emmett awkwardly. ‘We’d better be off too.’

Clifford called Pip and he came to them, although he seemed a little subdued. Connie went to pat his side and the dog yelped again. ‘Must have fallen over or something,’ said Clifford.

Connie and Pip walked back to the others side by side. How could she have got it so wrong? She had truly believed she and Emmett were important to each other, but clearly he had other ideas. ‘Someone to help while away the time …’ That had hurt her deeply. How could she have been so stupid? Up until now, Connie had always prided herself that she understood people but perhaps she wasn’t so clever after all. As they packed the picnic things away, she caught a glimpse of the letter she’d just penned to Roger waiting to be posted. Perhaps she was wrong about him too.

Twenty

Reuben had a fantastic send-off. Friends and family had been ‘sitting up’ with Kez ever since her father died which meant that she’d had someone with her day and night. According to the Romani tradition, Kez had fasted the whole time. Connie hadn’t seen her friend since Clifford took them both home that Easter Sunday and she was concerned to see her looking so drawn and tired. Connie had managed to get time off to go to the funeral by swapping her off duty time with one of the other student nurses. She dressed in black with a white blouse as was the custom for women going to a gypsy funeral.

It seemed the gypsies had come from the four corners of the earth to pay their respects but Isaac wasn’t among them. He was still serving his time. They walked from Titnore Lane behind the hearse all the way to Broadwater cemetery, a distance of some three miles, holding up the traffic and creating a staring crowd as they went. The women who normally sold their flowers from coach-built prams parked along the Broadwater Road weren’t doing any business today. Instead, they stood in a silent line near the cemetery entrance. Reuben was in a glass-sided horse-drawn hearse with a lorry full of wreaths and flowers following behind. Kez had put a Gates of Heaven wreath which she’d made herself at the side of his coffin; a tall archway of green foliage, peppered with Love in the Mist and a dramatic spray of mimosa, daffodils and Queen Anne’s Lace on the left-hand side. As was the custom, the little black gates beneath the archway were permanently open.

The service, in the chapel at the cemetery itself, was beautifully done and to Connie’s surprise, Isaac was already waiting in the pew, a prison officer next to him. The officer’s coat hid the handcuffs on both their wrists until the Vicar, Rev McKay from St Mary’s, had a word with the man and Isaac was allowed to sit next to Kez without the cuffs. They had chosen the place to lay Reuben to rest with care. It was a sunny spot, halfway up a hill, overlooking the Findon Valley. It was peaceful and as they walked towards the open grave, the birds sang in the warm April sun and rabbits scurried into the undergrowth. Reuben would have loved it up here, Connie thought. As soon as the graveside ceremony was over, Isaac was taken away again and Connie couldn’t help voicing her disgust over his treatment. ‘Anyone would think he was a murderer, the way they’re treating him.’

Everyone got lifts back to the caravans in Titnore Lane and once they were all gathered, Reuben’s caravan was towed into the middle of the field to be set alight. Connie knew for a fact that he had many valuable things inside. ‘Aren’t you going to keep anything of his?’ she asked Kez before the thing went up in flames. ‘Something to remember him by?’

Kez seemed surprised. ‘We never touch a dead man’s things.’

‘Perhaps there’s something Isaac would want?’ Connie insisted. ‘Some of his own things.’ She couldn’t bear the thought of Isaac coming back to nothing.

‘All Isaac’s things are in his own tent,’ Kez said wiping her eyes. ‘The Roma believe touching a dead man’s things would bring bad luck.’

Connie watched the flames leaping into the air as a perfectly good home went up in smoke. She couldn’t understand it. All that lovely china and glass, his pots and pans, the watches he repaired … and nobody wanted anything. Even the caravan itself was valuable. Simeon had used gold leaf rather than paint when he’d decorated it and Reuben had always kept it up to date so far as repairs went.

As the flames died down, the gypsies took to the road again. Connie stayed to say goodbye. ‘What will you do now?’

Kez shrugged. ‘Move on, I suppose. This was the place where Reuben wanted to be. Simeon is talking to some mush about buying a piece of land over Slinden way.’

Connie kissed her children and hugged her friend. ‘How will Isaac know where you are when he gets out of prison? Shall I send him to Slinden?’

‘He knows we’ll be at the horse fairs,’ Kez said. She swallowed hard. ‘He’ll find us.’

Connie walked away with a heavy heart. Something had changed. It wasn’t just losing Reuben. Perhaps something in Kez had died with him. She seemed troubled, as if something was playing upon her mind. Whatever it was, Connie was worried about her.

When she got back to the nurses’ home, Connie found another letter from Kenneth in her pigeonhole. It had been penned using his left hand so the few lines were shaky and a little difficult to decipher. ‘My nose is better. It’s still a little …’ (Connie couldn’t make out that word) ‘but the Maestro says it will improve with time.’ Connie’s spirits leapt. Maybe now at last she could tell her mother. She wrote back immediately to ask.

It was the end of the week and the girls were going to a dance but Connie had been asked to do a short spell of nights because they were short staffed. She was a bit disappointed as she watched Betty and Eva getting ready. Although they were meeting up with Jane Jackson, Sally, back home from college and with her mother again for the Easter holidays, had declined to come. She was better, but still hadn’t quite got over losing Terry. Connie wished with all her heart she was going with them. In fact, she wished she was going herself. After all the angst of the past few days, she could have done with a bit of light relief and a good laugh.

Betty had some lovely things. Her mother was good with a needle and spent a lot of time making the latest Butterick or Simplicity pattern. Everyone still needed coupons but she managed to pick up some nice material on the market. The room was filled with excited chatter. Avon’s Wishing and Evyon’s White Shoulders perfume filled the air as Connie helped Eva with her hair and lent Betty the pearl earrings she had bought in H. Samuels.

‘Oh, I wish you could come too,’ said Betty, ‘especially as we’re meeting your friend Jane. She’s lovely, isn’t she?’

‘She tells me she’s got a new boyfriend,’ said Connie. ‘I haven’t met him yet. Tell me what he’s like, won’t you.’

‘Leave it to me,’ said Betty conspiratorially. ‘I’ll dish the dirt.’ And they all laughed.

‘Roger will be disappointed to miss you,’ said Eva, patting her hair in place.

‘You didn’t tell me he was coming,’ Connie cried.

‘You didn’t tell me you were doing nights,’ Eva countered.

Connie slumped on the bed. ‘I didn’t know until yesterday,’ she said. ‘Honestly, I sometimes think Ward Sister has it in for me because I swapped duties to go to Reuben’s funeral.’

‘You always let your imagination run away with you,’ said Betty. ‘Has anyone seen my stole?’

Connie was stunned into silence. Betty’s remark made her bristle but Connie let it go. Starting a row would spoil their evening. Betty found her stole and the girls were ready. Some of the other nurses were already gathered in the corridor. Connie stood at the door to wave them off, their high heels clacking along the linoleum floor. It was seven o’clock and she had an hour and a half before she had to be on duty. It was time to try out the new family phone.

‘Belvedere Nurseries. How can I help you?’ Connie’s mother sounded very efficient and when Connie told her so, they both giggled. It was lovely to hear her mum’s voice and it made Connie feel ever so slightly homesick. They chatted about Mandy and school. ‘She’s doing maypole dancing in the vicarage summer garden fete. Ga? She’s fine. Oh, and we took Pip to the vet.’

‘Why?’ Connie was alarmed.

‘You remember how he didn’t like anyone patting his side after we’d been on that picnic where the little girl went missing?’ said Gwen. ‘Well, the vet thinks he was hit with something.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Connie.

‘His side has been badly bruised. He was lucky not to have a broken rib, apparently.’

Connie vaguely remembered Pip barking as he rushed into the wooded area where the child was and then hearing a sharp yelp before he came out again. Everyone was so taken up with little Janice being reunited with her mother that Connie hadn’t given her dog a thought. Could he have been hit by a falling log or something?

‘The vet thinks he was hit or kicked,’ her mother went on.

‘Kicked!’ Connie was horrified. ‘Who on earth would have done that? Is he going to be all right?’

‘Yes,’ said her mother. ‘It’s just going to take time, that’s all.’

‘Poor old Pip.’

When she’d put the phone down, Connie thought back to that day. Something was niggling away at the back of her mind. Something that was connected to all this, but what was it? She felt like she was grabbing at something only just out of reach.

When she reported for duty, Connie was sent to the antenatal ward. She was working with Sister Neil and she wasn’t looking forward to it. Connie had already had an altercation or two with her since she’d begun her training, once when Connie had been asked to tidy the linen cupboard and didn’t get the sheets in a perfectly straight line and another time when Connie had burst through some swing doors when Sister was coming in the opposite direction, causing her to drop a bottle of distilled water. Everyone said she was an excellent nurse but Connie thought her hard-nosed and unfeeling. Still, it might not all be bad. Connie had never actually seen a baby being born and this was a golden opportunity. Sadly, once again she was doomed to disappointment. It was a very quiet night with only one woman in labour with her first baby. ‘She’ll be hours yet,’ said Sister after she’d examined the patient. ‘It probably won’t come until the day staff are here.’

At two in the morning, a bell sounded near Sister’s desk. Connie was making cotton wool balls and putting them into huge jars at a table nearby. Sister Neil looked up anxiously. ‘That’s the patients’ bathroom on antenatal. Who would be having a bath at this time of night?’

Connie was just as puzzled.

‘Nurse Dixon,’ said Sister, ‘you come along with me. I’m not going on my own.’

Taking torches, they walked purposefully along the dimly lit corridor to the bathroom. The light was on, the door slightly ajar and they could see movement inside. Glancing back at Connie, and taking a deep breath, Sister pushed the door and strode in. Afterwards, Connie wasn’t sure which of them had been the most surprised, Sister, herself or the bearded man standing stark naked in the bath, drying himself with the hospital bathmat. While he was washing his feet and legs, he must have bent a little and accidentally pushed the emergency bell with his bottom. As soon as he saw Sister and Connie, he used the mat to cover his modesty.

‘It’s okay, missus,’ he said gruffly. ‘I ain’t gonna hurt nobody.’

Sister Neil puffed out her chest. ‘What on earth do you think you are doing?’ she demanded.

The man held his hand out in surrender. ‘I’m sorry, missus. This is the only place I can get cleaned up. I’ve got an interview for a job in the morning.’

Sister Neil strode towards the bundle of clothes on the floor. Her mouth was set in a tight line. Oh, you’re in for it now, my lad, thought Connie. Even from where she stood, Connie could see that his body was covered with clusters of little red dots, not unlike the German measles rash. The man obviously had body lice. His clothes were probably alive with them. He stepped out of the bath and stood on the tiled floor.

‘Please, missus,’ he begged. ‘Don’t call the police. I’ll get dressed and be out of here in two minutes. You won’t even know I was here.’

Sister Neil tut-tutted. ‘Well, you’re not walking out of here with those clothes.’

‘I have to,’ he said. ‘They’re all I’ve got.’

Sister Neil turned to Connie. ‘I hope I can trust you to say nothing about this, nurse,’ she began. ‘Go to the porter’s office and ask him for a complete change of clothes from the lost property box.’

Connie couldn’t believe her ears but she said, ‘Yes, Sister.’

‘But first of all,’ said Sister, ‘go and get a brown paper bag from my office and take those things with you. Tell the porter to burn them in the boiler and then ask him to come up here in about half an hour.’ She had taken a cloth from the cleaning cupboard and was rubbing Gumption onto the side of the bath. ‘As for you, my lad,’ she said addressing the astonished midnight bather in a far more gentle tone of voice, ‘when I’ve cleaned this scum from the sides, you can have a proper bath. In fact, you can have a good long soak.’ Sister turned and saw Connie standing in the doorway. ‘Are you still here, nurse?’ she said sharply and Connie fled.

Down in the bowels of the hospital, the porter’s lodge was empty. Connie was just wondering what to do when a fresh-faced young man came towards her. He looked familiar but Connie couldn’t work out where she’d seen him. He was younger than her, tall, average looking with round rimmed glasses and a small moustache.

‘Can I help you, nurse?’

Connie handed him the bag of clothes and explained what Sister wanted. He seemed surprised. ‘You’ve left her alone up there,’ he said anxiously. ‘Is she going to be all right?’

Connie grinned. ‘If you knew Sister Neil,’ she began, ‘you wouldn’t ask me that.’

‘Oh, it’s Sister Neil,’ he said with a knowing grin. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘I think I know you,’ said Connie as they searched the lost property box for a new set of men’s clothing. ‘Have you always lived in Worthing?’

‘I’m from East Worthing,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘Goring,’ she said. ‘Where would we have met?’

‘I don’t think I have met you before,’ he said candidly.

Connie wasn’t about to give up just yet. ‘Did you go to the dances in the Assembly Hall?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve been abroad serving King and country for two years,’ he said. ‘I only got demobbed four months ago.’

It was then that it dawned on Connie where she’d seen him before. ‘Did you have a girlfriend called Sally?’

His expression clouded. ‘I might have done.’

‘Sally Burndell,’ Connie persisted. ‘I seem to remember seeing your photograph in her handbag.’

‘What do you know about her?’ His voice was hostile and it was obvious he didn’t really want to talk about Sally.

‘Did you know, for instance, that Sally has been having poison pen letters?’ She could see that he had been brought up sharply so Connie went on. ‘Someone has been accusing her, quite falsely as it happens, of being a loose woman. We’ve been quite worried that someone who didn’t know what a lovely girl Sally was might actually believe all that stuff.’

Terry had paled but he said nothing.

‘I just thought as a friend of hers, you might like to know that.’

They continued pulling clothes from the box until Connie was sure that she had something suitable for the man upstairs. ‘Sister wants you to give us half an hour and then come up to chuck the man out,’ she said.

Terry nodded.

When she came back with the clean clothes, Connie was amazed to find the man clean shaven and sitting on a chair, wrapped in a bath towel while Sister cut his hair. She had obviously put Dettol in the bath. The smell pervaded the whole bathroom. Once he was dressed in the clothes Connie had brought, he looked quite presentable. ‘Good luck,’ said Sister Neil. ‘I hope you get that job.’

There were tears of gratitude in his eyes and he snatched her hand and kissed it.

‘That’s enough of that nonsense,’ she said stiffly. Terry had appeared at the doorway and Sister Neil changed her demeanour. ‘Escort this man off the premises,’ she said tartly. ‘He is trespassing.’

The man followed the porter, stopping only for a second as he reached the stairs to turn and mouth ‘thank you’ to Sister Neil. She straightened her cap and went back into the bathroom.

They cleaned up the room, scrubbing the bath and putting his tramp’s cut hair in another brown paper bag for the incinerator. Outside in the corridor, another nurse advanced towards them. The woman in labour was in the second stage and Sister was wanted in the labour ward. It had been an eventful night and to her absolute delight, Connie saw baby John Charles Dare come into the world about forty minutes later.

Twenty-One

When the night duty came to an end, Connie had three whole days off. It was absolute bliss. She slept for part of the first day and then went home to Belvedere Nurseries. She especially wanted to see Pip. He greeted her warmly but she noticed that all of a sudden he seemed a lot older. There were even more grey hairs around his muzzle and he had white in his eyebrows.

‘I wish you could talk,’ she said softly as she fondled his ears. ‘What happened to you in that wood?’ She racked her brains to remember. She and Clifford had heard the mother shouting and they had joined the other walkers searching for the child. All the while, Pip had been barking and then she’d heard that yelp. Then she remembered somebody running out of the undergrowth just before Emmett brought the little girl out. She froze. ‘I don’t remember seeing that bloke afterwards,’ she whispered to Pip. ‘Was it a bloke or a girl?’ She thought some more and decided it must have been a man. ‘Did he do something to you? Where did he go?’ She tried to recall his face, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t even sure she’d seen it because he was running away from everybody, and besides, she had such a shock seeing Emmett, everything else went out of her mind.

Her mother came downstairs with a couple of shirts that needed mending. The two women embraced. ‘Connie, I don’t want you to worry,’ said Gwen drawing her to one side and looking round anxiously, ‘but Clifford and I have been thinking about something.’

Connie lowered herself into a chair. This sounded serious.

‘Where’s Ga?’ said Gwen.

‘Serving in the shop when I came in,’ said Connie.

‘Clifford and I both want a new start in life,’ her mother said. ‘This past winter has made us both realise that we want more than this for Mandy and Clifford is positive that we’ll never get it here.’ A shadow moved in the hallway. ‘We’ll talk later,’ whispered Gwen.

‘What are you two whispering about?’ Ga demanded as she walked into the room.

‘Hello, Ga,’ said Connie. ‘How are you?’

‘Overworked,’ snapped the old woman.

Give it a rest, thought Connie. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said taking her bags upstairs to her room.

Connie brought up the subject of the man running in the woods as they ate their evening meal.

‘I don’t recall him at all,’ said Clifford pulling the corners of his mouth down.

‘Does it really matter?’ Ga challenged. ‘What’s done is done.’

‘That’s true,’ said Connie, ‘but it’s been puzzling me.’

‘You mean you think something happened to that poor child?’

Connie shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Mum.’

Gwen and Clifford shared an anxious look.

‘I think we should change the subject,’ said Ga. ‘Little ears are flapping.’

‘That’s not true,’ Mandy retorted. ‘I’m not listening.’

Connie grinned. ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing at school,’ she said. Her sister was pouting because they’d stopped talking. ‘I hear you’re going to dance around the maypole at the school fete.’

Mandy nodded vigorously. ‘It’s ever so hard. You have to keep counting.’

‘Tell me what day it is and I’ll see if I can get the day off,’ said Connie.

‘Will you help with the Sunday school outing?’ asked Mandy. ‘Miss Jackson says she needs lots of helpers.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Connie smiled. ‘When is it?’

‘Whit Monday,’ said Gwen. ‘The maypole dancing is on the Saturday before.’

‘I may not be able to do both,’ Connie cautioned. She didn’t tell the family she had two more days off when she went back to the nurses’ home that night because tomorrow, she was going to see Kenneth.

Her brother looked so much better. He had lost his elephant’s trunk and the skin over his nose looked pink and healthy. He was more excited about his hands and proudly showed her that Mr McIndoe had created a ridge along his palm at the base of where his fingers used to be. This would eventually give him the ability to grip, once the swelling had gone down.

‘Not quite as good as fingers,’ Kenneth smiled, ‘but it will certainly help.’

They both examined his hand and then Kenneth said, ‘Where’s your chap today? Couldn’t he come?’

‘He’s not my chap,’ Connie protested. ‘He’s the brother of a friend of mine.’

‘Oh,’ said Kenneth in an all-knowing way. ‘He seemed to like you though.’

Connie blushed and changed the subject. ‘I want to ask you something,’ she said. ‘It’s about the day you were sent away.’

Kenneth shot out his bottom lip. ‘Are you sure you want to talk about that? The last time I mentioned it you almost fainted.’

‘I’ll behave myself this time,’ she said. ‘You don’t mind me talking about it?’

He shook his head. ‘Not at all. If Ga was here she’d have something to say about it, but no, I don’t mind.’

‘You see,’ said Connie sitting closer as if talking in confidence, ‘I can remember some stuff but not everything.’

He looked puzzled. ‘You mean to do with Stan Saul?’

Hearing the name made Connie want to shudder but she tried not to let it show. ‘Over the years, I’ve blocked out so much of that day. I remember him kissing me and that I didn’t like it. I remember him giving us cider and then I remember him running away when Ga came.’

‘I reckon there was something in that cider,’ said Kenneth. ‘I didn’t drink very much of it but I felt really ill. Ga accused me of being drunk.’

‘So what did happen?’ said Connie.

‘All I remember is Ga coming in and giving me hell. She bashed me half to death with a hair brush. I could hear you upstairs being sick and she was telling me I was a pimp. I had no idea what the word meant but she was hopping mad.’

‘I know she told you to go,’ said Connie, ‘but why did you stay away?’

‘I was about ready to go anyway,’ said Kenneth. ‘I was coming up to sixteen and it was just the excuse I needed. The only trouble was, just as I was going out of the door, she told me she’d tell Mum about you and Stan if I came back. I kept away because I didn’t want to ruin your reputation.’

‘Me and Stan?’ said Connie. ‘There was no me and Stan. He was horrible. I hated him.’

‘She said he’d got you pregnant,’ Kenneth said quietly.

‘What!’ Connie stood up. ‘That’s awful. How dare she? Nothing happened, Kenny, I swear.’

The two of them fell silent and Connie sat back down. ‘He was nothing but a creepy little maggot.’

‘I knew if Ga told Mum she would skin me alive,’ said Kenneth staring at the floor. ‘Ga said she would protect you and that no one would ever know what you two had been up to. She made out as if it was all my fault.’

‘How?’

‘Because I had invited him,’ said Kenneth. ‘She even accused me of taking money from him.’

‘What money?’ Connie shook her head. ‘You mean the money on the table?’

Kenneth took in his breath. ‘How did you know about that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Connie. ‘I can’t remember exactly. Kenny, I tried to tell Ga it was nothing to do with you, but she wouldn’t listen. Who did the money belong to anyway?’

Kenneth shrugged.

‘But Ga said Stan had paid you to take me to bed.’

‘That’s a barefaced lie!’

‘And I was thirteen, for goodness’ sake,’ said Connie. ‘What did I know about stuff like that?’

‘So I stayed away all this time for nothing,’ said Kenneth.

Connie’s heart went out to him. ‘Well, we’ve found each other now, Kenny. We have to tell Mum that you’re alive. I can’t keep this up much longer.’

‘Not yet.’

‘But why?’

‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘I’ve met someone.’

Connie was completely taken aback. ‘Met someone?’

‘I know,’ said Kenneth. ‘I find it pretty amazing too.’

‘It’s not that,’ Connie said quickly and her brother laughed as her face flushed. ‘Who is she?’

‘One of the nurses,’ he said. ‘Her name is Pearl.’ His eyes misted over. ‘She’s wonderful.’

‘Do I get to meet her?’

‘She’s on duty today,’ he said. ‘She’ll be bringing the teas around in a minute.’

Connie was totally gobsmacked. What a surprise! She hadn’t expected that, and yet why not? Kenneth was still a young man. She rubbed his arm affectionately. ‘I’m really happy for you,’ she smiled.

‘Ah, here she is.’

Connie looked around as a small woman with her mousy blonde hair pushed back in a French plait walked towards them. She was smiling.

‘Darling,’ Kenneth called, ‘I want you to meet my sister.’

Connie stood up and Pearl reached for her hand. Her handshake was firm. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said.

She sat with them on the lawn as Connie and Kenneth drank their tea. With a little gentle probing, Connie found out that Pearl had nursed her brother from the beginning of his stay at the Royal Victoria and somewhere along the line, they’d fallen in love. Certainly when Pearl looked at Kenny, Connie couldn’t help being aware that she gazed at him as if he was as handsome as Tyrone Power or James Stewart.

‘About Mum?’ Connie asked as she was leaving. ‘I should tell her.’

‘Soon,’ promised Kenneth.

On the way home, as she dozed on the train, she finally pieced together the events of that day. The only thing that eluded her now was why. Why did Ga send Kenny away for good? What possible motive could she have?

For her third day off, Connie was going to Chichester with Eva. They knew there was a market there and it would make a lovely day out on the train. Connie had to be careful not to spend too much. All these train fares were beginning to eat into her money but she’d never been to Chichester before and the long journey meant that she and Eva could talk.

‘Steven is taking me to meet his parents at the end of the month.’

Connie grinned. ‘Does that mean your romance is no longer a secret?’

Eva nodded. ‘It’s getting harder and harder to deny it,’ she said candidly. ‘I’m about to enter my third year of nursing and he’s got another two. We’re planning to marry as soon as he graduates.’

‘How exciting,’ Connie enthused. ‘Did you go and see Queenie? Was she all right about it?’

‘She was fantastic,’ said Eva. ‘She said she couldn’t face coming to the wedding …’

‘Understandable,’ Connie interrupted.

‘But she wants to help me with the reception. Will you be my bridesmaid when the time comes?’

‘Oh Eva, I’d be thrilled.’ Connie paused. ‘It looks like your romance won’t be the only secret out in the open at last.’

They spent the rest of the journey talking about Emmett and his wife and Connie’s visit to Kenneth the day before. The one person they didn’t talk about was Roger. Every time Connie went into Eva’s room, she’d look at the photograph of Roger she kept on her dressing table. It wasn’t very big, and Roger was standing a long way from the camera, but Connie’s eye was always drawn to it. She had to be careful Eva didn’t see her looking, because she didn’t want to give her ideas. In the end Connie had to ask. ‘How’s Roger?’ she said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Eva grinned knowingly.

‘Only asking,’ Connie said quickly. Because Roger hadn’t written for some time, Connie found herself thinking about him all the time. She’d started worrying that something may have happened to him. Had he been injured by a bomb? Had he been … no, if he had, Eva would have told her. Eva seemed unconcerned about her brother but Connie knew they wrote to each other at least once a week, so he must be all right. She didn’t want Eva jumping to conclusions. Roger was a friend.

‘He’s doing some sort of training course,’ said Eva. ‘They have to keep up-to-date with things. One of his mates was killed last week.’

So that was why he hadn’t written. The revelation hit Connie hard. Roger was a nice man. She hated the idea that his life was in danger all the time.

‘Are you all right?’ Eva asked. ‘You look a bit pale.’

‘How can you stay so calm about it?’ Connie accused.

Eva gave her a long hard stare. ‘Years of practice but inside I’m screaming.’

They were sitting opposite each other and as her friend turned her head to look out of the window, Connie moved to sit next to her and hold her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was being crass and stupid. It must be hell for you.’

‘And you?’ said Eva.

‘I don’t want to think of him that way,’ said Connie. ‘He’s just a friend. I’m done with men.’

‘Oh, Connie …’

‘I mean it. I was so wrong about Emmett.’

‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea,’ said Eva.

‘Now you sound like my mother,’ said Connie, resuming her usual seat.

*

Stan had put it off long enough. It hadn’t come as a shock this time. He’d had the clap before but this time he was frustrated. That slut had virtually offered herself to him. If he hadn’t been so weak this would never have happened. It didn’t take much to work out who had given it to him this time. He smiled grimly. She wouldn’t be giving it to some other mug; he’d make sure of that. She’d looked so young that he’d felt sure he was the first but she obviously wasn’t as unsullied as he’d thought. It was unfortunate that he’d had to go to his mother’s doctor, but there was no alternative. Still, the man was close to retirement, and he still knew his stuff. Of course, he had insisted that he hadn’t been with anyone.

‘It must have been on the lavatory seat. Those public toilets down by the seafront leave a lot to be desired,’ he’d said and the doctor didn’t argue. He knew and the doctor knew he was talking out of the back of his head, but so long as his mother never found out, he didn’t care. It began with an itch, but as soon as the discharge came, he knew what it was. Damn it and he’d been so careful. He’d never liked going to one of those tarts, but there were times when the need was so strong and no one else was available. He didn’t want to wear a rubber and the girl had looked very young. She’d looked cute in that gym slip. His mouth tightened. Next time he’d put something over her mouth. Not that there would be a next time. He couldn’t stand women prattling away all the time. He had enough of that from his mother. She never shut up.

‘Venereal disease is much easier to treat these days,’ the doctor told him.

He was glad. The last time he’d had a dose of the clap, he was in hospital and had to miss the whole of the VE celebrations because by then he was on his third day of treatment. Thirty-four grams of sulfathiazole by injection over a period of five days. It was bloody painful but it had done the trick.

According to the doc, the VD clinic was at the back of the hospital and down a lane. Apparently, they were very careful about privacy and made sure that no one would be able to see him arriving or identify him. It was open Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening and from nine till noon on Thursday. He decided to go as soon as possible.

Twenty-Two

Chichester was wonderful. Connie and Eva strolled around the shops for a while and in among the market stalls. They had decided to make a day of it and although there was little money to spend, she and Eva enjoyed browsing.

‘Connie!’

Connie spun round when she heard the voice and a second later, a bemused Eva looked on as Connie and Kez hugged and danced with each other in the middle of the pavement.

She was selling lovely handmade dollies’ clothes, beautifully crafted wooden trains, rattles and rockers. Connie could see Simeon’s amazing talent straight away. They browsed among the things and Connie bought Mandy some lovely wall-mounted letters which spelt her name. There was a peg on the ‘a’ so she could hang her dressing gown up if she wanted. Connie loved the bright jazzy colours. After living for so long with dull browns and creams and woodland green, it was so much fun to see reds and yellows and bright blues. Connie wondered where Simeon had found them but the market stall was so busy, there was hardly any time to speak to Kez.

‘Where are you camped?’

‘We’re keréngro now,’ Kez beamed in between customers. ‘Simeon bought a piece of land over Slinden way and we’ve got our trailer there. My kids can go to school and learn to read.’

‘These things are fantastic,’ said Eva after Connie introduced them. ‘I’m sure you’ll do a roaring trade.’

Kez was wrapping another sale in newspaper. ‘She is already!’ laughed Connie.

‘Simeon is talking about getting a shop,’ Kez told them during another brief lull. ‘He’s talking with the bank mush right now.’

Another customer interrupted them, giving Connie another chance to admire more stock, some lovely skittles and a small train.

‘Does Simeon make all of these?’ Connie asked.

‘He makes the wooden stuff,’ said Kez. ‘I dress the dollies.’

‘Where are your kids?’ said Connie, looking around.

‘Pen looks after them while I works,’ said Kez.

‘You look like a real business woman,’ Connie laughed.

‘Thanks to you helping me to read,’ said Kez, giving her arm a grateful squeeze.

Eva wandered off to the next stall. ‘Have you heard from Isaac?’ Connie asked. Kez shook her head.

‘His time must be up soon.’

Kez sold a toy farmhouse and wrapped it in newspaper. As she put the money in her pouch, she sighed. ‘He should be out in a week or so,’ she said. ‘We went up to Portsmouth, but he didn’t want us to see him.’

‘He must be very angry and upset,’ Connie remarked.

‘’Course he is, ’cos he never done it,’ said Kez fiercely. ‘Isaac is a lot of things, but he ain’t no liar. If he says he never took the stuff, then he never.’

‘Clifford told me they found the stuff in his caravan,’ Connie said cautiously.

‘And that’s another thing,’ said Kez. ‘That weren’t his caravan. They found it in Reuben’s caravan.’

She moved to serve someone else leaving Connie to digest what she had said. She hadn’t really thought about it before but Kez was right. Isaac slept behind the hedge in his own tent. In recent times he had progressed into a small touring caravan dating back to the 1930s. It wasn’t at all like Reuben’s traditional gypsy caravan. It was a bit battered but he was doing it up. He also had a small lorry which was why he’d been learning about motors. Connie frowned. Having seen how independent the gypsies were, there was no reason for Isaac to put his stuff in his father’s caravan. What was the point? Reuben was on his last legs and Isaac would have known that when the old man died, everything would go up in smoke, so why hide valuable booty there? Of course he had no idea when the old man would die, but it would be one hell of a risk, wouldn’t it?

‘Did your dad have a lot of money?’ Connie asked.

Kez shrugged.

‘You said Simeon has gone to the bank,’ Connie persisted. ‘Did Reuben have a bank account?’

‘You know Reuben never trusted Gorgia,’ said Kez. ‘If he had money, he hid it somewhere.’

Connie looked away with a frown. Like under the floorboards of his caravan, for instance? With no one around to direct them (Isaac in jail and Reuben too ill to protest) the police had searched the wrong caravan, hadn’t they. The money they’d found was Reuben’s and somebody must have planted the missing jewellery in his caravan thinking that’s where Isaac lived as well. So Isaac was innocent after all. She didn’t like him all that much, but nobody deserved to be framed for something they didn’t do. The revelation left Connie with more pressing questions. Who could have done it and why?

‘Ready to move?’ Eva cut across Connie’s thoughts and she nodded. Kez was dealing with a steady stream of customers anyway. She called her goodbyes and Kez gave her the thumbs up. Connie was upset but there was little point in making waves now. Isaac would be out of prison soon.

‘Fancy going to the pictures before we catch the bus back?’ said Eva.

‘Why not?’ said Connie breaking into a trot. ‘Race you there.’

‘How do you test the patient’s urine for sugar, nurse?’

It was two days later and Connie was doing her best to appear calm and controlled while shaking in her shoes. Matron always made her feel inadequate and she hated it. She couldn’t forget the white glove incident in Room 1. Connie had been so sure she had cleaned every speck of dirt from that room and when she went back, she couldn’t find any other smudges similar to the black on Matron’s glove, so how come she had missed it? It was a complete mystery.

‘Come along, nurse, speak up,’ said Matron tetchily.

‘Um …’ Connie hesitated. ‘I pour 5cc of Bendict’s solution into the test tube and add …’ The words died on Connie’s lips because she could see by Matron’s expression that she’d said something wrong. What had she said? ‘Umm, 5cc of Benni …’

Behind Matron’s head she could see Betty mouthing Ben-e-dick.

‘I mean Beniprick solution …’ Connie began again.

‘For heaven’s sake, nurse, you have been here long enough to know this,’ came the reply. ‘This should be routine by now.’

‘Yes, Matron.’ Connie could feel her face flaming.

‘Routine!’ said Matron turning on her heel.

Aggie relaxed deep into the armchair. It wasn’t very often that she and Olive had the place to themselves but today the rest of the family was out. Clifford had gone up to London. Aggie didn’t know why but she was sure Olive would get around to telling her. It was the second time he’d been up there on business in as many weeks. Her thoughts clouded. She hoped he wasn’t pretending to be working when all the time he was running around with some floozy.

Gwen had gone to school to see Mandy dancing around the maypole as part of the school summer fete. There had been great excitement this year because she was one of the children chosen but numbers were restricted to one parent so Olive wasn’t invited. Not that she would mind, of course. Her friend ignored children unless they were doing something they shouldn’t.

Left alone while Olive was in the kitchen getting the tea things, Aggie stood up to admire Olive’s nice ornaments and pretty pictures. She wouldn’t dream of touching anything of course, that would be deemed as nosy, but looking was all right. Aggie kept her own home fairly plain. It cut down on the dusting. With no birthday or Christmas cards to catch her attention, Aggie satisfied her curiosity by looking at the bookshelf and trying to make up her mind which family member had chosen which book. Mandy was the easy one with a well-thumbed copy of Enid Blyton’s book Five on a Treasure Island. There was a C.S. Forester book about Lord Hornblower which Aggie guessed belonged to Clifford and another called The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald which, because it was about the wife of a chicken farmer, Aggie supposed belonged to Gwen.

As she turned to sit down, she noticed that Olive had been writing letters. The bureau was open and Aggie gazed longingly at the paper rack. She remembered a time before the war when Olive had paid the absolute earth for some pretty sheets of creamy paper with a watermark. At the time, although Olive had given her a couple of sheets, Aggie had thought she was quite mad but now she was of the opinion that in these austere times the paper added a little distinction to a letter. There wasn’t much left now. With one ear open for the sound of the tea trolley, Aggie thumbed through the pile of letters waiting to be posted. Nothing of interest except for one addressed to Sally Burndell. Why would Olive be writing to her?

By the time the rattling tea trolley came into the room, Aggie was sitting in the armchair just as Olive left her.

‘I’ve made some sardine sandwiches,’ said Olive as she backed through the door pulling the trolley behind her.

‘Oooh, lovely,’ said Aggie although she couldn’t stand sardines.

She had the toaster from the kitchen and bending to put it in the hearth, slipped in a couple of crumpets. Aggie licked her lips. The crumpets were delicious eaten with butter and some of Gwen’s homemade greengage jam.

‘Of course, you’ve heard about Sally,’ said Olive handing her a plate.

‘What’s she done now?’ Aggie took a bite of her sandwich.

‘She’s getting married.’

‘No!’ Aggie took a sip of tea to swill away the taste. ‘Well, that’s a turn up for the books. I thought you said her gentleman friend didn’t want her.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Olive matter-of-factly. ‘I can’t keep up with her. First it’s on, then it’s off. Then she’s going to be a secretary and then she’s not. Next she’s free to work in the shop and now she’s not.’

Aggie frowned. ‘Her poor mother must be at her wits’ end.’

‘Anyway,’ Ga continued, ‘she hasn’t bothered to send us an invitation to the wedding.’

They sipped tea, each left to her own thoughts.

‘I was looking in your bookcase,’ Aggie eventually confessed. ‘Mandy must enjoy reading. I noticed Five on a Treasure Island …’

‘Oh, that’s Connie’s,’ said Olive. ‘She picked it up in a jumble sale. I think she’s read it to Mandy but it’s a bit old for her yet.’ Olive stood up and went to the bookcase. ‘This is my favourite,’ she said pulling down The Egg and I. ‘It’s so funny. I love it. Have you read it?’

‘No,’ said Aggie feeling a bit miffed. ‘I don’t get much time to read.’

‘I’m sure they’re up to something again,’ said Olive. She took Aggie’s cup and emptied the dregs into the slop bowl before pouring her another cup of tea.

‘Who?’

‘The family. There’s a lot of whispering and Clifford is always writing letters.’

‘Maybe they’re planning something nice for the summer holidays?’ Aggie suggested.

Olive gave her a withering look. ‘I don’t think so. That Clifford always was a devious one. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.’

‘And after all you’ve done for them,’ Aggie tut-tutted sadly. ‘I don’t know why you put up with it, dear.’

‘What choice do I have?’ said Olive sourly. ‘Give him his due, he is a good worker.’ She sighed. ‘We’d get along just fine if he wasn’t always trying to change things.’ She pointed to her friend’s chin and Aggie wiped away some melted butter with her napkin.

‘Perhaps you should just come out with it and ask them what they’re up to?’

‘I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.’

‘What about Connie?’ said Aggie. ‘Couldn’t you have a word with her?’

‘Constance!’ Olive snapped. ‘That little minx. She’d only stick up for Clifford, wouldn’t she. I still can’t bring myself to forgive her for running out on us like that when she left the WAAFs.’

‘I think it’s terrible the way they treat you,’ said Aggie. ‘Especially when you’ve been so good to them.’

Ga smiled bravely. ‘Have another crumpet, dear.’

This was Connie’s first Saturday off for some time but it meant that she was lucky enough to help with the church jumble sale. The church held several jumble sales during the year. They were a good way of raising funds for the building they hoped to have one day. Connie loved them and collecting jumble could be just as much fun as the event itself. Connie’s duties at the hospital had stopped her from taking part in that, but as soon as she’d heard Connie was free on the day, Jane Jackson didn’t waste time in asking her to help. Connie was at the hired hall in Mulberry Lane by half past seven.

‘Glad you could make it,’ said Jane, giving her arm a squeeze.

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ smiled Connie.

‘Have you heard about Sally …?’ Jane began.

Connie held her breath. Not more bad news?

‘Terry turned up,’ said Jane. ‘It’s all on again and they’ve even set a wedding date.’

Connie grinned. ‘Oh Jane, that’s wonderful news!’

‘It certainly is,’ said Jane. ‘Her mother is looking a bit bewildered but everybody is thrilled of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Connie. She was so glad for Sally. The poor kid had had such a rough time and Terry had looked a decent sort. She’d drop her a line to congratulate her when she got back home. ‘Jane, I’ve brought Mandy along too.’

Connie’s sister stood beside her beaming.

‘Hello Mandy,’ smiled Jane. ‘You can help with the children’s toys, if you like.’

The arrangements were almost always the same. The men would put a line of trestle tables along each side of the church hall, and some more tables in front of the stage. Books and children’s toys were on the left-hand side near the door with women’s clothing on the next two tables. The bric-a-brac was always on the end tables with any big items like an old pram or washstand on the stage itself. On the other side of the hall the tables were divided in two halves with shoes and handbags on a small table just before the hatch where teas and coffees were served from the kitchen, and then the other side of the hatch the tables were for men’s clothes – not so many of those.

While the men were putting up the tables, Connie and Jane joined the other women in dragging the bags from the cupboards where they had been stored, into the main hall.

‘Is your boyfriend here?’ said Connie giving Mandy a toy soldier to put on the children’s table. ‘I’m the only one who hasn’t seen him yet.’

Jane shook her head. ‘He’s working today but he’ll be coming to the outing on Whit Monday.’

They had plenty of helpers and any time someone found something they’d like, they would put it on the stage behind the curtain until the end of the ‘sort out’. The perk for helping was being able to buy what you wanted before the sale. The jumble came from a cross section of the village. Sometimes Connie was handling stuff from the upper crust and at other times she was dealing with things that had obviously been handed down several times already. And it didn’t always follow that the good stuff came from the rich either. Connie knew it was often the roughest looking people who gave good, complete, unbroken and clean jumble while the obviously affluent might fob them off with rubbish.

‘I was half expecting Reverend Jackson to be here,’ Connie remarked to one of the other women as she handed her a welcome cup of tea.

‘He’ll be along later,’ she said. ‘This morning he’s interviewing somebody to play the piano for the Sunday services.’

‘At last,’ cried Connie. ‘It’s ages since Michael Cunningham left.’

They were about halfway through their sorting when a well-heeled woman in a big car drove up to the door. ‘I’ve brought you some things for your sale,’ she announced in an all too loud plummy voice. Several heads looked up but everyone carried on with the job in hand. Eventually she spotted Connie. ‘Hey, you. Miss. Fetch them from the car for me.’

Reluctantly, Connie followed her out of the door.

‘I don’t want anything for them,’ she said handing Connie a rather large and heavy box.

As soon as she’d gone, Connie sorted through the boxes she’d left. They were filled with broken toys, cracked plates and cups with no handles.

‘She’s just dumped her rubbish on us,’ Connie said in disgust.

Rev Jackson had just arrived in the hall. He came over to look. ‘Put it all in the hallway, Connie,’ he said shaking his head. ‘We’ll put it in the pile for the rag and bone man at the end of the sale.’

Connie dragged the box into the hallway and then noticed an old tea caddy. When she opened it, it was full of green mouldy tea. She couldn’t resist taking it back into the hall to show Jane.

‘How vile,’ said Jane, jerking her head back as the musty smell filled the air. ‘Ugh.’

Something caught Connie’s eye. She looked around and found a bent spoon.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ cried Jane.

Connie fished around in the tea and pulled out a silver caddy spoon. ‘Voilà!’

Rev Jackson took it from her and looked at it a little more closely. ‘Well done, Connie,’ he said. ‘This is hallmarked. It could be worth a bit. We’ll take it to the jewellers after the sale.’

‘Ha!’ laughed Jane. ‘I bet she doesn’t know it was in there.’

‘And I bet she wouldn’t have given it to us if she had,’ Connie grinned.

Everything was ready by nine forty, so someone made them all another cup of tea. Mandy was going to stand with Connie on the children’s clothing section.

‘Tell everybody, whatever it is, it’s thruppence,’ Connie told her.

Mandy nodded gravely, aware of her responsibility to make a lot of money for the church.

The queue outside was already snaking around the hall. At ten o’clock, Rev Jackson called out, ‘Ready everybody?’ and a moment or two later having paid him sixpence to get in, the people rushed into the hall like a stampede of wild elephants and the sale was underway.

The first half an hour was manic. Most things were going for a song but sometimes people would barter.

‘How much is this shirt, love?’

‘A tanner.’

‘I’ll give you fourpence.’

People pushed and shoved, some even snatching their bargains out of the hands of another. Connie was terrified that they’d get to the end of the morning and find somebody’s flattened child under the table but even though a few children disappeared under the frenzy of shopping bags and mothers in search of a bargain, nobody was hurt. A few ended up with a clip around the ear if their mother missed a bargain because they were in the wrong place and getting under her feet.

Mandy was chuffed every time she put another thruppenny bit in the money tin and Connie could see the coins were mounting up. By eleven o’clock the worst was over. A few women stayed doggedly sorting through the mountain of clothes for something they could wear or remake into something else. Another cup of tea came round and it was most welcome.

And at the end of the sale, the remaining jumble had to be piled up and stuffed into bags ready for the rag and bone man who was coming at twelve thirty. They cleared the hall, the men put the trestles back under the stage and Mandy helped Connie sweep the floor. Battle-scarred and weary, some helpers were promising themselves ‘never again’ until Rev Jackson said, ‘Thank you everybody. It’s been a good morning. Not only do we have a new church pianist called Graham, but we have made seventy-two pounds three shillings and five pence,’ and everybody applauded.

When they collected their things from behind the curtain, Connie gave Mandy the toy typewriter she’d seen her admiring as she put the toys out.

‘You were brilliant,’ she said, giving her a kiss.

‘Is that for me?’ said Mandy, her bright eyes shining.

‘Of course,’ said Connie. ‘I want you to type me a letter one day.’

‘Oh, I will,’ said Mandy. ‘You’re the bestest sister ever.’

By the time they got back home, Gwen had lunch waiting for them, macaroni cheese, Mandy’s favourite. Afterwards, while Mandy played outside with Susan Revel and Sarah Bawden, Connie sat on the sofa in the little sitting room exhausted but happy. It was good to have this little oasis of calm available any time she was able to be here.

Her mother walked in with two cups of tea.

‘Where’s Ga?’

‘Gone into Worthing for something,’ said Gwen. ‘I’m glad because I want to talk to you about something.’

‘Sounds serious,’ Connie joked.

‘It is,’ said her mother. ‘Oh bother, I forgot you like sugar in your tea, don’t you?’

She hurried out of the room leaving Connie worried. Serious? What could that mean? Was her mother ill again? She didn’t look ill and she had boundless energy since Clifford came back. Perhaps there was something wrong with Clifford. He certainly seemed pretty miserable at times and once she had caught him looking at some papers, papers which he stuffed under a cushion as she’d come into the room. Was he in trouble with the business? No, Ga would have said something if the nurseries were failing. Maybe there was something wrong with Mandy. She could hear her playing outside with Susan and Sarah. They were skipping.

‘Raspberry,

strawberry,

apple jam tart.

Tell me the name of your sweet heart.’

No, it couldn’t be Mandy. She’d been full of energy at the jumble sale and listen to her now. If it wasn’t Mandy, it had to be something about Ga.

Until her mother had pre-empted the moment, Connie had decided that this was the moment to tell her about Kenneth. Whatever Kenneth said, it wasn’t right keeping his whereabouts from her any longer. She’d be cross enough that Connie had known where he was for almost two months now and that she’d been writing to him ever since and not told her. It would soften the blow a bit when her mother found out about his fiancée, but she still had to tell her about his terrible injuries.

Her mother reappeared with the sugar bowl and put it on the little table next to the sofa. ‘Sorry I was so long,’ she smiled. ‘It was empty and I had to get some more from the cupboard.’ She flopped into her chair and arranged the cushions.

‘Come on, Mum,’ said Connie. ‘You’ve got me worried.’

‘This is going to come as a bit of a shock,’ said Gwen, ‘but Clifford and I are thinking about leaving.’

Connie’s brain was a little slow to catch on. ‘Leaving? Leaving what?’

‘The nurseries are hard work for little return,’ said Gwen. ‘We don’t mind hard work, but we want a better future for ourselves and Mandy. We’ve decided to leave Belvedere Nurseries.’

‘Is that all?’ Connie laughed. ‘That’s fine. What will you do? Buy a shop?’

Gwen took a deep breath. ‘Clifford read an advertisement in The Times,’ she said getting to her feet. She went to find a tin box under the sideboard. Unlocking it with a key, she searched until she found a particular envelope and handed it to Connie. Inside was a cutting. Calling all able bodied and skilled workers. Australia needs you. The Australian government is setting up assisted passages for British families. For only £10 you could have a brand new life for you and your family. It was followed by a telephone number.

Connie’s heart thudded. Her mother was staring at her anxiously. ‘Australia?’

Gwen nodded. Connie re-read the cutting. Her mouth had gone dry. Australia was thousands of miles away. It took six weeks to get there. It was on the other side of the world. She would never see her mother or Mandy again. She wanted to burst into tears, to shout and rant, ‘No, you can’t go, I don’t want you to go, don’t leave me please …’ She wanted to say, ‘Wait, you can’t go, I haven’t told you about Kenneth yet. Would you really leave him as soon as you’ve found him again?’ She wanted to call her mother selfish and horrible but as she looked up again, something else kicked in.

‘That’s amazing, Mum,’ she smiled although her voice had developed a distinct wobble. ‘What an opportunity. All that way for just £10?’

‘You don’t mind?’ Gwen asked anxiously.

‘Of course I do,’ said Connie brightly, ‘but if you and Clifford want to do it, who am I to stop you? Don’t let your opportunities pass you by, Mum.’ Her voice had become thick with emotion as she repeated the very words her mother had said to her when she’d talked about nursing.

Gwen flung her arms around her daughter. ‘Oh, Connie. You’re such a wonderful daughter. You don’t know what it means to me to have your blessing. I’ve been dreading telling you.’

As they let each other go, they both had tears in their eyes. ‘I shall miss you,’ Connie smiled brokenly.

‘Why don’t you come too?’ said her mother.

Connie blinked. ‘To Australia?’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t, Mum. My training.’

‘You could enrol over there,’ said Gwen, clearly excited by her own suggestion.

Connie shook her head. ‘Mum, I need my SRN.’

‘I wish it didn’t have to be this way,’ said Gwen, taking a hanky out of her apron pocket and blowing her nose, ‘but Clifford …’

‘I know,’ said Connie, drying her own eyes. ‘Clifford is a good man and he wants the best for you both.’

‘There are such wonderful opportunities out there, Connie,’ said Gwen. ‘And after what happened to poor Sally … those terrible letters. I can’t wait to get away from here.’

‘Is anyone any closer to finding who sent them?’

Gwen shook her head. ‘There are some sick people out there.’ She paused. ‘Oh darling, when you’ve finished your training please come and join us. We’d be settled by then.’

‘When do you plan to go?’ Connie was dreading the answer and when it came it was worse than she thought.

‘The middle of September.’

‘September!’ Connie cried. ‘So soon?’

‘The assisted passage is only for younger people,’ said Gwen. ‘We have to be among the first to go. If we leave it any longer, Clifford will be too old.’

Connie’s whole world was crashing down around her ears. ‘What does Ga say?’

‘We haven’t told her yet,’ said Gwen. ‘I wanted you to know first.’

‘Do you think she will go with you? I mean, she’s got the money to pay her fare, hasn’t she?’

Her mother’s expression darkened. ‘We want to do this on our own.’

‘But what will she do?’ Connie cried.

Gwen sipped her tea. ‘Sell up and move into a luxury flat I should imagine. She’s never paid us a proper wage the whole time she’s lived here, so I imagine she’s loaded. She’ll land on her feet. She always does.’

‘She kept you and Clifford short as well?’ Connie gasped. ‘I thought it was only me.’

Her mother shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t have told you really, but it’s true. That’s why Clifford gets so upset. She won’t let him expand. She’s stopped him from putting up more glasshouses, and she won’t let him sell any of the land. He even suggested using the rough patch at the bottom for static caravans or building a few prefabs to help people with housing. The rent would have supplemented the nurseries but she won’t have any of it and although we get by, he wants to be free to do what he wants without having to ask her first.’

By the tone of her mother’s voice, Connie finally understood just how difficult it must have been to live with Ga. After she had packed up the WAAFs, Connie had been away from home for so long, that the thought of being forced to live with Ga again was what drove her towards nursing. The only reason she came home on her days off was to see her mother and Mandy. Certainly not Ga.

‘I had no idea it was so bad, Mum.’

Gwen sat next to her daughter and put out her arms. ‘I’m torn, Connie,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to leave you, but I must go with my husband. He’s a good man but he’s so unhappy.’

Connie could see that this was going to be a wonderful release for her mother, Clifford and Mandy. They could be a family in their own right at last. It was only the sinking feeling in her own heart that reminded Connie that she would be on her own too.

Twenty-Three

When she got back to her room in the nurses’ home, Connie sat on her bed and stared dejectedly at the wall. She had heard the water running in the bathroom as she came in. Betty’s things were on her bed but her dressing gown was gone from the back of the door so she must be in the bath.

Connie’s chin quivered and she let her tears fall freely. Everything was going wrong. She knew she was a good nurse but every time Matron was around, she got so flummoxed she did stupid things and now that her mother and her sister were leaving her for good, she felt really depressed. How could she survive without them? And what on earth was she going to do about Kenneth?

On her way in, she’d been to her pigeonhole and collected a letter from Roger. ‘Thanks for both of your letters,’ he wrote. ‘I think our letters must have crossed in the post. I’ve been kept quite busy. It seems that as soon as things get back to normal, someone uncovers another UXB. I reckon we’ll be carrying on with the unit for some time to come.’

She didn’t know what to do about him either. She liked him. He was a good friend but did she really want more? Not that he’d intimated anything else but friendship of course. She sighed. It was hardly the end of the world but it was one of those moments when you wonder what it’s all about.

There was a soft knock on the door and Eva came in. ‘Hello. Had a nice day? I saw the light was on.’ Her voice faltered. ‘Connie, whatever’s wrong?’

Eva sat on the bed beside her and as soon as she put her arms around Connie’s shoulders, she broke down altogether and once she started crying, she couldn’t stop. Eva let her do it, plying her with clean handkerchiefs until she was done, and Connie told her everything. Some of it, Eva already knew. She knew about Kenneth and Connie’s dilemma about telling her mother, but Connie’s run-ins with Matron and the family’s move to Australia was news to her.

‘Dear life,’ said Eva, ‘you’ve obviously had one hell of a day.’

‘What am I going to do?’ Connie wept.

‘Well,’ said Eva blowing out her cheeks, ‘as far as Kenneth goes, I think you should tell your mum. She’ll be angry of course but she will hate you forever if you let her go all the way to Australia without seeing him.’

Connie nodded. ‘You’re right. I’ve been so anxious to please him, I haven’t really thought about how it would affect Mum. Going to the other side of the world changes everything.’ She burst into tears again as Betty came into the bedroom wearing her dressing gown. Her towel was over one shoulder and she was carrying her wash bag. ‘Whatever’s wrong?’ she gasped.

‘Connie has just discovered her family are moving to Australia,’ said Eva.

‘Oh, you poor love,’ said Betty sitting on the other side of Connie. She smelled deliciously of Yardley’s French Fern bath salts.

‘I don’t think I can do this anymore,’ said Connie. Deep in her heart she knew she didn’t really mean what she was saying but she was hurting so much. She couldn’t do anything about Australia, and she knew whatever she decided Mum was going to be upset about Kenneth. Nursing was the one part of her life over which she had complete control.

‘Do what?’ said Betty.

‘Be a nurse,’ Connie wailed. ‘I’m lousy at it. For some reason, Matron’s got it in for me and she gets me in such a state I can’t do anything right.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Eva. ‘You can’t let the old bat ruin your life.’

‘But she always picks on me, Eva,’ said Connie blowing her nose. ‘You remember how I was when she asked me about the Benedict solution. I knew what it was, but she got me in such a panic my mind went a complete blank.’

‘She does that to everyone,’ said Eva.

Connie was calming down but she wasn’t ready to let go yet. ‘Then there was that day when she found the dust in the room I’d just cleaned …’

‘The old cow has been doing that one for years,’ scoffed Betty. ‘She had a pair of white gloves on, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Connie slowly.

‘Some of the older girls have told me about it,’ said Betty. ‘She makes a big thing of putting on one glove and keeps the other in her hand, right?’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Eva.

‘And when she comes out of the room,’ Betty went on, ‘she’s got both gloves on and one of them has a dirty finger. Am I right again?’

The two girls looked at her with blank expressions.

‘That’s because she’s already blacked it with shoe polish.’

Neither girl spoke.

‘It’s a set-up,’ cried Betty. ‘There was nothing wrong with the room you cleaned.’

Connie was trying to recall everything that happened and Betty was right. She had searched that room from top to bottom but she’d never found the source of that black smudge. No wonder if it was boot polish!

‘I don’t believe it,’ gasped Eva. ‘That’s an awful thing to do.’

They looked from one to the other and burst out laughing. ‘The crafty old cat!’ cried Connie.

Betty got up from the bed. ‘I’ve got a bottle of sherry in the wardrobe. Fancy something to drink, girls? Connie?’

Connie blew her nose noisily.

‘She’s up for it,’ said Eva. ‘Is that a letter from Kenneth?’

Connie blushed. ‘From Roger, actually.’

Eva grinned. Betty poured the sherry into the one glass she had stashed in her wardrobe and some more into the lid and a third lot into her tooth mug. Eva got the glass, Connie the tooth mug. Connie sipped slowly. Even though the mug was clean, the sherry still tasted vaguely of toothpaste.

‘Ga always pulls me up on my shortcomings,’ said Connie. ‘She was convinced from the start that I’d never make the grade. Do you honestly think I can do it?’

‘Absolutely,’ cried Eva. ‘You’re a really caring person, Connie. Just the sort of nurse the new NHS will need.’

‘Don’t let Matron see that you’re getting into a flap,’ advised Betty. ‘Find a way to bring her down to size.’

‘She’s pretty small if she has to resort to such mean tricks,’ said Connie.

‘Atta girl,’ said Eva, giving her a hearty pat on the back.

‘Anyway, enough of that,’ said Betty. ‘Have I got a juicy bit of gossip for you!’

Connie and Eva looked up.

‘Sister Hayes is leaving,’ said Betty. ‘She’s pregnant.’

‘But she’s not married,’ Connie blurted out.

‘Exactly,’ said Betty. She puffed up her chest and imitated Sister Hayes as she was on their first day. ‘This hospital has a good reputation for clean living gels with fine upstanding morals. We don’t allow men in the nurses’ home under any circumstances.’ Betty paused for effect and then lifting the lid of the sherry bottle to her lips added, ‘Sound advice if you don’t want to get in the family way, gels.’

And all three of them roared with laughter.

It was supper time and Matron made a surprise visit to the women’s ward. ‘We are short of nurses in the special clinic,’ she announced to Sister Wayland.

‘We don’t usually send the students,’ Sister reminded her. ‘Dr Saunders prefers the older nurses.’

‘Needs must, when the devil drives,’ Matron said coldly. ‘Who have you got on duty?’

Sister Wayland read out the names on the duty roster.

‘Give me Nurse Dixon,’ said Matron.

Connie put Mrs Meyer’s meal on the locker and with an apology left her chewing a morsel of fish. Mrs Meyer had little appetite these days and she knew she hadn’t got long to live. It had taken a while to trace her daughter who lived in Kenya but she was now on her way. They’d told Mrs Meyer she was coming, and somehow it kept the old lady going. As Connie did her best to encourage her to eat a little more she couldn’t help wondering how she would feel if her mother was taken ill when she was twelve thousand miles away. She could only hope and pray that Mrs Meyer’s daughter got here in time to say her last goodbye.

‘You will report to the special clinic,’ said Matron. ‘Have you any objections to that?’

Connie shook her head. ‘No, Matron.’ What was the special clinic? Connie was dying to ask but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Matron turned and walked away. A couple of seconds later, she came sailing back down the ward, her mouth looking as tight as a cat’s bottom. She was holding up a stocking. Connie braced herself.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’

Connie stared at her blankly. ‘I don’t know, Matron.’

‘I found it attached to the cupboard door,’ said Matron. ‘You have just come from that cupboard, haven’t you?’

‘I needed to get Mrs Meyer a new gown,’ said Connie.

‘Don’t answer back,’ Matron snapped.

Connie thought about protesting but what was the point? The woman had already made up her mind Connie was responsible for putting the stocking there and nothing would change it. ‘No, Matron.’

There was a loud bang and Sister came running. ‘Who has been messing around with the cupboard door again? I thought I told …’ The words died on her lips as she saw Matron. ‘Excuse me, Matron. I thought you’d gone.’

Matron puffed out her chest. ‘I had until I saw what this stupid nurse had done.’

She threw the stocking in Connie’s face and turned on her heel saying, ‘Please remember that this is a hospital ward, nurse, not a changing room.’ And with that she swept out.

There was another loud bang. Sister bent to pick up the stocking. ‘Someone spilled some cleaning fluid on the floor,’ she said. ‘I kept the door open with the stocking to assist the drying. If it’s not tied back, it bangs all the time.’

Biting back her tears, Connie returned to her patient. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Meyer, but I have to go. I am needed elsewhere. I’ll get Nurse Frances to help you.’

‘You’re trembling, dear,’ the old lady said with effort.

Connie smiled even though she was struggling to keep a lid on her emotions.

‘Take no notice of that miserable dried-up old prune, dear,’ said Mrs Meyer. Connie felt a bony hand patting hers. ‘Remember what I said and think of her with her knickers around her ankles.’

And despite everything, Connie laughed.

*

Stan almost missed the lane, it was so well hidden by undergrowth. At the end he was faced with two doors. They were unmarked but the doctor had said one was for women and the other for men. For a second, he panicked. Which one was which? All at once, the door opened and he was face to face with another man. Keeping his head down, he went in. As the door closed behind him, the man was lighting up and he could see his hand was shaking.

The reception area was small with seating around the walls. He went to the hatchway and he was handed a card with a number on it. X527. The nurse on the other side, some old bat with grey hair, smiled and asked him to take a seat until the doctor called him. This was the worst bit. He was in mortal fear that he would see someone he recognised.

*

Connie discovered that the special clinic was for patients with venereal disease. Patients accessed the clinic by a back entrance and the nursing staff used an internal yellow door. She was dreading this but she also realised that as unpalatable as it might be, a good nurse had to deal with all patients with all sorts of problems and from all walks of life. Her first lesson was not to judge a person. She had been assigned to look after two women, X65 and X495. X65 was about thirty-five, a brassy looking woman who smoked incessantly. Her language was crude and according to her notes, she had been to the clinic several times. X495 was much younger. A respectable looking woman dressed in a smart suit and a faded fur, she had only been married a couple of years. Although no one asked for details, she made it clear that she was mortified to be in the clinic. She told Connie she had only just discovered that her husband had been visiting what she called a house of ill repute and that he had passed something unmentionable on to her. Connie’s heart went out to her and she did her best to make her feel at ease.

After the doctor had seen them both, he said he was popping out for a fag. As soon as she was dressed, Connie walked X495 to the door.

‘Do I have to come again?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Connie sympathetically. ‘The treatment is for six days.’

‘Don’t waste your sympathy on that witch,’ muttered the doctor as he came back in and the door closed. ‘She might look like the cat’s whiskers but she runs a brothel just outside the town centre. I pity the man who gave her that. He’ll probably have no chance of fatherhood by the morning.’

‘But I thought …’ Connie began.

‘That X65 was the worst?’ said the doctor. ‘Raped when she was six, and used by her mother’s men friends until she left school. I wouldn’t say she’s got a heart of gold but no one deserves what happened to her in life.’

Connie was stunned. A nurse called another number. ‘X527. X527.’ There was a movement on the other side of the screen and the nurse said, ‘Right this way, sir.’

Connie followed the doctor back into the women’s section.

*

Stan had been sitting in the corner until she called his number. He had reached for a magazine from the table but then it occurred to him that someone else might have already picked it up and he changed his mind. You never knew what filthy disease they might have. Instead, he leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes and tried not to think about the itch that was driving him mad.

When the nurse called him into the other room, he had to go behind a curtain and undress. While the doctor took a swab, he stared at the top of the man’s head. He had a wart in the centre. It didn’t have hairs on it like his mother’s wart on her top lip, but it made him shudder. Thinking that his examination had hurt him, the doctor apologised.

‘Does it hurt you to pass water?’

‘It burns.’

‘I think that without doubt, X527, you have gonorrhoea,’ said the doctor, returning to his seat and writing up his notes. ‘The swab will ascertain whether or not this is so, but you will commence treatment straight away. You will need to come back for daily injections.’

‘Daily?’ he spluttered.

‘I think six days should do the trick,’ the doctor went on. ‘This new Penicillin therapy has had some very promising results.’

‘But every day?’ he complained. ‘It will be hard. I have commitments.’

‘If you cannot manage the night clinic,’ said the doctor, ‘we can put you down for the day clinic. It starts at ten o’clock but of course there is always the risk that you might bump into someone you know. Would that be better?’

‘I think I’ll stick to the nights.’

The doctor motioned to the nurse and she brought a small tray with a glass syringe. ‘I cannot stress the importance of maintaining the full treatment,’ he said. ‘Drop your trousers again, X527.’

On the bus on the way home, he sat on the edge of the seat. Now he had an unbearable itch and a sore backside.

*

Connie went home as soon as she’d finished her late duty and caught the last bus back to Goring. The house was in darkness when she walked in. Everyone was already in bed. Her heart was heavy. If Ga moved as well, this place would soon be a thing of the past. Pip greeted her lavishly and it occurred to her for the first time that he would soon be without a home. What was going to happen to him? Ga wouldn’t keep him. She’d never liked him. He was far too old to go all the way to Australia and she certainly couldn’t look after him in the nurses’ home. That realisation added another layer to her heartache. She went to bed and cried herself to sleep.

She was dreaming that she was eating an ice cream, but for some reason the cone kept slipping into her ear. It was so cold she woke up to find Pip with his head on the pillow, breathing into her ear. She pushed him away sleepily but a second or two later, he was back. She opened her eyes and he made for the open door and looked back, his tail wagging. Obviously, he wanted to go out. Connie groaned. Swinging her legs out of the bed, she groped for her slippers.

As she was pulling on her dressing gown, Connie heard an unexpected noise. Someone was downstairs. Why didn’t Pip bark? She crept out onto the landing, Pip padding along just ahead of her. Should she wake Clifford? If she did, the whole house would be awake and she’d feel a right idiot if it was nothing. She didn’t put on the light as she went downstairs. Afterwards, she wondered why she hadn’t. It would have been far more sensible and a lot safer. A light would have sent the burglar running.

She and Pip padded along the passageway to the sitting room door. As she walked in and turned on the light, she wasn’t sure which one of them was the most surprised, herself or Isaac Light. Pip had stopped right next to her and she grabbed his collar.

There was a canvas bag on the sofa and Connie could see a couple of silver picture frames sticking out of it. Isaac was riffling through the contents of the roll top desk and he had found some cash. There were several pound notes in his hand and he held a letter opener. As soon as he saw Connie, he held the letter opener at arm’s length and advanced towards her. Pip growled and he stopped in his tracks.

‘Put it down, Isaac,’ said Connie quietly, ‘or I let the dog go.’

Isaac dropped the letter opener and the money.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Connie asked. ‘My family has shown nothing but kindness to your family. Is this how you repay us?’

‘Kindness,’ he spat. ‘Is that what you call it? You sit here in your cosy little house with all this …’ he waved his arm extravagantly, ‘this stuff, while we get shoved from pillar to post. We’re not all dirty gypos you know. Some of us want to make an honest living.’

‘When did you get out of jail?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Yesterday,’ said Connie, ‘and here you are today, robbing the very people who tried to help you.’

‘I’ve got nothing,’ he said baring his teeth. ‘Even my bloody van’s been taken away.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Connie. ‘If it’s not there, that’s only happened recently. It was there a couple of weeks ago because I saw it. Kez has moved over to Slinden.’

He looked surprised.

‘Kez and Simeon have a place over there,’ she went on. ‘They’ve set up in business together making toys. They’re doing quite well.’

‘While I’m left on the rubbish heap.’

‘No, you’re not,’ said Connie. ‘They want you back. Half of this is your fault anyway. They went all the way to Portsmouth to see you but you wouldn’t see them.’

‘That’s right,’ he said sulkily. ‘Blame me. Everybody blames me.’

‘Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ said Connie crossly. ‘And keep your voice down unless you want the rest of the family to hear you.’

‘I never done what they said,’ he hissed.

‘I know you didn’t,’ said Connie. ‘And what’s more important, Kez knows that too. She believes you and so did Reuben. I know how much you’ve suffered.’

At the mention of his father’s name, Isaac’s face coloured. ‘What do you know about suffering?’

Now Connie was furious. ‘What do I know about suffering?’ she hissed. ‘I work in a hospital where half the people who come there have come far too late to get help because they can’t afford to pay the doctor’s shilling. What do I know about suffering? My family are going to the other side of the world and I’ll never see them again. My own brother is in a hospital with half his face blown away and only a stump for a hand. What do I know about suffering? I work bloody hard to make a living, so why can’t you get off your backside and do the same?’

She had surprised herself with her own passion and Isaac’s cocky attitude was somewhat deflated. ‘Are you going to call the coppers?’

‘I think I should,’ said Connie. ‘They’d come and take you down to the station straight away. Of course, you’ll be locked up again. Remember how small the cells are? But of course you do. You must be really keen to go back seeing as you only got out yesterday.’

Isaac’s face had gone white. ‘Please,’ he said faintly. ‘Don’t tell.’ He went to the bag and took out the photo frames. ‘I won’t do it again.’ He dug deeper and took out Clifford’s silver cigarette case, her mother’s best teapot, several other items, including her mother’s silver thimble. ‘Please don’t tell,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your brother too. I don’t want to be locked up again. I can’t stand it.’

‘You should go and see the Frenchie,’ said Connie, her voice softening. ‘He’ll give you another chance, I’m sure. He helped your father.’

‘He can’t help me,’ said Isaac, the old belligerence coming back. ‘I went there. The place is all locked up.’

Connie frowned. ‘All locked up?’

‘He’s gone,’ said Isaac. The bag was empty and Isaac backed towards the French doors.

‘Have you had anything to eat?’ Connie asked.

‘I’ve already helped myself to a pork pie … thanks.’

Pip growled again. Isaac put his hand up in a defensive gesture and slipped out into the night. She let the dog go and closed the French doors.

‘You wanted to give him a second chance, didn’t you?’ she said patting Pip’s side. ‘Let’s hope we made the right decision.’

The dog licked her face and Connie felt strangely emotional. She bent down and put her arms around his neck. ‘Good boy,’ she said quietly. ‘Good boy, Pip.’

As she stood to her feet, Connie knew she wasn’t alone. There was someone in the hallway. Dear God, had Isaac brought someone else with him to the house?

‘Who’s there?’ she said cautiously and her mother stepped into the room. She was in her dressing gown, her hair in a long plait at the side of her head. Her eyes were red and she had obviously been crying.

‘How could you?’ she said coldly. ‘How could you keep such a secret? Why didn’t you tell me about Kenneth? You’ve done a wicked, wicked thing, Connie, and I don’t know if I can ever forgive you.’

Twenty-Four

They sat up most of the night. There were tears aplenty but Connie told her mother everything.

‘I wanted to tell you, Mum, I really did, but Kenny had a funny bit of skin dangling from his nose and he didn’t want you to see him like that. He told me that if you came, he would tell them to send you away.’ Pip came and put his head on Connie’s lap.

‘Tell me again what happened,’ said Gwen.

So Connie told her mother about the crash and the flames that came up between Kenneth’s legs. She told her about his burnt hand and how it had seized up until Mr McIndoe had managed after four operations to get some limited movement back into it. ‘He couldn’t even feel his face,’ Connie explained. ‘He said he vaguely remembered them dragging him out of the cockpit and rolling him on the ground, but he’d been burnt on the whole of his right side and they’ve had to rebuild his nose.’

‘So what was the elephant trunk thing?’ asked Gwen, clearly alarmed.

‘A skin graft,’ said Connie. ‘They’ve taken skin from another part of his body and put it on his face. It was still attached to the place where they’ve taken it from because they don’t want the skin to die.’

There was a brief lull in conversation and then Connie said, ‘The hospital wrote to you several times but you never replied.’

‘What are you saying?’ said Gwen crossly. ‘Do you really think that I would abandon my own son? I never had any letters, Connie.’

‘That’s what I told them,’ said Connie. ‘I felt sure that if you knew where Kenny was, you would have moved heaven and earth to be with him, but they insist that they definitely wrote to you.’

‘Maybe they wrote to the old address,’ said Gwen.

‘They had the right address,’ said Connie shaking her head. ‘When you didn’t reply, they tried my address at the hospital.’

‘So why didn’t I get the letters?’ said Gwen, puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’

Connie said nothing. She still had her suspicions but she didn’t want to be the one to point the finger at Ga. After all, she had no proof.

‘Mum, please forgive me for hurting you,’ said Connie, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘This has weighed heavily on my mind for so long. I wanted to tell you …’

Her mother leaned over and took Connie in her arms. ‘I think from now on we have to promise each other that no matter how difficult a thing is, we mustn’t keep secrets from each other,’ she said.

Connie nodded. ‘But Ken …’

‘Shh, shh, shh,’ said Gwen. ‘I shall tell Kenneth the same thing, don’t you worry. Now tell me where he is.’

‘I’ll take you in the morning, if you like,’ said Connie. ‘I’m not doing anything much.’

‘No,’ said Gwen. ‘I want some time with him on my own. Tomorrow is Ascension Day. Mandy goes to school then they all go to the Anglican church for a service and she’s got the rest of the day off. You’d be doing me a great favour if you would look after her.’

Connie nodded again. ‘There’s one more thing, Mum.’

Her mother’s face paled and she groaned. ‘Oh Connie … now what?’

‘No, you’ll like this,’ Connie promised. ‘Kenny is engaged.’

‘Engaged?’ Gwen gasped. ‘But I thought you said …’

‘She’s his nurse, so she knows all there is to know about him. She’s a lovely girl. Her name is Pearl. I think you’ll like her a lot.’

‘But what sort of a marriage will they have if he’s so badly burned?’

‘You wait until you see her, Mum,’ said Connie. ‘Yes, he’s scarred but that doctor has worked wonders. I think once he’s finished all the treatment, Kenny has every chance of having a good life.’

Gwen shook her head in disbelief. ‘When I was a young woman, I saw men come back from the Great War,’ she sighed. ‘They had horrible open wounds …’

‘Kenny’s not a bit like that, Mum.’

Her mother yawned and stood up. ‘Not a word of this to Ga,’ she warned.

‘I thought you said no more secrets,’ Connie remarked.

‘I don’t want her sticking her oar in,’ said Gwen fiercely. ‘So please Connie, say nothing.’

The first grey light of dawn was coming through the window. Pip stretched and yawned before returning to his bed and flopping down although there was only about two hours left to sleep.

‘Night, Mum,’ Connie said wearily as they made their way back to bed. As she lay between the sheets, her head was pounding. It was a weight off her mind now that her mother knew about Kenneth. Connie knew that it was the stress of the past few weeks that had made her work in the hospital suffer. If only she could take a break, a holiday and give herself a chance to wind down and have a bit of peace and quiet in her life, but it was impossible.

Her mother left before anyone was up. Connie decided that while Mandy was in her Ascension Day service, she would take the opportunity to go to the Frenchie’s workshop. She wanted to see if he knew what had happened to Isaac’s caravan.

‘You do know he’s virtually closed down,’ said Clifford at the breakfast table.

‘Yes,’ said Connie, ‘I had heard that. What happened?’

Clifford shrugged. ‘It might have something to do with breaking up with Mavis Hampton.’

Connie’s heart jumped. Eugène had broken up with Mavis? Connie forced herself not to think about it as she deliberately changed the subject. ‘Clifford, do you know what happened to Isaac’s caravan and his old jalopy?’

‘Isn’t it still in the field?’

‘Apparently not,’ said Connie.

‘Then the Frenchie must have moved it,’ said Clifford. Connie was about to ask where but they both heard Ga taking her boots off by the back door. Clifford’s chair scraped along the stone floor as he stood up and left the table. As she watched him go, it suddenly occurred to her that he couldn’t even bear to be in the same room as Ga. Clifford had always been a quiet man but he was avoiding Ga as much as he could these days.

‘Where’s your mother gone so early in the morning?’ said Ga sitting down at the table. ‘I hope she’s not expecting me to look after Mandy when she gets back.’

‘I’m looking after Mandy,’ said Connie, ‘and Mum’s gone to East Grinstead.’

‘East Grinstead?’ said Ga. ‘Whatever for?’

Connie just looked at her and then she saw Ga’s face colour as the realisation dawned. ‘Oh, I think you already know that, Ga,’ she said pointedly.

The old woman straightened herself with a sniff. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she said haughtily. At the same moment, Mandy came thundering down the stair so Connie had to let it go. It would be better not to pick a fight in front of the child.

‘Mandy, sit up straight,’ Ga snapped as Connie’s sister slid onto her chair. ‘You’re late. It’s nearly time to go. In fact, you’ll have to go without breakfast this morning. Go and put your shoes on.’

Mandy’s face crumpled.

‘It’s all right,’ said Connie. ‘She doesn’t have to be there yet. She’s only got to be in time to be in the crocodile to go to the service.’

Mandy slid back onto her chair and Connie pushed her boiled egg in front of her. ‘When the service is over,’ she said, ‘we’ll come back and change, and then I’ll take you out.’

‘We could do with some help around here,’ said Ga. ‘Especially with Gwen off somewhere … gallivanting.’

‘Sorry,’ said Connie brightly. ‘I’m afraid we’re busy.’ Her heart was thumping and she willed her voice not to quiver. Mandy stared at her wide-eyed.

Ga stood up from the table. ‘Really, Constance, I have never known anyone quite as selfish as you.’

Connie ignored the barbed comment and her great aunt left the room banging the door behind her.

The door to the workshop was open. Connie walked inside and called. Her voice echoed around the empty void that had once been a busy workshop. She couldn’t believe how different it was from the last time she was here. All the bicycle paraphernalia was gone. Last time she’d been there, there had been several cars and vans in various stages of repair, but they’d all gone too. She turned to leave and saw Isaac and the Frenchie walking up the path together.

‘Connie,’ cried Eugène, ‘how nice to see you.’

‘The door was open,’ she said apologetically. She studied his handsome face and was worried. He seemed tired … no, haggard and drawn even and she longed to run her hand down his cheek. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said indicating the workshop.

He shrugged.

‘How is Mavis?’ Connie fished. ‘Is her leg better?’

‘I no longer care,’ he said angrily. ‘She has ruined me.’

‘Where are all your things?’

‘The bailiffs took them in lieu of my debts,’ he said bitterly. ‘They left me one box of tools, that’s all. And wouldn’t you know it? All my friends are suddenly very busy. Fair-weather friends the lot of them.’ He spat on the ground.

She couldn’t blame him for feeling bitter but this was a side to him that wasn’t very attractive.

‘You’ve still got me,’ said Isaac.

‘A penniless man and an ex-jailbird,’ he scoffed. ‘We should go far.’ He laughed bitterly ‘A fat lot of good you are to me.’

Isaac’s face fell and Connie saw a darkness fill his eyes. Something inside her rose up. ‘That’s not fair,’ she said crossly. ‘You have every right to feel angry and betrayed, but no right whatsoever to take it out on him.’

‘But he has such unrealistic expectations!’ cried Eugène. ‘I am not God, you know. We have no money and no premises. How can we service vehicles when we have nowhere to work on them? How can I repair bicycles with nowhere to keep stock? I don’t even have a motor to move my caravan.’

‘You told me once that you had bought some land,’ said Isaac.

‘A postage stamp,’ said Eugène. ‘I now discover that it had been up for sale for years but nobody wanted to buy. Even if I could sell it again, it’s worthless.’

‘Couldn’t you build a new workshop there?’ Connie suggested.

‘The guy who sold it to me saw me coming,’ said Eugène bitterly. ‘It might be beside the sea but apparently you’re not allowed to build on it. All I have is a dirty pond and a few overgrown bushes.’

‘Can you at least put the caravan there?’ she said.

‘Where?’ he challenged. ‘In the middle of the pond?’

Connie felt helpless. She couldn’t leave them as they were but what could she do? All she had was a couple of quid which she was going to use to buy Mandy lunch out. She thought about all the people Eugène had helped when the snow came. Perhaps they hadn’t really turned their back on him. They would have helped if they could, but they were as poor as the next man. And what about Isaac? Left to his own devices, he’d be back in jail in no time. Then Connie remembered Kez.

‘You’ve still got Isaac’s car, haven’t you?’

‘I told you,’ said Isaac, ‘I went there and it’s gone.’

Eugène ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I forgot to tell you. I moved it further into Titnore woods for safety. Sorry.’

A wave of relief spread over Isaac’s face.

‘Isaac, go and see Kez,’ said Connie as she secretly stuffed the two pounds into his hand. ‘She’s doing well. Simeon started a business and I know he’s bought some land over Slinden way. Take Eugène with you. They know how kind he was to Reuben. It’s time to call in a favour or two. Go and see Kez.’ And then before either of them could protest, she walked away.

Gwen Craig waited nervously in the little office. She was dressed in her Sunday best suit, white blouse and she wore a brown hat. She had no stockings but her legs were fairly brown so she felt she could get away with it. Just in case, she tucked her legs under the chair as she sat primly holding her handbag on her lap.

She had spoken with Kenneth’s doctor and listened with mounting horror as he described what her son had been through. She bristled as he told her of what he’d suffered because the previous hospital didn’t know how to deal with his injuries, and she relaxed a little as he told her of the progress Kenneth had made since being at the Royal Victoria. She appreciated that the doctor and his team were doing the best they could for her son, but she’d heard enough explanation … now she just wanted to see him.

‘We have to respect his wishes,’ said the doctor. ‘I think you must brace yourself, Mrs Craig. He may refuse to see you.’

It was a sentiment completely incomprehensible to Gwen. ‘But I’m his mother,’ she said tartly.

‘Precisely,’ said the doctor, a seasoned diplomat. ‘Sometimes our boys find it hardest to face those who are their nearest and dearest.’

So she’d been left in the office while he went to find her son and ask him.

The room was sparsely decorated. The walls were cream at the top and evergreen below the dado rail. There was a desk and chair, a clutter of papers and folders on the top of the filing cabinet and a wastepaper basket, chock-a-block full, next to her. A doctor’s white coat hung from a hook on the back of the door. Not a very tidy place but she noted with some gratitude that it was spotlessly clean. She had seen a ward cleaner mopping the floor as she came in, a tired looking woman with grey hair and a lined face, who looked as if she felt unappreciated and probably taken for granted. Gwen determined that she would compliment her on the way out.

The door opened and a pleasant-faced nurse walked in. ‘Good morning, Mrs Craig,’ she smiled. ‘I’ll take you to see your son now, if you would like to follow me.’

Gwen had rehearsed in her own mind everything she would say when she saw Kenneth but all her romantic speeches evaporated when she saw her son. Thank God, her wartime stoicism kicked in. Fixing a bright smile on her face, she walked towards him. Oh God, look at your poor face. ‘Hello, darling.’ She put her arms out and he struggled to his feet. Dear Lord, what happened to your fingers? They never said you’d lost all your fingers on that hand. ‘Don’t get up, dear. It’ all right.’

‘Hello, Mum.’

Your eye is drooping.

‘It’s lovely to see you again.’ She felt the warmth of his body as he put his arms around her but she didn’t squeeze. Who knew what was lurking under that uniform of his? He was taller than she remembered. He’d grown up. Grown up and been shot down. Oh Kenneth, Kenneth. They released each other and the nurse had put a chair in place for her. Gwen turned to thank her.

‘Mum, this is Pearl.’

Gwen looked up at her. Pretty … well-rounded figure, a trustworthy open face. Oh Kenneth, you’ve lost all the hair on one side of your head, and your ear … it looks almost as if it has melted.

‘Hello, dear.’

Kenneth put his hand out and Pearl went to his side and grasped it. ‘Pearl and I are to be married.’

‘That’s nice, dear.’ Connie was right. She looks like a nice girl. She’d look after you but what sort of marriage will you have? Didn’t Connie say the flames came up between your legs? What about … down there?

‘I’m sorry I refused to see you, Mum,’ said Kenneth. ‘I didn’t want you to worry.’

‘That’s all right, dear.’

Gwen was aware that she sounded like an automaton but it was the only way she could keep the smile on her face and the tears at bay.

‘You obviously must have a lot to talk about,’ said Pearl. ‘I’ll get you some tea.’

She’s so young. Too young. Why would she want to saddle herself with a cripple?

‘Isn’t she wonderful?’ said Kenneth as he watched her go inside.

‘Yes dear, she’s very pretty.’ I don’t want her hurting you. She might love you here in this setting but what happens when you are both in a little flat on your own and you can’t give her babies?

‘Mum,’ he began. ‘It’s all right. You don’t have to be brave. You can have a cry if you want to.’

If I start, I won’t stop.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Gwen brokenly.

‘You don’t have to do anything, Mum. I’m fine. I’m getting better and Pearl will look after me.’

‘Oh, Kenneth,’ said Gwen. ‘She’s so young. Are you absolutely sure …’

‘Yes, Mum, we are. Don’t you think I haven’t already gone over and over all this? I did my best to put her off, but she is determined.’

Gwen could see Pearl coming through the doors with a tea tray. ‘Forgive me, son, but can you be a proper husband to her?’

Kenneth gave her a sheepish grin. ‘Don’t you worry on that score, Mum,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve already tried the equipment and it works just fine.’

Gwen felt her face colour but at the same time a sense of peace flooded her body. ‘I still have a dilemma,’ she said.

Kenneth frowned and then as Pearl poured the tea, she told them about Australia.

When Eva and Roger strolled into the Lyon’s Tea Room on South Street, everyone sitting at the table seemed a little awkward and embarrassed. Steven was busy ordering afternoon tea while Vi and Cissy Maxwell and Mr and Mrs Mitchell sat primly in their seats. As Eva approached, Steven rose to his feet and kissed her cheek. Roger gave him a firm handshake as the waitress, neatly dressed in her nippy uniform and cap, hurried away with their order.

Once all the formal introductions were complete, everybody relaxed a little and started off with small talk.

‘The traffic on the A24 was horrendous.’

‘The bus was late too.’

‘Looks like we’ll be having more rain.’

Steven winked at Eva across the table.

The waitress came back with a pot of tea and the cake stand. Vi Maxwell elected herself as ‘mother’ and poured the tea. The cake selection was wonderful. Butterfly cakes, Victoria sponge and some jam tarts.

‘I’m sure Eva is a lovely girl,’ Mr Mitchell began, ‘but Mother and I think this is all a bit quick.’

‘Eva and I have been seeing each other for over a year now, Dad,’ said Steven stoutly. ‘We just didn’t tell anyone, that’s all.’

‘Crafty devils,’ muttered Roger.

‘We hear that you’ve been married before,’ said Mrs Mitchell. Her tone was a tad accusatory.

‘Her husband was killed after only six weeks,’ said Cissy.

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Mitchell, the wind clearly taken from her sails. ‘How sad.’

‘Yes, it was actually,’ said Roger.

Eva talked briefly about Dermid adding, ‘His family knows about us and have given us their blessing.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Mrs Mitchell absently.

‘Queenie is a big-hearted woman,’ said Vi.

‘Very generous,’ Roger agreed.

The tension was rising so Eva kicked him under the table. Roger looked surprised and mouthed, ‘What?’

‘You’re a lot older than my son,’ said Mr Mitchell.

‘She’s only three years older than me,’ said Steven. ‘That’s all.’

Mr Mitchell was unrepentant. ‘One has to think of these things, especially where having children is concerned.’

‘I hardly think the late twenties is too old, Dad,’ said Steven crossly.

His father turned his attention back to Eva. ‘And what did you do during the war?’

‘I was in the WAAFs,’ said Eva sweetly.

‘You travelled around?’ asked Mrs Mitchell.

‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘I was stationed in Poling but I had a couple of brief sorties to Blackpool and London.’

‘Blackpool,’ said Mrs Mitchell wrinkling her nose.

‘It’s where I trained,’ said Eva.

‘But you were brought up in Worthing?’

‘Dad,’ said Steven again. ‘This is beginning to sound like the Spanish Inquisition.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said his father. ‘I don’t mean it to. I just want to get to know Eva.’

‘Is this going to be a long engagement, dear?’ asked his mother.

‘We have to wait until Eva finishes her training,’ said Steven.

‘So it’ll be at least a year,’ said Vi Maxwell wiping her jammy fingers on the snowy white napkin. ‘Plenty of time for you to get to know my lovely daughter.’

Eva’s heart sank. They’d only been together a few minutes and already the parents were in competition with each other. She glanced helplessly at her grandmother.

‘Pardon me for saying so, Mrs Mitchell,’ said Cissy, ‘but I can’t help admiring your splendid hat.’

‘‘You know I was thinking exactly the same thing,’ said Roger. ‘It’s quite the best thing I’ve seen in ages. Such a beautiful colour.’

‘More tea anyone?’ said Vi. Mrs Mitchell, her face glowing a delicate pink of pleasure, passed her cup across.

‘Perhaps you might all like to come and have Sunday lunch with us,’ said Mrs Mitchell. ‘When Eva and Steven can get off duty, of course.’

‘Thank you,’ said Eva, much relieved. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Sounds like a great idea,’ said Roger. ‘You’re right on the doorstep for me. My unit is in Horsham.’

At the door as they said their goodbyes, Eva hugged her brother gratefully.

‘I think that went very well,’ he grinned.

‘Thanks to you and the hat,’ whispered Eva.

‘Looks like a dead ferret, doesn’t it?’ Roger whispered in her ear.

‘What about you and Connie?’ said Eva laughing.

‘Stop matchmaking, sis,’ Roger grinned. ‘I’m still thinking about it.’

‘Don’t take too long,’ said Eva. ‘She’s an attractive woman. It won’t be too long before somebody snaps her up.’

Twenty-Five

By the time she was halfway down the lane, it had started to spot with rain. She had put Mandy to bed but Mum wasn’t back home yet so she couldn’t ask about Kenneth and she had to go back to be on duty the next day. Connie toyed with the idea of going straight to the bus stop and back to the hospital but she was really worried about the Frenchie. She wondered if he had gone with Isaac to Slinden to see Kez the previous week and the minute Clifford mentioned that he was back in his caravan next to the workshop, Connie was anxious to see him. There was no doubt that Eugène had been dealt a bitter blow but she didn’t like the thought of him being on his own. The past few weeks had been awful for her too. What with Reuben’s death, meeting Emmett and his new wife, and then her mother announcing that she was leaving the country, even though her friends had helped her get a more rational approach to life, Connie still felt as if everything was changing too quickly. Her mother had returned from East Grinstead so everyone knew about Kenneth. As a result, Ga wasn’t speaking to her, which was no hardship but if that wasn’t enough to contend with, there was the problem of Roger. Roger who seemed to like her so much but stayed away days and weeks at a time, with hardly any contact at all. She quickened her step. The cloud burst long before she reached the door and knocked. A second later it opened and the Frenchie stood in front of her.

‘Connie,’ he cried as he pulled her inside. ‘You’re soaked.’

She stood inside his caravan for the first time. They stared at each other for a second and then he sprang into life. Pulling open a drawer, he handed her a clean towel. ‘You must dry yourself,’ he said, the words dying on his lips as he spoke. He touched the side of her face with the towel, his large dark eyes fixed upon her. He wasn’t drunk but Connie could smell whisky on his breath. Her heart was pounding as a tendril of her wet hair fell across her cheek and he moved to brush it away.

‘I was worried about you,’ she said lamely.

She should go. She shouldn’t be here. He was still getting over Mavis and she was feeling bruised and vulnerable, but then he touched her hair with the towel and Connie shivered.

‘You must take off your things,’ he said. ‘You will get a cold.’ He went back to the drawer and pulled out a crisp white shirt. Connie gave him a quizzical look and he shrugged. ‘Mavis kept me well supplied with clean shirts. She insisted I was clean when she came.’ His voice was full of regret and sadness.

‘She gave you a bit of a hard time,’ Connie observed.

‘I like strong women,’ he said unashamedly. ‘I liked it when she was difficult. It was exciting.’

He handed her the shirt but they both knew she wouldn’t be putting it on.

Connie unbuttoned her wet blouse slowly and as she slid it from her shoulders, he was waiting with the towel to pat her dry. She could feel his warm whisky breath close to her cheeks and she was the one who was drunk. Drunk with pleasure and desire and love. She began to pull her wet hair down and as it cascaded onto her shoulders, he rubbed it gently between his fingers and then put it to his lips. His slightly stubbly cheek brushed next to hers and she heard the sound of his breath against her ear. She trembled again and he put the towel right around her shoulders, drawing her closer.

‘I shouldn’t be here,’ she said and their eyes locked. Connie could hardly breathe.

‘But I am glad you are,’ he said huskily.

He let go of the towel and pulled a chair towards the oil stove and put her wet blouse over the back of it to dry. ‘I should go,’ she said feebly.

The rain on the caravan roof was gathering pace as he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. The first kiss was as gentle as if he’d brushed her lips with a feather, but when she didn’t resist him, he looked at her again and then kissed her with passion. Connie moaned with delight. This was what she’d always dreamed of. Every cell in her body was electrified. She leaned into him, willing him on. She was conscious of only two things, the sound of the rain pounding on the roof, and her awakening desire. As the one grew louder, the other grew stronger. All at once he caught her by the tops of her arms and held her gently away from him. Connie opened her eyes.

‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it?’ Her voice sounded shrill, almost panicky and she hated the sound of it.

‘Are you sure?’

This was the moment to say no. This was the time to come to her senses. To stay would be madness. Connie drew a breath and for a nanosecond took in her surroundings. She was in a battered old caravan with a broken man and yet as she looked at Eugène’s face she saw a hunger in his eyes. Mavis Hampton, the most beautiful girl in Worthing, had ditched him and she’d been so wrong about Emmett and confused about Roger. They were both broken … kindred spirits.

‘Connie?’ The sound of his gentle whisper brought everything into focus. All at once, Connie didn’t care if this was the one and only time he was with her. She wanted him, like she’d never wanted anyone before, not even Emmett and certainly not Roger.

‘I am sure.’

He moved quickly hurling a whole lot of things away from the cramped little sofa and Connie chuckled as he led her to it and presented it to her as if it were a beautiful marriage bed. They undressed slowly and by the time every garment had fallen to the floor, Connie was awash with desire. As a last act before they lay together, he reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a rubber johnny. Connie wasn’t aware of it, but her face must have registered surprise.

‘I was engaged,’ he shrugged. ‘I want to protect you.’

She wished he hadn’t brought up the fact of his engagement. It dampened her resolve but when he was ready and he’d taken her into his arms, he melted every other thought away.

He was so gentle, so controlled. She knew he was holding back, every move calculated to give her maximum pleasure. When he entered her, every fibre of her being was yielded to him. ‘I am the first,’ he said in mild surprise.

When it was all over and he lay on her, Connie smiled. He rolled onto his side and looked at her, tenderly playing with her hair as she drifted towards sleep.

‘The first time I ever saw you, you were singing,’ he said.

Connie frowned. ‘I was?’

‘You came into my workshop with your little sister and I heard you.’

‘Oh yes,’ she smiled. ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …’

He kissed her again. ‘Connie …’

She woke in the early morning with the sun streaming in the caravan. Eugène was gone and her heart sank. He had covered her nakedness and she threw the blankets aside to look for her clothes.

The caravan was small but it was clean and reasonably tidy. Her blouse was still by the stove although that was no longer lit. A stack of pictures leaned against the wall. They were facing the wrong way. Connie glanced around and then began to look through them. She recognised a couple of them from when she’d seen them on the workshop wall, the two fishermen and a seascape. Even with her untrained eye, Connie could see that he was good. She pulled the next one towards her and Mavis Hampton smiled up at her. The shock was so great, Connie almost dropped the pictures leaning against her legs. The picture was amazing. He had caught the woman’s expression perfectly and yet it was greatly romanticised. Anyone else would have interpreted Mavis as the self-centred girl she was, but there was something about this picture that told another story. As she scrutinised it more fully, Connie suddenly realised what she was seeing. He was still in love with her, wasn’t he? It was his love for her that shone through the canvas. Dear Lord, what had she done? If he loved her this much, there was every chance that they would get back together again.

She already had her bra and suspender belt on and she was pulling on her stockings when the door opened. Connie grabbed her blouse and held it against her. Eugène came in with a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk and some cheese.

‘I have to go,’ she said and he nodded. ‘I have to be on duty at one,’ she said desperate to justify herself.

He nodded again and taking her hands in his he gave her that same grave look he’d given her the night before. ‘Connie,’ he said, his voice trailing.

‘I know,’ she said quickly. ‘This was a mistake. A terrible mistake.’

‘A mistake,’ he repeated.

‘I’m sorry, Eugène,’ she blurted out. ‘I didn’t mean to … I’m sorry.’

He nodded grimly. ‘It was my fault, Connie. I was drunk and I was angry. I took advantage of you.’

She put her finger on his lips and turned her head to hide her own embarrassment. What an idiot she’d been. How could she have let herself get carried away like that? He was being kind and she was the one who had taken advantage. She could only hope she hadn’t ruined their friendship.

‘Have some breakfast before you go,’ he said and she nodded but they were awkward with each other now. The bread stuck in her throat and she couldn’t look him in the eye.

‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘Start again I suppose. Isaac will stay in Slinden. He’ll be all right.’

‘I took the liberty of looking at your paintings,’ said Connie. ‘You should sell them.’

‘Sell them?’ he said modestly. ‘Do you think they are good enough?’

‘Good enough!’ she cried. ‘They’re brilliant. You have a real talent.’

Eugène shook his head. ‘I am not trained,’ he said.

‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘And I’m no expert on art but you have the gift of capturing the real essence of a person onto canvas. You paint with feeling.’

‘Why, thank you, Miss Connie Dixon,’ he smiled. ‘That’s very encouraging.’

As she left he squeezed her hand. ‘You’re a good person, Connie. I hope I shall always be your friend.’

On the bus on her way back to the hospital, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. That silly Mavis had a gem of a man and she’d let him go but he still loved her. As soon as he made good with his paintings, she’d want him back.

*

A Sunday school outing. What luck! The notice on the church noticeboard said they needed helpers. Even better. It was a bit late in the day, but why not volunteer? Stan smiled to himself as he approached the door. Rev Jackson was there, shaking hands with everybody who had come to the early morning service. There was no time like the present.

*

Mandy had used up all the paper in her book. She wanted to make her mother a birthday card. She knew exactly which picture she would draw, a house with red curtains and a green door. She would put Haqqy over the top but she wasn’t sure how to spell birthday. Susan Revel’s mummy was coming to take her to Susan’s house to play, so it would be the ideal time to make the card without anyone knowing what she was doing. Mrs Revel would help her with the spelling too. Mandy knew birthday had a ‘b’ but she wasn’t sure how to write the rest. Until she’d had the idea, it had been a real problem because of course, she couldn’t ask Mummy. Daddy was out for the day and Connie wasn’t here. This way, it would be a real surprise. She went to look for Ga because she had some paper in her big bureau, but she was working in the shop and didn’t like it if you interrupted. Mandy sighed in frustration. Grown-ups were never there when you needed them.

She stared at Ga’s writing desk. Mandy knew she wasn’t supposed to touch it and that Ga would be very cross if she got caught but she also knew there was plenty of paper inside. Sometimes other people took some. Mummy took a bit when she wanted to write to Connie and she’d seen Auntie Aggie take a couple of sheets once while Ga was getting her a cup of tea in the kitchen. Surely Ga wouldn’t mind when she told her it was for Mummy’s birthday. She wouldn’t touch anything else. She wouldn’t look in the drawers where Ga kept her stamps, but she’d go to the narrow slots which looked a bit like a toast rack and take a sheet of the pretty paper. She knew it was there because one wet afternoon when she had little to do, Ga had shown them all to her. The lid was up and locked but Mandy knew exactly where Ga kept the key. It was in the kitchen on the big hook. She had to stand on a chair to reach it. She did it easily but it was a bit scary when the chair wobbled a bit as she stretched up. Mandy unlocked the bureau and remembered to put the long rests down before she put the lid down. It was very heavy and it fell with a loud bump. Mandy stood on Ga’s chair and leaned over. She was just reaching for the paper when Ga’s booming voice made her jump.

‘And what do you think you are doing, young lady?’

Mandy lost her balance and knocked several things out of the bureau onto the floor. At the same time, Ga’s broad hand struck her bottom and the tops of her legs with a stinging force. ‘How dare you?’ she cried. ‘This is private. It has nothing to do with you so you shouldn’t be snooping into my affairs, you naughty little girl.’

By now Mandy was in floods of tears. Ga dragged her unceremoniously from the chair.

‘I wanted some paper for Mummy,’ Mandy wailed.

Ga picked up the letters Mandy had accidentally pushed onto the floor, put them all into one of the slots and slammed the lid of the bureau with great force. Then she rounded on the child once again.

‘Go to your room this minute,’ she bellowed.

‘I only wanted to make a card for Mummy’s birthday,’ Mandy said again, but Ga wasn’t listening.

‘God punishes people who steal,’ Ga said as she pushed Mandy towards the stairs. ‘You wait until I tell your mummy what you did.’

‘Please don’t,’ Mandy begged. ‘It was a surprise.’

They had reached her bedroom door and Ga pushed her inside. ‘Mrs Revel is here and I’m going to tell her that you can’t come to her house to play with Susan,’ said Ga, slamming the door. A second later, the door opened once again. ‘And I shall also tell your mummy that I don’t think you should go on the outing the day after tomorrow. I’m sure Miss Jackson wouldn’t want to take a thief to High Salvington.’

As soon as she’d gone, Mandy threw herself across the bed and sobbed.

It was the day of the Sunday school outing and Connie was assigned to look after the patient behind the curtains. It was Mrs Meyer. The end was very close but she seemed peaceful. Connie cleaned her eyes and swabbed her mouth. The old woman smiled as Connie offered a sip of water and laid her head back on the pillow. Connie reached into her locker and pulled out her hairbrush.

‘There we are, Mrs Meyer,’ she said brushing her hair gently. ‘Sister’s got a little surprise for you.’

‘Not ice cream,’ joked Mrs Meyer. ‘I hate ice cream.’

Connie grinned. ‘Better than ice cream,’ she promised. She could hear voices on the other side of the curtain. ‘Your daughter is here.’

‘My Judy? Here?’

‘That’s right.’

Mrs Meyer shook her head. ‘Oh no, dear. My Judy lives in Africa.’

‘And she’s here to see you,’ said Connie as the curtain opened slightly and a middle-aged woman stepped beside the bed. Connie manoeuvred the chair, and Judy Meyer sat down. ‘Hello, Mum.’

A lump formed in Connie’s throat when she saw tears glistening in her patient’s eyes. ‘Oh Judy. I never thought I’d see you again. How are you, love?’

By midday it was all over. Judy and Mrs Meyer had said their goodbyes and her mother had gone peacefully. Connie was asked to perform one last duty for her. As she washed her poor thin body, Connie reflected that her whole life was dedicated to the care and treatment of her patients but there came a time when it was time to let them go. She’d liked Mrs Meyer. She’d often told Connie about her faith and explained that she was ready to go.

‘I’m so tired,’ she once told Connie. ‘I’m ready for a bit of peace and quiet, although I don’t suppose it’ll be that peaceful up there. All that singing … Never mind, I’ve had a good life.’

To Connie’s way of thinking, Mrs Meyer had had a hard life. Orphaned at a young age and stuck in a children’s home for years, she’d married a fellow inmate almost as soon as they’d left it. He’d left her a widow with two small children so she’d had to take cleaning jobs to survive. Her son had been killed somewhere over Germany in 1940 and her daughter was a missionary in Kenya. Not an easy life at all and yet Mrs Meyer made the best of everything even when it came to dying. ‘I’m lucky to have a clean bed and all you lovely nurses to look after me,’ she’d once said.

Connie wiped a tear from her eye and blew her nose. She’d done the last thing for her and Mrs Meyer was ready for the undertaker. She left the curtain closed and went to clear up her trolley. When she came back to the desk to report her completed duty, Matron was sitting there looking at the patient’s notes. Connie felt the old nervousness come back.

‘Mrs Meyer is ready, Matron,’ she said quietly. It was policy to speak in hushed tones when someone had died. Nobody wanted the rest of the ward to be upset.

‘What’s that supposed to mean, nurse?’ Matron snapped. ‘When you give a report, for heaven’s sake speak clearly and precisely.’

Connie chewed her bottom lip anxiously. She gave Sister a helpless look. ‘I have laid out Mrs Meyer,’ Connie said in the same hushed tones.

‘Speak up, girl,’ Matron insisted.

‘Mrs Meyer is ready for the undertaker,’ said Connie.

Matron stared at her for a couple of seconds and then said, ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

‘Thank you, Nurse Dixon,’ said Sister. ‘You can go off duty now.’

Matron made a point of looking at her watch.

‘Nurse Dixon should have gone off duty an hour ago,’ said Sister. ‘She kindly stayed on to lay out the patient because we are short-staffed.’

Connie walked down the ward, conscious of Matron’s eyes boring into her receding back. She was late, very late. In fact she wasn’t at all sure that by the time she’d got back to the nurses’ home and changed, there would be time to catch the bus. As she walked down the ward, Connie could see Nurse Boiling doing her best to comfort Mrs Jenkins. A very nervous woman, Mrs Jenkins was convinced she wouldn’t survive her operation anyway. Really, it was too bad of Matron to make her talk about the undertaker like that. And why was Matron so aggressive towards her? Connie couldn’t understand it. As she reached the swing doors, she thought she could heard Mrs Meyer’s voice. ‘Don’t forget she’s just the same as us with her drawers around her ankles first thing in the morning.’

Connie turned as she closed the door. Matron was still sitting at the desk, her giant legs akimbo and Connie could just imagine the biggest pair of bloomers imaginable draped around her ankles.

‘Thanks, Mrs Meyer,’ Connie whispered as she turned for the nurses’ home.

It was a bit of a mad rush but if she ran all the way, she still might be in time for the 2.10 bus. That was supposed to arrive near the pick-up point at 2.30. Exactly the same time as the coach was leaving.

It was unusual for Olive to come to her house and Aggie’s surprise must have shown as she opened the door. By the look on Olive’s face, her friend was furious. Aggie stepped back to let her in.

‘She’s found Kenneth,’ said Olive, taking off her coat. ‘I’ve been trying to get up here for days but what with one thing and another … Anyway, I’ve found out that she’s been going up to East Grinstead to see him.’

‘How?’ Aggie gasped.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Olive. ‘What are we going to do? Supposing she brings him home?’

‘She’s got to be stopped,’ said Aggie, her eyes widening with fright. ‘It’ll only cause more trouble, you know it will.’

‘I know that!’ snapped Olive, ‘but what can I do about it? I told them never to speak of that day but they’re not children anymore. It’s kept them apart for years but it’s bound to come out now.’

The two friends stared at each other for a second and then Aggie’s face softened. ‘Sit down, dear. I’ll make a cup of tea and then we can decide what to do.’

‘Connie?’

As soon as she heard his voice, Connie’s heart leapt. ‘Roger!’ He was leaning against his car. She had never seen him looking so handsome. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

He stood up straight. ‘You seem to be in a tearing hurry. Can I give you a lift anywhere?’

‘Oh, could you?’ she blurted out. ‘I’m terribly late. Sister made me stay on to lay out a patient and then Matron came onto the ward unexpectedly and …’ She paused and smiled. ‘Listen to me prattling on about nothing. Yes, please, I would love a lift.’

He opened the passenger door and gave a bow. Laughing, Connie climbed in.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said as he climbed in the driver’s side. ‘Why are you here? How did you know I’d be coming off duty?’

‘Eva told me,’ he said starting the engine. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Goring,’ she said. ‘With a bit of luck I can still be in time to catch the coach.’

‘Goring?’ He frowned. ‘What coach?’

He didn’t even flinch when Connie told him about the Sunday school outing.

Twenty-Six

The day couldn’t have been more perfect. Jane Jackson stood by the coach door checking her clipboard as the children climbed aboard and her cousin Jeanette Luxton who had travelled all the way from Taunton to help her, made sure everyone was sitting down. As always, it was hard to find helpers. People were glad to get rid of their children for an afternoon but reluctant to come along for the trip. Jane couldn’t really blame them. Most of the families, even in this well-heeled area, worked hard. It was difficult to get free time and when they did, there was always the garden or the allotment to do or aged parents to visit. Mothers and fathers had little time to themselves and so Sunday school from three till four on a Sunday and the outing from two thirty till five once a year made a welcome break and a time to be alone.

She had the usual stalwarts she knew she could always rely on. Mrs Stevens, Mrs Hawks and Mrs Ibbotson never let her down and they could drum up support in the way of cakes and sandwiches even if they couldn’t persuade people to come along. Jane watched tin after tin going into the boot of the coach and smiled. As usual, there would be plenty to eat. Mr Hawks loaded the big urn and Mr Stevens had made sure the camping stove was all cleaned up and ready to use. The two men kissed their wives goodbye and waved as they climbed aboard the coach. Arnold had volunteered to come too. This was the first time Jane had introduced her new boyfriend to her church friends. He was a bit ‘last minute’ but her father was happy for him to come along. Jane knew he loved children. ‘I’ve brought along a little bit of magic,’ he said as she checked him off the list. He opened his jacket and she saw a bulging bag of sweets. ‘Just in case we need to bribe them to be good,’ he added with a wink.

‘I think you only need to stand up to persuade everyone to behave, darling,’ she teased and he nodded ruefully. Arnold was very tall.

Her father came out of the hired hall. ‘Graham has kindly offered his services too,’ he said, pushing the new pianist forward. The man nodded shyly as Jane thanked him profusely, explaining how difficult it was to retain helpers as he climbed aboard.

‘Connie said she’d be here in time to catch the coach,’ said Jane, turning to her father, ‘so that gives me three people to do the teas, and five of us to play the games with them. With twenty-eight children that should be enough, shouldn’t it?’

‘You are wonderful, my dear,’ Rev Jackson said, giving his daughter a kiss on the cheek. ‘I don’t know how I would manage without you.’

‘Time to get going,’ said the driver irritably. He was looking at his watch. ‘I’ve got another job at three.’

‘There’s one more person to come,’ said Jane. ‘She won’t be long.’

It was wonderful sitting beside Roger as they sped on their way but Connie’s mind was full of unanswered questions. They travelled east chatting about their various jobs and the things they had been doing since they’d last met. As they pulled up outside the pick-up point a dog barked and jumped up at the car, his tongue lolling.

‘What the …’ Roger began.

‘Oh, it’s Pip!’ cried Connie. ‘He must have come down to see Mandy off.’

She opened the door and Pip scrambled in, greeting Connie in his usual exuberant way, his wagging tail swinging Roger across his face. ‘Hey, old fella,’ he laughed. ‘Get that tail into the back seat, will you?’

‘Looks like we’ve missed the coach,’ said Connie, looking around.

‘Do you still want to go?’ asked Roger.

‘I did promise to help,’ said Connie. ‘Jane doesn’t have that many helpers.’

‘Then tell me where to go,’ said Roger, starting the car again.

‘Are you sure?’ said Connie. ‘A Sunday school outing is hardly a man’s idea of fun.’

‘Believe me,’ said Roger. ‘Right now a Sunday school outing is right at the top of my 100 things to do before I die list.’ And laughing, they set off for High Salvington.

As soon as the children were off the coach, the driver turned his vehicle and sped away. Jane organised everybody into a crocodile and they walked the last few yards up the hill and into the meadow. As soon as she gave the word, the children ran freely like calves leaping from their enclosure after the long winter months. Jane watched them jumping and running, shouting and chasing each other and smiled. Even though it was such hard work and she’d be exhausted by the time they all went home, to see them as happy as this made it all worthwhile. They had such energy, such a joy of life and up here in the late summer sunshine, they were carefree and happy and it didn’t matter how much noise they made.

Jane blew her whistle and called everybody together.

Once the groans and complaints had died down, she laid down some ground rules. ‘In a minute,’ she told them, ‘we are all going to play rounders but first of all, I have a little competition for you.’ She handed each child a piece of paper. ‘On your paper, you will see a list of things to find. I want the older ones to be with the little ones who can’t read. There is a prize for the people who bring back everything on the list.’ Already some of the children were standing up and ready to go. ‘Wait a minute,’ Jane said firmly. ‘You will find everything you have on the list in this meadow. I do not … I repeat, I do not want anyone to wander off in the woods on their own. Understood?’

There was a collective, ‘Yes, Miss,’ and the children set off on their treasure hunt.

Mrs Hawks and Mrs Stevens had found the ideal spot to set up the picnic and Arnold and Graham put up the trestle table. Once Jeanette had the snow white sheet pulled over the bare board, the table already looked grand. She then looked around for some large stones to weigh it down at each corner. Arnold had gone back for the crockery, left in boxes at the side of the narrow lane, while the women returned for the sandwiches. Jane left them to it. It was a well-oiled machine and Mrs Ibbotson who had waited in the lane to make sure nobody pinched anything, soon joined them.

Jane turned her attention to the children. She enjoyed watching them. Little Patrick Rivers had been ill most of the winter, but now his cheeks had colour in them. Jenny Wright had had a brush with polio and although her legs were not quite back to normal, she was making a valiant attempt to keep up with her big sister. Jack Albert had always been a bit of a loner, but now he had plenty of friends. Jane thought back to the Christmas party when they had been playing hide and seek. She and Jack Albert had been searching for the others. ‘Let’s see if anyone is in the toilet,’ she’d suggested. Jack hurried to look and she’d chuckled when she’d found him lifting the lid and peering into the bowl. Little Elsie Anderson came up to her and gave her a gappy smile. ‘Thank you for inviting me, Mith,’ she lisped and then ran off again.

Jane sighed happily. Up here on High Salvington, they were as safe as houses and with Arnold by her side, what more could a girl want?

‘I know a really good place to find what’s on your list,’ he said, stepping up beside her. ‘Here, take my hand and I’ll show you.’

Mandy looked up at him trustingly and slipped her hand in his. Her hand fluttered a little in his and he felt his pulse quicken. See? She wanted him as much as he wanted her. He smiled down at her angelic face, loving her pretty blonde curls and the two red ribbons she wore in her hair. He led her away from the others, keeping close to the wooded area, where they could be alone. Gradually, the excited shouts of the other children faded.

Mandy spotted a bird’s feather and bent to pick it up but he egged her on.

‘No, not that one. I know a much better place where you can get loads of them.’

‘But Miss Jackson said we shouldn’t go into the woods,’ Mandy protested mildly.

‘It’s all right,’ he said soothingly. ‘She said don’t go alone, didn’t she? Well, you’re not alone. You’re with me. I’ll keep you safe. Besides, Miss Jackson knows where we are. She knows where the best bird feathers are.’ She looked up at him trustingly and he stroked her lovely blonde curls. One of her ribbons came off in his hand. ‘Whoops,’ he laughed. ‘Sorry.’

‘I want to go back now,’ she said but he wasn’t listening. What a pity they’d cut her hair short but the red ribbons on either side of her head had made her attractive. No, he decided, she’d look even prettier with it long. He could feel himself harden. Just a little further and then she’d be his. ‘Shall I tickle you and make you laugh?’

He tickled her neck and Mandy giggled.

‘Shall I? I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming.’ The child did her best to wriggle from his grip but he held on tight. He tickled her under her arms and down her body and she laughed. She enjoyed it.

‘I’ve got something to show you,’ he said, his voice tight with the thrill of it. ‘I’ve got a little friend I want you meet down here.’ She stared at the button on his trousers where he was pointing with a puzzled expression. ‘Would you like to meet him?’

He could feel her tugging at his hand again and smiled. His head was buzzing. His heartbeat speeded up. She was only pretending to pull away. She wanted it too. She was as eager as he was. Keeping a tight grip on her, he unbuttoned his trousers deftly with the other hand.

‘You’re hurting me,’ she whimpered.

‘Don’t you want to meet my friend? Come with me and I’ll show you. His name is Mr Charles.’

Connie and Roger parked in the lane. It narrowed to the point where the ground was too soft for vehicles. Pip leapt out barking joyfully and began his sniff and mark routine.

As Connie headed towards the hill, Roger caught her arm. ‘I owe you an explanation, Connie,’ he said. ‘I’ve been avoiding you.’

‘I had noticed,’ Connie laughed nervously and her throat tightened. Oh, now he was going to say he didn’t want to see her again. She glanced at his firm jawline. Please give us one more chance? she said in her head. I’ve missed you, Roger. You’ve been a real friend to me and I need you even more now Mum and Clifford are leaving me.

‘I’ve been making difficult decisions,’ he began again.

Her heart sank a little more. Her mind was racing ahead of him and she wanted to say, Roger, I’ve made a stupid mistake. I shouldn’t have let Eugène make love to me. I let my feelings run away with me. I was unhappy and he was unhappy because he’s just lost the love of his life. You won’t want me now, will you, Roger? Not when you find out I’m damaged goods …

Roger had pulled her in front of him and was looking directly at her. Connie blushed. Could he see it in her face? What she’d done with Eugène? Did it show, that first time?

‘I once told you that I would carry on with my job until such time as I found something I cared for even more.’

She nodded.

‘Well, the time has come to pack it in,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep my mind on the job anymore, Connie. I’m distracted all the time.’

Connie didn’t know what to say. Was he asking her to talk him out of it? Did he want sympathy? She didn’t think she could do that. She knew he loved what he did but it was dangerous. She couldn’t bear the thought of something awful happening to him even if she never saw him again. How Eva and her mother put up with it all for all these years she never knew.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said quietly.

‘You could say you feel the same way.’

‘The same way?’

‘Oh Connie, you silly goose, this is my God-awful clumsy way of telling you that I’ve fallen in love with you.’

She was stunned. She should say something but all at once, her mouth wouldn’t work. Love? He loved her? The revelation hit her somewhere in the pit of her stomach but it wasn’t a pleasant experience. She felt herself begin to panic.

‘Oh, I should have booked a table somewhere romantic and given you flowers,’ he groaned. ‘What a fool I am, but I couldn’t keep it inside any longer. Please say something, Connie.’

‘Oh, Roger,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think … I mean, you didn’t reply to my letter … so I thought …’

Connie was confused. When he’d told her she should have been on top of the world but she felt numb. Now that the initial shock had gone, she felt … nothing …

He leaned over and pulled her closer and then his mouth searched for hers. As he kissed her she was thinking that this should have been the most wonderful moment of her life, but it wasn’t. Roger Maxwell loved her but she didn’t feel a thing. Connie took a step back and looked up at him. ‘Roger,’ she began. ‘We have to be careful. The children …’

‘Yes, yes of course,’ he smiled.

As they began to walk towards the meadow, they could hear the children’s voices and the occasional scream of excitement. ‘Sounds like everyone is having a great time,’ said Connie weakly.

Pip raced past them. Roger reached for her hand and smiled. ‘Where’s he off to in such a hurry?’

‘Probably scented a rabbit,’ she said and he had to stop and kiss her again.

Jane was overjoyed to see them. ‘We could do with another man around,’ she said when she saw Roger. ‘Some of the boys are a bit boisterous.’

‘I thought you had men,’ said Connie.

‘Arnold is around somewhere,’ said Jane. ‘Oh, there he is. You haven’t met him yet, have you?’ She called his name and a tall lanky man walked towards them coming from the direction of the woods. He towered over Jane and Connie noticed how much her face softened when she looked up at him.

‘Where have you been?’ Jane asked. ‘You’re all covered in scratches.’

‘I went on a call of nature,’ he said, dusting down his trouser leg. ‘I thought I’d better walk quite a way inside in case one of the children saw me but on my way out, some dog went flying past me and I fell over a tree root.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Connie. ‘That might have been Pip. He’d probably caught a scent of something. Are you all right?’

Arnold brushed the sleeve of his jacket and put out his hand. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘pleased to meet you both.’

‘We’ve just got to get the blankets spread out,’ said Jane, handing them to Roger and Connie, ‘and then I can blow the whistle for tea. Arnold, can you and Graham organise the boys on one side and girls on the other. Where is Graham?’

‘Who is Graham?’ asked Connie.

‘The new pianist,’ said Jane. ‘To be honest, he’s been a bit of a dream this afternoon. Dad asked him to come just to swell the numbers but I don’t think I’ll ask him next year. He hasn’t helped much at all.’

The ladies from the church had got the water boiling, so tea was ready. Jane blew her whistle long and hard and the hungry children came running.

The first touch was always the sweetest. He groaned with delight.

Mandy was terrified. She didn’t like this one bit. He had taken her away from the others even though Miss Jackson had said they should keep close together. The whistle had gone. She was supposed to run to Miss Jackson when the whistle went but he wouldn’t let go of her hand and she certainly didn’t like Mr Charles. Mummy always said that things down there were private. She had tried to pull away but he kept pressing her hand onto him. The man was pulling a funny face and making a funny noise and then to her horror Mr Charles began to move. The more she struggled to get her hand back the bigger it seemed to get.

‘No,’ she protested. ‘I don’t like it.’ She was crying now. Big tears and sobs which racked her whole body. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘That’s a pity,’ he said huskily, ‘because Mr Charles likes you and he wants to look at you.’

‘No!’ cried Mandy. ‘I want to go back with the others.’

‘If you go back now,’ he said harshly, his voice taking on a slight edge, ‘I shall tell Miss Jackson that you’ve been a very naughty girl.’

The child froze.

‘I shall tell her you wouldn’t hold my hand when I told you to. I shall tell her you made Mr Charles very cross. Do you want me to tell Miss Jackson that?’

Miserably, Mandy shook her head.

‘Now let me show you my friend Mr Charles,’ he said, his voice softening again. ‘He wants to be your friend too.’

They both heard a dog barking in the distance but the man ignored it as he fished in his open trousers. Mandy stared in horror as Mr Charles emerged.

The children were sitting on the two blankets. ‘Sit crossed-legged,’ Jane told them, ‘and then we’ll say grace.’

Out in the fresh air, the smell of egg sandwiches was overwhelmingly good. So were the children. They put their hands together and as Arnold said grace, Jane, diligent as ever, was busy counting heads.

‘Somebody’s missing,’ she announced as the first tin of sandwiches was handed around. ‘There’s only twenty-seven.’

Connie counted with her and realised who the missing child was. ‘It’s Mandy,’ said Connie.

‘Has anyone seen Mandy?’ Jane demanded. The children looked from one to the other and shrugged.

‘I saw a little girl walking towards the woods,’ said Jeanette.

‘Why would she be doing that?’ said Jane. ‘I told everyone to stay out here in the open.’

As the adults looked from one to the other their anxiety levels rose.

Connie frowned. ‘It’s not like Mandy to wander off.’

‘You stay here with the children,’ Roger told Jane. ‘We’ll go and look for her.’

The barking dog was coming closer. ‘Pip,’ she whispered and he came rushing out of the copse at full pelt and hurled himself at Stan. In the ensuing panic, Stan let go of Mandy’s hand but the child remained frozen to the spot. Stan lashed out with his foot and the dog backed off and bared his teeth, a low threatening growl coming from his throat. Mandy stumbled backwards.

‘Stay there!’ Stan shouted at the child and once again she froze.

Pip put himself between Mandy and Stan and began backing into her until Mandy was forced to move backwards. Stan looked around desperately. If he didn’t know better, he would say it was exactly the same dog he’d encountered the last time. He’d been forced to let the little girl go that time. Well, it wasn’t going to happen again. Mandy was crying hard. He had to shut her up. Too much noise and they’d draw attention to themselves.

‘And stop that bloody racket.’

The child sucked back her sobs and wet herself.

Stan launched his foot at the dog again but it missed its mark. The dog was snarling and growling fiercely. He had to find some way to get this wretched animal out of the way. Looking around he picked up a solid looking piece of wood. The dog knew what was coming and rushed at him, trying to get there first. They hurled themselves at each other several times before the wood caught Pip on the side of his head. There was a shrill yelp and the dog fell to the ground. Mandy stared at him in horror. Stan stood over him gasping for breath. ‘That’s sorted you out good and proper,’ he snarled and he booted the dog in his side for good measure, but Pip didn’t respond.

When the man turned back to Mandy, something kicked in in her mind. He had just kicked her dog. He was a bad man, a very bad man. Mandy turned and ran, screaming her head off as she flew.

‘Come back here,’ he shouted.

But for once she wasn’t listening. She ran deeper into the coppice and he relaxed. The stupid brat didn’t know it but she was running away from the others, into an area where the trees hadn’t been thinned out. With a bit of luck, she’d reach a wooded wall and be trapped. He changed his tactic again. ‘Mandy, come back at once or I shall have to tell Miss Jackson what a naughty little girl you’ve been. You know you shouldn’t be running about in the woods. Miss Jackson told you not to do that, didn’t she?’

He was quite close to her when he tripped over an exposed tree root. At the sound of his fall, she screamed again and ran in another direction. Damn it, now she was heading back towards the meadow. He couldn’t let her go back in that state. There was no telling what she might say. Ignoring the painful bruise on his side, he jumped up as quickly as he could and ran after her again.

The ground in this part of the coppice was uneven. Small hillocks fell away into quite deep ruts and the place was littered with fallen trees and broken branches. The child ran wildly missing the overhanging branches which bothered him and made him slower.

‘If you don’t stop this minute, I shall slap your bottom,’ he shouted. That usually did the trick. On the whole, children were anxious to please and by nature obedient to the voice of authority. He slithered and slid after her and almost caught up with her when all of a sudden, she fell with a scream and vanished.

She’s gone down a rabbit hole, he told himself. I’ve got her now. I’ll pull her out and be nice to her. She’d wet herself, hadn’t she. That would make things really simple. He’d say, ‘Take your knickers off, darling. You don’t want to be walking around with wet knicks on do you?’ But when he reached the spot where she had fallen he couldn’t believe it. This was no rabbit hole. It was much deeper. He could see the top of her head and when she looked up at him, she was a long way down. He could have lain on the ground, leaned over and pulled her out but the ground alongside was unstable. It creaked and small clods of earth were still falling. He stood over the hole with his hands on his hips and looked down. ‘You see what happens to naughty little girls who won’t do what they’re told?’ he said cruelly.

‘Please,’ she sobbed. ‘Please Mr Graham, I don’t like it here. I will be good, I promise.’

‘I would like to help you,’ he said, shaking his head slowly, ‘but Mr Charles is very upset with you. You weren’t very nice to him, were you?’

‘I will be,’ she pleaded. ‘Please get me out. I don’t like it down here.’

But then he hesitated. Her face wasn’t angelic anymore. It was dirty and bleeding from lots of little scratches. She had nettle stings under her eye and her lovely blonde curls were a mess and she’d lost both of her red ribbons. Her peachy cheeks were streaked with tears and there was yellow snot hanging from her nose. Ugh. She wasn’t his little cherub anymore. His lip curled. She might as well stay there for all he cared. She was nothing more than a dirty little slut and he didn’t want her anymore.

He stamped his foot a couple of times and she began to slide again. He smiled. Then he heard someone calling. He looked around frantically and the stupid kid began to shout back. He grabbed an exposed tree root and shook it. The earth fell away quickly and he only just stopped himself from going into the hole himself. He scrambled backwards, then one more stamp on the ground and she was gone.

Twenty-Seven

‘Has she come back yet?’ Connie and Roger had returned to the group sitting on the blanket.

Jane Jackson shook her head. ‘I’ve got a couple of the helpers looking down the bottom of the meadow,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand it. Why would she go off on her own?’

‘My dog has gone missing too,’ said Connie, struggling not to give way to the panic rising up inside her. ‘I can only hope he’s run off and Mandy has chased after him to bring him back.’ Even as she said the words, she wasn’t convinced that she even believed what she was saying. She looked around at the children on the blanket eating their sandwiches. ‘Were any of you playing with Mandy? Did you see her going into the woods?’

The children looked from one to the other shaking their heads.

‘You were with her, weren’t you, Graham?’ Jeanette Luxton said.

Connie turned towards the direction of the question and frowned. Jeanette was talking to a man in a brown suit. Connie hadn’t noticed him before and she couldn’t see his face because he had his back to her and yet there was something vaguely familiar about him.

‘With who?’ said Graham, tapping a cigarette on his cigarette case.

Connie grabbed Roger’s arm. She had recognised the voice immediately, but it was that tapping sound that sent a chill down her spine. It was him. How could she ever forget?

‘What?’ said Roger. ‘Darling, what is it?’

‘I know you,’ Connie shuddered. ‘Your name isn’t Graham. You’re Stan Saul.’

Everyone turned towards the man sitting on the corner of the blanket. Stan Saul turned slowly towards Connie. Earlier in the afternoon, when nobody was looking, he’d pocketed a ball. On his way out of the woods, he’d pretended to pick it up in case someone wondered what he was doing. There was no reason to fear that they’d find Mandy and he had hoped no one would notice him until the time the coach came. Bluff it out, he told himself as he turned to face her. He didn’t recognise her and yet she knew him. ‘Do I know you?’ he smiled.

‘Connie Dixon,’ she said coldly.

He smiled affably but his heart sank. ‘Connie Dixon,’ he said brightly. ‘I had no idea it was you. How are you?’

Connie could feel her face heating. Her heart began to thump in her chest and the old fear crept back. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself angrily. She was a grown woman now. A grown woman with a man beside her and her friends all around her yet Stan Saul still had the ability to instil a wave of sickening fear into her heart. Her hands felt clammy but she was unaware that she was wiping them up and down the side of her skirt.

‘What were you doing out there?’ she accused.

He looked surprised, wounded even. ‘Me?’ he said softly. ‘I just went to look for this ball.’ He held it up. ‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘One of the children is missing,’ said Jane.

‘Missing?’ said Stan. ‘How awful. Which one?’

‘My little sister,’ said Connie. ‘Mandy Craig.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Stan softly.

‘Why have you changed your name, Stan?’ Connie accused.

‘It’s a long story,’ said Stan, rolling his eyes innocently.

Jane frowned. ‘Connie, is this relevant? Shouldn’t we send someone back into the woods to look for Mandy?’

‘Where is Mandy?’ Connie asked Stan coldly.

Roger laid his hand on Connie’s arm but she was too focused on Stan. She hadn’t noticed that the whole Sunday school was staring open-mouthed.

‘My dear girl,’ said Stan, ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

‘Perhaps,’ Roger said taking charge, ‘if Jeanette and Graham … er, Stan saw Mandy going into the copse, it stands to reason she must still be in there. Where exactly did you see her?’

‘She said she was looking for a feather,’ said Stan casually. ‘I left her by that stile down there.’

‘That was one of the things on the treasure hunt list,’ Jane groaned. ‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that now.’

Arnold put his arm around Jane’s shoulders. ‘Don’t get upset, darling. She’ll turn up, you wait and see.’

‘What was she doing down there in the first place?’ Jane wailed. ‘I told everyone not to go into the woods.’

‘Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere,’ said Roger. ‘I’m going back to look for her again.’

‘I’ll come with you, if you like,’ said Stan.

‘No!’ Connie cried.

‘Connie, the more people we have out there looking for her,’ said Roger, ‘the quicker we’ll find her.’

‘But not Stan,’ Connie insisted.

‘That’s all right,’ said Stan, seeing the shocked expression on some of their faces. ‘I’m quite happy to stay here and help look after the children and free up somebody else to go.’

Connie was about to say something else when Jane said, ‘I think the rest of us should all stick together now. I’ve got a pass the parcel that we can play until the coach comes back. Mrs Stevens, did you say we had some cakes?’

The three ladies produced their cake tins and the children were happily occupied choosing them. Arnold emptied his pockets of sweets announcing that there would be one sweet for every very good boy and girl. ‘I’ll go with Roger and Connie, darling,’ he told Jane. ‘Between the three of us, we should find her quite quickly.’

Roger was asking Stan exactly where he’d last seen Mandy. He pointed to an area well away from the clearing where Pip lay and the place where Mandy had disappeared.

‘She was definitely walking east,’ he said in a considered tone of voice.

‘I’m sure Stan has something to do with this,’ Connie said as she and Roger walked back towards the trees. ‘I don’t trust him one bit.’

‘Listen, Miss Jackson,’ Stan said to Jane. ‘I really ought to be getting back.’

‘The coach will be here in half an hour,’ said Jane.

‘My mother is a sick woman,’ he went on. ‘I should have said something before but your father said you were desperate for helpers and I didn’t like to let him down.’

Jane touched his shoulder. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You must go. There’s a bus that goes to town on the hour from the top of Salvington Rise by the shops if you’d rather not wait for the coach.’

‘You don’t mind?’ he asked pleasantly.

‘Not at all,’ smiled Jane. ‘I’m sorry about Connie.’

He nodded sagely. ‘She’s upset. I understand that.’

Jane patted his arm. ‘You’re a very understanding man.’

He said his goodbyes and struck out. ‘I wonder if you would be good enough to call in to the manse and tell my father what has happened?’ Jane asked.

Stan hesitated.

‘If you don’t have time to call in, could you perhaps telephone?’

‘Of course,’ Stan agreed amicably. He turned to go.

‘The number …’ Jane began.

‘Beg pardon?’

‘You’ll want the number.’ She was writing it down on a piece of paper torn from the list on her clipboard. ‘It’s Goring 458.’

He took the number and stuffed it into his pocket.

‘And call her name on the way back,’ Jane suggested.

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Mandy’s. You never know, she could have gone in the opposite direction.’

‘Good idea,’ he said waving cheerfully.

Calling her name, he headed down Honeysuckle Lane until he was lost to view, then he stopped. It would be so much easier and quicker to go in the opposite direction. He could walk to Long Furlong and straight home but he wanted to avoid the searchers at all costs. He couldn’t afford to be trapped into staying in the woods to help them. He was in luck. The bus was parked right by the shops and because he ran, he caught it comfortably. As the bus sped down Salvington Hill, he saw the coach coming up. He smiled to himself. They could search until the cows came home but they’d never find her. Served her right, little tease, egging him on like that and then running away.

Of course they’d keep trying to find her even when it got dark. Once the children were safely back home, someone in the village would organise a search party. Not the minister, because he wouldn’t bother telling him. And when they complained, he’d tell them he was so concerned about his poor old mother that he’d clean forgot. He chuckled. Oh dear, oh dear. Everyone was going to have an awfully long night.

‘Roger, I’m scared.’

Roger put his arm around Connie’s shoulders. They’d been calling and searching for about fifteen minutes and there was still no sign of Mandy or Pip.

‘I know,’ Roger said quietly, ‘but there a good chance she’s simply got herself thoroughly lost.’

‘That Stan …’ she began.

‘Yes,’ said Roger. ‘What was all that about?’

Connie wanted to tell him but somehow the words got stuck in her throat.

‘I don’t know,’ said Connie. ‘He always was a bit creepy and like I say, I just don’t trust him.’

Roger’s face darkened. ‘But he’s the church pianist, isn’t he? Surely they would have checked his credentials.’

‘Reverend Jackson is very trusting,’ said Connie.

‘You mentioned something in the past …’

‘It was because of Stan that my brother was forced to leave home.’ Now she was being economical with the truth.

Arnold had come to join them. ‘Still no sign then?’

Roger shook his head. ‘I think we should start working our way back to the lane,’ he said. ‘It’s the only area we haven’t looked at and perhaps if something frightened her, she may have thought she could make her own way home.’

‘But if she was in the lane,’ Connie reasoned, ‘she would have had to walk right past the meadow where we all were.’

‘True,’ said Roger, ‘but we are trying to get into the mind of a child here. I know it’s not logical but she may have been looking for houses, civilisation, or running blindly to reach her mother.’

‘It’s worth a try,’ said Arnold. ‘You two go to the right. I’ll cover the left side of the track.’

They turned back and began calling again, looking carefully through the trees for any sign of life. In the distance, Connie had spotted Stan running down the hill and her blood chilled. She recalled another man running towards the road the day she and the family were on the downs and that other little girl got lost. It was the same gait. She stopped walking and froze. Oh God … oh God … she thought as she turned to see where Roger and Arnold were. Her gaze went to the ground and she suddenly cried out. The two men came running. From where she was standing she could see that the grass in a small clearing was trampled down. In the centre of the area, there was a bright red stain.

‘What is it?’ said Roger.

Connie pointed and Roger bent down. He touched it with his fingers and bringing it to his nose, he sniffed. ‘Definitely blood,’ he said gravely and Connie took in her breath.

The search had now taken on a new sense of urgency. If Mandy had lost this much blood, what could have happened? Had she been attacked by someone or something? Had she fallen or got a nosebleed? Whatever the reason, surely she would have run towards the meadow and help. Connie’s mind was racing ahead of all that. Supposing she was unable to run and get help? Supposing someone had stopped her. It was Stan Saul, wasn’t it! She shuddered. Why else was he running away if he had nothing to do with this? She could feel herself beginning to panic. Where was her little sister? She called desperately. ‘Mandy, where are you?’

Then Arnold found more blood. ‘Whoever was bleeding was going in this direction,’ he said.

Connie kept close to Roger and together they stepped over brambles and fallen branches following the trail of blood.

All at once Connie looked up and saw a dog lying on the ground. She could see at once that it was Pip. He was lying beside what looked like a fox’s earth. She called his name and he tried to lift his head but flopped back down again. She ran as fast as she could and threw herself on the ground beside him. As he looked up at her there was no mistaking the adoration in his eyes and he managed to make his tail give a couple of painful and exhausted wags. He had been horribly injured. His side was torn and bleeding and his mouth was badly cut. She could see he was missing several teeth as well. Connie burst into tears. ‘Oh, Pip. Pip, what happened?’ She looked helplessly at Roger. ‘What was he doing here? He’s an intelligent dog. He would have known to drag himself along the path if he needed help. Why come right down here in the thicket?’

They looked at each other, no one daring to actually say what they feared the most. Connie leapt to her feet. ‘Mandy,’ she screamed. ‘Mandy, where are you? Mandy?’

They waited a couple of minutes, hopes rising once again but all they heard was the sound of the wind sighing through the trees. ‘Mandy …’ It was hopeless.

‘Connie,’ Roger began cautiously. ‘Is it possible the dog attacked Mandy?’

Connie’s eyes grew wide. ‘Never in a million years. He adored her. If anything, he would have risked his life to save her.’

They stared at each other as the full import of what she had said dawned on them both.

‘What do you want us to do?’ said Roger. They were all on the horns of a dilemma. The dog needed the help of a vet, but Mandy couldn’t be forgotten. Connie put her hands on either side of her head and tugged at her hair in desperation.

‘I think we’d better get the dog to a vet straight away,’ said Arnold, taking his coat off. He laid the coat on the ground and then he and Roger gently lifted Pip onto it. As they lifted him, the dog whimpered and yelped in pain.

‘Get him to my car,’ said Roger. ‘We’ll drive him there as soon as we can.’

They hurried towards the lane again, with Connie running behind them.

‘Connie, we’ve got to get more help,’ said Roger. ‘We need others to help us cover the ground. We could be searching for a month of Sundays if we try to do it on our own.’

They’d reached the car. Connie fondled the dog’s ears and kissed his muzzle. ‘Thank you for trying,’ she said, her voice strangled by a terrible sense of loss and anguish. ‘I love you.’ She felt his body quiver as he tried to lift his head and lick her face. The two men laid him on the back seat. ‘I’ll find her,’ Connie promised and Pip managed one last wag of his tail.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Roger asked. ‘I could take the dog to the vet, then go back to the village for some more bodies, or we leave the dog here to take his chances.’

‘Go,’ said Connie. ‘You’re right. We need help.’

‘Coming?’ asked Roger as he sat in the driver’s seat.

Connie shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘She’s in there somewhere and I’ve got to find her.’

Roger got out of the car again. ‘Do you drive?’ he asked Arnold.

Arnold nodded. ‘But not since I left the army two years ago.’

Roger tossed him the keys. ‘That’s good enough for me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know the area so without someone to guide me it would take an age to find a vet.’

‘Tell Jane where I’ve gone,’ said Arnold, climbing in the driver’s seat.

Roger watched Arnold reverse flawlessly and drive back down the hill. He was just about to walk back up the hill when he saw a coach coming up the hill and then he heard a chatter of excited voices as a crocodile of tired but happy children and their helpers came out of the meadow.

Connie drew Jane to one side and told her what had happened. ‘We’ll be back as soon as possible,’ Jane reassured Connie and Roger.

‘Bring as much help as you can,’ said Roger. ‘And we’ll need torches too. It’ll be getting dark soon.’

Connie walked away and back up the hill, calling her sister’s name again. Pip must have been trying to protect Mandy. What other reason could there be? She remembered how he had taken off like a rocket almost as soon as they’d got out of the car. When she and Roger heard the delighted screams of the children, Pip must have heard something quite different. One of those screams had been a real scream. She thought about the relationship he had with Mandy. They really loved each other and the dog must have realised Mandy was in danger. So what had stopped him in his tracks? The dog couldn’t have been knocked down by a car. The lane was too narrow and the ground too soft for vehicles. What about some sort of farm vehicle? There was a field almost ready for harvesting above them, but surely a farmer would have stopped to check if he’d hit an animal. There was only one other answer. Pip was deliberately attacked. Connie frowned as she tried to imagine what sort of an animal it could have been. Pip was fearless and there was no doubt that he would risk his very life for someone he loved, but what sort of animal knocks out teeth? A man with a stick, perhaps …

As Roger joined her, she said nothing. She couldn’t bear to voice the things she feared the most, that Stan Saul had attacked her dog and done something awful to her sister. She had to find Mandy at all costs.

When the parents met the coach, Jane explained that although everyone else had come home safely, Mandy was missing. Gwen ran all the way home and Clifford shut the nurseries, got the car out and they came straight up the hill. Once they arrived, the locals on the hill were involved but there was little time for formal introductions. They all wanted to get on with the job of finding Mandy.

Connie and Roger took her mother and Clifford back to the place where they’d found Pip. ‘I’m sure he was trying to get to her,’ said Connie. ‘You know how devoted he is to her. She has to be around here somewhere but I’ve called and called and there’s no answer.’

Clifford took charge and they started a much more methodical search but after half an hour they had still drawn a blank. As the group came together again, they could hear more voices. Clifford made his way back to the path and found a whole crowd of people walking towards them. Mrs Bawden their next-door neighbour, the Frenchie, Isaac Light, Rev Jackson and Jane, Mr Stevens and Mr Luxton and a whole lot more friends and neighbours.

Connie felt a tear come to her eye. ‘How did you all get here?’ she gasped.

‘We persuaded the coach driver to bring us back,’ said Rev Jackson. ‘Now where do we start?’

Roger explained where they had already looked and the area not yet fully covered. As soon as Connie noticed Eugène, her heart leapt. His eye met hers and she mouthed a silent ‘thank you’. Before long the wood was ringing with people calling for Mandy. They walked beside ditches and lifted bramble patches. They prodded layers of leaf mould with long sticks and stared into rabbit holes and badger sets. Just when it all seemed utterly hopeless Connie heard Isaac shouting, ‘Over here, over here.’

Everyone ran to the spot. Caught on a thick bramble they saw a red ribbon. Gwen reached out and grasped it as the tears sprang into her eyes. Now everyone was talking. Connie waved her arms to try and get some quiet but it took Roger’s authoritative voice to get the silence they needed.

Connie nodded towards her mother and Gwen took a deep breath.

‘Mandy,’ she called. ‘It’s Mummy. Are you there, darling?’

Everyone held their breath then from somewhere deep below the earth, they heard a child’s cry.

Twenty-Eight

They had no tools and she was obviously deep underground.

‘How the hell did she get down there?’ someone said.

‘We should all move back,’ said Roger, looking around. ‘There’s too many of us and this ground is very unstable.’

‘I’ll go down the hill and see if we can borrow some spades,’ said Eugène and several of the men took off with him.

Connie and her mother felt a mixture of relief and panic. It was wonderful that they had located Mandy at last and that she was obviously alive, but how far had she fallen and how on earth were they going to get her out? Looking up, Connie could see that the tree canopy had once been shattered by something and Roger was right, the ground beneath their feet was very unstable.

The area was now largely neglected although during the war it had been the site of one of the many RAF wireless and Radio Location stations. It was within sight of another station on Highdown, a couple of miles away, as the crow flies, and they had helped the British forces keep a tab on enemy aircraft flying to and fro on air raids on London as part of the Ground Control Interception. Although there were plenty of bomb craters, High Salvington’s greatest claim to fame was being the crash site of an enemy Heinkel 111 in August 1940. Back then, a crowd almost as large as the one on the hill now had gathered to see it.

The spades arrived and Roger began to organise a working party. Somebody had had the foresight to bring a wheelbarrow, which would make it easier to transport the dug soil away from the site. Tackling it from above increased the risk that the earth on top of her would simply collapse. They couldn’t see her but they could hear her muffled cries. Clearly she was able to breathe without too much problem. It appeared that she had slipped down at an angle and gone under the damaged roots of a tree which leaned downhill at a crazy angle.

‘I believe she’s wedged in there by her shoulders,’ said Roger. ‘I have no idea how deep the hole is and I don’t want to risk her falling even further.’

It was decided that they should dig alongside the opening rather than above it. That way they hoped to be able to persuade Mandy to crawl her way out without too much soil falling on top of her.

Eugène slipped unnoticed beside Connie. ‘We will get her out,’ he promised. As she turned to look at him, she was filled with a longing to feel his strong arms around her. He looked better. The dark rings had gone from under his eyes and his complexion seemed a lot healthier than when she last saw him. ‘Did you go to see Kez?’ she whispered.

He nodded. ‘I did. Thank you, Connie. You are a true friend.’

Roger moved closer and interrupted them. ‘Let’s start getting the earth away from here,’ he told the Frenchie. ‘You can wheel it up over the ridge.’

‘No problem,’ smiled Eugène, taking off his jacket. Connie almost reached out to touch him but changed her move into a folding of her arms.

‘I’ll try and find another strong looking fellow to help you and you can do shifts,’ said Roger glancing first at the Frenchie and then at Connie.

‘That’ll be me,’ said Isaac, taking his shirt off as well.

Connie choked up. Roger gave her a quick side hug. ‘You’d better brace yourself, darling. This is going to be a long, hard job.’ And she saw Eugène look away.

The hill quickly became a hive of activity. Women living nearby had turned up with flasks of tea and later on, some sandwiches. Every now and then, Roger called for them to stop working so that Gwen could have the opportunity to call out to Mandy and reassure her that they were doing everything possible to help her. What they didn’t tell her was that because of the unstable ground, this was getting more difficult by the minute. It wasn’t just the moving hillock they had to contend with, they also had problems with the thick brambles and undergrowth which had to be cleared away before they could even get a spade into the earth.

As the evening wore on, the word had got around and a tidy crowd of would-be helpers gathered in the lane and PC Noble turned up on his bicycle. Connie was glad that they still had double summer time. 1945 was supposed to be the last time it was used but in view of the terrible food shortages in the country, the government had decreed to reinstate it in 1947 giving more hours of daylight to enable farmers to keep up the good work. The clocks would go back one hour on 10 August and then the final hour would be on 12 November.

Later on, someone put a blanket on Connie’s shoulders and as she pulled it around her, she realised for the first time how terribly cold she was. She had no cardigan and her arms were bare. Eugène and Isaac who had stripped down to their vests, glistened with sweat and the dirt on their bodies made them look like a couple of miners. As the gloom turned towards dusk, the first of the oil lanterns was lit and a hurricane lamp hissed nearby. The first group of men were beginning to get tired, so a shift pattern was adopted and slowly but surely they were making progress. They shored up the sides as they went and once they were actually tunnelling, they had to shore up the overhang too.

Roger was a careful overseer, checking everything thoroughly as they went. ‘No slacking,’ he told Eugène who had stopped to wind a handkerchief around his blistered hands.

‘Roger!’ Connie exclaimed. ‘He’s doing his best.’

‘It’s important to keep up the momentum,’ said Roger, unrepentant. ‘We can’t afford passengers.’

Eugène was about to react but Isaac tugged on his arm and the two men carried on.

Everything was going so well until someone’s spade hit something metal.

‘What the hell was that?’

Rev Jackson looked around wildly. ‘Didn’t they have guns up here during the war?’

‘No, you’ve got that one wrong yer reverent,’ said a voice. ‘I’ve lived up here all my life and there’s never been a gun up here.’

The man who hit the metal was running his hand along whatever it was he’d hit. ‘There’s definitely something down here and it’s quite big.’

Roger scrambled down the bank. He traced his hand alongside the other man’s and even in the gathering gloom they all saw his face pale. ‘Have you ever been bombed up here?’

‘What for?’ someone cried. ‘There’s nothing up here.’

‘What about the RAF Wireless and Radio Location during the war?’ someone else remarked. ‘Could be that somebody was aiming for that, I suppose.’

‘Wireless and Radio Location?’ Rev Jackson queried.

‘Part of our air defences, sir,’ said Roger. ‘The German Luftwaffe were intercepted by our aircraft thanks to the boys working on Ground Controlled Interception.’

‘Really?’ said Rev Jackson. ‘I never realised.’

Roger nodded sagely. ‘We’re all indebted to a lot of people we don’t know about, sir.’

‘Tell you what,’ another man said, ‘the Germans sometimes dropped the odd leftover bomb before they reached the Channel.’

‘So did our boys,’ a woman called out. ‘If they were heading for Tangmere or Ford, they couldn’t afford to land with an unexploded bomb still on board.’

‘Then I’m afraid we have to stop what we are doing,’ said Roger. He jerked his head towards PC Noble. ‘Could you tell everyone to get well away, please?’ The policeman saluted and scrabbled up the bank. ‘And ask your sergeant to call my HQ and dispatch a unit.’

PC Noble seemed slightly confused.

‘What’s up?’ said Clifford, sliding down the bank to join him. ‘Why have you stopped digging?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t carry on,’ said Roger. ‘That feels like a UXB to me.’

‘A bomb!’ someone cried. There was a collective gasp and several people moved away. PC Noble flew up the bank, mounted his bicycle and rode as fast as he could towards the houses further down the lane.

‘How can you be so sure?’ Clifford said desperately.

‘Roger is a bomb disposal officer,’ said Connie. ‘He was the man who defused that bomb in Worthing High Street a few months ago.’

Clifford seemed to wither in size. Gwen burst into tears as Eugène took it upon himself to clear the rest of the people from the scene. Some left reluctantly, but most of them were only too keen to go back down the hill.

‘You can’t leave her there,’ cried Gwen.

Connie’s face was stricken. ‘Can’t we pull her out first?’

‘I’m sorry, darling, but we cannot risk it,’ said Roger. ‘We’ve been really lucky so far not to set it off. It has to be checked and made safe before we can go on.’

Connie stared at him in horror. ‘But she’s underneath.’

‘I know,’ said Roger, ‘and I will get her out. It’s just going to take time.’

‘I want to speak to her,’ said Gwen. ‘Let me talk to my daughter.’

Roger hesitated for a second and then said, ‘Okay. But try not to let her panic. Tell her we’re all going to have a rest. Tell her it’s night-time. Don’t tell her what’s really happened. Try to make everything sound as normal as possible.’

Gwen’s eyes filled with tears and she looked helplessly at Connie and everyone knew what she must be thinking. How could she possibly sound normal when every part of her body was screaming in panic for her child?

‘I’ll do it, Mum.’

‘Connie.’ The sound of Eugène’s voice made her hesitate. She turned and her eyes met his. Eugène glanced back at Roger watching them then turned to Connie. ‘Be careful,’ he said quietly.

Her chin quivered slightly as she nodded in thanks and then Roger reached out his hand to help her down. As she took it, Connie stepped on the boards the men had laid down for the wheelbarrow. Her foot slipped slightly and she felt Eugène’s strong arm make a grab for her from behind to hold her steady.

‘I’ve got her, thank you,’ said Roger coldly as he reached to help Connie.

Connie couldn’t look back but somehow it was Eugène’s grip that gave her the strength she needed. Taking a deep breath, she knelt and then lay on the ground in front of the hole. It was damp and smelled earthy. ‘Mandy …’

‘Let me out,’ Mandy sobbed. Her voice sounded far away but Connie could see a small gap tapering away in the distance. This must have been where she went into the hole, pulling the earth in behind her but luckily still giving her enough access to air. If it had closed right around her entirely she would have been buried alive. ‘I will be good. Please, Connie.’

It took every ounce of strength Connie had not to break down. ‘Mandy … darling, listen to me. It’s hard to get down to where you are. We are going to have to get some special things to help us.’

‘But I want to come out now.’

‘I know you do, darling. But everybody is going to have a little rest first and then we’ll get you out. Promise.’

Silence.

Connie chewed her lip anxiously. ‘Can you hear me, darling?’

‘I’m thirsty.’

Connie looked helplessly at Roger. ‘That’s okay. We can give her something,’ he whispered.

‘All right,’ Connie shouted down the hole. ‘I’ll see what I can do. We’ll have you out soon, Mandy, I promise. Do you think you can be a good girl for just a little bit longer?’

She waited for what seemed like an eternity and then Mandy said, ‘Do I have to touch Mr Charles?’

For a second, Connie’s eyes widened and her blood ran cold. Aware that every eye was upon her she fought with herself not to start shaking. Her heart was already pounding with rage. So she had been right after all. This had something to do with that damned man. Dear God. What was she going to do? Her mother and Clifford were already demented with worry. If she said something now it would only add to their misery. She swallowed hard. ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, darling.’

There was another pause then Mandy sighed, ‘All wight.’

Out in the lane, the coach driver had already decided it was time to go. ‘If there’s a bomb down there, I can’t risk my motor being blown to kingdom come,’ he told Rev Jackson. ‘You either get your people back on the coach or you all stay here at your own risk.’

Although he himself wanted to stay, it seemed prudent to Rev Jackson to get everyone else home. ‘I know you all want to help,’ he told everyone, ‘but the best way is by giving the authorities plenty of space to do what they have to do.’

It was his diplomatic way of assuaging any guilt they might feel at leaving Connie and her family to it.

Jane and Arnold sought Connie out first. ‘We’ll come back in the morning,’ she promised Connie. She and Arnold were full of apologies. ‘Please don’t feel bad,’ said Connie, giving Jane a hug. ‘You’ve both been real pals. Thanks, and take your dad with you. He looks completely done in.’

‘The vet says he’s doing all he can for Pip,’ said Arnold. Connie sucked in her lips, unable to speak. ‘I think he might make it,’ Arnold went on. ‘He’s a plucky little dog.’

The driver started the engine and a reluctant Rev Jackson began to close the door. ‘We’ll pray for you,’ he said helplessly.

The School of Military Engineering began in Ripon in Yorkshire in 1940. Once the seriousness of the country’s position was fully realised, the military formed a specialist Bomb Disposal School. They began with a basic unit which consisted of one officer, and fifteen other ranks which were divided into two subsections, one for the removal of a bomb and the other for its sterilisation. Roger came into the system in 1943 when the total Bomb Disposal force numbered some 10,000 men, who were stationed in every theatre of war and in the three services. His unit was based in Horsham which was only a twenty-mile drive away. Without even the basic equipment, there was little Roger could do except wait. He did his best to appear calm and in control but in truth he did have some serious concerns. He could only hope that the strike of the spade hadn’t been enough to restart any dormant timing device. The bomb itself was badly damaged and most likely exceedingly dangerous. Not only that, but it was only held in place by tree roots and highly unstable earth works.

Connie was being very brave. She was a plucky girl and the way she was behaving only made him admire her all the more. He wasn’t so sure about that other chap sniffing around. He had made short work of emptying the wheelbarrows at the top of the incline, but he seemed to be hanging around Connie a bit too much. Who was he? She’d never mentioned going out with anyone else and Eva had never mentioned it either. He was beginning to regret leaving it so long before declaring his hand. Connie was definitely the girl for him.

Roger managed to rig up a rubber tube and after he’d pushed it down the little gap, Connie came back onto the boards to explain to the child what was happening. When Roger had spoken to her, Mandy had become agitated, but Connie’s voice calmed her.

‘Can you see a rubber tube coming down, darling?’ Connie lay on the boards looking down. ‘If you put it in your mouth, we’re going to put some water down for you.’

Once they’d made sure Mandy was able to reach the other end, Roger dripped a little water down the tube for her to drink. At least, he reasoned to himself, her arms must be relatively free, and she wasn’t too tightly wedged in. The one thing he had to make sure of was that she didn’t flap about too much and cause the earth to slip or the bomb to shift. The longer she was there, the greater the danger that the whole thing would go up. He was very concerned about Mandy and the way he felt about Connie made the thought that she might be hurt unbearable.

Mr and Mrs Craig had been taken in by some people further down the hill. The houses nearest the UXB had been cleared by PC Noble and his sergeant who had turned up soon after he’d been informed about what was going on. Plenty of people further down the hill were only too willing to open their doors to give the onlookers shelter. It wasn’t until later that the first sign of trouble came when a large formidable woman climbed out of a taxi and demanded to see whoever was in charge. She was followed by a smaller woman who looked rather overdressed for the occasion. It was Ga and Aunt Aggie.

PC Noble came to see what was happening as Ga boomed and shouted, hardly giving any of them the chance to speak. ‘Someone told me Mandy had fallen down a hole. So why aren’t you getting her out? Don’t just stand there, young man, take me to her. She was supposed to be in the care of that drippy girl from the vicarage, but she’s come back home without her. Where is the child? And where’s Constance?’

Connie and Roger, thinking the commotion might be the arrival of the bomb disposal unit, came down the hill to see what was going on.

‘There you are,’ Ga shouted as soon as she saw her. ‘Where’s Mandy?’

‘Ga, this is Roger,’ Connie began. ‘He’s been helping us with the rescue and …’

‘So why isn’t he still down there getting her out?’

‘We have to wait …’ Roger began.

‘Wait? Whatever for?’ she fumed. ‘You get back there right this minute, young man.’

Roger seemed taken aback being spoken to like that. ‘Madam, I have no equipment,’ he said. ‘As soon as my unit comes from Horsham …’

‘Horsham?’ Ga gasped angrily. ‘But that’s miles away.’

‘Olive, dear,’ said Aggie. ‘Keep calm.’

‘Keep calm?’ roared Ga. ‘That’s what they told us all through the bloody war. Keep calm and carry on. Well, this isn’t bloody Hitler we’re talking about. This is a member of my family.’

‘The bomb disposal squad will be here at any minute,’ said Roger stiffly.

‘Bomb disposal …’ Ga choked. ‘Constance, what is he talking about?’

Connie took her great aunt’s arm.

‘Let go of me, Constance,’ Ga snapped. ‘I don’t need holding up.’

‘Mandy has fallen underneath an unexploded bomb,’ said Connie, struggling to be civil. ‘Roger is a bomb disposal officer.’ There was a stunned silence. ‘It has to be defused.’

‘Then tell him to get on with it.’

‘And he will, Ga,’ said Connie. ‘As soon as the team get here.’

Roger marvelled at her patience. Clearly the aunt was used to saying ‘jump’ and everybody saying ‘how high’. She was a monster. He turned to look for the unit and spotted his mother and sister walking up the hill. He waved but didn’t wait. Before they came, he decided to check one more time that everything was still as it was at the site.

The five women met in the lane.

‘What’s she doing here?’ Ga demanded when she saw Eva’s mother and addressing Eva she said, ‘Been cavorting half-naked in any more fountains lately?’

‘Olive, dear …’ Aunt Aggie began again.

‘Oh, shut up, Aggie,’ Ga retorted.

‘Ga,’ Connie scolded. ‘Please.’

Eva pretended she hadn’t heard and gave Connie a hug. Theirs was a mutual sense of shared concern. Ga harrumphed and moved away from them.

‘Hello Olive, Aggie,’ said Cissy. ‘How are you both?’

‘Don’t you speak to me,’ said Aggie stiffly.

‘Can’t we let bygones be bygones?’ said Cissy. ‘Especially under the circumstances …’

Ga wrinkled her nose. ‘Did you hear something just then, Aggie? I thought I heard a sheep farting.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Connie snapped. ‘Can’t you let up for just a minute?’

Cissy turned to Connie. ‘This must be so awful for you, dear. How is she?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Connie. Her head was pounding and she had a raging thirst. ‘Asleep, I hope. She’s had a dreadful experience.’

‘Someone told us they’d stopped digging,’ said Mrs Maxwell. ‘Is that because it’s getting dark?’

Connie shook her head. ‘It’s because there’s an unexploded bomb there.’

Vi Maxwell took in her breath. ‘Then Roger …’

Connie nodded. ‘He’s been wonderful but we have to wait for the team to come from Horsham.’

‘But Roger said he didn’t want to do it anymore,’ said Vi helplessly. ‘He said he didn’t feel safe because he had other things on his mind.’

Connie put her hand over her mouth lest she made a sound.

‘You know why, don’t you, Ma?’ said Eva. ‘It’s because he’s fallen in love. Roger loves Connie.’

‘Eva,’ Connie cautioned. She had just noticed the red glow of a cigarette in the gloom. A group of men, including Eugène and Isaac were leaning against the wall of the shop across the road. ‘Don’t.’

Ga had removed herself to the other side of the lane but she was listening to every word they were saying and quickly rounded on Connie. ‘Constance, what is she talking about? Who is that man?’

‘That man,’ said Vi, her voice steeped in sarcasm, ‘is my son.’

Ga looked as if she was about to have an apoplectic fit. ‘Your son!’ She glared at Connie. ‘And here you are hanging around him like a lovesick cow? A Maxwell?’

Connie gritted her teeth. How she hated Ga. It took every ounce of strength Connie had not to lash out at her. She glanced helplessly towards Eva but she had already turned away.

Just then a front door opened and Gwen and Clifford having heard the raised voices came out of the house. ‘What’s happening? Any more news?’

Connie went to her mother and gave her a hug. She looked totally distraught. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying and her face was pale. ‘Nothing yet, Mum, but the team should be here at any minute.’

‘What are you doing here, Ga?’ said Clifford.

‘Surely you didn’t expect me to stay at home and do nothing?’ she snapped.

‘Well, there’s nothing you can do here,’ Clifford said pointedly, ‘so go back home and take Aggie with you.’

‘It’s a good job I am here,’ said Ga. ‘Did you know about Connie and that man?’

Clifford stared at her with a blank expression.

‘She’s in love with him,’ Ga shrieked. ‘Well, I tell you now, I’m not having a Maxwell as a member of my family. I’m going to put a stop to this once and for all.’

‘For God’s sake,’ bellowed Clifford.

‘Go home, Ga.’ Connie spoke in such an authoritative voice everyone looked at her in shocked surprise. ‘And this is neither the time nor place to fuel your stupid dog-eared family feud.’

‘Dog-eared …’ Ga spluttered. ‘I’ll have you know …’

‘We don’t want to hear it,’ said Connie, covering her ears. ‘All we care about is getting Mandy out of that hole alive and I don’t care who does it. They can call Hermann Göring and the whole bloody German army for all I care. If they can get Mandy out, I’ll cheer them all the way.’

‘Well,’ Ga harrumphed. ‘I’ll go to sea.’

‘I wish you bloody well would,’ muttered Clifford.

Connie turned towards Eva. ‘I’m supposed to be on duty tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Can you get a message to Ward Sister?’

‘It’s my day off,’ said Eva. ‘I’ll do the shift for you.’

Connie put her arms around her friend. ‘Thanks, Eva,’ she choked. ‘You’re a real pal.’

‘Why don’t you all come back inside?’ called the homeowner. ‘You’ll catch your death out here.’

‘I’m not going anywhere with a Maxwell,’ said Ga.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Clifford, herding everyone inside and waiting until last. Ga glared at him and he closed the door.

The taxi driver was talking to some of the other residents as Ga marched back down the lane. ‘Take us back to Belvedere Nurseries,’ she demanded as Aggie hurried after her.

He gave her an old-fashioned look but said nothing. Ga didn’t care. She was furious. How dare Constance speak to her like that? Who did she think she was? And as for that cocky Maxwell girl …

‘Everything all right with the little girl then, missus?’ said the taxi driver as they sped down the hill.

Ga didn’t even hear him. She was still seething. Connie was getting far too big for her boots. What she needed was taking down a peg or two.

The driver pulled up outside the darkened house. He didn’t get out to open the door for her so she had to do it herself. She baulked at the idea of shelling out 10/6 for the fare as well. ‘It was only five minutes up the road,’ she snapped.

‘Twenty,’ said the driver, his face expressionless. ‘It was a round trip and there was two of you.’

She slapped the money in his hand. ‘Don’t go looking for a tip,’ she said, ‘and I shan’t be using this taxi service again.’ She stamped to the door and fumbled for her keys.

The driver checked the money, exactly right. ‘I wouldn’t take you anyway, you miserable old bat,’ he mumbled.

Aggie went inside first and Ga turned to glare at the taxi driver one more time. As soon as she was sure he was looking at her, she stuck her nose firmly into the air. The taxi driver pushed the taxi into gear and stuck up two fingers.

Twenty-Nine

The team arrived about fifteen minutes later. Roger briefed them and they set about working out a plan of action. Major Owen was in charge and he invited suggestions.

‘Can we carry on digging underneath, sir?’ said Lance Corporal Parker. ‘One of us could crawl in and work on it from underneath.’

‘Too dangerous with the child still in there,’ said Roger. ‘If the earth started moving she’s just as likely to panic or distract you at a crucial moment.’

‘First, we need to fix a stethoscope on it to check there’s no timer,’ said Major Owen.

‘It’s doubtful that the timing mechanism is still intact,’ Roger said, looking at his watch. Usually there was a half hour or an hour’s delay before detonation. They had passed both.

‘That’s what Lofty Greenways thought in Hastings,’ said Private Taylor grimly.

They stopped talking for a couple of seconds as they remembered Private Greenways, blown to bits when a chance tap on the casing of a bomb restarted the timing device leaving him with no time to get clear.

‘All right, so we’d better strap a magnet to the bugger to prevent any clock starting up again,’ said Major Owen. ‘Then what? Cut a hole in the casing?’

‘And use the steam steriliser you mean?’ said Roger.

Major Owen nodded.

‘I’ll get on to it right away, sir,’ said Roger, standing up.

‘Not you, Captain Maxwell,’ said the Major.

‘This has been my case from the start, sir,’ Roger protested. ‘I should like to see it through.’

‘Not possible, I’m afraid,’ said the Major. ‘You’re too emotionally involved. You’ve just said the child is your girlfriend’s baby sister.’ He shook his head. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘She’s not actually my girlfriend,’ Roger lied, desperate not to be sent away. ‘Just a friend.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said the Major. ‘No.’

Roger had no alternative. He was outranked.

They set up arc lights run from a generator and got to work. Roger stood above them in the lane, the recommended two hundred yards distance between the UXB and the team, wishing that he could be hands on. The sappers had laid down a sandbag barrier. It was small comfort because Roger fretted knowing that Mandy didn’t have that sort of protection. However, they were a well-oiled machine and beautiful to watch. The idea was to dissolve the explosive filling with steam until it was rendered harmless. He could only hope and pray that they managed to get it all away before the detonator activated.

As the first light of dawn trickled over the horizon, they heard the child crying. At least she’s alive, he thought, but as Mandy’s wails grew louder and more desperate, he began to worry again. It sounded as if she was starting to panic. The obvious thing to do was to get the child’s mother or Connie but he knew the Major would never allow them that close to the hole until the bomb was safe. It was a mammoth task to stop himself from dashing down there to comfort her, and he could only imagine how devastated the family would be if they could hear her.

A man stood up further down Honeysuckle Lane. Eugène Étienne yawned sleepily. Isaac was still snoring gently as he sat up. PC Noble had tried to move them on but they had been reluctant to go, so they had bedded down against the wall. Connie meant too much to both of them to leave. Isaac had come to realise for the first time what she had done for him and his family and he didn’t want to let her down. Eugène had his own reasons for being there. He had known as soon as they’d laid together on that horsehair sofa that he would never feel about another woman the way he felt for Connie. As they made love, his passion for her only grew stronger. He didn’t just love her, he adored her. He had wanted to tell her that morning but then she had pre-empted him by telling him she’d made a terrible mistake. He couldn’t have her, he knew that now. She was with Roger. It cut him to ribbons to see them together but if Roger made her happy that was all that mattered. He got up and came sleepily towards him.

‘She’s crying,’ he said unnecessarily.

‘I hear that,’ said Roger tetchily.

‘Do you want me to get Connie?’

Roger shook his head. ‘I can’t allow her any closer.’

‘We could sing to her,’ said Eugène.

‘Sing?’ Then all at once Roger half remembered a conversation he’d had with Connie once when she’d talked of her little sister. She’d told him of Mandy’s favourite song. Dear God, what was it?

The Major must have thought he had gone completely mad when Eugène stood in front of the sandbags and burst into song. ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …’ As his rich baritone voice filled the misty dawn air, Roger joined in. The men working around the bomb heard her quiet down and finally understood what they were doing. After a while, Major Owen gave them the thumbs up and Roger clambered down to him.

‘False alarm,’ said the Major. ‘Bloody thing was filled with this.’ He lifted his hand and poured a pale substance from one hand to the other.

‘So we can get her out now?’

The Major nodded. ‘The only danger now is falling earth.’ Eugène climbed back up the bank and called Isaac. He came back down the plank walkway with the wheelbarrow.

The back door was unlocked. Roger opened it quietly and looked around. Clifford and Gwen were locked in each other’s arms asleep on the sofa. Someone had covered them with a blanket. Connie sat at the kitchen table, her head on her arms. As he opened the door, she felt the cold air on her legs and sat up. She looked terrible. Her hair was wild and she had dark circles under her eyes. He longed to take her in his arms and tell her it was going to be all right, but it wasn’t over yet. He put his finger to his mouth and motioned her forward. Connie crept outside quietly and they didn’t speak until they were on the lane.

‘The bomb wasn’t dangerous after all,’ he told her.

Connie frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It was filled with sawdust,’ said Roger and as he saw her jaw drop he added, ‘Probably sabotaged by the forced labour who made them.’

Connie flung her arms around his neck and squeezed him until he could hardly breathe. ‘So we can get her out now?’

Coming back from the hole with a full wheelbarrow, Eugène saw them together. He closed his eyes in agony and leaned his head back. It was hard watching the girl he loved with someone else. Connie and Roger were running back to the site hand in hand.

After all the waiting, it didn’t take long. The soldiers had supported the weight of the bomb with shoring and they’d made short work of the remaining soil. As soon as it was safe, Connie lay on the boards and reached out her hand. She moved her arm around the opening, calling Mandy’s name softly and then she felt a fluttering on her fingertips.

‘I can feel her!’ she cried. ‘Mandy, we’re coming. Oh, I can’t quite reach.’

‘Here, miss, let me,’ said Private Taylor. He was a tall man and quite thin. His arms were definitely longer than hers so Connie moved away. Taylor reached down the hole. They heard Mandy whimper and then Taylor pulled.

She came out smoothly although the earth was falling all around her. When she saw Taylor, she looked absolutely terrified until Connie scooped her into her arms and hugged her tight. The child felt very cold and of course she was filthy dirty. She smelled of urine and her dress was wet. Roger handed Connie a tin mug of lukewarm tea and when she put it to her lips, Mandy drank greedily. The men, their faces wreathed in smiles, applauded.

‘Mr Charles …’ said Mandy, burying herself under Connie’s armpit.

‘You don’t have to see him,’ Connie whispered, the old rage rising up inside once more. There was a shout from the bank and the next minute Gwen and Clifford were scrambling down.

‘I’ll get the car,’ said Roger as Connie put Mandy into her mother’s arms. ‘We should get her checked out in hospital.’

They squeezed into Roger’s car, Clifford in the front and Gwen on the back seat with Mandy straddled across her lap. Roger pulled Connie towards him and kissed her. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he said earnestly.

As they sped away Connie looked around. Eugène and Isaac came across to stand beside her. A clod of damp earth fell from the front of Connie’s dress. She was crying now … tears of relief, joy and exhaustion. Eugène reached out his arms and she leaned gratefully onto his chest. He didn’t say anything. He just let her cry and held her tenderly. When she was done, he gave her his handkerchief. ‘Not very clean, I’m afraid.’

Connie didn’t care. ‘Eugène, I know you’re tired, but would you and Isaac do one more thing for me?’

‘Of course.’

‘You heard what happened to my dog? Take me to see Pip.’

It was still very early but there were lights on in the vet’s house. He had his surgery in two rooms purpose built onto the side of the house. When she got out of Isaac’s old motor, Connie was conscious for the first time how dirty she was. She tried to smooth down her crumpled dress and run her fingers through her messy hair. She was embarrassed to be out and about looking so awful but the need to see Pip overruled everything else.

Mrs Fielding opened the door to the three of them in her dressing gown.

‘I’m sorry to …’ Connie began.

‘Come in,’ said Mrs Fielding stepping aside. She was holding a cup of tea. ‘My husband was hoping that you would come soon. He’s been up all night. Go straight through.’

Mrs Fielding followed them through the surgery door and put the tea down on the desk where Mr Fielding was sitting. He had his back to them. ‘Your tea is there, dear,’ said Mrs Fielding, ‘and Connie has come.’

When he turned, he was hollow-eyed and unshaven. He stifled a yawn. ‘Ah, Connie,’ said Mr Fielding smacking his lips. ‘You’ll be pleased to hear he’s still with us.’

After taking a gulp of his tea, Mr Fielding led them into the other room. Pip lay on a couple of blankets. He looked much the same as he had done when they’d found him, except that there was now a large blood-stained bandage around his middle. His eyes were closed. Mr Fielding knelt and began dripping water from a dropper onto his mouth and the dog moved his tongue.

‘I don’t know how he’s managed to keep going this long,’ he said. ‘These injuries would have taken a much younger dog hours ago.’

‘Any idea how he got them?’ Eugène asked.

‘My guess is that he was hit several times with something heavy,’ said Mr Fielding. ‘A piece of wood perhaps and he’s been viciously kicked as well.’

‘So it was no accident then?’ said Isaac.

‘Absolutely not,’ said the vet. ‘There’s a definite imprint of the boot on his side. I heard what happened to your little sister, Connie, so I took a photograph just in case this had anything to do with her being in that hole.’

Connie knelt beside Pip and stroked his head. His tail flickered slightly and he opened his eyes.

‘Can you save him?’ Eugène asked. ‘If it’s a question of money …’

Mr Fielding shook his head. ‘There’s nothing more I can do, but he’s got this far …’

Connie and Pip locked eyes. She could feel her throat getting tighter and it was hard to hold back the tears. ‘Oh, Pip,’ she said softly. ‘You’re such a brave little dog. I love you so much. I’m so sorry.’ She kissed the dog’s muzzle. ‘We got her out,’ she said. ‘Mandy is safe now.’

Again the tail flickered and Pip gazed up at her, adoration in his eyes. Connie could hardly see as her tears fell freely, but as she cradled his head in her hands and kissed him she saw something pass across his eyes. What was it? Fear? No, Pip was fearless. Sadness? No, it wasn’t that either. Pip was at peace with himself. The look stayed for a second and then he slowly closed his eyes for the last time. As his head relaxed in her hands, Connie realised what she’d just seen. It was the last tender goodbye.

Thirty

Connie didn’t feel a bit like it after the trauma of the previous day and losing her precious dog, but by 2 p.m. that day she was back on duty. There was no chance of taking the rest of the day off. Home Sister had made that very clear when Connie came back to the hospital.

‘But Nurse O’Hara was happy to do my shift,’ she protested.

‘Nurse O’Hara will be sent off duty,’ said Sister Abbott.

Connie had managed to get a little sleep before returning to the ward but not much. She had too much to think about. What was she going to do about Stan? She had no proof but it was obvious that if Mandy was talking about ‘Mr Charles’ he was still up to his dirty tricks. She should have told the police there and then but somehow what with the worry about the bomb and Ga making such a terrible scene, she couldn’t bring herself to add to her mother’s troubles. Her mind went round and round what might have happened before Mandy fell down that hole. Pip must have been trying to protect Mandy. Dear Lord, had he managed to prevent Stan from touching her? The man had to be stopped once and for all.

Another problem was Roger. What was she going to do about him? She didn’t love him but he was a good and kind man. If she couldn’t have Eugène, maybe she should settle for Roger. Connie tried to imagine what it would be like being married to him. It would be fun having Eva for a sister-in-law. It would also upset Ga and the thought of that made her smile. She could get her own back for the way in which Ga had in effect sent her mother and Clifford away, but then she’d come back to how unfair it would be to use Roger like that. He had gone back to Horsham, promising to telephone the call box outside the hospital as soon as Connie came off duty. Eugène had taken Pip’s body in the back of Isaac’s car and Clifford would bury him somewhere on the property.

Connie lined up with the rest of the staff for Sister’s hand inspection and thankfully passed the test. It had taken a great deal of scrubbing to get her nails clean after yesterday and thanks to the local press, the word had got around. Everyone wanted to know how her sister was. ‘She’s at home now,’ said Connie. ‘My mother is exhausted but she’s looking after her.’

As they sat down for the afternoon report, the telephone rang.

‘Matron wants to see you in her office,’ said Sister, putting the receiver back on its rest.

Connie smiled to herself. Obviously Matron had heard about Mandy and wanted to hear about it first-hand. ‘Shall I go as soon as I’ve heard the report, Sister?’

‘No,’ said Sister. ‘Matron was most insistent. You have to go immediately.’

Ten minutes later, Connie walked into Matron’s office but far from the welcoming and gentle enquiry she was expecting, Matron wore a thunderous expression. Connie could feel herself panicking. She’d done something wrong again, but what? As she stood to attention by the desk, Connie knew she was about to get a telling off, but she hadn’t a clue why.

Matron had a sheet of pale cream writing paper in her hand and Connie caught a glimpse of a lion’s head watermark. It was good quality paper. As Connie trembled, she began reading aloud.

‘Dear Matron,

I witnessed two of your nurses skylarking with a dead body in the lift. I saw one of them, Nurse Dixon, hit the other nurse on the bottom with the dead man’s hand and then they both laughed …’

Connie’s jaw had dropped and Matron glanced up at her with a cold stare. It took Connie a second or two to realise that whoever had written what was in Matron’s hand had seen Eva and her with Mr Steppings’ body. But that was ages ago. Why tell Matron now … after all this time?

Connie frowned. ‘That’s not true, Matron,’ she began. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

Matron ignored her and began reading again. ‘I do not wish to cast aspersions,’ she went on, ‘but I think this sort of behaviour brings the hospital into disrepute.’

Connie could feel herself trembling. Who was doing this, and why?

Matron looked up again. ‘I tend to agree with that, nurse. And this is not the first complaint I have had about you.’ She indicated two other sheets of identical paper contained within a buff-coloured folder on her desk. ‘Since I had those letters,’ she went on, ‘I have kept a close eye on you and there have been quite a few times when I have found your nursing care sadly lacking.’

‘Matron,’ Connie said. ‘I can explain.’

Matron held up a hand to stop her. ‘I’m afraid I have no other alternative but to ask you to leave.’

Connie stared at her in horror. ‘But it’s not true!’

Matron put all three pieces of paper together in the folder and closed it. ‘Were you and another nurse in the lift with a body?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘Did the arm of the dead man hit the other nurse’s bottom?’

‘Well, yes it did, but …’

‘No buts, nurse,’ said Matron coldly. ‘This hospital stands for decency and respect for both the living and the dead. I will not allow you or anyone else to sully its reputation. You will surrender your uniform and give your house keys to Home Sister with immediate effect. I expect you to be off the premises within the hour. That will be all.’

‘But Matron,’ Connie began again.

‘That will be all, Miss Dixon,’ said Matron standing up and opening her door.

Connie turned miserably to go.

‘By the way,’ said Matron. ‘Who was the other nurse with you in that lift?’

Biting back her tears, Connie drew herself up. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember,’ she said.

For the first time that day, Connie was in luck. There was no one about as she walked into Belvedere Nurseries through the back way. She had decided on the bus coming back home that she wouldn’t tell her mother she’d been sacked. Not yet, anyway. After all the trauma of yesterday, she wanted her mother to enjoy a bit of calm for a while. Connie hid her extra bags of luggage in the woodshed and carried only her small case into the house.

‘Connie!’ cried Gwen. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve been given a few days off,’ said Connie, avoiding her mother’s eye as she put the case down. She knew Gwen had a knack of knowing when she was lying.

‘How lovely,’ Gwen said taking her into her arms. ‘Oh, it’s so good to have you at home and Mandy safe and well.’

‘Are you all right, Mum?’

Gwen pushed back at arm’s length and smiled fondly. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You look tired.’

‘That’s only to be expected, dear. Like you, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.’

They hugged each other again.

‘Mandy is upstairs,’ said Gwen. ‘She’s awake now. She’s been sleeping and sleeping but I suppose that’s no bad thing.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘Of course, darling,’ said Gwen. ‘She was asking for a glass of milk a minute ago. You can take it up to her, if you like.’

Connie took off her coat and hung it by the door.

‘Those wretched birds have been at the milk again,’ said her mother as she poured a glass.

Connie smiled. The milkman left the milk by the back door and if her mother didn’t take them in straight away, the birds would peck through the cardboard milk bottle top and drink the cream at the top. It was a marvel to Connie that they did it. Which bird was the first to discover the delights of cream and how long did it take him to work out how to get at it? The ingenuity and craft they deployed to get something they wanted was amazing and she couldn’t help admiring such determined thieves.

‘By the way,’ said her mother as Connie put one foot on the stair, ‘who is Mr Charles?’

Connie froze, glad that she already had her hand on the banister or she may have stumbled. ‘Mr Charles?’ she said with a smile that she worried was a little too bright.

‘Mandy keeps saying she doesn’t want to meet him,’ said her mother barely noticing the effect the sound of that name was having on her other daughter. ‘I just wondered if you knew what she was talking about.’

Connie pulled the corners of her mouth down and shook her head.

‘Ah well,’ said Gwen turning back to the kitchen. ‘Perhaps it’s some storybook character she’s been reading about at school.’

Connie walked up the stairs anxiously. All her own problems paled into insignificance now. This was too much of a coincidence … seeing Stan Saul and the mention of Mr Charles again. Clearly something had traumatised Mandy in the woods. Connie may have deliberately blotted out the memory of the day it happened to her but she could never forget the revulsion she’d felt when she saw ‘Mr Charles’ for the first time.

As she walked slowly up the stairs, Connie remembered how her head was banging like a drum and her mouth felt dry. ‘I need to go back to Kenneth,’ she’d said, and that’s when she’d realised that her words were all slurry. She had been confused and couldn’t understand why she felt so strange. Of course now, with an adult head on her shoulders, she realised that he had made her drunk. And yet when she and Kenneth had talked about it, they’d realised that neither of them had had enough to be drunk. Stan must have put something into the cider. Either that or it was exceptionally strong.

Stan had pushed her into her bedroom and she stumbled backwards onto the bed. Full of trust, Connie had closed her eyes and relaxed. Her head had been spinning and she was desperate for some sleep but when she opened her eyes a second later, Stan had slipped off his braces and was unbuttoning his trousers. He was staring at her with a strange look in his eye and she didn’t like it. She remembered how much her stomach was churning and she knew she was going to be sick. As his trousers fell to the floor, she’d gasped. ‘What’s that?’

‘Meet Mr Charles.’

That’s when the fear kicked in. She’d tried to get up but he pushed her back down and yanked at her dress. ‘You’re going to love him.’

As young as she was, it was at that moment that Connie knew everything was out of control. She didn’t know what he was going to do but it was too scary and she was helpless to stop him. ‘No. No,’ she’d begged. ‘Don’t.’ Even now, after all these years, thinking about it made her feel queasy. She gripped the banister a little more tightly and waited for the moment to pass.

As she and Stan began a tug of war with her knickers, she’d become aware of voices downstairs. Her befuddled mind couldn’t make sense of it and her arms had little strength to resist him. Stan was much bigger than she was and he had a power which was overwhelming. He’d lifted her roughly further up onto the bed and pulled at her knickers again. They were coming off and she couldn’t do anything about it. She began to cry. ‘Please … don’t.’

The voices downstairs were getting louder but Stan didn’t seem to hear. He was in a hurry. He was fully aroused and needed satisfaction. What little gentle coercion he had used before had turned into an ugly rough-handling. He pinned her to the bed with one hand around her throat and finally tore her knickers off. ‘Come on, you little tease. Don’t fight me. It’s nice. You’ll like it.’

Back in the present day, Connie swayed at the top of the stairs. She closed her eyes again and the memory, as vivid as if it were only yesterday, came flooding back. He’d prised her legs apart using his free hand and his knee and then mounted the bed. At the very same moment the door had swung open and her great aunt had come into the room. Ga gave Stan’s bare buttock a resounding slap and he leapt away.

‘Get out of here, you dirty little swine,’ Ga had bellowed, ‘and if you ever come into this house again, I’ll have your guts for garters.’

Connie braced herself against the banister. She hadn’t thought in depth about that day for years but if Mandy was talking about Mr Charles, she had to find out if a similar thing had happened to her. Connie felt the familiar rage and indignation building inside her. That man had ruined her family and blighted her own life. Until Eugène, she had been unable to let any man get really close to her. Now that she was being honest with herself for the first time, that was the real reason she and Emmett hadn’t made a go of it. She’d always pushed Emmett away because she’d hated the thought of seeing his Mr Charles. Perhaps that was why she’d hesitated for so long about Roger.

It was because of what Stan did that Kenneth had been sent away. Connie took a deep breath. She must not allow him to do it again. Stan or Graham as he now called himself, was obviously popular with Rev Jackson and the other people in the church but they were such trusting souls and Stan could charm the birds off the trees. She couldn’t let it go this time. Somehow or other, she had to find out what really happened on High Salvington. Connie took another deep breath. Stay calm, she told herself. Don’t frighten the child and take one step at a time. Then she slowly opened Mandy’s bedroom door.

‘Eva, Eva, open the door.’

Betty’s banging was very persistent. Eva was dog tired and she had had a long day on the ward. In the end, after being sent off duty she’d been called back and she’d done the whole of Connie’s shift, finishing at 9 p.m. After spending a worrying time on High Salvington, Eva had managed to keep going all day but as soon as she’d come off duty, she’d downed a cup of tea and lay on the bed. Even though Betty’s knocking was urgent, Eva had been so dead asleep it was hard to make her body respond. She had been sleeping on her back and was aware of a dry crusted dribble down the side of her face. Her head was thick and frankly she felt awful.

‘Eva,’ Betty insisted. ‘This is important.’

Eva dragged herself upright and shuffled to the door. Betty burst into the room and as soon as she saw the sight of her, Eva was alarmed. ‘Good Lord,’ she said pulling herself together, ‘whatever’s happened?’

‘It’s Connie,’ said Betty. ‘Eva, you’ll never believe this but she’s been sacked.’

Betty was right. Eva didn’t believe it. ‘Sacked? No. You’ve got it wrong.’

‘She’s left us a note,’ said Betty waving a piece of paper in the air. ‘All her things are gone.’

Eva snatched the note. ‘Dear Betty and Eva,’ she read, ‘I have just come from Matron’s office and I’ve been asked to leave. There’s very little time to explain because I have to be gone within the hour and Home Sister is waiting outside the door. Someone reported seeing us in the lift with Mr Steppings. Don’t worry, I haven’t said anything. Destroy this when you’ve read it. Thanks for being such good pals. I shall miss you. Love Connie.’

‘Do you think Home Sister saw this?’ Eva asked anxiously.

Betty shook her head. ‘She put it in my jewellery box. I only found it when I went to get my pearls. I thought she’d gone home for a couple of days … you know, after all that happened to her little sister. When I found the note, I looked through her drawers and everything has been cleaned out.’

Eva opened her wash bag and wiped her face with the damp flannel. She still felt a bit peculiar but her brain was slowly coming back into gear.

Betty still seemed confused. ‘What does she mean about Mr Steppings?’

Eva told her about the night she and Connie became friends. ‘His hand fell off the trolley and bopped me on the bottom,’ she said. ‘Connie made a joke about it being his last chance to touch a pretty girl, that’s all.’

‘But if all this happened while you were alone in the lift, who could have seen you?’

That was puzzling Eva as well. They had been alone in the lift when the incident took place. By the time they’d reached the ground floor, the pair of them had been careful to look as dignified as possible. Of course they had repeated the story to umpteen people since then. They’d meant no harm. It was part of the black humour of the hospital. No offence was intended and the nurses were always discreet in front of the patients, but joking about incidents like that between themselves helped to lighten some very dark moments.

There was a soft knock on the door and Eva opened it. Several other girls stood outside. ‘We heard you talking,’ said one, ‘and we guessed it must be about Connie. Isn’t it awful?’

‘I was with her on the ward today,’ said another. ‘None of us can believe this has happened.’

‘Come on in,’ said Eva. They squeezed into the small room, some sitting on the bed and the others on the floor. Everyone was upset and a few of them were crying. The big question was, what on earth could they do about it? What Matron said was as unalterable as the law of the Medes and Persians. With odds like that stacked against them, what hope did they have of getting their friend reinstated?

Thirty-One

His mother stared at the washing basket. Stan’s trousers were covered in mud and his shirt was very dirty. She didn’t want to think about it, but she was beginning to feel uncomfortable. When he’d come home on Monday night, he’d told her he’d been playing hide and seek with the children on High Salvington but it was odd that his things were so messy. She wouldn’t have bothered about it if it weren’t for the fact that almost as soon as he’d come through the door, he’d taken himself straight up to his room. She knew better than to follow him or disturb him once he had shut the door but she remembered the pattern from when he was a little boy. He usually shut himself away when he’d been up to mischief and he couldn’t face her. He didn’t come out again but she could hear him listening to the radio. She’d called up the stairs at supper time but when he didn’t appear, she’d left some cold meat and salad on a tray outside the door.

Later, when she’d come up to bed, he’d eaten everything and left the tray outside on the landing but that unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach was getting stronger. She’d spent a restless night but by the time she’d got up this morning he’d already left for work.

It was Ethel Durrent from next door who made the connection with Mandy. ‘They say they were up half the night looking for her,’ she said, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘Wasn’t your Stan there too?’

His mother put her fist into a ball, hardly daring to listen. Why hadn’t Stan mentioned this when he came home last night? ‘And was she all right?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Ethel, ‘but she was under a bomb.’

Mrs Saul relaxed. So nothing else. Thank God for that. The missing child was nothing to do with Stan.

‘Did you hear what I said, dear?’ Ethel was obviously waiting for some kind of reaction. ‘She was down a hole with a dirty great bomb on the top of her.’

Mrs Saul shook her head and looked suitably alarmed. ‘Poor kid. How awful. So what happened?’

Ethel Durrent gave her a blow by blow account but in truth, she wasn’t really listening. What sort of a mother was she when her first thought was an accusation against her own son? Rev Jackson trusted Stan. All that rubbish about using his second name. He needn’t have bothered. Rev Jackson said he was a wonderful pianist and he was so grateful when Stan, or Graham as he now wanted to be called, had volunteered to go with Jane Jackson on that outing. There weren’t many men who were willing to help out. Most blokes thought it was unmanly to be running around with a bunch of Sunday school kids, but then, Stan wasn’t like most men. He bought her cut flowers and he’d mowed the lawn for her. He was a good boy, was Stan.

But when she’d emptied the washing basket and seen the trousers and the shirt, something didn’t sit right. The old worry was back again. Supposing … Had Stan … What if …? His mother shook the bad thoughts away. Jane Jackson would have kept a close eye on those children and Stan would have been in plain sight of everyone. She’d managed to convince herself it was her imagination, until she went through his pockets and found a bright red hair ribbon.

It wasn’t until that evening that Connie finally sat down with her mother and Clifford to talk about Mandy. Ga was out. It couldn’t have worked out better for Connie. They were alone in the house. This wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be done.

Clifford sat with his newspaper and Gwen sat concentrating on her knitting, a complicated Fair Isle patterned waistcoat in 3 ply wool for her husband.

‘I need to talk to you about something that happened a long time ago,’ she told Gwen.

At the end of her row, Gwen looked up uncertainly. Clifford folded his newspaper and stood up. ‘I think I’ll just go outside and check on the greenhouse,’ he began.

‘If you don’t mind, Clifford,’ said Connie, ‘I’d prefer you to stay.’

He lowered himself back down into his chair.

‘This is hard to talk about,’ Connie began, ‘but it is important that you both know what happened.’

‘You’re scaring me,’ said Gwen, putting her knitting on the arm of her chair.

‘I don’t mean to, Mum,’ said Connie, ‘but please try not to interrupt while I do it. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

So she told them. She told them about that meeting with Stan Saul on Long Furlong twelve years ago. She told them how she and Kenneth had brought him home to the house in Patching. She told them about the cider he’d given them and how Kenneth had fallen asleep with his head on the table. Then she told them how she had ended up upstairs with Stan and how he’d got undressed. Clifford stared at the floor in shocked surprise and Gwen at first put her hand to her throat and then reached for Clifford’s hand when Connie described her fear and panic as Mr Charles was revealed.

‘Oh, God,’ Gwen whispered faintly. ‘So you think …? And Mr Charles …? Oh no, no …’ Connie nodded and her mother began to cry softly.

Clifford looked helplessly from one to the other. ‘Am I missing something here?’

‘It’s Mandy,’ said Gwen. ‘She keeps saying she doesn’t want to see Mr Charles.’

It took a second or two for the penny to drop then Clifford leapt to his feet, his face white with fury. ‘Tell me who this bastard is,’ he demanded. ‘Where is he? I’ll bloody tear him limb from limb.’

Connie put her hand on Clifford’s arm. ‘Clifford, I know you’re upset …’

‘Upset!’ he bellowed.

‘Shh,’ said Connie, looking anxiously up at the ceiling. ‘Whatever you do, don’t let Mandy hear you.’

He forced himself to lower his voice but he was still white hot with anger. ‘Then tell me where he is,’ he spat.

‘Clifford, the man needs to be behind bars,’ said Connie. ‘If you go after him, you’ll be the one in prison.’

‘Tell me or I swear I shall see Ga and make her tell me.’

‘No!’ cried Connie and Gwen in unison.

‘For God’s sake, don’t do that,’ said Connie. ‘You’ll do more harm than good. It took every ounce of courage for Mandy to tell me and if you tell Ga, she’ll go up there like a bull in a china shop.’

‘But you can’t expect me to do nothing,’ he cried helplessly.

‘Yes,’ said Gwen. ‘No,’ said Connie at the same time.

Shocked, Connie stared at her mother.

‘I don’t want my child being interrogated by the police,’ said Gwen. ‘That’s what it’ll mean, won’t it?’

Clifford put his hands to his head and ran his fingers through his hair.

‘We’ll be gone soon,’ Gwen said, taking hold of his arm. ‘A few more weeks and we’ll be on our way to Australia. Don’t you see? It’ll blow over. It’s going to be all right.’

‘Mum,’ said Connie, ‘I understand how you feel but believe me, this won’t blow over. Mandy will need help. Right now she thinks it’s her fault. She thinks she fell down the hole because she wouldn’t do what he wanted.’

Clifford moaned in pain and turned around in a tight circle.

‘And if Stan did the same to me all those years ago,’ Connie continued, ‘it stands to reason that he’s been doing it to other little girls in between. He has got to be stopped.’

Gwen looked at Connie as if seeing her for the first time. ‘I didn’t know,’ she apologised. ‘Oh Connie, why didn’t you say something at the time? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because Ga told me not to,’ said Connie. Her mother’s expression hardened. ‘Actually, I think for once in her life she did it for good reasons. To protect me, just like you want to protect Mandy, but it has to end here. How many other little girls has that monster frightened out of their wits in between? We can’t let it go on.’

‘She’s right,’ said Clifford.

‘No,’ Gwen insisted. ‘I won’t have you going to the police. And anyway,’ she said rounding on Connie, ‘just because he did it to you, doesn’t mean he actually touched Mandy, does it?’

Connie put her hand over her mouth. Her mother obviously had no idea how much that hurt. She sounded so indifferent to what had happened to her. Yes, she was an adult now but that day Stan had robbed her of something. From the moment he had exposed himself to her, she had lost her childhood innocence. Connie knew her mother was frantic with worry over Mandy but she could have done with a little more understanding and a hug.

‘Did Mandy tell you he touched her?’ said Clifford. He was quieter now, but just as angry.

‘I don’t think he did,’ said Connie.

‘How can you be sure?’ Clifford asked.

‘I think when he showed her Mr Charles,’ said Connie, ‘that was the moment Pip went for him.’

‘Pip,’ said Gwen. ‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten about him.’

‘The vet said that Pip had been hit with something, a piece of wood or a log,’ said Connie. ‘Someone viciously beat him and left him for dead.’

Gwen took in her breath. ‘And you think Mandy saw all that too?’

Connie nodded.

‘But why didn’t she take the opportunity to run away?’ Clifford cried.

‘She was too frightened,’ said Connie. ‘My guess is that after she saw what had happened to Pip, that’s when she ran away.’

Clifford put his head in his hands. ‘And then she fell down the hole.’

‘But Stan went back with the others to look for her,’ said Gwen. ‘Why didn’t he tell everybody where she was?’ She saw Clifford and Connie share a glance and at last Gwen understood. Stan didn’t want Mandy to be found. He’d left her down the hole to die.

‘I know we should go to the police,’ said Gwen choking back a small sob, ‘but I keep thinking how awful it would be for her. She’s only a little girl. How can we put her through all that as well?’

Neither of them had an answer to that. They heard the back door open and close again and Ga walked in. She seemed surprised when they turned towards her. ‘What’s the matter with you lot?’

‘You’d better tell her, Gwennie,’ said Clifford. ‘I don’t think I’ve the stomach for it. I’m off to the pub.’

‘You won’t say anything, will you?’ Gwen said frantically.

‘Of course not,’ he snapped. ‘What do you take me for?’ He reached for his cap on the back of the door. ‘But it isn’t right, Gwennie.’

‘What isn’t right?’ said Ga as he slammed the door.

‘This is all down to you,’ Gwen snarled at Ga. ‘You and your bloody interfering. If you had left well alone, none of this would have happened.’

‘Mum, that’s not fair,’ said Connie. ‘Ga was trying to do the best thing for me, just the same as you’re doing for Mandy.’

‘Will one of you tell me what’s going on?’ Ga demanded.

‘Stan Saul was with Mandy on High Salvington,’ said Connie.

Ga lowered herself into her chair as Connie began to explain.

‘No,’ she said when Connie had finished. ‘That can’t be right. His mother told me he was a changed man.’

‘What are you saying?’ said Connie faintly.

Ga looked up sharply. ‘He never actually touched you, did he?’

Connie laughed sardonically. ‘You know as well as I do that he came this close,’ she said, holding her thumb and forefinger together.

‘You were drunk,’ said Ga defensively.

‘I was thirteen years old!’ Connie retorted. Connie was aware that her mother had begun to cry again. ‘And actually, I wasn’t drunk. He’d put something in my drink, Ga. And he did the same to Kenneth’s. I’d hardly had more than a mouthful when I felt funny and couldn’t stand up properly. Kenneth flaked out altogether.’

Ga stared at Connie in disbelief. ‘But he said …’

‘He said, he said,’ said Connie angrily. ‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it? You never once bothered to ask Kenneth and me what happened, did you? You assumed … and just because Stan was older than the both of us you took his word for it.’

There was a thick silence as the two of them digested what Connie was saying.

‘He promised me it would never happen again,’ said Ga. Her voice was a lot smaller now. ‘What was I supposed to do? Stan is all his mother has got. She dotes on that boy. It would have broken her heart if I’d gone to the police.’

‘But I was your family,’ cried Connie passionately as she crossed both hands over her chest.

Gwen was still furious but Connie felt strangely moved with compassion. She’d never seen Ga quite like this before. ‘Don’t you see?’ she said sitting down next to her. ‘By not going to the police all that time ago, you separated this family and put countless other little girls in danger.’

Ga looked up at her. Her face was white. ‘He said it was all your fault. He said you’d egged him on and teased him. He said you were up for it.’

‘You’re not listening, Ga,’ Gwen snapped. ‘They all say that. Men who want to be with little girls. The man is sick … evil … He’ll say anything to justify what he’s done.’

‘But he got married,’ Ga protested loudly.

‘And she killed herself,’ said Connie. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder about that, Ga? I certainly did, especially when you told us that his wife had been a widow with a little girl of her own.’

The full horror of what Connie had implied shocked them all. The sound of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to grow louder by the second.

‘So what do I do now?’ said Ga eventually.

‘I don’t want Mandy to have to talk to the police,’ said Gwen helplessly. ‘One day they might treat a child with kindness and care but I know that right now they’ll try and get her to say she’s made it all up. They’ll shout at her and frighten her and I can’t have that.’

Connie put her head in her hands. They were back to square one. Her mother began to cry again.

‘It’s all right, Mum,’ said Connie, rubbing her mother’s arm gently.

‘And I’m sorry about you,’ said Gwen brokenly. ‘I wish you could have told me. I should have been there for you, darling.’

Ga fished out a handkerchief from her apron pocket and moved away from them to blow her nose.

‘Anyway,’ said Gwen. ‘We’ll be out of the country soon. We can make a fresh start.’

Ga spun around. ‘Out of the country? What are you talking about?’

Gwen sniffed loudly and drew herself up. ‘Clifford and I are going to Australia. There’s a new scheme for migrant workers and we’re taking Mandy.’

Ga’s jaw dropped. ‘But why?’

‘Don’t give me that, Ga,’ said Gwen, her voice loaded with sarcasm. ‘You know perfectly well why. We want a life of our own. Clifford wants to be the master of his own destiny, not a slave to your beck and call.’

‘But all this is for you …’ cried Ga. She waved her hands expansively.

‘You’ve trotted that one out for years,’ said Gwen, angrily stuffing her knitting back into the knitting bag, ‘and yet every suggestion Clifford makes, you won’t allow. He’s stifled here and I can’t bear to see him so unhappy anymore.’

With head high, she marched out of the room and went upstairs.

‘I don’t believe this,’ whispered Ga. ‘What on earth is happening to this family?’

‘I think you’ll find it’s discovered its backbone at last,’ said Connie.

Connie was up early but Ga was already sitting at her writing bureau. She was in her dressing gown and her plaited hair hung over her shoulder. Connie, who was already washed and dressed, put a cup of tea on the drop-down lid. She was still annoyed with Ga but she had made up her mind to try and be civil. Ga moved her arm quickly to cover the page and stopped writing. All at once Connie realised that the paper she was using was exactly the same pale cream paper that Matron was holding in her office. Anger exploded in her chest.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ she snarled.

‘What?’

‘You wrote to Matron and got me the sack, didn’t you?’

‘What are you talking …?’ Ga began.

Connie snatched the page and held it up. ‘Don’t bother to deny it. I saw the letter. It was written on paper just like this.’

‘I have never written to your Matron,’ Ga bellowed indignantly. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

But Connie was on a roll now. ‘How many others have you written, Ga? What about those horrible letters to Sally Burndell?’

‘Sally Burndell,’ Ga blustered, ‘was a silly airheaded girl who was cheeky to the customers.’

‘And you tried to destroy her for that!’ Connie shrieked.

There was a small sound and Gwen stood by the doorway. ‘What’s going on now?’

‘It was Ga who wrote those poison pen letters to Sally,’ Connie accused. ‘And she’s the one who got me the sa …’ Connie only just stopped herself in time. ‘And while we’re on the subject …’ she began again. She ran from the room, up to her bedroom and back again. Throwing a piece of paper on the bureau in front of Ga she added breathlessly, ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain that.’

They were looking at a childish picture of a house. It had a red roof and smoke coming from the crooked chimney. On one side was a mummy, a daddy and a little girl. The little girl was holding the hand of another adult, a woman, wearing what looked like a frilly cap. On the other side of the house was a much older woman.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Ga said defensively.

‘Mandy said you stopped her from taking a piece of paper from your bureau,’ said Connie. ‘She wanted to make Mum a birthday card.’

‘She took it without my permission,’ said Ga indignantly. ‘Theft is theft no matter what the reason for taking it.’

‘Mandy also told me you dropped this when you were burning something in the range,’ said Connie. ‘If stealing a piece of paper is theft, what would you call this, Ga?’

Connie turned the paper over and Ga paled. It was now obvious that Mandy had drawn on the back of an envelope. The envelope was addressed to Mrs G. Craig and in the top left-hand corner it said Royal Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead.

Thirty-Two

Rev Jackson was speechless. His face had paled and he fiddled with his cassock. Connie didn’t bother telling him about Ga and what she’d been up to. She was only interested in telling him about Stan and by the time she had finished what she had to say, Connie was trembling.

They were sitting in his office in his own home. They were alone, apart from Mrs Jackson who had been cleaning in the hallway when Connie arrived. She had brought them a pot of tea.

‘This is certainly a sorry tale,’ said Rev Jackson when Connie had finished, ‘but I hesitate to act upon this information. It was all a very long time ago and perhaps your memory has eroded what actually happened.’ Connie must have shown her disappointment because he added quickly, ‘I really don’t doubt that you believe you have spoken truthfully, my dear, but Graham, I mean Stan, is bound to deny it and all I am left with is your word against his.’

He gave her an apologetic stare. He was right of course, and Connie couldn’t go against her mother’s wishes. She had only told Rev Jackson about her own experience. She hadn’t mentioned a word about Mandy.

‘I just felt the need to warn you, that’s all,’ said Connie, getting to her feet. They walked out into the hallway. ‘I don’t think it would be such a good idea to let him have contact with the children … especially unsupervised.’

‘We are always very careful about looking after the children in our care,’ said Rev Jackson. ‘Changing the subject, how is your sister? What happened to her on High Salvington was most unfortunate. Tell your mother I shall call around this afternoon.’

Connie shook his hand and walked away. Without Mandy’s testimony she wasn’t going to get anywhere, was she? She could understand her mother’s reluctance, but it was frustrating. She still felt physically sick every time she thought about Stan and yet she had been one of the lucky ones. If Ga hadn’t have come back at that very moment, God alone knew what would have happened. From what she could gather, Mandy had been just as fortunate, but how many other children hadn’t? If only there was some way she could stop that monster in his tracks.

Connie trembled as she stood outside of the house. She had waited by the gate for some time, trying to pluck up courage to knock on the door. The house itself was the most attractive in the road. The garden was neat and tidy with roses around the door and delphiniums, goldenrod and lupins waving in the borders. She had never been here before and she didn’t want to be here now. She had chosen her time very carefully. It was time for the Golden Hour Meeting and Stan would be at his place on the piano. On Wednesday afternoons, Rev Jackson held a service for the pensioners of his congregation, followed by a cup of tea, which was why he was dressed in his minister’s robes when she’d seen him in his office.

Connie was banking on the fact that Stan’s mother would still be at home. She never went to church so it was now or never. She took one last deep breath and walked up the path.

Mrs Saul looked a little surprised when she opened the door and saw Connie.

Connie didn’t wait for an invitation to come in, she simply barged past. ‘I’m sorry, Auntie Aggie, but this is important. I need to talk to you.’

Roger looked at Gwen anxiously. ‘I’ve come to see Connie.’

Gwen smiled. ‘You’d better come in. You’re not the first and I’m in the middle of baking bread.’ She indicated her floury hands.

Roger followed her into the neat kitchen. Connie’s great aunt was sitting hunched up by the kitchen range. She glanced up as Roger came in but far from the torrent of abuse she usually dished out when she saw a Maxwell, she nodded curtly and lowered her eyes.

Roger looked around at the other assembled people and was dismayed to see that one of them was the French Canadian and the other, the chap who’d been with him on the hill. They apparently brought gifts for Mandy and Roger was immediately annoyed with himself that he hadn’t thought of doing something like that too. He couldn’t help admiring the beautifully handcrafted doll’s cradle and a little chair. It must have cost a packet. They weren’t the only people in the room. There was someone else, a girl with flame-coloured hair and an interesting weather-beaten face.

‘This is Kezia,’ said Gwen. ‘She’s an old friend of Connie’s. Kez popped in on the off chance of seeing her as well.’

Roger and Kezia exchanged a nod of greeting.

‘And you know Eugène and Isaac of course.’

Roger nodded politely and looked away.

‘We’re here to say goodbye,’ said Kez by way of explanation. ‘The Frenchie is moving to Slinden with us and I came to thank Connie for looking after my brother.’

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Gwen said, holding up her floury hands again, ‘but I must put this in a warm place to rise.’

‘No, no,’ said Roger. ‘You carry on. That’s fine.’

‘I owe you an apology Captain Maxwell,’ said Ga.

Roger lifted his hand to stop her. ‘You were distraught. It really doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh but it does,’ said Ga. Her tone was contrite and her voice small. ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking since last I saw you and I’m ashamed of my behaviour. I have come to see that I may have confused my loyalties.’

‘Please …’ Roger protested, then turning to Gwen he said, ‘Is Connie here?’

Mrs Craig and Kez shook their heads.

‘She said she was going to see Reverend Jackson,’ said Ga dully. ‘If I had known Stan was going to turn out like that, I would never have gone along with what Aggie said.’

Roger frowned. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘There’s no need to go into all that, Ga.’ Gwen glared at her aunt and then added, ‘We’ve all had a bit of a shock what with one thing and another.’

‘Oh, so you know about Connie?’ Roger asked. ‘I must say, not to put too fine a point on it that I was appalled by what Matron had done.’

He looked around at their puzzled expressions and started to feel uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and lowered himself onto one of the kitchen chairs. ‘Look, I don’t know how much she has told you,’ he began, ‘although knowing Connie probably nothing at all because she wouldn’t want to upset you.’

Gwen’s face paled. ‘Is something wrong? This sounds serious, Captain Maxwell.’

‘Roger, please,’ said Roger. ‘Haven’t you all wondered why Connie is at home and not in the hospital?’ He glared at Eugène and noted with some satisfaction the anxious look on his face. The man didn’t know. Roger resisted the smug smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

The three women looked at each other. ‘It’s her day off,’ said Ga.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Roger. ‘It seems that someone made an allegation about Connie behaving inappropriately. They accused her of being disrespectful towards a patient.’

Gwen clutched at her chest leaving floury marks all over her apron. ‘What?’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Kezia stoutly.

‘Apparently Matron had an anonymous letter,’ Roger went on. ‘Connie has been sacked.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Kezia said again. Ga moaned.

‘Sacked?’ said Eugène. He and Isaac exchanged a worried glance.

‘But she never said a word about it,’ Gwen gasped.

‘Yes, she did,’ said Ga. ‘I remember it now. She told me but it didn’t really register. It was when we were fighting over that envelope. Don’t you remember? She was about to say that I’d got her the sack from the hospital.’

Roger raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Ga challenged. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’

Nobody spoke.

‘Like I said,’ Roger went on, ‘in view of the terrible day you all had on Monday, she probably didn’t want to upset you. All her friends, including my sister feel it’s grossly unfair and for that matter, completely untrue.’

‘An anonymous letter, you say?’ said Ga.

‘But who could have done such a thing?’ cried Kez.

‘Who indeed,’ said Roger.

‘I saw the way she looked after my father,’ Kez went on. ‘She’s a wonderful nurse.’

Ga was staring into the hearth.

‘Can nothing be done?’ asked Eugène.

Roger pulled a face. ‘Apparently Matron is adamant.’

‘What’s she supposed to have done … exactly?’

Roger repeated the story about Mr Steppings.

‘I remember her telling us about that,’ said Gwen. ‘It was an accident. No harm was intended.’

‘I’m sure of it,’ said Roger, ‘but the fact remains, Connie has lost the opportunity to do the thing she wanted most, to be a nurse.’

They heard the sound of a bed creaking upstairs and everyone’s eye turned towards the ceiling.

‘Mandy,’ said Gwen, looking directly at Roger. She glanced down at her dough. ‘I must get this out of the way before she comes down.’ She was pushing the dough into tins and covering them with a clean tea towel.

‘Forgive me,’ said Roger. ‘I forgot to ask. How is she?’

‘She was up quite early this morning so she’s having a rest now,’ said Gwen. ‘I want to thank you for everything you did to help us.’

Roger shook his head. ‘It was nothing. What happened to the dog?’

‘He died,’ said Eugène. ‘Clifford and I buried him in the orchard.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Roger. ‘Connie was fond of that dog.’

‘Pip is dead!’ Kez cried in alarm. ‘When he wasn’t here, I simply thought he was out for a walk.’

‘Someone attacked him,’ said Gwen.

‘Whatever for?’ cried Kez.

‘It’s a long story,’ said Gwen, ‘but we think Pip tried to help Mandy and her attacker lashed out.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ said Kez.

‘Have you managed to trace the man?’ Roger asked.

Gwen and Ga exchanged looks and then Ga blew her nose again.

The floor above their heads creaked again. ‘Ga, why don’t you go up and sit with Mandy?’ said Gwen. She had put the dough to rise next to the range and was busy clearing the table to do the washing up. ‘It would be good for her to see a familiar face when she wakes up.’

The older woman rose to her feet and left the room.

‘I don’t know how much Connie has told you,’ Gwen said to Roger.

Kez stood up. ‘I’d better be going.’

‘I’d rather you stayed, Kez,’ said Gwen. ‘You too, Eugène. Along with Eva, you are the most important people in her life and Connie is going to need all the help she can get if she’s to get through this.’

Aggie Saul sat white-faced at her kitchen table. She had listened to everything Connie had told her without once interrupting. It was far worse than she’d ever dreamed. Her mind drifted back to when Stan was a boy. He was such a lovely looking child and it wasn’t until he was about twelve that she realised he was a little different. That’s when she’d caught him with little Estelle from next door.

He’d persuaded the child to take off her knickers and do a wee by the back door. While she performed, he was watching her and touching himself. Aggie had scolded him of course. At the time she’d put it down to natural curiosity but in her heart of hearts she’d known it wasn’t right. Estelle was only six, for goodness sake. Stan’s father had wanted to give him a thrashing when Aggie had told him what had happened. Aggie had tried to stop him of course but Leslie had been too enraged to listen. Having called her boy every name under the sun he’d reached for his belt but Aggie made sure he never laid a finger on her son and from that moment, she’d raised her little lad on her own.

She’d known about Olive catching him with Connie but she didn’t feel that counted because they both blamed Kenneth. Olive had found some money on the table and said Stan had paid Kenneth to go with his sister. Well, what red-blooded young lad wouldn’t make the most of an opportunity like that, and Stan had been most apologetic.

She took a deep breath. How dare Connie come here and accuse her Stan of wrongdoing all those years ago? Why didn’t she say something at the time? Connie was going on about Mandy now. Agatha frowned. There was no proof that Stan was anywhere near the child. He’d been with Jane Jackson all the time. With a sister like Connie, it was far more likely that the girl had made the whole thing up.

They heard the back door slam and Stan’s voice called, ‘Mother, I’m home.’

Connie’s face paled. He was back a lot sooner than she had expected. She rose to her feet as he walked in the door. Her heart began to pound. She shouldn’t have done this on her own. She should have waited for Roger or asked Clifford to come with her, or even gone to the police.

Stan stared at both of them. ‘Connie, what an unexpected surprise,’ he smiled affably.

He took out his cigarette case and Aggie’s mothering instincts kicked in. Her eyes narrowed as she walked to her son’s side. ‘Connie’s been saying bad things about you, son,’ she said. ‘She’s been telling me that you like little girls. She says you had something to do with Mandy going missing on the Sunday school outing. Tell me it’s not true, son. Tell me it’s not true.’

Stan shot her a wounded look. ‘Of course it’s not true, Mother,’ he simpered. ‘How could you believe I’d do anything like that? Why, it’s disgusting.’ He glanced at Connie and said in a much sharper tone, ‘Whatever she’s said, she’s a liar.’

A wave of revulsion and nausea flooded over Connie. ‘You’re sick, Stan,’ she said. ‘You need help.’

‘It was you who went to see Reverend Jackson, wasn’t it?’ said Stan.

Connie was relieved. Perhaps it was going to be all right after all. Rev Jackson must have spoken to Stan straight away. ‘He’s a good man,’ she said, softening her voice. ‘I’m sure when you both have a chat, he’ll make sure you get all the help you need.’

Stan smirked. ‘Reverend Jackson and I have already had a long chat.’

‘That’s good,’ she sighed.

‘I told him not to believe a word of it,’ said Stan in a superior tone. He took out his cigarette case and tapped a cigarette on the lid. ‘He was very embarrassed having to bring it up but after I explained everything, he reckoned it would all blow over soon. All I’ve got to do is sit tight.’

Connie’s jaw dropped.

‘He could see it was untrue, Mother,’ Stan continued. ‘As a matter of fact, he said that his daughter was most impressed by the way I helped out with those kids on the outing.’

Connie’s eyes filled.

‘He said he would do all in his power to … what was it? Ah yes, “to purge this village of gossip and innuendo”,’ said Stan confidently. ‘In fact, I think he was going into his study to prepare his sermon on Sunday.’ Stan waved his hand as if creating a headline. ‘No gossiper shall inherit the kingdom of God.’

Connie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. When she’d left Rev Jackson he was confident that what she had told him was true and yet somehow this silver-tongued monster had turned the tables yet again.

‘You know me, Mother,’ Stan continued. ‘Would I really do all those terrible things like she said?’

Aggie looked up at him with trusting eyes. ‘I never believed it for a moment, son, but what are we going to do?’

Connie suddenly felt very vulnerable. She took a step towards the door but Stan was right there barring the way. ‘Don’t be a fool, Stan,’ she began. ‘I’ve already told my family where I am.’

‘Let me see,’ said Stan, stroking his chin and play-acting a part. ‘Yes, Connie was here. She stayed for a cup of tea and then we both saw her leave, didn’t we, Mother?’

As he lunged towards Connie, she pulled the chair over between them. She backed away but there was nowhere to go. Stan and Aunt Aggie were both blocking the only way out of the room. Connie did her best to fight them off but within minutes they had pulled her from the kitchen into the hallway. Stan grabbed her painfully by the arm and Aunt Aggie opened another door. Stan shoved her in front of it and then Connie was slipping and falling down the cellar steps.

Thirty-Three

Rev Jackson was slightly surprised to see Eugène and Kezia at his front door. Eugène he had long admired. The man had done such a lot for the community during that long horrible winter and it seemed grossly unfair that he should be struggling with his business now. Rev Jackson was never one to listen to gossip but he had heard that the engagement with Miss Hampton was off. She had apparently fallen for an Earl and preferred to be known as a Countess rather than plain wife. Rev Jackson was aware of the gypsy woman because he’d had words with her grandmother about telling fortunes on the doorstep. He couldn’t think why they should both want to see him. As they followed him to his study, it crossed his mind that perhaps they wanted to marry. They seemed a rather unlikely pair but the war had changed so many things.

As they left Connie’s home, Eugène, Isaac and Kez had agreed that they couldn’t sit around twiddling their thumbs the same as everyone else. Ga had said Connie had gone to see the minister, so Eugène had suggested they start from there. He and Kez went to the door, while Isaac waited in the motor. He had no time for Rev Jackson. After all, it was his testimony that helped to put him behind bars.

Eugène got straight to the point.

‘Connie?’ said Rev Jackson. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, she came to see me this morning but I haven’t seen her since.’

‘Did she talk to you about Stan Saul?’

Rev Jackson put up his hand in a stop signal. ‘I’m afraid I am not at liberty to discuss a confidence.’

‘Sir, we have reason to believe he’s a child molester,’ said Eugène firmly.

‘Oh, I think not,’ said Rev Jackson smiling benevolently. ‘Connie was a little confused, that’s all. After the events of yesterday that’s hardly surprising …’

‘Connie wasn’t making it up, Reverend,’ said Kez. ‘I know she’s telling the truth ’cos he done it to me an’ all.’

It was dark in the cellar. The only light came from a dirty window near the ceiling. Connie sat miserably on the stair and cried. Her leg hurt like hell from where she’d fallen and she’d done something to her finger. She’d been an absolute idiot. No one knew where she was and there was no telling what Stan and his mother would do next. Even though no one believed her, it was in Stan’s best interest to shut her up somehow. The cottage was isolated so there was no point in shouting for help. No one would hear her anyway. There were other cottages in the road but Aggie’s place stood apart from them. Gradually, as her eyes became used to the dimness, she looked around for some sort of weapon. She was no match for the two of them, especially with a bad leg, but, by God, she’d go down fighting. The one person she found hard to cope with was Auntie Aggie. Surely the woman could see what her son was like and yet she’d closed her eyes to what he was doing again and again.

Connie looked around. She found a rolled umbrella with a long spike in a corner. It looked as if someone had hammered it a bit and she couldn’t open it up but it might come in handy. There was a steel ruler on a table by the wall. She practised a couple of jabbing movements with it. She would have to be really close to someone to make a difference but in a desperate situation, it was better than nothing. She put them both near the bottom of the stairs.

The light was fading. Soon it would be completely dark and Connie knew that’s when she would be in the greatest danger. She rubbed her cold arms. She wished she’d kept her cardigan on now but it was still upstairs in the sitting room. She looked up at the cellar door. Was there some way she could barricade herself in? He wouldn’t be expecting that. She hobbled back to the stairs to look at the lock. The stairs were quite rickety, but the door at the top was stout. It was opened by a latch and a keyhole but the key wasn’t on the other side of the door. Her only hope of stopping them from getting in and buy a little time was to block the latch.

Back downstairs, she scoured the cellar for something to use as a wedge. The whole place was surprisingly clean. Rows of kilner jars with preserved fruit and pickles lined the shelves. The floor was nicely swept and there was a table and chair in the corner. She tried the drawer in the table and cried out in surprise. Inside she’d found a fountain pen and some paper, a pretty beige with a watermark, neatly laid out. She held it up to the fading light and saw the same lion’s head watermark that she’d noticed in Matron’s office. Whoever wrote the damning letter that got her the sack had used this very paper. Connie sat down on the chair to think. In her own mind, she had accused Ga. Ga had some of this paper in her desk. Mandy had got into trouble for trying to take a sheet because Ga always said it was for her and her alone. Yet Auntie Aggie had some too. Could it be that it was Auntie Aggie who had written to Matron? But how would she have known what happened in the lift? Then Connie remembered telling the family about it. Had Aunt Aggie been there too? Even if she wasn’t, she and Ga told each other everything so it was perfectly possible that Ga had told her the story about Mr Steppings. Connie’s heartbeat quickened.

There was a letter opener and a small hard-backed book at the back of the drawer. The book seemed to be a list of names, all beautifully written in the same copperplate handwriting. But before she examined anything else, Connie climbed the stairs again and forced the letter opener through the latch. It was rudimentary, but it would give her a little more time, if nothing else. Then she went back downstairs to have another look at what was in the drawer.

Eva had been busy collecting signatures. It seemed that the whole hospital was shocked by Connie’s sacking. She’d obviously made a huge impression on people and everyone wanted to help. Eva was on duty at two.

At twelve thirty, Eva had gone back to the nurses’ home to change. A man accosted her outside the door. He had already stopped three other girls but they had rebuffed him.

‘Brendan Beardsley, Worthing Gazette,’ he said. ‘Have you any comment to make on the new National Health Service which comes into being next year? I’m sure our readers would be very interested to know the feelings of an ordinary nurse.’

Eva smiled. All at once, she realised she had stumbled on a way to get Connie’s plight noticed. If she could get the reporter interested, it would be a whole heap more powerful than a few signatures. She slipped her arm through his and led him back out to the road.

‘Yesterday your newspaper ran a story about the little girl lost on High Salvington,’ she began. ‘Would you be interested to hear what happened to the heroic nurse who helped to rescue her?’

PC Noble had a problem with believing their story. He may have dismissed it altogether if had just been the gypsy, but Rev Jackson was a respected member of the community and when Captain Maxwell turned up to talk to him about the same matter, PC Noble realised that he would have to tread carefully. He didn’t hesitate to tell them that he’d had his eye on Saul ever since he’d turned up in the area and decided to change his name. ‘I thought to myself, what man with nothing to hide,’ said the policeman, ‘changes his name?’

‘Quite so,’ said Roger, although changing your Christian name didn’t seem to be such a big deal to him.

‘But after a few enquiries,’ PC Noble went on, ‘I discovered that Saul’s wife had committed suicide.’

‘She didn’t kill herself,’ said Kez. ‘He pushed her. I saw him.’

The policeman gave her a sceptical look. ‘I should be careful, young lady, making accusations like that.’

‘The point is,’ said Captain Maxwell, ‘we want the authority of the law present when we go to the house. We feel that this man should be questioned about the little girl.’

Half an hour later, PC Noble parked his police bicycle in the hedge, took off his bicycle clips and straightened his tunic. The others were already waiting in the lane. They had driven to the house in Isaac’s car and Captain Maxwell’s car.

‘I think it would be best if you leave me to handle this, sir,’ he said, leaning into Captain Maxwell’s window. ‘By coming to me, you’ve made it a police matter.’ To Eugène and the others he called out, ‘Wait here.’

Roger nodded his agreement reluctantly. In his opinion, Noble was as gullible as the rest of them when it came to Saul. He was annoyed that Eugène had got to the police house before he had. They might have been friends of Connie’s but he thought them all a bit shifty.

Eugène had never felt more anxious. Had Connie come here? He worried that she had got herself into deep water. Kez squeezed his arm encouragingly. ‘She’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘Connie is as tough as old boots.’

Roger was proved right almost immediately. PC Noble came back almost straight away. ‘Mrs Saul tells me Miss Dixon was here but she left about two hours ago,’ he said.

‘You did go in?’ said Roger.

‘I have no reason not to believe her, sir,’ said the policeman. ‘I can’t just go barging into people’s homes with no good reason.’

‘But what if she is in there?’

‘I’d need a warrant, sir, and there’s no reason to suppose that even if she is in there that she’s come to any harm.’

‘Did you ask to see Saul?’ Eugène asked.

‘He wasn’t there.’ Noble turned his bicycle round and touched his helmet. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye out, sir, don’t you worry. Now if I was you, I’d go home. She’s probably there waiting for you.’

Roger hit the steering wheel in frustration.

‘She’s still in there,’ said Kez.

‘You heard the man,’ said Roger. ‘She left. She probably wandered off somewhere to think.’

‘You’re not going to leave it at that, are you?’ cried Kez. She climbed down from the motor. ‘We have to make sure.’

Roger wound down the window. ‘Let’s go back to the nurseries and make sure she hasn’t gone home first.’ He started up the car.

‘I’m going in there,’ said Kezia, producing a few tired looking sprigs from her skirt pocket. ‘I’ll make out I’m selling lucky heather.’

‘No,’ said Roger firmly. ‘I think my idea is better.’

‘Fine,’ said Kez. She turned towards Eugène and her brother. ‘If I’m not back in an hour, come looking for me.’

‘Don’t be such an idiot,’ cried Roger. ‘You can’t go barging in there.’

‘Watch me,’ said Kez.

Roger watched her walk up the lane, turn onto the path and knock on the door. Mrs Saul, he presumed it was her, opened it and Kezia offered her the heather. The older woman shook her head but Kezia kept talking. A couple of seconds later, Kezia went inside. Eugène and Isaac used the opportunity to creep around the side of the house. Roger stared at the front door anxiously. What now? Kezia was gone for ages and by the time the door opened again, he was beginning to think he would have to drive back to the police station and get Noble again.

‘What on earth were you doing?’ he gasped as Kezia returned to his car and climbed in.

‘Telling her fortune,’ Kezia grinned. She opened her palm and showed him the ten bob note Aggie had given her.

‘For God’s sake …’ Roger began crossly.

‘You don’t think I believe in all that stuff, do you?’ she said. ‘I told her a load of rubbish and then Stan come in and turfed me out.’

‘So he was there!’ cried Roger. ‘Did he recognise you?’

‘Why should he?’ said Kez bitterly. ‘How many of them remember the kids they ruin? I was only eight when he got me.’

‘I’m sorry, Kez,’ said Roger genuinely. ‘That copper is a bloody idiot. He said he wasn’t there.’

They were quiet for a second or two, and then the door of the car opened and Eugène slid in the back seat. ‘What the hell …’ Roger began.

‘Are you all right, girl?’ Eugène’s voice was quiet but full of concern.

She shrugged. ‘If I’d had a knife, I’d have stuck it in his black heart.’

Eugène gripped her shoulder. ‘If Connie is in there,’ he said, ‘she’s most likely in the attic. Isaac’s gone to take a look.’

‘She’s in there all right,’ said Kez. ‘I saw her cardigan on the arm of the chair.’ She grinned. ‘I didn’t say a dicky-bird and it’s obvious they haven’t even noticed it’s still there.’

‘But you haven’t seen her for months,’ Roger protested. ‘How do you know it was hers?’

‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ said Kezia good-naturedly, ‘we girls don’t have a lot of clothes these days. Believe me, it was hers.’

‘Well spotted then,’ said Roger grudgingly. He turned towards Eugène. ‘You obviously know the woman. Why don’t you go in and demand Connie back?’

‘There’s no love lost between me and Aggie Saul,’ said Eugène with a shrug. ‘She was very upset when I refused to let her have extra coal during the big freeze.’

‘So what do we do now?’ said Kez.

‘My guess is he’ll get her out of there tonight,’ said Eugène.

‘Do you think he’ll kill her?’

Eugène nodded. ‘Yes but he’ll do it somewhere else. He’ll want it to look like suicide or something, especially now that he knows the police have been around.’

‘But she’ll kick up a fuss,’ said Kez. ‘How will …?’ She stopped in her tracks as if remembering and added, ‘He’ll give her something to drink. That’s what he did to me.’

‘You mean he’ll drug her and then carry her out?’ said Eugène.

‘Don’t you think that’s all a bit far-fetched?’ said Roger.

‘I can’t risk hanging about,’ said Eugène opening the car door again.

‘You can’t risk hanging about?’ Roger snapped. ‘I care about her too you know.’

Eugène hesitated. ‘Then help me find her!’

It was getting more difficult to see in the light. The sun was going down and the amber dusk was giving way to evening. Connie thought she heard a strange rustling sound and hid. Stan was coming back. After a minute or two of hiding under the stairs, she realised it wasn’t Stan. Perhaps it was an animal creeping about in the undergrowth outside. She wasn’t sure if the noise came from outside the door at the top of the stairs or the little window but when she came out of hiding, she called softly at the window a couple of times but it was quiet as the grave. It must have been a cat, she told herself. She’d spent some time looking at the book in the drawer and quickly realised that it contained a list of names. They didn’t mean anything until she came across two names she recognised, Sally Burndell and then her own. Her heart sank as she realised that these must be the people who had been the victims of the poison pen letters. On closer inspection she’d come across Mrs Ranger. Connie lowered herself onto the chair. Mrs Ranger had jumped off the end of Worthing pier at high tide. No one knew the reason why. She’d always seemed such a contented woman. There was no note either. It was a mystery. Could it be that … no, no, it didn’t bear thinking about. It would have been easy to give way to tears at that moment but instead, Connie pulled herself together. She still needed to find something, anything which would help her fight Stan when he came back. He would come back, she was absolutely sure of that and she had to keep hold of this book. It was evidence.

She looked at the preserves. She could throw a few of them at him, but she had a rotten aim. She looked around again. There was a low table under the stairs. She noticed a draught as she walked there and wondered if there was an opening somewhere. The air circulated nicely just here. The walls seemed solid although there was an air brick higher up the wall.

She lifted the cloth on the low table and discovered it wasn’t a table but a blanket box of some sort. Perhaps she could hide the book in there. Aunt Aggie mightn’t miss it straight away and with a bit of luck, Connie could get it to the police before she knew it was missing.

It wasn’t locked. Connie threw it open and jumped back, grabbing at her throat and stifling a scream of horror. The shock was immense. Even in the failing light she could see what it was straight away. A dull musty smell filled the air as Connie trembled uncontrollably. She was looking at the mummified remains of a man.

Thirty-Four

Kez was the only one who kept her cool. It was obvious that both Eugène and Roger were in love with Connie. ‘Pack it in you two,’ she snapped. ‘This is neither the time nor the place.’ The two men settled into an uneasy truce.

Isaac came back a few minutes later. ‘I’ve found a way to the roof and there is an attic all right.’

‘Is she there?’ Roger asked anxiously.

Isaac shrugged. ‘I’ll need something to open the window,’ he said.

Roger was feeling very uncomfortable. Breaking and entering wasn’t his style.

Connie heard the key turn in the lock and Stan tried to push the door open but the letter opener did its work. She heard him curse her through the wood. Connie looked around wildly. Where was the best place to be? If she was to get up the stairs without him seeing her, she had to be close enough to make a dash for it and yet hidden enough so that he wouldn’t spot her straight away.

He came back a few minutes later and took the wood axe to the door. Connie’s heart was in her mouth. This was it. This was the moment when she started to fight for her life. It didn’t take long to break the latch and the door flew open. Stan swung a torch around the cellar.

‘I’m coming to get you,’ he called as if he was playing a child’s game. Connie shuddered as he began walking down the stairs. ‘Ready or not, I’m coming.’

She waited until he had entered the cellar and was walking towards the desk then scrambling on all fours she came out from under the stairs, stood up and made her dash. She was halfway there when Stan roared in anger. Panic constricted Connie’s throat. The man of her childhood nightmares was right behind her and her legs couldn’t move fast enough.

Connie’s heart was thumping wildly and she could hardly breathe for the panic that seized her at that moment, but somehow she managed to reach the stairs and began the race for the top. Terror was making her whimper now. Her eyes were wide with fear, her head hurt and she had developed a discernible tic on her cheek. Her only thought was getting through the door, a mere eight steps away, and out of the house. She could almost feel Stan’s breath, cold on her neck but that was imagination because all at once something stopped her in her tracks and she couldn’t move her foot anymore. Connie looked down and realised Stan had reached through the open stair and grabbed her ankle.

Connie snatched at the rails and clung on for dear life as Stan’s fingers dug deep into her flesh. Then he shook her ankle like a dog. It was becoming impossible to stay on the stairs. She could feel her body titling towards the floor again and the rickety frame wobbled alarmingly. As the pair of them wrestled to gain mastery over her leg, Connie found her voice again and screamed. Stan uttered not a sound.

Try as she may, Connie couldn’t get away from him and she knew if she let go of the handrail there was every possibility she would be pulled off balance and catapulted over the side and onto the flagstone floor beneath. If the fall didn’t kill her the madman holding her heel most certainly would. Whatever happened, she couldn’t let Stan grab her other leg either.

Connie lay on the stair face down and tried to press Stan’s fingers against the wood. Her assailant had his mouth open and he had bared his teeth. The fear of being bitten gave Connie renewed strength. Her fingers found the umbrella and she poked it through the stairs, managing to jab him in the neck. It only took a second, but Stan let go of her foot and grabbed the umbrella.

Connie didn’t wait. She gathered herself together and made another dash for the top. Three rungs from the door she felt Stan’s weight on the bottom of the staircase. He was right behind her.

Connie burst into the kitchen and grabbed the cellar door. Splintered and broken as it was, she had to get it shut before Stan came into the room. She almost made it … almost … A black leather glove had grabbed the edge of the door and Connie couldn’t get it shut. She had all her weight against it but Stan was too strong for her. She could feel her foot slipping on the linoleum so she turned her body until she had her back to the door. That’s when Auntie Aggie laid into her with a broom.

‘You wicked, wicked girl. You hurt my boy with your wicked lies.’

‘No, no …’

‘You’re evil, Connie Dixon. Evil.’

It was hard for Connie to fight her off but somehow she managed to keep herself on the other side of the door and away from Stan.

‘Connie …’

Connie held her breath as she thought she heard someone in the distance calling her name. Auntie Aggie stopped hitting her and turned around.

‘Connie, are you there?’

It was Roger. Thank God. Thank God … Roger …

‘Roger,’ she screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Oh Roger, help me. I’m in the kitchen, help me …’

‘We’re coming, Connie, we’re coming.’ That was Kez and she heard them banging on the front door. A wave of relief flooded over her but from behind the door, Stan found new strength. He had become Samson. Connie slid a little further forward. Whatever she did she couldn’t let Stan win now. If he got into the kitchen, Connie knew she’d be dead long before Roger and Kez managed to get to her.

‘Mum,’ Stan shouted. ‘Stop her. Stop her.’

But Aunt Aggie had dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and was sobbing.

Far away down the hall, Connie could hear thumping and banging and the sound of splintering wood. It was becoming harder to stay upright. If Connie’s feet went any further forward, she would land on her bottom, and yet if she relaxed her grip so that she could reposition herself, Stan would come in. Connie could hear Stan’s laboured breathing right behind her ear.

‘Roger!’ She was almost hysterical now but then she heard a noise coming from upstairs.

‘Connie!’ It was Eugène. Connie almost lost it then. She was sobbing and her panicking heart was pounding so hard in her chest she thought she would die anyway.

‘Help me … I can’t,’ she choked, ‘I can’t …’

Someone was thundering down the stairs. For a split second, Stan stopped pushing and Connie snatched at a heavy saucepan right by her hand on the shelf. She missed and the lid clattered to the floor.

‘Mum!’ cried Stan.

Out of the corner of her eye, Connie saw Aunt Aggie jump to her feet and with a primeval scream, swing the broom one more time. Behind the door Stan used all his strength to push it open and Connie’s feet began sliding at an alarming rate across the floor. At the last second, Connie ducked and the emerging broom hit Stan full in the face. There was a sickening crunch and Stan roared. At the same time, Connie was jolted onto her bottom as the remains of the cellar door slammed shut again. Eugène and Isaac burst into the kitchen just as on the other side of the door, Stan let out one last frantic cry as he overbalanced and then they heard a series of loud cracks as the stairs came away from the wall. The pounding at the front door stopped and Connie heard more footsteps coming towards them. Roger and Kez stumbled into the kitchen but by then Connie was already in Eugène’s arms.

‘Oh God, what have I done?’ Aggie dropped the broom and ran to the cellar door. She opened it and Roger only just grabbed her in time to stop her falling headlong on top of her son. ‘Stan,’ she shrieked. ‘Stan. Can you hear me, son?’

But Stan didn’t answer.

Epilogue

Connie leaned back in the passenger seat of the car and smoothed her bump. It was the summer of 1951 and she was expecting her first baby. Hot and swamped under the yards of material in her maternity dress, the novelty of being pregnant was beginning to wear off. She was excited about being a mother and couldn’t wait to meet the first of her husband’s promised fourteen kids. The nursery had been decorated, the cot was in place and the pram would arrive as soon as the baby was born. Any sooner and everybody deemed it bad luck.

Eva climbed into the driver’s seat. She and Connie had just had tea with Sally Burndell and her husband Terry. Their friend stood in the doorway of their sweet and tobacconist shop to wave goodbye.

‘She’s bigger than you,’ Eva remarked out of the corner of her mouth.

‘She’s only got a couple of weeks to go,’ Connie reminded her.

‘Well, all I can say,’ Eva smiled, ‘is that it’s a good job you’re not driving, Connie Étienne. I don’t think you’d get your arms up to the steering wheel.’

Connie waved to Sally and then stuck her tongue out at Eva.

They were on their way to the church at Patching with the hope that this trip would clear up the rift between their two families once and for all.

The past few years had been momentous to say the least. Aunt Aggie and Stan were put on trial for concealing the body of Leslie Saul, their husband and father, and for Connie’s false imprisonment. At first Connie and the family were upset that the pair were not tried for Leslie Saul’s murder, but the pathologist couldn’t find an actual cause of death. The body had obviously been in the cellar for some time and the dry cold and free movement of air meant that rather than decompose, Leslie had been preserved in a mummified state. Stan had broken his back in the fall from the stairs and would be confined to his bed for the rest of his life. At least Connie, Kez and Gwen had the satisfaction of knowing he no longer posed a threat to children and Mandy had been spared a police interrogation. Over time, Connie and Kez compared notes and found a great deal of help and consolation in talking to each other about their experiences.

‘I was dead lucky to find a man like Simeon,’ said Kez. ‘I told him what happened and he still wanted to marry me. Any other gypsy girl in my position would have been mullered.’

Largely through Eva’s efforts, and a campaign in the local paper, Connie had been vindicated. Of course, Matron never apologised for believing the letters she’d received nor for judging Connie so harshly but it was enough that Connie was allowed to continue her nursing. Several other people came forward as victims of Aggie’s poison pen but because she was already in prison on a much greater charge, no case was brought against her. Connie and Eva had passed their exams at the end of 1949 under the umbrella of the new National Health Service but Connie didn’t stay long at her post. She had married in the summer of 1950. Eva had to wait another year until her fiancé would be a fully qualified doctor and then they could marry, but at last her wedding plans were underway.

Connie continued to visit Kez and the family and it was during a meal with them that Peninnah began her family discourse again. Connie had heard it many times before but this time something resonated with her. ‘Little Mac took the tattooed lady’s mare,’ Pen recited, ‘and Abe gave Little Mac a piece of bread and a quart of ale but there was none for ’e, so he died …’

‘Can you say that again?’ said Connie. Pen went back a further couple of generations and returned to the same sentence. Connie could hardly breathe. Didn’t Cissy Maxwell once tell her something about a Little Mac in her family? How did the same name belong in both stories? Or was it only one story? As far as she knew, Cissy and the gypsies weren’t related and yet this incident had apparently had a big influence on them both. But who was the tattooed lady? And more to the point, who was Little Mac? She and Eva had gone back to Cissy who had filled in some of the blanks. She had explained to them that Little Mac was Tobias Maxwell who had lived in the last century. A small, vain and greedy man, he had been ostracised by his community but even though they’d probed her with questions, Cissy didn’t know why. Cissy had dug out some old photographs and Connie and Eva were surprised to see that in quite a few of them, both of their families were together. They found pictures of the Maxwells and the Dixons on picnics, on an outing somewhere in a large farm cart together and as part of a country dancing troupe.

‘They were all friends back then,’ said Eva. ‘So what happened?’

Cissy shrugged. ‘I was only a little girl,’ she said, ‘but I think it was something to do with Tobias and money.’

‘Do you know any more?’ Connie wanted to know.

Cissy shook her head. ‘Abraham Dixon was a stonemason. It could have been something to do with that.’

Intrigued, Connie and Eva agreed to spend an afternoon in Patching looking for any trace of her ancestor. His cottage was still standing but his workshop was long gone. The lady who lived there had never even heard of Abraham.

‘You should find Ernie Sinclair,’ she said. ‘He’s lived in this village for nigh on sixty years. He usually sits on the bench outside the pub.’

‘You mean Mr Sinclair the road sweeper?’ asked Connie. She remembered him from her childhood when he’d walked through the streets with a wheelbarrow, a long-handled brush and a spade. The streets of Patching were spotless.

Eventually they came across him and were pleased to find he remembered Connie and her family.

‘I remember you when you were knee high to a grasshopper,’ he smiled. His gums glistened in the sunshine. ‘And now you’re having one of your own?’

Connie told him about being a nurse and about her marriage to the most wonderful man in the world.

‘I’m glad,’ said Mr Sinclair. ‘Your father would have been very proud of you. He was a good man, Jim Dixon.’

‘We wanted to ask you about our families,’ said Connie.

Ernie Sinclair remembered the story well. So well that as he told them, he could hardly contain his amusement. ‘Abe agreed to carve old Mrs Maxwell’s headstone,’ he said.

‘That would be Tobias Maxwell’s mother?’

The old man nodded.

‘So was it a case of taking the money but not doing the work?’ asked Connie.

‘Oh no,’ chuckled the old man. ‘He done the work all right. It still be up the church yard. Caused a right stink I tell ye. I remembers my granfer telling me, nobody spoke to him after that.’

The two women found their way to the church and spent the afternoon walking around looking at the inscriptions on the headstones. Some of them were almost impossible to read but as far as they could see, Maude Maxwell’s stone wasn’t there. Just as they were about to leave, they came across the grave-digger. ‘The old Maxwell stone? It’s up by the yew tree,’ he said. ‘They turned it round so no one could see.’

Connie’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Then it’s still there,’ she gasped.

The graveyard was in pristine condition apart from one overgrown area where the yew tree crowded out the sunlight and created a dank atmosphere. The ground was uneven and Eva was afraid Connie might trip. There was one stone leaning against the flint stone wall and a few broken bits of headstone scattered among the brambles. The broken stones were pieces of headstones which had been erected in the path of the prevailing wind and had eventually come off.

‘It’s got to be that one,’ said Eva, pointing to the large stone against the wall.

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Connie, ‘or this has all been in vain.’

It was only with great difficulty that they managed to move the heavy stone. Eva wanted to wait until they could find some strong men to lend a hand bearing in mind Connie’s condition but she was far too impatient. They had to pull away the grass and get rid of some brambles but at last they uncovered the inscription which had caused Little Mac to be ostracised by the whole village and the two families to stop speaking to each other.

Eva began to laugh first, but Connie seemed puzzled. One line had obviously been defaced and the last line looked like an afterthought.

‘That “gl” was once an “s” wasn’t it?’ said Eva pointing to the inscription. ‘Sadly has been changed into gladly.’

‘So it has,’ said Connie beginning to chuckle.

‘I suppose it’s a bit tame by today’s standards,’ said Eva, ‘but back in Victorian times it must have been quite shocking.’

‘So this was the start of it,’ said Connie. ‘By the time Arthur married your Gran, the families had been at loggerheads for more than twenty years.’

‘It’s got to end,’ said Eva. ‘It’s not our fight.’

‘We should get everyone to come here for a picnic,’ said Connie, suppressing a grin.

‘I can’t see your great aunt agreeing to that,’ said Eva.

‘Well, she’s going to have to,’ said Connie. ‘Perhaps if she sees this, she’ll realise how ridiculous it is to hold grudges.’

They both giggled. ‘When shall we do it?’ said Eva.

‘How about Bank Holiday Monday?’ said Connie.

Unusually for a Bank Holiday, the weather was perfect. Mandy burst back through the open door, with all the exuberance of an over-excited eleven-year-old. ‘Hurry up, Mummy. They’re all going to go without you!’

‘Nobody’s going without your mother, Mandy.’ Connie was relieved to hear Clifford’s calming voice coming into the room behind her. He walked towards Gwen and beamed, ‘Come on now, my lovely. Take my arm and we’ll be off.’

Connie couldn’t have been happier. Just a few years ago she had dreaded that her family would be twelve thousand miles away and that she might never see them again. If the incident with Aggie and Stan had a positive side, it was that it had brought the family closer together. Once Ga realised how devious Stan had been and how manipulative Aggie was and the terrible things she had done, she was utterly repentant. It took Gwen a while to forgive Ga but things were a lot better now. Aggie’s name was linked to the thefts as well. She’d obviously done it because she was so miffed that Eugène and Isaac hadn’t given her logs during the winter of 1947 and had done her best to blacken his name. Having seen Reuben’s caravan, one gypsy home was much the same as every other and so she had planted the watch. A search of the cellar revealed Mrs Wright’s pearl brooch.

Ga was still awkward around Cissy Maxwell but with Roger and Eva being such an integral part of family occasions, her tongue was gradually becoming more civil. The thought of poor Leslie’s body hidden all those years in the trunk in Aggie’s cellar was almost too much for Ga.

‘I said such awful things about him,’ she lamented. ‘May God forgive me.’

As for Roger, he’d been upset that things didn’t work out for Connie and him but not for long. He may have been disappointed, but Roger wasn’t the sort of man to hold grudges.

Ga and Kenneth had had a tearful reunion and she had helped him and his new wife to set up a small business and find a flat of their own. Clifford was a changed man too. Ever since Ga signed the nurseries over to him and moved out, he’d had the place buzzing. There was a proper shop now and a small café where Gwen served teas. A new start in Australia was forgotten. They had all they wanted in Worthing.

Outside in the yard, already baked in August sunshine, friends and family waited patiently. Roger had collected Cissy and Vi from Durrington. He looked a lot more relaxed now that he’d come out of bomb disposal. He was working as a military advisor for the government now. He blew Connie a kiss as she emerged through the door. Kenneth and Pearl were behind Roger in their Ford Prefect, with their two children, Dick and Johnny in the back seat. It was unusual for Kenneth to leave his cabinet making business but he had given himself and the three disabled servicemen who worked with him the day off. Ga sat in the back of Clifford’s car and Gwen sat next to her husband.

Connie made her way to a battered Humber and gazed into the face of her beloved husband. There hadn’t been a day since he’d held her in his arms in Aggie’s kitchen that Connie hadn’t thanked God for Eugène Étienne. Things had finally looked up for him when the boggy wasteland he’d bought along the seafront fell under the watchful eye of three developers. Eugène held on until the price had almost doubled. He used the cash to buy a cottage and had it done up before selling it on. Having done it more than once, by the time Connie finished her training, he had enough money to buy a house with an outhouse which he converted into a studio. With the Festival of Britain sweeping the country, Eugène’s paintings were selling like hot cakes.

‘Ready sweetheart?’ he said softly.

‘Ready,’ she grinned.

The picnic was wonderful and later, when the children were all tuckered out, Connie and Eva explained why they had brought them all back to Patching.

‘We’ve found the reason why our two families fell out all those years ago,’ Connie explained. ‘When I heard Peninnah telling the story of the tattooed lady, I realised that must have been Aunt Gertrude.’

Gwen took in her breath. ‘Not the same Aunt Gertrude who ran off with the chap from the fairground?’

‘Only she didn’t join the fairground,’ Connie nodded. ‘She became the wife of a gypsy. Aunt Gertrude was Pen’s grandmother.’

‘So our family and Kez’s family are related?’ cried Ga incredulously.

‘’Fraid so,’ Connie grinned. ‘And it gets better.’

She told them how Abraham Dixon had made the edifice for a Maxwell tomb. She pointed out the masterpiece, complete with crowns, trumpets, exotic plants and the inscription, which was magnificent but it seems that Abraham wasn’t paid. And when he wasn’t paid for another tombstone, that of the man’s widow, Tobias Maxwell’s mother, he was very upset.

‘When Pen tells her oracle,’ Connie went on, ‘she says Abe, that’s Abraham Dixon gave Little Mac, that was Tobias Maxwell, a piece of bread and a quart of ale but there was none for him and so he died …’

Gwen frowned. ‘So, what does that mean?’

‘On the day they struck the deal,’ Eva explained, ‘the two men shared a meal.’

‘But Abraham Dixon wasn’t paid,’ Connie continued, ‘and shortly after he’d completed the work he died.’

‘But that’s so sad!’ cried Vi Maxwell. ‘I feel terrible now.’

‘I think he may have known his time was coming,’ said Connie, ‘because he had time to exact his revenge.’

They took the family into the churchyard and showed them Abraham Dixon’s handiwork. It took a few minutes to sink in and then everyone was laughing.

‘In loving memory of Margaret Maude Maxwell.

b. June 21 1813 d. Jan 31 1883.

Gladly missed by her son.

What is life without you?

Peace, perfect peace.

Connie watched them laughing, all the people she loved most in the world, together and happy. Best of all, Ga and Cissy stood together, arm in arm.

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank my agent Juliet Burton, my editors Caroline Hogg and Helen Bolton, and the wonderful team at HarperCollins Avon for their encouragement and above all their friendship.

Read on for two exclusive short stories from Pam

A Girl Called Emilie

The letter had come as a bit of a shock.

Of course he knew he had been there. It was the place where they’d stayed in that amazing old manor house. He’d been with a crowd of mates on a so-called cultural exchange to Poitou- Charentes in France, organised by the local council. The idea was to foster relations with the people of the area as part of the twinning of their two regions.

Jason worked in the Parks department and his older brother, Tom, worked in the electoral registration department.

‘There’s a whole crowd of us going, Jase,’ Tom had said. ‘You should come too. It’ll be a laugh.’

‘What, boring civic dinners and a load of OAP coach trips?’ Jason had laughed. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘One civic dinner,’ said Tom holding up a single finger, ‘followed by a trip to the local brewery, a prize-winning vineyard, and a newly opened flying school … Oh, and the area is famous for its cognac.’

Jason could feel himself being reeled in. ‘But would they really want someone from the Parks department,’ he began.

‘Just give me the word and I’ll wangle it somehow.’

Yeah, that’s about right, Jason thought. You could wangle just about anything.

He’d gone, and of course, Tom was right. It had been a blast. He’d loved every minute of it; the scenery, the hospitality and the locals. After his painful break-up with Tanya, it had been exactly what he’d needed. It was even better when he’d got back. Tanya had contacted him and they’d made it up. They were back together again now, and once they’d saved enough for a deposit on a house, they’d get married.

Tom was getting married tomorrow. This was his stag night. Why did the letter have to come today of all days? Jason didn’t want to spoil anything but he had to know. He turned it over in his hands and looked at the name on the back of the envelope … Emilie Grosjean, followed by the address. He had a hard job remembering her. Yet if what she was saying was true, he must have been there. How could he have forgotten doing a thing like that? And more importantly, how was he going to explain this to Tanya?

Bringing it up in the pub probably wasn’t the best idea, but Tom might know something. Jason glanced at his watch. The others would be here soon but there was still time to quiz his brother.

Tom came back from the bar with two brimming pints. ‘Get that down your neck,’ he said, spilling one glass as he downed his own. ‘My last night of freedom and I intend to get plastered.’

‘Do you remember when we went to Niort last year?’ said Jason, wading in.

‘Was that the place with the Roman dungeons?’

Jason nodded.

‘I remember you getting trolleyed.’

Jason cringed. He didn’t recall how he got there but they’d found him the next morning, fast asleep and curled up on the lap of a big statue in the town’s square.

Tom roared at his discomfort. ‘Wish we’d had the camera.’

Thank God you didn’t, thought Jason. If Tanya had seen … he frowned. Was that why he couldn’t remember being with Emilie? Was it because he was too drunk?

Tom leaned towards him. ‘Why do you ask? What’s up?’

‘I’ve had this letter,’ he began. ‘From a girl called Emilie.’

Tom sat back in his chair and took a long swig from his glass. ‘Emilie. Emilie who?’

‘Emilie Grosjean. Do you remember her?’

‘I might do,’ said Tom.

Tom was stalling and that’s when it struck Jason. He’d never been with Emilie had he? It was Tom. Tom must have spent the night with her. And afterwards, when she said, ‘Comment vous appelez-vous?’ Tom, suddenly remembering his fiancé back home, had said his name was Jason.

Jason’s eyes narrowed. ‘Tom, this is important. Did you go with her?’

His brother shrugged again. ‘Dunno, might have done. Can’t remember.’

‘Come on Tom,’ Jason insisted. ‘It was only nine months ago.’

Even though the light in the pub was dull, he could see his brother had gone very pale.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Like I told you, I’ve had this letter,’ said Jason. ‘And…’

Tom leaned forward again. ‘Listen Jase,’ he interrupted, ‘this is my stag night. I’m getting married tomorrow. Whatever she says it’s nothing to do with me, OK? It was only a bit of fun. Don’t mess up the rest of my life, please.’

The door burst open and the rest of the lads came in. There was a lot of shouting and plenty of distraction as they hustled their way to the back of the pub where Jason and Tom were sitting, and from then on, the drinks flowed like water.

Tom was almost legless when they handcuffed him, just in his boxer shorts, to the lamp post outside the police station. As the rest of the lads made their way noisily down the high street, Jason came back.

Tom rattled his chains. ‘Don’t leave me here, Jase,’ he slurred helplessly. ‘They’ll come out and arrest me. If I spend the night in the cells, they’ll take me to court in the morning.’

‘Answer my question then,’ said Jason.

‘What question?’

‘Did you tell Emilie your name was Jason?’

‘You’re a hard man, Jase,’ said Tom, his teeth chattering with the cold. ‘Yeah, all right. I was with her. Proper little goer she was and all.’

‘You had a good time with her then?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘So,’ said Jason, the relief sweeping over him. ‘You’ve had your fun and left me with the consequences.’

‘Just forget her, Jase,’ said Tom.

‘I can’t do that, Tom,’ said Jason unlocking the handcuffs. He threw his coat over his brother’s shivering body. ‘You see, you gave her such a good time, she entered my name in the town lottery. I’ve just won a fortnight’s holiday in a chateau in the Poitou-Charentes.’

The Wedding Suit

Dee couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when she decided to take the suit back. It could have been when she saw the creases in the back of the jacket after Mark had sat down for a ten second photograph. Or maybe it was when she hung it up and saw the state of the trousers. Each leg looked like a dance band concertina. How could she let her one and only son get married looking like that?

Mark was back on duty and not at home until three days before the wedding so there was no chance to discuss the matter with him and she could hardly ask Sally what she thought about it. If it was considered bad luck for the groom to see the bride’s dress before the big day, surely the same thing applied in the opposite direction? She searched for the label. Lion Stores, the most expensive shop on the High Street. Dee folded the suit carefully and took it back to the shop.

‘I’m afraid,’ said the assistant, a rather overly made-up woman of uncertain age, ‘that I cannot change the suit. You’ve no receipt. How do I know the suit is ours?’

‘The label,’ Dee pointed out. ‘Your store is unique isn’t it? At least you claim you are when you advertise.’

Reluctantly the assistant called the Manageress.

‘Madam,’ said the Manageress, a snooty woman who held her head back and peered at the offending garment as if it had a very bad smell, ‘there is nothing wrong with the suit. It’s the material.’

Slightly confused, Dee frowned. ‘But surely that’s the same thing?’

But the Manageress was implacable. ‘We never have complaints. There is nothing wrong with the suit,’ she repeated.

‘A suit is made of material,’ Dee pointed out. ‘Without material there would be no suit and this material is very creased.’

But the Manageress refused to budge. Dee could feel herself getting quite cross. How dare they look down their noses at her? She gritted her teeth and stood her ground.

‘Give me the name and address of your head office,’ she said, raising her voice for the first time.

The Manageress was reluctant, but it was obvious she didn’t want a scene. A scrap of paper was pushed into her hand and Dee was escorted to the door.

Back home, Dee composed a letter. She explained the problem very carefully. It took her the best part of the afternoon to work out what to say and she used three quarters of the Basildon Bond she kept for best.

‘If the suit creases this much,’ she wrote politely, ‘what will it look like when he poses for the wedding photographs?’

Dee enclosed a self-addressed envelope with the letter to ensure a speedy reply. All she had to do now was wait for the cheque.

A week later, Dee recognised her own handwriting on the envelope as it fell on to the mat. She sat at her kitchen table with her coffee to savour the moment.

‘Dear Madam,’ the letter said. ‘We regret you are dissatisfied with our merchandise. However, as Mrs Gambol, the Manageress, pointed out, Lion Stores’ suits are second to none. The cut and style are immaculate and the colour is the very latest fashion. We suggest to avoid further creasing, your son should wait until the last minute to put on his suit.’

Dee almost choked on her digestive biscuit. Then she reached for her notepad once again.

The local paper made her simple request a generous headline. ‘Crumpled suit good enough for local hero?’ certainly captured everybody’s attention and sold a lot of newspapers.

The Manageress was given the opportunity to put her side of the story in the next issue. She repeated her first edict and posed outside the front door of Lion Stores. The photograph was a little unflattering, especially with her arms folded over her ample bosom, and everyone agreed that the unfortunate smudge under her nose made her look like somebody else entirely.

It was after that, that the national press began to show interest and ‘there’s nothing wrong with the suit, it’s the material’ became the new buzzwords.

Dee was alarmed when she was asked to give a TV interview, but she was quite excited to be sitting on the sofa with Sophie on the Beeb and then with Lorraine over on the other side.

‘Surely they can’t expect,’ she asked innocently, ‘my son to arrive at the church in his boxer shorts and shirt and then to put his suit on in the car park?’

The TV presenters agreed that it was ridiculous to ask any man to do that. Lorraine seemed positively appalled, and when she held up a picture of the tearful bride holding a photograph of her fiancé, the whole nation was stirred into action.

Clothwise Fabrics were none too pleased when their shares suddenly plummeted on the stock market. A furious Board of Directors met to consider legal action against Lion Stores, and when the local MP bumped into the Lion Stores MD at their golf club, the intransigence of the managerial department was suddenly reversed.

When he came back home on leave, Mark was stunned to find he had a five star wedding all lined up for him. Everything, the cake, the reception, the cars, the photographs, had all been generously donated by those who wanted to make sure that ‘one of our boys’ had a day to remember. Everyone agreed that his designer suit, personally paid for by the owners of Lion Stores, Clothwise Fabrics and the local MP, was superb. Bride and groom were happy to be photographed, videoed and filmed for all the glossies … for a small fee of course.

The world cruise honeymoon was a terrific surprise and the Brigadier (who went to the same golf club), made sure the groom had enough leave to enjoy every minute.

Satisfied at last, Dee kissed her new daughter-in-law and son goodbye as the honeymoon car waited to take them to the airport. One hundred yards down the road it stopped and reversed back.

‘Mum,’ said Mark, ‘do us one more favour will you? Could you take the suit back to the shop for me? I got it from “Seconds for Hire” on the high street.’

Can a wife ever really know her husband?

A gripping family drama for fans of Kitty Neale and Maureen Lee.

The war may be over but the hard times have only just begun for the Roberts family.

Full of family drama, this is the perfect read for fans of Maureen Lee and Katie Flynn.

About the Author

Adopted from birth, Pam Weaver trained as a Nursery Nurse working mainly in children’s homes. She was also a Hyde Park nanny. In the 1980s she and her husband made a deliberate decision that she should be a full-time mum to their two children. Pam wrote for small magazines and specialist publications, finally branching out into the women’s magazine market. Pam has written numerous articles and short stories, many of which have been featured in anthologies. Her story The Fantastic Bubble was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service. This is her fourth book.

Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2013

Copyright © Pam Weaver 2013

Cover photographs © Getty Images & Alamy

Cover design © Debbie Clement 2013

Pam Weaver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Source ISBN: 9781847563620

Ebook Edition © June 2013 ISBN: 9780007480449

Version 1

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

KAY BRELLEND

Coronation Day

MAH and GCH, much love to you both

and wishing you well, now and always.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

Prologue

Summer 1939: Park Road Pool, Hornsey

‘Leave her alone, Vic, fer Gawd’s sake. You make her blub again and we’ll all get chucked out. Lifeguard’s got his eye on us.’ Christopher Wild jerked his head towards a tanned, brawny fellow, garbed in swimming trunks. From his vantage point, seated at the top of an A-frame ladder, the lifeguard had a clear view over the lido and at present had his stern expression fixed on them.

Vic shrugged off the warning, intent on swaggering over to the group of schoolgirls to continue teasing them. Christopher grabbed his pal’s arm and yanked him back. The youngest girl was crying, and being comforted by her bathing-costumed friends. At intervals the group was throwing dirty looks at the party of youths.

‘Only having a bit of a lark with her, bleedin’ cry baby she is.’

‘Ain’t a lark if she’s hurt, is it?’ Christopher pointed out and shoved Vic Wilson down onto the grass next to some of their pals. He’d just prevented him again trying to creep up behind Grace Coleman to nudge her into the deep end of the pool. The first time he’d done it Vic had given the lame excuse that he was teaching her to swim. Christopher thought Vic a good pal on the whole, but knew he could be spiteful, and stupid too.

Christopher sat down next to Vic. Most of the members of their little gang were lying back, basking in the July sun’s warmth. Christopher remained seated on the parched grass with his arms clasped around his raised knees. He subtly watched the group of girls and, in particular, Grace who was knuckling her bloodshot eyes and pushing rats’ tails of drenched hair back from her forehead. She’d managed to hang onto the side of the pool after Vic had given her a hefty bump, sending her off balance and into the water. Although she’d disappeared beneath the surface, her friends had hauled her out almost immediately.

Grace Coleman was a skinny little thing with long fair hair. She was usually quite loud and confident and was popular too. In other respects, she was quite sporty, and could outrun all the boys in kiss chase. But she couldn’t swim.

The Colemans lived in the next street to Christopher in Islington and their families knew each other well. For a reason he couldn’t fathom, he’d always quite liked her. At ten years old she was two years younger than he was, and in Christopher’s opinion Vic Wilson was a prat for tormenting her so he could show off.

Noticing the direction of his friend’s gaze Vic said, ‘Dunno why she comes here if she don’t like getting wet.’

‘She don’t mind getting wet, it’s drowning she ain’t keen on.’

‘I’m getting a drink.’ Bill Bright, one of Christopher’s other friends, got up and strolled off in his swimming trunks in the direction of the cafeteria.

‘Get us one ’n’ all,’ Vic called after him.

‘Give us the money then,’ Bill sent back over a shoulder.

‘Give it yer when you get back.’ Vic grinned cheekily.

Bill showed him two fingers and put on a swagger as he came level with the group of girls.

Christopher noticed that Grace was about to be left on her own again. Now she’d quietened down, her friends were jumping back into the pool, intent on enjoying themselves. He levered himself up and went over to sit down on the grass beside her.

‘You alright?’

She nodded and sniffed. Her red-rimmed eyes narrowed on Vic, who was watching them. ‘If he tries to push me in again I’m gonna tell on him. Me dad’ll give him such a hiding.’

‘He’s just an idiot. Don’t mind him.’ Christopher thought it was unlikely that old man Coleman would stir himself enough to do any such thing. When Wilf Coleman wasn’t working in a meat factory he spent his time slouched in the betting shop or in the pub.

‘You’re a good swimmer,’ Grace said enviously. ‘I was watching you earlier diving off the board.’

‘Got taught when I was little by me dad.’

‘Bet he didn’t push you in. My dad did. When we went on holiday to Clacton he tried teaching me to swim like Vic just did. He got annoyed and pushed me off the edge of the pool ’cos I wouldn’t get in. Was only the shallow end though,’ she added in mitigation.

‘S’pose me dad might have done that to me.’ Christopher narrowed his eyes at her. ‘You ought to learn, y’know, ’cos if you don’t you’ll get teased every time you come here with yer friends. Can’t just hang about on the side, can you?’ He nodded at the girls frolicking in the pool. ‘None of them offered to hold your chin so’s you can do a few strokes to and fro?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, they have. I just don’t like it though. Don’t like feeling the water stinging me nose and me eyes.’

‘Gotta hold yer breath and keep yer eyes shut,’ he explained. ‘Soon as yer head’s up and out, blink and take a big breath.’

‘’S’alright fer you to say.’

‘I’ll show you if you like.’

‘He’s sent you over to try and push me in, hasn’t he!’ Grace glared at Christopher and shuffled away on her skinny posterior.

‘Please yourself …’ Christopher sighed and got up.

A moment later Grace was at his side, her small hands wringing water from her long hair. ‘You could show me another time … when they’re not about … they’ll just laugh.’ Her eyes slid sideways towards the watching youths.

‘Might not be coming again for a while.’ Christopher grimaced and stepped away.

‘Alright … show me …’ Grace caught at his hand to stop him leaving. ‘But round the other side, away from them.’

Christopher disentangled his fingers from hers and ambled around the perimeter of the pool with Grace traipsing in his wake. He stopped by an area of water that wasn’t quite as populated.

Grace nervously assessed the rocking blue waves. ‘How deep is it?’

‘Come to about the top of your head. Don’t worry, I’ll hold you up, won’t let go … honest. Then you’ve just got to do a bit of doggie paddle towards the shallow end and you’ll be able to stand up … or carry on if you like.’

Grace took a deep breath, trudging forward.

‘Ready?’ he said, standing by her side at the edge of the pool.

He got no reply. He cast a look down on her wet head. ‘Once you’ve done it, nobody’s gonna tease you no more.’

She nodded her agreement. She could see her friends larking about. They hadn’t even noticed she’d moved away and was about to make a momentous effort.

‘Ready?’ Christopher asked again.

She nodded, sucked in a shaky breath and in the split second he moved she grabbed at one of his hands, launching herself forward with him.

CHAPTER ONE

February 1952

‘Touch any of them tools again and it’ll be the last thing you ever do, you thievin’ toerag.’

Christopher Wild stuck a threatening finger close to the man’s bristly chin, his face contorted into a savage mask. A moment ago he’d been knocking down a partition wall inside a derelict property when, from the corner of an eye, he’d seen a suspicious movement through a gaping hole in brickwork where a window frame had once been.

‘Wasn’t stealin’, was I now,’ the fellow muttered in his guttural Irish accent. ‘Was just gonna borrer the pick for a little while, that’s all it was …’ He propped the pick back against the front wall of the house, next to a fourteen-pound hammer, then stuffed his hands into his donkey-jacket pockets. He was a large individual with wildly unkempt black hair and a ruddy complexion.

‘Yeah, ’course … just gonna borrow it, weren’t yer …’ Christopher mimicked sarcastically. He grabbed several implements by their battered wooden handles and sent them hurtling, one after the other, along the hallway of the house where they thudded against bare boards. ‘Piss off and borrow stuff off yer mates.’ Christopher flicked his head at the contingent of navvies working a distance away along the street. Some of them had heard what was going on and had come out of the tenement to watch. A couple started to approach.

The Irishman spread calloused hands, gesturing for a truce as he retreated. Despite his attempt at nonchalance his small eyes were shifting to and fro. Christopher knew if the navvy had managed to filch the pick, Wild Brothers Builders would never have seen it again … not without a fight anyhow. And they’d had one of those earlier in the week when a couple of shovels went missing. The week before that there had been an almighty bust-up when his colleague, Bill, got a tooth smashed in a fight. A new high-reach ladder had disappeared from where it had been tied on the top of one of their vans. Of course, the pikeys had denied all knowledge of any of it, they always did, but now Christopher had caught one of them red-handed he knew that every accusation, every punch landed, had been well deserved.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nuthin’ I can’t handle,’ Christopher mumbled to a middle-aged man who’d sprinted up to him, looking agitated.

Stephen Wild, Christopher’s father, had been sitting in one of the vehicles scribbling with a pencil in his notebook when he’d noticed a confrontation between his son and one of Declan O’Connor’s crew. He’d stuck the pencil behind his ear, dropped the ledger, and sprung immediately from the Bedford van to rush over. He was well aware that things could turn very nasty at any time.

The Irishman started to amble away and Christopher put a hand on his father’s shoulder and steered him over the threshold of the door-less house. He didn’t want another fight erupting so soon after the last. And thankfully they hadn’t lost any more equipment.

Christopher worked for his uncle’s construction firm as a foreman when his father wasn’t about to take charge. Although it was called Wild Brothers, his father was more or less just another employee and his uncle Rob was the guvnor. Rob was certainly the one with the money and the business nous. Stephen Wild was the brawn, or he had been in his younger years when he’d had better health and vigour. Now it was Christopher’s turn to take on the brunt of the donkeywork, and to chivvy the lads into action so contracts were finished on time.

Since tempers had started running high due to the Irish crew muscling in on their territory Wild Brothers’ few employees seemed to be working less and moaning more. Stephen took a glance along the street and noticed that their rivals were carrying on a heated discussion, with much gesticulating.

Alert to trouble brewing, Christopher’s colleagues started emerging from the bowels of the derelict tenement they’d been demolishing in Whadcoat Street. The men were carrying the tools they’d been using. Hammers and jemmies were swinging in fists as they approached to stand about their boss in a show of solidarity.

‘Nuthin’ goin’ on here. Get back about yer work,’ Christopher told them. They remained where they were, covered in brick dust, looking belligerent and ready to get stuck in.

‘They on the thieve again?’ Vic Wilson demanded indignantly, glaring along the street.

‘They’re having a go at it. Keep stuff inside the house, or locked in the vans.’

‘Fuckin’ Micks,’ Bill Bright said, flattening his lips against the gap in his teeth. ‘Should’ve put me ’ammer over that pikey’s crust earlier in the week.’

‘Yeah … then we’ll all be out of work, and sitting in the nick, won’t we,’ Christopher stated dryly. ‘Just what they want, ain’t it? Us doing something stupid so they can have the work all to themselves.’

‘We let ’em push us around then, do we?’ Ted Potts suggested sarcastically.

‘Get back to work,’ Christopher snapped impatiently.

He watched his crew peel off one by one and go back inside the property. He waited until banging and crashing resumed before he turned to his father.

‘Ted’s got a point,’ Stephen Wild muttered, squinting at the group of labourers along the road. ‘Declan O’Connor’ll be laughing his bollocks off alright if we let ’em keep getting away with it.’

Declan was the Paddies’ guvnor and would turn up about once a day to check on his crew and taunt Wild Brothers’ boys with a few yelled insults.

Most of the navvies had gone about their business. But a couple were still leaning on shovels, chin-wagging, and throwing dirty looks their way.

‘A real bust-up’s brewing and it’d be as well to get this out of the way now rather than later when O’Connor turns up.’ Stevie jutted his chin belligerently.

Christopher turned a jaundiced eye on his father. He was a reasonably fit man for his forty-five years, but in no shape to be taking on burly Irish navvies in a fistfight … or worse. If things kicked off it might not just be punches doing damage. Bill’s threat to use a hammer had been in retaliation to O’Connor swinging a shovel at his head two weeks ago. Luckily it had missed or he wouldn’t have ended up with just a broken tooth and bruises. But things were getting serious. The fact that O’Connor’s gang took a dinner break in the pub didn’t help. When they ambled back in the afternoon a couple of them were always two parts pissed and up for a brawl – even amongst themselves.

Christopher was aware his uncle Robert had fingers in many other pies and might not be too bothered about the winding-up of his building concern. But if the pikeys took over in the street, the rest of them would suffer. A few other piddling contracts might come their way and keep him and his dad employed, but Vic, Bill and Ted would have to go.

‘Just need to keep calm,’ Christopher said. He quirked a rueful smile. ‘Keep calm and carry on …’ He quoted a wartime motto.

‘They’d better stay on home ground then. The boys are getting to the end of their tethers. And so am I …’ Stephen came to an abrupt halt, squinting at a house some distance away. Despite demolition work having started at one end of the long road, some families still lived in houses in Whadcoat Street.

It was February and bitterly cold but an elderly woman had just shoved up her sash window and stuck her head out to bawl something at them.

‘Aunt Matilda’s after you by the looks of things,’ Christopher told his father as he noticed his great-aunt waving to gain their attention. ‘You go and see what she wants; I’ll make sure everything’s under control here.’

Christopher was glad when his father immediately went loping off along the road. He didn’t want him getting geed up by the lads into confronting the pikeys. Christopher watched him come to a halt and angle his face up towards Matilda.

When his father reappeared Christopher was attacking the splintered remains of a doorframe with a hammer. Something about his father’s shocked expression made him drop the tool to the ground.

‘King’s dead.’

‘Eh?’

‘Matilda just said it come over on the Home Service. King George has died.’

‘Eh? What’s that?’

Vic Wilson had appeared, wiping his grimy face with a handkerchief.

‘Me aunt’s just told us that the king’s died.’

Bill and Ted trooped into the front room of the house.

‘What’s that?’ Bill asked, frowning.

‘King George has died …’ Stephen repeated croakily, blinking rapidly. He looked close to tears.

Into the stunned silence came Vic Wilson’s voice. ‘Weren’t unexpected I suppose.’ He grimaced. ‘Smoked like a chimney, didn’t he?’

‘Poor sod might not’ve needed ’em so much if his brother’d done his duty, ’stead of running off with that bloody American woman,’ Stephen barked angrily. ‘He weren’t trained up for the job, was he.’ He gestured with a hand as he sank down to his haunches then collapsed to sit on the bare boards. ‘Just got chucked in at the deep end by that selfish git. Edward was the one brought up for it from when he was a kid and got taught all the right stuff. George just had to pick it up as he went along.’ Stephen came to a sudden halt, his face florid from his impassioned outburst. His head dropped forward and his fingers sank into his hair. He wasn’t a royalist by any means but, like most Londoners, Stephen Wild had nothing but praise and respect for King George and Queen Elizabeth. They’d braved the dangers of the Luftwaffe bombings on the city along with everybody else instead of scurrying off to the comfort and protection of a mansion in the countryside.

Christopher perched on an upturned crate and shook his head. He agreed wholeheartedly with what his father had said. ‘Yeah, good bloke he was. Did us proud during the war, considering he weren’t really cut out fer the job. Queen Elizabeth too. She was a diamond.’

‘He was only about ten years older’n me.’ Stephen produced a packet of Weights and immediately took one out then threw the packet for Christopher to catch it.

‘Makes yer think, don’t it. Me dad’s comin’ up to sixty-five …’ Vic sat on the floor next to Stephen and got out his own cigarettes.

Bill squatted down too and fished in Vic’s packet of Weights when it was offered, then lobbed it towards Ted.

As a melancholy silence descended on the room Christopher drew smoke deep into his lungs then rested his head in his cupped hands.

‘Can’t believe it, y’know …’ The woman’s voice had come from the doorway and jerked them all to attention. ‘He was only fifty-six. Weren’t an old man at all, was he?’

‘Were a sick man though, Aunt Tilly, weren’t he,’ Christopher said. ‘S’pose we all knew fer a while it might be coming.’ He stood up. ‘Any more news come over on the wireless? Was it a heart attack took him in the end?’

Matilda came gingerly further into the debris-strewn property. ‘Don’t know … not said.’ She shook her grey head, her wrinkled complexion creasing in a frown. She was seventy-one years old yet, considering what she’d been through in her life, in robust condition. ‘BBC has cancelled all the programmes. Just gonna be sad music and news broadcasts. Bound to come out later today what caused it.’

‘Won’t get nuthin’ done now. Everything’ll be closing up out o’ respect.’ Billy nodded sombrely.

‘Right ’n’ all!’ Stephen said forcefully, shoving himself to his feet. ‘Ain’t a man anywhere deservin’ of more respect than him.’

‘We off home then?’ Ted asked optimistically.

‘Yeah, go on, get going,’ Stephen said. There was plenty of work left to do, and a good few hours in which to do it, but nobody had the heart now to get stuck in.

‘Bet them Irish bastards don’t show a bit o’ respect and knock off early,’ Vic said. He unhooked his jacket from the back of the door and shrugged it on over his overalls.

‘Most Paddies can’t stand the English at the best of times,’ Bill interjected sourly. ‘Probably be doin’ a jig, they will.’

‘Can’t tar ’em all with the same brush.’ Matilda wagged a finger. ‘The Irish couple wot’s just moved in along the road don’t seem bad people. Spoke to the woman the other day when she was coming out of Smithie’s shop and she was as polite as yer like. Introduced herself straight off. Noreen Murphy’s her name and she said her husband’s called Kieran.’

‘Well, I don’t reckon they should have camped in that dump in the first place,’ Vic mumbled, slightly chastened. ‘They’ve got a couple of young kids with ’em. It ain’t right, livin’ like that.’

‘Couple of sweet little girls they are ’n’ all,’ Matilda remarked. ‘But yer can’t always pick ’n’ choose when it comes to putting a roof over yer family’s head.’

‘As far as I’m concerned they can stop in the road as long as they like if they ain’t causing trouble.’ Chris chipped in his opinion.

‘Well, I’m getting off home now,’ Vic announced, sounding sulky.

‘Winston Churchill’s gonna make a broadcast to the nation tomorrow about King George.’ Matilda’s tone was solemn once more. ‘Eight o’clock on the Home Service, just so’s you know when to tune in.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘Keep moving … keep moving … please …’

The crowd obediently shuffled away from the gates of Buckingham Palace to congregate instead on the nearby pavement. Nobody seemed to want to leave although it was bitterly cold and raining. In fact, as news had spread, people who’d been travelling home from their offices in the City had diverted to St James’s, swelling the multitude mourning the death of the king.

People were huddling together, turning up collars and pulling hats firmly down over their ears. But they stayed where they were, staring solemnly through the gloom at the royal palace where the Union Jack was limply fluttering at half-mast. Above the politely insistent voices of the policemen could be heard the sound of men and women weeping.

‘Come on now, over the road, please. Move away from the gates, madam …’

Matilda knuckled burning tears from her eyes and obeyed the constable’s request. He looked to her to be no more than a boy, but he had a nice face, and had kindly patted her shoulder on noticing her distress.

Having got a foothold on the packed kerb Matilda tried to wedge her stout body into a tight space. A woman in a luxurious fur coat unintentionally jostled her, knocking her back into the road. Matilda’s arthritic joint gave her a jolt and she gasped aloud.

‘So sorry, my dear,’ the woman murmured in a cut-glass accent.

Matilda nodded acceptance of the apology, rubbing her knee.

‘We’re going to miss him terribly,’ the woman added and shuffled sideways to make a space for Matilda next to her on the pavement.

Matilda settled beside her, aware of a floral scent wafting from the little lacy hanky the lady had held to her nose. ‘Right ’n’ all we are,’ Matilda gruffly returned. ‘His eldest gel’s got big shoes to fill …’ She broke off to watch as a sleek limousine drew up by the gates and was allowed through. She’d been outside the palace since five o’clock that afternoon, and during that time had seen many visitors arrive. A bobby on duty had explained to someone – and the information had rippled through the throng – that foreign diplomats were arriving to sign a book of condolences.

‘King and queen helped get us through the war, didn’t they?’ Matilda carried on in her rough tone. ‘Could’ve run and hid somewhere safe but they didn’t.’

The fur-coated woman nodded her elegantly coiffed head and on impulse shared the protection of her umbrella with Matilda. ‘Wonderful, steadfast people,’ she agreed and again wiped her nose. ‘She’s in Kenya, you know …’ At Matilda’s quizzical look the lady explained. ‘Young Elizabeth … she’s at the Royal Hunting Lodge in Kenya. But I’ve no doubt, she’ll be flying straight home. What dreadfully sad tidings for her and Margaret.’

‘’S’pect she would have stayed with her dad had she known how grave it all were,’ Matilda said. ‘Can’t change that now. Still, he got a peaceful end, so I heard on the wireless. That’s a blessing and no more’n he deserved.’

‘Amen to that,’ the woman said and closed her eyes.

‘Matilda Keiver?’

Matilda heard her name faintly called and pivoted about in surprise. Having looked this way and that she suddenly noticed a woman’s face and neck stretching to gaze over a sea of hats. Matilda bobbed her head to and fro to try and guess the identity of the woman now waving at her. She squinted and then her lips parted in an astonished smile. ‘Friend of mine’s over there. Better go and say hello,’ she told the well-to-do lady. ‘Toodle-oo …’ Her companion’s sable sleeve got a pat before she departed. A moment later she was edging her way through the throng.

‘Shirley Coleman!’ Matilda exclaimed when she was standing next to the woman. ‘Not seen you since …’ Her eyes veered heavenwards as she calculated the years. ‘Must’ve been 1941 when I last clapped eyes on you.’

‘September 1941 I moved out of Crouch End,’ Shirley confirmed. ‘’Course the kids had gone a bit earlier to Surrey. Got evacuated there, didn’t they.’

‘That’s it, I do remember,’ Matilda said. ‘How’ve you been keeping?’

‘So-so,’ Shirley returned, mouth drooping down at the corners. ‘Sad business about the king, isn’t it?’

Matilda nodded sadly. ‘Was only gonna come and stay for a little while, but now I’m here …’ She glanced about. ‘Looks like nobody else wants to go home neither. S’pose it’s the only way people like us can show how grateful we were fer what he did, and the queen ’n’ all. Just saying to a lady over there …’ Matilda jerked her head to the left. ‘Could’ve hid during the Battle of Britain, couldn’t they, but braved it out like the rest of us.’

‘Yeah,’ Shirley agreed. ‘Got to show appreciation and respect.’ She suddenly looked around. ‘Grace is here somewhere. She came with one of her workmates but I think her friend’s gone to catch the tube home.’

‘You lot back living in London then, Shirley?’ Shirley and her family had never been neighbours of Tilly’s in Whadcoat Street but she’d got to know the family quite well.

‘Grace and me are back. My son Paul is married and living Dorset way with his family. We’ve been back a year now. Wilf passed away, you wouldn’t have known that.’

Matilda placed a woolly-gloved hand on her friend’s shoulder. ‘Sorry to hear that, Shirley.’

‘Came back from Japan a very poorly soul, he did.’ Shirley grimaced. ‘Died in 1949, and after he’d been laid to rest, Grace and me carried on in Surrey for a while but then decided to come back to London. She’s a typist, you know. Got a good job in an office in the City.’

‘Sorry about Wilf,’ Matilda repeated in a murmur. ‘So whereabouts in London are you living?’

‘Tottenham. Just off White Hart Lane. Close to where I grew up. Don’t think you ever knew my mum, Ada Jackson, did you, Til? She’s still about and not in bad health, all things considered.’

Matilda grinned. ‘Never met her, Shirley. But I know that area well. My Alice ain’t far from there. She lives Wood Green way on the big council estate. Got a lovely little place, she has.’

‘Bet you’ve got grandkids too, haven’t you, Til?’

‘Big family we are … grandkids, great-grandkids …’ Tilly chuckled proudly. ‘How about you, Shirley? Your Grace married, is she?’

Matilda knew that Shirley’s children were a lot younger than her own because Shirley was more the age of her daughter Alice. But despite the age gap, Tilly had become quite friendly with Shirley because her great-nephew, Christopher, had grown up with the Coleman children.

Christopher had spent a good deal of his childhood being looked after by Matilda while his father was at work so his great-aunt had been acquainted with his friends, and some of their parents.

‘Grace isn’t married, but got grandkids all right. Paul’s got three boys. But don’t see a lot of them being as they’re so far away. Grace …’ She grimaced. ‘Grace was engaged, but he was a wrong’un.’ She shook her head, her expression turning ferocious. ‘Did the dirty on her and went off with a widow who was nearly old enough to be his mother … oh, shhh … here she is. She doesn’t like me talking about it,’ Shirley whispered. She beckoned her daughter closer.

Matilda smiled at the pretty young woman who’d squashed a path through the crowd.

‘You remember Mrs Keiver, don’t you, Grace?’

Grace frowned and bit her lip, not wanting to appear rude.

‘You know, young Christopher Wild’s great-auntie … lived down Campbell Road … or Whadcoat Street as it turned into some years ago as I recall.’

A sweet smile parted Grace’s lips. ‘Oh yes, of course I remember you …’ She did remember too. Nobody who had visited Campbell Road, or The Bunk as it had been nicknamed thanks to its proliferation of doss houses, was ever likely to forget it. Neither would Grace ever forget the couple of times her friend Christopher had taken her on visit to his auntie, despite the fact it had been over a decade ago.

Her parents had constantly warned her to give Campbell Road, and the people who lived there, a wide berth. But when she’d found out from Christopher where his great-aunt lived she had, with the inquisitiveness of youth, begged him to take her there. She’d been astounded to discover one of Christopher’s relatives lived in a dirty hovel. Christopher and his father had lived close to Grace’s family and, while it certainly wasn’t luxurious in Crouch End, their terraced homes were adequate in most respects. Grace recalled she had been about ten or eleven at the time of her secret visits to The Bunk, but even at that tender age she’d been thrillingly shocked that such a slum existed and it had left an indelible mark on her memory.

‘Well … nice to see you both, but I suppose I should be making tracks.’ Matilda glanced about. ‘Bleedin’ cold night, ain’t it. I’m gonna be off and catch the bus back.’

‘We’ll walk with you to the bus stop.’ Shirley and Grace settled into step beside her. They walked in silence for a short while, huddled in their coats, shoulders hunched up to their ears, hats pulled low, to protect against the drizzle.

The two Coleman women settled into a slower pace as they noticed Matilda walking with a slight limp.

‘Got arthritis bad in one side,’ Matilda brusquely explained. ‘Damp don’t help.’

‘Wilf suffered with arthritis something chronic in the winter,’ Shirley remarked. ‘Young man too he were when he first got afflicted.’

‘Had a bad accident a long while ago,’ Matilda offered up. ‘Never been right since.’

‘Oh … ?’ Shirley said curiously.

‘Don’t talk about it,’ Matilda answered bluntly.

‘So where you living now then, Tilly? Did Reg come back from the war? I remember he went off to fight early on.’

Tilly shook her head. ‘Died in 1943. Should never have gone. Told him he were too old. Lied about his age, didn’t he, to get hisself enlisted.’

‘Brave man …’

‘Stupid man.’ Tilly begged to differ, but with a soft smile twisting her lips.

‘Two husbands you lost to the Germans then,’ Shirley said sympathetically. She knew that Jack Keiver, Matilda’s first husband, had been killed fighting on the Somme. She knew too that Matilda and Reg Donovan, although living as man and wife, hadn’t taken a trip to the Town Hall to say their vows.

‘Yeah,’ Matilda confirmed with a wry grimace. ‘Long, long while since I lost my Jack, God bless him.’

‘So where you livin’ then?’

‘Same place,’ Matilda replied a touch brusquely. She tended to be defensive when asked her address. People always followed that first question with another that began why … ? while gawping at her as though she’d lost her marbles.

Grace inclined forward to peer past her mother at Matilda. ‘You’re still in Campbell Road … I mean Whadcoat Street, Mrs Keiver?’ Her voice was pitched high in surprise.

‘Yeah … but not for long,’ Matilda replied with a sour smile. ‘Slum clearance has started up one end.’ She dug her hands further into her pockets. ‘So gonna be re-housed at some time. Don’t know where.’ She slanted a look sideways at her companions. ‘You’d be surprised, there’s still a good few people living there in the street. Remember the Whittons and the Lovats and old Beattie Evans? Some of them that are still alive are still about.’ She gave an emphatic nod. ‘Still got enough friends and neighbours left around me.’

‘Bleedin’ ’ell …’ Shirley breathed, her astonishment causing her to revert to language she hadn’t used in a long while. Having lived in Surrey, Shirley liked to think she’d travelled up in the world. ‘Never would have guessed it. Thought you’d all be long gone from there. You must’ve lived there a time, Til.’

‘Nearly all me life … over seventy years, bar a few years here and there, before I turned twenty, when me parents moved about London a bit. But we always come back to Campbell Road … usually ’cos it was the only place we could afford to kip, it’s true.’ She sighed. ‘But had some good times in amongst the bad. Me ’n’ Jack settled there just after we was married. Had all me kids there, with old Lou Perkins’ help.’ She broke off to grin. ‘She’s still about Islington somewhere, too. I intended to be carted off from The Bunk in me pine box but seems like the Council’s got other ideas for me.’

Grace exchanged a furtive look with her mother.

‘So how is Christopher doing, Mrs Keiver?’ she blurted. She was a sensitive young woman, not one to deliberately cause offence to another, and she knew Matilda had spotted the glance, clearly questioning her sanity.

‘Yeah … he’s doing alright. Works in his dad’s building firm as a foreman. In fact their firm, Wild Brothers it’s called,’ she informed them proudly, ‘is doing the demolition work that’s started at the top end of Whadcoat Street. Whadcoat Street,’ she repeated derisively. ‘Daft name. It’ll always be Campbell Road to me.’

Matilda halted as they reached the bus stop. ‘Well, nice to see you both after all this time.’

‘We’ll keep in touch,’ Shirley said quickly. ‘Would you mind if I sort of popped by?’ She had a morbid curiosity to see whether Matilda’s hovel was better or worse than the one she remembered.

‘Come any time. Sometimes go out for a little drink round the Duke, but that’s it.’ Matilda smiled. ‘You’ll be bound to catch me in.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘You look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’ Matilda tapped Kathleen Murphy’s cold nose playfully with a finger.

‘Hello, Mrs Keiver.’ Noreen Murphy gave Matilda a smile. ‘It’s bitter today, isn’t it?’ She pulled her daughter’s hat down further over her ears then adjusted the collar of Kathleen’s coat in an attempt to shield her cheeks from the sharp breeze.

‘About time we had a bit more sunshine to warm us up now it’s April,’ Matilda said, clapping together her gloved palms. She’d been shopping for vegetables in the market when she’d spied Noreen pushing a pram and had ambled over to talk to her. Asleep inside the pram, swaddled to the chin with a woollen shawl, was baby Rosie. Little Kathleen was sitting on top of the coverlet, holding onto the handle to keep her balance, her little legs, bare above her socks, mottled purple with cold.

‘You off home now?’ Matilda asked. She’d noticed that a bag containing a very few potatoes was pegged on the pram handle, but Noreen seemed to be heading back in the direction of The Bunk.

Noreen nodded.

‘I’ll walk with you. I’m done here too.’ Matilda fell in step with her neighbour. ‘Has your husband had any luck finding a job?’ Matilda had bumped into Noreen earlier in the week and discovered that Kieran Murphy was scratching around for work. Noreen had told her that since they’d turned up in The Bunk he’d only managed to pick up a bit of poorly paid casual labouring but wanted something permanent.

‘He’s out looking now,’ Noreen sighed. She slanted a quick look at Matilda. ‘Don’t think I’m being cheeky, will you now, Mrs Keiver, but I remember you said your nephews were working on the demolition in the road, and I was wondering whether they might need an extra hand? Kieran’s a good hard worker.’ She praised her husband.

‘Not sure if they do, luv, but it’s always worth havin’ a word. Tell Kieran to ask for Stephen or Christopher, they’re the foremen in charge.’ In fact Matilda knew her nephew, Robert, who owned the firm, considered Wild Brothers to be already overstaffed. She’d heard him grumbling about his lack of profits and too many wage packets to be found at the end of the week. ‘How about the Irish gang working along there? Has your Kieran asked them for a shift or two?’

‘He thinks they’re up to no good, and I do too,’ Noreen said quietly, wiping little Kathleen’s runny nose with a hanky. ‘We’ve heard them talking … troublemaking …’ She broke off to rub at her daughter’s chapped knees as Kathleen whimpered she was feeling cold.

‘I reckon it’s wise to give ’em a wide berth ’n’ all,’ Matilda agreed with a nod. ‘But being sensible don’t help put grub on the table, do it?’

Noreen grimaced wryly at that.

‘You thought of getting yourself a little job of some sort?’ Matilda asked kindly. She guessed Noreen Murphy was about Christopher’s age: mid-twenties. She was an attractive young woman with the same long black tresses and large grey eyes as her eldest daughter. But she made no effort with her looks. Her hair was simply scraped back into a straggly bun and her pretty features were pale and permanently set in an expression of exhaustion. Matilda guessed Kieran was probably the same age as his wife yet he looked equally haggard and a decade older.

‘I think about a job a lot, but that’s all I do.’ Noreen gave Matilda a skewed smile. ‘Kieran’s not keen on me finding work. He thinks it’s his place to provide for us.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s all fine and noble but it’s an attitude that don’t feed and clothe kids. Sometimes it takes the two of yers pullin’ in a wage to make a decent life. If he ain’t having any luck finding work, perhaps you might do a bit better.’

‘I’ve said the same thing to him, and we always end up having a row about it, Mrs Keiver.’

‘Call me Matilda, we’re neighbours after all, and if you change yer mind I know of a woman down Tufnell Park way who’s looking fer a cleanin’ lady. I know she’s alright ’cos I used to do a bit of charring for her mum, in me time.’

The baby coughed and mewed plaintively and Matilda leaned forward to look in the pram. ‘Want to get that little ’un along to the doctor, don’t you …’

‘She’s fine … she teeths with a bit of bronchitis, that’s all it is,’ Noreen said quickly. ‘I have linctus at home.’

They turned into Whadcoat Street and ambled along in amiable quiet. As they drew close to the shop Matilda said, ‘Better go ’n’ pay something off me tab at Smithie’s. Miserable old git’ll be after me otherwise. You take care of yerselves …’ Having ruffled Kathleeen’s hair Matilda set off across the road.

‘Ain’t you had enough of hanging around in this stinking hole all week?’

‘You don’t have to hang about here if you don’t want to.’ Christopher ignored his friend’s scowl and blew into his cupped palms to warm them. Despite the approach of spring a light sleet was descending and treacherously coating the pavement so he trod carefully in his smart leather shoes and stuffed his hands into his pockets to protect them from an icy breeze. He came to a halt in front of his aunt’s dilapidated house. Once the door had been painted bottle green but now only a few flakes of colour clung to the splintery wood. Christopher turned to Ted Potts. He’d tried to shake him off earlier so he could visit his aunt on his own. ‘Why don’t you go and knock Vic up.’ He jerked his head, hoping to hurry Ted on his way. ‘I’ll meet you both at the dog track at about seven o’clock.’

‘Nah … ’s’alright.’ Ted gave a martyred sigh. ‘I’m here now, ain’t I. I’ll stick around with you.’ He didn’t relish going into this fleapit to see Christopher’s great-aunt, yet neither did he want to go to Vic’s home. If Vic’s wife were about he’d get an ear-bashing for luring Vic off out. Deirdre kept tabs on Vic and, considering that they’d only been married two years, and Vic had already been caught out with another woman, it wasn’t surprising.

‘Go on …’ Christopher twitched his head again. But his friend seemed content to slouch against the doorjamb and fiddle with a penknife. Once he had it open he started idly cleaning his nails. Christopher scowled and raised a hand to hammer on the door. A window above was shoved up and he stepped back to grin at the wrinkled face, edged by two plaited grey buns, peering out.

‘That you, Chris? Come on up. Door’s open,’ Matilda called down. ‘See you’ve brought yer mate with yer.’

‘Alright up there, Mrs K?’ Ted Potts called in greeting, a wonky fag wagging between his lips. ‘Brass monkeys out here, it is.’

‘Got the kettle on,’ Matilda informed them before ramming home the sash in its frame.

The two young men proceeded into a dingy damp hallway and up some perilously rickety stairs. Very few of the spindles remained and the handrail shuddered when touched. On the first-floor landing a door stood open and Christopher and Ted filed into Matilda’s home.

It never failed to amaze Ted why anyone would choose to continue living here now that the Council was clearing the street and re-housing people elsewhere. But Christopher had told him that his aunt would hang on in her first-floor room till she was forced out. Chris had said in an odd way he understood Matilda’s hankering to grip onto her past.

At present Matilda was the only person occupying this particular tenement house and Christopher had urged her to spread out a bit and make use of a couple of the other rooms too. The rent would be the same for one room or all nine of them. Mr Keane, the landlord, was glad to get paid anything at all. Over half of the properties in the street were now empty and producing no income for their owners. The worst examples had been abandoned completely by the freeholders.

But Matilda’s view was that it was easier, in the winter months, for a person living alone to keep cosy in a small space. So she lived, slept, ate in a single first-floor front room, much as she had for a good part of her life. Fortunately, in a road of derelict houses she’d found one that was slightly better than the rest. Most had never been connected to electricity but she’d managed to get a property where she could plug in her precious wireless that had been a Christmas gift from her nephew, Rob.

‘Kettle’s just boiled,’ Matilda said. ‘Who’s fer tea?’

There was no response to her offer because both her nephew and his friend were staring at the little girl sitting on the bed, chewing on a biscuit. The child gave them both a shy smile then ducked her face behind a curtain of long ebony hair.

Matilda grunted a laugh. ‘Say hello to Kathleen, you two. I’m keepin’ an eye on her for Noreen while she’s off out doing a bit of cleaning to earn herself a couple o’ bob.’

‘I thought the Murphys had two little ’uns,’ Chris said, recovering from the surprise of seeing his aunt doing a spot of babysitting.

‘Noreen’s taken Rosie with her in the pram. She’s not walking yet and still sleeps a lot, so ain’t a problem. But this little one gets fed up waiting fer her mum to finish work, don’t yer, Kathleen?’

Kathleen nodded her small head. ‘You’d sooner come and sit with yer Auntie Matilda, wouldn’t yer? Like me biscuits, don’t yer …’ She gave the child an affectionate grin. ‘Anyhow I know your daddy’s home now ’cos I saw him walking up the street out the window. So do you want to go home or wait for Mummy to fetch you?’

Kathleen slanted a peek at Ted. ‘Home …’ she whispered.

Chris burst out laughing. ‘That’s your ugly mug scared her off. Told you to go off to Vince’s, didn’t I …’

‘Take her back home fer us, Chris, would you, and I’ll make the tea.’

‘Me aunt saw you were back so asked me to drop Kathleen off home.’ Chris had been holding the little girl’s hand, but as Kieran Murphy cautiously opened the door to him, he offered it to her father to take.

Kieran Murphy continued staring at him, looking shocked. ‘Mrs Keiver’s been minding Kathleen?’

‘Yeah … while Noreen’s at work, didn’t you know?’ Chris could see the fellow’s freckled cheeks reddening in embarrassment or anger.

‘Please tell your aunt thank you very much,’ Kieran returned stiffly, drawing his daughter to his side. He was about to shut the door but quickly stepped forward before Chris had gone too far. ‘You work for Wild Brothers, don’t you. I’ve seen you driving one of their vans.’

Chris retraced his steps. ‘Yeah, I’m Chris Wild.’

‘Is there any work going at all?’

Chris stuffed his hands in his pockets. He’d had a feeling he was soon going to have this question fired at him by Kieran Murphy. He’d seen the fellow watching them working, trying to pluck up the courage to come over and ask for a job. And now he was going to have to disappoint him.

‘Sorry,’ he grimaced ruefully. ‘If me guvnor had his way he’d put someone off.’

Kieran gave a crisp nod and retreated back inside, mumbling his thanks.

‘That tea brewed?’ Christopher, now back at Matilda’s, pulled out a chair, parking himself at the battered planked table.

‘Not fer me, thanks, Mrs K,’ Ted said quickly, having noted the grimy chips on some cups in an enamel bowl. He was seated on a chair that was losing its stuffing and was glad Chris had quickly returned from taking the kid home because he’d run out of small talk with Matilda. He gazed about at old mismatched furniture that he knew his parents would have been embarrassed to put out for the dustmen to cart off. The iron bedstead shoved in the corner was strewn with tatty clothes and other odds and ends. A large oval mirror in a gilt frame hung on the wall, above the hob grate where the kettle was puffing steam, and was reflecting Ted’s expression of distaste back at him.

‘So how you lads doing up the other end?’ Matilda asked cheerily.

The last time she’d entered the demolition zone where the lads were working had been when she’d felt compelled to join her nephews in commiserating about the king’s death.

She set two cups and saucers on the table and gave the teapot a swirl to mix the leaves then tested the brew by pouring a few drops. It looked strong enough so she filled the cups and dripped milk from a half-empty bottle into them before handing one to Christopher.

‘Had another fight with the Paddies the other day,’ Ted conversationally told Matilda, ignoring Christopher’s quelling look. He took a peer in the biscuit box Matilda had stuck under his nose and selected a digestive. ‘Pikeys got a right good kicking, Mrs K …’ He blushed. ‘No offence, o’ course …’ He’d just remembered that Matilda’s second husband, Reg Donovan, had been a didicoi. And she also seemed fond of the Murphy family.

‘My Reg knew what he was,’ Matilda said with a fond smile, settling down at the table opposite her nephew. ‘You lot better make sure you keep yer wits about you if there’s punches getting thrown. Make sure yer dad keeps out of it,’ Matilda told Christopher, wagging a finger close to his face. ‘Stevie’s getting on a bit and shouldn’t be getting into scraps with younger men.’

‘Don’t you let me dad hear you say that, ’cos he still reckons he’s a bit of an ’andful, y’know.’ Joking aside, Christopher knew his aunt was right; his father should steer clear of getting involved in the worsening feud. But, worryingly, Stevie was allowing himself to get wound up by the Irishmen, and Declan O’Connor in particular.

‘Must be bleedin’ hard on you, having to work with them close by, but just ignore ’em best you can.’ Having given her concise advice Matilda drank some tea. ‘Wage packet at the end of the week’s what matters.’

‘Right ’n’ all, Mrs K,’ Ted stoutly agreed, and helped himself to another biscuit out of the box on the table.

A quiet descended on the musty room and Matilda turned up her paraffin lamp as it was a gloomy late afternoon. She twiddled the knob on the wireless set and some Light Programme music increased in volume. ‘Was listening to them talking about the Coronation Day plans just as you knocked,’ she explained. ‘Prince Philip’s the Chairman of the Commission doin’ all the arranging. It’s a while off till the big day but I’m reckoning on us all having a good old knees-up next June. Time’ll fly by till then.’ She paused, looked reflective. ‘Don’t seem five minutes since the old king died but it’s well over a month since he took his final journey to Windsor. All done for him now, God rest him.’

Christopher and Ted murmured agreement.

‘Speakin’ of George, bless him, I never told you, did I, that I went up to the palace on the day of his death,’ Matilda suddenly announced. ‘I stood around by the gates with all the other people. Should’ve seen the crowds up there! Couldn’t hardly get a foot on the pavement for somebody bumping you off again. Very sad atmosphere, it was; men and women crying their eyes out. Got a bit tearful meself, I don’t mind admitting. Lots of cars were going in and out of the gates …’ She broke off her rattling description to exclaim, with an emphasising thump on the table, ‘Guess who I saw there! Surprised me, I can tell you!’

‘Well, it weren’t the king,’ Ted weakly joked then fidgeted in embarrassment.

Christopher glowered at him. Like the majority of people, himself included, he knew Matilda was fiercely proud of late King George and wouldn’t appreciate tasteless mockery. ‘Who did you see?’ he asked his aunt.

‘Shirley Coleman and her daughter, Grace. They’d gone there as well to pay their respects.’

‘Thought the Colemans had gone to Suffolk,’ Christopher remarked, dunking his digestive in his tea.

‘No! They moved to Surrey. Grace and her brother Paul got evacuated there to a farm. Then Shirley went that way ’n’ all to live close to them when Wilf joined up.’

‘Oh … right,’ Christopher said and took a gulp from his cup.

‘Anyhow they’re back living in Tottenham … White Hart Lane way. And Grace’s got a good job in the City as a typist.’

‘What about old man Coleman?’ Ted joined the conversation. ‘Old Wilf were a bit of a miserable git as I recall. Used to play knock down ginger on him, didn’t we, Chris?’ He leaned forward to give Christopher’s arm a nudge. ‘Not that he ever stirred hisself to open the door. It was always his missus chasing us up the road, weren’t it?’

‘Oh, Wilf died some years ago. Never recovered from his war injuries, so Shirley said.’

The two young men exchanged a suitably solemn look.

‘Pretty girl, she is.’ Matilda gave her nephew a wink. ‘I remember you brought her here once or twice.’ She chuckled to herself. ‘She seemed surprised to know I still live here.’

‘Everybody’s surprised to know you still live here, Aunt Til,’ Christopher returned dryly.

‘Suits me,’ Tilly returned brusquely but with a twitch of a smile. After a silence she added, ‘You two look smart.’ She studied her nephew and his friend. They were both wearing sharp dark suits. But it was Christopher who redrew her admiring glance, and not just because he was her kin. He had a tall, muscular frame that suited the outfit whereas Ted was short and overweight.

The Wild men had always been handsome; even Chris’s evil, long-departed grandfather, Jimmy, who Matilda had despised, had been a looker in his day. Christopher’s lean, angular face, deep brown eyes and thick dark hair got him a lot of attention from the girls. In fact Matilda was surprised he hadn’t been snapped up long ago. But her great-nephew seemed in no rush, at twenty-four, to give up life as a bachelor, even though some of his friends were now settling down.

‘Where you off to then, all dolled up?’ Tilly asked.

‘Me ’n’ Ted ’n’ Vic are going to Harringay Stadium then to the Starlight Rooms,’ Chris explained.

‘Don’t you go wasting yer money!’ Matilda mockingly rebuked. ‘You know I don’t hold with drinkin’ ’n’ gamblin’!’

Christopher grinned at that. It was common knowledge in the family that his great-aunt Matilda had been a very heavy drinker and a bookie’s runner in her time.

Christopher drew out his cigarettes and offered the pack to Ted. He knew his aunt had never smoked, which he found quite a surprise as she’d had plenty of other vices. Having lit up and taken a long drag he settled back. ‘Any more tea in that pot?’

‘Make a fresh lot if there ain’t,’ Matilda offered, giving the pot a shake.

Christopher was aware of his friend slanting an irritated look at him. Ted was eager to get going and Chris was equally eager to get shot of him. In fact he wished Ted hadn’t accompanied him to his aunt’s because he’d wanted to speak to her in private about something. But Ted could be thick-skinned, and not easy to shake off, when he had nothing else to do.

‘Why don’t you get off now, mate? I’m stopping a bit for another cup of tea with me Aunt Til. Didn’t realise it was getting on.’ Christopher very obviously checked his watch.

‘Yeah … will do,’ Ted mumbled. He’d had enough sitting around in Matilda’s shithole. He got up with much shaking of his trouser legs and polished his shoes on the backs of his shins. ‘See yer then, Mrs K. Thanks fer the biscuits.’

‘Mind how you go, son,’ Matilda called as he closed the door. ‘What’s on your mind, Chris?’ she asked as soon as they were alone.

Christopher darted a look at her and shrugged, thinking she could be too cute and blunt at times. His aunt had realised straight away he had an ulterior motive in getting rid of Ted, but he’d not yet worked out how to go about things. What he wanted to talk about had always been a taboo subject in their family. ‘Just wondering what you can tell me about me mum,’ he blurted out.

Matilda dropped her eyes to her cup. She hadn’t been expecting that! It had been some years since Christopher had last quizzed her over his mother, and she’d thought she’d satisfied him that she’d nothing more to reveal. ‘What is it you want to know about yer mum that I ain’t already told you?’ she asked levelly.

‘Well, that’s just it … nobody’s really told me anything much about her.’ Christopher made an effort not to sound as if he was blaming anyone. ‘Dad won’t tell me nuthin’. Bleedin’ hell, wanted me to think she was dead for years and years, didn’t he!’ He gestured in annoyance. ‘You know what he’s like. He just clams up and gets narky soon as I mention her.’

‘Well … that’s understandable. They’ve been divorced a very long time, y’know. Weren’t married fer long in the first place.’

‘Yeah, I know; but I don’t see why he won’t even talk about her,’ Christopher insisted, his voice rising. ‘Ain’t I allowed to know anything other than her name was Pamela Plummer and they was only married a very short time?’

‘’Course you are,’ Matilda soothed gruffly. ‘But it were all a long time ago now, Chris, and things get forgot. Yer dad probably can’t remember a lot of what went on. Crikey … you’re twenty-four. You was only a babe in arms when they broke up and yer dad took on looking after you.’

‘Have you forgot everything about her?’ Christopher asked.

‘No … like I told you before, she was a pretty young woman, I thought so anyhow,’ Matilda said carefully. ‘Quite small and blonde, were Pamela, so nothing like you in looks.’ She gave her tall, dark-haired nephew a fond smile. ‘You’re the spit of your dad and Uncle Rob.’

‘Is there a photo of her, d’you know?’

‘I’ve not seen one in years,’ Matilda replied truthfully. ‘But I saw a picture of them on their wedding day. I know yer dad gave it to Pam when they broke up. He didn’t want it.’

That was a vital clue Christopher hadn’t known and he pounced on the information. ‘So me dad were the one wanted to split up?’

‘Don’t think it was just him,’ Matilda said gently. ‘As you know, yer mum ’n’ dad didn’t get on and both of ’em soon realised they’d made a mistake. They was too young, y’see. It just didn’t work out between them. It happens sometimes; people get caught up in the excitement of weddings ’n’ ferget that afterwards babies come along and it’s not all a lark but bloody hard work.’

‘So it was me that was the problem. When I come along …’

‘Don’t be daft!’ Matilda ejected quickly, cursing herself for phrasing things badly. ‘What I meant to say is: when money’s tight, and work’s tight, it puts pressures on people and …’

‘And they couldn’t be bothered to try and stick together, even though they had me …’

‘Now I didn’t say that, Chris!’ Matilda gave him a stern look. She felt she’d dug herself into a hole and must be careful how she climbed out.

‘And me mum never wanted to see me after that?’ Christopher asked earnestly. ‘Why not?’

‘I’m not saying she didn’t want to see you,’ Matilda answered slowly. ‘But I do know she went back home to live with her folks. Mr and Mrs Plummer moved away from round here shortly after the divorce came through. I think Pam went with them, and haven’t seen nuthin’ of her since. Could be she got herself hitched again.’

‘So I might have half-brothers or -sisters?’

‘S’pose you might …’ Matilda agreed.

Christopher drew out his cigarette packet and Matilda pointed at them, glad of a reason to change the subject.

‘And you can do with cutting down on them coffin nails, ’n’ all, Christopher, or you’ll be going the same way as poor old King George.’

She suddenly turned her head, frowning. The bang on the door was unexpected, but she was very glad of the distraction. She knew she’d have to say something to Stephen about Christopher’s renewed interest in his mother. She wasn’t too cowardly to get involved – in her time she’d upturned greater cans of worms within the family – but this truth was very personal and would be hurtful to Christopher. It was his father’s place – or his mother’s – to tell him the whole story about his past, not hers. The fact that Stevie avoided all mention of Pamela told Matilda he still harboured bitter memories about his brief marriage.

‘Go down and see who it is, will yer, Chris. Paid me rent so it can’t be Podge,’ she reassured him. Podge Peters had been collecting Mr Keane’s rents for decades. Only Podge wasn’t fat any more. He was a shadow of his former self now he had lung disease.

Chris shoved himself up out of his chair, a soundless sigh in his throat, knowing the conversation about his mother was finished and he’d discovered very little that was new, or might help him find her.

As Matilda heard him clattering down the stairs she shook her head sadly to herself.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Oh! Sorry! We were after Mrs Keiver.’

Being confronted by a dapper young man, rather than Matilda, had disconcerted Shirley Coleman. The door had only been open a matter of seconds but already an odour of damp was assaulting her nostrils and behind him, in the hallway, was a disgusting glimpse of decay.

‘You’ve found her,’ Christopher replied. His eyes lingered on the younger of the two women, thinking she was worth a second look and not just because she appeared vaguely familiar. They seemed neat and well-spoken and Christopher knew if they were Jehovah’s witnesses, or rattling a tin for the Sally Army, they were in for a surprise.

‘You ain’t here to preach to her are you?’ The warning mingled with faint amusement in his tone as he propped an elbow on the doorframe and drew on his cigarette. ‘’Cos, if you are, I’d advise you to clear off while you can or she might pelt you with winkle shells. I’ve seen her do it.’

He became aware that the pretty young woman had been staring at him while he’d been fondly reminiscing on his auntie’s method of dispersing unwanted do-gooders. He exhaled smoke, gazing right back, deepening the pink in her cold cheeks.

‘Who is it, Chris?’ Matilda yelled from the top of the stairs, bobbing to and fro for a glimpse of the callers. Her arthritis was playing her up and she didn’t fancy going down to find out.

Invariably, when somebody came knocking on Matilda’s door, she’d shove up the front window and converse with visitors through it. Sometimes she even chucked down her rent money at Podge Peters if she didn’t feel inclined to make the effort to open up to him.

A dawning realisation lifted Grace’s brow a moment after she heard Matilda bawl out the name. ‘You must be Christopher Wild,’ she garbled, wishing she hadn’t stared so obviously at him. She could tell he’d noticed her gawping. In common with her mother, as soon as he’d opened the door, she’d thought him a fine specimen of a man, with a wholesome appearance that seemed out of place in a slum. ‘You won’t remember me,’ she rushed on with a breathless smile. ‘Grace Coleman, and this is my mum, Shirley.’ She put a hand on her mother’s arm then abruptly stuck it out for him to shake.

Christopher stopped lounging and dropped his cigarette butt on the floor. ‘That’s a coincidence; Matilda wasn’t long ago talking about you two. She met you in London weeks ago, the day the king died.’ He gave Grace’s hand a firm shake, then extended the same courtesy to Shirley.

‘Yeah … we were there,’ Shirley confirmed, as she suddenly noticed that Grace and Christopher had locked eyes and she was being overlooked. She could understand why her daughter was mesmerised, she thought sourly. Christopher Wild was a tall, dark handsome man … but, in Shirley’s opinion, he sounded a bit rough and ready, and looked a bit too similar to that nasty bastard who’d run off and left Grace in the lurch a few years ago.

‘We told Matilda we’d pop by at some time. So as we were in the area we thought we’d make it today. Go up, shall I?’ Shirley enquired on hearing Matilda’s raucous shout to close the bleedin’ door ’cos there was a draught.

Christopher shifted aside to let Shirley pass. Grace would have followed, but he put a hand on the doorframe barring her way. ‘Not seen you in ages. Must be ten years or more …’

‘Eleven, I think,’ Grace calculated. ‘I wasn’t quite twelve when I got evacuated to a farm in Surrey with my brother.’

‘Stop here a minute with me?’ He shook the packet of Weights. ‘Me aunt ain’t keen on me smoking; reckons I’ll get ill if I keep on. If I have one here I’ll save meself an ear-bashing about coffin nails. Want one?’ he offered politely. ‘Catch up on old times for a minute or two, shall we?’

‘Yeah … thanks …’ Grace said and took a cigarette. After Christopher had lit it she turned to stand with her back against the brick wall of the house. ‘Cold out here,’ she burbled, aware he was studying her profile.

‘Ain’t much warmer inside,’ he answered dryly.

‘Did you get evacuated?’ She slid a sideways look up at him.

‘Sort of … for a couple of years. But I was lucky in that I got to choose where I went.’

‘How did you swing that?’ Grace asked interestedly.

‘Got relatives Southend way so after the heavy bombings on London I got sent off to stay with them. It was only for a couple of years. I was soon back in London working full-time.’

‘You were lucky.’

‘How did you get on in Surrey?’

Grace shrugged. ‘I remember it was quiet, and boring, and a bit smelly. I liked the animals, especially the sheep. They were nice enough people … strict though and posh with it.’

‘Thought they must’ve been,’ Christopher said with a half-smile.

‘Why’s that?’ she asked sharply.

‘They’ve taught you to speak proper,’ he teased, chuckling when she blushed and turned away. ‘Sounds nice … I like it,’ he added.

‘Why’s Matilda still live round here?’ Grace swiftly changed the subject.

‘Memories, I suppose. She’s spent most of her life in The Bunk. Friends, enemies, two husbands, four kids – not counting me dad and uncle who she sort of adopted after their mum died – she’s had ’em all right here.’ He stared into the distance but it was a lengthy road and the kink at the Biggerstaff intersection robbed him of a complete view.

‘But even so …’ Grace began, a mystified look pinching her delicate features as she glanced about at the squalor.

When she and her mother had arrived at the turning into Whadcoat Street they’d been unsure of which house was Matilda’s as Shirley had forgotten to ask for the number. So, before venturing into the bowels of The Bunk, they had stopped on the corner of Seven Sisters Road for a recce. Grace’s swift, encompassing glance had led her to conclude the road hadn’t improved. But it was different. She had been ready to turn around and head home, but her mother had been determined to visit Matilda.

As a tramp-like individual had scuttled up Grace had bravely accosted him. He’d known Matilda, right enough, and had pointed at a door and given them a gap-toothed grin, before ambling away with a bag in each fist and a shilling for his trouble.

When Grace had visited those few times over a decade ago, she’d stood gawping, transfixed, at the rotten houses, the majority of which had been people’s homes. But now, interspersed with roughly boarded up residences, business names were pinned to the front of some of the terraces indicating these were buildings in commercial use.

‘She ain’t the only one living down here now, y’know.’ Christopher was accustomed to seeing revolted interest animating the faces of people unused to the area. He pointed his cigarette at houses further along the terrace. ‘You’d be surprised how many people are kipping inside some of them.’ A sudden shriek of laughter from inside made Grace and Chris exchange a rueful smile.

‘Nice of you and yer mum to come and visit her, being as you lost touch for a long while.’

‘Didn’t want to come here, to be truthful.’ Grace pulled a little face. ‘It was mum’s idea. She’s not stopped talking about Matilda Keiver, and the old days, since we ran into your aunt by the palace gates.’ She shuffled her feet on the pavement to warm them and hunched her shoulders to her ears, tucking her long fair hair inside her collar. ‘She’d have come sooner to see her but I’ve managed to put her off.’

As a light sleet started to fall, Christopher moved further inside the hallway. He took Grace’s elbow and pulled her in to shelter so they stood face to face in semi-darkness.

‘But I couldn’t get rid of her today,’ Grace continued. ‘She just said she was coming with me when I told her I was visiting Wendy.’ Seeing his puzzlement she explained, ‘I’ve got a friend who lives off Muswell Hill. I knew when I told mum I was seeing her today, she’d want to come too just so’s we could divert here.’ She drew daintily on her cigarette and blew smoke out of her mouth at once. ‘Me mum is here ’cos she’s nosy, you see, not being kind … sorry about that.’

‘No need to be,’ Christopher replied. ‘Matilda’s obviously glad of her company …’ As though to prove his point another rumble of laughter could be heard above.

‘Just because people live like this doesn’t mean it should be treated like a bloody freak show.’ Grace glanced about at her dismal surroundings. ‘They deserve some respect. I like your aunt. I did when I was younger too. I bet all the way home on the bus me mum’ll be going on about the state of her place. Worse it is, better she’ll like it.’

‘Don’t be so sensitive,’ Chris soothed with a tinge of mockery. ‘Matilda’s the last person to feel sorry for herself, or ashamed of herself. She could move out of here tomorrow if she wanted.’

Grace avoided his eyes and stared off through the open doorway.

‘You always was a soft touch, Grace Coleman.’ He slipped a low-lidded look over her petite figure.

‘You mean I was a cry baby,’ she said tightly.

‘Didn’t say that. Don’t remember you bawling often but you was always trying to stop us tying tin cans to dogs’ tails …’

‘Well, it was bloody cruel!’

‘’Course it were, but as a boy I didn’t know no better.’

‘Your mother should’ve taught you not to torment dumb animals …’ She bit her lip, having remembered that Christopher’s mother was dead, and his father had brought him up. ‘Sorry.’ She blushed scarlet. ‘Sorry … forgot your mum passed away, didn’t she …’

‘She ain’t dead,’ Christopher said unemotionally. ‘I found out years ago that were a lie me dad told me to shut me up asking after her. They broke up when I was still a baby and me mum took off.’

‘Really?’ The information was so surprising Grace forgot to immediately exhale and she coughed and spluttered as smoke reached her lungs. ‘Where is she now?’ she squeaked.

Christopher shrugged with feigned nonchalance. ‘Who bleedin’ knows?’ He made an exaggerated gesture with his arm. ‘Mystery, ain’t it, and looks like it’ll stay that way, ’cos nobody seems to want to tell me.’

‘Perhaps they don’t want to hurt you,’ Grace suggested, having recovered her breath. ‘She might have got killed in the war or moved away and remarried.’ She gave him a kind smile.‘Your mum might have a new husband and family.’

‘Well, she didn’t want her old ones, so that’s on the cards.’

Grace bit her lip, feeling awkward in the presence of his bitterness, but she knew whatever he was feeling about his parents hadn’t stopped him studying her from beneath his long, low lashes.

‘Why didn’t you just say you don’t smoke?’

‘I do sometimes,’ she retorted, having noticed humour far back in his deep brown eyes. ‘Usually when I go out and have a drink.’ She dropped the half-smoked cigarette onto the boards and put a foot on it.

Christopher could see she was edging away from him towards the stairs to join her mother. He didn’t want to lose her company just yet. Grace Coleman had grown into a very attractive woman, and he knew he’d like to ask her out, but it was more than that. She had a sweet kindness about her and, as her presence eased more memories to the surface, he suspected he’d liked her years ago for the same reason.

‘Matilda told me you work in the City as a typist,’ Christopher said.

‘She told me you do building work.’

‘Another topic of conversation over?’ he murmured with a half-smile as she took another step towards the stairs. ‘What else did she tell you about me?’

‘Nothing. And I didn’t ask.’ Grace gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘I know it’s ages since we saw each other, but I do remember you were a little bit conceited, even then, Christopher Wild.’

He took a couple of steps after her. ‘I was sorry to hear about your dad.’

‘Thanks,’ Grace said huskily and halted by the banisters. ‘It seems he’s been gone ages, but it’s only a few years.’ She paused. ‘How about your dad? Did he go off to fight?’

‘He joined up in 1941,’ Chris answered. ‘He would’ve gone before but he didn’t want to leave me.’

‘Did you live alone when he went?’

‘Sometimes. But I was with Matilda or me Uncle Rob in London so I wasn’t really on me own. Rob was me guvnor too. I started work in his warehouse in Holloway Road before I left school.’

‘You had a lot of freedom …’ Grace sounded a little envious.

‘Yeah, it was great. I tried to join up meself when I was seventeen.’ He grinned at the memory. ‘Me and a couple of mates went down Euston Road recruiting office.’

‘And?’

‘They chucked two of us out for being too young even though we tried to blag our way in with a lot of chat about bringing our birth certificates back another day. Sammy Piper got took on though. He’d just turned nineteen. Never saw him again, but he might’ve come through alright.’

‘Lots didn’t,’ Grace said sadly.

‘Yeah …’

‘Well, better go up and say hello …’

Chris watched her start up the stairs.

‘First door on the left,’ he called as she gingerly put a hand on the wobbly banister.

‘Just saying to Shirley we had a reunion on a miserable old day all them weeks ago when the king died, but if she comes over here on Coronation Day it’ll be a right good knees-up. Won’t be in the doldrums then, will we, Shirl?’

‘I’ll say that for you, Aunt Til, you do know how to have a bit of a shindig in the street.’ Chris chuckled.

‘We’ll have to get started on plans for a street party. It’ll probably be the last one we have, too, now the demolition’s well under way.’ Matilda grimaced her regret at having to acknowledge that fact.

When Whadcoat Street replaced Campbell Road, and Biggerstaff Road took over as the name for Paddington Street, a death knell had sounded for the notorious Bunk. Oddly, Matilda – and many others too – still mourned its passing and were prepared to hang on in what was left of the street till the bitter end. Of course, Matilda realised the decaying terraces couldn’t remain – the majority were beyond repair – yet still she felt a wrench at knowing the living stage, where a multitude of precious memories had been played out, was in terminal decline.

‘We’ve got till next June to get everything ready for the big day and don’t you lot go knocking down the houses this end till I say you can,’ she jokingly scolded her nephew.

‘No chance of that, Aunt Til; guvnor reckons there’s a few years’ worth of work here and he wants us to end up with the lot.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ Tilly nodded, satisfied. ‘We’ll make it the best party yet … go out on a bang, as it were,’ she said emphatically. ‘We could get some fireworks, and have a big bonfire … ask all the old crowd over for a final Bunk get-together.’ She gleefully rubbed together her palms. ‘Some of ’em, like the Whitton gels and the Lovats, ain’t moved that far away and a lot turn up on Bonfire Night every year. ’Course all my lot’ll be coming over. The little ’uns will love it. Not that some of ’em are so little any more. You couldn’t move down here last November 5th: busier’n Piccadilly Circus, it were.’

‘Well, of course, if we don’t have a do going on down our street in Tottenham, I expect we might manage to come over for it.’ Shirley had sent a startled look her daughter’s way while listening to Matilda’s enthusiastic plans. The idea of mingling socially with slum dwellers, past or present, horrified her.

Grace knew her mother would sooner stay indoors on her own on Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation Day than be caught making merry with people from The Bunk. Yet, personally, she would be glad of an invitation to a street party in Whadcoat Street. Matilda was a wonderfully natural character, in Grace’s estimation. She imagined the Keiver family had great, uninhibited fun when they got together.

‘Ain’t you gotta be off, Chris?’ Matilda gently ribbed her nephew in the break in the conversation. She’d noticed he was having difficulty keeping his eyes off Shirley’s daughter, unsurprisingly considering how pretty Grace was. Although she was in her early twenties Matilda reckoned the girl could have passed for a teenager because she was so small and slim. She ran an eye over her stylish coat and leather court shoes, admiring the elegant way Grace was turned out. Shirley, on the other hand, looked as though she was trying to recapture her youth: her coat barely reached her knobbly knees and her make-up looked too thick in Matilda’s opinion. Her lips twitched in a private smile as she turned her attention to her nephew.

‘Chris is meeting his pals soon ’n’ going to Harringay dogs,’ she announced.

‘Plenty of time yet,’ Christopher said and settled back in his chair. ‘Do you remember Ted Potts?’ he asked Grace.

Grace gladly put down her cup of tea. It had a slight tang to it as though the milk in it was on the turn. ‘Yeah … I think I do. Quite short, wasn’t he, when we were at school?’

‘Yeah, that’s him; he still is a shortarse. He was here this afternoon. You only just missed him. How about Vic Wilson? Do you remember him?’

‘He was a rotten bully,’ Grace stated, narrowing her eyes.

‘Not any more.’ Christopher choked a laugh. ‘He’s married to Deirdre Thorn and she’s got him right under her thumb.’

‘Oh … I remember her! She was in my class at school.’

‘His wife only keeps tabs on him ’cos he’s been playing around,’ Matilda interjected. ‘Can’t blame the gel for doing that.’

‘How about Bill Bright?’

‘Remember Billy.’ Grace nodded. ‘My friend Maureen liked him.’

‘He got engaged a few months ago to Bet Sweetman.’

‘Sounds like you two have got some catching up to do another time,’ Shirley said with an arch look at Matilda. She gathered up her coat and handbag. ‘Anyway, time we got off, Grace. You ready?’ She shrugged into her coat.

‘Thanks for the tea, Mrs Keiver.’ Grace got to her feet, pulled her gloves from her coat pocket, and put them on. ‘It’d be nice to come over for your street party next year. Thanks for the invitation.’ Grace knew her mother had shot her a quelling glance but she ignored her.

‘You’re very welcome, Grace, and if I need some help with me plans I reckon I can count on you as another pair of hands.’ Matilda gave her a beam.

‘Of course,’ Grace said. ‘I make good sandwiches, you know.’

‘Well, got to get that bus,’ Shirley interrupted in a strained voice.

‘Want a lift back to Tottenham? I’ve only got the works van but you’re welcome to a ride. It’s only got one passenger seat in the front but you can squash together and I’ll dust it off first.’

‘No … it’s alright; thanks all the same … don’t want to put you out …’ Grace murmured.

‘No trouble … I’m going that way in any case.’

‘Yeah, why not, Grace,’ Shirley butted in. ‘Save us the bus fare and I don’t fancy hanging about waiting at the stop in this weather. Freeze to death out there, we will.’

‘Right, that’s settled then,’ Chris said and went to drop a farewell kiss on his aunt’s freckled brow.

Moments after pulling up at the kerb in front of their house Christopher had courteously jumped from the van to help them out as the passenger door wasn’t easy to handle: it slid stiffly along rather than opening outwards.

‘Have you got time to come in for a cup of tea, Christopher?’

‘I’m drowning in tea, thanks all the same, Mrs Coleman.’

Shirley’s eyes veered between her daughter and Christopher, noting they were standing close together.

‘Well … I’m going in,’ Shirley said with a significant look. ‘And I could do with a hand getting tea ready.’

‘D’you fancy coming out with me sometime next week? Say Thursday about seven?’ asked Christopher as soon as she was gone.

‘That was quick!’ Grace exclaimed, suppressing a smile. ‘No small talk first?’

‘We’ve done all that this afternoon,’ he returned. ‘No point in wasting time as far as I’m concerned.’ He tilted his head to look into her honey-coloured eyes. ‘So I don’t bother with small talk, and you don’t play hard to get … deal?’

‘Alright … but I can’t be home late as I start work early and have to catch the tube at seven-thirty.’

Christopher caught her chin to kiss her but she held him off with a fist planted hard against his coat. ‘We’ve not even been out yet,’ she squeaked in indignation.

‘Yeah … but I saved your life … and you still owe me …’

She giggled at the mock gravity in his voice, liking the way one of his fingers manoeuvred easily to stroke her cheek. ‘So you remember, do you? Thought you’d forgotten about teaching me to swim.’

‘It’s all coming back to me,’ he said softly and removing her controlling hand from his chest, he kissed her gently on the lips before strolling away.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Got a bone to pick with you, Stephen.’

Stephen watched his aunt stomp over his threshold and carry on straight into the kitchen. He closed the door and followed her, quite meekly and without comment. She’d made the trip to Crouch End to see him so he knew something was bugging her.

After their mum had died of Spanish flu this woman had been a substitute mother to Stephen and his brother Robert. They both loved her and respected her blunt wisdom and sense of fair play. Even now she’d advanced in years, and was no longer the bruiser she’d once been, she wasn’t afraid to tackle any problem head on, especially if it involved family.

Stephen rocked the kettle to judge how much water was in it then put it on the gas stove and turned to face her, resigned to getting a lecture.

‘It’s time Christopher was told all about what went on between you ’n’ Pam.’ Matilda didn’t believe in preamble.

The month of May had arrived in a blaze of sunshine and had seemed to fire Matilda into action. For weeks past she’d been playing over in her mind the conversation she’d had with Christopher and wondering whether it was best to speak up or let sleeping dogs lie. She’d been glad to see Shirley and Grace Coleman that afternoon, not simply for a nice chat about her Coronation Day plans, but because their appearance had cut short her awkward conversation with her nephew. From the moment they’d all left, Matilda had been cross with herself for being relieved about it. One thing Matilda Keiver had never been was a coward, and yet she’d felt like one that day. She knew Christopher had reached a point in his life where he was no longer going to let the matter of his mum’s whereabouts drop. And that was brave of him. So she’d decided to be equally courageous and tackle his father, even though it was bound to cause ructions. It was a problem they could solve together because if he wanted help she was ready to offer it.

Stephen’s jaw had sagged towards his chest. He hadn’t been expecting that! He’d thought his aunt had probably got the pikeys on her mind, and was about to nag him to back off on further hostilities to protect his, and Christopher’s, safety and livelihood.

‘What the bleedin’ hell’s brought this on?’ he barked, rattling cups and saucers onto the wooden draining board.

‘Not what … who …’ Matilda replied, arms akimbo. ‘Few weeks ago Chris asked me again about his mum and I did me best to answer him. But I’m warning you, this time he’s not gonna be fobbed off.’ She dragged a chair out from under the small formica-topped table and sat down, sighing as she stretched out her aching legs. ‘Been giving it a lot of thought, y’know, Stevie; I reckon you should come clean over it once ’n’ fer all.’

Having conquered his shock Stephen made a dismissive gesture. ‘He’ll forget about it now he’s got this new girlfriend. Right keen on Grace, he is …’

‘He won’t forget it,’ Matilda contradicted him, undeterred by her nephew’s effort to change the subject.

‘What’s he said then?’ Stephen snapped testily.

‘He wants to know anything I can tell him about her. He asked to see a photo of her.’

‘Well, there ain’t none.’

‘I told him that,’ Matilda replied levelly. ‘I said there was a wedding photo but you gave it to Pam.’

‘Shouldn’t have told him nuthin’ about photos,’ Stevie returned harshly. He clattered teaspoons onto saucers and spun away from the sink to glare at his aunt.

‘I’ve told you before, I ain’t lying about any of it. Up to now I’ve just told him the bare bones and tried to make meself scarce quick as I could. But I’m done with that. He’s a man and he’s got a right to know. I care about him as much as I do about you, and don’t you forget it!’

‘Well, if you care that much, don’t go upsetting him, and you will if you keep on and he finds out his mother was cruel to him. Should never have told him in the first place that she was alive. Were only you kept on about it made me tell him she weren’t dead.’

‘I went on about it because you’d told lies! And lies always come back to bite yer!’ Matilda stormed.

‘What’s all the shouting about … ?’

Neither Matilda nor Stephen had heard the front door opening, or Christopher walking down the hall. He came further into the kitchen swinging a look between the guilty faces of his father and great-aunt.

And he knew, without either of them answering him.

He drew in a deep breath. ‘Glad you’re both here, and talking about me mum, ’cos I’ve got something to say on that subject too.’

Stephen licked his lips and darted a look at Matilda. She was gazing earnestly at her great-nephew.

‘I’m gonna start looking for her,’ Chris announced. ‘Fact is, I already have started.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘I’ve been to the place you told me she and her parents were last known to have lived.’ He stared at his father for a comment but Stephen was tight-lipped, whitening in anger. ‘The lady who now lives in that house remembers the Plummers. She reckoned they moved off to Cambridge over twenty years ago but ain’t sure if their daughter went with them or stayed in London.’ He watched his aunt and father exchange a look, but still neither of them said a word. ‘If there’s anything you can tell me I’d be grateful to hear it, but if you don’t want to help, it don’t matter ’cos I’m still gonna try and find her somehow, just to get things straight in me head.’

‘Well get this straight in yer head,’ Stephen suddenly bellowed. ‘She didn’t want you, I did! And I was the one took on the job of bringing you up, ’cos she was too bleedin’ useless to be a mother …’

‘That’s enough!’ Matilda had shoved herself to her feet. ‘Christopher wants to find out what happened to his mum. That’s natural enough …’

‘She weren’t never a natural mother; she was a lazy good-fer-nuthin’ slut …’

‘Shut up!’ Matilda roared, swiping out at Stephen’s arm with the back of her hand to quieten him. ‘If Christopher manages to find Pam, and she’s got the guts to have an honest talk with him, he can make up his own mind about her, and what went on.’

‘No … let him carry on,’ Christopher said quietly. ‘Finding out more in a few minutes than I’ve learned in twenty-four fucking years.’ He gazed at his father. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before? Why didn’t you say she was lazy and useless and we were better off without her?’ he asked in a voice hoarse with emotion.

‘Didn’t want to upset you about any of it,’ Stephen forced out. ‘What kid wants to know that sort of thing about his mum?’

‘Me … I’d’ve liked to know. D’you think she’d want to see me now? Did she ever try and see me after you broke up?’

Stephen clamped together his lips but gave a savage shake of his head. It was a lie. He’d had dozens of letters from Pamela over the first few years after their divorce. In them, she’d begged to see Christopher, but he hadn’t allowed it. The letters had petered out and, after their son turned five, the birthday cards stopped arriving too. Everything had been burned, but Stephen could remember they’d all had a London postmark. It had been the first thing he’d checked: whether she was still living locally. But he’d never seen her, although he’d expected her to turn up on his doorstep and demand to see their son. Stephen had jumped to the cosy conclusion that when the chips were down, she just couldn’t be bothered.

‘Why wouldn’t she want to see me? I wouldn’t make a nuisance of meself. All I want to do is spend an afternoon talking to her about when I was little and what she’s been up to … that’s all …’

Matilda felt tears needle her eyes and she swung about and started fiddling with the teapot and crockery.

Stephen strode for the door, grim-faced, but Christopher stepped in front of him to stop him leaving the kitchen. ‘Did she go off with another man? Is that it?’

Stephen shoved at Christopher’s arm to move him. But Christopher refused to budge, so he stuck a finger under his son’s nose. ‘The only thing you need to know is … who’s looked after yer? Eh? Who’s got you over bumps and scrapes and the bleedin’ measles and all the rest of it? I’ve spent me life going without and bringing you up …’

‘Yeah, I know. And I’m grateful to you fer making sacrifices. But it took the two of you to get me here in the first place. You ain’t everything …’

Stephen swore beneath his breath. ‘You’d better fuckin’ move, son, or there’s gonna be trouble,’ he threatened softly.

‘Christopher …’ Matilda’s grey head gestured for her great-nephew to move aside.

Stephen strode into the hallway and ripped his coat off the banisters before slamming out of the front door.

‘Well … that went well,’ Christopher said acidly. But his face was ashen with strain.

‘Sit down,’ Matilda said gently.

Once he was seated she put a cup of steaming tea in front of him and loaded sugar into it.

‘Fer what it’s worth, Chris,’ she said quietly, ‘I think you’re doing the right thing.’ She placed a rough hand on his broad shoulder and squeezed. ‘Can tell you like Grace a lot, even though you’ve not been walking out long together. Sometimes things just seem right, don’t they …’

He nodded and sipped from his tea.

‘Things are changing for you, Chris. You’re a man … oh, I know you have been fer quite a while, but comes a time when the larking about with yer mates gotta stop ’cos something far more important comes into your life.’ She walked away to the draining board. ‘Yer dad’ll get over it; be good fer him ’n’ all ter jump this hurdle, then perhaps he’ll start thinking about settling down again himself. He’s still a youngish man. No reason why him ’n’ Pearl can’t get married. Can’t use the excuse of caring fer his boy for ever, can he?’ she said lightly.

Christopher shook his head but didn’t look up. ‘D’you know where I could start looking?’

‘Bexleyheath,’ Matilda said. ‘I reckon if you was to go there and make some enquiries you might find out something about Pam Plummer … or Pam Wild. She might have kept to her married name, but I know when it all happened, and the two of ’em was eaten up with bitterness, she didn’t want to be known as a Wild. Then of course, she might have married again in the meantime, which would make it all a bit harder.’ She paused. ‘And you’ve got to accept that she might be dead, Chris. Whole of London took a battering during the war and lots of casualties … so if she stuck around in town …’

‘Yeah …’ he sighed. ‘Just be nice to know though. What makes you say Bexleyheath?’

‘Ran into a friend of your mum’s I hadn’t seen in a while, before the war. Vicky Watson was her bridesmaid. She said she’d sort of lost touch with Pam but thought she’d gone south of the river, Bexleyheath way. I remember Vicky seemed a bit cagey. It made me think Pam might have a new man in her life. Or perhaps Vicky just thought I harboured grudges over what went on between yer mum and dad. But that weren’t the case then and it ain’t now.’

‘Where does Vicky Watson live?’ Christopher immediately asked.

‘Ain’t Vicky Watson now; she’s married to David Green who works for the Water Board. Or he was working there when I spoke to her. But that were over thirteen years ago. I think they had a place in Clapham, but ’course they might’ve got bombed out.’

‘Thanks, Aunt Til.’

Christopher had spoken so huskily, so gratefully, that Tilly dipped her head to conceal the tears in her eyes. ‘I’ll be getting off then,’ she croaked, putting her empty cup down on the draining board.

‘Want a lift back?’

‘If you’ve got time it’d save me poor old legs,’ Matilda answered with a smile.

‘Don’t reckon your old legs are as bad as you make out,’ he ribbed her, glad to lighten the atmosphere.

‘You try falling out a bleedin’ first-floor winder and see how you feel,’ she came back indignantly, but with a rueful chuckle.

When he was younger, Christopher had had a macabre fascination with knowing all the details about Matilda’s narrow escape from death. It had never been kept a secret from him that his paternal grandfather had been the black sheep of the family and had tried to murder Matilda. There had been no point trying to cover up the scandal as many people knew it first-hand. The younger generation had had gruesome details passed down to them about the night Jimmy had a fight with a gangster and was mortally wounded. Rather than wait, and let nature take its course, Jimmy had committed suicide by falling from a window and dragging Matilda out with him. Jimmy had died that night, although his legend lived on. He was still spoken about by some locals with a mixture of dread and awe. At school, Christopher had enjoyed his mates being envious of him because of his notorious ancestor. But those juvenile feelings had passed; now he felt an acute sense of loss at never having known even one of his grandparents.

‘Did Mr and Mrs Plummer ever try to keep in touch with me? I suppose even if they had me dad wouldn’t have allowed it.’

Matilda slowly walked to the front door. She turned to Christopher before opening it. ‘They were ashamed, Chris. Not of you – of their daughter and what had gone on. They were strait-laced people … not like us. Staying respectable and not being gossiped about could’ve been more important to ’em than seeing their grandson.’ She sighed. ‘That’s just my opinion. Could be there were other reasons they kept quiet. If you get to speak to yer mum she’ll tell you about them, I expect.’

As Chris helped Matilda out of his van in Whadcoat Street he spied Kieran Murphy pushing a pram over the threshold of his house. The man raised a hand to them but didn’t stop to talk; he immediately disappeared inside.

‘Ain’t seen much of Noreen lately; I reckon he’s got her under lock ’n’ key.’ Matilda scowled.

‘Not done no more babysitting?’

‘He don’t want her workin’. Thought Noreen had told Kieran she’d got a little job cleanin’ but seems she went behind his back and he hit the rafters over it. He’s made her promise to give it up and stay home with the kids. Know she ain’t lyin’ over his temper ’cos I’ve heard them going at it hammer ’n’ tongs on a few occasions.’ Matilda gave a sorrowful shake of her head. ‘Pride’s all well ’n’ good when you can afford it. But that man can’t.’

‘Could tell he had the ’ump about you minding Kathleen the day I took her home. Asked me for work that day too.’

‘Rob wouldn’t wear it, would he?’

Chris barked a laugh. ‘I didn’t even bother asking him ’cos I didn’t want me ears chewed off.’

Matilda gave her nephew a wave and proceeded towards her house. She knew Kieran was angry with her as well as his wife because he’d found out she’d put Noreen in touch with the client in Tufnell Park. Pigheaded men didn’t intimidate Matilda; if Kieran Murphy had an axe to grind he could come right out and say what was on his mind. And she’d tell him his fortune in return.

But for now Matilda had more important people’s troubles weighing on her mind. A short while ago Stevie had gone storming off with a face like thunder but, like Noreen’s husband, he’d eventually realise not to ride roughshod over loved ones ’cos sometimes a battle led to all-out war.

CHAPTER SIX

‘There’s been an accident. You’d better get back up there fast.’

Smithie’s general store was still trading on Whadcoat Street and Christopher had been inside buying cigarettes when Vic Wilson burst in to garble out his terrifying message.

‘Accident?’ Christopher parroted, staring at him, but he’d already moved towards the shop’s exit. A knot of bystanders could be seen congregated outside the house they were working on close to the junction with Lennox Road.

‘Yer dad’s fallen off that bleedin’ old ladder …’

Even before Vic mentioned his father, an instinctive dread had started churning Christopher’s guts. He sprinted as fast as he could towards the scene with Vic puffing in his wake.

The first thing Christopher saw was the wooden ladder – the one nobody was supposed to be using at heights because a lot of top rungs were worn – lying in bits on the ground. Stephen was curled up close by, moaning, with Bill crouching over him looking petrified.

Christopher fell to his knees beside them. ‘What you done?’ He bellowed at his dad, gripping his arm. He shot a stare at Billy. ‘Anyone called for an ambulance?’

‘Ted’s gone to telephone for help …’ Bill burbled.

‘What’s he done? Where’s he hurt? Where you hurt?’ he demanded, leaning over his father in an effort to make him open his eyes, but they remained squeezed shut. Christopher could hear laboured breathing interspersed with chilling whimpers of pain.

‘Come off that old ladder, he did,’ Bill spluttered in shock. He raked shaking fingers through his hair. ‘We was all inside working and he kept on about it was time to get started on the roof even though you’d said we’d gotta wait till we had a decent ladder ’fore tackling it.’ He turned to Vic who was prowling in a circle, sucking desperately on a cigarette. ‘We told him ’n’ all, didn’t we, Vic?’ Vic nodded a vigorous response. ‘Took no notice of us. He must’ve gone up to start on that fucking gutter without even asking anybody to foot it for him …’ Billy tailed off, with a despairing shake of his head.

Christopher touched his father’s scalp and felt hot stickiness on his fingertips. Having gently moved aside some of his hair he exposed blood pooling beneath his skull. An anguished groan tore at his throat. ‘I told him not to go right up it! Told him not to!’ he raged in a suffocated voice. He jumped to his feet and paced to and fro. ‘Vic, go and see what the fuck Ted’s up to. Where’s the ambulance? Go and see what he’s up to …’

The sound of a distant bell calmed him slightly and he dropped back to his knees to soothe his father who’d started to cough and shake.

‘S’alright … listen … ambulance is coming …’ he whispered, grasping his father’s icy hand and giving it a tight squeeze. ‘You cold?’ Whipping off his jacket he gently put it round Stephen’s huddled form. The other two men immediately struggled out of their coats and offered them up.

‘Can I help at all? Shall I fetch a blanket to cover him? Do you need cloths or water?’ Kieran Murphy had just dashed across the road to offer assistance, having spotted the commotion in the street from his window. His wife appeared in the doorway of their house, holding Rosie in her arms while Kathleen clung to her legs, thumb in mouth.

Vic threw him a dirty look and muttered beneath his breath, but Chris glanced over a shoulder and gave an appreciative nod. ‘His hands feel frozen. Blanket might keep him a bit warmer … thanks,’ he croaked.

Kieran disappeared back inside the property and returned with a large blanket in a matter of minutes. He helped Chris spread it out and tuck it around Stephen before quietly retreating to stand with Noreen. Ted came racing back round the corner and stood gasping and holding the stitch in his side. ‘Didn’t know whether to stop at the chemist and get some stuff like bandages and paraffin gauze …’ His voice tailed off as he read his colleagues’ expressions. They all knew that bandages and paraffin gauze weren’t likely to be of much use.

‘Jayzus … now what’s gone on here?’ Declan O’Connor had just arrived in the street to check on his workforce. He’d noticed at once the little group gawping at the drama and had sprung from his van to run over. His crew had congregated along the road and were watching from a distance. None of them had come down to offer help.

Christopher sprang up. ‘What’s gone on? What’s fuckin’ gone on? I’ll tell you what’s gone on, you bastard. Me dad’s come off a fuckin’ ladder and you know why? Because you bunch of thievin’ cunts stole the new one he should’ve been using.’ He gripped one-handed at the Irishman’s throat and squeezed hard while Vic and Bill tugged at his arms and torso trying to prise them apart. Ted crouched beside Stephen holding out his arms, trying to shield the invalid and prevent him becoming aware of the fracas.

‘It was untied from the top of his van and stolen, so don’t make out you didn’t know,’ Christopher spat though his grinding teeth, as finally his men dragged him back. ‘So he used this one and it’s only fit fer fuckin’ firewood.’ He shook off imprisoning hands and strode to the ladder. He saw at once where a few of the wormy worn treads had given way at the top and kicked out at it in violent frustration. ‘You’d best keep that lot away.’ Christopher pointed a shaking finger at the approaching navvies. ‘’Cos if yer don’t there’s gonna be murders here today …’

O’Connor looked for a moment as though he might retaliate; his fingers were massaging his scratched throat, and his snarl had hoisted one side of his mouth up close to his nose. But instead he strode towards his men, arms outstretched, to pen them and prevent them coming any closer. A moment later the pikeys were retreating towards their own territory, throwing glances over their shoulders. They stood by the door of the house they were working on, and watched as an ambulance screeched around the corner and speeded up to the casualty.

‘Want me to go and let the guvnor know what’s gone on?’ Vic asked in a hushed tone. He gave Christopher’s arm a shake to gain his attention.

Christopher had been crouching by the medical team examining his father, but now he slowly and wearily stood up.

‘Go and let Mr Wild know what’s happened, shall I?’ Vic repeated in a whisper.

Christopher’s uncle was always known either as the guvnor, or Mr Wild. None of Wild Brothers’ employees was under any illusions as to who ran the show, or where familiarity ended.

‘Yeah,’ Christopher said hoarsely. ‘He’ll be at the warehouse off Holloway Road.’

Vic nodded.

‘Would you tell him to let Pearl know?’ Christopher knew his father’s girlfriend would be distraught to hear the news but she’d be even more upset if she were the last to find out. He dug in a pocket and brought out his van key and handed it over. In seconds Vic was reversing at speed out into Lennox Road.

‘Woss gone on?’ a woman’s gravelly voice called.

Christopher turned to see old Beattie Evans, who still lived in the street, hobbling towards him leaning heavily on a stick.

‘Me dad’s had an accident,’ he answered croakily. ‘Would you let me aunt know he’s gone to hospital when she gets back from the market?’

Beattie nodded, mouth agape. ‘Bleedin’ hell,’ she muttered. ‘Stevie don’t look good.’ She glanced about at the stricken faces. The shortarse looked as though he was about to collapse, or throw up. And she could see why: he’d got his eyes fixed on the blood escaping from beneath Stevie’s head and trickling towards the gutter.

Beattie had lived in The Bunk long enough not to be badly affected by the sight of a bit of claret. In Campbell Road’s heyday she’d watched men caving each other’s skulls in with iron bars. In fact, she’d seen Matilda Keiver, in her prime, put a poker over a bloke’s head when he wouldn’t pay his rent. But those days were gone and everybody had gone soft in her opinion. She knew that hot sweet tea often did the trick on such occasions. ‘Get anybody a cuppa, can I?’ she offered gamely.

‘Coming in the ambulance?’

Christopher pivoted about to see one of the crew addressing him. They had his father on a stretcher in the back and were ready to go. He nodded and clambered in quickly. A moment later he’d sprung out again to talk to Ted and Billy.

‘Get everything under lock and key before you leave.’ He sent a stare of violent hatred along the road. ‘I wouldn’t put it past those pikeys to try and turn this to their advantage.’

‘I bought new ladders just a few months ago. I know I fucking did. I bought a couple of step ladders and a high reach, and I know you had ’em, ’cos I delivered them to you myself when you was working on that extension in Tooley Street.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘So why was he up a fucking worm-eaten old ladder messing about with gutters?’ Robert Wild turned a look of angry disbelief on his nephew. ‘If you needed more ladders why didn’t somebody just say so?’

Robert and Christopher were standing together in the waiting room of the hospital, and attempting to keep their voices low during a fraught exchange. At intervals both men were darting glances at the double doors that led to the wards, praying that the doctor would reappear with reassuring news.

Chris’s uncle had turned up just twenty minutes or so after the ambulance had arrived and Chris had been enormously relieved to see him. He didn’t relish having this conversation with his guvnor, but he was glad to have somebody with him to prevent his imagination running riot. Every time he heard a hum of activity behind the doors his heart leapt to his throat. He was certain the doctor would rush out at any moment to tell him they hadn’t been able to save his father. The waiting room was almost empty: just an elderly couple sat huddled together on chairs at the end of one row. They looked as anxious as Chris felt and he guessed they too were praying for good news from the staff about a relative.

Aware of his uncle’s steady stare Christopher ran a hand across the back of his neck and dropped his chin. He knew he’d have to grass his dad up, and he was already feeling guilty as hell over his accident.

Stephen had told him not to let on to Robert that the new ladder had been stolen. He’d said he’d replace it himself without the guvnor ever finding out that the Irish crew had stolen it off his van. Christopher had suspected his dad had felt embarrassed, and also at fault for having forgotten to padlock the new ladder. In the past they’d been able to leave equipment unattended for a short while without risking losing it, but since the Paddies had turned up in The Bunk anything out in the open had needed nailing down. Christopher also understood that his dad didn’t like feeling beholden to his brother, or that he was in his shadow, although, of course, he was, on both counts.

‘Didicois working down Whadcoat Street have been stealing stuff,’ Christopher admitted gruffly. ‘We’ve lost shovels to ’em ’n’ all. They nearly had a pick away too only I caught ’em red-handed.’

Robert’s expression made words unnecessary.

‘He didn’t want you to know,’ Christopher sighed out as two nurses bustled past in a rustle of starch. ‘Said he’d replace the stuff we’d lost out of his wages when he could afford to. Felt it was his fault for not keeping a closer eye on it all.’

Robert spun away, his fingers splayed rigidly above his head in a gesture of sheer exasperation, as he hissed a string of curses that made Chris wince.

‘Have you let Pearl know?’ Chris swiftly changed the subject.

Robert nodded. ‘Sent Gil round to the shop where she works to get her and bring her here straight away. Thought they’d have arrived by now. Traffic must be bad …’ He glanced at the large round clock on the waiting-room wall. It was almost five o’clock in the afternoon and Chris realised he’d been here for over an hour already.

‘Came as soon as I heard off Beattie about the accident.’ Matilda hurried in through the swing doors. ‘How is he?’

‘Don’t know yet … waiting to hear.’ Christopher drew his aunt towards the row of hard-backed chairs and made her sit down. He could see she was breathless and agitated. He sat beside her while his uncle paced to and fro.

Ten minutes later Pearl appeared, ashen-faced. She rushed over but Gil, the warehouseman who’d given her a lift, hung back by the door as though conscious he wasn’t family and should keep to a respectful distance on such a solemn occasion.

‘How bad is he? Is he going to die?’ Pearl blurted out. She was a tubby woman and the tops of her arms were visibly quivering beneath her cardigan. She looked dishevelled, as though she’d dropped everything to race here. Suddenly she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve to scrub at her watering eyes.

‘Waiting for the doctor to come and give us his verdict.’ Robert had put an arm around her trembling shoulders. ‘He’s strong as an ox, is Stevie,’ he encouraged her. ‘Take more’n a tumble to see him off …’

‘He’s been telling me about those pikeys in the street.’ Pearl was generally easy-going but, at present, her face was puckered in anger at the thought that Stephen might have been set about. ‘Have they done it to him? Was he in a fight?’ She shoved at her sleeves in agitation, eyes narrowing vengefully.

‘No, nothing like that,’ Robert soothed. ‘He’s had a fall from a ladder …’

Pearl gulped in a startled breath. ‘How high up was he … ?’ she started.

Matilda was first to notice the white-coated doctor entering and she sprung from her chair, flinching at the sharp pain in her knee. The little group converged on the portly fellow.

‘He’s been very lucky.’ The doctor addressed Christopher. ‘All things considered, it’s a miracle, young man, I’m not now writing your father’s death certificate.’ He waited until the information had sunk in and expressions of sheer thankfulness were transforming four faces. ‘He’s badly bruised and has a broken leg and collarbone and a few cracked ribs. The ladder probably saved him from worse injury. From the few words he’s said, he remembers landing on top of part of it and it probably broke his fall.’ He paused, aware of hungry eyes on him; the invalid’s family was silently devouring every word he uttered. ‘It’s the nasty head injury that’s most worrying,’ the doctor continued. ‘He’s concussed … I’m hoping that’s all it is. But we’ll need to keep a careful eye on him.’

Christopher nodded vigorously, feeling so utterly relieved that he thought he might burst out crying. He could feel heat in his eyes and a stinging sensation attacking his nose. He tried to say a few words of thanks but his throat seemed to have closed so he let his uncle do the talking and sank down onto the chair next to the one Pearl had tottered to. He put his elbows on his grimy overall knees and let his forehead sink into his cupped palms.

‘Can I go and see him?’ Robert asked.

‘I think just his son should see him today.’ The doctor paused. ‘And only for a few minutes; you mustn’t excite him at all. He’s drifting in and out of consciousness and needs to rest.’

Christopher nodded wordlessly and, as the doctor gave him a kind smile, he felt his eyes fill up again.

‘You’ll keep him in here for as long as necessary, won’t you, doctor? Don’t let him come out till you’re sure he’s ready.’ Robert knew his brother well enough: Stevie would discharge himself as soon as he was able to get his feet to the ground.

‘I’ll sit by his bed and make sure he don’t do a runner, if needs be,’ Matilda announced, thrusting her shaking hands into her coat pockets.

A sob suddenly burst from Pearl and she wailed against Christopher’s shoulder, ‘Stupid sod, he is. What’s he doing going up ladders at his age when there’s you young men to do that …’

Robert went over and patted comfortingly at her back. ‘Don’t worry, luv,’ he consoled her. ‘Soon as he gets out of here I’m gonna have his guts fer garters over it.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘Yeah … it is …’ Christopher immediately spurned Grace’s comfort. ‘We’d argued again just this morning about me wanting to find me mum.’ The tip of his cigarette glowed and, in the ensuing silence, smoke drifted through his nostrils to mingle with night air. He turned away from the van’s open window to gaze at her. ‘Made a change for us to speak actually, even if it were just a blazing row. He’s been giving me the silent treatment for weeks. Hell it is trying to work with somebody all day long when they won’t say a word to you.’

‘It’s not your fault he went up that ladder, Chris,’ Grace gently persisted. ‘Your dad decided to use it, and he should’ve known better.’ One of her hands covered his fingers, resting idle on his thigh. ‘You’d all told him it was dangerous. What more could any of you have done?’

‘Could’ve kept quiet about me mum, that’s what I could’ve done. Wish I’d never bloody mentioned anything about going looking for her. Me dad was right. He’s always been around for me. What’s she done except made herself scarce for over twenty years?’ The bitter outburst tailed away only to be resumed a moment later. ‘I knew it’d upset him badly if I started going on about her, but still I did it.’

‘You’ve got a right to know about your mother,’ Grace quietly reasoned. ‘Anyhow, rowing over your mum doesn’t excuse him doing something stupid.’ She huffed. ‘For Heaven’s sake, at his age, he should’ve known better than risk his life like that!’

Irritably, Christopher whipped his fingers out from under Grace’s warm palm. He knew there was sense in what she was saying but anxiety and guilt continued gnawing at him. ‘Neither of us has been able to concentrate properly since this blew up. He probably forgot the ladder were knackered because of everything else going round in his head.’ Chris flicked the dog end out of the van window and immediately drew out another cigarette from the pack. ‘And where was I, eh, when it happened?’ His tone was viciously self-mocking. ‘Buying fags down the shop, weren’t I, ’cos I couldn’t stand the bad atmosphere and needed a break. If I’d been where I should’ve been, and seen him hoisting it, I’d’ve put a fourteen-pound hammer through the poxy thing right there and then.’

Grace slid closer to him on the seat and leaned her cheek against the tightly bunched muscle in his shoulder. ‘Come on … relax, don’t blame yourself,’ she softly urged, massaging his forearm with her small fingers. ‘The doctor said he’s been very lucky. Tomorrow when you get to the hospital you might find him sitting up having breakfast in bed.’

‘Please God you’re right about that …’ Chris mumbled. ‘He didn’t say a word to me. Don’t know if he could hear me talking to him. Looked still as death and whiter’n the sheet tucked under his chin.’

At the hospital Christopher had stayed only briefly with his father yet he’d found the time ample. The sharp, sterile scent of the small side ward, and oppressive silence, had made him glad to spot the doctor beckoning him away after five minutes. Although Stephen’s eyelids had flickered up once or twice he either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, speak to his son. Nevertheless Christopher intended to visit the hospital first thing tomorrow before carrying on to see his uncle Rob and sort out what was to be done about the work situation.

‘He’ll be fine after his breakages mend and he’s had a good rest!’ Grace whispered fiercely against his stubble. She rubbed a finger back and forth on his grimy jaw, realising it wasn’t just his overalls that smelled mucky, but his skin too. ‘You could do with a wash and shave.’

Christopher put an arm around her and eased his face against her sweetly scented skin. ‘Don’t know what I’d do without you to talk to,’ he murmured.

‘Thought you said your Aunt Tilly was a diamond at listening and giving advice,’ she teased.

‘She is …’ Christopher paused, realising that a couple of months ago he’d have headed straight to Whadcoat Street to sift through the day’s troubles with his aunt. But instinctively he’d come away from the hospital and headed towards Tottenham, without even returning home first to wash and change out of his work clothes. ‘It’s you I need to talk to now when bad things happen.’ His wry smile turned sultry and his lips prowled after hers to claim a hungry kiss. ‘Don’t go in yet …’ He murmured against her cheek as their lips unsealed.

‘Got to …’ she sighed. ‘You know what me mum’s like about getting me indoors before eleven during the week …’ She glanced sideways at the house and noticed the front-room curtain twitch. ‘Oh, God, she’s watching us alright; probably heard the van pull up. Got to go, Chris, ’cos it’s work in the morning.’

As soon as Grace had got in the van and seen Chris in his overalls, her pique at his late arrival had withered away. She’d realised at once something was wrong. After hearing the bare bones of Stephen’s accident she’d no longer fancied going to the pictures even though he’d sweetly offered to speed home and smarten up so they wouldn’t miss the main feature. Instead they’d gone for a drive and she’d allowed him his long silences while he inwardly battled to make sense of what had occurred. Then they’d parked up outside her house and, unprompted, he’d given her a detailed account of the calamity that afternoon. Grace’s quietly adamant opinion that he wasn’t to blame had started to calm his inner demons, if not completely tame them.

‘Shall we go to the pictures on Saturday instead?’

‘You asking me out, Grace Coleman?’ Chris demanded, feigning surprise. ‘’Cos if you are you’d better not start getting fresh with me, y’know.’

She blushed but saucily squeezed his knee. ‘It’ll be a change for me to be the one taking liberties, Christopher Wild.’ She playfully fended him off as he lunged for her with a growl. ‘My treat this weekend as it’s the end of the month and I get paid,’ she squeaked while being crushed against his chest.

Christopher relaxed his predatory grip on her arms and smoothed one of her warm cheeks with the backs of his fingers. Something had occurred to him, and he regretted bringing it to her attention and putting a dampener on their plans. ‘I doubt if me dad’ll be out of hospital so soon, but if he is, I’m not sure I’ll be going anywhere if he’s hobbling about and needs looking after.’

‘Oh, yes, ’course … I should’ve realised …’ Grace grimaced in apology.

Pushing aside all thoughts of his father Chris concentrated on the warm woman resting against him. He curved an arm about her, drawing her close so his hands could caress her back, stroke at her nape until she was pliant and curling her body against his. ‘I know it’s daft to talk about this so soon, when we’ve only been going out a couple of months, but …’

Grace shifted position and caught his face between her palms, curtailing his diffident declaration of love. ‘Shhh … time enough for that another day.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I’d sooner hear it – if you still want to say it – when you’re over the shock of your dad’s accident.’ Despite her husky rebuff she snuggled up to him encouragingly, tilting up her face to ask, ‘Will you try and find this woman in Clapham so you can ask her some questions?’ His puzzled expression prompted her to explain. ‘You told me your aunt Tilly gave you a tip about a woman who knew your mum years ago. I think you said her name was Vicky. Will you try and find her?’

‘Nah … don’t think so. Gonna just let it die a death. Since I brought up the subject of me mum we’ve had nothing but trouble.’

‘I think you should keep on looking for her,’ Grace demurred, levering herself upright by using a fist on his thigh. ‘Otherwise, when everything’s back to normal, you’ll start wondering whether you did the right thing giving up. It’ll niggle away at you.’ She grimaced. ‘Don’t want to sound callous, Chris, but perhaps you’ve been given a good opportunity to try and find this Vicky. While your dad’s in hospital he won’t know what’s going on, and what he doesn’t know, can’t hurt him,’ she pointed out.

‘What if he comes out with it direct and asks whether I’m gonna carry on looking for me mum?’ Christopher frowned, mulling over what she’d suggested. ‘I don’t want to lie to him yet, if I tell the truth, he might have a relapse.’

‘Don’t know the answers, Chris.’ Grace shook her head, setting her long blonde hair swinging about her sharp little chin. Her honey-coloured eyes clung to his face. ‘It’s up to you what you do. But I know what I’d do … if it were me …’ She glanced to her left and sighed as she saw her mother gesticulating at her through the window.

‘Me mum’s waving at me. Before I came out this evening she said to ask you in when you brought me home.’

‘Yeah?’ Chris stretched his neck to squint at the sight of Shirley’s head bobbing behind the curtain. ‘What’s she want with me?’

‘To know if you’re likely to stay the course, I expect,’ Grace muttered sourly, while scowling in her mother’s direction. She was aware that secretly her mother hoped he would scarper. Shirley had been dropping hints she thought all Matilda’s kith and kin beneath them.

‘Thinks I’m a no-good cad, likely to get you in trouble then leave you in the lurch, does she?’ Chris suggested with a dry chuckle.

Grace swerved a doe-eyed look at him and Chris realised his teasing had hit a raw nerve.

They hadn’t had a serious talk about their respective past affairs. Given that they were in their twenties, they’d both assumed the other had previously been romantically involved, perhaps seriously. Christopher hadn’t pried, although he was curious, as any man would be, about a girl he was falling in love with. He knew his Jack the Lad past wouldn’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny, and he didn’t want to be a liar or a hypocrite about it, so he’d decided to keep quiet and explain himself when he had to. But, a moment ago, a few bitter words from Grace had piqued him into forgetting his strategy.

‘You had a bad experience with someone?’ He caught her wrist lightly as she slid towards the door.

‘Most of them,’ she returned lightly, attempting to shrug off his hold. When she couldn’t she turned back to challenge him. ‘How about you? How many girls have you regretted going out with?’

‘Can’t think of any … not that I’ve gone out with many in the way you mean; just knocked about with most of them,’ he answered flatly. ‘So there’s bound to be a few who wished they’d never clapped eyes on me.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged, giving her an impenitent look. ‘I’ve been called a selfish bastard, and a few other names, in my time.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think?’ He choked a laugh. ‘I’m no different to the next bloke when it comes to pushing his luck on a Saturday night … or I was …’

Their eyes locked and Grace nibbled at her lower lip.

‘You’re different,’ he said quietly. It was the first time he’d seen her look vulnerable, as though the lustre in her eyes might be caused by tears. ‘I was gonna tell you I think you’re special earlier but you stopped me.’ He took out his cigarettes but she took the pack from him and closed the lid.

‘Your aunt’s right, you do smoke too much.’ She blinked and sniffed.

‘Who was he?’

Grace studied her hands, clasped in her lap. ‘I’ll tell you another time.’

‘You’ll tell me now.’

She twisted towards him, head cocked defiantly to one side, but he didn’t flinch from her combatant stare.

‘Tell me?’ he requested softly.

She’d met Hugh at a local dance in Guildford when she was nineteen and they were engaged six months later, shortly before her dad died. Although Shirley was receiving a small widow’s pension by the time they were planning the wedding, and had had a part-time job in a drapery, Grace had realised it wouldn’t be fair to expect her mum to contribute much. She’d accepted that paying for her wedding would be, on the whole, her responsibility, and had been glad she’d heeded her parents’ advice to save a little bit of her wages each week for her future. She’d done so from the moment she started work in a dress shop in Guildford after leaving school at the age of sixteen.

Her lovely nan had offered to give her some money towards the cake and the flowers, and had put down deposits as soon as the date was set. When it was called off, Grace had insisted her nan be repaid and had returned the deposits out of her own pocket. She couldn’t bear the thought of her grandmother, existing on a meagre pension, having to suffer for her generosity because of a rat like Hugh Wilkins.

‘Are you going to answer me, Grace?’ Chris’s quiet question broke into Grace’s thoughts. ‘When I was nineteen and still in Surrey, I got engaged,’ she blurted. ‘He was a … selfish bastard.’ She gave an acid smile on using his term, but kept her eyes lowered. ‘He was about your age and worked as a shipping clerk, close to my office in the City. After his boss died – or perhaps it was before, I’m not sure – he started comforting the man’s widow. A few months later, just as we were due to get the banns read, he moved in with her and her two kids and told me it was over.’ Grace glanced at him before resuming. ‘Didn’t seem to matter to him that she was only a year younger than my mum. I suppose the money left to her by her late husband might have been more attractive than she was … or I was, come to that.’ She proudly tilted up her chin. ‘I think they got married last year. Sound bitchy and bitter over it, don’t I?’

‘Reckon most people would feel the same if it happened to them,’ Chris said quietly. ‘What a prat he was,’ he drawled in a way that was a greater compliment to her than any praise.

Grace rewarded him with a shadow of a smile.

‘You over him now?’

She nodded and turned fully towards him. ‘Yeah, I’m definitely over him.’

‘Good … that’s all I need to know.’

‘Might not be all I need to know,’ she returned waspishly. ‘How many girls have you … knocked about with?’

He smiled at the Weights in his fist. ‘Not that many …’

‘You might as well tell me, Chris, ’cos eventually your mates’ll drop you right in it.’

He started to laugh. ‘Oh, yeah, gits’ll do that all right. Especially Vic.’ He glanced up with boyish diffidence. ‘Leave it for another time, shall we?’

‘You’re lucky me mum’s on the prowl, and it’s getting late, or I’d pin you down over it right now.’

‘Yeah?’ He slid predatorily closer. ‘Sounds good …’

She whacked at his arm in mock disgust. ‘You’d better come round and let me out.’ She tugged at the stiff handle. ‘If I try opening the door I know I’ll risk losing me fingers in it.’

‘That’s all I need, another dash up the Casualty Department.’ He got out and came round to help her from the van. He didn’t move aside but kept her trapped close to him, his body shielding her from Shirley Coleman’s spying.

‘Don’t matter about none of what’s past, Grace,’ Chris whispered gently. ‘None of ’em matter.’ He tilted up her chin. ‘It’s just us now.’ He slid his lips against her cheek. ‘And tell your mum I’m a decent chap and she needn’t worry I’ll chase her round the kitchen. I’ve never had a thing for mature women …’

Grace burst out laughing so spontaneously that her petite figure bumped suggestively against him. ‘She might like you chasing her round the kitchen,’ she gasped out. ‘She’s always hinting she’s not too old for a boyfriend.’ A moment later her humour had passed and she was gazing up at him with a serious expression. ‘I’ll come with you, you know. When you go looking for your mum, I’ll come too, if you want, and give you all the support you need, promise.’ Having gone onto tiptoe she kissed his dusty cheek then extricated herself from his embrace. ‘Give your dad my best wishes for a speedy recovery, won’t you?’

‘Yeah … thanks.’ He watched her go in and close the door, filled with a sense of elation, before giving Shirley a cheeky wave.

It was only as he crashed the van into gear that he realised it would be the first time, since the war, he could recall going home to Crouch End to spend the night alone. His father had always been there.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘How’s Stevie this morning?’

Christopher had barely got a foot over the threshold of Rob’s office before his uncle fired that urgent question at him. He accepted the mug of tea Rob had just poured out and perched on the edge of a chair.

‘He seemed a lot better. But he’s not going to be out for a while yet, so the sister said.’

A smile of sheer relief animated Robert’s face on hearing the good news.

‘He’s all bandaged up and got bruises coming up on one side of his face and on his arms.’ Chris described a large circle on one of his own cheeks with a finger. ‘Couldn’t see his legs but I reckon they’re black and blue as well. Matron said he’s been sick a lot but apparently that happens with bangs on the head. He’s not sitting up yet, but he had his eyes open and we had a bit of a chat.’

Christopher had called in at the hospital to see his father before eight o’clock and the staff sister – who looked like a forbidding battleaxe but in fact had been kind – had muttered about breaking the rules but had allowed him to see Stephen for a short while. Their chat had skirted around anything controversial and, thinking about it now, Chris realised he’d spent almost the whole ten minutes satisfying his father’s curiosity about the weather.

‘Be alright, d’you reckon, if I go up during visiting this afternoon?’ Rob asked.

‘Don’t see why not. I’m gonna pop in this evening.’

‘So what’s been happening with this Irish crew, and how come nobody thought to tell me about it?’ Now he’d satisfied himself his brother was on the mend, Rob immediately got down to business with his nephew.

‘They turned up not long after we started there. Dad was keen to find out how they got a foot in the door, but Declan O’Connor don’t give nuthin’ away. He’s a right sly bastard. We come to the conclusion a palm must be getting greased up the Council Office.’ Chris had expected a cross-examination from his uncle and had resigned himself to telling Rob everything about the pikeys, and the accident, whether his father approved of it or not. In Chris’s opinion it was time the navvies got paid back for what they’d done. If the new ladder hadn’t been nicked, his father wouldn’t be lying in hospital.

‘Declan O’Connor never does much donkeywork himself; he just turns up to pay his men and gee them up. Can tell from the way he tries to wind us up, calling out stuff about us falling behind, and not knowing our business, that he’d like to see us off. He’s after having all the work in the street.’ Christopher paused, and took a swig of tea. ‘Have to say though, he looked shocked when he saw what had happened to me dad.’ He glanced up at Rob. ‘I went for him over thieving the ladder and causing the accident and they all backed off. Hope it stays that way, ’cos I can do without any more trouble while dad’s so poorly.’ He sighed. ‘On me mind all the time, he is.’

‘Sounds like I need to have a little chat with somebody,’ Rob said, looking thoughtful. ‘Why’s Stevie been keeping this to himself?’

Christopher shrugged, feeling a bit uneasy. He decided to give his honest opinion. ‘You know what me dad’s like … I’m guessing he felt bad about new stuff going walkies. Like I said yesterday, he was intending to replace it out of his own pocket.’ Then he added, ‘I don’t reckon he wants you to think he’s incapable of sorting stuff out himself, and that’s why he decided to try and handle O’Connor on his own.’

A faint grimace of surprise flickered over Rob’s features. He hadn’t been expecting his nephew to be quite so perceptive, or truthful, about Stevie’s insecurities. But Rob knew Chris’s loyalty to his father was rock solid.

‘You alright overseeing the Whadcoat Street job on your own now?’

‘’Course I am.’

‘Right …’ cos when your dad gets out of hospital he’s gonna need a good rest, and then I’m gonna have a word with him about things. Perhaps it’s time he eased up working on the tools and came and did a bit in the office instead. It’d relieve the pressure on me too. Your aunt Faye is always telling me to slow down and take a few days off. Perhaps she’s right about that.’

Chris took a gulp from his mug. He wasn’t sure how his dad would take to sitting behind a desk, but there was time enough to argue the toss about that another day. He knew he ought to get off to work to make sure the lads weren’t taking liberties while they were unsupervised.

‘Is it right that you and your dad have been arguing a lot lately?’

Chris put down his tea and frowned at his shoes. Rob was his uncle, and his guvnor, but he felt like telling him to mind his own business on this one.

‘Anything I should know about?’ Rob prompted.

Chris shook his head. ‘Nah … personal stuff …’

‘Right,’ Rob said. In fact he knew very well what the problem was between his brother and his nephew. When he’d given Matilda a lift home from the hospital the previous evening his aunt, in her agitated state, had blurted out that Stevie probably hadn’t been concentrating at work because he’d been in high dudgeon ever since Chris had mentioned finding his mum. She’d realised at once she’d spoken out of turn, and had threatened Rob with dire consequences if he repeated it to anyone else.

‘Who told you we’d been arguing?’ Chris demanded.

Rob pulled open a filing cabinet drawer. ‘You know how it is with the lads … word gets round.’

‘You know what it’s about, don’t you?’ Chris wasn’t fooled for a moment. None of the lads knew anything except that he and Stevie had been avoiding one another as best they could.

‘Heard rumours that you want to find your mum.’

‘And?’

‘And … I’m not sure you should rock the boat on this one, Chris.’ Rob tossed some papers that he’d pulled from the cabinet onto the desk. ‘It’s been a long time settled, why stir it up?’

‘Because I’m a Plummer as well as a Wild, and there’s things I want to know.’

Rob had detected the raw emotion in his nephew’s voice and he put up his hands, gesturing for a truce. ‘Just telling you what I think, mate. But it’s not my opinion that counts, it’s yours.’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Chris said coolly. ‘Better be off and get to work.’

‘Come back later before you knock off. I’ll write out a docket and you can take it to the merchants to get any stuff you need.’

Chris nodded.

‘Make sure you buy a couple of bleedin’ strong ladders, won’t you?’ Rob called dryly as Chris closed the door.

He was just getting into his van when a smart saloon car pulled up by the office and a woman got out from behind the wheel. Chris liked his aunt Faye so he strolled over to speak to her.

‘Heard about your dad, Chris,’ Faye said immediately, her features crumpling in sympathy. ‘So sorry … how is he this morning?’

‘Better,’ Chris nodded and smiled, emphasising the good news.

A sigh of sheer relief was Faye’s response. ‘And how are you bearing up? And how’s that lovely new girlfriend of yours?’

‘Yeah, I’m alright, but can’t keep any secrets, I see,’ Chris muttered, but with a twitch of the lips.

‘In this family?’ Faye’s tone had risen in feigned amazement. ‘Matilda told me about Grace.’ She tapped his arm. ‘And when Matilda’s impressed with somebody you know they’re alright.’

‘Yeah, Grace is alright,’ Chris endorsed softly, proudly.

‘You going to bring her with you when you come for dinner? I don’t know if your dad will be out of hospital by then and able to make it, but we’re going ahead with a little do for Daisy’s birthday.’

Chris had forgotten all about his aunt’s invitation to his cousin Daisy’s birthday lunch.

‘I’ve invited Pearl and I hope she’ll come. It’ll take her mind off things if she comes over for the day.’

‘I’ll ask Grace, I’m sure she’d like to come,’ Chris said as he pulled open the van door. ‘And it’d be nice to introduce her to some of the family.’

‘You don’t know that family like I do! If you did, you might be having second thoughts about going steady with Christopher Wild, or meeting more of his lot.’

Grace shot her mother an exasperated look. Moments ago she’d got home from the office and, before she’d even shrugged off her coat, Shirley had resumed nagging. The same conversation had been echoing in her head at breakfast that morning and Grace had gladly escaped to go to work.

It had all started when she’d told her mother that she’d been invited to Sunday dinner in a few weeks’ time with some of Chris’s extended family.

‘So what if the man I’m going out with isn’t a middle-class clerk who goes to work in a suit! Thank God for that! I had one of those before, didn’t I, Mum, and look where that got me.’

‘I know Hugh Wilkins was no good.’ Shirley gestured disdain at the memory of her daughter’s ex-fiancé. ‘I’m the first to admit there’s good and bad in all walks of life, so I’m not tarring all working-class people with the same brush …’

‘Well that’s a bleeding relief!’ Grace shouted with intentional coarseness. ‘’Cos we’re working class!’ She spun away from her mother in disgust. ‘My dad, your husband, worked in a factory all his life, in case you’ve forgotten.’

‘See!’ Shirley wagged a finger. ‘Before you started knocking about with one of the Wilds you wouldn’t have talked to me like that. Your language, miss!’

‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake,’ Grace muttered. A moment later she’d swung back to her mother, unable to contain her annoyance. ‘You’re a snob and a hypocrite, d’you know that? Nice as pie to Matilda to her face, weren’t you, then behind her back tearing her family to shreds. When we went to see her, why didn’t you tell her straight out that she lives in a dump, instead of sitting drinking tea with her then running her down afterwards behind her back?’ Grace paused for breath. ‘And why didn’t you tell her straight out you’d sooner sit in listening to the wireless than go to Islington and join in her street party on Coronation Day?’

‘You can’t tell me Whadcoat Street isn’t a dump, and who in their right mind would want to socialise with people like that?’

‘I would!’ Grace shouted. ‘And I’m going to.’

‘Well, you lower yourself if you want to. I only went to see her and have a cup of tea with her to be polite. Didn’t really fancy a cup, I can tell you.’ Shirley’s face was a study of distaste. ‘And I’m only thinking of you and your future, miss, when I say stay away from them. I don’t want to see you making more mistakes.’ Shirley adopted a pious look. ‘You know I’ve always been pleasant to Christopher. First time he came here I invited him in for a cup of tea to thank him for bringing us home. I know my manners.’

‘And he’s always been pleasant to you, ’cos he knows his manners,’ Grace returned pithily. ‘So his dad can’t be that bad, can he? He’s obviously brought him up properly.’ She barely paused before adding, ‘You’ve not even asked how Stephen Wild is, have you? Yet, know what? Every time I saw Chris’s dad he would always say to me, send yer mum me best, won’t you, luv.’

Shirley reddened. ‘You told me yesterday he’s well on the mend, and will soon be out of hospital. Can’t be asking about his accident all the time. Anyhow, I’ve never said anything bad about Christopher’s dad. His mum … now that’s a different matter,’ she finished in a mutter and, aware she was defeated, stomped off down the hall to the kitchen. ‘Could do with a bit of help getting tea ready,’ she called irritably.

Grace quickly pegged her coat on a hook on the wall then followed her mum into the kitchen with an urgent question hovering on the tip of her tongue. ‘Did you know Chris’s mum?’ she burst out.

‘Knew her alright,’ Shirley said with a nod. She stuck an old pot under the cold tap and half-filled it with water.

Grace was quiet for a moment while digesting that exciting news. Her annoyance at her mother was ebbing away on realising Shirley held useful information. When her mother thrust a peeler at her, and a colander filled with potatoes, she automatically started to prepare them. ‘Chris was only a baby when his parents split up.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Shirley replied, cutting into a cabbage and digging out the stalk. ‘Barely a year they were married and nobody believed that Christopher was a honeymoon baby, if you know what I mean.’ She gave her daughter an arch look. ‘Being as they took the trouble to get married – quite a lavish do it was – it surprised a lot of people when they divorced. But I knew it wouldn’t last.’

‘How did you know that?’ Grace speared a glance at her mother while halving the peeled potatoes and dropping them into the water in the pot.

‘Friend of mine told me that Pam Plummer was always more interested in Rob Wild than his brother, Stevie. Can’t blame her for that. We all had a pash for Rob Wild … regular heartthrob he was. Even when he was a young hound he had a business and a flash car and plenty of money. But Pam should have left him alone once she married his brother.’

Grace overlooked her mother’s farcical, selective snobbery where the Wilds were concerned. A comfortable lifestyle, with a hound of a husband, obviously trumped middle-class morals every time. She had an unexpected opportunity to find out more about Christopher’s mother, and that was far more important to Grace than taking her mother to task again for being a hypocrite. Just yesterday, when he’d brought her home, Chris had again seemed swayed towards resuming his search for Pamela.

‘How did your friend know Pam was still after Rob Wild?’

‘She made it her business to know,’ Shirley said with an emphasising grunt. ‘For a while, people reckoned that Vicky Watson had Rob Wild hooked. She certainly thought so, so she kept tabs on the opposition.’

‘Vicky Watson?’ Grace breathed. ‘You knew her?’

‘Yeah. Went to school together.’

‘Where is she now, do you know?’

Shirley shot a suspicious look at her daughter. ‘Why’re you so interested in Vicky Watson?’

‘Just … Chris mentioned her ’cos she was his mum’s bridesmaid.’

‘Yeah, she was,’ Shirley confirmed, with a smile of recollection. ‘That’s how she knew Pam liked Rob. Pam and Vicky were good friends for a while and confided in one another. But Vicky found out that Pam, even after she was married to Stevie, was chasing after Robert on the sly.’

‘And how did Robert feel about it all? Was he married then?’

‘He was involved in a really bad fight,’ Shirley said, putting down her knife to stare into space. ‘Nothing to do with Stevie being jealous or anything like that, ’cos Rob never showed any interest in his sister-in-law,’ she immediately explained, having seen the startled look in her daughter’s eyes. ‘Rob was beaten up by gangsters. Anyhow, as soon as he was well enough he surprised everybody and married Faye Greaves and nobody knew much about her as she’d lived in Kent most of her life. Vicky was not pleased about that, I can tell you.’

‘So where’s Vicky now?’

‘A few years later she got married to a fellow worked for the Water Board, and they moved to Clapham. David Green seemed a weird sort for Vicky. He was a lot older than her, and it was a surprise when they got together. But Vicky and me sort of kept in touch. I used to send her Christmas cards, then during the war it tailed off.’ Shirley placed the pot of potatoes on the gas stove. ‘Used to visit her sometimes and we’d go down to the Lyons corner shop and have a cake and a cuppa and a natter about old times.’

‘So you’ve got her address …’

‘Somewhere, I expect. I used to have lots of friends.’ Shirley pouted out a sigh. ‘’Course the war put paid to a lot of it … moving about … getting evacuated … you lost interest in people …’ She suddenly turned around to find she was talking to herself.

CHAPTER NINE

‘What’s so urgent that it can’t wait till after I finish work this evening?’

Apart from his wife, few people spoke to Robert Wild in that tone of voice and got away with it. But it wasn’t only Walter Purvis’s attitude that was pissing Rob off; he was also seriously narked because it had taken many weeks to get in contact with the crafty git.

Various toffee-nosed secretaries had told him that Mr Purvis was on holiday, or out on site, or in another department, or any other old pony Walter had told them to put forward as an excuse. The fact that the Council’s Chief Contracts Manager had been determinedly incommunicado had convinced Rob the man knew why he was after him. He gave him a hard stare. ‘Get in the car for a minute,’ he said icily. ‘I need to talk to you.’

Walter Purvis slid onto the passenger seat and dumped his battered briefcase down on the floor. ‘I’ve had to delay an important contract meeting on the second phase of Whadcoat Street to come here,’ he complained, shoving his poplin shirt over his paunch and into the straining waistband of his trousers. He knew enough about Rob Wild’s reputation for dealing with those who crossed him not to ignore his summons. It had arrived in an envelope that morning, addressed to his home rather than his office, and he’d been infuriated to receive it.

‘Delayed it, have you? That’s quite convenient,’ Robert drawled. Walter was already sweating from the July heat; Robert knew that in a moment the fat creep would be in a real lather. ‘What I’ve got to say is gonna have some bearing on your contract meeting so listen very carefully.’

Purvis frowned at him and shoved his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. From behind the wire-rimmed glass his pale eyes blinked rapidly. He was a middle-aged man of about the same age as Rob, but there all similarity ended. Walter was overweight, lacking in personal hygiene, and thinning on top. Hardly a model Lothario, as no doubt his despising wife would have testified, yet he unfortunately had a liking for lithe young men, and the high life, that wasn’t satisfied by the salary he drew. He thus supplemented it by taking backhanders in return for dishing out lucrative building contracts.

Robert had had a few illicit dealings with him previously. Those had gone very well and when Walter told him he was the only building contractor he trusted enough to accept sweeteners from Rob had tended to believe him. Walter was scrupulously careful in keeping everything under wraps and he paid him well.

Robert was now feeling annoyed that he’d been uncharacteristically naïve. It seemed Declan O’Connor had also cottoned on to Walter and the greedy bastard was trying to play both ends against the middle. Rob was about to impress on him it had been a bad move …

‘I thought we had an agreement that the first phase of Whadcoat Street demolition was all mine.’

‘It is,’ Walter said, perplexed. ‘Your brother started on it, surely, many months ago? Payments have been issued …’

‘Stevie’s started down there alright, and thank you for the cheques,’ Rob added politely. ‘Are you satisfied with the way things are going?’

‘Of course …’ Purvis looked apprehensive. He was starting to sense trouble.

‘So why get in the competition?’

‘What?’

‘A gang of pikeys have started work there too, just yards away. So do you want to tell me why my money suddenly isn’t enough, when we had a gentlemen’s agreement?’ Rob watched the fellow’s chins sag. He smiled. ‘Or perhaps you’re intending to return my envelope … you remember, don’t you? It was the one I gave you, stuffed with tenners.’

Purvis’s eyes swivelled to and fro as though he believed somebody might have overheard their conversation, even though Rob’s voice had been sinisterly soft. ‘I don’t know … I’ve no idea …’ He suddenly blinked rapidly. ‘It’s got to be Kennedy,’ he hissed. ‘He’s been brown-nosing and telling me had everything under control,’ he explained. ‘I recruited him some years ago when he was fresh out of college and brash as they come. He’s not changed much.’ In fact Walter had given him a job because he’d thought him easy on the eye. And that’s all he had done, look, because he’d never be stupid enough to pursue a young work colleague, no matter how fit and handsome he was. ‘I’ve been giving him a bit of a free hand for the past six months, and he’s been covering for me when I’m on holiday. If I hadn’t been seconded to another department to oversee it while some soppy prat’s gone off to have a nervous breakdown …’

‘Well, you’d better shift yourself right back where you belong, Walter, and sort this out, or I will, and then who knows what stones might get overturned …’ Rob suddenly realised the toffee-nosed sorts answering the phones hadn’t been giving him the runaround after all. But he felt not an iota of guilt on realising that Walter had probably just told the truth about the pikeys being nothing to do with him. He reached to start the ignition but the surveyor made no move to get out.

Walter wanted to stay and talk now. ‘What’s been happening down there?’ he asked nervously. ‘This Irish crew … have they been causing any trouble I should know about? Anything that might draw attention?’

‘Yeah, you could say they’ve been causing trouble: my brother’s in hospital, and there’s a brawl down there every bleedin’ day. So sooner or later the Black Marias are gonna be racing the ambulances to Whadcoat Street.’ Rob smiled sardonically. ‘’Course that’s nothing new for The Bunk, and I’d know ’cos I grew up there.’ He suddenly leaned close to Walter and murmured, ‘I paid you well for this contract, so I reckon I’m due some of my money back, don’t you? Let’s say twenty per cent for all the inconvenience.’

‘You said your brother’s in hospital,’ Walter burbled, blanching. The thought of handing back some of his commission, as he liked to call it, was a secondary concern; his mind was racing ahead examining dreadful scenarios that might expose him as corrupt and depraved and put paid to his career and his marriage. Arrest, court, the boys who might be called as witnesses, were all lurid images whizzing through his mind. ‘Did these navvies beat your brother up and put him in hospital?’ he gasped.

‘Might just as well have done. He had a fall off a ladder and it wouldn’t have happened if the thieving gits hadn’t been stealing all Wild Brothers’ equipment.’

‘You should have told me before,’ Walter complained in a high-pitched squeak. ‘I could have nipped it in the bud …’

‘Well, you know now, so sort it out,’ Rob announced before giving Walter a withering look. ‘Or believe me I will sort it out and there’ll be blood and guts all over the place … yours included, if your wife finds out about your habits.’

Walter shrank back against the leather upholstery, seeking protection from that image.

‘D’you mind?’ Rob asked, and nodded at the car door. ‘I’m meeting my wife for a spot of lunch …’

‘Who is it you’re after, dear?’ the old fellow asked again, cocking his good ear at Grace.

Grace raised her voice a little. ‘Mrs Green … Vicky Green.’ She was beginning to wish she hadn’t wasted an afternoon to come on a wild-goose chase, especially as her friend Wendy had felt obliged to type an urgent report for her so Grace could tell their supervisor everything would be covered in her absence.

Fifteen minutes ago she’d arrived at the Clapham address that she’d covertly copied from her mother’s notebook. The woman at the property had told her she believed the Greens had moved around the corner, close to Clapham Junction, just after the war. But it seemed the elderly occupant of this house was also on the point of sending her on her way. Grace glumly realised she was having no luck locating the woman who might know Pam Plummer’s whereabouts.

‘Ah … Mrs Green.’ The grizzled face nodded at her, and the old gentleman indicated the house to his right with his thumb. He shuffled back inside, shutting the door, leaving Grace staring at its coloured glass panel. She retraced her steps along the path and carefully latched the creaky wooden gate. She’d reached her destination and, after all her efforts, felt her courage oddly draining away. It was tempting to turn around and head home rather than explain her business to a stranger. And she realised her faintheartedness sprang from the fact that it wasn’t actually her business at all that had brought her here; it was Christopher’s.

When she’d set out she’d been fired with confidence and certainty, but now she was having second thoughts and wondering whether Chris would think she was interfering, rather than helping.

He had no idea she’d come here, or that she’d got Vicky Green’s address from her mum. Grace hadn’t told him about it because he’d been shilly-shallying about looking for his mother since his father had had a setback. Stevie had fallen on a wet floor in the hospital bathroom and ever since Chris had been unwilling to discuss Pamela.

Yesterday evening, when Grace had tried to gently impress on him again that it was the right time to do some detective work without upsetting Stevie, they had ended up bickering. She’d spent a restless night turning things over in her mind but had decided Chris would be relieved if she took the initiative and resumed the search. His father couldn’t then blame him for going behind his back. But now she was having second thoughts …

Grace surfaced from her reflection to see the old boy had lifted an edge of his net curtain and was watching her loitering on the pavement. He gave her a smile and again jabbed his thumb at number thirty-seven. Grace acknowledged him by wriggling a few fingers then, taking a deep breath, walked next door. She knocked and waited. She knocked again and felt a twinge of shame as her clenched hands began to relax because nobody was at home.

‘Who are you?’

Grace pivoted about to find a woman in a floral summer dress, a shopping bag in each hand, crossing the road to hurry towards her. On reaching the gate she struggled, juggling bags, to lift the latch.

‘Sorry …’ Grace burbled with a faltering smile. ‘Are you Mrs Green?’

‘Who wants to know?’

‘Well … I do …’ Grace said, feeling intimidated by her brusque manner.

‘And who are you?’

The woman was standing close to her on the path now, her head with its fading blonde hair cocked to one side. Grace could see that once she’d been an attractive woman and, in common with her mother, she was making an attempt to hang on to her youth by using a lot of make-up.

‘I’m Grace Coleman and my mum used to know a woman called Vicky Watson who married a Mr Green …’

‘Shirley Coleman’s daughter, are you?’

Grace finally got a smile.

‘Well, well … haven’t heard that name for a good while. Sort of lost touch with Shirley.’ She looked Grace up and down. ‘Still in Islington, are you? I remember your dad joined up and the rest of you were off to Surrey to get away from the bombing.’

‘We live in Tottenham now …’

Grace watched Vicky turn the key in the lock of her front door then edge in sideways with her bulky bags.

‘Well, come in, then,’ Vicky invited. ‘Might as well have a cuppa as you’ve come all this way, although I’ve got to say, I’m not sure why you have,’ she added bluntly. She suddenly dropped her shopping and twisted about. ‘Oh, you’ve not come in person to tell me your mum …’ She jerked her head twice, indicating she’d rather not utter the final word.

‘Oh, no … no … she’s fine,’ Grace reassured the woman, and followed her inside.

‘Pam Plummer … now there’s another name from the past,’ Vicky said, putting down her cup. ‘I often wonder what happened to all those people I used to know in Islington.’

They were seated now, in a neat front room, in fireside chairs that had a square table wedged between them, holding a plate of rich tea biscuits.

Grace sipped her tea. ‘My mum told me you all knew one another from your schooldays. So I wondered if you kept in touch with Pam and have her address.’

‘Does Shirley want to get in touch with her?’ Vicky asked in surprise.

Grace hesitated, not wanting to lie, but not wanting to tell the truth either. She knew Chris considered searching for his mother a very personal matter. ‘Mum was going on the other day about once having lots of friends; I think she’s a bit lonely since dad died a few years ago. He got injured in the war and never really recovered,’ she explained, having noticed Vicky’s enquiring look.

‘Very sorry to hear that …’ Vicky murmured.

‘Anyway, I’ve been thinking about a street party for Coronation Day next June,’ Grace said brightly. ‘There’s less than a year to go now till the big day. I thought it’d be a great idea to have a get-together … and that it might be nice to find a few of Mum’s old friends.’ Grace knew that it was best not to mention that Matilda Keiver was involved, or that the party would be held in The Bunk. That news would be sure to make Vicky fire some very awkward questions at her. ‘Mum doesn’t know I’m here,’ Grace added carefully. If it came about that a reunion did take place at some time she didn’t want her fibs causing her mum problems. ‘So it would be a nice surprise for her if it goes ahead … ’Course I’ll let people know in good time …’

Vicky stood up and went to a little bureau. ‘Last I heard of Pam she was living in Bexleyheath with her husband. But that was before the war, so it’s a while and they might have moved on.’

‘Husband?’ Grace echoed.

‘Yeah … second husband, name of Stanley Riley. Your mum would know she got divorced when she was young, but probably not that she’d remarried. When we all lived around Islington, Pam got involved with a rough family. She married one of them, worse for her, and lived to regret it.’ Vicky pursed her lips in thought. ‘I remember she had a son, but her ex-husband brought the boy up. God knows what sort of tyke he turned into. You should ask your mum about the Wilds, she’ll remember them, I’m sure, and tell you there wasn’t a good one amongst them.’

Grace lowered her eyes and sipped from her tea but she felt her indignation burning. Her mum had told her that this woman had very much hoped to marry into that rough family. ‘I think I’ve heard of Rob Wild,’ she said. ‘He’s done well for himself, hasn’t he?’

Vicky swung about to give her a hard stare. ‘He’s done well alright … by treading on other people. He was a horrible, selfish man; the worst of the lot of ’em.’ She opened the small address book she’d fished out of the bureau. ‘Shall I write down the address for you?’

‘Oh, I can remember it, thanks …’

It seemed that twenty-five years on, Vicky Watson, as she’d been, still hadn’t got over her pique at being dropped by Rob Wild. Grace felt relieved she’d not mentioned the Keivers or the Wilds when talking about Coronation Day street parties moments ago.

‘Pam might have a telephone number, I suppose, but I haven’t got it listed here,’ Vicky said, turning the pages back and forth.

‘Don’t worry, the address will do; thanks a lot for helping out with that,’ Grace said, standing up. ‘Thanks for tea.’

As Grace was leaving the house Vicky muttered, ‘Oh, my husband’s home early.’

Grace glanced over a shoulder and saw a soberly dressed, balding gentleman marching along on the opposite pavement. He appeared to be close to retirement age and wore spectacles and a pinched expression. She turned to smile farewell and understood the sour look on Vicky’s face. She’d not yet met Chris’s uncle but if what her mother had said about him were true, Mr Green would have been a very poor substitute for Robert Wild.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Will you work in your dad’s business, when you finish school?’

‘He wants me to, so does Mum.’ Daisy Wild had tilted her dark head towards Grace to whisper her reply. ‘Mum always wanted to be a secretary before she got married. They think I should do a commercial course so I can do the firm’s books.’ She dismissed it with a hand flick. ‘I’d rather do hairdressing for a while then find a rich husband to look after me.’

‘You’ve got a nice lot of qualifications and can get yourself a good job, young lady,’ the birthday girl’s mother told her from across the dining table. Despite her mild reprimand, Faye allowed her husband to pour their daughter a glass of Sauternes.

Daisy wrinkled her nose and continued attacking her roast potatoes. ‘You’ve got lovely hair; it’s an unusual colour … sort of caramel blonde, isn’t it,’ she chattered. ‘I bet it’d look good in a bun. Do you wear it up much? I could do it for you later. I like to practise on my friends at school.’

‘Leave poor Grace alone.’ Faye smiled in wry apology. ‘She’s trying to eat.’

‘Sometimes I put it in a bun,’ Grace told Daisy as she tucked into her lamb. The meal was delicious and she’d already complimented their hostess on an excellent roast. Grace had been immediately made to feel welcome by the members of Chris’s family she’d not previously met.

‘You work in an office, don’t you, Grace?’ Faye sounded interested. ‘Do you like secretarial work?’

‘Yes, I do. I’m in a typing pool so it’s a bit hectic but we’re lucky to have a good boss. The work gets shared out fairly and we’re paid for overtime.’

Faye gave her daughter a significant look.

‘You listen to your mum, and to Grace, and you won’t go far wrong.’ Rob pointed his fork at Daisy in emphasis. ‘And I don’t want to hear talk of husbands, rich or otherwise, for a good while yet.’

‘Mum wasn’t much older than me when she married you,’ Daisy chipped in with a saucy smile.

‘That’s enough backchat, young lady,’ her father told her. ‘You just concentrate on finishing your schooling. Eat your dinner.’

‘Leave the girl alone,’ Matilda growled, putting down her knife and fork. ‘If she likes doing hair, let her do hair. It’s a job. Ain’t as if she’s telling you she’s planning to sit around on her backside and sponge off you.’

‘Thanks, Auntie,’ Daisy muttered with a glimmering look for her parents and a subtle smile for Matilda.

It made a refreshing change for Grace to listen to people airing their opinions without an atmosphere ensuing. At home, a prolonged silence would have been the result of a difference with her mother, not that Shirley would ever allow anything so common to occur while they had company.

‘Well, this is nice,’ Faye said contentedly as there was a lull in conversation and only the chink of busy cutlery, and a stifled burp from Matilda, was heard. ‘It’s been a long time since we had a little get-together on a Sunday. Of course, it’s a shame Stevie can’t be here.’

It had been inevitable that talk would turn to the invalid.

‘I went in to see him last night,’ Rob informed them. ‘He told me an Irish family have moved into the street.’ He’d addressed the remark to his nephew but his aunt came back with an answer.

‘They’re called Murphy. Nice people,’ was Matilda’s succinct opinion. ‘Noreen was in the shop getting a bit of bread and tea on the strap yesterday. Poor sods have got two little gels ’n’ all to feed.’

‘Causing any trouble?’ Again Rob’s question was directed at Chris.

‘Told you they’re nice people,’ Matilda replied bluntly.

‘They are nice enough.’ Chris endorsed his aunt’s view. ‘Feel sorry for ’em if anything, having to make do with a dump like that … no offence, Auntie.’

‘None taken,’ Matilda grunted, and continued her conversation with Pearl.

‘The fellow’s called Kieran and he’s started working with O’Connor’s crew. He asked me for a job first but I knew you’d say nuthin’ doing.’ Chris realised it wasn’t the time or place for a discussion about work so he simply let the subject drop.

He had guessed that Kieran would eventually be forced to take any offer of employment that came his way. But he hadn’t caused Wild Brothers any problems. He didn’t join in any catcalling that came from the rival gang, and seemed to want to keep his distance from his colleagues. Chris could tell he was the sort of man who simply wanted to keep his nose clean and provide for his family.

‘Have you been in to visit Stevie today, Pearl?’ Matilda asked, in between trying to dislodge something from her teeth.

Pearl shook her head, thrusting plump fingers through her hair in a gesture of exasperation. ‘Popping in this evening. Driving me mad now, he is, going on about coming home. I reckon the doctor’ll chuck him out in the end just for a quiet life.’

‘He’s been whingeing at me as well about it,’ Chris said, spearing another roast potato from the bowl in the centre of the table. ‘I reckon he’s about to discharge himself.’ He’d done justice to Faye’s superb cooking. Even after second helpings, and a few extras, he’d cleared his plate. ‘That’s the best dinner I’ve had in a long while.’

‘I know your dad can pull off a decent roast,’ Faye remarked. ‘I’ve tasted a few of his dinners and they’re not half bad.’

‘He can cook actually.’ Chris praised his dad while Pearl endorsed the fact her boyfriend was a bit of a chef, by nodding. ‘Got to admit I’ve been missing him in that respect,’ Chris added.

‘Shouldn’t have brought that up, Faye,’ Rob jokily complained. ‘Chris’ll be up the hospital with Stevie’s clothes next time he’s feeling peckish.’

‘Better feed him up a bit more then. Who’s for pudding?’ Faye had noticed empty plates all round.

Rob got up and helped his wife clear the table of used crockery and cutlery.

‘Stevie is a dab hand at a bit of catering. When we have our Coronation Day party he can be in charge of the food,’ Matilda announced. She did a little drum roll on the table with her fingers. ‘And I’ve managed to already stash away a nice bit of booze. Old man Turner who works down the docks got me a case of Irish whiskey on the sly.’ She put a finger to her lips. ‘Don’t go tellin’ Faye though, ’cos you know she don’t like any duckin’ ’n’ divin’ and stuff wot falls off the back of lorries.’

Chris grinned at his aunt. ‘You should know better at your age,’ he ribbed her, glancing at Grace for her reaction to his aunt’s confession to doing a bit of receiving. Behind a hand, raised to cover her mock outrage, she was laughing.

‘And don’t forget, Grace …’ Matilda wagged a finger at her nephew’s girlfriend. ‘You’re on me planning committee and soon we’ll need to get things underway.’

‘’Course, be pleased to help out.’ The mention of the Coronation Day street party reminded Grace of her meeting with Vicky Watson. She slid a glance at Chris … time enough later to think about owning up to that …

‘And you’re me second in command as far as table laying goes,’ Matilda told Daisy.

‘I’m going to bring me boyfriend to the street party,’ Daisy whispered to Grace. ‘But don’t tell me dad …’

A moment later Rob came in, wearing a proud smile and carrying a huge glass bowl of sherry trifle.

‘Perhaps I’m not as stuffed as I thought,’ Chris said. Through the sparkling glass could be seen sumptuous layers of jam sponge and fruit and custard.

‘You just might find your eyes are bigger than your belly, Christopher,’ Daisy rebuked him, playfully whacking her cousin’s abdomen and making him wince.

‘Well, you can’t have none ’cos you’re watching yer figure,’ Chris retaliated and moved the glass bowl along the tablecloth, out of her reach.

Grace was enjoying seeing a family so at ease with each other. Whenever her mother had family over everybody seemed to stand on ceremony. Not that they entertained often: Shirley had never liked any of her in-laws, so they rarely saw the Coleman side now her father had passed away. Her mother’s lot were a bit thin on the ground: Shirley’s younger brother had been killed during the Second World War, leaving his widow childless. Grace now felt quite sad that she’d never had an opportunity to grow close to any cousins. She rarely saw her older brother, Paul, so she hardly knew her young nephews. Their visits were limited to Christmas and birthday trips.

But Grace had her beloved nan to visit. Her maternal grandmother had lived in Tottenham all her life, and being close to Nan Jackson was the main reason she and her mother had chosen to settle there on returning from Surrey after her dad passed away.

Once the trifle bowl was empty, but for creamy smears, people began lazily stirring in their chairs.

‘Well, off you all go and relax in the front room,’ Faye said. ‘Rob’ll put on the wireless for a bit of light music and I’ll bring in a nice cup of tea in a while.’ She moved back her chair and started clearing the table.

Grace got up too. ‘You must let me help,’ she insisted. ‘It’s the least I can do after that wonderful meal.’

‘Thanks,’ Faye said with a smile. ‘That’s kind.’

Pearl and Matilda also started stacking dirty crockery.

‘How about you giving a hand, young lady?’ Faye suggested to her daughter.

‘I’m sorting out records ’cos Chris wants to listen to the new one I bought this week.’ Daisy squinted meaningfully at her cousin.

‘Oh … right … yeah, that’s it,’ he replied gamely, while an almost imperceptible shrug indicated he had no part in it.

‘You’ve got him well-trained.’ Pearl directed that at Faye, while watching Rob roll up his sleeves and fill a large bowl with hot water. ‘Stevie might be able to cook but he ain’t keen on doing a bit of washing-up.’

Rob gave the women assembled in the kitchen a smile of studied charm. ‘I can be hired out very cheap, you know, ladies.’

‘Don’t take no notice of him,’ Matilda warned them with a wink. ‘Won’t be yer washing-up he’ll be wanting to do …’

‘Matilda!’ Faye exclaimed with mock indignation. ‘You know he’s a reformed character and has been for a long time.’

‘A rogue’s a rogue,’ Matilda stated with a twinkling smile for her nephew.

At forty-eight years old, Rob Wild was still a handsome man despite his dark hair having silvered at the temples, and a tracery of faint lines being visible on his close-shaven jaw. The scars were the result of a fight he’d had with gangsters almost twenty-five years ago. The facial marks didn’t worry him, neither had his leg injury until his slight limp had prevented him being able to join up to fight for his country in 1939.

‘If Matilda reckons I might have a relapse and start flirting perhaps I’d better leave you girls to it.’ Rob shook his soapy hands and dropped a kiss on his wife’s fair head of hair before leaving the kitchen.

‘Any excuse to skive! Right, you’re on washing-up duty at Matilda’s Coronation Day party,’ Faye called after him.

‘Makes yer sick, don’t it.’ Matilda wiped furiously at a plate with her cloth. ‘Been married how long? And still turtle doves, the two of ’em.’

‘You have a lovely house,’ Grace said a few minutes later, when the washing and wiping was well under way. She glanced around the large, well-equipped kitchen.

When Chris had pulled up in the van outside his uncle and aunt’s house Grace had felt her jaw drop. The imposing stucco-fronted villa was situated in a very nice part of Tufnell Park and the sleek Wolseley car parked on the driveway at the side had obviously cost a lot of money.

‘I know we’re lucky to live here,’ Faye readily admitted. She pushed her damp hair back from her brow with the back of her wrist then set to scrubbing plates again. ‘Rob used to rent this house when he was quite young. Then, as Matilda knows, things went sour for a while and we moved to a smaller place in Islington. But he always wanted to move back here, although I quite liked our cosy little cottage. When the freehold came up for sale, he was fortunate enough to snap it up.’

‘I want to move in with Stevie,’ Pearl suddenly announced.

Three pairs of eyes swivelled towards her.

‘But whenever I bring the subject up, he cocks a deaf ‘un,’ she added with a grimace of disappointment.

‘Well, could be things’ll be changing soon,’ Matilda said with a deliberate flick of a glance Grace’s way. ‘When Chris settles himself down, you might find Stevie won’t be keen to be living on his own.’

‘Let’s get that tea made.’ Faye noticed that Grace was looking bashful. She took the wet cloths and hung them on the cooking range rail to dry. ‘Leave that lot on the kitchen table.’ She nodded at the clean, stacked crockery. ‘We’ll need it again teatime anyway.’

‘Fancy a stroll in the garden?’ Chris asked Grace as they sat side-by-side, sipping tea, in the elegant front room.

She nodded enthusiastically, and put down her cup. She was keen to explore outside. Having followed Chris towards the French doors she stepped out onto a paved area that ran the width of the house, beyond which was an expanse of well-tended lawn. They strolled arm-in-arm down some steps and on to springy turf.

‘Crikey, I’m full,’ Grace murmured with a satiated sigh.

Chris slanted a smile down at her. ‘Better not bring you here again in case you start getting fat,’ he teased with an appreciative look at her figure. She was dressed in a sleeveless floral print dress that was skimpy enough to show off a little bit of creamy cleavage and her shapely legs.

She pinched his arm in response, making him give an exaggerated howl. In retaliation he lifted her up and carried her, squealing, a few feet before allowing her sandaled feet back onto the lawn.

‘Wish I had a house like this,’ Grace said dreamily, turning around to look at the back aspect of the handsome property.

‘Me too,’ Chris said with a wry chuckle. ‘Don’t come cheap, places like this.’

‘It’s a big house for just the three of them.’

‘Oh, Adam comes home sometimes. Daisy’s got a brother,’ he explained. ‘He’s quite a bit older than her: about twenty-seven or so. Adam’s an officer in the RAF.’

‘Is he really?’ Grace said, surprised.

‘He was a bit of an ace towards the end of the war, and he was only twenty.’ Chris sounded proud of his heroic cousin. ‘At the moment he’s stationed in Germany with his fiancée.’

‘Must tell my mum,’ Grace giggled. ‘She’ll be impressed.’

‘Glad one of us impresses her ’cos I know I don’t, do I?’ Chris returned dryly.

‘Don’t mind her; she’s a snob and I’ve told her so.’ Grace patted his arm, consolingly. ‘I hadn’t realised your Aunt Matilda could be such a card.’

‘Oh, Matilda’s a character alright.’ Chris took her hand and led her to a bench set under a weeping willow tree. ‘I tend to think of her as my nan rather than my auntie. When I was younger I used to think of her as me mum. She’s been everything to me, really …’ Chris gazed off into the sunlit summer afternoon.

Grace hadn’t been sure when to tell Chris she’d got some information from Vicky Green. He still didn’t know she’d gone to Clapham and found his uncle Rob’s old flame. He’d been avoiding talking about his mother and whenever she tried to bring the subject up he’d get quite sharp with her.

But Grace had brought the address with her today, in the hope an appropriate time might arise when she could slip into the conversation that she knew where Pamela might be. And as he’d just mentioned thinking of Matilda as his substitute mum …

‘I’ve got something for you actually,’ she began lightly after they were seated. She pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket. ‘My mum told me that she used to know Vicky Watson … Vicky Green as she is now, ’cos she’s married. I went to see her and got you this.’

Chris’s eyes darted to her outstretched hand, then to her face.

‘You needn’t worry that I told my mum or Vicky anything about why I was interested in Pam Plummer.’ She looked earnestly at him, noting disbelief and a hint of anger darkening his eyes. ‘It came up in conversation that my mum used to go to school with Vicky. She was reminiscing about all the girls fancying your uncle Rob years ago, because he was a bit flash. Apparently, Vicky thought she’d got him hooked. Anyway, my mum kept in touch with Vicky and used to send her Christmas cards, and she had her address, so I copied it down without her knowing.’ She paused, garnering courage. ‘I went to see Vicky in Clapham and asked for Pamela’s address. I said I wanted it to contact Mum’s old friends for a Coronation Day get-together. It’s not wholly a lie … it’d be wonderful if somehow or other your mum could come.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me what you was planning on doing?’ Chris demanded hoarsely, staring at the paper as though it were something poisonous.

‘Because you’ve been a bit narky lately, Chris,’ Grace calmly pointed out. ‘I understand why that is,’ she added in the same even tone. ‘You’re naturally worried about your dad, but he’s so much better now and due out of hospital soon.’

He licked his lips, staring off into space as though trying to marshal his thoughts.

‘Stevie can’t blame you for getting it, Chris, I went there …’ Grace began.

‘Yeah! And I never asked you to,’ he growled, turning a fierce look on her.

Grace felt tears start in her eyes. She had always known what his reaction might be, and yet still it hurt. ‘Her name is Riley now. Your mum married a Stanley Riley …’

‘So bleedin’ what?’ Chris knew he sounded petulant and childish and he hung his head, propping it in cupped palms.

‘Sorry … I shouldn’t have interfered.’ Grace sprang up to walk back towards the house. ‘It’s time I was getting home,’ she said huskily. ‘I’m just going to thank your aunt and uncle and say goodbye to the others …’

Chris caught her arm and dragged her back beside him. ‘Sorry.’ He leaned close to whisper against her hair. ‘I know you’ve done it for the right reason … but … I’m scared of going there and being told to clear off.’

‘Are you scared of being welcomed in too?’ Grace asked, pushing back to search his eyes. ‘You don’t know how your mum’ll react.’

‘Me dad called her a useless lazy slut when he found out I wanted to find her; he’d never said anything like that before.’

‘Perhaps he’s as scared as you are,’ Grace said gently. ‘It’ll be a big change for you all if you get to know your mum; and you might have brothers and sisters too. He could be still bitter about it all.’

‘I reckon it’s true, what he said.’

‘Well, perhaps it was true, but people change over time, and if you give up, you won’t ever know.’

‘I’m not sure …’ he croaked.

‘Think about it, that’s all you’ve got to do,’ Grace urged him.

Chris wiped a hand across his mouth and stared into the distance.

‘Your dad’s not out of hospital yet, there’s still time before he comes home …’

‘Yeah, I know!’ Immediately he closed his eyes and muttered an apology for sounding brusque, raking his fingers through his long dark hair. ‘Me uncle Rob thinks I shouldn’t rock the boat, and he always talks sense.’ He choked a mirthless laugh. ‘Don’t know how he found out I’d been hoping to contact me mum. Probably Matilda blurted it out. I’m pretty sure me dad wouldn’t have mentioned any of it to him.’

‘It’s up to you what you do, Chris …’

He suddenly got up and, taking her hand, pulled her onto her feet. ‘There’s a pond down here with a few fish in it, come and have a look.’ He screwed up the paper in his fist, stuffed it into a pocket, and set off.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘We’ve got to get away from here.’ Noreen Murphy bounced the baby on her hip in an attempt to stop Rosie’s coughing. ‘Are you listening to me, Kieran?’ she asked plaintively. ‘I said we should get away from here now … this week. Rosie’s chest is rattling, can’t you hear it?’ She dropped a kiss on the baby’s soft dark curls. ‘It’s too damp and dirty in this place …’

‘I heard you before, woman!’

‘Well, what have you to say about any of it?’ she asked in despair. ‘I talk and talk. What do you say?’

‘We’ll move when I’ve money enough to get somewhere decent.’ He continued climbing out of his dirty work clothes and took them to the window to shake the worst of the muck from them into the street. ‘I’ll not keep moving us from one dump to the next.’ He sent that over his shoulder at her. ‘It’ll be a good room next time, Noreen, promise you, it will. I just need to keep working and saving and in a month or two …’

‘We need somewhere clean now. I want to go away from here now.’ She spun on the spot to look about at her depressing home. ‘It’s no place for young children.’ Noreen lay the baby down on a filthy mattress then drew the tot, clutching at her knees, towards the iron bedstead and sat her down on it too. She opened a packet of biscuits and gave Kathleen a custard cream to chew on.

‘We’ll go back to Ireland then, shall we?’ Kieran suggested softly.

‘If only we could …’ Noreen sighed. ‘We came here to escape one lot of troubles but what have we got in its place?’ She looked around at her squalid surroundings.

Kieran walked over in his underclothes to embrace his wife. ‘We’re better off here, you know we are.’

‘You’re in with bad men, Kieran.’ Noreen shrugged off her husband’s comfort and started pacing to and fro. It was a dull summer day and the recent rain had permeated the atmosphere with the odour of mildewed mortar. Noreen rubbed her bare arms with her palms as she stared at her husband’s back. ‘I’ve heard them talking, you know. They’re always planning on setting about Christopher and his men working along the street.’

Kieran swung around and gave her a fierce look. ‘You keep yourself to yourself, you hear me, Noreen? I’m doing just that. I do my work and then I come home. We’ll not be taking sides or interfering in any feuds between people. We’ve had enough of that back in Ireland. I’m sick to me stomach of fighting and killing.’

‘You’d be better off at the labour exchange than getting in with such as O’Connor. Has he paid you all of your wages yet?’

A brusque shake of the head was Noreen’s answer.

In response she went to the child sitting on the bed and took the packet of custard creams from her, making Kathleen whimper. She lobbed it her husband’s way. ‘There’s your supper then, ’cos I’m not going back to that shop and begging for more credit until Rosie needs linctus.’

‘I’ll take her to the doctor’s surgery for medicine.’

‘You will not,’ Noreen said, narrowing her eyes. ‘You know as well as I do that the surgery will want to know our address. You know too what will happen when the authorities find out our home is a slum waiting to be pulled down.’ Noreen rushed over to Kieran and grabbed his chin forcing him to look at her. ‘They’ll take our girls away if they find out we’re living in such conditions as aren’t fit for adults let alone little children.’

Kieran wrenched free of his wife’s pinching fingers. But he had nothing to say because he realised Noreen’s fears were valid.

‘Shush that noise now, Kathleen,’ Noreen told the little girl, who was still grizzling. Kathleen contented herself with sucking her sugary fingers to ease her hunger.

Kieran came towards his elder daughter, holding out a biscuit. ‘Look what Daddy has for you. Good girl,’ he crooned, stroking her long dark hair and sitting down beside her. ‘I’ll have me money off O’Connor tomorrow, or tell him I’ll not work longer for him.’

‘And what if he tells you to whistle for your wages? What will you do then, Kieran?’

‘Give over about it, woman!’

‘I’m getting work,’ Noreen said abruptly. ‘I can get a job cleaning again. The lady in Tufnell Park said I could go back any time …’

‘You will not.’

‘I will …’

‘And who will look after Rosie and Kathleen?’

‘You. You’re just along the street working, are you not? And if O’Connor won’t pay up you can stop home with the little ones for it’s pointless getting calluses and covered in muck for no good reason.’

‘I’ll do no such thing!’ Kieran looked outraged. ‘You’re the girls’ mother and you’ll care for them as you should.’

‘And you’re the girls’ father and my husband and you’ll care for us as you should, or I’ll take on the job of it.’

Kieran jumped to his feet, making Noreen skitter backwards in alarm. But he grabbed up his dirty work clothes and pulled them on again before storming out.

‘You told us ages ago the guvnor was gonna sort things out with them didicois.’ Vic had stuck his head around the van’s open back door to hiss at Chris. ‘We’ve all had enough of them taking the piss out of us all day long.’

‘Guvnor is sorting it out,’ Chris snapped back. He didn’t bother turning around and continued sorting through the tools in the back of the van. ‘Just get on with yer work.’

‘O’Connor offered me a job last night when I was packing up to go home. Laughed in me face about Stevie’s accident and said nobody in their right mind ’ud go up a worm-eaten old ladder. Said your old man should be put out to graze …’

Chris sent him a sideways glare. He knew Vic wasn’t lying about O’Connor’s spite; he also knew his workmate was intentionally trying to wind him up by recounting it all, especially the bit about his father. Vic, Billy and Ted were itching for another showdown with the pikeys and Chris could understand why: never a day went by that they didn’t make it their business to cause some problems for Wild Brothers to prevent them working.

Now bad feeling was turning inwards and Chris realised it was exactly what O’Connor wanted: he’d be happy to have them sniping at each other, and save him the job of doing it.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Vic demanded. ‘O’Connor offered me a job with his crew.’

‘Well, you takin’ him up on it?’

‘’Course I bleedin’ ain’t!’

‘Well, what yer telling me about it for?’ Chris ejected through his teeth. ‘If you change yer mind, let me know and I’ll have me uncle make up your cards for Friday.’ He snapped his head at the house. ‘Now get back to work, fer fuck’s sake; we’re falling right behind.’

Vic stuck two fingers up at a navvy who’d been catcalling at them while picking through salvage he’d dragged out of a house along the road.

Chris jumped off the back of the van and glanced after Vic. He noticed that Ted and Billy were ambling towards him, no doubt for a confab. Chris was aware that the other two often gave Vic bullets to fire because they hadn’t got the guts to shoot their mouths off themselves.

‘Forget the mother’s meeting!’ he yelled sarcastically at them. ‘Get on with stripping out that back room on the top floor.’

Chris watched until they’d dispersed then turned and carried on unloading equipment from the back of the van onto the pavement. He didn’t glimpse O’Connor approaching until he was just a yard or two away. Chris swung towards him, weighing a hammer in his hand. The mood he was in following his run-in with Vic, he was tempted to use it.

O’Connor held out his hands in a gesture of appeal. ‘No need for any o’ that, son,’ he drawled, all Irish blarney. ‘Got a few problems with your lads, I see.’ He shook his shaggy head in mock sympathy. ‘Being the ganger is not all it’s cracked up to be now, is it? I know that alright, so I do. I expect you’re after wanting your pa back to deal with them; he had a bit more authority about him now, didn’t he?’

‘You got anything interesting to say, or you just gonna stand there talking crap?’ Chris continued tapping the metal hammerhead against an open palm.

‘It was your dad, wasn’t it, who got hurt in that fall? Just come over to ask how he’s doing.’ O’Connor’s concern was as fake as his tobacco-stained smile.

‘He’s doing fine, so now you know, you can piss off.’

‘Aw … don’t be like that when I’ve come to offer you a bit of help.’ Declan swiped a hand about the bristle on his chin, his eyes foxy. ‘You’ll be one short for a while longer then?’

‘You’re not gonna ask fer ’is job are you?’ Chris enquired dryly.

O’Connor grunted a laugh. ‘Not me … no … no … but now I’ve taken on Murphy I’ve got a fellow spare I can let you have at a cheap rate. He’ll take charge, ’cos you haven’t got it in you, have you now, to do a man’s work. You’re still a wee boy, so y’are …’

‘If you don’t fuck off, O’Connor …’ Chris muttered threateningly.

O’Connor bared his yellow teeth in a howl of laughter. ‘What you gonna do about it, Sonny Jim?’ He nodded at the house. ‘Now, why don’t you all pack up and go, and let a real team take over and do a proper job? Tell you what … I’ll give you a little something to make it worth your while …’ He pulled a pound note out of his pocket and waved it mockingly. ‘Here … buy sweeties …’

‘What’s he saying?’

Vic had stormed out of the house with Ted and Billy close behind.

As much as Chris would have liked to land one on the Irishman he knew that he shouldn’t because starting a ruckus was just what O’Connor wanted. He used the same stupid stuff to taunt them with day in, day out, and Chris had learned to let it wash over him.

‘You taking up me offer of a job now?’ O’Connor riled Vic, deliberately grabbing his shoulder in a vicious pinch to spin him around.

Vic swung a right hook at his jaw but O’Connor had anticipated that. He ducked, jabbing a meaty fist hard in Vic’s solar plexus, making him fold over with a heavy grunt. It was the signal for his crew to tumble out of the house along the road and come running. Only Kieran Murphy stayed where he was. He shook his head and disappeared back inside the house where he’d been working.

‘Luvly,’ Chris heard Billy mutter. ‘I’m just about fuckin’ ready fer ‘em.’ He picked up one of the nail bars that Chris had flung onto the ground earlier and took a run and a swing at the closest navvy.

Chris swore under his breath in exasperation but, as O’Connor swiped a shovel and raised his arms high with the intention of putting it over Vic’s head, he nipped in and kneed him in the groin. He grabbed at the falling shovel before it crowned him, hurling it aside. Vic was still winded and was having difficulty straightening up enough to turn and deal with the Paddy who’d just jumped on his back. But there were no Queensberry rules here, and as O’Connor staggered, Chris had no qualms about jerking his knee up viciously again, making him shriek in pain. Knuckles raked his cheek and Chris swiftly grabbed his opponent’s overalls to haul him forward and nut him before shoving him backwards.

The only way to calm the Micks down was to get their boss to give them the order; Chris had learned that over the months. But he didn’t reckon O’Connor was now in any mood to call his boys off. Right now he was clutching his throbbing balls, ambling in a knock-kneed circle, moaning out curses. Chris swung a foot hard at his thick legs, sending him reeling off balance. His second swipe sent the Irishman crashing over. As soon as he was on the ground Chris pounced, planting a boot firmly on his neck.

‘Tell them to back off.’ He ground his heel harder against O’Connor’s Adam’s apple. ‘Tell them, you Irish bastard, or Vic’s gonna keep stamping on yer knackers while I throttle you.’

O’Connor started, waving his arms frantically about and bubbling at the mouth.

‘Got the message, have you?’ Chris bawled at the Irish gang as they disentangled themselves from their opponents, breathing heavily.

Chris eased his foot off O’Connor’s throat. ‘Tell them to fuck off back up the road, ’cos I ain’t lettin’ you up till they’re gone.’

O’Connor rasped out the order, and immediately Ted got in a last sly punch, making one of them totter back on his heels. The remainder of the little crew also retreated, sending venomous looks in their wake.

Chris strolled away from O’Connor and resumed unloading his van while Vic brought his breakfast up into the gutter then, rubbing his sore guts, said he felt much better. His two breathless and bruised colleagues stood with their narrowed eyes fixed on the Irishman who was dragging himself up off the floor.

‘You’re a dead man …’ O’Connor whispered against the graze on Chris’s cheek, his eyes blazing hatred.

‘You first,’ Chris returned, giving him a despising look and a dismissive jerk of the head.

When peace had broken out, and his colleagues’ banging and crashing could be heard coming from the top floor of the tenement house, Chris turned his thoughts to what Vic had said earlier. He shut the van doors and locked them, a frown on his face. He was also starting to worry that his uncle was taking his time about getting rid of the Micks. When Rob said he’d do something, he did it. His uncle was no pushover and certainly wouldn’t be frightened of taking on O’Connor and his crew. He’d grown up hearing tales from his relatives of how Rob Wild had seen off rivals, and yet he was also a canny businessman and doting husband who steered clear of anything too drastic that might upset the authorities, or his wife. Chris knew if O’Connor were still around at the end of the week he’d have to bring up the matter with his uncle and find out what was going on.

‘I’m onto it, I swear,’ Walter Purvis whispered into the phone. ‘And you shouldn’t have rung me here. How did you get this number?’ He was standing in the hallway of his home, throwing nervous glances over his shoulder. His wife poked her head out of the kitchen to frown crossly at him. He gave her a sickly smile and a little wave.

‘Never mind about any of that,’ Rob said. ‘You’re starting to piss me off, Walter. When we last spoke you said you’d need only a few more days to have things under control.’

‘I will have it under control,’ Walter hissed, covering his mouth in panic in case his wife was listening. ‘But Kennedy’s a slippery character. I’ve been trying to get him on his own … it’s a delicate situation … as you must appreciate … not something that can be brought up in the office with others present … I have to investigate then approach him carefully in case he blabs once he knows the game’s up …’

‘Don’t give me excuses, Walter,’ Rob sighed. ‘Give me results. I’m expecting to hear in a couple of days that they’re gone ’cos if I don’t, I’m getting a mob to shift ’em …’

‘No, no, don’t do that, all hell might break loose,’ Walter interrupted.

‘I’m sure it will, Walter, that’s the idea …’

‘Coming, dear,’ Walter piped as his wife’s greying perm appeared again and she mouthed to him that his tea was getting cold. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll speak to you in the week.’ He put down the phone with an unsteady hand then used it to push his wispy hair back from his perspiring brow. Pinning a smile to his face he entered the dining room.

The moment he spied his quarry Walter Purvis hastened out from behind the newsvendor’s stall where he’d been loitering and strode towards him. He’d known Kennedy was off out on his dinner break as he’d heard him in the office making arrangements on the phone. At last he’d been presented with an opportunity to collar him away from flapping ears and have it out with him.

‘Need to speak to you, Kennedy …’

The younger man glanced sharply at Walter. ‘Oh, hello, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll pop along to your office this afternoon.’ When Walter stepped in front of him to halt him Kennedy added, ‘Can’t stop now; meeting somebody for lunch.’ He tried to step past his stout middle-aged boss.

‘That’s going to have to wait,’ Walter said, grabbing his elbow. ‘This is urgent.’ When Kennedy gave him an impatient look, Walter decided to use his trump card. ‘It’s about the Whadcoat Street job,’ he said quietly. ‘I believe you might have some explaining to do there …’

Kennedy’s expression transformed immediately and a mix of guilt and defiance narrowed his eyes. ‘What about Whadcoat Street?’

‘Yes, indeed, what about it?’ Walter muttered with a significant raise of his eyebrows. Having glanced about for somewhere private he noticed an unoccupied bench set on a rectangle of green that was screened by trees. ‘Let’s go over there and have a little chat about things and see what we can come up with.’

Kennedy reluctantly followed him then perched on the edge of the wooden slats, gripping together his hands. To escape Walter’s fixed stare he examined his nails. ‘I hope this won’t take long, Mr Purvis,’ he began. ‘I’m already late …’

The look his boss gave him promised him he’d take as long as he liked. Walter was becoming more confident that he had rattled Kennedy, and that made him sure he was right in thinking he’d been taking backhanders off pikeys. ‘Where have you been siphoning the money from to pay O’Connor?’ When he got no immediate response, and Kennedy shuffled his feet on the gravel, staring into space, Walter smiled. ‘I think you’ve been booking it down to the Stroud Green job because it’s coming in under budget and it’d be a shame to let good money go to waste, wouldn’t it?’

Kennedy suddenly coughed and fidgeted as though he might jump up and run. Some of the boys who Walter arranged to meet in clandestine places had the same gauche air about them. He found it rather endearing.

‘I’ll make it easy for you, Kennedy. I feel responsible, you see, as I recommended you and helped get you promoted.’ He patted the young man’s knee. ‘Now I know you’ve done wrong but I’m prepared to think you’ve been foolish rather than corrupt. Besides, I don’t want this bouncing back on me any more than you want to feel the full weight of an investigation into false accounting, misappropriation of public funds and so on, and so on. Of course, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to perjure yourself either if it went to court, so I’m going to suggest a way around things.’

‘Why?’ Kennedy croaked after a lengthy silence.

Walter blinked at him. ‘I thought I’d explained: I don’t want to get my knuckles rapped for singing the praises of a miscreant, neither do I want to see you arrested for taking backhanders and doling out jobs for the boys …’ Walter hoped Kennedy was appreciating the distinction, and who had the most to lose. ‘I took a look at your file, you see. I noted your father’s family hail from Ireland, although, of course you’d never know it as you have a rather common London accent.’ Again he tapped Kennedy’s knee, gave it a little squeeze. ‘Perhaps you’ve been doing a favour for an uncle … cousin?’ Walter’s head trembled enquiringly as he waited for an answer.

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Kennedy muttered.

‘Family, eh? Who’d have ’em?’ Walter chortled. ‘We can put this right,’ he soothed. ‘Of course, you’ll need to tell O’Connor his services are no longer needed. And then hand over to me the cash he’s paid you.’

‘I’ve spent it.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Walter sighed. ‘Well, we’ll have to think of another way you can repay me for saving your bacon …’

‘Kind of you, sir.’ Kennedy gave his boss a sour look but a moment later placed a hand on his knee.

Walter beamed at him. ‘That’s the spirit.’ He got up and buttoned his mac. ‘It would be best if you left the department; perhaps a shift sideways. I’ll arrange a transfer for you. Enjoy your lunch.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘You’ve not been fighting with the Irishmen again?’ Grace frowned at the bruise on Chris’s forehead, then brushed a finger along his grazed cheek. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him looking battle-scarred.

‘It’s nothing; it happened earlier in the week,’ Chris replied quietly, as he saw Shirley emerge from the kitchen. ‘You ready?’

‘Dear me … you’ve been in the wars, Christopher!’

‘Had a bit of rubble fall on me at work, Mrs Coleman,’ Chris slickly said. He knew Shirley already thought him a rough handful; if she knew the truth of it she’d probably banish him from darkening her doorstep.

‘Cup of tea before you go out?’ Shirley offered brightly.

It was unusual for Christopher to enter the house. Shirley was aware that Grace normally made sure to be ready and waiting when he pulled up, so she could simply call goodbye when shutting the front door. Her daughter wanted to keep her and Christopher apart to avoid any awkward questions arising. Grace was always telling her to stop prying, because when there was something to know, she’d come out with it.

But Shirley thought she had a right to find out a few things now, seeing as they’d been going steady for months, and her daughter invariably returned home after a night out with Chris looking dishevelled and dreamy-eyed. A bit of kissing and cuddling didn’t bother Shirley, so Grace’s tousled hair and swollen rosy lips were overlooked. She waited up for her daughter’s return to run an eagle eye over her for tell-tale undone buttons and a skew-whiff skirt. Grace was more than old enough to be a mother herself, but to Shirley she was a spinster daughter who was too headstrong to heed advice, and might allow a horny charmer to get her into trouble and ruin her future.

After Hugh had thrown Grace over, Shirley had panicked, wondering if her daughter had been daft enough to go all the way with the two-timing swine before getting the ring that mattered on her finger. She’d had visions of Grace with a swollen belly in a few months’ time and no man in sight to marry her.

Eventually Grace had had enough of her nagging and had shouted at her she was still a virgin so she had nothing to worry about, and in future to mind her own business. But that had been some years ago. Grace was now twenty-three and had been left behind by most of her contemporaries. Shirley had seen a wistful look flit over her daughter’s face a few weeks ago when they’d bumped into one of her old school chums pushing a pram in Wood Green High Street. Shirley knew such longing could be more dangerous than a randy, determined man, in addling a woman’s wits.

Considering Christopher was a handsome rogue, with a nice line in patter – Shirley remembered his smooth, confident manner the first day she’d seen him at Matilda’s – he no doubt attracted lots of girls. Shirley thought it likely he’d been trying it on with her daughter and what she wanted to know was how successful he’d been, and whether he’d yet asked Grace to get engaged. Shirley knew she’d have mixed feelings if he had; she still thought her pretty daughter could do better for herself than a good-looking builder from a notoriously bad family.

Grace worked in an environment teeming with respectable men, with good pay and prospects, who arrived home clean and tidy. Hugh might have been a bad lot but at least he had turned up to take Grace out in a smart Hillman saloon rather than a dirty Bedford van.

For fifteen years Wilf Coleman had came home reeking of raw meat, because he’d worked in a food-processing factory until the war gave him a way out. Shirley had never let him near her until he’d bathed, and even then the odour seemed to cling to his flesh and turn her stomach. She’d had high hopes of Grace doing better for herself …

‘Where’re you two off to then?’ Shirley asked, hoping to delay them to slip in a few probing questions.

‘Wood Green Gaumont; “The Lavender Hill Mob” is showing.’

‘Oh, that’s a good film. I saw that with Miriam after work one evening; we did have a laugh.’ Shirley came further into the hallway. After doing her shift in a Woolworth’s store in Wood Green High Street she occasionally had an evening out at the Gaumont, followed by a bite to eat, with a colleague.

She ran a look of grudging approval over Christopher’s attire. Shirley had to admit he turned up to take Grace out smelling fresh and looking smart though she had noticed bruises on his face a couple of times. Being as he worked on a building site, and his father had recently come a dreadful cropper, she was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt about the rubble, rather than jump to the conclusion that he’d been brawling.

‘Better be off,’ Grace said, edging Chris towards the door. She’d noticed her mother scrutinising Chris’s face. ‘If we don’t get going we’ll miss the start …’

‘Don’t be late back!’ Shirley grimaced disappointment as the couple disappeared. She’d not managed to find out a thing.

‘Fancy some chips?’

‘No thanks … I had a big tea before I came out.’ Grace smiled.

They’d just descended the steps of the Gaumont surrounded by the dispersing audience who’d enjoyed the antics of Alec Guinness and the rest of the madcap cast of ‘The Lavender Hill Mob’. They started walking in the September dusk towards Turnpike Lane, where Chris had parked the van.

Grace slipped a hand through his arm and gave it a squeeze. ‘You’re a convincing liar, you know. This evening when you told my mum rubble fell on you I almost believed you myself.’

‘Rubble did fall on me earlier in the week,’ he insisted, giving her a subtle smile.

‘Maybe it did, but I’d put money on it that somebody’s knuckles left those marks on your face.’

He stooped to brush a kiss on her cheek. ‘Shhh … they’re almost healed and I’ve had enough listening to the lads going on about the pikeys all day long. Shall we go for a coffee? Or stop off at a pub?’

Grace shook her head.

‘What d’you want to do?’

‘Go for a drive?’

He slanted a look at her. ‘Right … now if I reckoned you’d suggested that ’cos you were gonna ask me to park up somewhere nice and quiet so we could …’

Grace gave a tiny laugh and averted her pink face. ‘You’ve got a one-track mind, Christopher Wild. Can’t we just park up and have a talk about things?’

‘No …’

‘Why not?’

‘’Cos I know what things you want to talk about,’ he said levelly, ‘and every time that subject comes up we end up arguing. I had enough nagging off the lads at work today.’

Grace withdrew her arm from his and, halting by a brightly lit shop window, rested her back against the glass. She gazed up indignantly at him, noting impatience in his expression, but choosing to ignore it.

‘Don’t snap at me; it’s not my fault you’ve got a lot of problems at work,’ she said tartly.

‘I didn’t say it was.’

‘And I don’t nag you about contacting your mum. I just think you should.’

Christopher spun on his heel away from her and took out a packet of Players. He had a cigarette alight in a matter of seconds.

‘You can have a fight every day of the week yet you can’t find the courage to drive to Bexleyheath to say hello to your mother?’

He walked away a few steps, dragging deeply on the cigarette. ‘Come on … I fancy a cold beer.’ He shot out a hand behind him for her to take.

But Grace stayed where she was despite feeling a bit chilled. She had on a pretty sleeveless summer dress with just a cardigan over it. But the night air was fresher than she’d anticipated. Wrapping her arms about her middle she settled back mutinously. She wasn’t going to let him ignore her. Too often he changed the subject, or started kissing and caressing her, when there was an issue he wanted to avoid talking about. If he used the latter method of shutting her up, it worked a treat for him, she realised sourly.

He pivoted about and their eyes clashed across a few separating yards of pavement, both too proud and stubborn to back down or close the gap.

‘Why do you go on about it every bloody time we go out?’ He sounded angry and frustrated. ‘I wish I’d never told you about her at all. I want to relax when I’m with you, Grace, not get an ear-bashing.’

‘Is that all you want?’ Grace asked tightly.

‘No … but as there’s not much chance of that I’ll settle for the cinema and a cold beer,’ he said, a touch too sarcastically.

‘I wondered when we’d get around to that,’ Grace murmured.

‘Well, it’s not as if you’re sweet sixteen, is it?’ he muttered.

‘I wondered when we’d get around to that too …’

Chris stuck the cigarette in his mouth and shoved a hand through his dark hair. ‘It doesn’t matter … swear. I know you’ve had the dirty done on you by another bloke, and you’re gonna be cautious for a while about trusting men.’ Spontaneously his hungry eyes roved over her curvy figure and slender, bare legs. ‘I promise I’m not like him … I won’t up ’n’ leave …’

Grace laughed acidly. ‘Only you could turn a conversation about finding your mother into a complaint about me not going all the way with you.’

‘That works both ways.’ Chris drawled and ground the cigarette butt beneath his shoe. He glanced up, holding her gaze with his dark, sleepy eyes. ‘You told me it’s my decision whether I go to Bexleyheath to look for her, and I reckon you were right, so back off and leave me alone.’

‘Yeah … I certainly will …’ Grace replied in a suffocated voice, pushing away from the window and starting back the way they’d just come.

In a few seconds Christopher was at her side, spinning her about by gripping her arm. ‘What game you havin’?’

‘I’m not playing, that’s the point,’ Grace said tremulously, shaking him off and continuing walking briskly. ‘You’re the one behaving like a sulky kid and I’ve had enough.’

He crowded her back against a brick wall. ‘I’m the one acting like a kid? You’re twenty-three, you’ve been engaged, and you’re acting like a fucking virgin …’

‘Perhaps that’s because I am,’ she stormed.

She punched at his arm to move him but he kept her penned while frowning at her.

‘Really?’ he eventually said hoarsely.

‘No … I just said it to piss you off, like everything else I come out with.’ She ducked beneath one of his braced arms and darted across the road.

He weaved between traffic and caught up with her. This time Grace came to a halt. She knew trying to outrun him was silly and undignified. She waited for a couple to amble past arm-in-arm before she said, ‘I think … it’s time we had a break from seeing each other.’

‘You’re giving me the brush-off?’ He sounded incredulous. ‘Why? Because I won’t let you order me about?’

‘I’m not ordering you about.’ Grace made a despairing little gesture. ‘Can’t you understand that’s the problem … you just see it that way?’ She swallowed the tears blocking her throat. ‘I think it’s best if we have a break,’ she repeated, attempting to smile. ‘Perhaps you need to have some time on your own to work out what to do …’ Her voice tailed away then sprang again into life. ‘Before I came along and complicated things you seemed certain you wanted to contact your mum.’

‘It’s nothing to do with you coming along and complicating things. Me dad’s been in hospital, in case you’ve forgotten. He’s not long been home and I’m not going to upset him again by going off looking for someone who was a lazy slut and didn’t want me anyhow …’

‘You don’t know that …’

‘You think me dad’s lying to me?’

‘No … but things aren’t always so cut and dried, and I think your mum deserves to be heard.’

‘She’s never bothered to come and find me and ask me to listen to her side.’

‘Perhaps that’s because she knew what sort of reception she’d get.’

‘I know what fuckin’ reception I’ll get!’ he ground out through his teeth. ‘Now I know a bit more about her, I know she’s gonna tell me to get lost and stay out of her life!’

‘Well, at least then you’ll know,’ Grace reasoned. ‘You said Matilda was encouraging you to find her too; if you won’t listen to me, I know you’ll listen to her advice.’

‘Me aunt wouldn’t have mentioned her name if I hadn’t kept on about it. If she thought Pam Plummer was worth finding, she’d have told me to go looking years ago. That’s what Matilda’s like: all fair ’n’ square. The only reason she wants me to meet her is ’cos she knows once I’ve done it I’ll never ask about me mum again.’

Grace raised her glistening eyes heavenwards. ‘It’s no use, Chris,’ she said despairingly. ‘Thanks for taking me to the pictures tonight, I can get the bus back home …’

He gripped her wrist and dragged her roughly into an alley between two shop-fronts.

‘You all right, miss?’ A middle-aged man had observed their altercation and was now hovering at the mouth of the narrow opening.

‘She’s fine, piss off,’ Chris growled without turning to look at him.

‘I’m fine,’ Grace called in a tremulous voice. ‘See what I mean about you?’ She gave a gulp of humourless laughter while watching the fellow shake his head then disappear.

Chris raised a hand to cup her face. ‘I’m sorry … it’s just you drive me nuts, Grace …’

‘I’m sorry too, ’cos you drive me nuts …’ Grace sighed. ‘I meant what I said … I think it’d be best if we don’t see each other for a while …’

He plunged his mouth hard on hers, curving a hand about her nape to move her forward and prevent her scalp scraping against the brick. He knew he could have her if he wanted to. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t, and always courteously brought her back outside her house to kiss her goodnight and ask if she was ready to stay away somewhere on Saturday. It’d taken him one date to discover she was putty in his hands after a bit of clever petting. He was confident that if he eased them a way further up the alley now, and kept up the onslaught, he could take her against the wall, in the same way he had numerous other girls he barely remembered. But he wouldn’t forget Grace …

He heard the little moan as he tantalised her mouth and throat with deliberately sweet, seductive kisses. To satisfy his conceit he suddenly twisted them further into darkness and lifted her, wedging himself with practised ease between her parted legs. Her lids flew up and she gazed at him with startled doe eyes. But she didn’t struggle and he knew if he was slow and artful he could have her hate him tomorrow.

He tilted his forehead against hers, closing his eyes, then lowered her slowly to the ground. He turned away and shook out his cigarettes so clumsily some scattered on the concrete.

‘I’m just going to get the bus home,’ Grace said in a husky, quavering voice. She moved a hand as though to touch his arm in farewell but withdrew her fingers again almost immediately.

‘I’ll see you to the bus stop,’ he said and set off towards the High Street, outpacing her along the alley by yards.

They walked in silence and stood at the stop together for no more than a minute before a trolley bus pulled up in a squelch of brakes.

Grace gripped the metal pole and turned to say goodbye but the word withered on her tongue. He was already a distance away, striding swiftly towards Turnpike Lane with his head down and his hands thrust into his pockets.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘I reckon it’s time you stopped shirking, you lazy sod, and got yerself back into work.’

Faye gave her husband a frown, even though she knew he’d only been ribbing his brother about his convalescence. ‘Give poor Stevie a chance, will you! He’s not been out of hospital that long.’ She passed the bowl of potatoes to Pearl. ‘Help yourself. There’s more keeping warm in the oven so dig in.’

‘I’ve told him he needs to get himself sorted out. Bored stiff, aren’t you, Steve, sitting about doing nothing but reading the newspaper or listening to the wireless all day long.’ Pearl liked her food and she took Faye up on her generosity, liberally spooning mashed potatoes onto her plate.

‘Well, there’s a job waiting to be done in the office. I’ve only got one pair of hands and an in-tray that’s spilling all over me desk.’ Rob took the bowl from Pearl and helped himself to spuds.

‘Do I get any say in this?’ Stevie asked, feigning an air of injury while pouring himself lashings of thick brown gravy.

‘I’m with you, Stevie.’ Faye rallied to her brother-in-law’s side. ‘It’s up to you to decide when you’re ready to get back to work so don’t let Rob push you into it.’

The two couples were sitting around the kitchen table, enjoying a cosy dinner of steak and kidney pudding and mash, with a few beers to wash it down. It was just the four of them at home at Faye and Rob’s as Daisy had gone out with her friends for the evening. It was the first time they’d met socially since Stephen had been discharged and naturally enough conversation had quickly turned to the subject of Stevie’s employment prospects.

‘Seriously, mate, you know the job’s there waiting for you as soon as you’re feeling up to it.’ Rob tucked into his food but continued sending enquiring glances his brother’s way.

‘Yeah, thanks, I am grateful, it’s just …’ Stevie sighed. ‘It’s true I’m bored stiff at home, but … no offence, I reckon I’ll be bored stiff pushing papers around ’n’ all. It just ain’t me, sitting behind a desk all day long. I know it’ll drive me crackers.’

Rob looked surprised. He knew his brother was not in a position financially to give up work altogether. Stephen needed an income more than ever now it looked likely Chris might soon announce he and Grace were setting up home together. But, judging by the way his brother was still limping about, Rob didn’t think Stephen was fit enough for manual work. ‘You want to go back on the tools?’ he asked with a frown.

‘Nah … don’t think I’m up to climbing ladders any more,’ Stephen admitted. He forked some tender beef into his mouth, savouring it before adding, ‘To be honest the thought of going up a high reach again gives me the shivers.’

‘Well, if you make sure this time it’s one with rungs that ain’t worn through …’ his brother commented dryly.

‘Shut up and leave Steve alone.’ Faye pointed her knife at her husband.

‘Anyhow, Chris is doing a better job of supervising the lads than me.’ Stephen added to his reasons for giving up his job with Wild Brothers. While he’d been at home he’d been doing some thinking and had come up with the idea that he’d like to start a little business of his own. He hadn’t yet mentioned anything about it to Pearl because he was still mulling over possibilities. He was an experienced driver and knew he could start doing van deliveries. He had thought of asking Rob to give him a contract for taking some of his merchandise from the warehouse to market pitches. But he knew, much as he appreciated what his older brother had done for him over the years keeping him in cash and sound advice, he’d like to step out from Rob’s shadow before he got too much older. He wanted to earn a living in a job where he wasn’t relying on his brother for employment but pulled in clients won on his own merit.

‘Tell you what,’ Pearl suddenly piped up. ‘That suet pudding you did earlier in the week were a treat, Stevie. I reckon you could knock ’em up in your kitchen and flog ’em at a profit.’ She started to chuckle, tucking into her food.

‘I’ve tasted your suet pud and it ain’t half bad.’ Rob nodded his head in agreement.

Stephen continued eating, looking thoughtful. He enjoyed cooking and knew he had a flair for it. Even when rationing had been at its height, he’d been inventive and had managed to knock together some tasty grub for himself and Chris. But it had never occurred to him before that there might be a profit in it.

‘That’s not a bad suggestion,’ Faye suddenly said, taking the words from Stephen’s mouth and glancing about at them all. ‘I know I’d pay good money to eat something you’d cooked, Steve. You’re a natural.’

‘Don’t want to get stuck indoors tied to yer own kitchen sink, do you?’ Rob sounded dubious about the idea.

‘No … but I wouldn’t mind a little premises,’ Stephen said slowly, putting down his knife and fork and looking serious. ‘Suit me down to the ground, that would, having me own caff. Wouldn’t need to be anything big ’n’ fancy, just a cosy place to do afternoon teas and perhaps a few plain dinners. Got to keep costs down or no bugger would be able to afford to come in and eat. Except you, of course.’ He grinned at his brother.

‘Well, if you reckon it’s a goer, and you can find a property that seems about right, I’ll stump up for the first year’s rent while you get on your feet.’ Rob noticed Steve about to decline his offer. He hadn’t realised until he’d had that talk with Chris following Stevie’s accident just how fed up his brother was with feeling beholden to him. Stephen was now keen to be his own man and Rob admired him for it. ‘’Course, it’ll be a loan and you can repay me any time you like. Won’t charge much in interest.’

Stephen gazed gratefully at his brother. ‘I’d pay you something off the loan as soon as I started to make a profit,’ he vowed gruffly.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Rob said, businesslike. ‘Can do it official, if you like, through the books.’

‘Well, no need to go mad,’ Stephen returned, grinning.

‘I’m interested, if you want any help,’ Pearl suddenly burst out in an enthusiastic tone. ‘Me boss in the chemist’s is always telling me I’m a natural with the customers. Got the gift of the gab, so he says, and keep ’em coming back.’ She barely paused before rattling on, ‘If you like, Stevie, you can do the cooking and I’ll do the waitressing and clearing up. I could take the orders and man the till. Don’t mind doing all the shopping too …’ Her round pink cheeks were glowing in excitement. ‘I’ve got a little bit saved, and I’d like to invest it if you’ll let me.’

Faye got up from the table, smiling serenely. ‘Forget about the ales, I think this calls for a bit of a celebratory toast.’ She went quickly to the pantry and found a bottle of red wine.

‘Never mind that, love,’ Rob said, having finished off his beer in a gulp. ‘I’ve got a bottle of champers down in the cellar. Been saving it for a special occasion, and I reckon this is it.’

When Stephen heard his son’s key in the lock he turned off the wireless and got to his feet. It didn’t occur to him to glance at the clock on the mantelshelf in the back room or he’d have realised it was early for Chris to be home from a night out with Grace.

Stephen had dropped Pearl off earlier and she’d promised she was going to immediately look at her savings books and do some sums. Stephen had headed off home with the intention of doing the same. He knew he had a Building Society passbook with a small amount in it that he had been saving for Christopher. He hadn’t told Chris he’d been putting money by for some years for when he eventually got married. Even had Chris been aware of the little nest egg, Stephen knew his son wouldn’t mind him using it on something so important. Besides, Stephen had every intention of replacing it soon from the profits he’d make from his new business venture. And he was bursting to tell Chris all about the exciting plans for a caff that had been discussed that evening at Rob’s. He hoped perhaps Chris might take some time at the weekend to look at premises with him, if he wasn’t planning to work or be off out with Grace.

Stephen appeared in the hallway, a bright smile on his face. ‘How you doing, son? Good night out? How’s Grace?’

Chris mumbled something at him and continued towards the stairs. A moment later he was halfway up them with Stephen gawping at his back.

‘You lot! Get out here and take a look at this!’ Vic crowed, his voice bubbling with glee.

Ted and Billy emerged from the house to join him on the pavement.

Ted’s grimy face split into a snaggle-toothed grin. ‘Oi! Chris! Come ’n’ take a butcher’s,’ he bellowed. ‘Yer can’t miss seeing this! If I ’ad me camera I’d take a picture.’

Chris came out of the house, frowning impatiently, but his expression lifted when he saw what was amusing them.

Along the road O’Connor’s crew were loading their gear onto an open-backed truck and it was obvious, from their snarling expressions, and the fact that two of them were rolling on the ground, having a scrap, that they were not happy. They appeared to be packing up and leaving for good.

‘Looks like the guvnor managed to swing it after all … good on ’im.’ Vic did a little jig, with much clicking of heels and fingers.

‘Guvnor never lets you down, do he?’ Ted began nodding his head. ‘Might have took him a while but he got there in the end.’

‘When he does it, he does it right, see.’ Billy added his two penn’orth.

A darkly sardonic glance encompassed his workmates but Chris refrained from reminding them that just yesterday they’d all been chewing his ears off again with complaints about his uncle taking his own sweet time in seeing off the Micks. Instead, he gave Declan O’Connor a jaunty wave. ‘Oi! O’Connor! I’ll ’ave me ladder back now as you won’t be needin’ it,’ he shouted. ‘And while you’re at it, I reckon you can leave them two shovels ’n’ all. Won’t charge you no hire rates … ain’t my way to put the boot into a man who’s down.’

O’Connor tensed rigid on hearing that taunt then swung about and pointed a thick finger at Chris. ‘Told you once before, Sonny Jim, you’re a fookin’ dead man.’

‘Yeah … and I told you, you’ll go down first, mate …’

O’Connor turned his back and continued arguing with Kieran Murphy before shoving hard at the man’s shoulder, sending him crashing back against some house railings. A moment later he scrambled into the truck, crashing the gears and sending it lurching forward. The way the vehicle was facing he either had to do a three-point turn to head away from them or drive past and endure more jeering.

The truck suddenly screeched down the road, O’Connor deliberately aiming the vehicle at them, sending the Wild Brothers’ lot diving behind the railings fronting the house.

‘Fuckin’ sour grapes, I call that,’ Billy scoffed with a two-fingered salute from behind his protective screen.

O’Connor’s face was boiling red with rage as he sent them all a hate-filled glare. The gears groaned as he got reverse and disentangled his bumper from the railings.

‘You go ahead and have your laughs now while you can,’ Declan spat menacingly. ‘I’m not a man with a short memory, you fookin’ remember that.’

Ted pretended to scrub tears from his eyes with his fists. ‘Gonna miss you when you’re gone …’ he boo-hooed.

The rest of the Irish contingent had jumped in a panel van and it came hurtling down the road to shudder to a stop beside their boss’s vehicle. The menials seemed to be waiting for a signal from their guvnor to tumble out and get stuck in, but O’Connor appeared reluctant to go for a final tear-up. Chris surreptitiously swooped on an assortment of tools in the hallway of the house and distributed weapons amongst his colleagues, in case Declan decided to give the nod.

O’Connor suddenly let out the clutch and his truck whizzed back, then rammed once more against the railings, buckling them to within inches of Vic’s shins. A moment later he’d ground the gears into reverse and, steering manically, he roared on towards Seven Sisters Road with Vic’s hammer and snarling curses following him. The other vehicle was soon revving, a mass of faces, spewing filth, bobbing at the side window, then it raced away in the truck’s fumy wake.

‘You’ll never guess who I saw the other day.’

Grace stopped stirring her tea and glanced at her friend Wendy, faint interest lifting her eyebrows.

‘Hugh Wilkins,’ Wendy said. ‘He asked after you.’ She took a glance around the café. ‘Where’s my bun? I’m starving …’

‘He can go and take a running jump,’ Grace muttered sourly.

A Lyons nippy appeared and put down two plates holding aromatic currant buns.

Wendy immediately split hers and began buttering it. ‘I was in Bourne & Hollingsworth and he came up to me.’ She shook her head. ‘Didn’t want to give him the time of day but …’ The bun hovered in front of her mouth. She smiled impishly. ‘I made sure I told him you were with a new boyfriend and it looked serious.’

‘You shouldn’t have lied, Wendy.’ Grace chuckled ruefully.

‘Is it a lie?’ Wendy’s eyebrows hovered close to her brunette hairline.

‘You know it is,’ Grace said quietly and started buttering her bun. ‘Serious?’ She choked a miserable laugh. ‘It’s over between us by the looks of it.’

‘Chris still not been in touch?’

Grace shook her head.

‘He’ll be back.’

‘Was Hugh out with his wife?’ Grace could tell her friend was about to pursue that conversation about Chris and, although they were close friends, she didn’t want to discuss him with anybody.

At first she’d been confident that in a week or two Chris would pull up outside her house and ask for a second chance, and they’d discuss calmly what to do about his mother. But he hadn’t come to see her, or telephoned, and she’d begun to realise she must have been wrong in thinking he’d been on the point of telling her he was in love with her.

He seemed to have easily forgotten her, but, unbearably for her, it seemed there was truth and wisdom in the old saying that absence made the heart grow fonder. Since they’d split up she’d come to realise she’d fallen in love with him. But much as she yearned to see him she knew the problems that made them argue wouldn’t go away, not while the spectre of his mother was wedged between them. So she hadn’t contacted him to say she’d made a mistake because, deep down, she knew she hadn’t, and besides, her pride was smarting and she was unwilling to chase after him.

‘Hugh had a girl with him,’ Wendy said, having swallowed her mouthful of bun. ‘She looked about fourteen and seemed a sulky brat.’ Wendy sipped from her tea. ‘Hope he’s got a hellish life with his stepkids. It’s what he deserves after what he did to you.’

Grace shrugged her indifference and bit into her bun. She realised she hadn’t given Hugh Wilkins a thought in ages.

‘Don’t see how anybody could forgive or forget something like that,’ Wendy said bluntly. ‘What about all the money you lost? I feel bad now that I couldn’t afford to pay you for my bridesmaid’s dress. It was a beauty and I’ve worn it a few times.’

‘It doesn’t matter; in any case, later on you bought me a lovely silk blouse in compensation.’ Grace paused, feeling uncharacteristically resentful. ‘I’m glad Hugh had laid out as well, at least he didn’t get away scot-free.’

‘But he ended up marrying a rich woman, so it didn’t matter so much to him, did it?’

Grace simply shrugged and gazed out of the corner café onto an Indian summer afternoon. It was early October and gloriously mild weather. Women were still strolling in summer dresses and open-toed sandals. But appealing as the sunlit scene was, Grace couldn’t put from her mind the loss of her little nest egg. After the shock of being jilted by Hugh had subsided a bit, the realisation that she’d wasted her savings on an aborted wedding had come as a huge blow.

She hadn’t yet managed to build up her little kitty again. A wistful twist shaped her lips. But there was scant likelihood of needing savings to pay for a wedding any time soon.

‘You finished?’

Grace was jolted from her thoughts by her friend’s voice. She pushed away her empty cup and plate and nodded.

‘Come on, let’s go and spend some money,’ Wendy said and led the way out of the café and, arm-in-arm, they headed in the direction of the market.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘How’s things going at work?’

‘All right now the pikeys have gone,’ Chris informed his dad. ‘Feel sorry for Kieran Murphy; he came over and asked again for a job. I spoke to Rob but I knew what his answer would be: there’s not enough in the contract to warrant another pay packet. Anyhow, the lads would never have stopped moaning; they’re all after overtime, and again Rob says there’s nothing doing on that score.’ He paused. ‘We got a good day in today though and are back on schedule. What’s for tea? I’m starving.’

‘Doin’ a mince ’n’ onion pie.’ Stevie turned awkwardly on his healing leg to watch his son plonk down at the kitchen table and unfold his newspaper.

‘You not getting in the bath?’ He ran an eye over Chris’s mucky appearance.

‘Yeah … in a bit.’ Chris carried on reading the midweek football scores. ‘Fancy coming down the Arsenal Saturday?’ he asked his father.

‘Yeah … don’t mind …’ Stevie continued spearing sideways glances at Christopher while rolling pastry. ‘Going out tonight?’

‘Nah … gonna listen to the wireless and get an early night.’

Stevie didn’t keep tabs on his son’s social life, but he was beginning to suspect that Chris hadn’t seen Grace for a couple of months. At first he hadn’t given it much thought because sometimes a tiff, or family circumstances, just made it work out that way. But now he suspected it was something far more serious than that.

‘You used to see Grace most Thursday evenings.’ It sounded like an idle observation.

‘Don’t now,’ Christopher said, standing up. ‘I’ll run me bath. How long’s that gonna be?’

‘About an hour.’ Stevie patted the pastry lid on his pie and started crimping it. ‘Grace was right for you, y’know. You want to tell me what’s gone wrong?’ he asked quietly.

‘No,’ Chris said and strolled off into the hallway.

Sighing, Stevie shoved the pie in the oven. He wasn’t fooled for a moment by Chris’s nonchalance. If he were over the girl he’d be out on the pull with his mates, or boozing it up at weekends. The fact that he wasn’t, and had spent the past couple of months moping around at home, made Stevie think that his son was behaving himself because he hoped to get her back. But he seemed to be taking his time about doing it for some reason.

When he’d first got discharged, Chris had been like a mother hen, but once his son had realised that, apart from being slow on his pins, he was quite healthy, he’d eased off fussing and they’d fallen back into their old routines.

Stevie reflected on the evening that he had waited up for Chris to come home so he could tell him the news about his plans for a caff. His son had come in looking shell-shocked and had gone to bed without saying a word. Stevie had guessed immediately he’d got woman troubles; he recalled seeing that vacant expression gazing back at him in the mirror a few times in his life. During his divorce from Pam he’d walked round like a staring-eyed zombie for months.

Having put the potatoes to boil Stevie sat down at the table and frowned sightlessly at the newspaper. He regretted bringing his ex-wife to mind. The thought of the horrible tension he’d caused to exist between him and Chris, just before his accident, now made him feel uneasy and ashamed.

He knew he’d cheated death, and whether it was that humbling knowledge or the hefty bang on the head that had knocked some sense in to him, he couldn’t be sure.

While in hospital he’d had ample time to reflect. He couldn’t escape his conscience, or the fact that Matilda had been right – as she usually was. He shouldn’t have been so hard on his son because he wanted to find his mum. Stevie knew the shock of hearing Matilda’s news that day had made his mouth work faster than his brain, but there’d been no excuse for carrying on being stubborn and resentful.

Any proper father would have talked things through like an adult with his only child; instead he’d made both their lives hell with his sullen silences. He understood now that Christopher had the right to know about his past, whether it were good or bad, and it was no longer his job to sift out the stuff that might upset him, because he wasn’t a kid any more.

Christopher was a man and he’d fallen in love with a nice girl. Stevie realised he wished things would come right for Chris and Grace. He wished his son might soon be a father himself. But most of all he wished he’d told Chris he was sorry for what he’d done, and if he still wanted to find his mother, he wouldn’t stand in his way.

Since he’d got out of hospital nobody had mentioned Pam, not even Matilda. Having mulled things over in his mind Stevie had come to the conclusion that it would be unwise to dredge it up, even to apologise. Many months had passed since it all blew up so the best thing might be to let sleeping dogs lie and in that way Chris might put all his efforts into getting back with Grace …

‘Smells good … make the gravy, shall I?’ Chris came into the kitchen towelling his hair. He pulled a box of Bisto out of the cupboard, dropped it on the table then wandered off into the front room to turn on the wireless.

‘Oi! That gravy won’t make itself, y’know …’

Chris’s contribution to the gravy making was always limited to finding the box, leaving it on the table, then disappearing.

Stevie heard his stomach grumble and he realised he was hungry. Pushing aside his troubles, he got stiffly to his feet and opened the oven door. Inside he could see a crisp golden crust, from which was coming a rich, savoury aroma. He smiled wryly wondering why it had only just occurred to him how good it was to be back home.

Chris stopped drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and started tapping his feet instead. Suddenly he thrust back against the seat, dropping his eyes to study his fists clenched on his thighs. Abruptly he hauled open the van door and jumped out. Having carefully locked the vehicle he strode away. He swung about, came back to test the door. It didn’t budge. He rubbed a hand across his mouth as he quickly turned to enter an un-gated garden path. He rapped on the door, then clasped his hands behind his back. There was no answer but a middle-aged woman two doors along, sweeping up fallen autumn leaves, straightened wearily from her task and stared at him.

‘D’you want me?’

‘Er … no … I’m after Mrs Riley.’

‘That’s me …’ She smiled at Chris. ‘You’ve come about the gate, have you? I saw you sitting in your van and wondered if you were the builder I called yesterday. Managed to get here sooner than you thought, did you?’

Chris licked his lips; his voice seemed trapped deep in his throat. Carefully he planted a hand on her red-tiled windowsill to steady himself as he felt his head swim. From his father’s, and Matilda’s, descriptions of Pam Plummer’s looks and character he’d built up an image of his mother now being a blowsy old bottle blonde, about Shirley’s age, and with a similar tendency to appear as mutton dressed as lamb. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The woman getting slowly to her feet was thin and dowdily dressed in a shapeless cardigan and pleated skirt, her lank, greying hair scraped back into hairgrips fastened either side of her head.

‘Oh … you’re wondering what I’m doing over here.’ The woman was now brushing together her palms to get dirt off them. ‘It’s Mrs Lockley’s garden, not mine. She’s almost eighty and widowed, you see, and isn’t up to a job like this.’ She came out onto the pavement, latching her neighbour’s gate behind her. ‘She had a bit of a tumble on wet leaves last year. Done her hip in, poor old girl.’ She was rolling down her cardigan sleeves as she approached. ‘Don’t mind helping out ’cos we’re all gonna be old someday. ’Course you’ve got a way to go, by the looks of it, but it’s catching up on me, I can tell you …’ She halted by the opening to her property, grimacing at the space where a gate should be. ‘So, how much d’you reckon? Doesn’t need to be fancy; a plain wooden one with fastenings will do, and I’ll paint it myself.’

‘I’m not here about the gate.’ Christopher barely recognised his own voice and his knuckles showed white against the red tiles.

‘Oh? Who are you then?’ She looked him up and down. She’d wondered why a builder would turn up in his best clothes to price a job, unless he was going straight out on the razzle, of course. It was only mid-afternoon but he looked the sort of handsome young man who would have a full social life.

‘Christopher …’ Chris ejected his name hoarsely. ‘I’m Christopher Wild …’

She was still smiling faintly at him, but when her features froze in shock, and she sagged at the knees, he simply watched his mother crumple to the ground. Jerking into action Chris rushed forward with his arms outstretched to help her up. She flapped both hands at him, her eyes screwing shut as though he were an abomination she couldn’t bear to gaze upon.

‘Go away,’ she gritted through her teeth and lowered her head so her chin rested on her chest.

‘I just came here … wanted to say hello … see you … that’s all,’ Chris stuttered quietly. ‘Please let me help you up …’

‘Go away … go away and never come back!’ his mother hissed into her muffling cardigan.

‘I just … I’m sorry … I just wanted to say …’

‘Go away!’ she screamed, her small hands balling into quivering fists.

Chris stumbled past her cowering figure and hovered on the pavement for a moment, staring at her. He strode to the van, then returned, his hands alternately plunging into his pockets and ripping free again. ‘I’m sorry. Let me help you up …’ His voice was raw with pleading. He glanced to his right and saw that a neighbour was peering out of a window. A moment later the woman was opening her front door and staring open-mouthed at the scene.

‘You alright, Pam?’ the woman called urgently. ‘You got trouble with him? Do you want me to call the police?’ Gladys Rathbone came further down her path but halted behind the protection of her gate. ‘What’s happened to her?’ she demanded of Christopher. ‘What in God’s name have you done to her? I’ll get the police on you.’

Pamela Riley slowly hauled herself to her feet, using the privet hedge as support. ‘It’s nothing,’ she told her neighbour. She tottered quickly towards her front door, searching in a pocket. ‘My fault … Just had a trip, that’s all. It’s nothing.’ Her voice was so low it was virtually inaudible yet it held an unmistakable demand for privacy. A moment later she’d found her key and thrust it into the lock. She barely opened the door but managed to squeeze herself through a tiny aperture, before closing it.

As soon as Christopher found an area that seemed deserted he pulled up and jumped out of the van. He prowled to and fro on weed-strewn concrete outside an ugly brick building that resembled a warehouse. As though comforting himself had just occurred to him he jammed a shaking hand in a pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. He smoked one while pacing then lit another from its butt before halting and remaining motionless till the cigarette clamped between his lips had had the life sucked out of it, and the stub had been shredded beneath his foot. Like a drunk, he weaved a path to the brick wall of the building, turning his back to it for support. Squeezing shut his burning eyes he sank to his haunches then gripped his scalp with both hands as the first sob tore out of him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘Supper’s ready …’

Grace had known it was suppertime even before she heard her mother calling up the stairs to her. The warm aroma of toast had wafted into her bedroom while she sat, dressed in her pyjamas, legs curled under her on the eiderdown.

It had been a Coleman family ritual, for as long as she could remember, to have a light supper of toast and jam, or toast and dripping, with a hot drink of Ovaltine, just before turning in. As children, she and her brother would draw out their suppers for as long as possible to delay bedtime. Grace didn’t really fancy anything else to eat today; however she’d go down and eat a few mouthfuls so her mother would have no reason to again remark that she wasn’t herself since breaking up with Chris Wild. The comment was always followed by a heavy hint that it was time she stopped moping over him, because he wasn’t worth it, and started going out with friends to find herself a nice fellow this time.

The faded photograph on the coverlet drew Grace’s eyes and she picked it up, placing it back in the shoebox with the other little treasures that Chris had given her when they’d been a couple. There were blackened copper coins, and a tin soldier that he had said had probably been pilfered from the factory in Thane Villas. It might even have come via his father’s cousin: Alice had worked there before the First World War when just a girl, straight out of school. There was also a brass belt buckle that Chris had said he believed once belonged to his grandfather. It had been found in a house where Stevie and Rob had lived with their parents for many years. His father had found the buckle and, having stared silently at it for several seconds, had flung it away as far as he could. He’d told Chris afterwards he recalled being thrashed with such force by his rotten father, Jimmy, that a buckle had come loose from his leather belt, and he’d got another swipe because of it.

Even before Chris had told her a bit about his wicked grandfather, her mother had related a few tales about the notorious Jimmy Wild, with pointed references to how bad blood in families passed down the generations. Apparently, Jimmy had been a pimp and a criminal in his time, but what sickened Grace was the knowledge that he’d regularly beaten his wife and children.

As soon as Chris had mentioned to Grace he and his workmates were unearthing odds and ends in the Whadcoat Street houses she had expressed an enthusiastic interest in seeing them. The first item he’d brought her had been a battered old cocoa tin, rusted firmly shut, but containing something – probably coins – that clattered when it was shaken. When Chris had made to force it open, Grace had stopped him for some reason, wanting the treasure to remain safely sealed within.

The tin had been discovered behind loose bricks in a wall. Chris had explained a likely reason it had been put there: when his father was a kid growing up in Campbell Road, his mother, in common with most women, would use hidey holes to conceal money from husbands who drank or gambled. He’d gone on to tell her his dastardly grandfather would loot any small savings his grandmother, Fran, would stash away to buy Christmas treats for Stevie and Rob, as children.

The photo had been found wedged down the back of a drawer in a built-in cupboard, and was badly fissured, but the face of the handsome youth, taken when he was many years younger than she was, Grace guessed, was still brightly smiling. He was dressed in First World War army uniform. Chris had told her that his dad had studied the photo, but hadn’t recognised the young private as a neighbour from his days living in The Bunk. But then Stevie had been only seven years old when the Great War started, and the fellow might have perished on the Somme, and never made it back home to Campbell Road.

The last item he’d fetched her, before they’d split up, had been a tattered letter that had brought Grace to tears. A woman called Violet Brewer, living in Lancashire, had sent it in January 1901. In a spidery, uneducated hand the poor wretch had begged her husband, Alfred, to come home, or get some money to her somehow, so she could feed their remaining five children, the baby having recently died of a fever.

Grace touched the stained and crumpled envelope, but didn’t take out the note to reread it. She felt guilty for having pried at all into Violet’s misery. But she wondered, as she always did, whether Alfred had returned to help. Chris had read the letter too, and had said, in his blunt way, he doubted the poor sod would have had any help to give if he’d ended up in one of The Bunk’s notorious doss houses …

‘This is going cold, Grace, and I’m not making more, ’cos there’ll be no bread left for breakfast.’

‘I’m coming down now,’ Grace called in response to her mother’s tetchy complaint. She put the lid on the shoebox and returned it to its place in the wardrobe.

‘Who on earth’s come calling at this time of the evening?’ Shirley dropped her jammy toast to her plate and, sucking her sticky fingers, exchanged a look with Grace. The knock on the door had startled them both while they’d been sitting at the kitchen table, enveloped in a comfortable quiet.

Shirley hurried into the hallway and disappeared into the front room. Having twitched aside a curtain to spy outside she whipped back to hiss, ‘It’s Christopher. Did you know he was coming round?’ There was a hint of blame in her voice.

Grace shot to her feet. ‘Of course not!’ She glanced in dismay at her pyjamas.

‘I’ll tell him you’re already in bed,’ Shirley whispered crossly.

Grace suddenly realised that he’d knocked some minutes ago, and hadn’t done so again. As nobody had answered, he might have gone away, thinking they’d already retired for the night … or were intentionally ignoring him. She dodged past her mother and quickly yanked open the door, hoping he hadn’t disappeared, and gazed straight up into his dark features.

‘For Heaven’s sake, Grace, act with a bit of decorum,’ Shirley muttered angrily at her from behind.

Grace kept her pyjama-clad figure concealed behind the door as she stared wide-eyed at him.

‘Can you come out?’ It was a husky plea.

‘Well … it’s a bit late … and I’m not dressed …’

His eyes dropped to her lightly shivering figure.

‘I’ll wait in the van. Can you get dressed and come out? I need to talk to you.’

‘This is a fine time to come calling, I must say,’ Shirley directed at him while trying to peer past her daughter. ‘No manners,’ she sighed out heavily.

‘Shut up, Mum,’ Grace sent over a shoulder. ‘I’m just off out for a while.’

‘What?’ Shirley barked. ‘You’ll do no such thing, miss. It’s gone ten o’clock …’

‘I’m twenty-three!’ Grace snapped in a suffocated voice. ‘If I want to go out for half an hour on a Sunday night, I will.’

‘I’ve said before, you weren’t this damned rude to me before you started knocking around with …’ Her voice tailed off but both her daughter and her unwanted visitor understood what else she’d been about to say.

‘Wait for me?’ Grace murmured, with a pleading look, and received a nod from Chris in response.

He retreated backwards along the path, muttered, ‘Thanks,’ before swinging away and closing the gate.

‘You in trouble indoors ’cos of me?’ Chris asked Grace when she was seated beside him.

She slanted a look at him and gave a rueful smile. ‘Oh, yeah … but don’t worry, I’ve had enough of her ordering me about and thinking I’m still a kid …’ She glanced away, feeling bashful. Her mother wasn’t the only one who thought her childish: the last time she’d been out with Chris before they broke up he’d implied the same thing … but not for any reason her mother would approve of.

‘Can’t blame her,’ Chris said quietly. ‘Girl like you’s worth protecting from blokes like me, and she knows it.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I was gonna pop by earlier and ask if it’d be alright to come back this evening.’

‘But?’

‘Thought you might say don’t bother … Would you’ve done?’

‘No …’

He put the van in gear and set off with a jerk. After taking a few back turnings he pulled up and opened the window. A moment later he got out his cigarettes and, having lit one, he turned to look at her. ‘Thought you might like to know I’ve been to see me mum. Last week I went to Bexleyheath and she was still living at the address you gave me.’

Grace stared through the dusk at him with large, luminous eyes, not daring to ask. ‘I’m glad,’ she breathed. ‘That’s good …’

‘Is it?’ he countered. ‘Aren’t you gonna ask how it went … this long-awaited reunion?’

Grace swallowed the aching lump in her throat. She didn’t need to ask; she could tell from his tone of voice, from his savagely sardonic expression, that he very much regretted having done what she’d pushed him into doing.

‘Are you blaming me?’ she asked. ‘If you are, I’ll apologise. It wasn’t ever my business, and I know I was wrong to interfere in the first place …’

‘No, you were right,’ he interrupted, dragging on the cigarette and exhaling a stream of smoke out of the window. ‘You’re always right, Grace. It’s done, it’s over and now I can forget about her.’

‘Have you told your dad or Matilda that you went to see her?’

‘No … no point … there’s nothing to say apart from she told me to piss off. Well, not exactly in those words; I suppose she was as polite as she could be, considering I nearly gave her a heart attack. So, it’s done, and now I’m gonna forget all about her.’

‘Are you sure you can do that? You sound too wounded to forget her,’ Grace reasoned gently.

‘I’m not wounded,’ he returned immediately, pitching the smoked butt out of the window and pulling the pack of Weights out of his pocket again.

‘Is she a horrible woman, like your dad said?’ Grace burst out, suddenly fired with an urgent need to know how hurt he’d been. She felt furious with Pamela Riley for rejecting him and was tempted to go to Bexleyheath herself and give his mother a piece of her mind.

‘No … she was nice … nothing like what I was expecting from me dad’s description of her,’ Chris admitted with a faraway look. ‘When I got there she was in a neighbour’s front garden, down on her hands and knees, clearing the wet leaves off this old dear’s path so she didn’t slip over.’ He paused, tapping the packet of Weights on the steering wheel. ‘So … if she was a lazy, good-fer-nuthin’ slut at some time, she ain’t any more. She’d been watching me sitting in the van, while I was plucking up the courage to get out and knock on her door. She thought I was the builder she’d rung up about fixing her a new gate.’ He gazed through the windscreen into the darkness. ‘Once I’d gone up her path she came over, smiling and chatting. I liked her straight away. I think she liked me too … till I told her who I was.’ He tipped his head back and chuckled bitterly at the memory of it. ‘Nearly got meself arrested over it.’ He glanced at Grace’s solemn face. ‘As soon as she realised why I’d come, she collapsed. One of her neighbours saw her on the ground and rushed out threatening to get the police on me. Must’ve thought I’d whacked her.’

‘What happened?’ Grace gasped through her fingers. Her heart was pounding beneath her ribs at the idea that she might have caused him to be in such serious trouble. ‘Did your mum say you’d assaulted her?’

‘No … she told her neighbour she’d tripped over, but I can’t deny it was my fault that she ended up on the deck. I thought for a minute she was seriously ill. She wouldn’t let me help her up, though; she just got on her feet and went inside, and that was that.’

Grace gave an audible sigh of relief, instinctively reaching out a hand to comfort him. He watched her fingers hover before just brushing his sleeve and withdrawing.

‘It’s alright, you don’t need to worry I’m feeling vindictive. I’ve said I don’t blame you. I’m not even going to say I told you so …’ He held out his hand, inviting her to touch him again.

His reassurance seemed hollow, spoken in such a stinging tone and, for the first time, a little frisson of fear tightened Grace’s gut. Even when he’d had her pinned against the wall in an alley, she’d trusted him not to harm her. But this wasn’t about a tiff, and a girl telling a boy she wanted a break from seeing him; it was about a lifetime of wishing and dreaming crumbling in an instant, and she knew if she were in his shoes she’d be inconsolable.

‘Why didn’t you come and tell me straight away you’d gone there?’ she asked huskily.

‘Weren’t up to it,’ he admitted brusquely. ‘It knocked me for six for a while. Dunno why, ’cos I was sure I’d cope alright with being told to get lost.’ He turned his head, protecting a glitter in his eyes. ‘Me dad knows something’s up with me … reckon he thinks it’s what’s gone on between us, so I’ve let him believe what he likes.’

He’d been licking his wounds for a whole week, Grace realised, before feeling composed enough to come and tell her that, against his better judgement, he’d done what she’d said, and had his courage rewarded in the way he’d said.

She knew there was nothing she could say to ease his pain, but there was something she could do, and she wasn’t sure whether that was what he was expecting and was the reason he’d brought her here: so she could make up for hurting him, his way. Worse, she was wondering if it was the least she owed him …

Although she’d honestly wanted things to turn out well between Chris and his mother there had been a selfish reason too that she’d been unwilling to examine till now.

Naively, she’d believed that once a reunion had taken place, Chris wouldn’t be so obsessed with Pamela. Grace had had her fill, when engaged to Hugh Wilkins, of competing with an older woman for her boyfriend’s attention. But instead of removing a rival, and helping Chris to feel more relaxed about his relationship with his mother, all she’d done was given him more reason to brood about her.

‘I’m sorry …’ she whispered, unable to express her guilt and remorse more fully.

‘Me too …’ He withdrew his hand. ‘So where does that leave us?’

Grace swallowed. ‘I don’t know …’ she croaked. ‘Perhaps if you try again in a week or two to see her, she might then understand …’

‘Fuck’s sake … !’

The curse exploded beneath his breath but she’d heard it and the violence in his voice made her flinch and swivel away from him.

‘I’ll come with you, if you want. You don’t have to go there alone next time. I promised I would go with you, and it’s the least I can do.’

‘I’m not going there again, with or without you.’ It was a quiet, calm statement.

‘Was her husband at home … or any children?’

‘Don’t know … never saw anybody else … they might’ve been out, I suppose.’

‘I should be getting back …’ Grace murmured.

He lit another cigarette, settled back against the seat. ‘Have you missed me?’

‘Yes …’

He turned towards her. ‘Good, ’cos I’ve missed you.’ He stretched out a hand and stroked the side of her face, trailed his fingers to caress softly beneath the hair at her nape until her eyelids drooped. ‘Goodnight kiss?’ he asked in a throaty murmur that mingled a challenge with wry pessimism.

She gazed at him with such wariness that he started laughing. A moment later he was leaning forward to turn the ignition. ‘I might be pissed off, and sex-starved, Grace, but I haven’t turned into a rapist.’

As he flicked the half-smoked cigarette out of the window, and reached for the handbrake, Grace spontaneously slid close to him, hugging him tightly about the waist and burrowing her face in his chest. ‘I know … I know you wouldn’t … it’s just I can see how sad you are and I don’t know what to do to make it right …’ Her muffled words petered out. She knew she’d said the wrong thing. But he didn’t laugh, or make any lewd suggestions. He put an arm about her, then the other, so she was squeezed hard against him and his warm breath stirred her hair.

‘It was brave of you to go there,’ Grace said after a few quiet minutes, when their hungry embrace had loosened a bit and the atmosphere between them was peaceful. ‘If your mum can’t be brave too, and meet you halfway, it’s her loss. Perhaps, once she’s got over the shock of seeing you for the first time …’ cos it is for the first time, really.’ She ran a hand up and down on his sleeve, searching for the right words. ‘Last time she saw you, you were just a babe in arms, weren’t you? Now you’re a man, and perhaps you don’t look anything like she imagined you would. But she might feel differently when she’s had a chance to calm down.’

‘You think so?’ He sounded cynical, yet also strangely open to persuasion.

Grace nodded vigorously and edged away from him so she could gaze earnestly into his eyes. ‘She must be a kind soul if she helps out her elderly neighbours.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘People who are kind sometimes never get thanks, or favours done back. My nan’s a bit like that,’ Grace said. ‘She’s sprightly for her age, and does a bit of shopping for a couple of her neighbours who hobble about, yet the old miseries moan if she’s gone in the wrong shop and spent a penny too much on their butter.’

‘You coming out with me at the weekend?’

Grace nodded and smiled. ‘It’ll have to be Sunday though ’cos I promised my nan I’d go to Wood Green shopping with her on Saturday, then back to hers for tea.’ She suddenly sat up. ‘Would you like to come to my nan’s for tea?’ She read his dubious expression. ‘Oh, you needn’t worry about my mum, she won’t be there, thank goodness. One of her friends is a hairdresser and she’s going to give Mum’s hair a permanent wave.’

‘Right, in that case, I’d like to meet your nan,’ Chris said. ‘’S’long as she don’t mind sharing her Victoria sponge with me.’

‘How d’you know we have Victoria sponge?’

‘Everybody has Victoria sponge according to me dad, now he’s an expert on teatime favourites. Oh, by the way, he’s opening a caff.’ He chuckled on seeing Grace’s comically sceptical expression. ‘It’s true … you can ask him …’ With that he caught her to him for a kiss of tender passion before steering away from the kerb.

‘I once met your grandfather, you know.’

Chris put down his teacup and gazed at the small, elderly lady seated across the table from him. ‘You knew the Plummers?’ he asked hoarsely, darting a look at Grace.

They were seated at Nan Jackson’s square dining table with an ample tea of sandwiches and dainty cakes spread out before them on a crisp linen cloth.

‘No, not your Plummer grandfather,’ Nan Jackson clarified with a smile. ‘I have to say I never knew them at all. But I once got introduced to Jimmy Wild in a pub. Me and your granddad Bert.’ Nan Jackson looked at Grace who was interestedly listening to this anecdote. ‘Well, we’d gone to Islington to see some people, you see. Bert had a job in a factory before he went off to fight in the Great War and he used to work with a fellow by the name of Lenny … can’t remember his surname …’ Nan Jackson’s lined face puckered further and she gave an impatient little tap on the table. ‘Ooh, what was it? Anyway, Lenny and his girlfriend were having a bit of a party in a pub in Holloway Road ’cos they’d got engaged. Nag’s Head, it was,’ she blurted with a pleased smile on remembering the pub’s name. ‘Lenny was quite pally with Jimmy Wild ’cos he and his girlfriend lived close to The Bunk. I expect you knew your grandparents used to live in Campbell Road, didn’t you, Christopher?’

‘I did,’ Chris confirmed. He was eager to hear more about his notorious grandfather, and have an outsider’s opinion on him. Everybody in the family had seemed to loathe Jimmy Wild because of his wicked ways. ‘I know he was unpopular. What did you think of him?’

‘Well, he was a handsome devil, I’ll give him that,’ Nan Jackson said with a chuckle. ‘I assumed he was with his wife, your grandma, that night but apparently the pretty blonde woman with him was his fancy piece. Everybody in the Nag’s Head was going on about how brazen they were, carrying on like that.’

‘I’ve heard some tales about him.’ Chris gave Grace’s grandmother a rueful smile. ‘I feel sorry for me poor old Nan Fran and what she must’ve had to put up with.’

‘He tried to murder Matilda in the 1920s, you know,’ Grace piped up, eyes widening. ‘You told me about it, didn’t you, Chris.’

‘I’d heard a rumour about that … dreadful thing to do, wasn’t it?’ Nan Jackson said but her lips twitched in scandalised humour. ‘I’ve heard about Matilda Keiver too and I reckon it’d take a better man than Jimmy Wild to see her off.’

Chris nodded, his expression making words unnecessary. He helped himself to a piece of sponge oozing butter cream.

‘ ’Course Jimmy was young when I met him. You could tell just from looking at him that he was a rogue alright: all swagger and brash as they come. He’d flirt with any woman who was walking past him. I remember his fancy piece … Nellie was her name … giving him such a look for trying to chat up the barmaid right in front of her eyes.’ Nan Jackson stretched out a withered hand and pushed the plate of cakes towards Chris. ‘Now come on, take another one, I’ve not baked this lot to see them go to waste. Eat up, both of you.’

‘Mum thinks the Wilds are a rough lot, but I reckon you needed to be to survive in a place like The Bunk.’ Grace gave Chris a smile. She was pleased he didn’t seem embarrassed at all by this conversation about his evil grandfather, and that he and her nan had seemed to take to one another straight away.

‘Good and bad in all families,’ Nan Jackson said succinctly. ‘And I speak as I find. I can tell from meeting you, Christopher, that you’re a good ’un.’ She gave her granddaughter a wink and poured herself a fresh cup of tea.

‘Well, on a lighter note we’re after some chairs to borrow for the Coronation Day party we’re having in The Bunk.’ Grace chose a cake and put it on her plate. ‘Chris’s dad is opening a caff so we’ll be able to borrow some from him because, of course, he’ll be shutting up shop on the big day. But we still don’t reckon we’ll have enough, do we?’ She glanced at Chris for a nod of agreement. ‘Do you know if your community centre up the road might have some going spare in June next year?’

‘I could ask the committee, if you like,’ Nan Jackson said. ‘You don’t want to take ’em just yet, do you?’

‘Oh no, nowhere to store them, but we’re trying to get everything organised so it all goes off with a bang.’ She turned to Chris. ‘We want it to be a great do, don’t we. Matilda has already got a few cases of drink stashed away in her room, and a whole list of people she wants to track down and invite.’

‘Surprised she ain’t drunk the Irish whiskey,’ Chris chipped in drolly. ‘I’ve heard a few tales about her ’n’ all and how she liked a tipple or two in her time.’

‘Living in The Bunk, I reckon she probably needed it,’ Nan Jackson said, rolling her eyes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘I’ve seen you before. You were here a while ago, weren’t you?’

‘Yeah … is Mrs Riley about, d’you know? I’ve come to do her job.’

Chris already knew she wasn’t: for a week he’d secretly investigated his mother’s routine to find out if there were days and times when she was regularly away from home. To do so he’d had to take time off work, and he knew his three workmates were getting narked that he kept disappearing. But he didn’t care. He wasn’t even bothered that they’d fallen behind schedule again in Whadcoat Street, and he had nobody to blame for it but himself. He’d had set in his mind for a long time what he wanted to do, and today he was fired up to go ahead and do it.

Every time he’d passed his mother’s house, on a recce, he’d been relieved to see the gate was still missing. He knew any direct offer of help from him would be rejected. Just a glimpse of him might again make her frightened and unwell, and he couldn’t bear the thought of that, so he’d made sure to keep out of sight.

Earlier that morning, he’d seen Pamela walking towards the bus stop on the corner of her road. He’d known she’d be away from home for some hours, working as a waitress, because he’d previously checked where she went when she set off in the mornings. On one occasion he’d followed the bus and had noticed her go inside a place called the Greengage Café. A short while later he’d spied her, dressed in white pinafore and cap, serving behind the counter. It had looked the sort of cheap and cheerful place that he and the lads might use during their dinner break to stodge up on pie ’n’ mash before going back to work. He knew too that Pamela didn’t leave work till after three in the afternoon, and that she seemed to live alone. He’d kept an eye out for her husband, or any other family members who might be living at the address. He’d even knocked once, after she’d set off for work, just in case somebody might be in there. He’d thought it best to find out rather than be spotted hanging about. But there had been no response, and no neighbours had appeared to give him the third degree.

Today he hadn’t been so lucky.

After Pamela had got on the bus that morning to go to work he’d pulled off from where he’d parked out of sight, behind a larger vehicle, to halt outside her house.

Unfortunately, just as he’d got out of his van, the neighbour who’d threatened him with the police on the day he’d come to introduce himself to his mother had been on her way out, swinging a shopping bag.

Chris cursed his bad luck but managed a vague smile in response to the woman’s barked greeting.

‘So you’re here to do the gate, are you?’ Mrs Rathbone plonked her hands on her hips and cocked her head, eyeing him suspiciously.

Chris nodded and looked busy, shuffling paperwork on his bonnet.

‘You must have given her a better price than the other fellow. Disgrace, he was! He wanted a fortune for a little job like that! Mrs Riley only wanted the gate put back to stop the litter blowing up the path. She told me she wasn’t going to bother having it done after all … she must’ve changed her mind.’

‘I charge reasonable rates,’ Chris muttered, and turned his back on her hoping she’d quickly get going.

‘She’s not in, anyhow, because she works Tuesdays in a caff and won’t be back till this afternoon.’

‘Yeah, well, don’t matter. Can do the job if she’s in or out.’ Chris strode to the back of his vehicle and started rummaging in it for tools, wishing she’d just piss off so he could get started.

‘Shame they never kept the gate that was on there,’ Gladys Rathbone remarked, following him to peer inquisitively into the van. ‘Nothing wrong with it, but they got rid of it, you see. You could just have fixed that back on for her, and she’d have saved herself a tidy amount.’

‘Yeah? What happened to it, then?’ Chris slanted a glance at her.

‘Gave it to the scrap man after it got taken off because of the wheelchair. Even then it was still a scrape for him getting through the opening.’ She nodded at the privet hedge. ‘So she had to cut that back quite a bit with the shears, but it’s grown over nicely now.’

Chris straightened, turned slightly towards her, frowning enquiringly, but wary of seeming to be prying.

‘Mrs Riley’s husband lost a leg in the war. He was in a wheelchair from about …’ she looked heavenwards, calculating the years. ‘Say … 1942 it must’ve been when he got invalided home. Died two years later, poor soul … infection. Only got married, the two of them, shortly before he joined up, so she ended up his nurse more than his wife … no children …’ Drawing herself to attention, the woman shot him a look, realising she’d spoken very much out of turn. Briskly she buttoned her coat. ‘Well, I’ve got to be off.’ She checked inside her shopping bag before marching off up the street.

As soon as she’d gone Chris measured the opening, praying that it would be the right size, or near enough, so he could plane the gate to suit. He’d chosen it with care, driving the merchants mad by making them bring out practically every timber variety they had stocked in the warehouse till he saw one that seemed right. But, as he strode to and fro on the pavement, he was glad to see his one matched well with those hanging on the gateposts of the neighbouring houses.

He quickly went to the back of the van and lifted out the gate then a moment later returned for his tools.

‘Bleedin’ hell, decided to turn up, have you?’ Vic’s expression was as sour as his speech. ‘I’ve been coverin’ fer you, y’know. We was goin’ like the clappers till you started doin’ a disappearing act fer days on end. So don’t blame us now we’re behind again. Where’ve you been slopin’ off to this past week?’

‘Mind yer own business, and stop nagging,’ Chris replied mildly. ‘I’m here now, ain’t I?’

Vic went off muttering beneath his breath.

‘Where’s he been hiding this time?’ Billy mouthed, jerking his head Chris’s way.

‘Gawd knows …’ Vic grunted and, raising his hammer, brought it down with a crash on a doorframe.

‘Bird trouble, bet yer life,’ Billy said with a cautious peer towards the door to make sure Chris was out of earshot. ‘He ain’t been the same since he started seeing Grace Coleman. Don’t go out nowhere, ’less it’s with her.’ He pressed down a thumb onto his open palm. ‘That’s where she’s got him … right under …’

‘She is a good-looking sort. I know I would …’ Ted made a lewd gesture with his fist.

‘I don’t reckon even he’s managed to get a leg over with that one … she’s a right tight knickers, if you ask me,’ Billy replied with a smirk. ‘Anyhow, saw Sharon Webb down Tottenham Royal on Saturday and she was asking after Chris.’

The mention of Sharon brought his mates’ eyes swivelling his way. She’d always been a favourite with the boys since she had a voluptuous look of Diana Dors about her.

‘Chris could be in there again like a shot if he wanted. Dunno whether to tell him about Sharon asking after ’im being as him and Grace seem to be back on …’

‘He was always a lucky bleeder like that; surprised he puts up with being henpecked.’ Vic started stamping his boot against the frame until it splintered and came out in a cloud of dust.

His remark had given Billy and Ted an opportunity to exchange a gleeful look. ‘Yeah …’ cos you make sure you let Deirdre know who wears the trousers in your house, don’t yer, Vic?’ Billy mocked.

‘Yeah … and you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face once you ’n’ Bet get married, mate. Ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, having a missus ’n’ kids.’

‘Deirdre ain’t dropped her nipper yet, what you moanin’ about?’

‘Me brother’s got two under five and I’ve seen what goes on, don’t worry about that,’ Vic returned dolefully.

‘When’s it due?’

‘Five months to go …’

‘Five months? Got ages then to learn how to change dirty nappies.’ Ted started chuckling.

‘You lot are worse’n a bunch of old women, y’know that.’ Chris had come in and dumped down a ten-pound hammer. ‘Get that wall down, Ted, and the rest of you …’

‘Whoa … whoa … hang on …’ Billy made a meal of finding his watch up his sleeve then stared at it. ‘It’s just a couple of minutes to dinnertime. We’ve been here since quarter to eight, and I’m bleedin’ starving, so I’m off to the caff.’

‘I’ll come ’n’ all. Deirdre ain’t done me no sandwiches today.’

‘That’s a result then, Vic,’ Ted said drolly and downed tools. He turned to Chris. ‘Here … some old tramp’s been kipping upstairs again.’

Chris glanced around as he picked up the ten-pound hammer, propped against the wall. ‘How d’you know that?’

‘Couple of old blankets and a few empty bottles are up there. Must be bleedin’ desperate to use this place to doss in.’

As Vic started shrugging into his jacket he muttered, ‘No harm in it, surely, if someone is making use of some o’ the houses.’

‘Just half an hour …’ Chris yelled after them as they all trooped out.

But he was smiling as he took a swing at the wall. He hoped his mum was pleased with her new gate, but if she wasn’t, and had it taken off so she could burn it because it came from him, he knew he’d still be glad he’d done it. He doubted she’d contact him, either to thank him, or to have a go about him trespassing and interfering. But he’d thought of a way to do her a favour, and perhaps let her know, despite everything that had gone on between her and his dad, he was his own person, and he only wished her well.

From what her neighbour had said about her losing her husband, it seemed she’d had an unhappy, unlucky life. Chris felt annoyed with his father for having called her names when he knew nothing about her now. Stevie didn’t appreciate how fortunate he was. He had Pearl, and a brother who was supporting him in opening up a new business, and a son who took him down the Arsenal and cared about him – even when he was acting like a silly old sod. What did his mother have? A job in a greasy-spoon caff, and an empty house to go home to.

Whatever Pamela Plummer might have done in the past, Chris doubted it had been so bad that she’d deserved to suffer so much since. If his father discovered how it’d turned out for her, he’d probably mutter about what goes round comes round, and think she’d got her just desserts.

Chris knew he wasn’t yet completely content; he’d found out that his mother was alive, and he knew he’d like very much to see her again. Perhaps, through her, he’d find out a bit about his Plummer grandparents. If they were dead too, she might have no family at all … except him. Next time he went that way, and he knew he would, if the gate was still standing, it’d be a good sign, and he’d take a chance and knock on her door …

Chris heard his stomach grumble and realised he was hungry. He strolled out to the van and rummaged for the big pack of sandwiches and the flask of tea his dad had done him that morning. He went back inside, sat down with his back to what was left of the wall, and started eating. It was a moment before he sensed he wasn’t alone. He turned his head to see little Kathleen Murphy staring at him … or rather at his cheese and pickle sandwich.

Chris smiled at her, thinking she was a sweet little thing, but wondering what on earth she was doing here. She was shoeless and coatless on a late November day and he realised she was lucky not to have hurt herself climbing over the rubble in the hallway. He pushed himself upright.

‘Hello … where’s your mum?’

The girl pointed outside and then at his sandwich.

‘Your name’s Kathleen, isn’t it?’

‘Kathleen Murphy,’ she said in a lilting accent.

She pointed again at his sandwich but Chris could tell she was either too polite or shy to ask outright for it.

He rummaged in his lunch box and got out a fresh one and offered it. ‘Take you home now,’ he said.

She moved towards him for the food, wincing as her tiny feet stepped on grit.

Swinging her up in his arms he said, ‘Now, Kathleen, I think we should find your mum.’ He felt her cold little body beneath his palms and automatically rubbed at her legs to warm them.

Kathleen grabbed at the sandwich and immediately took a bite out of it.

‘Hello … Mrs Murphy … you in?’ Chris had stopped at the bottom of some stairs in a musty hallway to yell out.

A moment later he heard the sound of a baby’s cries followed by its hacking cough. He started up the stairs, carrying Kathleen.

Before he reached the top a woman appeared, looking harassed. She halted, gawping at him and turning pale. Chris could tell she’d no idea her daughter had gone missing.

‘Kathleen … ?’ Noreen gasped. ‘What … where has she been … ?’

‘She came down the road and into the house we’re working on,’ Chris explained. ‘No harm done,’ he reassured her when a look of mingling shame and embarrassment transformed Noreen Murphy’s shocked expression.

‘Sorry about that … I thought she was playing out here on the landing … that’s where she was …’ She indicated a doll discarded on dirty bare boards.

‘No harm done,’ Chris repeated and set the girl down next to her mother. ‘She seems a bit cold … and hungry.’

Again the woman’s face flushed guiltily and she lowered her eyes. ‘I was just going to do us a bite to eat.’ Noreen knew that for a lie. She’d been waiting for her husband to come home with some groceries, but if Kieran hadn’t managed to find Declan O’Connor, and get his wages from the tight-fist, he’d be back with nothing for them to eat.

‘What’s going on?’ Kieran Murphy’s voice sounded soft and suspicious as he started up the stairs towards them.

Chris could tell straight away that Mrs Murphy didn’t want her husband to find out one of their children had been neglected, and could have got hurt. But he didn’t see any way to avoid telling the truth. The last thing he wanted was Kieran jumping to the conclusion that he was making a play for his missus while he was out looking for work. And Noreen was a good-looking young woman despite her dishevelled appearance.

‘Your daughter was just outside, I brought her in,’ Chris said succinctly.

Kieran’s eyes darted to his wife’s face as he took the remnant of sandwich from Kathleen’s fingers, making her whimper and try to snatch it back.

He thrust the food at Chris then the next moment was roughly steering his wife into their room and dragging his daughter behind him by the hand.

Before Chris had reached the bottom of the stairs he could hear a violent argument in progress and two children crying.

‘Done a good job there, hasn’t he?’

Pamela glanced up to see Gladys Rathbone strolling towards her, inspecting her new gate. Unable to speak, she nodded and removed her hand from where it had lain, curved softly about the top rail.

‘Got a few bits ’n’ bobs myself need doing,’ the woman added. ‘If I wait for Charlie to put me up a few more shelves in the pantry, I’ll be waiting for evermore. Perhaps I might give your fellow a call, see if he’ll give me a quote. When I spoke to him earlier, he said he does reasonable rates.’ She slid Pam an enquiring look, hoping to find out what she’d paid for the job. ‘I will say, he’s a very handsome young man …’ She chuckled dirtily and prodded Pam’s arm.

Pamela raised her head at last and her neighbour saw her bloodshot eyes were glistening.

‘Don’t mind me having a joke about your builder,’ the woman apologised with a frown. ‘You’re thinking of your Stan, aren’t you, Pam … ’course you are. I should’ve known that getting a new gate would bring back sad memories for you. I’ll leave you in peace. But come over a bit later, if you feel like it, and we’ll have a cup of tea and a bit of Battenberg before my Charlie gets home.’

Once she was alone, Pamela latched the gate carefully, noting how easily it snapped into place, how well it swung on silent hinges. She turned and went inside to stare at the scrap of paper she’d found on her doormat that afternoon. It now lay on the hall table and, picking it up, she reread for the hundredth time the message neatly written on a page that had been torn from a cheap notebook.

I was going to paint it but don’t know what colour you like. Anyhow you might get wet paint on your clothes. You don’t owe me anything. Christopher.

A sob swelled in her chest and she sank to sit on the low table clutching her son’s note to her heart.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘So it’s all back on with you and him, is it?’

‘I’m going out with Chris again, if that’s what you mean,’ Grace confirmed, continuing to brush her hair. As she pinned a section of sleek blonde hair back with a gilt clip she noticed, at the corner of her eye, her mother still hovering by her bedroom doorway. Grace felt like also saying she was sick of hearing Christopher called him when Shirley knew his name perfectly well. But she bit her lip, waiting for her mother to leave her in peace, so she could finish getting ready to go out. Unfortunately, her mother seemed content to settle back against the doorframe to watch her, so Grace got up from the little dressing-table stool and picked up from the bed the navy-blue wool-crepe dress she’d got out of her wardrobe earlier. She stepped into it then approached her mother and turned her back for her to do her up.

Her mother jerked up the zip then fiddled with the hook and eye at the collar. ‘You need long sleeves on now the weather’s got so cold,’ Shirley lectured, eyeing her daughter’s bare arms. ‘You’ll need a cardigan on over that if you’re not going to catch your death.’

‘I’m getting one out of the drawer in a minute,’ Grace replied, relieved her mother seemed to have turned her attention away from Chris.

‘Your nan tells me that you’ve taken him round there with you a couple of times.’

Grace muttered beneath her breath and bent down to look for her shoes under the bed. ‘Yes, I have. We went for tea and were telling her all about the plans for the Coronation Day party in Whadcoat Street next June. Nan likes Chris; I expect she’s told you that.’ Grace sat down on the edge of the mattress and misted her wrists with perfume, rubbing them together to fire the warm spicy scent.

Shirley hurrumphed. ‘She wouldn’t though, would she, if she knew a bit more about him. You’re lucky I’ve kept her in the dark about what sort of family he comes from or he wouldn’t get past my mother’s doorstep.’

‘You’re wrong about that,’ Grace said calmly. ‘Nan does know his family were once very hard up because I told her. And when we were there she was talking to Chris about his wicked grandfather Jimmy ’cos once she and Granddad met him. We had a laugh about it. Luckily she’s not as prejudiced as you are.’

‘I’m not prejudiced! I just don’t think he’s good enough for you.’

‘Why can’t you just leave him alone!’ Grace swivelled about on the edge of the bed. ‘He’s done nothing to you!’

‘What’s he done to you, eh? That’s what I want to know, my girl.’

‘Oh, here we go again …’ Grace muttered wearily.

‘Yes, miss, here we go again, and with your attitude, and if you’re not careful, I can see you ending up just like your cousin Celia …’

‘Please … not the cousin Celia story,’ Grace sighed. ‘Don’t tell it to me again, Mum. I can recite it off by heart.’

‘Good! ’Cos if that doesn’t put the fear of God into you, I don’t know what will.’

‘Well, it’s certainly put the fear of God into you, Mum!’

‘I don’t deny it!’ Shirley thundered. ‘It’s enough to scare the wits out of any decent mother! Do you think I want a daughter of mine ending up in a sanatorium?’

Grace raised her eyes heavenwards. One of her cousins – on the Coleman side, naturally, her mother ensured she made that clear to anybody she recounted the tale to – had ended up in an unmarried mother’s home after her parents threw her out, and the baby’s father did a runner.

A policeman had got Celia pregnant, then resigned from the force, and joined the navy in the latter half of the war, to escape being tied down. Rumour had it he’d come back as hale and hearty as when he’d left, and had moved up to Cumbria without contacting Celia. But by then, with no family willing to help her, the baby had been forcibly taken from Celia for adoption, and the poor girl had attempted suicide twice.

At regular intervals Shirley would remind her daughter of Celia’s disgrace, stressing the stupid girl had only herself to blame for giving it away to a rotter before she’d got the marriage lines tucked away in a drawer.

‘Where are you off to, then?’

‘Just out …’

‘Where?’

‘For God’s sake, give over! We’re not going to a hotel, and even if we were, it’s none of your business.’ Grace glared at her mother with a mixture of pity and annoyance. ‘Just because you and Dad never had a kind word to say to each other doesn’t mean couples who get along want to be at it like rabbits …’

‘What do you mean never had a kind word to say to each other!’ Shirley interrupted in a bellow. ‘That’s a wicked thing to say! We might not have been lovey dovey, but we had respect for each other. And your father would never have dreamed of taking liberties with me before he’d paid for his fun with a wedding ring.’

Grace sighed. Her mother obviously had on her rose-tinted spectacles. Sadly, she could bring to mind numerous occasions of bawled insults flying between her parents when mutual respect had been nowhere to be seen or heard. But it hadn’t just been a case of Wilf being browbeaten by Shirley’s withering looks and sarcasm. Grace had felt sorry for her mother, too, married, as she was, to a man whose passions in life seemed to be a pint of bitter, a game of darts, and the racing pages in the News of the World.

Obviously, they’d felt close enough, on at least two occasions, to produce her and her brother, Paul. But, Grace couldn’t recall any instances of her parents being openly affectionate. The only time she’d seen them in each other’s arms was when they’d danced a waltz at her brother’s wedding in the back room of the Red Lion pub in Guildford.

‘So let’s have a little less backchat from you, my girl …’ Her mother’s nagging was penetrating Grace’s reflection. A moment later a loud knock on the front door brought Shirley’s lecture to a close, and Grace fully to her senses. But her mother was already heading for the stairs, and was halfway down them before Grace had even collected her handbag.

‘Oh, it’s you, Christopher,’ Shirley said as though his arrival was a surprise. ‘Come in; Grace is still upstairs. You’ve been going out a while now, haven’t you, and Grace has introduced you to some of the family.’ She immediately launched into the speech she’d rehearsed in her mind. ‘Her nan tells me you’ve been round there for tea. Well, I think it’s time for me to say that, as Grace’s dad has passed away, you’re welcome to speak to me about anything … intentions … anything like that …’

‘Mum!’ The single word was heard as a suffocated, silencing groan issuing from the landing.

‘Evenin’, Mrs Coleman,’ Chris responded with studied courtesy. ‘Thanks for that, I’ll bear it all in mind.’ Slowly he lifted his eyes, brimming with sultry amusement, to Grace, hovering at the head of the stairs. She’d swung about on the top tread as though she might disappear, then turned slowly back to give him a frown that was, at one and the same time, ashamed and apologetic.

He shook his head slightly, biting his lip to suppress a smile, hoping he’d indicated he wasn’t at all bothered by Shirley’s pushy behaviour.

With a deep, calming breath Grace descended the stairs, yanked her coat off the peg, and tonelessly said, ‘Bye, Mum.’ She was halfway down the front garden path before she allowed Chris to help her into the garment. Despite it being dark, and a cold and foggy November evening, she’d simply wanted to get out of the house, and away from her mother, as soon as she could.

They had driven for a few minutes in unbroken quiet before Grace burst out, ‘I’m sorry … she’s so embarrassing … I’ve not said anything to her to make her think …’

‘I know,’ Chris said, slanting an amused look at her profile. ‘Since that idiot you were engaged to slunk off, I suppose she thinks all men are the same. She’s just looking out for you, Grace,’ he added reasonably.

‘She’s looking out for herself, more like!’ Grace returned. ‘It’s not just about protecting me, it’s about her not wanting to be shown up or gossiped about, like Celia’s lot.’

‘Who’s Celia?’

‘My cousin.’

‘Got herself in trouble, did she?’

Grace studied her hands while giving Celia some proper thought. ‘It is a very sad tale, actually,’ she admitted. ‘It’s just I’m sick of hearing about it.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘She’s more my brother Paul’s age than mine, so I never really knew her well,’ Grace started. ‘When she was nineteen or twenty she got pregnant by a policeman who wouldn’t stand by her. So, against her will, her baby was taken away for adoption … it sent her mad.’ She glanced at him, wondering if it was the sort of thing he’d shrug off, or perhaps he’d applaud the copper’s deviousness, being as he was, in his own words, a man who liked to push his luck on a Saturday night.

‘What happened to the copper?’

She shrugged. ‘Nothing, as far as I know.’

‘What … he didn’t even get a good kicking?’

‘He joined up to avoid getting married, and when he came back after the war, he went off to Cumbria. Probably he’s Chief Constable by now,’ she finished sourly.

‘Why didn’t Celia’s old man go after him with a shotgun? Cumbria’s not that far …’ One of his hands sliced down on the steering wheel. ‘Straight up the A1 and you could be there by nightfall.’

A slight grimace lifted Grace’s brow. ‘I suppose it was too late; the baby had been adopted by then. Is that what your lot would do … go after him, even if he was a policeman, and give him a good kicking?’

‘Too right, and being as he was a copper, it’d be a pleasure. It’s never too late for revenge, not when it’s something as bad as that.’

‘You’d do that, for your daughter?’ Grace asked.

‘’Course …’ He glanced at her. ‘Your mum thinks you’ll let me get you up the duff and then I’ll disappear.’ He choked a rueful laugh. ‘Seems your mum knows me better than she knows you.’ He frowned. ‘That was a joke, of course …’

‘Don’t worry about her, she’s just an old busybody.’ Grace turned her head to stare out of the side window into the misty darkness. ‘It’s getting very foggy out there …’

‘I had a run-in with one of those today.’

That comment drew an enquiring look from Grace.

‘A busybody,’ he explained. ‘I went over to Bexleyheath again and got chatting to me mum’s neighbour. Same old girl as before.’ He paused, grinning. ‘She didn’t threaten to set the police on me this time.’

‘You’ve been to see your mum again?’ Grace echoed before her delicate features transformed into a wondrous smile.

‘I saw her, but not to speak to. I kept meself hidden in case she caught a glimpse of me and had another turn. I went over there to do her a favour.’ He sounded sweetly diffident. ‘I’d been giving a bit of thought to what you said about people like her not getting anything done for them, even though they help out others. So I fixed her a new gate while she was at work.’

‘What a good idea!’ Grace beamed her approval.

‘Yeah … I thought so too,’ he said, feigning conceit. ‘Just hope she thinks so …’ He slanted Grace an exaggerated grimace. ‘I stuck a note through her letterbox, just telling her she don’t owe me nuthin’; didn’t want her to think I might be sending in me invoice.’

‘I’m sure she’ll know, from a kind gesture like that, you just want to be friends with her.’ Grace endorsed her praise by hugging his arm.

‘I found out she’s had a really hard time of it. This is where the busybody neighbour comes in,’ he clarified. ‘I didn’t ask questions, she just started telling me about why the gate got took off in the first place.’ He whipped a quick look at Grace as he steered around a corner. ‘When me mum’s husband got back from the war he’d lost a leg and needed a wheelchair.’

‘And he couldn’t get in and out of the gate in the wheelchair?’ Grace guessed.

Chris nodded.

‘What a terrible shame for him to be crippled … and for her too, of course …’ Grace murmured.

She’d heard similar tragic stories of war casualties. It wasn’t unusual to see men out and about, trying to cope with life following the loss of limbs, or their sight, in the wake of the Second World War. Grace was often amazed at how jaunty some of them seemed to be as they hobbled along in their neat clothes and polished shoes. She suddenly realised that poor Mr Riley couldn’t be amongst those plucky souls. ‘So, if your mum wanted the gate put back … that means no wheelchair and no Mr Riley. He must’ve died.’

‘Yeah, she’s a widow; he passed on a while ago, not long after he got invalided home.’

‘Have you got any half-brothers and -sisters?’ Grace asked optimistically.

Chris shook his head. ‘According to the battleaxe, me mum married Mr Riley just as the war started, and he was wounded a couple of years after. She said Pamela ended up being more his nurse than his wife … in which case it ain’t surprising they never had kids.’

‘Are you disappointed not to have more family?’ Grace asked gently.

‘Yeah; I am … a bit …’ He fell silent.

‘Talking of kids … I did another good turn ’n’ all today. Little girl from up the road come wandering into the house we’re working on. Lucky she didn’t come a cropper; she was walking about barefoot on a building site. So I took her home to her mum. They’re the people I was telling you about: the Murphys who moved in earlier in the year. Matilda was doing a bit of babysitting for the woman so she could do a cleaning job. But her husband put a stop to that. He won’t let her go out and earn a few bob even though he’s scratching around for work now he’s lost his shifts with the pikeys.’

‘That’s a daft attitude to have,’ Grace said emphatically.

‘Kieran Murphy’s asked me for a job a couple of times now but we’re not taking on.’

‘What did the woman say when you took her little girl back?’ Grace asked. ‘Anything could have happened to her. She might have got bricks fall on her while you were working. How old is she?’

‘About three or four, I reckon. Sweet little thing, she is, polite too; her name’s Kathleen.’ He chuckled. ‘She was after me sandwiches. Poor little mite seemed starving hungry, so I gave her one.’

‘They must be very hard up …’

‘I reckon they are, but it seems the old man’s one of these too proud fer his own good and doesn’t want it known he can’t provide for his family. He took the sandwich off the kid and give it me back … what was left of it.’ Chris frowned. ‘Kieran Murphy was out, but he turned up just as I was handing Kathleen over to her mum. The woman looked guilty as hell and knew she’d been wrong in not keeping an eye on the girl. But she’s got another kid to look after, and that one’s a lot younger and coughing its guts up all the time.’ He sighed. ‘Kieran had a face like thunder so I just left ’em to it. Wish I hadn’t now; wish I’d offered a bit more help. But not a lot you can do for a man won’t even let his kid have a cheese sandwich he ain’t paid for.’

‘At least you tried,’ Grace said, feeling proud of him. ‘Some people would just walk on by.’

‘Felt sorry for his wife; she knew she’d done wrong letting the tot out of her sight. I could hear him tearing a strip off her before I got out of the house. Shame I can’t offer the bloke a job, then perhaps they could get themselves out of there, but the guvnor says there’s nuthin’ doing.’

‘Couldn’t he make an exception?’

‘Nah, not Rob. He’s a businessman and he won’t jeopardise his profit margin by gettin’ all sentimental. Can’t blame him really; if he gives Murphy a job one of the others will have to go and that ain’t fair. D’you want to see where me dad and Pearl are opening up their caff?’ Chris asked abruptly, changing the subject. ‘It’s in Hornsey Road; got quite a good spot, they have.’

On seeing Grace’s enthusiastic nod, he added, ‘We’ll probably catch them in; me old man said they’ll be working late. He’s keen to get it all up ’n’ running by next week. He’s thinking of doing fancy teas as an opening offer, to draw in the customers.’

‘Sort of early Christmas cakes?’ Grace observed. ‘He’s obviously got a good business brain, your dad.’ She sounded impressed.

‘Suppose he has, in his own way.’ Chris had always thought his uncle Robert was the smarter of the two of them, and doubtless he was where winning building contracts was concerned. But perhaps now his dad was working at something he enjoyed, instead of felt obliged to do, he might prove to everybody that he could run a successful business as well as his brother, if he put his mind to it.

Stevie might not know a lot about doing paperwork but he knew what people liked to eat. Everybody loved a nice bit of cake, and with Christmas approaching, they were thinking of their stomachs. Chris reflected sombrely on the Murphys, wondering if they’d manage to get themselves somewhere warm and cosy by then, and enjoy a good Christmas Day.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

‘I saw Vic this evening,’ Stevie announced. ‘He was just off to the shop to get something for his tea. Unusual for him to do a bit of shopping.’

‘Deirdre’s playing a blinder there, I’ll give her that,’ Chris said with a chuckle. ‘She’ll probably have him burping the baby and changing it after every feed.’

‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Pearl stated flatly. ‘She’ll need to put her feet up for a while after it’s born. My husband used to change our Calvin’s nappy.’

Pearl was the same age as Stevie, forty-five. She’d separated from her husband almost twenty years ago, after producing one son. But neither she nor her husband had ever bothered to put divorce proceedings in place. Pearl knew that if Stevie were to propose she’d get the ball rolling the following day. She’d loved him for years and very much wanted to be his wife.

Her son had lived with her until he was eighteen, although he’d seen his father whenever he wanted to as the marriage had floundered without rancour on either side. But Calvin had his own life now, and was a regular in the army, so Pearl only saw him a couple of times a year.

‘You told me he never done nappies willingly,’ Stevie protested, frowning at Pearl.

Talk of husbands helping out with their newborn children always made Stevie feel uneasy. He was uncomfortably aware he could have done more to support Pamela when their son had been born, and then things might have turned out differently. When she’d moaned about Christopher’s constant crying he’d told her to pull herself together and get on with it. When she’d complained her nerves were playing up, and she couldn’t think straight, he’d told her to get off her backside and be a wife and mother, because she was getting fat and lazy.

He’d never seen his father lift a finger to help his mother, whether it was caring for kids or household chores. In fact, Stevie had never seen his father work willingly at anything at all. Jimmy Wild would always skive and sponge if he could.

At the age of twenty-one Stevie had selfishly assumed babies were women’s work, and Pamela should naturally be able to cope with hers. But if he’d ever guessed how she’d go about coping with their fretful son, he’d have nursed Christopher to sleep every night rather than risk him being harmed.

For twenty-four years Christopher had been the most precious thing in his life and, although Stevie knew it was time for them to go their separate ways, nobody could take his son’s place in the centre of his heart.

Soon they’d not only be working but living apart, and it was the right thing for both of them, Stevie accepted that. Yet still he felt a pang of possessiveness at the thought of somebody else being more important to Christopher than he was.

‘My husband might not have liked doing nappies.’ Pearl suddenly took up the cudgels again. ‘But he did it all the same. And that’s what a woman wants: a bit of support now ’n’ again without too much of a song ’n’ dance going with it.’

‘Sounds like you wished you’d stayed with him,’ Stevie muttered petulantly.

‘Nah … couldn’t have done that. Couldn’t stand that smell no longer.’

Chris and Grace stared at her before exchanging a glance of suppressed amusement.

‘He was a taxidermist,’ Pearl explained. ‘Bleedin’ stinky stuffed animals in every room in our house, there was. Five years of it and I’d had enough!’ She wafted a hand in front of her nose.

‘I think it’s a good thing for men to lend a hand with children,’ Grace spluttered, to stop herself hooting with laughter. ‘It’s handy for you both to know about rearing babies just in case one of you gets poorly at some time,’ she gasped out. ‘Anyway, if you pull together it makes life easier all round …’

‘Bear that in mind, son,’ Stevie said with mock warning, wagging a finger at Chris. But he glanced fondly at Grace, hoping that she was his future daughter-in-law. She wasn’t just pretty, and nicely spoken, but wise and kind too.

‘Anyhow, I’ve got a problem with me sink out the back, come and take a look.’ Stevie pushed back his chair. ‘The tap’s playing up. Let the girls finish their cups of tea,’ he added, as Chris beckoned Grace to accompany him and explore the caff’s interior.

Stevie gripped a stiff tap set over an old butler sink in a small storeroom. It wouldn’t budge, so he tried the other one next to it but had no luck there either.

‘Need to get a pair of Stilson’s on them taps,’ Chris said, taking over trying to force the brass crossheads to turn.

‘Rob’s on the warpath,’ Stevie said without preamble. He’d wanted to get his son on his own to tell him the bad news. ‘He came round this evening, looking for you, just after you went out. Seems you’ve been taking time off without him knowing and the job’s fallen behind again.’

Chris shot a glance at his father. There was no point in denying it. ‘Who told him I’ve been taking time off?’

‘Don’t need to be told, do he? He’s got eyes in his head. He went round Whadcoat Street one afternoon to pop in on Matilda then meet the council wallah and do a valuation. Vic said you’d just that minute gone off up the shop, or something equally daft, trying to cover for you. Rob ain’t stupid, son, neither’s the council wallah, and if you want to keep your job as foreman for Wild Brothers, you need to bear that very much in mind. Rob pays you a good, regular wage and you’re gonna need that if you’re thinking of settling down.’

Chris nodded slowly, instinctively glancing Grace’s way. He accepted he’d got banged to rights. ‘I’ll have a word … apologise …’ he said gruffly.

‘Yeah, do that. I slipped in that you’ve been having a spot of woman trouble …’ Stevie indicated Grace over his shoulder. She and Pearl were still sitting at a table, chatting over a cup of tea. ‘I didn’t elaborate on any of it, ’cos that’s fer you to do, not me.’ He watched as his son kept his eyes down, loosening the cold tap enough for a few drips of water to plop into the stained sink. ‘All sorted out now? No more need to take time off?’ Again Stevie’s head jerked backwards at Grace.

‘Won’t be taking no more time off,’ Chris replied, giving a bicep-bulging, final twist to the tap, and sending brownish water spurting into the sink. He turned it off and dried his hands on his sleeves.

His father patted his shoulder before leading him away to show him a shiny new refrigerator.

Chris followed him slowly, feeling guilty on two counts. He’d annoyed his uncle by neglecting his duties as foreman of his building firm, and he’d misled his father by allowing him to believe that Grace was the woman who’d kept him away from work on recent occasions.

He thought of his mother, as he’d first seen her, down on her knees, kindly sweeping up somebody else’s path. He reflected on what he knew of her disappointing, depressing life, which nevertheless hadn’t knocked the stuffing out of her – he had done that when he’d introduced himself.

Chris knew that if he found out she wanted to see him, he’d take time off work and go to Bexleyheath again tomorrow …

‘You’ve made a prat of me, Chris, and I don’t like that.’ Rob took a swig from his mug of tea. He hadn’t offered one to his nephew this morning when he’d turned up in his office to apologise for letting the schedule slip on the Whadcoat Street job. ‘I asked you if you could cope with this contract without Stevie, and you said you could. Now, if you ain’t up to it I’ll get someone else in to run the show.’

‘Don’t need it … it’s all fine now.’

‘Not according to my man up the Council it ain’t. That’s why you’ve made a prat of me. I made a lot of noise about the pikeys being on my patch and he cleared ’em off. Now I’m getting sarcastic comments about perhaps he should get ’em back … and deduct it from my money. Weren’t just me turned up when you was absent: a council bloke paid a visit too.’

Chris swiped a hand through his hair. ‘Yeah, Dad said. It’s all back to normal. I’ll work late … get it back on track.’

‘O’Connor’ll be laughing his bollocks off, if he finds out it’s going sour on us.’

‘I’ll work late … starting tonight,’ Chris repeated. He hesitated. ‘How about if I let Kieran Murphy have a few days?’

‘Up to you, mate,’ Rob answered. ‘But you’ll be paying him out of your own wages.’

‘Best be off to work.’ Chris looked at his watch, wanting to get away from his irate guvnor as soon as he could.

‘It’s not like you, Chris, to be missing shifts,’ Rob said. ‘What’s the problem?’

As Chris met his uncle’s eyes he realised he’d guessed more than his father had about the identity of the woman involved in keeping him from doing his job.

‘Told you to leave things alone, Chris, didn’t I?’ Rob shook his head. ‘Only one way this is going to end up, you know that, don’t you …’

‘I’ve gotta get going,’ Chris said and strode towards the door.

‘Yeah, you do that,’ Rob turned his back on his nephew.

‘You didn’t tell me that the guvnor had been round checking up on things with the council jobsworth when I wasn’t here.’

Vic dropped his newly lit cigarette and stamped on it. Chris had been a bit late turning up, so he’d thought he was having a morning off again, and there’d be plenty of time for a crafty fag before getting started. ‘I did tell you I’d been covering for you,’ he insisted, narked.

‘Yeah, but not that it were covering for me in a big way,’ Chris bawled.

‘I told them you’d just gone up the shop.’ Vic shrugged. ‘What’s wrong with that? They didn’t know no different.’

Chris gave him a sour look. ‘The guvnor would never buy that. We’re talking about Rob Wild, not Joe Muggins.’ He locked the van and strode into the shell of a house they were working on.

‘You in the shit over it?’ Vic had followed him. He knew if Chris got the sack he could be in line for the foreman’s job.

‘Gonna work late and get things back on track …’

‘When … when you gonna work late?’ Vic asked immediately.

‘Why, what’s it to you?’

‘Nuthin ’… just thought if there’s overtime going …’

‘There ain’t. I’ll bring it back on track on me own.’ He gave Vic a mocking glance. ‘But if you fancy turning up ’n’ giving a hand out of the goodness of yer heart, Vic …’

‘Sod that fer a game o’ soldiers,’ Vic muttered and stomped off.

‘Yeah … that’s what I thought,’ Chris drawled, dropping his tool bag on the floor.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

‘Going in, luv?’

Pamela Riley shot a look at the fellow who was holding open the door to the Duke of Edinburgh pub.

‘You going in?’ he repeated as she hesitated then took a step away. ‘Who you after?’ He’d guessed she’d been looking for somebody inside, and had been peering through the glass panel to see if they were present before entering.

‘Matilda Keiver,’ Pamela blurted. ‘I know she used to drink here a lot.’

‘Old Tilly …’ The man barked a laugh. ‘Oh, yeah, she’s still a regular. Don’t come in now as much as she used to, but she can sink a few, considering she’s getting on a bit.’ He glanced at his watch, nodding to himself. ‘You might be lucky; she could be along for a dinnertime snifter.’ He studied Pamela, noting her dull, sensible appearance. She didn’t look, or sound, as though she was a friend of Matilda’s. She had the air of a middle-aged housewife from a better part of town. He guessed her to be at least twenty years Matilda’s junior, but then old Tilly got along with most folk, as long as they hadn’t upset her or her family in some way. If they had, she’d be down on them like a ton of bricks.

‘Thanks for letting me know she’s still about,’ Pamela said, noting the man was still holding the door slightly ajar. ‘I’ll just hang on here a bit longer and if she doesn’t turn up … I’ll be on my way.’ She shrugged further into her coat.

He smiled at her, thinking if she made an effort with a bit of make-up, and took that ugly old hat off her hair, she wouldn’t be a bad-looking woman for her age. It occurred to him that she might be waiting outside for a friend to get her a drink, because she was on hard times. Matilda was known to be keen to have a drinking pal, and generous in that respect. ‘Come on … I’ll buy you one if you’re a bit short.’ He pushed the door open.

‘No thanks,’ Pam returned curtly. ‘If I wanted a drink I’d pay for it myself.’

‘Suit yerself, luv,’ the man replied, unperturbed. He started off, then retraced his steps. ‘She don’t live that far away, y’know. If you go round Whadcoat Street you’ll probably find her in.’

‘Don’t know it. All I know is she used to live in Campbell Road.’

‘Yeah, that’s it. Campbell Road. Now it’s Whadcoat Street.’

Pamela frowned at him. She’d walked along Seven Sisters Road and glanced at the turning into Campbell Road, seeing nothing but squalid houses and a few workmen in the distance doing slum clearance. The Bunk had always been a dump, but she’d assumed now it was uninhabited. It hadn’t occurred to her to check the street name, high up on the wall.

‘Whadcoat Street?’ she said, in surprise. ‘Why’d they bother changing its name now they’re pulling it all down?’

‘Obviously you ain’t been back in a while, duck,’ the fellow chuckled. ‘Street names got altered right back in the thirties. Gawd knows why; didn’t make a blind bit of difference to what went on down there. The Bunk’s The Bunk … always will be.’ He rubbed his hands together, then puffed into them.

It was an early December day and there was a bitter breeze blowing. Pamela was also feeling chilled and had half-turned away from him to protect her cold cheeks from a buffeting. She hunched up her shoulders to her ears and continued listening to what he’d got to say.

‘Paddington Street’s now Biggerstaff Road, see, ’cos that name got changed as well,’ the fellow explained. ‘Pen pushers with nothing better to do I suppose … can’t leave nuthin’ alone.’

‘Matilda still lives down there, even though they’re knocking it down?’ Pam couldn’t disguise her astonishment, or her scepticism.

‘Yeah, and she’s not on her own neither. Should’ve seen the crowd they had down there Bonfire Night.’ He shook his head in amusement at the memory. ‘Weren’t as lively as it used to be in its heyday, but had a good time. Bit of a tradition, ain’t it, Bonfire Night and The Bunk. Went down there meself November 5th. Never miss it.’ He sauntered off, whistling. A moment later he was gesticulating at her and pointing across the road.

It took Pam a moment to realise he was letting her know that Matilda was on her way.

Pamela felt her insides knotting in anxiety despite the fact that the person progressing slowly in her direction seemed quite unintimidating. The Matilda of old had always had a bounce in her stride; this woman had a slight limp and was dumpy of figure rather than solidly built. Her hair was no longer a fiery flaxen shade, but colourless. It was plaited, as Pamela remembered it often had been, and coiled in buns pinned on either side of her head. If the fellow hadn’t indicated this elderly woman’s identity she would never have known her.

But then she didn’t expect Matilda to recognise her either.

Last time they’d spoken, Pamela had been an overweight, fresh-faced blonde in her twenties. She had no illusions as to how she looked now, even before a glance sideways at the pub’s windows reflected back at her the thin, lined face of a faded woman who looked older than her forty-four years. Her thick fair hair had once been her pride and joy; now she mostly went out wearing a hat to cover the fact her crowning glory was wispy, and a silvery shade of mouse.

‘After you,’ Matilda said as she saw a woman hovering in front of her by the pub’s door.

‘No … it’s alright … I’ve … I’m just waiting …’

Matilda squinted at the woman getting in her way, thinking something about her seemed familiar, but she was unsure what it was. Then a fragment of memory made her think of a woman with a small dimple in her chin and a high-pitched voice, who’d once been part of the family. She’d been giving Pamela Plummer some thought lately but even so it seemed hard to believe that …

‘You’re Matilda Keiver, aren’t you,’ Pamela blurted out. ‘You won’t remember me … it was years and years ago you last spoke to me …’

‘I know you,’ Matilda said, cocking her head, her eyes fixing on Pam with fierce directness. ‘Bleedin’ hell, you’re right … it was a while ago … about twenty-five years if I remember correctly.’

‘Twenty-three, and I haven’t come to cause trouble,’ Pam immediately burst out. Suddenly the years were peeling away. It seemed only yesterday she’d last had those probing eyes on her. A short while after that, Pam had left the Islington area for good, and hadn’t been back since.

‘What have you come for then, Pamela?’ Matilda asked evenly. ‘’Cos whatever it is, I think you ’n’ me know it is gonna cause a ruckus of some sort. But that might not be a bad thing.’

Pamela’s thin lips twisted into a smile. Matilda might look past it, but her mind seemed as sharp as it had been when she’d been ducking and diving as one of The Bunk’s rent collectors.

Pam had hoped to winkle out of Matilda a few titbits of information about Christopher, so she’d know a little about his life, and could hug it close to her, when she went back to her own existence in Bexleyheath. Instead, she fished in her bag and brought out a five-pound note. Matilda was too cute to give away a thing. Pam knew if she found out anything about her son, it would be because Matilda Keiver wanted her to know it.

‘Would you give this to Christopher, for me?’ Pam asked hoarsely. ‘He did a job for me, but went off without getting paid. I don’t take charity.’

‘Christopher don’t give charity, not if I know him,’ Matilda returned flatly. ‘What he might want to give you, as you’re his mother, is a bit of his time and a bit of his help.’

The five-pound note, in Pam’s outstretched fingers, wavered then got dropped to her side. ‘I want him to have it. He did a good job. But I don’t know where he lives to send it.’

‘He lives at home with his dad still.’

‘Well, in that case …’

‘In that case, you’d sooner set off back home with your fiver than come face to face with Stevie.’

‘I’d sooner you take it and give it to him,’ Pam said shortly but shoved the banknote in a pocket. ‘I won’t be going to Stephen’s place. I told you, I haven’t come here to cause trouble … especially not for Christopher.’

‘Caused him enough of that when he was little, didn’t you, Pam.’

‘Yeah …’ Pamela immediately set off. She stopped after a few yards and twisted about to find Matilda watching her, but not maliciously. ‘Is that what you wanted to hear? I admit I did something terrible, but rest assured I’ve paid for it.’

Matilda took a few steps after her. ‘Usually the way, ain’t it, Pam? The lord pays debts without money …’

‘Does Christopher know … has Stephen told him I nearly … hurt him badly?’

Matilda shook her head. ‘Stevie started off telling him you was dead. I let him know I didn’t think that was right, and in the end he told Chris the truth. But Stevie’s said as little about you as he thought he could get away with.’

Pam grimaced a sour acceptance at hearing that. ‘You don’t seem surprised that I’ve seen Christopher.’

‘I ain’t. I knew he’d find you.’ Matilda walked back to the pub and pushed the door handle. ‘Come on, inside … you’ve come all this way from Bexleyheath to give the boy his fiver, least I can do is get you a drink to warm you on yer way home. Bleedin’ freezing again today, ain’t it.’ When Pam hesitated, Matilda added, ‘Lot of water gawn under the bridge, Pam. You needn’t think I’m gonna get at you fer what went on.’ With a jerk of her head she invited Pam to precede her into the Duke pub.

Matilda gestured for Pam to put away her purse and indicated a little table cosily tucked into a corner. ‘Park yerself over there outta the draught and I’ll get the drinks. Still a gin ’n’ orange fer you is it, Pam?’

‘I’ll have a small sherry if that’s alright,’ Pam answered with a twitch of the lips. ‘I want to get back to Bexleyheath in one piece.’

‘Small sherry it is, and I think I might have one of them ’n’ all fer a change,’ Matilda said.

It was a popular pub but today there were very few people who’d ventured out in the bitter cold to enjoy a dinnertime snifter. Most of the drinkers were regulars, like Matilda, and greeted her by name as she ambled by on her way to the bar. As she waited for the landlord to fetch the drinks Matilda turned to look at Pam, gazing into space. Her face was careworn and Matilda knew without a shadow of a doubt that life hadn’t been kind to her.

‘’S’pect you got a right surprise on seeing Christopher, didn’t you?’ Matilda put the drinks down and eased herself into a chair with a contented sigh. ‘Nice to get off me feet,’ she murmured, giving Pam a moment to consider her reply.

‘Knocked me for six when he introduced himself,’ Pam admitted quietly and took a sip of sherry. ‘Then when I’d calmed down I wished I’d acted differently. But it was too late, he’d driven off.’

‘But he must’ve been back to fix your gate.’

‘Came over and did the job when I was out,’ Pam said. ‘Kind of him to do it, all things considered …’

‘He is kind,’ Matilda said. ‘He’s grown into a fine young man.’

Pam nodded and turned her head to shield the sudden glisten in her eyes.

After a short silence Matilda asked, ‘Did you get married again, Pam?’ She had noticed the younger woman absently twisting a gold band on her finger.

‘Yeah … married Stan in 1939, not long before the war started. He was a good man. Joined up straight away … got injured badly.’ Pam’s brief account of her second marriage tailed off and she blinked. ‘Didn’t have much luck with husbands one way or another.’ She picked up her sherry and took a swallow.

‘Survive his injuries?’ Matilda enquired, although she’d guessed that he hadn’t.

Pam shook her head. ‘Buried him in 1944. He was in a wheelchair for a while … we didn’t have any kids …’ Her voice faded. ‘How about you, Matilda?’ she asked. ‘I know you lost Jack in the Great War.’

‘Yeah … lost my Jack, God rest him,’ Matilda said gruffly. ‘Lost Reg too in 1943. You wouldn’t have known him but I was with Reg Donovan for over fifteen years although we never made it official.’

‘Is Christopher married? Does he have any children?’ Pam suddenly blurted out the thought that had been rotating in her mind for many weeks. The idea of being a granny, even from afar, had coated her insides with warm pleasure.

Matilda smiled. ‘Not got a wife or kids yet, but he’s got a lovely girlfriend called Grace and I reckon it’s getting serious.’

‘Good,’ Pam murmured, smiling at her sherry. She swallowed the small amount left in her glass and drew a five-pound note from her pocket. ‘Would you pass this on to him, please?’

‘’Course … if you don’t want to give it to him yerself.’

Matilda could tell that Pam was angling to leave, but she had a few more questions she’d like answers to before she let her escape. ‘Did you stick around in London after you and Stevie split up?’

Pam glanced up to find Matilda’s gimlet eyes on her. ‘Stayed with my parents for a while. They moved off to Cambridge and I went as well for a year and helped out in their draper’s shop. But it didn’t work out so as soon as I could I got myself a job and moved back to London. I worked in a hotel on the Strand as a chambermaid. Pay wasn’t up to much but I got board and lodgings.’

‘How’s yer mum and dad keeping?’

‘Dad died a couple of years ago. Mum’s got a bungalow in Cambridge. Don’t see her very often.’

‘They must’ve been pleased to see you settle down for a second time.’

‘Nothing I did pleased them after what happened …’ Pam pursed her thin lips. ‘Another sherry?’ she asked quickly, standing up.

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Matilda answered, upending her glass.

Pam took the empty schooners and went to the bar.

‘Not having one yerself?’ Matilda asked when Pam returned and put down just one small sherry.

‘Got quite a journey to make, better get going.’ Pam buttoned her coat. ‘Gets dark so early this time of year.’

‘Yeah,’ Matilda said. ‘Well, you take care of yerself, won’t you.’

Pamela looked at the five-pound note. She put a couple of fingers on it and pushed it across the table close to Matilda’s glass. ‘I’d be obliged if you’d pass that on.’

‘You can give it to Chris yerself, you know. He’s just down Whadcoat Street, where I live, doing the demolition on the houses up one end.’

Pam’s startled eyes darted to Matilda. A moment later she gave a quick shake of the head. ‘I’d be obliged if you’d pass it on,’ she repeated before turning to head out of the pub.

Pamela stopped at the top of Whadcoat Street and gazed into the distance. No men were visible now, just parked vans. She realised her son must have gone inside one of the properties to work.

Much as she longed to see Christopher, and talk to him, she couldn’t do that. It wasn’t just that her unexpected appearance was sure to embarrass him in front of his colleagues: she felt completely drained following her talk with Matilda. Yet Matilda had been true to her word and had avoided bringing up the reason for the bitter split between her and Stephen all those years ago. Pam knew she’d need to replenish her courage before directly approaching her son.

She stood a while longer, hunched into her coat, hoping perhaps he might come out and go to his van, just so she’d get a glimpse of him before she set off home. Somebody did emerge from a house but she knew it wasn’t Christopher. The fellow was too short and too plump – nothing like her tall, handsome son. Pamela glanced back the way she’d just come; she knew if she loitered too long she might find Matilda bearing down on her on her way home from the Duke and she’d said all she wanted to say today to Christopher’s great-aunt. With a final yearning stare, she turned to walk briskly on towards her transport home.

‘Cold enough for you, Mrs K?’

‘Taters, ain’t it, Ted. Chris in there, is he?’ Matilda shuffled on the pavement to keep warm.

‘Upstairs, he is. Want him?’

‘Tell him to come along ’n’ see me when he’s got a mo, will you?’

Ted nodded and ambled back inside carrying a shovel on his shoulder.

‘Yer aunt’s lookin’ for you.’

Chris wiped dust from his eyes to blink at Ted.

‘She said can you go ’n’ see her.’

‘Have to be when I finish later. Ain’t urgent, is it?’

‘Didn’t seem like it,’ Ted said.

Chris remembered he’d meant to call in and see his aunt when he was halfway home to Crouch End. He’d worked late, as he’d promised his uncle he would, until the generator had packed up and the light had gone. It was seven-thirty when he turned around and returned to Whadcoat Street to bang on his aunt’s door.

The sash above his head was shoved up. ‘Took yer time, didn’t you? Thought you’d gawn off home and forgotten about me.’ The sash banged home again.

‘Sorry it’s late,’ Chris said with a smile. ‘Trying to get things back on schedule up there.’

‘Thought perhaps Ted had forgotten to give you me message.’ Matilda stuck the kettle on the hob. ‘Not had yer tea yet, then?’ She ran a look over his mucky overalls.

Chris shook his head and sat down close to the little stove. It was surprisingly cosy in the room once the door was shut and the many scrappy draught excluders were wedged in place.

‘Get stuck into them biscuits then, you must be starving.’ Matilda knew she was playing for time. It was unlike her not to come straight out and say what was on her mind. But she didn’t want to seem to be prying. Christopher and his mum seemed to be making headway without any help or interference from anybody else.

Chris took two digestives. ‘Hope me dad’s got a nice hotpot on the go … me belly thinks me throat’s been cut.’

‘Don’t know how lucky you are, having a dad like that.’

‘Yeah … I know …’ Chris took a bite out of a digestive.

‘Saw yer mum today.’

The biscuit hovered in front of Chris’s mouth then was dropped to his lap. ‘Who d’you see?’ he asked in a squeak that betrayed he thought his ears had deceived him.

‘Pam came over and had a drink with me in the Duke.’

Chris gawped at his aunt. ‘Did she come over to tell you I’m making a nuisance of meself?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘Did she say to stop going there?’

‘No … nuthin’ like that. She came over to give me this and ask me to pass it on.’ Matilda took the five-pound note off the mantelshelf and placed it down on the table close to Chris’s mug of tea. ‘Wanted you to be paid for the job you done her.’ She smiled at him. ‘Fixed her on a gate, didn’t you?’

‘Didn’t want no pay for it. Wrote her a note and told her I didn’t want nuthin’.’

‘You don’t want to be paid, and she says she don’t want no charity, so you’re gonna have to sort that one out between yourselves. But I reckon that’s not the only reason Pam came over to see me. She wanted to find out a little bit about you. Just like you’ve been wanting to find out a little bit about her.’

Chris lifted his eyes to his aunt, a spark of optimism in their depths. ‘She wasn’t angry? She didn’t tell you to tell me to stay away from her?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

Chris took the banknote. ‘I’ll buy her some flowers with it.’ He glanced bashfully at his aunt.

‘She’s had a rough time of it, you know, Chris. Lost her second husband not long after they was married.’

‘Yeah … I know …’

‘Who told you? Pam said you’ve not spoken more’n a couple of words ’cos the shock of seeing you was too much for her at first.’

‘One of her neighbours came up and started talking to me when I was working on her gate. I didn’t ask no questions, the old girl just told me.’

‘Does Stevie know you’ve been over there?’

Chris shook his head. ‘Nobody knew about me going over, only Grace.’

Matilda sipped her tea. ‘You’ll have to tell him, Chris. I know you probably don’t want to upset the apple cart now things are settling down, but it’s only fair you tell your dad that you’ve met your mum.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Him and Pearl are getting stuck into their new business so now might be the right time, while he’s occupied elsewhere.’

‘Don’t know how to go about it.’

‘Come straight out and tell him, son. Honesty’s the best policy, so they say.’

Chris dwelled on his aunt’s advice as he slowly drove home, smiling, enveloped in a sense of thrilling anticipation, the like of which he’d not experienced since he was a boy waiting for Christmas.

He wasn’t expecting a wonderful relationship to spring up between himself and his mother; a comfortable atmosphere between them would suffice for now. And it would content him to have a little bit of knowledge about his other relatives, especially his grandparents.

The next time Chris arrived in Bexleyheath he hoped his mum would be at home. He took a deep breath, rat-tatted politely, then waited.

He loosened his collar from his bobbing throat when he heard footsteps approaching. Quickly he shoved a hand across his hair to neaten it.

‘Got you these to say thanks for the money,’ he burst out. ‘But I didn’t want no pay so I hope you’ll take them and not think I’m bothering you.’ He thrust the huge bouquet towards Pamela. It had been the best bunch of flowers he could find in Bexleyheath High Street.

‘You should have kept the cash, not spent it on me; you paid out for the gate after all,’ Pam blurted after a shocked silence in which she’d blanched then flushed in mounting pleasure.

The scent of oriental lilies wafted on the air; her son had bought hothouse blooms that must have cost most of the five pounds she’d left for him with Matilda. Nobody had ever bought her such beautiful flowers. Neither of her husbands had been romantic or demonstrative men; but then she’d not been married long to either of them … certainly not to Christopher’s father.

She opened the door to its full extent so she could take hold of the arrangement without squashing it.

‘Will you come in for a cup of tea, Christopher?’ Her eyes rose to meet his.

‘No … not today … perhaps another time.’ Chris felt pleased that she’d used his name. ‘I’m in trouble with me boss for missing work recently and don’t want to lose me job. So better get going. Just wanted to say thanks for the money, but I didn’t want nothing. Just wanted to do you a good turn.’

‘Well, you must get off then, of course,’ Pam said with maternal concern, almost shooing him away. ‘Don’t get the sack because of me. Thank you very much for these.’ Pamela’s smile was strengthening as she became more relaxed. ‘They’re a beautiful selection …’

Chris took a step away, chest expanding in satisfaction. He wanted to stop and talk to her, but had decided on the way over to take things slowly. It wasn’t just the valid excuse of not getting into trouble with Rob over missing shifts. He knew it would be best not to overwhelm his mother with his presence after they’d spent such a long time apart. ‘I’ll come back another time … if that’s alright … ?’

Pam nodded and dragged her eyes from her son as she withdrew into her hallway. ‘Off you go then …’ she said softly, a moment before closing the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘You be careful if you’re going out there. You can’t see a hand in front of yer face.’

‘Didn’t need this holding the job up …’ Chris had just opened the front door to peer along the garden path, while covering his nose and mouth with his fingers to prevent the freezing air abrading his throat and lungs. He squinted but couldn’t make out the shape of his van parked at the kerb, so solid was the sulphurous atmosphere. On the holly bush close to the house droplets of icy water sparkled incongruously like pretty crystals.

‘Never mind the job, son,’ Stevie said, peering over his shoulder. ‘Ain’t worth risking travelling on the roads even short distances in this sort of pea-souper.’ Stevie couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen such dense, choking fog. ‘I’m hoping Pearl’s got the sense to stop home today. Bloomin’ nuisance it is, just as we get to December and put our special teas on the menu. But then again nobody’s gonna be out and about in this so no customers as such …’ Stevie stood looking morose, mentally calculating his losses.

‘Better hope the lads know to hold fire till it clears tomorrow.’ Chris gladly shut the door against the freezing damp that in just a few minutes had seemed to seep into his bones.

‘Better hope too Grace knows you’ll see her later in the week,’ Stevie said. ‘Don’t want to be doing that sort of journey at night time, do you.’

‘It might clear by this evening. Anyhow, Tottenham’s not that far,’ Chris said with a smile for his father’s motherly clucking.

‘If Shirley’s got any sense she won’t let her daughter out of the house till it lifts. Give you bronchitis easy as anything, you stay out too long breathing in that muck.’

Chris knew his father’s advice was sound. It was the worst fog he’d ever seen and he didn’t relish going to the end of the road again for a loaf of bread, let alone setting out for work. He’d been to the local shop early that morning for milk and tea and even with a scarf wound about his lower face as protection he’d felt his chest aching as his lungs made an effort to pump air. When he’d got back he’d been amused and astonished in equal part to discover his skin, above the scarf, had been flecked with black soot.

The following day Chris woke to see the same yellow haze beyond the windows of his bedroom. But he was determined not to lose another day’s work, and had managed to get messages to the others that he expected them to turn up no matter what this morning brought in the way of weather. So he set off early, at a crawl, towards Whadcoat Street, glad that a bus was immediately in front of him for most of the way so he could follow its taillights into Seven Sisters Road.

It took him close to an hour to do a journey that usually lasted a matter of minutes. When he got to the site, Ted and Billy were already there. It was their custom to travel to work together in Billy’s old jalopy as they lived close to one another. The car was parked at the kerb and there were four others parked behind in a street that was usually deserted.

‘What’s going on?’ Chris gestured at the strange vehicles.

Ted rubbed his gloved palms together and hunched his shoulders to his ears. He came close to Chris to squint at his face through the filthy mist. ‘Bleedin’ lark this is!’ He appeared torn between amusement and amazement. ‘You’ll never guess …’ He nodded in the direction Chris had moments ago pointed. ‘They’ve all followed us here, one behind the other, like sheep. They’d been using Billy’s lights to guide ’em. Now none of ’em knows where they are and Billy’s been trying to tell ’em how to get back to Holloway Road where we must’ve got the convoy going.’

‘Got a torch?’ Billy had materialised beside them. ‘Bleedin’ battery’s gone in mine. I’ll have to lead ’em down to the bottom of the road. The two in the middle have already had a prang.’

Chris went to the van and pulled out a heavy rubber torch and immediately switched it on.

‘You two get started inside …’ Chris instructed. ‘I’ll walk in front of them and get them down to Seven Sisters, after that they’re on their own.’

‘Got some juice fer the generator? We ain’t gonna get much done in there today without a bit of light.’

Chris swore beneath his breath. He’d completely forgotten that the generator was out of fuel, and the can on the van was empty. He had meant to fill it yesterday but had stayed inside all day rather than venture out in the fetid air. He knew by the time he got to a filling station, and got back here, it would be dinnertime. In a way he was wishing he’d not bothered setting out this morning at all. Dejectedly, he realised that nothing much was going to get done.

‘Is Vic turning up?’ Billy asked.

‘Deirdre probably won’t let him out in this, in case he accidentally on purpose gets lost and she don’t see him fer a month,’ Ted quipped.

As though to prove him wrong Vic’s stooped figure loomed into view.

‘Bus driver took a wrong turning. Stupid sod was following a milk float ’n’ we ended up outside the dairy.’

‘Just get done what you can till I get back,’ Chris said and walked tentatively, hands outstretched to detect obstacles, towards the first vehicle parked behind Billy’s car. He swung the torch to and fro to ease his path but the beam seemed to bounce off a solid wall of smog.

He peered in the first car to see a man and woman with a child of about six huddled on the back seat, wearing school uniform.

‘We were taking her to school,’ the woman said in agitation. ‘Now all we want to do is get home again.’

Chris could tell from her nice accent that they were well out of their area. ‘Where you from?’

‘Hampstead,’ the fellow announced. ‘You should have let her have a day off,’ he said to his wife. ‘And I should have just gone into work on time, as usual, on the train,’ he added cuttingly, making his wife shoot him a glare.

‘Wouldn’t have got far, mate,’ Chris said. ‘I heard on the wireless that nothing much is running. Even the underground is out.’

He turned about as a fellow from another car approached him, feeling his way along the vehicle’s coachwork.

‘What’s down the bottom there?’ The man pointed vaguely while squinting a frown at the boarded-up houses he could just make out lining the street.

‘Seven Sisters Road,’ Chris answered. ‘I’ll guide you down there with the torch and out into the road. With any luck you can find a bus to follow that might be going your way.’

By the time he got back to the house – led there by the sound of Billy coughing so violently he was in danger of bringing his guts up – Chris realised they might just as well pack up and go home. In winter, the interiors of these properties were dingy in normal conditions. Without doors, or glass in the windows, the foul atmosphere that had descended was swirling everywhere.

Once Vic had joined Ted in clearing his chest every five minutes, and Billy had tripped over the toolbox for the umpteenth time, Chris had had enough. ‘That’s it … let’s go … wasting time staying …’

‘Waste o’ time coming in the first place,’ Vic grumbled.

‘Alright with getting a day’s pay docked, are you?’ Chris shot back.

‘Ain’t our fault we can’t do no work.’

‘Ain’t the guvnor’s fault neither, is it? And he’s gotta take the losses.’

‘Give us a lift?’ Vic meekly asked Chris, after that spiky exchange. ‘Be bleedin’ midnight time I get home if I wait fer a bus. Be better off walking …’

‘Yeah, make him walk, Chris, after givin’ you lip,’ Billy called with a wink at Ted.

‘You can shut up ’n’ all …’ Vic snapped narkily. ‘You ain’t offered to give me a lift, have yer, selfish git.’

‘Just get packed up, all of yers, and I’ll drop Vic off home,’ Chris said with a sigh.

Chris was coaxing the old girl’s damp engine to start when he saw, through the van’s window, a woman coming towards him, head down and hand over her nose and mouth. As she got closer and looked up he realised it was Noreen Murphy. Considering the lack of visibility Chris realised she was moving quickly. He immediately wound down the window to speak to her.

‘Have you seen Kieran?’ she burst out, looking anxiously up at him.

Chris could see she was very agitated and on the point of tears. ‘Haven’t seen him this morning. Has he gone out to work?’

‘He hasn’t found proper work, just a day here and there. Yesterday he bumped into one of O’Connor’s men and made him tell him where that cheating divil is now. Kieran set out early to catch him in Camden Town to make him hand over his wages. He says he won’t wait a day longer, and he won’t come back empty handed either.’

‘He hasn’t paid Kieran yet?’ Chris’s voice rose in astonishment. The pikeys had been gone from the street a long while.

Noreen Murphy shook her head and swung a look to and fro. ‘O’Connor gave him some, but not all what he was owed. We need it badly. Kieran wouldn’t have gone out in this otherwise.’ Her teeth started to chatter and she cleared a wet film from her cheeks with shaking fingers.

‘He’ll be alright, luv, don’t worry,’ Chris soothed. ‘Just take him a while to get himself back here; everything’s slowed right up and there’s no transport running …’

‘It’s not him I’m worrying over.’ She raised her glistening eyes to Chris’s face. ‘Little Rosie’s chest is so bad.’ She took a look back the way she’d come as though fretting about leaving the children to come out searching for her husband. ‘She’s struggling to get her breath, the poor little soul. She needs a doctor … where is Kieran? He’ll have to take her to hospital, so he will. I can’t keep dosing her with linctus. It’s no use …’ She twisted around, muttering about having left the children alone for too long.

With a sigh Chris turned off the engine and jumped out of the van. Noreen was again striding so swiftly towards home that she was already lost to view. As he followed her he almost collided with Vic coming towards him, pulling his balaclava down over his head.

‘We off then … ?’ Vic mumbled through the wool.

‘You’ll have to get Billy to drop you off,’ Chris told Vic as his face appeared. ‘I’m gonna offer to give Mrs Murphy a lift to the hospital. Her youngest has got a bad chest. I know she ain’t exaggerating ’cos I’ve heard the little mite coughing all week. Now this fog’s come down …’ Chris’s words tailed off as he shook his head.

He caught up with Noreen as she was running up the stairs. The sound of a child’s whimpering could be heard.

‘I’ll give you a lift to the hospital if you want,’ Chris called after her.

Noreen came down a few steps and gave him a grateful look. ‘Will you? Thank you … I’ll bring them down. Kathleen will have to come too I suppose … not that I want her out in this, but I can’t leave her on her own …’

‘Me aunt’ll watch her while I get you to the hospital,’ Chris said. He knew Matilda was a diamond at giving assistance when it was needed – especially where children’s welfare was concerned. And he knew she was very fond of little Kathleen.

Chris didn’t bother bawling up to Matilda to announce himself today. He went straight in and up the stairs with Kathleen in his arms to bang on his aunt’s door.

Matilda opened up and gawped at him. ‘Where you found her?’ she asked. ‘Under a gooseberry bush?’

‘Can you look after Kathleen for a bit for Mrs Murphy?’ Chris asked without preamble but with an appreciative little chuckle for his aunt’s drollery. ‘The baby needs to go to hospital and Kieran ain’t about to take her.’

Even if Noreen’s husband had returned from tackling O’Connor over his wages, Kieran hadn’t any transport, and would have needed to beg a lift rather than carry the child through the streets to the hospital.

‘’Course I can.’ Matilda held out her arms and Chris handed the child over.

‘Cor, you’re getting a big girl, ain’t yer, Kathleen,’ Matilda said with a huff and a grimace at the cold, slight figure in her arms. ‘See if we can find a few biscuits, shall we, and a nice hot cup of tea to warm you up.’

Kathleen nodded and, as Matilda put her to the floor, she scampered to where she knew the biscuit box was kept on a shelf and gazed at it expectantly.

‘How’s little Rosie, did you say?’ Matilda whispered when sure Kathleen was out of earshot. The tot might only just have turned four years old but she was bright as a button and Matilda didn’t want to make her fret over her baby sister. ‘I know the poor little mite’s chest’s been rattling for weeks. Thought it might be Rosie’s teeth worrying her ’cos I know Noreen said she teeths with bronchitis.’ Her nephew’s bleak expression made Matilda give a heavy sigh.

‘She’s coughing all the time and is as white as a ghost,’ Chris said. ‘Can see why Noreen’s anxious to get her to the hospital as soon as she can.’

‘You’d best get off then.’ Matilda shooed him on his way.

‘Kieran’s got a nice welcome home, ain’t he.’ Chris shook his head. ‘I hope the poor sod has at least managed to get his wages out of that thieving git, O’Connor.’

‘I’ll keep an eye out for him and give him a shout out me window if I manage to spot him through the fog.’

‘Right; won’t be too long, I hope,’ Chris said, moving towards the door. ‘But can’t see a hand in front of your face out there. D’you want anything brought in today, Auntie? Bread? Milk? Save you going out later.’

‘Could do with a loaf and a bottle of milk, Chris.’ Matilda spoke while getting the lid off the biscuit box. ‘You get going and make sure you drive carefully. Kathleen’s gonna be fine here with me so make sure you tell Noreen that ’cos it sounds as though she’s got more’n enough on her plate to worry about.’

Chris reckoned Noreen did have enough to worry about too. As the van crept along slowly through the fog he could hear Rosie’s laboured breathing interspersed with pathetic little mewing sounds. It seemed the baby was too weak even to cry properly and Chris felt anxious and frustrated as the bus in front braked, forcing him again to a stop. He turned his head and squinted through the misty half-light at Noreen. Her face was dipped close to the precious bundle in her arms and Chris glimpsed the tears dripping from the end of her nose as she wept silently. Cursing beneath his breath at their snail-like progress, he took a chance and pulled out to overtake the bus in front. The road ahead seemed empty of vehicles so he put his foot down, praying for a clear run the remainder of the way to the hospital.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

‘’Ere, Vic, I ain’t sure about this …’ The woman’s voice sounded whiny. ‘I think I wanna go home.’

‘Just keep hold of me hand.’ Vic Wilson was picking his way through debris, dragging her with him. His foot knocked against a chunk of rubble and he sent it skittering sideways with his boot and started up the stairs. On reaching the landing he turned right and fumbled in his pocket for candles and matches. He got the light going and led the way to a pile of dustsheets beneath which were stashed a couple of old blankets. He dripped wax onto boards then stuck the burning candle on the floor. Its flame elongated, throwing leaping shadows on the walls of the derelict property.

‘It’s too cold ’n’ creepy, Vic, I wanna go home.’ The woman started retreating towards the door.

Vic leapt up and grabbed her hand. ‘You was alright last week, Sandra. Just ’cos there’s a bit of fog about don’t mean you need to get all frightened. Ain’t Halloween is it, you silly mare? Come ’n’ see what I got under the floorboards.’ He tugged her back with him to the dustsheets and prised up a loose board to reveal a bottle of gin and a few brown ales. With a flourish he produced a couple of dusty tumblers from the same place.

‘Don’t suppose you’ve brought any orange to go with that gin.’ It was a peevish complaint but Sandra was already cleaning out the glass with the sleeve of her coat.

‘Do us a favour …’ Vic muttered, spearing her a sour look. He lunged for her, pulling her down beside him on the makeshift bed. ‘What more could any gel want, eh? Candlelight … nice drink … even got you some chocolate …’ He drew from his pocket a bar of Dairy Milk and broke it in half.

She snuggled up to him, unwrapping her share of the chocolate to take a bite. ‘Pour us a gin then, Vic.’

He half-filled her glass then got the top off his brown ale and took a swig. ‘Bottoms up.’

‘What you said to Deirdre?’ Sandra wound a dark curl about a finger while sliding a sly look at him.

‘None o’ yer business, I’ve told you that before.’ Vic took another gulp of beer and put down the bottle.

‘Your wife ain’t gonna believe you’ve gone out with mates on a night like this.’

Vic took Sandra’s glass of gin and put it down on the boards then rolled on top of her buxom body. ‘Never mind about her …’ he growled, sinking his hot mouth against her throat and drawing deeply. ‘Thinkin’ about you now, ain’t I, and it’s about time we got you out o’ them clothes …’

‘It’s bleedin’ freezin’,’ Sandra protested, trying to hang onto her coat as he shoved it roughly off her shoulders.

‘I’ll soon warm you up gel, don’t you worry about that.’

‘What was that?’ Sandra struggled to sit up, snatching at her coat to cover her plump bare breasts.

Vic had heard the noise too. He scrambled onto his knees and went on all fours towards the door. Through the cloudy darkness he could just make out a pinprick of light moving down below. He sped back to retrieve his trousers and yank them up, thinking all the while he was glad he’d had the foresight to bring a weapon of some sorts with him, just in case they were disturbed.

‘Who’s that?’ he roared out. ‘Show yer fucking self before I come down and put a crowbar over yer crust.’

Sandra was soon at his side, pulling on his arm, terrified. ‘Who is it, Vic? Has some dirty old sod been spying on us at it?’

‘Wouldn’t have seen much, would he, in this?’ Vic snarled, shaking her off. He crept out onto the landing, feeling his way, and peered over the banister into the opaque blackness. He heard a few whispered words then and the accents were unmistakable. ‘If that’s you, O’Connor, I’m on me way down to break yer fuckin’ neck.’ In fact Vic knew he was going to do nothing of the sort. He was shaking like a leaf. He didn’t mind a tear-up with the pikeys when he was mob-handed, but he didn’t fancy taking them on alone, especially with Sandra cramping his style.

But it seemed he wasn’t going to need to worry about defending them. He heard a few more guttural mutterings, and somebody stumbling and cursing, before an engine roared. He fumbled back past Sandra to peer out of the front window at the street. It was impossible to see any more than a shifting shadow as the vehicle pulled away but he’d recognised the sound of Declan’s cranky old motor.

The pikies had been back under cover of the fog, no doubt to see what they could pinch. Vic knew that thankfully nothing was left behind in the way of tools in the evening. Everything got cleared out and taken away on the vans. He knew there’d be no reason to mention this little episode to anybody. No harm was done. He let out a sigh of sheer relief and turned to give Sandra a winning smile. Overlooking the fact that a mop of brown curls was sticking to the tears streaming down her face, and she was vibrating from head to toe in shock, he said jauntily, ‘Scared ’em away, see, now … where was we?’

‘Thank Christ fer that.’ Stevie had opened the door to a bright clear day. ‘Come ’n’ take a look, Chris.’ He turned, smiling happily, to see his son coming along the passage eating a piece of toast.

‘About bleedin’ time too,’ Chris said with a relieved sigh. He’d been bored stiff cooped up at home while waiting for the dreadful smog that had blighted the capital for four days to disperse. During that time London had come to a virtual standstill due to the hazardous atmosphere.

When he got to Whadcoat Street the first person he saw was Kieran Murphy. Chris realised the man had been loitering by the railings, waiting for him to turn up, so he could talk to him.

‘Need to thank you very much for what you did for us the other day.’ Kieran bashfully rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. ‘Already said thank you to your aunt Matilda for looking after Kathleen while you took Rosie to the hospital. Mrs Keiver’s a fine woman.’

‘Yeah, she is,’ Chris said. ‘And I was pleased to help get the little ’un to a doctor. How is Rosie?’

‘She’s fine and back home, thank you for asking.’

Chris noticed Kieran’s eyes filling up and he gave his arm a small comforting shake. ‘I know the poor little mite’s had a cough for a while, so it’s good to know she’s better.’

‘They kept her in the hospital overnight and dosed her with strong medicine,’ Kieran gruffly explained. ‘Noreen has the bottle and must give Rosie some every day this week. A lot of people had the same complaint because of the terrible smog. A very busy place, it was …’ He paused, looking bashful. ‘We should have taken Rosie to a doctor sooner but we were worried they’d find out we lived here …’ Kieran glanced at the slum behind him.

‘Right … got you …’ Chris said, immediately understanding the couple’s fears. He’d heard his aunt recounting tales of Bunk children being forcibly removed from their parents when the authorities deemed them in danger of neglect.

‘I thank the lord the hospital was as busy as it was, for few questions were asked of us. I thank the lord we have the National Health Service too,’ Kieran admitted with a grimace.

‘Don’t know how we managed before without it,’ Chris agreed. ‘You still lookin’ fer work?’ he asked abruptly in an attempt to buck Kieran up.

Kieran nodded and shuffled his feet. ‘Noreen told you that I’d gone after O’Connor for my pay on that day.’

‘Did you get your money?’

Kieran shook his head. He angled his face to show Chris the bruise on a profile he’d been keeping averted. ‘Got that instead. He’s an evil man.’

‘He’s that alright. No work in Ireland for you?’

‘I had work but …’ Kieran sighed. ‘There was a lot of bitterness between my kin and Noreen’s. We come from different sides of the troubles and we didn’t want our children in the middle of a feud. Better that Kathleen and Rosie have just the two of us than know a lot of uncles and cousins who hate one another.’

‘Right … I’m with you …’ Chris said sympathetically. ‘Well, I can let you have a day a week for about a month, that’s all though. Guvnor won’t wear more’n that ’cos there’s nothing in the price, y’see. But you might be able to pick up a bit elsewhere and make yer money up, and it’ll get you past Christmas.’

Kieran’s drawn expression transformed into a smile. ‘That’s grand, thank you. When can I start?’

‘No time like the present,’ Chris answered.

Kieran pumped one of Chris’s hands then turned to rush back towards his house to tell Noreen the good news.

Chris grimaced ruefully to himself. He knew his uncle wouldn’t pay out another penny on the job – he was going to have to dock his own pay to give Kieran his wages. Yet he didn’t regret doing it, although he knew he’d keep his generosity to himself. The lads wouldn’t understand. But Grace would; she’d know why he’d had to help out a man who wanted desperately to provide for his family when Christmas was coming for two little girls …

‘You’ve got a damned cheek, d’you know that?’

‘Just wanted to speak to you, that’s all.’

Grace shot a look at her friend Wendy. But Wendy shrugged and rolled her eyes, letting Grace know she was equally astonished at this unexpected meeting with Hugh Wilkins. She had seen Grace’s ex-fiancé some months ago when out shopping, but she’d not bumped into him since.

Grace had just been returning from her dinner break with her friend when Hugh had called to her before she’d entered their office building. He’d obviously been loitering in the vicinity with the intention of ambushing her.

‘I’ll just go on up, shall I?’ Wendy was letting her friend know she’d stick around if Grace wanted her to.

‘It’s alright,’ Grace sighed and tipped her head towards the door of the building, indicating Wendy should get back to work on time.

‘I’ll cover for you if you’re a bit late back,’ Wendy called from halfway up the steps towards the entrance.

‘I’ll be right behind you, don’t worry,’ Grace said pithily, whipping around to confront Hugh.

‘Don’t go mad, Grace,’ he said quietly, putting out his hands in supplication. ‘I just wanted to speak to you.’

‘Don’t go mad? Just wanted to speak to me?’ she hissed. ‘Why shouldn’t I go mad? And why d’you want to speak to me? What could we possibly have to say to one another now?’

‘Well, I could say sorry …’

‘Sorry! It’s a bit bloody late for that isn’t it!’

‘I want to make it up to you …’ he continued, shoving a hand through his light brown hair.

Enlightenment suddenly transformed Grace’s expression of fury and incomprehension into one of cynicism. ‘You’ve broken up with her already, haven’t you? Chucked you out, did she, when she discovered you were only interested in her money?’

Grace tried to whip past him and enter the building but he gripped her arm.

‘I knew getting married was a mistake from the start, but she kept on about it. I should never have left you,I know that now …’

Grace shook off his fingers. ‘Go and whine to somebody else, Hugh. I’m really not interested.’

‘I know you lost a lot of money when everything was cancelled.’

Grace spun about on a step. ‘Going to offer to reimburse me, are you?’ she asked sarcastically.

‘If you want, I’ll pay you back.’ He gave her a crooked smile. ‘We could have a drink after work. I’m still working at Carruther’s in Moorgate. We could meet up and discuss it, if you like.’

‘Get stuffed.’ Grace enunciated the phrase quietly and hurried on up the steps to the entrance.

By the time she’d settled at her desk and loaded her typewriter with several sheets of paper, interleaved with carbon for the flimsy copies, she’d calmed down a bit. She could see Wendy peering sideways at her from her desk and she simply shook her head, implying there was nothing urgent or interesting to report.

But hard as Grace tried, she couldn’t put from her mind that it had taken her many years to amass the savings that Hugh Wilkins had wasted for her overnight when he’d jilted her. A tiny part of her believed he owed her that money, and if there was a way she could get it back without having to pander to the swine, she knew she’d be very keen to hear about it.

‘If that was me I’d meet the rat like a shot and get every penny I could out of him. He owes you it.’

‘He’s probably lying about reimbursing me just as he lied about everything else.’

Grace and Wendy were in the ladies’ washroom getting ready to leave work. Wendy had kept on about what had gone on with Hugh until Grace had told her. She’d also let her know that it seemed Hugh’s marriage was in trouble already and he was sniffing around her again.

‘You going to tell Chris that Hugh lay in wait for you today?’

Grace shook her head. ‘He’s got enough on his plate with his work and his moth …’ She bit back what she’d been about to say. She never discussed with anybody that Chris was hoping to be reconciled with his mum. Grace had been overjoyed on hearing the news that Pamela had accepted Chris’s bouquet of flowers and had let him know she didn’t object to seeing him again.

Knowing Chris the way she did, he’d probably offer to meet Hugh for her, just so he could ram the two-timing swine’s money back down his throat.

‘What you looking so broody about?’

‘Sorry …’ Grace smiled. ‘Didn’t know I was.’

‘Want another drink?’

Grace shook her head. ‘How’s your dad’s fancy teas going?’ she asked conversationally, determinedly putting Hugh Wilkins from her mind.

Chris put down his tankard and smiled. ‘Sold out of scones the other day. He reckons those are firm favourites, so are home-baked biscuits, and if he could get a bit more sugar he could double his takings.’

‘Has he done any dinners?’

‘A few pies and Spam fritters with mash and cabbage. But he says people are careful with their cash and sticking to afternoon teas is best ’cos there’s more profit.’

‘You’re making me feel hungry …’

‘Fancy a bite to eat?’

Grace shook her head. ‘Best be getting back; work tomorrow.’ She emptied her glass and put it down, frowning, wondering if Hugh would again materialise outside her office in the morning. He’d been there yesterday when she’d arrived in Lombard Street and she was sure she’d seen him hovering on the opposite pavement when she and Wendy went for their dinner breaks, despite the fact she’d told him earlier to clear off and leave her alone.

‘What’s up?’ Chris asked quietly as he helped her out of the van outside her house.

‘Nothing …’ Grace smiled up at him, giving him a final kiss on the lips.

‘You might as well tell me; you will in the end, you know that,’ Chris persuaded huskily.

Grace sighed. ‘It’s just that … Hugh’s been making a nuisance of himself, but I’m not bothered,’ she quickly added, having sensed a sudden tension in the muscled arms enclosing her. ‘I can handle the creep.’

‘Yeah … but I reckon I can probably handle him better. Where does he live?’

‘That’s why I haven’t told you,’ Grace said immediately. ‘It’s not a big deal …’

‘It is to me.’

‘Well, it doesn’t have to be, you know. I don’t want you causing any trouble.’

‘Sounds like he’s causing trouble, not me. What’s he want? I thought you said he was married now.’

‘He is, but it looks like things are going sour there, and serves him right. I expect his wife’s found out he’s a money-grabbing bastard.’

Chris looked thoughtful as he stepped away from her to lean back against the van. ‘Why haven’t you told me before?’

‘I said. I don’t want any trouble.’

‘Has he said he wants to get back with you?’

‘Not in so many words.’

‘What words has he used?’

‘He said sorry … and that he knows I lost a lot of money when all the wedding preparations were cancelled. I did too. I lost nearly every penny of my savings.’ Grace frowned and stuffed her hands in her pockets. She knew she’d sounded too grasping. ‘Forget about him. I asked Mum about Christmas Day.’ She quickly changed subject.

‘What did she say?’

‘Well, she had a moan as she always does, but in the end she said she’d like to come over to your uncle and aunt’s. I knew she’d agree, even if it is just to be nosy and have a look about their big house.’ Grace bit her lip. ‘The thing is … I don’t like to think of my nan being on her own. She usually comes to us for her Christmas dinner, you see.’

‘’Course she can come as well,’ Chris said.

‘Hadn’t you better ask your aunt and uncle first, if it’s all right.’ Grace sounded doubtful.

‘I’ll ask them, but I know what Faye and Rob’ll say … the more the merrier.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

‘I didn’t think we’d all fit in to the dining room …’

Faye, looking slightly hot and harassed, sat down at the table, the last to do so, and glanced about with a satisfied smile at the festive scene. The snowy-white linen cloths were decorated with flaming tapers and sprigs of holly and ivy. Just in front of her husband, seated at one end, was an enormous turkey that had one side carved down close to the bone. The other succulent breast was still protected by crisp bronze skin. Bowls filled with roasted vegetables, stuffing and other yuletide trimmings were lined along the centre of the table and the air was heavy with savoury scent.

‘I’ve had more people than this in my couple of rooms back in The Bunk,’ Matilda proudly proclaimed, straightening her paper hat before digging in to her Christmas dinner once more.

‘We did too, back in the old day, didn’t we, Mum.’ Alice Chaplin gave her mother a grin as she also cut into her turkey and stuffing. ‘Remember the sing-songs we used to have on a Saturday night round the piano?’

‘Remember it like it were yesterday,’ Matilda replied gruffly. ‘Yer dad bashing away on the old joeyanna and all the neighbours singing and jigging about in a space where you wouldn’t think you could swing a cat.’

‘And old Twitch, the copper, yelling up to us to keep the noise down, or he’d come and sort us out,’ Sophy Lovat, Matilda’s eldest daughter, chipped in. She glanced at her husband, Danny. In the olden days the Lovats had lived next door to the Keivers in Campbell Road and they’d been childhood sweethearts. ‘Remember it, Dan?’

Danny grinned. ‘Couldn’t ever forget it. I’d’ve liked to see that old sod Twitch try to put a stop to those Saturday shindigs. Geoff, God rest him, used to enjoy those nights.’ His voice sounded full of gravel as he remembered his younger brother, lost to the Great War.

‘On that note, I reckon it’s time for a toast,’ Rob said. He picked up his wine, waiting for the assembled company to join him in raising their glasses before solemnly announcing, ‘Absent friends …’

‘Absent friends …’ rippled as a single murmur through the room.

‘Has everybody got enough turkey?’ Ever the vigilant hostess, Faye rose slightly in her chair to take a look around at the numerous plates, to spot where a refill might be needed. ‘You look as though you’re ready for seconds, Chris. Rob, carve a few more slices in case anybody wants some more.’

Robert and Faye Wild’s usually spacious and elegant dining room was crammed with furniture and people. The main long table had several others coming off it at right angles to accommodate the crowd of kith and kin who had gathered for a big Christmas get-together in Islington.

Matilda and her four daughters were present with their husbands, although her grandchildren and great-grandchildren were spending most of their Christmas Day in their own homes. Many of the extended family would turn up in the evening for the boozy party that went on into the small hours of Boxing Day.

Daisy Wild was sitting next to her brother Adam and it was the first time Grace had met him. When they’d been introduced earlier she’d thought him a handsome, amiable young man with a quiet, slightly reserved manner, unlike his father’s boisterous side of the family, but the spitting image of his mum.

Grace had been made to feel very welcome by everybody, as had her mother and grandmother. Nan Jackson got on with most people and had settled comfortably into her plush surroundings. Grace knew her mother was a bit overwhelmed by evidence of the Wilds’ luxurious lifestyle, but was trying hard not to show it. When they got home later, no doubt Shirley would attempt to nitpick over their faultless hospitality despite the fact that Grace had observed her fluttering her eyelashes at Rob on a couple of occasions. The pash her mother had admitted having for him as a young woman had obviously not completely withered away. He was a charming host to everybody but quite clearly besotted with his wife.

‘Pull a cracker?’ Chris leaned across the table and held out a shiny red cracker towards Grace.

‘Reckon you’ve already pulled one there, son,’ Stevie said with a wink at Grace that made her blush. Stevie and Pearl were seated next to one another, steadily sipping festive spirit, and already quite merry.

‘Stop embarrassing the girl, Stevie,’ Lucy rebuked her cousin.

Lucy was Matilda’s youngest daughter and still youthfully attractive despite having turned forty. She gamely tried to draw Shirley into the conversation.

‘You live in Tottenham, don’t you, Shirley? Are your family Tottenham Hotspur supporters?’

‘We only support Arsenal in this house,’ Stevie warned, wagging a finger.

‘My Wilf used to support the Arsenal,’ Shirley said, putting down her sherry. ‘Me and Grace aren’t really keen on football, are we, Grace?’

‘You know your dad was a staunch Tottenham man, Shirley.’ Nan Jackson neatly placed down her knife and fork with a pat on her full stomach. ‘He had no truck with the Arsenal, I’m afraid to say …’

‘That’s fighting talk!’ Stevie adopted a fierce expression for the tiny elderly lady.

‘Enough about bloody football,’ Beth said. She was another of Matilda’s daughters and had married a man from The Bunk. She glanced at her husband. George was a staunch Gunners fan, as were most men who had grown up in Campbell Road, and all of them were still smarting at having lost the Cup Final that year.

‘Talking about religion and politics used to be taboo in company; now it’s football as well.’ Faye shook her head in mock despair. ‘Turn on the wireless, Rob, and let’s listen to some carols before things get heated.’

‘Queen’s making her first Christmas speech,’ Matilda announced. ‘We can’t miss listening to that.’

A general opinion undulated around the room that the new queen’s first Christmas speech was undoubtedly the highlight of the day.

‘And talking of the queen we’ve got a few plans to put in place for our big Coronation Day party next June.’

‘Plenty of time for that,’ Stevie said. ‘Ain’t got Christmas over with yet.’

‘We should make it a good street party; it’ll be the last.’ Faye’s comment started off much solemn nodding and grimacing from the assembled company. Everybody knew that The Bunk would soon be no more.

‘Will you be home, son?’ Rob asked Adam. ‘Be good if you were about and could come to the Coronation Day do.’

‘Hope I don’t miss it, Dad, but too soon to tell if I’ll get leave or not.’

‘And you must bring Geraldine.’ Faye mentioned her future daughter-in-law who today had gone home to spend Christmas with her folks in Kent.

‘I’m getting together a list of addresses for you two gels.’ Matilda pointed at Daisy and Grace. ‘You’re the clever ones in the family and can do the honours when it comes to writing to old acquaintances to let them know what’s going on. I’ve never been no great shakes at me letters but I don’t mind using one of you lot’s telephones and making a call if I’ve got the number.’

‘Saw Sarah Whitton the other day, Mum, and told her what you’re planning,’ Alice chipped in.

‘Still with that layabout Herbert, is she?’ Matilda asked. Sarah Whitton and Herbert Banks had been on and off as a couple since schooldays. They were now in their fifties and no closer to tying the knot than they had been as teenagers.

‘I said she could bring him along, if she wants,’ Alice replied. ‘And she’s asking her sisters too.’

‘I reckon Jeannie Robertson’s still going strong with Johnny Blake though I ain’t spoke to her in a while.’ Matilda mentioned a woman who had once been a neighbour, and a very close friend. ‘We sort of lost touch during the last war, but I’ve got an address in Mayfair for the two of ’em. I reckon they’re still living there, if the house survived the bombing. Beautiful place that were; good as yours, Rob,’ she said, glancing around at her stylish surroundings. ‘Went there a few times to see Jeannie; you visited her once too, didn’t you, Al?’ Matilda paused to reflect on that time in her youth when her husband Jack had been fighting on the Somme.

‘Me and Sarah Whitton went to visit her,’ Alice replied.

‘And I’ve roped Beattie Evans in to help with the party preparations.’ Matilda’s thoughts had quickly returned to her favourite subject. ‘She’s got a few people to contact. And of course, Margaret’s gonna pitch in.’ She grinned at Danny as she mentioned his mum. ‘Numbers could run into the hundreds if everybody who’s asked turns up.’

‘I’m planning on going up The Mall on the big day and wave me flag as the queen’s coach goes by,’ Pearl announced. ‘We’ll shut up shop that day,’ she told Stevie.

‘Stevie ain’t allowed to go.’ Matilda winked at her nephew. ‘He’s doing all the grub for the party so will be busy all day long in the street.’

‘Who’s paying for all this?’ Stevie suddenly enquired.

Index fingers suddenly appeared from all sides of the tables. Most were pointing at their host.

‘Thanks fer that,’ Rob said, exceedingly dryly.

‘Shouldn’t we have a whip round?’ Grace had piped up with that, conscious of the injustice of expecting Chris’s uncle to stump up for all of it.

‘’Course we’ll have a whip round, love,’ Rob told her gently. ‘They always like to pull my leg.’

‘We weren’t,’ was chorused back at him with much laughter.

‘Right, who’s for Christmas pud and mince pies?’ Faye asked brightly, noticing Grace looking bashful for not understanding a longstanding family joke. Rob was wealthy and the family, without rancour, often brought it to his attention.

‘Need a bit of a blow first.’ Matilda leaned forward to spear a Yorkshire pudding from the bowl on the table. ‘I will say, gel, you do make a decent bit of batter,’ she told Faye. ‘Can’t let these go to waste. I reckon I’ll have my plum pud by the wireless in the front room, while I’m listening to the queen. And I’d like a sixpence in my bit, please …’

After dinner, when everybody was crammed into the front room, seated in a semi-circle, awaiting the start of Queen Elizabeth’s first Christmas speech, Chris beckoned to Grace to join him at the back of the gathering.

‘Want to speak to you,’ he whispered in her ear, then followed up by brushing his lips against her rosy cheek. He took her hand and they slipped from the room, along the hallway, and into a kitchen that was filled with washed and stacked crockery, baking trays, and an aroma of sage and onion stuffing.

‘I’m gonna go and see me mum this afternoon and wish her a Happy Christmas.’

Grace stared at him with wide, shining eyes, a hesitant smile on her lips. ‘Does your dad know?’ she whispered.

Chris shook his head. ‘Don’t want to ruin his Christmas by saying nuthin’ about it. But don’t want to think of me mum all on her own for the whole day, neither.’

‘She might not be,’ Grace said. ‘Perhaps she’s had some friends over?’

‘I know she might have company of some sorts, but no family, I reckon. Anyhow I’ve got her a present. Ain’t much; just some chocolates and perfume. But I think she’ll like it.’

Grace gave him a spontaneous, rewarding hug. ‘’Course she’ll like it,’ she murmured gruffly. ‘She’ll be so pleased you’ve not forgotten her.’

‘Ain’t forgotten you either …’ He looked on the point of blurting something out, but instead drew from his pocket a box. ‘Go down on one knee if you want …’ He sounded nervous but his adoring dark eyes roved her face as he asked huskily, ‘Will you marry me, Grace?’ He opened the little box to show her a solitaire diamond ring. ‘Ain’t as fancy as I’d have liked to get you, but now me wages have dropped back a bit since I took on Kieran Murphy, I thought no point waiting longer to try and save a bit more …’

Grace threw her arms about him and kissed him full on the lips. ‘Of course, I’ll marry you,’ she breathed against his mouth. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’ She blinked, sniffed back tears, fiddled with his new tie. ‘I only got you this …’

‘It’s enough,’ he said, stroking a few fingers on the slubbed silk, ’cos we’ve got to start saving now.’

‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘And I’m glad you didn’t put Kieran off before Christmas just to spend more on me.’ She took the little box to study her engagement ring. ‘It’s beautiful … just right. Hope it’s a perfect fit too …’ Gently she eased the gem from its velvet bed and, having turned it this way and that to watch its rainbow sparkle, let Christopher slip it on her finger.

‘Made to measure,’ he said with a pleased chuckle. His hands cupped her face. ‘Will you come to see me mum with me? I’d like to introduce you as my future wife, ’cos I love you and I want her to know.’

‘I love you too,’ Grace returned softly. ‘But how are we going to escape?’ Her eyes were glittering with happiness and excitement. ‘And … are we going to tell them all we’re engaged? Don’t know how my mum’ll react; but I’m sure my nan will be very pleased.’

‘Perhaps we should announce it tomorrow in case Shirley causes an atmosphere. I’ll come over in the morning and we’ll tell her then.’

‘She’s already tucked away a few sherries, so it could go either way,’ Grace admitted. ‘Never know with Mum, when she’s had a few, if she’ll nod off or start a war.’

‘When shall we get married?’ Chris asked.

‘Tomorrow?’ Grace returned, achingly softly.

He drew her into his arms and kissed her. ‘If only we could. Soon as I’ve got the money together, we’ll do it. Can’t ask for me dad’s help now he’s got pressure on him with this new business. And it ain’t fair to expect your mum to help either, being as she’s a widow.’

‘I’ll save as much as I can,’ Grace said. ‘If I can get overtime I’ll do it. Where will we live?’

‘Don’t mind … Tottenham if you want. Don’t care so long as we’re together.’ He hugged her tightly to him, dropping a kiss on her soft fair hair.

‘I’ve thought of an excuse to escape!’ Grace exclaimed in a whisper, pushing back from him a bit. ‘These new shoes are killing me. It’s not a fib; Mum knows I’ve got blisters.’ She eased off one of her new leather courts with a pained grimace. ‘We can say you’re taking me home to get a comfortable pair to put on. If me mum and nan don’t want to stay for tea we can take them home at the same time, then go and see Pamela.’ Grace not only wanted to accompany Chris to see his mother, she yearned for some private time with her fiancé so they could discuss their exciting future plans.

‘’Course it’s an excuse,’ Matilda growled at Stevie, who’d just frowningly watched his son and Grace leave the room. ‘Young love, ain’t it. Those two want a little bit of time on their own … only natural.’ She turned to Shirley, seated next to her on a sumptuous velvet settee. ‘Credit to you, that gel.’ Following her pronouncement Matilda took a sip of Irish whiskey and smacked her lips.

Shirley graciously accepted the compliment by dipping her head.

‘Glad you’re stopping for a bit longer, Shirley, and yer mum ’n’ all. You wouldn’t want to miss the spread we’ll have, come teatime,’ Matilda told her, settling back comfortably. ‘If you’re partial to a sausage roll, or turkey sandwich, then you’ll be in luck later. Afterwards, there’s jellies and fruit and a sherry trifle. And when you’ve had yer fill of all o’ that lot, I can promise you Faye bakes a lovely fruitcake …’

‘Shhh …’ Faye begged for hush from the assembled company as the queen’s crisp, clear tones were heard. They listened in silence until the speech had ended.

‘Well … that was nice,’ Faye said to break the quiet.

‘Didn’t forget to mention them serving abroad, did she.’ Rob nodded. ‘And quite right too.’

‘Gracious as you like, weren’t she, bless her. And she mentioned the Coronation Day next summer, so that’s made me even more determined to make it a great party.’ Matilda hoisted her whiskey. ‘A toast to our new queen.’ Glasses were raised and Matilda’s words were echoed by one and all.

Shirley took another sip of sherry. ‘Having such a nice time,’ she slurred. A moment later her eyelids had fallen closed and her chin was sagging towards her shoulder.

‘That’s it, gel, get yer head down fer a while.’ Matilda gave Shirley’s knee a pat. ‘Serious drinkin’ starts after teatime …’

Matilda took Shirley’s half-empty sherry glass, and put it safely on a table.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

‘Lights are on, so someone’s home.’

Grace nodded and her eyes veered from the little terraced house to collide with Chris’s in the twilight. ‘Do you want to go and knock on your own, or shall I come with you now?’

‘Better go on me own first in case she’s entertaining and gets embarrassed to see me. Don’t want to upset her at all. If she seems a bit flustered I’ll just give her the present and come away.’ He turned in his seat and drew forth from the back of the van a neatly wrapped gift topped by a small bow. A moment later he was walking quickly away from the vehicle.

Grace watched with bated breath as he knocked then turned back to give her a nervous smile while shuffling from foot to foot. A moment later the door was opened and Chris was bathed in muted coral light. But Grace couldn’t see who was standing in the hallway.

Suddenly he turned and beckoned, evidently relieved, and with a deep breath Grace fought to slide open the van door and jump out.

‘Sorry, I’ve nothing else to offer you, but I usually treat myself to this at Christmas as I quite like it.’ Pamela gave a small smile, approaching Grace with the bottle of ginger wine.

‘Oh, that’s fine, thank you,’ Grace said quickly. ‘But I won’t have more than just a little drop.’ She didn’t want to take too much out of what looked to be Pamela’s solitary bottle of Christmas cheer.

Pam returned to her chair, her eyes darting back to her son, clinging to him, before she unconsciously brushed her fingers over the gift he’d brought her, placed on the table at her side. ‘I shall open it when you’re gone, if that’s alright. I’m sorry, I haven’t got something for you … I didn’t think I’d see …’

‘Don’t worry, please, ’course you didn’t know I’d come over today,’ Chris burst out over her apology. He was seated opposite his mother in a chair close to the hearth. ‘So … you had a Christmas drink earlier with Mrs Rathbone and her husband, that was nice.’ He sounded jolly.

‘They’re good neighbours, but she can be a little bit … inquisitive.’ Pam gave her son a tiny private smile, knowing he’d remember her neighbour’s threat to get the police on him on the first occasion he’d come to see her. ‘I only stay for an hour, but it’s enough. They’ve got their kids and the grandchildren over today, so they’ve got a houseful.’ She paused. ‘Oh, and tomorrow they’ll come in to me for a Boxing Day drink once they’ve seen off their family.’

Pam glanced at the bottle of beer she’d given to Chris. She knew she’d now only a couple left to offer Mr Rathbone, and very little ginger wine left to share with Gladys, but she didn’t care. She knew she’d be overjoyed if Christopher would stay long enough to drink the whole lot this evening.

Continually her eyes were drawn like magnets to her son although she tried hard not to stare in case she embarrassed him.

‘Your tree looks very nice,’ Grace said into the silence. She looked at the small fir adorned with baubles and tinsel. It seemed to be the only concession to Christmas. There were no other decorations up in the room and very few Christmas cards on the mantel.

‘They make a bit of a mess when the needles drop, don’t they?’ Pam clucked her tongue.

‘But I like the nice fresh scent, don’t you?’ Grace replied with a smile.

‘Are your mum and dad in good health?’ Chris asked huskily. He desperately wanted to know about his grandparents. He thought his mother looked startled by his question but eventually she answered him.

‘My father is dead … my mother … I don’t see her much,’ Pam said and took a sip of ginger wine. She suddenly put it down. ‘Would you like a bite to eat? I could do a sandwich … or there’s some Dundee cake if you’d prefer …’

‘No, thank you all the same, we’ve had a big blow-out dinner at me uncle and aunt’s …’ Chris’s voice tailed off. He wished he’d not mentioned that. There was no hint of turkey and stuffing here, just the faint scent of lavender polish and the smoky aroma of burning logs coming from the fireplace. He felt a stabbing pain in his guts because his mother had probably not bothered with a Christmas dinner at all. He wished now he’d come over to see her on Christmas Eve and offered to spend the day with her. If she’d wanted his company he’d have foregone his big merry Christmas with his father’s family despite the war that would have started at home when he told Stevie where he’d be going.

Grace watched Pam as she sipped her drink and flicked constant glances at Chris. The woman was trying hard to be amiable to them both but Grace could tell Pam wanted to have her son to herself for a while. And Grace thought that was right. Besides, Chris probably had personal things he’d like to ask Pamela, but he wouldn’t want to make his mother feel uneasy by voicing them now, in front of his fiancée.

‘May I use your bathroom?’ Grace asked quietly, placing down her glass.

‘Oh … of course. Top of the stairs, first door. Shall I show you?’

‘No need. I’ll find it, thank you.’

‘So, when will you get married?’ Pam burst out cheerfully when the door had closed behind Grace. ‘Have you set a date?’

‘Not sure when it’ll be,’ Chris admitted diffidently. ‘Only got engaged today.’ He grinned boyishly. ‘Nobody knows … except you …’

‘You’ve told me first? Before your father?’

Chris nodded. ‘But I came here to give you your present as well.’

‘Thank you.’ Pam returned his smile, eyes glowing. She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘She’s a lovely girl, you’ll be happy … I know you will …’

‘Grace is a diamond. She’s encouraged me to come and find you right from the start.’

‘Does … does your father know you’re here?’

Chris shook his head and gulped at his beer.

‘Does he know that you’ve been here at all?’

‘No,’ Chris admitted. ‘But I told him I wanted to find you a while ago.’

‘He was angry when you told him,’ Pam guessed. ‘I knew he would be.’

‘It’s up to me what I do, not him,’ Chris gently replied. ‘If he doesn’t like it, it’s too bad.’

‘Don’t fall out with your father because of me,’ Pam said. ‘I’m not worth it.’

‘’Course you are!’ Chris jumped up and in two strides was dropping to his knees in front of his mother’s chair. ‘’Course you’re worth it! You’re me mum …’ He gazed earnestly at her lined features.

‘And he’s your dad, and he’s brought you up his way …’ Pam quietly championed her ex-husband without glancing away from her lap.

‘Are you ashamed of me?’ Chris asked hoarsely. ‘’Cos I’m one of the Wilds and they’re a rough lot?’

‘No! Ashamed of you?’ Pam raised her glistening eyes to the ceiling. ‘How could anyone be ashamed of having a son like you?’ She placed a quivering hand on his dark hair and smoothed his cheek before returning it to her lap. ‘Look at you! You’re handsome, polite and kind … you’re everything …’ She knuckled her moist eyes. ‘Stephen’s done a fine job bringing you up, so don’t you go falling out with him because of me.’

Chris got to his feet. ‘Did you regret having me, is that why you went off and left me behind?’

‘No … it’s just …’ Pam hesitated. ‘I wasn’t a good mother … I couldn’t cope, so it was best your father looked after you.’

‘Did you try and see me when I was little?’

Pam nodded.

‘But he wouldn’t let you?’

Again she nodded.

‘That weren’t fair.’ Chris sounded angry.

‘It was … don’t blame him,’ Pam interjected. ‘Although I didn’t think so at the time, it was fair. I deserved to be punished …’

‘Why? What did you do?’ Chris asked hoarsely.

A long silence preceded her admission.

Immediately after losing Christopher Pamela had tried to prepare for this talk a thousand times or more, so sure had she been that she could persuade Stephen she was fit to have her baby back. She’d understood she might have to account to Christopher for her cruelty at some time. But her pleas, and her optimism, had fallen on Stephen’s deaf ears and so had withered away over the years, together with, so she’d believed, the necessity to explain herself. It was only recently she’d again gone over in her mind how she might mitigate once having almost killed her only child. But she wouldn’t lie to him … it was too precious, too pure a moment to sully it with cowardly deceit.

‘I gave you … something to quieten you because I couldn’t cope. I was too selfish and stupid to try hard enough to cope. So I gave you something to quieten you …’ she whispered and stared at the fire.

‘What was it?’

‘A drug … laudanum … don’t hear that name often now … gave you too much. It was dangerous … far too much …’

Chris was frowning in silence at her strained, white profile as she watched the flames.

‘You nearly poisoned me to death?’

She gave a single nod while staring at the blaze with tears trickling down her cheeks.

Chris remained still and silent for almost a minute before leaving the room. He found Grace hovering on the stairs. ‘Ready?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘Are we saying goodbye?’ she whispered and glanced at the front room.

‘Nothing more to say.’ He opened the front door then waited for her to precede him into the street.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

‘You promised to give me back fifty pounds today.’

Grace was finding it difficult to contain her temper. She glanced around the pub interior, already regretting agreeing to meet Hugh. He’d contacted her several times about returning her some money as a gesture of goodwill, even going so far as to hand a note, begging for a meeting, to the porter at her office. The old fellow had slipped it to her while she’d been pounding away on her typewriter.

Yesterday Hugh had caught her after she’d finished for the day and was on her way to the tube station. She’d been walking with Wendy and, as soon as her friend had spied his lofty, smartly suited presence heading in their direction, she’d prodded Grace to get what she could from the low-down rat.

Now Grace was wishing she’d not listened to anything but an inner voice that had been warning her Hugh Wilkins was callous and only out for himself.

From the first time he’d ambushed her outside her office she’d had an instinct that he was spinning her a line in order to get back with her now his wife had realised he was a chancer. Even knowing she’d got engaged a month ago hadn’t put Hugh off his pursuit. Grace wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t turned a hair when she told him she was engaged. Considering he was a man who’d easily jilted her close to their wedding day and now didn’t seem to value his own marriage, he was acting true to form. She felt a fool for having ever in her life got involved with such a nasty character. It was no valid excuse that she’d been young and gullible, and he’d been a plausible liar; she should have known better.

‘I did try to get fifty pounds for you.’ Hugh shrugged, took a swig of beer while looking around the pub’s clientele. He was always keen to spot a bigwig to ingratiate himself with. And now it looked as though his main meal ticket might soon be whipped away he could do with giving his career a boost. ‘Val’s watching me like a hawk and I don’t want to end up getting arrested.’

‘What’s she got to do with it?’ Grace impatiently stood up. ‘This is between you and me and nothing to do with your wife. Why would you get arrested?’

‘She holds the purse strings; or in this case the key to the bureau where the cash is kept.’ Hugh’s mouth thinned in annoyance. ‘The old cow would get the law on me too, if she caught me, but she won’t, trust me.’

Grace abruptly sat down again in the chair opposite him, her complexion turning white. ‘Well, you kept that quiet, didn’t you!’ she hissed in shock. ‘You implied you were going to pay me from your salary at the end of the month because your conscience was pricking you. Now you tell me you were going to give me money stolen from your wife’s bureau?’ She glared at him, her expression quickly displaying her disgust. ‘You’re a thief as well as a liar. I feel sorry for her; I hope she does set the law on you.’

Hugh lunged for one of her arms, gripping it tightly as she would have yanked it away. He glanced furtively about to make sure nobody was watching them tussle.

‘Get your hand off me, and don’t you dare contact me again, do you hear?’ Grace spat in an undertone. She jerked herself free with such force that she knocked her half-full glass onto the floor where it shattered.

Ignoring the stares she strode out of the pub and headed back towards her place of work.

Tears of rage and frustration were glittering in her eyes as she marched on. She’d thought that when she saw Chris later she’d have some good news for him. She’d known all along he’d be angry when he found out she’d met Hugh, but had hoped he’d understand why she’d done it when she produced fifty pounds to be put in their wedding kitty.

Christopher was still paying Kieran from his wages and doing any overtime he could get hold of to try and make up the shortfall. They were trying hard to save for a deposit on a property, but Grace felt guilty that she’d contributed very little to the pot. Once she gave her mother some housekeeping money, and laid out for her fares and dinners, there was little left from her pay to contribute towards their future. Christopher told her he didn’t mind, and it was his job to provide for them both. Neither of them wanted a long engagement, yet they were both adamant they’d rather wait till they had enough for their own place than start married life living with either of their parents. Dejectedly, Grace realised the wedding was going to be some way off yet.

Once they’d announced their engagement on Boxing Day both Shirley and Stevie had offered to house them on hearing they wanted to get married as soon as possible. Grace had understood her mum’s proposal had been prompted more by economics than generosity. Shirley would be able to supplement her small income with their rent, and Grace didn’t blame her for being practical about it.

Stevie had said they could have the second bedroom in his place free of charge, but Grace had known from Pearl’s strained smile that only conflict would ensue from that situation. In any case, neither offer had tempted her and Chris because they remained determined to start off married life in their own little home …

‘Piss off,’ Grace muttered, her voice dripping with disdain. Hugh had sped up and tried to halt her by swerving in front of her. She shoved him aside and carried on.

‘This bloke you’re with hasn’t done you any favours, you know.’ Hugh loped after her again. ‘You sound common as muck, you know that?’ he jeered.

Grace sent a shout of laughter over a shoulder. ‘Good. I hope I’m just like him. He’s the only reason I met you today. Know why? ’Cos I love him and can’t wait to be his wife, and I’m damned if I’ll let a good, decent man like him work his fingers to the bone to get the money for us to get married when I ought to have had savings to chip in.’

‘Managed to get you into bed, has he? Or are you still frigid?’

Grace whirled about and cracked a hand against his cheek, unaware of a blue Bedford van pulling up at the kerb.

Chris leapt out and was by her side in a matter of a few seconds.

‘Don’t think I need to ask you who you are, pal,’ he ejected through his teeth. His hand snaked to Hugh’s throat, squeezing, before he shoved him forcefully away.

‘This him?’ he asked Grace.

She nodded, whitening in shock at his sudden appearance before a guilty blush stole across her cheeks.

‘She’s told you to leave her alone. Now I’m telling you. Bother her again and it’ll be the last thing you do … understand?’

‘She met me for a drink of her own free will. Ask her …’ Hugh gasped out, rubbing his grazed throat. His expression was vindictive and pinned on Grace. Then he looked Chris up and down, a sneer on his face, as he took in his grubby workman’s overalls. With deliberate contempt he straightened his tie then started brushing down his dark suit as though to rid it of contamination. ‘Don’t worry, mate, you’re welcome to my leftovers,’ Hugh drawled, then with a laugh he turned to walk off.

Chris yanked him back by a shoulder and gave him a short sharp one to the jaw. ‘Need to learn a bit of respect when you’re speaking to my fiancée, mate.’

Hugh staggered back against a wall clutching his aching face but he didn’t retaliate even though Chris allowed him time to get his balance and throw a punch. Hugh wasn’t looking so superior a few seconds later when he slunk off, ignoring the few bystanders who were gawping at the scene.

Chris pivoted about to stare at Grace. ‘That true, what he said? You’ve had a drink with him?’

‘It’s not like that …’

‘What is it like?’

‘What are you doing here at this time of the day?’ Grace blurted out. Chris never came to her office during her dinner break although he had picked her up after work on occasions when he had to visit a merchant’s in the area. It had always been a lovely surprise to see his blue van parked at the kerb when she came down the steps.

‘Come to tell you me uncle Rob knows of a house going cheap. He said to look at it straight away when we finish work today ’cos it’s going to auction this week. So I got off work to tell you but …’ He gave her a hard stare. ‘Perhaps we won’t bother, eh?’ he finished softly.

‘You’ve not let me explain,’ Grace started. ‘You don’t understand what’s gone on.’

‘I’m listening,’ Chris said quietly.

‘I did go for a drink with him but only ’cos he said he’d give me fifty pounds.’

‘Yeah? And what was he expecting in return?’ Chris sounded viciously sardonic.

Grace felt her temper rising. Everything she’d done, she’d done while thinking about him, so he wouldn’t need to work so hard, because she felt it was only fair that she contributed towards their future. Now he was allowing stupid jealousy to make him lewd and nasty. She noticed Wendy a way along the street, waving to her and pointing to her watch.

‘I’ve got to go; me dinner break’s over and I need to get back.’

‘You’ve not told me why you’ve been for a drink with him.’

‘You know why; I’ve told you before he’s promised to give me back some of the money I lost when we cancelled our wedding.’

‘Yeah, and I thought we’d agreed you’d let it go and never see him again. You’re engaged to me now, or so I thought …’

‘You’re being daft, Chris.’ Grace looked close to tears. ‘I just want us to get the money together so we can get married. It’s not fair you do it all on your own. I want to be able to help us set up home.’

‘You saying you think I can’t support you and that you’ll have to carry on working after we’re married?’

‘I don’t mind carrying on working till we start a family, I’ve told you I think that’s a good idea.’ Grace spun on the spot, looking harassed. ‘We can’t talk about it now. I’ve got to get back to the office, but I’d love to look at this house after work with you. Where is it?’

He walked away from her then stopped a few yards from the van to lob over a shoulder, ‘Don’t matter. Seems to me we’ve got a lot of things to iron out before we take the plunge on a property. I’ll tell me uncle Rob we’re gonna give this one a miss.’

‘Hello there, Kathleen,’ Matilda called out in greeting as she approached Smithie’s shop. The Murphys’ little girl was loitering outside. ‘Where’s your mum? Getting something for your tea, is she?’

Kathleen nodded and pointed to the door, indicating Noreen was inside.

‘Reckon I might find a couple of pennies fer sweeties. Been good fer yer mummy, have you?’

Kathleen grinned up at Matilda. It was a bitterly cold February day and as Matilda took hold of Kathleen’s hand she could feel her small, icy fingers clutching tightly at her glove. Matilda entered the shop to find Noreen with baby Rosie, swaddled in a shawl, in her arms. It seemed she’d been unsuccessfully asking old Smithie for stuff on the strap.

‘Gotta pay up something for what you’ve already had, Mrs Murphy, before I let you take more,’ he grumbled with much head-shaking. He dragged her groceries back towards him on the counter. ‘Only doin’ it fer yer own good, y’know. Yer husband’s gonna be after me if I let you chalk up a long tab he can’t settle.’

‘There’s no need to tell him. I can bring in something Friday, so I can,’ Noreen pleaded in a whisper, turning about at hearing the doorbell’s clatter. She grew red on seeing Matilda leading her daughter in from the cold.

‘Kathleen! I told you to stay here with me. Thought she was behind me there,’ she told Matilda. ‘She must’ve followed Beattie Evans out a short while ago.’

‘Give her the stuff she needs, you miserable old git,’ Matilda growled at Smithie.

Matilda had known the Smith family for a long while and spoke to Peter Smith in the same way she’d addressed his father, Godfrey, half a century previously: in any way she pleased. Godfrey had not been such a stickler for weekly payments from creditors as was his son.

Before the Great War, when Matilda’s darling Jack had been alive, and her middle-aged daughters were still schoolgirls, the majority of families living in Campbell Road had lived hand-to-mouth. Godfrey had kept the Keivers and the Wilds afloat by allowing them groceries on tick. In those tough times – that Matilda nevertheless reflected on nostalgically – finding a forgotten farthing was akin to unearthing treasure. Godfrey would dole out small amounts of tea or jam or broken biscuits in return for the tiny copper to assist the destitute in their fight for survival.

‘Listen ’ere, Tilly, I’ve got a business ter run …’ Smithie started moaning.

‘You can afford it,’ Matilda muttered. ‘Made yourself a tidy amount out of what I’ve bought off yer over the years, don’t say you ain’t,’ she mocked. ‘And I’ll have a bag o’ sweets fer that.’ She plonked down her two pennies.

‘It’s alright, you don’t have to do that,’ Noreen said in her soft Irish tone. She still seemed embarrassed at having been overheard begging for credit.

‘Fill it up … that ain’t two penn’orth …’ Matilda grumbled as Smithie held out a brown paper bag containing an assortment of liquorice and sherbet and chews.

‘You’ll be the ruin of me, Matilda Keiver,’ Smithie complained, winding more black bootlaces into the bag.

‘Yeah … you told me that more’n twenty year ago,’ Matilda returned dryly. ‘And since then you’ve had two new cars, and a new wife, so don’t you go pleadin’ poverty.’

Noreen was about to forget her groceries and slip out of the shop while Matilda was engaged in a verbal duel with the shopkeeper.

Matilda caught at one of her thin arms and gave Smithie a significant stare.

‘Just this lot then, Mrs Murphy … but bring in something before the weekend.’ Peter Smith sighed.

Noreen quickly put Rosie on her unsteady little feet. She started loading bread and tea and milk into her shopping bag and mumbled her gratitude before quickly whipping her youngest up, settling her on her hip and heading for the door in case he changed his mind.

When they were outside, being buffeted by a bitter breeze, Noreen again tucked the wool shawl about Rosie’s shoulders to protect her from the cold.

‘Why don’t you come over mine fer a cup of tea before you head home,’ Matilda said kindly.

Noreen gave a brief nod and a grateful smile. She knew Matilda’s room was little better than her own but at least it was a different dump. Besides, it was somebody to talk to and, ashamed as she was to acknowledge it, she knew her neighbour would ply the children with biscuits to fill them up for a while and save her the necessity of doing it. She could present her husband with a fresh uncut loaf when he came in for his tea later.

‘She’s looking bonny now. Wouldn’t think you’d had that scare with her in the dreadful smog.’ Matilda nodded at Noreen’s youngest. Little Rosie’s cheeks were pink with cold but at the moment she was toddling, giggling, from one to the other of Matilda’s battered old chairs to clutch at the seats. ‘How old is she now?’ Matilda asked, shaking the kettle to judge what was in it.

‘Sixteen months,’ Noreen said, gathering her daughters to her side to prevent them chasing about in Matilda’s home.

‘Let ’em play,’ Matilda said gruffly. ‘Not doing any harm and I like to see kids enjoying themselves.’ She put the kettle to boil on the hob and set two cups. ‘Now I reckon I might find something nice for two good little gels. Know any gels who’s been good?’ she bent down to ask Kathleen.

‘Me ’n’ Rosie’s been good …’ Kathleen piped up, glancing shyly at Matilda’s biscuit box on the shelf.‘Your Kieran not managed to turn up some more work?’ Matilda asked bluntly as they sat sipping from their cups and Rosie and Kathleen sat side by side on Matilda’s bed, eagerly chewing digestives.

‘He’s out now looking,’ Noreen said on a sigh.

‘Not working along the road today?’

Noreen shook her head. ‘He’s got nothing. Christopher put him off last week …’ She glanced quickly at Matilda. ‘Oh, I’m not complaining, neither is Kieran. Not at all. It was good of your nephew to give Kieran work to get us over Christmas. And he kept Kieran on longer than he said he would; he was good to us because he knew that divil O’Connor had kept hold of Kieran’s pay.’ She paused. ‘He was a cheat and a liar and those other Irish fellows who were working in the road were always looking for trouble with Christopher and his men. Kieran fretted at first that we’d be thought of as trouble as well after he got a job with O’Connor. But you’ve all been kind. We’re grateful to you for helping.’

‘Don’t mind doin’ good turns fer them wot deserve it,’ Matilda announced. ‘And that O’Connor’ll get what’s coming to him sooner or later. But I didn’t know Chris had put yer husband off ’cos I ain’t seen much of him fer a few weeks.’

Yesterday she’d spied her nephew at a distance and had given him a wave. As they’d barely had an opportunity to speak since Christmas, Matilda had expected him to jog over and have a quick natter. But he’d simply raised a hand then gone back to work.

Matilda had a nose for trouble brewing and she was wondering if perhaps she ought to amble down the road later and have a word …

From the start she’d had an inkling that Chris might have taken Kieran Murphy on off his own back. At Christmas she’d mentioned to Rob that Kieran seemed to get along alright with the other lads in the firm. She’d noticed Chris shoot her a quelling look, and Rob frown in puzzlement, so she’d said no more on the subject because Christmas was a time for putting work aside and concentrating on family. But Matilda was cute enough to put two and two together and come up with a bit of a problem.

Despite the short, freezing-cold days putting folk off loitering to chat Matilda knew it was unlike Chris not to pop by. He usually poked his head in to say hello at least once a week. Previously she’d not given it much thought because she knew he now had Grace to think about, and lots of exciting plans to make with his future wife.

Of course, there was also Pamela still in the background. Matilda wondered if Christopher had yet found the right opportunity to tell Stevie that he’d managed to contact his mum and, following a tricky start, there had been an improvement in their relationship.

Matilda hadn’t questioned Chris because she accepted it was his business whether he kept her informed about how things were progressing with his mother. Besides, Matilda reasoned the less she knew, the less she’d have to own up to if Stevie should try to cross-examine her on the subject.

After Noreen had gone home with her children, filled to the gills with tea and biscuits, Matilda got her coat and headed off down the road in the gathering twilight. She could see Chris’s van parked so knew he was still about somewhere.

‘Ain’t been up to see me in a while. You alright?’ she called up to Chris as he stuck his head out of a window to talk to her.

‘Yeah … I’m alright. Sorry I’ve not been in; been a bit busy. I’ll pop along when I knock off.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

‘Saw Noreen Murphy earlier. She says you’ve put Kieran off.’

As soon as Matilda saw Chris heading up the stairs towards her she let him know what was on her mind.

She’d been filling the kettle at the sink on the landing. When done, she followed her nephew into her room and closed the door against the gloomy cold. Having kicked back into place the sausage of rags that served as a draught excluder, she set the kettle on the hob.

‘Had to …’ Chris sighed a reply as he sat down. ‘Didn’t want to, but …’ His voice tailed away.

‘Rob know, does he?’

Chris gave a noncommittal shrug.

‘Your uncle never knew you took him on, did he? You’ve been paying Kieran outta yer own wages ’cos that bastard O’Connor wouldn’t settle up with him, and the Murphys didn’t have a pot ter piss in over Christmas.’ She gave Chris an admiring smile. ‘That’s a fine and generous thing to do fer someone you hardly know.’

‘Wish I could’ve done more, but I can’t … not now …’

‘Can’t be expected to. Things have changed for you in a big way.’

Chris planted his elbows on the battered table and cupped his face in his hands. ‘Feel bad about taking back all me pay but … never gonna get enough saved to get married otherwise.’

‘Grace been on to you to get shot of Kieran?’ There was no accusation in Matilda’s tone. It was sensible and acceptable in her estimation for a young woman to scrape together every penny she could get hold of to set up her own home with her future husband.

‘No.’ He grunted a laugh. ‘If she knew she’d be upset I’d done it.’

‘Not told her then?’

Chris shook his head.

‘Seen yer mum lately?’ Matilda fired off another question that had been niggling at her.

‘Saw her Christmas Day. Took her a present. Ain’t seen her since,’ Chris stated, staccato-voiced, avoiding Matilda’s astute gaze.

‘Sounded like you wanted to add, and don’t want to see her neither …’ Matilda set his tea in front of him.

Chris took a sip and turned his head. He held out a palm to the warmth coming off the small stove.

‘What’s up, Chris? You had a big barney with Stevie about seeing Pam over Christmas?’

‘He still don’t know I’ve found her. I’ve not told him anything, and he’s not asked. S’pect he’s been too busy with the caff to bring it to mind.’

‘Well something’s eating away at yer, I can see that.’

After a short silence Chris straightened in his chair and gazed at his aunt.

‘Remember you said, ages ago when I first started talking about finding her, that it was up to me mum to have an honest talk with me about the reason they split up?’

Matilda nodded. ‘Yeah, I do. It were the day I come over to Crouch End to speak to Stevie about it all.’

‘She did tell me: she said she nearly poisoned me ’cos she couldn’t cope with me when I was a baby, but s’pose you already knew that.’

Matilda remained quiet, mulling over how hurt Chris must have been to hear it. But admiration for Pam for having the guts to admit to it dominated her mind. ‘Were brave of her to tell you something like that,’ she stressed gently. ‘She could easily have lied. Tell you the truth, I thought she would.’

Chris gave a sour smile. ‘That’s what Grace said, more or less. Seems women stick together on these things.’

‘Ain’t sticking together, son, it’s understanding that being a wife and a mother ain’t all hearts and flowers. You should be glad your Grace already knows it.’

‘Yeah …’ Chris stood up. ‘Gotta be off, now …’

‘Seeing Grace later?’

‘Dunno. Doubt it. We had a bit of a row last week.’

‘Got it coming from all sides then, ain’t yer?’ Matilda said.

As Chris trudged towards the door, fiddling with opening a pack of cigarettes, she said, ‘Look at yer: tall, strong as an ox, handsome with it. No lasting harm done, Chris; no need to get bitter over it now and let it sour all the good things you got to look forward to.’ She waited till he turned towards her before adding, ‘Yer mother’s paid her dues, you can’t say she ain’t, knowing the life she’s had. Let it go.’ She gave him a smile as he got a cigarette alight and immediately started to cough. ‘’Course you could cut down on them ’n’ give yerself a few more years.’ She took the packet and dropped it back in his overalls’ pocket. ‘Choke up chicken …’ she added, patting his back. ‘How long you been barking like that?’

‘Ain’t nothing … just caught it off Dad; he’s got a bad cold he can’t shake off.’

‘Didn’t need that on top of all the rest, did yer?’ She gripped his arm comfortingly. ‘It’ll all come right, you mark my words. Come Coronation Day you’ll be dancing in the street with your lovely fiancée.’

‘Well, this is a nice surprise,’ Matilda called out of the window, beaming in pleasure. ‘Come on up … door ain’t locked.’

It was the first time Grace had been alone to Whadcoat Street. She hadn’t told Chris she was planning on visiting his aunt, not because she didn’t want him to know, but because she hadn’t seen much of him. The cough he’d had had worsened enough to take him to the doctor’s last week. But Grace knew it wasn’t just a bout of bronchitis keeping them apart. He was using illness as an excuse to see her less often. Chris had been distant and cool ever since the incident with Hugh outside her office.

When Grace had seen Matilda during the Christmas holiday she’d promised her she’d write out Coronation Day invitations before Easter. But with the friction between her and Chris worsening she’d forgotten all about starting on the task. Yet it wasn’t just duty that had brought her to Whadcoat Street on a chilly Saturday afternoon in March. On the way to Islington on the bus she’d mulled over whether to ask Matilda if Chris had confided in her that he wanted to break off their engagement. If anybody had Chris’s trust, it was his great-aunt Matilda.

‘Weeks are marching on; it’ll soon be Easter and we need to get them invitations sent out about now, I reckon. Then if some people choose to stick close to home for their Coronation Day dos we can get by with less grub and booze, or ask a few more folk over to make up the numbers.’ Matilda had fired that at Grace before the young woman had fully explained the reason for her visit and was properly seated at her old table. ‘I reckon everybody’ll come, y’know.’ Matilda stuck the kettle on the hob and set two cups and saucers.

‘Hope so,’ Grace replied with a bright smile. She took the pieces of folded paper that Matilda had pulled from the drawer in the table and was now holding out to her, and put them in her handbag.

‘Faye writ that list out for me so you’ll be able to understand it. Got a beautiful hand, she has.’ Matilda spooned tea into the pot while giving Grace a closer look. She guessed the girl had something on her mind and had an idea of what it might be. Stevie had told her that Chris was suffering with bronchitis and had hardly seen Grace. But Matilda had spotted her great-nephew, at a distance, working along the road. She knew that if Chris was fit enough to work, he was fit enough to see the woman he loved. If he wanted to, and still loved her. Matilda hoped that was the case because she’d grown fond of Grace and was sad to think something bad had blown up between the young couple. ‘Had a word with Rob about the trestle tables we’re gonna need fer the kids’ tea party,’ she said, stirring the brew, and pondering on the wisdom of sticking her oar into this problem. ‘He’s got a few decorators’ trestles in the yard down Holloway Road but we’ll need more than that. I expect Stevie’ll let us have some tables out of his caff.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Grace said, injecting enthusiasm into her voice. ‘I’ll start on the invitations tomorrow,’ she promised, taking the cup of tea Matilda had poured for her.

‘Penny for ’em …’ Matilda sat down opposite Grace, having decided to have her say.

‘Oh … it’s nothing …’ Grace blurted. She was always startled by Matilda’s blunt approach and hadn’t yet worked out how to go about asking for the woman’s advice.

‘You ’n’ Chris had words?’

After a moment Grace nodded, blinking back tears that had started immediately to her eyes. ‘Had a row a while ago and things haven’t been right since,’ she croaked.

‘Will it patch up eventually?’

‘Don’t know …’ Grace admitted huskily. ‘He won’t say much about it or tell me how he’s feeling. I’ve said sorry …’

‘So what’ve you got to be sorry about?’

Grace fiddled with the handle on her cup. ‘I … I went for a drink with an old boyfriend and Chris found out.’

‘So, he’s jealous, you mean. Does he need to be?’

‘No!’ Grace insisted. ‘I only met Hugh because …’ She tailed off. She didn’t want Matilda to think her greedy and mercenary, and yet sometimes that’s how she saw herself. She’d stupidly risked her happiness with Chris for money.

‘Yer mum told me once that you was going to get married before but your fiancé did the dirty on you. Same fellow, is it?’ Matilda enquired.

Grace nodded. ‘He’s a creep and Chris knows it ’cos I’ve told him all about Hugh. And I’ve explained why I met him that day. But he doesn’t seem to want to believe the truth.’ She raked her fingers through her fringe of fair hair before owning up, ‘I wanted to get some money to put towards our wedding savings.’ Grace took a quick gulp of tea before elaborating. ‘When Hugh broke off our engagement I lost money I’d put down as deposits on the wedding. I admit I’ve felt resentful over it and would have liked it back. Then when Hugh started pestering me at work saying he felt guilty and wanted to pay back some of what I lost, I thought … why not? So I agreed to see him one dinnertime …’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘But I should have known the swine was lying, as usual.’

‘More interested in getting cosy with you than clearing his conscience, was he?’ Matilda cackled a laugh.

‘Exactly!’ Grace sighed. ‘And Chris won’t believe that’s all it was.’

Matilda patted Grace’s fingers curled on the tabletop. ‘If it’s meant to work out, it’ll work out. And if you want my opinion, I think it will ’cos Chris ain’t a fool, and if he lets you slip through his fingers, that’s what he’ll be.’ Matilda stood up and shook the kettle. ‘More tea?’

‘I’d best get back,’ Grace said huskily. She gathered up her bag and buttoned her coat.

‘We’re gonna have the time of our lives in a few months on Coronation Day, Grace … all of us …’

‘Thanks for tea … and everything.’ Grace suddenly felt rather shy, and unsure whether it had been wise to disclose quite so much. She knew Chris wouldn’t have told a soul about their personal troubles.

Matilda heard Grace clattering down her rickety stairs and went to the window, watching the young woman pulling up her collar against the cold before hurrying away. A sigh escaped Matilda’s withered lips. Much as she felt like going after her great-nephew to talk some sense into him, she knew she wouldn’t. If Chris was getting cold feet, and using Grace’s old flame as an excuse to call off a wedding he was unsure about, that was his business. It would be better for everybody if he wriggled free now than went ahead and regretted getting married. No doubt his father would also want to impress that on him.

Later that evening, Grace could no longer contain her frustrations.‘I can’t stand these silences between us. If you think you’ve made a mistake and want to call the engagement off, just say so.’

‘Has he contacted you again?’

‘No! I’ve told you no a thousand times, why won’t you listen to me?’ Grace cried in a muted voice. ‘I haven’t seen Hugh Wilkins in weeks and weeks and I’m not expecting to.’

Chris drew out his cigarette pack and opened it, about to light another, despite him giving a sudden, hacking cough.

In exasperation Grace snatched at the carton and threw it into the back of the van. ‘And it’s no use moaning you don’t feel well and haven’t any money when you’re spending out every day on those and making yourself cough!’ She covered her face with her hands, muttering bitterly through her fingers, ‘Sorry! It’s up to you if you want to smoke fifty a day and waste money rather than save for a deposit on a house.’

Chris sank back into his seat, suppressing another tickle in his throat. ‘Perhaps we should have a proper break from each other, till I can …’

‘Till you can what?’ Grace let her hands fall to her lap. Her eyes darted to him and instinctively she twisted the diamond ring on her finger. ‘Till you can trust me? Is that what you were about to say?’

‘No … I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say … till I can sort out the mess in my head.’ He glanced at her, inwardly wincing at the hurt and confusion in her eyes, but he couldn’t find the right words to comfort her while his thoughts were scrambled. He couldn’t seem to control his anger or his jealousy. He wanted to track down Hugh Wilkins and properly ram his teeth down his throat this time. But it wasn’t just his rival unsettling him. Thoughts of Pamela were constantly niggling at the back of his mind too. ‘It’s not just about us, Grace, or that prick you were engaged to before. One minute I think I hate her and never want to see her again, the next I think I’ll go over there so she can explain why she hated me so much.’

‘Your mother didn’t hate you, Chris,’ Grace said wearily. ‘If she had she wouldn’t have tried to see you after your father took you away. She made a mistake, a dreadful mistake, and she’s owned up to it. I wish I’d not interfered …’ Her husky voice petered out before springing back to life. ‘It’s my own fault. I kept on at you about seeing her. Everything was alright between us till you went to see your mother on Christmas Day and got to know her better.’

Chris gazed sombrely into the darkness. He knew he shouldn’t keep sniping at Grace about her ex-fiancé when in his heart he understood more than jealousy was gnawing at his guts. He also knew it was best they stayed away from each other for a while or he risked destroying the finest thing that had ever come into his life. And he couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.

‘The lads are going down Harringay Stadium at the end of the week. They’ve asked me if I want to go …’

‘Go. You deserve a night out. Go,’ Grace said and forced a smile before she quickly got out of the van and went indoors.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

‘That’s O’Connor over there, ain’t it?’

‘Where?’ Billy plonked down his tankard and glanced about the room. He spotted the stocky middle-aged Irishman at a table, guffawing with two of his work colleagues, and a couple of brassy-looking women. ‘Oi, Chris, that bastard O’Connor’s over there.’ Billy nudged Chris in the ribs.

Chris had been lounging against the bar, talking to Vic about the odds-on favourite in the next race. Now he straightened and turned immediately in the direction Billy and Ted were jerking their heads. He stared intently at the Irishman; O’Connor looked different done up to the nines in his shiny suit, with his hair, usually a wild black frizz, sleeked down flat. Chris felt his back teeth grind together. No doubt the thieving pikey was having a good time spending Kieran Murphy’s money on booze and bets. He could feel his temper rising and on impulse he pushed away from his support. Weaving between tables, he strolled over.

Declan O’Connor noticed him approaching and his laughing expression froze in recognition. A moment later he’d pushed himself upright and jutted his chin belligerently.

‘What is it you want, Sonny Jim?’ he snarled in an undertone.

‘Kieran Murphy’s wages. I told him if I bumped into you I’d collect ’em for him.’

O’Connor hadn’t been expecting to hear that and he blinked, taken aback. His tongue slithered over his fleshy red lips, aware that the others seated about his table were gawping, awaiting his response.

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, Sonny Jim, so why don’t you run along back to yer little pals.’ He flicked some thick fingers, gesturing for Chris to go away.

‘Yeah, I will … with Kieran’s wages in me pocket.’ Chris stuck out a hand, aware that Vic and Ted and Billy had stopped observing from yards away and now come to join him. They stood in a semi-circle behind his back. He knew that because the men in O’Connor’s group had got to their feet and were looking over his shoulder in anticipation of a fight starting.

‘Come on, don’t need to be no trouble,’ Chris jibed softly. ‘Just do the decent thing fer once and give it here.’ His fingers beckoned impatiently but he felt the pent-up anger and frustration that had been bubbling in his guts since Christmas Day calming down. Obliquely, he understood that getting Kieran his money wouldn’t set everything straight, but it would be a step in the right direction.

‘Fook off,’ O’Connor spat through his teeth. ‘Oi don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He half-sank back into his seat.

‘Think you do.’ Chris took a step closer. ‘Now why don’t yer be a big man and hand over what you owe, ’cos if yer don’t these ladies are gonna twig they’re on a hiding to nuthin’ come the end of the night.’ He glanced at the fat blonde. ‘He ain’t gonna pay you, luv. Want to join us instead?’

‘I told you once before you’re a dead man, Sonny Jim …’ O’Connor’s lips flattened against his teeth and he suddenly crashed around the table making the women shriek and his two comrades spring into action.

‘Deirdre’s gonna go mental soon as she cops a look at the state of me.’ Despite his comment, Vic started chuckling and dusting down his torn jacket with a hand.

Ted and Billy were also trying to neaten their rumpled clothes while guffawing.

‘You got us fuckin’ barred from a dog track, Chris,’ Ted complained with a smile. ‘Can’t believe it …’

‘Done you a favour then, ain’t I? Money you was losing down there every week, you could do with a break.’ Chris grinned behind the fag in his mouth.

They were walking back towards where their vehicles were parked, having got thrown out of the stadium for brawling. The Irish crew had been ejected too but had sensibly taken off in the opposite direction, having received a drubbing before the bouncers raced to intervene.

Chris had managed to get a tenner out of O’Connor’s pocket before he’d removed his knee from his windpipe and let him up off the floor. Before he headed home he was going to Whadcoat Street to give it to Kieran just in case he was in desperate need of it. Old Smithie in the shop could always be knocked up for emergency supplies. If the old miser got a sniff of a tenner in the offing, he’d probably deliver the stuff personally.

‘Give us a lift back, will yer, Chris?’ Vic asked.

‘You’d be better off jumping in with Bill, he’s going your way.’

‘Ain’t goin’ home, it’s too early,’ Vic said. ‘Gonna go round a mate’s, see if they want a drink,’ he mumbled.

‘I’ll come fer a drink with you,’ Ted offered. He wasn’t keen on heading home early either. He knew he’d only finish the night stuck on the sofa between his warring parents, listening to the wireless. Besides, after the evening’s events they’d got a good tale to tell in the pub.

‘Nah …’ s’alright …’ Vic discouraged him quickly. When Ted looked huffy he added shortly, ‘Ain’t that sort of mate.’

‘You’re gonna get yerself hung, Vic, you keep on,’ Billy warned with a laugh. ‘Deirdre’s old man finds out you’re still playing away even though she’s up the duff, he’ll have yer guts fer garters.’

‘No need fer anyone to find out if you all keep yer mouths shut.’ Vic sounded peevish. He knew that his bit on the side wouldn’t give him earache about the state he looked. He could feel a lump coming up on one of his cheekbones and taste blood on his lip. Sandra would be happy enough to see him so long as he had a bottle of gin to offer her, and he’d be glad to see her because the night’s excitement had got him aroused and he knew his pregnant wife wasn’t going to be any help there. She never was lately …

‘What’s happened? Has there been bad trouble?’

Kieran had answered the door in his pants and vest then whipped outside onto the landing and stood shivering and staring at the bruising on Chris’s face.

Absently Chris touched the swelling by his eye. He knew it’d be black by tomorrow.

‘Nah … nothing much. Just run into O’Connor when I was out with the lads tonight.’ He fished in a pocket and drew out the banknote. ‘He gave me this for you … yer wages.’

Kieran stared at the money as though it were a mirage. He made to take it then quickly withdrew his fingers.

‘Take it. Won’t be no trouble, promise. He owes you it, he knows that.’

‘You had a fight with that divil to get this for me and Noreen?’ Kieran raised astonished eyes to Chris’s face.

‘Would have had a fight anyhow,’ Chris ruefully admitted. ‘Just the mood I was in.’ He took one of Kieran’s hands and slapped the tenner in it. ‘Better get inside. You look bleedin’ freezing standing out here …’

‘What’s going on?’ Noreen, with an old coat over her nightdress, had joined her husband at the door.

‘Christopher has brought us this … from O’Connor …’

Aware that he was in for another round of questions Chris backed away a few steps. He just wanted to get home. He felt exhausted. ‘Right, I’ll let you two get back to bed, then.’ He started along the landing just as a baby’s wail was heard. ‘Sorry …’ He pivoted about, gesturing he hadn’t meant to disturb them all.

‘Thank you,’ Kieran called and took a few paces after him.

‘Can I get you something? A cup of tea before you go?’ Noreen blurted.

‘No, thanks … gotta get off …’

Chris turned quickly and clattered down the stairs. He was walking swiftly towards his van when he spotted his aunt coming towards him in the gloom, looking a bit unsteady on her feet.

‘What you doing up ’n’ about this time o’ night?’ he asked, a smile in his tone.

‘Could ask you the same thing.’ Matilda chuckled, sounding merry.

‘Been round the Duke?’ Chris had caught a whiff of intoxication about his aunt.

‘Nah … been over old Beattie’s. Her son fetched her over a bottle of port for her birthday so I offered to help her polish it off. We’ve been making plans for our Coronation Day party.’ She waved a bit of paper at him. ‘See, between us we’ve writ out a list of grub. Spellin’ might not be up ter much …’ She grabbed her nephew’s elbow. ‘Gonna help me up the stairs, son? Me old legs are playing up something chronic tonight, can’t hardly stand up ’cos of me arthritis.’

‘Don’t suppose the port’s helped much there either,’ Chris muttered wryly. He assisted her over the threshold and the two of them went stumbling up the stairs in a journey that took twice as long as it should have. He was glad of the darkness concealing his damaged face from his aunt because he didn’t feel up to another round of questions.

‘What was that?’ He spun about as they reached the landing.

‘What was what?’ Matilda echoed on a yawn.

‘Sounded like an explosion.’ Chris hesitated for a moment, frowning, then raced down the stairs and into the street. Instinctively he gazed back the way he’d come, towards the Murphys’ house, and saw an ominous orange glow. He took one step in the direction of the fire – before sprinting as fast as he could towards it.

‘What is it?’ Matilda had wobbled back down the stairs to yell at Chris from her doorway, but he was already too far away to hear her.

As he got closer Chris could see that the fire wasn’t at the Murphys’ place, as he’d dreaded it might be, but further along the street, in one of the empty houses Wild Brothers had been working on.

Flooded with intense relief he diverted to Smithie’s shop and pounded on the door while bawling up at Peter Smith to phone for the brigade. He heard the sash being shoved up and, angling back his head, saw Smithie’s frowning face appear.

The shopkeeper didn’t need any more telling; he’d seen the flames licking through a glassless window diagonally opposite. ‘I’ll call for help,’ he immediately shouted down, before disappearing.

Chris hurtled on down the street. He thanked heaven the Murphys were safe, but he knew this could be a disaster for Wild Brothers if all the firm’s future work was destroyed. And he had no doubt who had tried to finish them off: O’Connor was behind it. The pikey had come here tonight to take revenge and, despite knowing the seriousness of the situation, Chris still praised the lord that the vicious bastard had turned his spite on him instead of Kieran. The thought of two little girls trapped behind a wall of flames …

Chris slowed to a walk as he neared the inferno, blinking in astonishment to clear his vision, because smoke was stinging his eyes and he couldn’t believe his mate, Vic, was really waving frantically to him from the first-floor window of the burning house.

‘What are you doin’, you fuckin’ maniac?’ Chris roared at him, snapping out of his trance. ‘Get out of there now!’ He raced to the railings fronting the house and stared up, horrified, at Vic.

‘Can’t … can’t … tried … can’t … too late …’ Vic was babbling in terror. ‘Stairs are alight and Sandra won’t try and go down ’em.’ He turned to glance over a shoulder. ‘Silly cow won’t go down, ’case she gets burned … shall I leave her here, Chris? Shall I?’

‘Fuck’s sake, jump then,’ Chris thundered. He opened his arms and braced his legs, grounding himself. ‘Chuck her out first. You got to jump, you stupid bastard. I’ll try ’n’ break yer falls a bit. Jump!’

Chris was obliquely aware that people were emerging from houses and rushing towards him with offers of help. He glanced back up the road and saw his aunt hobbling closer, frenziedly waving. He knew she was signalling at him not to do anything daft. He spun on the spot looking for an able-bodied man to help; but most of the people who still lived in the street were elderly, like his aunt. Even Peter Smith looked to be in his late fifties. Chris spotted Kieran coming out of his house at a run while trying to jump into his trousers.

Vic’s head had disappeared; a moment later he’d dragged Sandra into view, shoving her forward while trying to lift her over the sash so she could escape. She was hysterical with fear, shaking her head and beating at him with her fists.

‘What you doing up there anyhow, you bleedin’ nutter?’ Chris had bellowed that out needlessly; he could easily guess what Vic had been doing camped out with a woman in a slum. His adulterous colleague had reckoned on being safe from disturbance or detection. Chris realised he now knew the identities of the tramps who’d been squatting overnight on site.

‘Shall I leave her, Chris? Shall I?’ Vic whimpered.

‘Anybody got a ladder?’ Chris whipped around to shout that out to the gathering crowd. ‘Anybody got a high-reach ladder?’ He had one himself on his van parked along the road, but the ladder was padlocked down on the top. The key to the padlock was at home in his overalls’ pocket. By the time he’d wrenched the ladder free it might be too late …

‘I’ve got one,’ Peter Smith cried out.

‘I’ll help you get it.’ Kieran Murphy was doing up his belt. ‘Quick, let’s bring it.’ He set off at a run in the direction of Smithie’s shop, the older man puffing in his wake.

‘I’m gonna jump … ain’t waiting …’ Vic tottered about by the open window. He’d just watched, mesmerised, as flames curled around the banisters on the landing. Sandra screamed as he got a leg over the sill and tried to hold onto him. He shook her off and pushed away from the stone ledge, landing on Chris and two other fellows who’d linked arms trying to buffer his fall while at the same time twisting sideways to avoid serious harm. Vic rolled on the ground, groaning and clutching at a shin, while his saviours tried to get their wind back.

‘Where the fuck’s she gone?’ Chris gasped, when he’d breath enough to do so. He was blinking up through a screen of acrid smoke at the open sash. There was no sign now of Sandra’s shaggy dark head poking out; she’d disappeared.

‘Stupid cow … I told her you’d catch her …’ Vic moaned from his prostrate position.

Chris pointed a threatening finger at him and drew back a fist as though tempted to whack him. But his attention jerked to Smithie and Kieran, who were jogging back with a ladder.

‘Sandra, get to the window!’ Chris shouted, trying to shake off his aunt who was hanging on his arm telling him to wait for the brigade. But there was no sound of a fire engine approaching yet.

The ladder was whacked against the wall in preparation for someone to brave the danger and drag Sandra out. Chris exchanged a bleak look with Kieran. They were the only two youngish men present, apart from Vic who was still rolling about in pain, and no use whatsoever.

‘I’ll go,’ Kieran said.

‘You fuckin’ won’t.’ Chris shoved him away from the ladder. ‘You’ve got a family.’ With a thudding heart and a deep breath he started up the ladder, aware of the heat and smoke increasing as he approached the open window. Despite his lungs feeling as though they were being squeezed in a vice, he fell over the sill and squinted into a fog. He saw Sandra cowering against the wall clutching a bottle of gin, peeping at him through a tumble of tangled curls.

He stumbled towards her and yanked her arm, tugging her towards the window on her backside because she wouldn’t get up. Suddenly she sprang into life and started clawing at his face, and because he felt breathless and panicky, he punched her as lightly as he could. As she sagged he hoisted her onto a shoulder then struggled to get himself through the opening and onto the ladder without dropping her or coughing his guts up. The roar of an approaching inferno focused his thoughts. He was fumbling his way down the first rung when he heard the fire engine’s bell. Having taken a wobbly peek over his shoulder he was aware too that Kieran was coming towards him, arms outstretched to offer assistance. His head was swimming and his nostrils felt on fire so he breathed through his mouth although it increased his coughing. He’d descended a few more rungs before he lost consciousness and crashed down on top of Kieran, sending them all tumbling in a jumble of limbs to the ground.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

‘Where’s Grace?’

‘She’s outside,’ Stevie croaked. ‘She’s been waiting outside all night.’

‘Want her …’ Chris murmured and moved his tongue about his arid mouth.

‘How you feeling?’ Stevie asked while patting his son’s hand, lying on the coverlet. ‘Give me a fright, you did. Brave you were doing that. Why d’you do it?’ Stevie choked out, squeezing shut his eyes. ‘Could’ve got killed … you stupid sod.’

‘Get Grace for me, Dad …’

Stevie nodded and rose stiffly from his bedside chair. He went out into the hospital corridor.

‘Chris’s woken up,’ he announced with a wavering smile for the family who were keen to know how the hero was doing, and to hear the doctor’s verdict this morning after yesterday’s dreadful incident.

The initial diagnosis had been that Chris’s lungs had been badly affected by inhaling smoke from the fire.

‘He seems … alright … normal …’ Stevie croaked before gesturing he felt overcome. He sank down onto the chair next to Matilda’s and propped his forehead in his palms. His aunt pressed his shoulder with a rough red hand and murmured comfortingly to him while trying to blink back her own tears.

Smithie had arrived late yesterday evening at Stevie’s house to give him the devastating news that Chris had been hurt in an accident and had been taken to hospital. Stevie had immediately got in touch with his brother Rob, as he always did when he needed urgent help. Between them they’d decided it best to let Grace know straight away, in case things took a turn for the worse. Rob had gone to Tottenham to break the news and bring her to the hospital while Stevie had headed straight to his son’s bedside.

‘Wants to see you, Grace.’ Stevie looked up with a composed smile.

Grace had dozed for a while in the small hours in a hard-backed chair, but since dawn she’d been mostly on her feet, restlessly pacing, awaiting her turn to go and sit with Chris while he was sleeping. For a moment she stared at Stevie with thumping heart, her eyes glittering with tears of relief. Their recent bickering over money, and Hugh Wilkins, now all seemed to Grace like so much pathetic trivia. All she wanted was to know that Chris was on the mend and would be home soon. A moment later she was walking quickly through the swing doors towards the side ward.

‘That’s the last time I let you out with your mates,’ Grace said softly as she approached Chris’s bed and sat down. She folded her quivering hands in her lap so he wouldn’t see them and know how badly shaken she was.

Chris smiled weakly. ‘Didn’t want to go down the dogs anyhow. I’d sooner have gone out with you.’

‘We don’t go out much, do we, since we got engaged? Perhaps we should enjoy ourselves more and forget about saving for a big wedding.’ Grace took his soot-blackened fingers between her trembling palms and raised them to her warm lips.

‘Thought you wanted to get married as soon as possible.’

‘Yeah, I do,’ she sniffed, blinking rapidly. ‘But can’t always have what we want, can we? All I want now is for you to get well enough to come home.’

‘What’s up with me then?’

‘Doctor said your lungs got inflamed by breathing in smoke. You already had a bad chest, didn’t you, so that didn’t help. But you’ll be alright …’

‘Yeah … strong as an ox, me … me aunt told me that, so I must be.’

‘You look good,’ Grace said, gently touching a hand to his dirt-smudged face.

‘So do you,’ he replied wolfishly and drew back the coverlet a bit. ‘Fancy getting in?’

Grace chuckled and leaned forward to peck his lips. ‘You definitely are feeling better.’

‘What happened to Vic?’

‘Broke his leg.’

‘That all?’ Chris feigned disappointment.

‘Billy came by the hospital earlier to see how you’re doing and told us Deirdre’s already gone home to live with her mum and dad. So, I doubt Vic’s going to get off lightly this time.’

‘What about Sandra?’

‘She escaped with a few cuts and bruises, and so did Kieran. I saw him earlier,’ Grace added. ‘He was one of the first to come here to find out how you are. He told me that O’Connor has been arrested. One of his men turned him in.’ Her eyebrows drew together in surprise. ‘Apparently they weren’t all in on it. It was only O’Connor involved in setting the fire; his friends were disgusted by what he did because they knew it could spread and people still live in the street.’ Grace shuddered. ‘Thank God the brigade got it out quickly.’ She leaned close to caress her cheek against Chris’s bristly jaw. ‘It was very brave of you to do what you did. Bit of a hero, aren’t you?’

‘I’m glad that bastard got arrested,’ Chris said. ‘I hope he gets a long stretch. In fact, hearing about it’s cheered me up so much I reckon I’m well enough to go home. Where’s me clothes?’

‘You’ve got to wait till the doctor says you can,’ Grace said firmly. ‘No point going too soon then having to come back again.’

She relaxed back in the chair and gazed tenderly at him while her fingers stroked to and fro on the back of his hand.

‘I’ve been acting like a prat lately and want to say I’m sorry,’ Chris mumbled gruffly.

Grace dropped to her knees by the bed and cuddled him through the blankets. ‘There’s never been any need for you to be jealous, I swear.’

‘I know …’ Chris stroked her crown of silky fair hair with his mucky fingers. ‘I’m just a bloody fool who doesn’t deserve you.’

Grace sniffed and raised her head to look at him. ‘You’ve had a lot on your mind, what with your mum and so on,’ she said graciously.

‘Yeah, she has been on me mind. Would you do something for me, Grace?’ Chris asked hoarsely.

‘’Course …’

‘Would you go and tell me mum that I’m in hospital but I’m alright and nothing to worry about. I want her to know … just in case …’

‘You’ll be home soon,’ Grace reassured him softly.

‘Yeah, I know, but I want her to know what’s happened. Wouldn’t want her to feel left out … just in case …’ He gazed at Grace earnestly. ‘Had weird dreams while I’ve been asleep and I was worried it meant I might not ever see her again.’

‘You will … if you want to …’

‘Weren’t me in danger in me dreams, it was her. She was stuck somewhere behind the flames, and I was trying to get to her, not Sandra, but I couldn’t reach her and she was just looking at me whispering it didn’t matter ’cos it was what she deserved …’ His voice cracked as tormenting images vividly assaulted his mind once more.

Quickly Grace renewed her fierce cuddling, comforting him through the blankets. ‘It was just a dream … s’pect the doctors gave you something to help you sleep and it made you hallucinate a bit.’

‘Yeah, but I want to see her, just in case …’ he insisted and turned solemn deep brown eyes on her. ‘Can’t ask me dad to go to Bexleyheath; got nobody else to ask, and I want her to know I’ve been in an accident but I’m alright.’

‘’Course I’ll go and tell her,’ Grace promised softly. ‘I’ll go this afternoon.’

Chris stared at her then raised his eyes to the slowly whirring fan on the ceiling. ‘But don’t say nuthin’ to me dad. Can see he’s worried about me and don’t want to put more on him just now.’

‘Yeah … plenty of time to tell him about you and Pam, but you will have to tell him, you know.’

Chris nodded, turning his head to welcome Grace’s cool soft lips as they approached his mouth for a farewell kiss. He watched as she quietly left the room with a final fond glance back at him before closing the door.

Chris gazed at the rotating blades above his bed, soothed by the soft whirring sound and feeling oddly at peace, despite knowing he had a war ahead of him with his father when he told him he was in touch with his mother, and it was staying that way for good.

‘Where are you off to in such a hurry? Have you got to get to work?’ Faye had just parked her car and, having caught sight of Grace hurrying down the hospital steps, she’d quickly intercepted her.

‘I won’t be going to work today; as soon as I could this morning I phoned in and told my boss what had happened and booked this week off as leave.’ Grace gave Chris’s aunt a breathless account and a welcoming smile. ‘Wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything anyway, not until Chris is home and we’re all back to normal.’

‘I’ve just come along to find out how Chris is.’ Faye looked eagerly at Grace, then at the hospital building behind her. ‘Is he awake?’

Grace nodded and smiled. ‘He seems in good spirits and is breathing quite easily.’

A deep sigh of relief escaped Faye. ‘In that case I won’t go in till later today. I expect there’s a crowd round his bed. Can I give you a lift home?’

‘I’m not going home, I’m off to …’ Grace’s explanation faded away. ‘Chris asked me to do something for him,’ she finished lamely.

‘Oh, well, wherever you’re going I’ll give you a lift.’ Faye approached the smart saloon at the kerb and opened the passenger door.

Grace bit her lip. She liked Faye very much and felt she was a woman anybody could trust but …

A look of enlightenment flitted over Faye’s features. ‘Were you on your way to Bexleyheath?’ she asked gently.

Grace had guessed that Rob had probably told his wife about Chris’s search for his mother; she knew too that Rob had warned Chris to stay away from Pam if he wanted to avoid stirring up trouble.

‘It’s alright,’ Faye said gently. ‘If Chris wants to see his mum, that’s his business. I’ve already told Rob how I feel on that score. I’ll give you a lift. It’ll save time if I take you. I’ve got a free afternoon.’

‘Thanks,’ Grace said quietly as she got into the car.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

‘I used to envy you, you know.’

Pam had come out with that while swiftly buttoning her coat. She had believed Grace’s reassurances that Christopher was on the mend in hospital, but nevertheless she’d instinctively recognised her son’s summons, and had insisted on being taken to see him. Grace had readily agreed to it as she’d had an inkling it was what Chris really wanted: to talk to his mother rather than have a message relayed to her.

‘We all act daft when we’re young: I’ve got plenty to own up to …’ Faye had been surprised by Pam’s frankness and responded kindly to her admission of jealousy. She’d been aware that in the early days Pamela had fancied Rob rather than her own husband. But it was all a long time ago, when they were little more than teenagers, and in Faye’s opinion bygones should be bygones.

‘I know now I was a fool.’ A rueful smile twisted Pam’s lips. ‘I always thought Robert was the one to catch out of the two brothers, being as he seemed to have everything. But Stephen had hidden strengths … just couldn’t see them at the time …’

Faye understood her meaning. ‘He’s been a good father,’ she agreed simply then fell silent as Grace returned to the front room, having used the bathroom before they set off on the journey back to Islington.

As they trooped down the hall Grace closed her eyes and inwardly sighed. She knew Stephen would still be at the hospital when they arrived there, and trouble was bound to ensue when he clapped eyes on Pamela. But this argument was long overdue and, in a way, she welcomed getting it over and done with because it was another rut on the path to her and Chris’s future together.

‘Who told you? You’ve no right … God’s sake! What are you doing here?’

Stephen had angrily hissed that out while gawping in astonishment at the frail-looking woman confronting him. He wouldn’t have recognised his ex-wife but for Matilda having greeted Pamela by name. A moment later his aunt had declared she was off out to the caff for a cup of tea before ambling away.

Rob and Faye exchanged a glance.

‘Right … time I was off. I promised to meet Daisy and take her shopping for new shoes.’ Diplomatically Faye started after Matilda, having given her husband a significant look.

‘Better check on the lads,’ Rob told his brother. ‘The sods might be shirking now there’s just the two of them. And seeing as we’re lucky the whole terrace didn’t catch light and put ’em out of work …’ He tailed off, aware that his brother wasn’t even listening to him. Stephen’s fierce gaze was fixed on Pamela’s careworn face.

‘Anyhow, the police are expecting me to go in and give them a statement now they’ve got O’Connor under arrest. They’ve already spoken to the lads, and Chris’ll be next in line for an interview, when he’s well enough.’ Rob smiled breezily, gave Grace a very respectful wink, then wandered in his wife’s wake.

As the silence lengthened and Stephen continued glowering at his ex-wife, Grace blurted out, ‘I brought Pamela here.’

Stephen swung his angry gaze on his future daughter-in-law. ‘Wouldn’t have said it was the right time for troublemaking, miss, being as Chris is so poorly …’

‘Chris asked me to contact his mum,’ Grace replied firmly. She wasn’t going to be intimidated, or made to feel guilty by dirty looks or harsh words. ‘Chris wants to see his mum, I know he does.’

‘I know what’s best for him,’ Stephen growled out through stretched lips. ‘And it ain’t her …’ He jerked a sideways nod at Pam.

‘Don’t you talk to Grace like that!’ Pamela stepped forward to plant her slight figure between her ex-husband and Grace. ‘I’m here to see my son and nothing you’ve got to say is going to make a blind bit of difference.’ She levelled a steady stare at him. ‘I listened to you once telling me I wasn’t fit to be near him and I believed you,’ she said in a flat tone. ‘I listened to my parents too, nagging at me to keep up appearances, and keep secrets, rather than fight on to get their grandson back.’ Her lips twitched at the shameful memory. ‘Terrified them, you did, with your threats to get the police on us all ’cos of what I did. My father never got over it; brought it up on his deathbed just the other year.’ She tilted up her chin. ‘Now I’m listening to nobody; I’m frightened of nobody. I’m seeing my son. That’s where I’m going, in there …’ She pointed at the door. ‘And I’ll fight you, or anybody else, who tries to stop me.’ With that Pam marched past Stephen and disappeared into Chris’s room.

‘Just wanted you to know, I’m sorry …’

‘What’ve you got to be sorry about?’ Pam returned gently.

‘Went off at Christmas without saying a proper goodbye to you, or wishing you a Happy New Year. It were rude of me.’

Pam plucked his hand from the coverlet and cradled it in hers. ‘It’s alright … I’d told you something that must’ve given you a real shock.’ Her eyes glistened with penitent tears. ‘I’m the one should be saying sorry … and I am. I’ve been sorry for what I did to you for so long it’s been a constant torment, so it’s a relief to get the words out at last.’

‘Well, now we’ve both said sorry, that’s that. All in the past,’ Chris mumbled gruffly. ‘Clean slate for both of us and when I’m out of here I’ll come over again and see you. Saturdays we could do something, like go shopping, or I could have a look over yer place and see what needs tidying up. Done the gate, but I expect there’s other bits of work cropping up all the time.’

Pam nodded, keeping her face averted while blinking rapidly. ‘Your Grace is a good girl,’ she croaked. ‘She’s strong and confident. She stood up to your father just now.’ Pam nodded her admiration.

‘So did you,’ Chris returned with a wry chuckle. ‘I could hear you.’ He frowned at their clasped fingers. ‘I should have told Dad a while ago that I’d been in touch with you. I’ve been a bit of a coward about it, I’m afraid …’

‘You’re no coward!’ Pam jumped to her son’s defence, squeezing his fingers in emphasis. ‘Grace told me all about your heroics, saving that girl from the fire.’ She patted his hand before letting it go. ‘Deserve a medal, you do …’ She broke off as a nurse poked her head round the door.

‘Doctor’s doing his rounds, not that there seems to be much wrong with you, young man.’

‘This is me mum.’ Chris proudly introduced Pam with a jerk of his head.

‘Well, he’s doing fine, Mrs Wild.’ The young sister gave a bright smile before disappearing.

‘Better be off now; don’t want to get in the doctor’s way.’ Pam rose from the chair, collecting her bag from the floor.

‘I’ll come and see you, promise … soon as I’m home …’

‘I know you will, son,’ Pam answered softly in a trembling voice replete with love and trust.

‘I don’t mind travelling back to Bexleyheath with you, honest …’

‘No!’ Pamela smiled at Grace. ‘It’s kind of you to offer to accompany me, but I’ll be fine. I don’t mind a journey on my own, and I’ve brought enough money for the fare.’

Grace and Pamela were conversing in low voices in the hospital corridor; Stephen was sitting still and silent in a chair against the wall. His chin was dropped close to his chest and he seemed to be studying his hands. He hadn’t uttered a word to a soul since Pam had entered Chris’s room. Suddenly he got up; but he didn’t head towards the side ward, he approached them.

‘I’ll give you a lift.’

Grace and Pamela stared at him in surprise.

‘Things to say,’ he muttered awkwardly. ‘Best get it off me chest … got the car outside …’

‘Thank you.’ Pamela sounded calm and collected. ‘I’ll take you up on your offer.’

‘Your dad’s giving your mum a lift home to Bexleyheath.’ Grace gave Chris a rueful smile as she settled down in the chair beside his bed.

Chris gawped at her. Suddenly a dry laugh scratched at his throat. ‘I was getting used to having two parents. Might be I won’t have even one if they end up stranglin’ one another …’

As Pam directed Stephen, with a pointing finger, to turn in at the top of her road she was sourly thinking that if he had things to say he was leaving it a bit late to air them. So far the journey across London had passed in silence.

‘Thanks for the lift.’ Stephen had pulled up outside her house and immediately Pam reached for the door handle.

‘I won’t stop Chris seeing you if that’s what he wants,’ Stephen blurted.

‘Good; ’cos I wasn’t going to let you,’ Pam returned. She met his eyes unflinchingly. ‘So that’s best all round for Christopher.’

‘I know it weren’t all your fault. I could’ve done more when he was little. I remember you being … sort of depressed, asking me fer a bit o’ help just after Chris was born.’ The words had spouted forth unrehearsed and Stephen rubbed a finger along the bridge of his nose, wondering whether to continue delving into hurtful memories, or whether to put the car in gear and drive off. ‘Just didn’t seem to be the thing for blokes to care fer kids,’ he continued, gazing through the windscreen. ‘Didn’t think I’d know how to do it.’ He grimaced at his fingers gripping the steering wheel. ‘Then I found out I knew alright, ’cos I didn’t have a choice in it.’

‘You had a choice in it,’ Pam responded bitterly. ‘You could have let me give a hand bringing Christopher up.’

‘I know,’ Stephen admitted bleakly. ‘But you shocked the sense out o’ me for a while with what you did. After that …’

‘After that you just thought you’d carry on being vindictive.’

Stephen swung a savage glance at her. ‘You deserved a hard time of it for being so wicked, you can’t say that ain’t true.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve had a hard time of it, hard enough to satisfy even a spiteful sod like you.’ Pam made to shove open the car door.

‘I never gave you a chance to explain at the time. That were wrong of me.’ Stephen put a hand on her arm to delay her then immediately withdrew it. ‘You should have got your say about why you did what you did.’

A silence developed between them as the years peeled away and they relived the time they’d endured together.

‘I felt alone, even though we were married and I had my parents, and Christopher, and a few friends, I felt it was just me up against it all.’ Pam had meant to tell him to get lost because it was twenty years too late to pick it over now, but an explanation simply tumbled out of her. ‘I tried to speak to my mum about how I felt … but she had nothing to say apart from you’ve made your bed, now lie on it.’ Pam grimaced a smile at a passing car. ‘Heard that regularly once a week at least; more when I went over to beg her to have Christopher for a few hours to give me a break.’ She glanced at Stephen. ‘They were disgusted when they found out I was already pregnant when we got wed. They pretended they didn’t know. But, the baby was too big to be premature, and the family started to gossip. Mum never forgave me for being a disgrace on that score either.’

‘You said your dad had died …’

‘Yeah … he’s gone …’

Stephen continued staring expectantly at her.

‘I do my duty and visit mum a couple of times a year. Neither of us makes much of an effort.’ Pam offered up a short answer to his unspoken question.

‘You should have told me at the time you felt like it were all getting on top of you …’

‘Why?’ Pam snorted. ‘What bloody use were you?’ She threw back her head to shout a mirthless laugh. ‘Where’s me tea … you couldn’t keep a rabbit hutch you fat cow … I’m off out … that’s all I ever got out of you!’ She relished the guilt that flitted over his features before whipping her face away. ‘Soon realised it was just me, on me own. So I liked to quieten Christopher and lose myself in stories in magazines. It was wrong, I know, but from the moment we said our vows it was wrong …’ She scrambled out of the car as she felt tears pricking her eyelids.

Stephen got out too and met her by the kerb.

‘I just want to say, I know things might have been different, if I’d been different.’ He’d rattled that off quietly before she could disappear indoors. He had an urgent need to acknowledge his part in the misery that had been their brief marriage. Instinctively he understood that if he didn’t his relationship with Christopher would suffer in the future. And earning his son’s love and respect had been his life’s work.

Pam halted by the hedge and muttered, ‘Thanks for saying so. I know you didn’t have to tell me, but I’ve always hoped you might. Always hoped you might say I could see Christopher too.’

‘Well, I’m saying it now … bit late in the day, I know …’ Stephen added hoarsely.

Pam glanced at him with eyes that were defeated rather than despising. ‘Yeah … bit late in the day,’ she echoed before opening her front gate.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

2 June 1953

‘Can you see our queen, Kathleen?’ Kieran hoisted his eldest daughter higher on his shoulders then grinned up at her.

‘I can see everything, Daddy,’ Kathleen cried out in delight while bobbing her dark head to and fro to get a look over the mass of people in front of her. ‘There’s a coach and white horses going by and it’s gold and shiny.’ Kathleen frantically waved both small hands. ‘A lady is waving at me, Daddy. Is she our queen, Daddy?’ Kathleen giggled, jiggling excitedly on her father’s shoulders.

Kieran grinned at his wife, carrying Rosie in her arms in an attempt to protect her from the heaving throng. The toddler was squirming to get down but Noreen held onto her, shushing her. People were good-naturedly jostling for position but the Murphys had managed to find, and hang on to, a good spot in The Mall from which to watch the coronation coaches proceed towards Westminster Abbey.

‘It’s a wonderful day for us, Noreen.’ Kieran sighed contentedly as he lowered Kathleen safely to the ground.

His wife affectionately hugged his arm. ‘It’s a long while since I felt so happy. If you get the job tomorrow it’ll be a new start for us. It’s a fine day, so it is.’ She slanted up a rueful glance at an overcast sky. ‘Even if it does come on to rain later … nothing can spoil it.’

After many, many months scratching around for odd jobs Kieran finally had an interview for a permanent post as a driver for a haulage company. They both knew such an opportunity would give them the means to move out of The Bunk at last.

‘’Ere! I thought you two were staying behind in the street to put up bunting.’ That gruff, jovial complaint made the couple swing about to find Matilda weaving through the crowd, accompanied by two of her daughters.

‘And I thought you were staying behind to do all the organising for our grand party,’ Noreen saucily came back at her. She’d raised her voice to be heard over renewed cheering.

Coaches carrying members of the royal family, and foreign dignitaries, were following on sedately behind the Gold State Coach towards Westminster Abbey. The crowd was surging forward at intervals, flags flapping noisily in the air.

‘I was intending to set to early,’ Matilda admitted. ‘But couldn’t miss this, could I? I’m glad I didn’t. What a glorious sight.’ She happily observed the jubilant scene before remembering to introduce the Murphys to Bethany and Alice. ‘Plenty o’ time to get the party started. The queen’s gone by so we’ve seen the best of it here, and what we’ll miss we can watch tomorrow, on the television set round at Rob’s. So we’ll be getting off home in a mo.’ Matilda sighed in satisfaction. ‘Turned out a lovely day, ain’t it? And didn’t Elizabeth look a sight fer sore eyes in her furs and jewels? What a get up.’

‘Could see all the stones in her crown sparkling from where I was standing,’ Bethany said.

‘I saw the queen with her crown,’ Kathleen piped up, making them all smile down at her. ‘She waved at me,’ she added shyly.

‘My Lilian has got a good spot at the front with some of her kids,’ Alice chipped in. ‘Oh, well … Come on, Mum, no point putting it off longer. We’d better get going and get the tables laid out. The little ’uns will be ready for something to eat after all the excitement.’ She crouched down to speak to Kathleen. ‘Bet you’re ready for some jelly and cake, aren’t you?’

Kathleen nodded and bashfully clasped her mother’s legs.

Matilda ruffled the little girl’s dark locks. ‘Make sure to be back in good time for the kids’ feed-up this afternoon,’ she reminded Noreen. ‘I’m expecting to see Rosie and Kathleen tucking in.’ She gave Kieran a wink. ‘Then later on the adults will have a bit of a knees-up.’

‘Is Christopher here somewhere?’ Kieran asked Matilda, glancing about. He owed his thanks to Chris for having put him forward for the job at the haulage company. Vince’s father was due to retire and Chris had made it his business to tell Kieran about the vacancy coming up. Kieran had been able to get an interview date arranged before the job was advertised.

‘Ain’t seen Chris for a few days,’ Matilda said. ‘S’pect him ’n’ Grace are busy arranging stuff now they’re gonna set a date fer the wedding in September.’

‘Better get a move on,’ Bethany warned her mother and sister, checking her watch. ‘Sophy and Danny will be arriving soon and I haven’t yet told George what time to meet them when they get off the train.’ Beth knew her eldest sister would be disappointed if nobody turned up to give them a lift from the station when they arrived from Essex. Her husband George usually did the honours as they still lived locally.

‘We’ll see you lot back at home a bit later.’ Matilda and her daughters headed off in the direction of the bus stop.

‘He doesn’t look too steady up there. Go and give him a hand, Josh?’ Alice asked her husband. She’d been watching her brother-in-law, Danny, up a ladder, tying a banner made from an old sheet to a lamppost. Painted in bold black letters along its length was GOD SAVE THE QUEEN. Sophy’s husband was stretching to tighten the cord and wobbling precariously while shouting instructions at a fellow on the opposite pavement who had hold of the other end of the string.

Josh put down the trestle table he’d been erecting and hurried over to give Danny some assistance while Alice continued setting out chairs.

‘They look good enough to eat, Stevie.’ Lucy had appeared with an armful of paper tablecloths just as Stephen emerged from Matilda’s house carrying a huge platter brimming with sausage rolls. He’d made them earlier at the café and had been keeping them warm on Matilda’s little stove.

The savoury aroma wafted temptingly around and the chef had to playfully smack away several hands that snaked out before he could land the plate on the table. ‘Kids first, you greedy lot,’ Stephen amiably told the adults who’d tried to snaffle a pastry in between positioning chairs for the children’s tea party.

Once the tables were covered in their colourful cloths, paper hats and streamers were scattered along their centres. Union Jacks were already anchored in several sash windows on either side of the road and chains of flags crisscrossed high above their heads, fluttering in the light breeze.

‘Where’s Chris?’ Rob had come up behind his brother and wolfed down a cheese straw with much smacking of his lips. ‘Not bad,’ he said, in praise of Stephen’s culinary skills. ‘I thought Chris was in charge of making the bonfire.’

Stephen glanced over to where Vince, Billy and Ted, with much larking about, were stacking up a pile of old timbers. The wood had been collected over the previous weeks from the demolished houses at the other end of the street. Close by, and gently rocking a pram in which slept a baby girl, was Deirdre, keeping a beady eye on her husband.

‘Not seen Chris since yesterday,’ Stephen said. ‘He didn’t come home last night … the dirty dog …’

‘Stayed with Grace, d’you reckon?’ Rob grinned at Stephen.

‘Wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ Stephen answered. ‘Like a couple of turtle doves, they are; and now they’re talking about a date in September …’ He gave his brother a wink before adding, more seriously, ‘Think that business with O’Connor setting light to the houses shook him up. He’s been acting a bit different. I was the same after I had me own accident,’ he mocked himself. ‘Makes you start to think … life’s too short to hang about waiting and hoping; just get on and do it’s my motto. That’s why I jumped in with both feet on the caff. Turned out the best thing me ’n’ Pearl ever did.’

‘Yeah …’ It was the sum of Rob’s agreement to his brother’s theory. ‘Chris’ll be coming along tonight, though?’

‘He’d better!’ Stephen laughed. ‘Or I reckon Matilda’ll have his guts fer garters.’

‘What about Pam?’ Rob asked, plunging his hands in his pockets while waiting for his brother’s response.

‘She got invited; up to her if she turns up. Can’t do no more’n ask.’

It had been a blunt statement, as though Stephen didn’t care either way. In fact he knew he’d appreciate it if his ex-wife put in an appearance; that way Christopher would know he meant it when he said there was no lingering animosity there on his part. He’d make sure he and Pearl made Pamela feel welcome if she came along. But he had a feeling it would be some time yet before his ex-wife’s wounds were healed by the strengthening connection to her son. Stephen knew that it wasn’t just duty, or a sense of something lacking in his life that took Chris regularly to Bexleyheath. His son was growing to love the mother he’d never known and, oddly, Stephen felt a quiet contentment because of it.

Briskly Stephen stepped back from the table he’d been piling with food and, before his brother could pursue the subject of his ex-wife, he turned on the spot to watch industrious people intent on making this last Bunk party the best ever. ‘We’ve had some shindigs here, ain’t we?’ he said. ‘I can remember as a kid marching up and down at the end of the Great War, banging a spoon on a pot on Armistice Day. Must’ve been at least a hundred kids in that procession. We all ended up jigging about round the barrel organ … went on for a few days, as I recall.’

‘Then we had a right good celebration in 1935 for King George’s Silver Jubilee and another on VE Day.’ Rob voiced his own reminiscences, his eyes distant.

‘Stop slacking there, Stevie, and bring out the fairy cakes.’ Matilda had come up behind her nephews. ‘And where’s Pearl with the jellies?’

‘She’s on her way. She was waiting for ’em to set properly. She didn’t get back from Trafalgar Square till late. Don’t worry, I’ve torn a strip off her,’ he joked. ‘Warned the silly cow she’d get caught in the crush and it’d make her late getting back here.’

‘Can’t blame her for hanging about in town. Once in a lifetime opportunity to see the queen on the way to get crowned,’ Matilda said. ‘Ooh, Elizabeth did look lovely …’

‘Oi, Tilly!’

Matilda twisted about at that familiar, raucous voice and immediately her wrinkled face lifted in a delighted grin.

‘Would’ve recognised you anywhere. Ain’t changed a bit, have yer?’ Matilda boomed out, hugging her grey-haired old friend.

Jeannie Robertson gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Yeah … you ’n’ all,’ she answered dryly. They both laughed. They were very different people now to those youthful, feisty women who once had fought – against and with – one another while scraping by, living as neighbours in The Bunk’s heyday.

‘Johnny with you?’ Matilda asked while glancing about for Jeannie’s fellow. She put down on the table the bottles of pop she’d been nursing while talking to her nephews.

Jeannie pointed to a tall, balding man standing with a group of people. Jeannie and Johnnie Blake had been together, on and off, since childhood, despite Jeannie having married someone else and had children with him.

‘And how’s your Peter doing?’ Matilda went on. Jeannie’s adult son still lived at home with his mother having suffered terribly, and never fully recovered, from shellshock in the Great War.

‘Yeah, he’s alright. Got himself a lady friend,’ Jeannie said proudly. ‘She’s a nice woman. Lost her husband in 1944 so she’s quite a bit younger …’ She broke off to exclaim, ‘Bleedin’ hell! That’s Connie Whitton over there, ain’t it?’ Jeannie was gazing at a buxom middle-aged bottle blonde who was sauntering along arm-in-arm with a stooped, shrunken-looking fellow. Connie had been a notorious prostitute in her time, when living in The Bunk, although she’d always been quite popular with her neighbours – women as well as men.

‘Reckon it is Connie,’ Matilda said. ‘And that must be Ralph Franks with her; now I wouldn’t have recognised him. He ain’t aged at all well – not like us …’ She chuckled as Jeannie swung an astonished glance at her.

‘Ralph Franks? Not the rozzer who used to do the beat about The Bunk with old Twitch?’ Twitch had been the nickname for Sidney Bickerstaff who had been well-respected by the Bunk community, considering policemen had been universally disliked and distrusted.

‘That’s Ralph alright,’ Matilda confirmed. ‘I heard Connie got back with him. Don’t think they’ve ever made it official, though.’ Matilda pointed to where her daughter Alice was standing talking to a couple of women. ‘And over there’s my Alice – good-looking one with dark hair – and I reckon that’s Connie’s sisters standing with her, Sarah and Louisa. Ain’t seen either of them in …’ Matilda gave up trying to calculate the years. ‘Bleedin’ hell, too long to remember when I last saw ’em. Before the last war, I know that.’ She paused for breath. ‘And Sarah’s still knocking about with her childhood sweetheart. Not that Herbert Banks is any more use now than he was as a kid. Sarah still ain’t married him, and I reckon that’s wise … but shame she ain’t got any children.’

‘We had some times, didn’t we, Til?’ Jeannie sighed out.

Matilda nodded and for a moment their eyes closed as they remembered the worst of it. Then wry smiles appeared simultaneously to tug at their lips.

‘Lot o’ water under the bridge and mighty glad to see most of it flow on by,’ Matilda said gruffly. ‘But good times ’n’ all. Specially when my Jack were alive, God rest him.’ She sniffed and chuckled to cheer herself up. ‘Anyhow, today we remember all them good times and ferget about the bad. And after the kids are stuffed fit ter burst, I’m gonna get the tables pushed back and remind you all how we used to do a shindig in The Bunk.’

‘And I’m ready fer it, don’t you worry about that,’ Jeannie said with an emphatic little jig on the spot. ‘But fer now I’m gonna mosey over and say hello to Connie … Oh, look who’s here! There’s old Beattie, talking to Lou Perkins, ’less me sight’s gone along with the rest o’ me.’ She exaggeratedly patted into style her salt-and-pepper-coloured hair that once had been a rich chestnut brown.

‘You’re not so bad fer yer age,’ Tilly ribbed her. ‘’Course you’re a bit older’n me, so naturally I look better.’

‘Bleedin’ cheek! I know you’re seventy if you’re a day and I ain’t yet turned sixty-five.’

‘Must’ve had your Peter when you was still at school then.’ Matilda roared with laughter before clasping Jeannie to her bosom.

‘Right … need any help with anything before I disappear?’ Jeannie nodded her head at the tables being piled up with platefuls of tasty food.

‘Nah, you go off and have a natter. Got me daughters and grandkids giving a hand with all the preparations.’

‘Fetch us some more serviettes will you, Sophy, when you get a minute?’

Sophy nodded at Alice and dived into a cardboard box to pull out some napkins printed with colourful Union Jacks. She started distributing them along the table by each plate. ‘Kids are getting hungry.’ Sophy pointed to a party of children, dressed in their Sunday best, hovering by the table, their eyes wide as they assessed the wonderful spread being laid out.

‘Time to get them seated,’ Bethany declared and started walking up and down the table pulling out chairs for excited youngsters.

CHAPTER THIRTY

‘Adam! You managed to get time off and come to our party!’ Faye plonked down the basin of jelly she’d been ladling out to the kids, and rushed towards her son to greet him with a fierce hug. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. Is Geraldine with you?’ She was always happy to see her son’s fiancée.

‘She’s gone to central London with some friends to see the coronation parade. But she’s hoping to come along later.’

‘Daisy will be thrilled to see you.’ Faye waved at her daughter, drawing her attention and, with a delighted grin, the young woman sped over to them. A dapper youth began trailing uncertainly in Daisy’s wake.

Daisy launched herself at her brother with such energy she almost knocked him off his feet. ‘Chris’ll be glad you made it.’ Daisy knew her brother and her cousin got on like a house on fire.

‘Where is Chris by the way?’ Daisy took a squint about. ‘And Grace, too. I’ve not seen either of them yet.’ A moment later she’d remembered her hovering boyfriend and urged him forward to introduce him to Adam.

‘This is Richard. I’ve told him all about you, and how brave you were in the war.’ She gave her brother a prideful beam.

Adam politely shook the nervous young man’s hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Richard … she exaggerates,’ he added modestly, patting the boy on the shoulder.

‘I saw Shirley Coleman turn up a little while ago. I’ll go and have a word with her and see if she knows where Grace and Chris have got to.’ Faye glanced away from her children with a frown. Her nephew’s absence was starting to niggle at her. ‘I expect something’s held them up, that’s all it is.’

Faye left her son and daughter chatting and went off to speak to Grace’s mother. She knew Chris wouldn’t intentionally miss this party. He and Grace had been talking about the preparations, along with everybody else, for months past. Grace had written invitations to many ex-Bunk residents for Matilda, and had been involved in planning today’s celebration. At the beginning of the week the young couple had been to the wholesaler’s to fetch back in the van the boxes of souvenir paper plates, tablecloths and serviettes.

‘Have you seen my Grace?’ On noticing Faye approaching, Shirley had immediately fired that at her, then glanced around, her lips pursed. ‘I can’t believe she’d not let me know she was stopping out last night.’

‘Didn’t come home then?’ Faye gave a little grimace.

‘I only came along to this party to give Grace a piece of my mind for worrying me so. I thought I might find her and Chris already here. But I’ve just had a word with Matilda and she’s not seen either of them for days. Didn’t say too much ’cos it looks like everybody’s having a good time and I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere.’ Shirley again swept the company with a searching gaze.

‘Grace didn’t give you a clue where she was off to?’

‘She had the day off work yesterday to do wedding things with Chris; that’s what she told me they were up to. Dolled up to the nines, she was. I’m just hoping she didn’t get too carried away with wedding things with Chris, if you get my drift.’ Shirley’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not going to be best pleased if any trouble comes out of this in nine months’ time, and I’ll make no bones about telling his father so when I clap eyes on him.’

‘They’re setting the big day for some time in September,so not too far off, is it,’ Faye quickly soothed Shirley.

‘Grace was engaged before, you know, and the rotter did the dirty on her. As far as I’m concerned, till a girl’s got a wedding ring on her finger, anything can happen.’

‘Chris idolises Grace,’ Faye quickly reassured her. She could tell Shirley was becomingly increasingly agitated by the thought of an unplanned pregnancy arising from the couple’s unexplained absence. ‘They’ll be along soon, I’m sure of it. Now come and meet some people; most of Matilda’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren are here. They’re a lovely bunch …’

Shirley allowed herself to be lead away, grumbling.

‘Now who wants more jelly?’ Pearl held up the glass bowl. A few hands went up but most of the children were too full to indulge in more. After Pearl had doled out seconds to those who wanted it, Stevie relieved her of the remainder.

‘I don’t mind a bit of jelly when I’m hungry.’ He immediately dug a spoon into it.

Pearl gave him a fond smile. ‘You’ve worked hard, so I’ll let you get away with that one.’ She glanced at the table; the children were slowly drifting away now they had eaten their fills. ‘Get the empties cleared away, shall we, then we can put out some fresh sandwiches and sausage rolls for the adults to dive into.’ She leaned forward to whisper, ‘Have you hidden the cake?’

Stephen nodded. Just that afternoon he’d iced a large sponge in the shape and colours of the Union Jack. He chuckled. ‘I’ve made a gold crown for Tilly to wear ’n’ all when we come to cut it. She can do the honours as she’s our Queen of The Bunk.’

Pearl guffawed. ‘She’ll like that, Stevie.’

‘Let’s make a bit of dancing space, shall we?’

Alice and Sophy had started to move back chairs to clear some room in the centre of the street.

Suddenly they stopped and stared as a van pulled up and Rob and Josh tumbled out to open the back doors. Alice burst out laughing. ‘I wondered where Josh had got to!’ She clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘I told him we could do with a bit of music but I didn’t dream he’d bring the piano from home.’ She weaved through the throng towards him. ‘You gone nuts, Josh Chaplin?’ She was shaking her head in amazement as he and Rob lifted the piano onto the pavement. ‘I was only expecting the Italian fellow to turn up and do a turn on his barrel organ.’

‘You can’t do the conga properly without someone bashing it out on the piano, Al,’ Josh soothed her in his gentle way. ‘Anyhow, you know you like a good singsong, with me tinkling the ivories. And George has fetched over his banjo, so we’re all set for a night of it.’

As the light faded, and the bonfire shed a warm glow on the street scene, Alice wandered away into the shadows. Planting her hands on her hips she sighed, realising she felt pleasantly exhausted. She’d moments ago danced the hokey cokey with Sarah Whitton, the pair of them singing their lungs out, and laughing hard enough to make their jaws and ribs ache. Now Alice hoped to find a chair to relax on, and take a breather; but sleepy-headed kids occupied every one.

Instinctively she perched down on her mother’s front step, and contentedly let the sights and sounds of the celebration wash over her. Her Josh was bashing out ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’ in between sending her significant little glances. She gesticulated at him not to be daft. That made him laugh and adopt an even more sentimental air, simply to tease her.

Alice settled her back against her mother’s door and sipped from her glass. Her eyelids closed and she let the June night air refresh her as her mind retreated through decades to remember herself as a girl, crouching outside with friends on balmy Saturday nights, while above, in their decrepit rooms, the adults would sing and jig to the tunes belted out on the piano by her dad.

It was the same piano that Josh was playing now, Alice realised, and the thought of her dad’s fingers flying over those battered keys, forty years previously, filled her with poignant pleasure. In a way it made her content that he was here enjoying this final Bunk party with them today.

Almost simultaneously, Alice’s three sisters spotted her quietly relaxing and ambled over to join her. They stood, smiling, watching waltzing couples, before they too settled down on the step or kerb, as they once had congregated together as children.

‘You know, I never understood what Mum saw in this place. I couldn’t wait to get out and get on …’ Alice paused, glanced towards Seven Sisters Road. ‘Yet … it’s got something, hasn’t it. In a daft way it’s special and I’ve only just realised I wish the street wasn’t being pulled down. I know I’m going to miss it when it’s gone.’

‘Me too,’ Sophy said. ‘Met my Danny here, didn’t I, so there are some fine memories for me. Remember, do you, Al, the day the Lovats turned up to move in next door?’

‘Was only twelve at the time, but I won’t ever forget it,’ Alice vowed. ‘I still think about Geoff …’ she added huskily as she remembered Danny’s younger brother. She’d been fond of him, had classed him as her best friend, and he’d proved his worth with his caring, selfless behaviour. His life had ended tragically and far too soon on a Somme battlefield.

‘Couldn’t ever forget Geoff,’ Bethany echoed. ‘He was a hero.’

‘We had some larks when we were young,’ Lucy chipped in nostalgically. ‘Might not have thought it was good at the time but they were diamond days. Bloody good job Mum didn’t find out about some of it though.’

‘Nearly got skinned alive by Mum a few times for misbehaving,’ Sophy added distantly.

‘We all know you’ve got a few racy tales to tell your grandkids, when you have some, little Luce.’ Alice turned the attention away from her eldest to her youngest sister.

‘She’d better not tell ’em!’ Beth declared. ‘She’ll scare the living daylights out of the poor little mites.’

‘Best not let on,’ Lucy agreed ruefully. ‘If any of me grandkids find out I’ve got a bit of a dodgy past they might not take a blind bit of notice of me when I tell ’em off.’

‘In that case, we’d all do well to guard our tongues about what we got up to as kids. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind hearing your stories again, Luce. The antics you got up to!’

‘Best leave it for another time, Al,’ Lucy answered with a wry chuckle. ‘But I will tell you …’

Alice gave a contented sigh, glancing about at the fire-daubed festivities where generations of their kith and kin were having fun. ‘We’ve got a smashing family, haven’t we?’

‘Wish Dad was here to see it,’ Sophy said.

‘Wish Chris and Grace were here to see it,’ Lucy suddenly chipped in. ‘Where on earth have those two got to? Stevie’s been waiting for them to turn up before he brings out his cake.’ She grinned at the sight of Matilda, waltzing past with Jeannie Roberts.

‘Now I’m down here on this step, I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to get up again, Al.’ Sophy stuck out an arm. ‘Give an old ’un a hand up, will you, sis?’

‘That is a beautiful bit of icing, Stevie. It’s a real treat to have such a lovely surprise.’

Matilda was standing, arms akimbo, assessing the Coronation Day cake with a proud expression.

Stevie had decided not to wait any longer for his son and future daughter-in-law to make an appearance before unveiling his masterpiece. A short while after Shirley had arrived at the party, Faye had given him a whispered warning that Grace’s mum was in high dudgeon because her daughter had stayed out with Chris. Since having accepted a few drinks, Shirley had mellowed and now seemed more willing to join in the fun. In Faye’s opinion – and Stephen had agreed with his sister-in-law – the young couple were probably now sober and feeling a bit bashful about turning up and getting ribbed, and rebuked, because of what they’d been up to last night.

Stephen was disappointed to think the couple might miss the last ever Bunk celebration. He also thought his son’s timing pretty bad, being as Chris had known for ages that this party was coming up. But he’d been young himself once, and knew that the urge to spend the night with an attractive woman could easily override good sense. It had happened to him, with Pamela, and had led to his beloved Christopher’s birth.

‘’Ere, everybody come and take a look at this.’ Matilda spun on the spot to holler that out.

People started to congregate around the table to admire the large cake Stephen had placed right in the centre.

He whipped out the gold-coloured crown that had been hidden behind his back and placed it gently on his aunt’s silver hair.

‘Now, being as Elizabeth couldn’t make it here today – I hear she’s busy elsewhere but she don’t know what she’s missing …’ Stevie gave a droll shrug. ‘You’re our queen, Matilda, and you have to make the first cut in the ceremonial cake.’ He handed his aunt a knife.

Matilda looked about. ‘Everybody ready?’ Having received a chorus of yes, she called, ‘Three, two, one,’ and plunged the knife into the sponge to an ear-splitting cheer.

‘You don’t want to go eating too much of that or you’ll lose yer figure.’

Jeannie Robertson had come up behind Matilda and given her ample backside a pat.

Matilda wiped her mouth of cake crumbs then screwed up her paper serviette. ‘Stevie do make a decent bit of cake, I’ll give him that. I wouldn’t mind another bit.’

‘Turned into a couple of fine men, your nephews Robert and Stephen, considering who their father was.’ Jeannie glanced to where the two brothers were laughing with a group of people.

‘Took after me sister Fran, both of them,’ Matilda said with gruff pride. ‘Nothing like that …’ She swallowed the swearword, pursing her lips.

‘How you been keeping health-wise?’ Jeannie knew about her friend’s lucky escape from death. She also knew that Matilda’s injuries had continued giving her gyp following Jimmy Wild’s attempt to murder her.

‘Not bad, all things considered. Get a bit of arthritis in me legs …’

‘Me too,’ Jeannie said on a chuckle. ‘And I never got shoved out a window. So you come out of it alright, didn’t yer? Someone must’ve been watching over yer that night, Til.’

‘Jack … dear Jack was me guardian angel,’ Matilda whispered. ‘He was with me, I know it.’

Jeannie heard the watery gurgle in Matilda’s voice and gave her a quick cuddle. ‘Got a lovely family, ain’t yer, Til. I’ve met a lot of ’em tonight. That’s what I miss, having grandkids. I know Peter won’t give me none.’

It was Matilda’s turn to offer comfort. ‘You never know, now he’s got this young lady, he just might surprise you.’ She nodded at a young blonde woman who’d just arrived who was holding a baby in her arms. ‘That’s my granddaughter Lilian there,’ she announced proudly. ‘Looker like her mum, ain’t she? She’s Alice’s gel. She’s holding little Beryl, one of me great-granddaughters … just a few months old.’

‘Remember when Lilian was born in The Bunk, I do. Where’s all them years gone, Til?’

‘Gawd knows, but I remember ’em all like it were yesterday.’

‘First sign yer losing yer marbles, ain’t it, Til, when you can remember stuff that long ago?’

Matilda roared with laughter and wiped her streaming eyes. ‘Glad you come over, Jeannie, you always do give me a good laugh.’

Jeannie patted Matilda’s back. ‘And there were times when we needed that laugh, Til, else we might have got found swingin’ from them banisters.’ She cocked her head in the direction of the houses.

‘No more talk about bad times,’ Matilda said briskly, dusting herself down. ‘This is gonna be the best night to remember. I’m gonna jig about till me knees give out.’

‘Come on then … I’ll hold you up, old ’un …’ Jeannie said, linking arms with her friend and leading her towards the dancing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

‘We’re gonna be in trouble, you know that, don’t you?’

Grace turned in the circle of Chris’s arms to see him smiling ruefully at her. ‘Yeah … we’re going to get a rocket, no doubt about it,’ she sighed out in agreement.

From beyond the shelter of the roaring bonfire, they were loitering, watching the Coronation Day celebration while garnering the courage to face their families and explain their absence.

‘Shirley’s turned up. Look … she’s over there dancing with Pearl.’

Grace bobbed her head, her eyes following Chris’s pointing finger. She smiled at the sight of her mother doing what looked like the cancan as she was shaking her skirt and twirling an ankle. ‘Can’t see my nan anywhere; I didn’t think Mum would come along on her own.’ She’d sounded surprised. ‘But I’m glad she’s here and enjoying herself.’

‘I reckon the others must have told her that wherever you are, you’re bound to be with me so you’ll be alright.’ A self-mocking smile tilted his lips. ‘Your mum’s fine,’ he reassured Grace, stroking fingertips on her flame-flushed cheek. ‘Look, she’s jigging about fit to bust with a pint glass in her hand.’

‘Yeah, she’s got a drink, so she’ll have calmed down by now.’ Grace didn’t sound wholly convinced that was the case. ‘I should have warned her I wouldn’t be home. She’ll have been worried about me, Chris.’ A tinge of guilt had entered her tone.

‘Do you regret what we’ve done?’ Chris asked gently.

‘No …’ Grace turned again to gaze earnestly at him. ‘No, not at all, it’s just, I know we’ve disappointed people by being selfish. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to go off like that.’

‘We’ve not been selfish,’ Chris insisted. ‘We said, didn’t we, we’ve been thinking about other people too much, for too long, and that wasn’t fair on us. Now it’s time to concentrate on our future and our happiness.’ He emphasised his point of view by tightening his arms about her, and encouraged her to brighten up by dropping one kiss, then another, on her soft hair.

‘Can’t see my mum anywhere,’ Chris remarked. ‘But that ain’t a surprise. She’s probably gone out with Roger.’

‘Do you reckon poor Roger will stick around with you giving him the third degree all the time?’

‘’Course he will! If he’s made of the right stuff.’ Chris grinned. ‘Only natural a son would want to make sure his mum’s not getting involved with a chancer.’ He sounded serious when he added, ‘’Cos if he is a wrong ’un he’ll have me to answer to.’

Pamela had been seeing her boyfriend, Roger, for a few weeks. She’d reassured her son that he was a regular in the café where she worked, and she’d grown to think him a nice enough chap over some months. Before she’d introduced him to Chris last week she’d agreed to a few trips to the pictures with Roger, just to make certain he was the kind of gentleman her beloved son would take to.

‘She could have brought Roger here with her this evening,’ Grace remarked, looking up at him over a shoulder.

‘I knew she wouldn’t come here, with or without him; she’d have felt awkward … an outsider … no matter how hard Aunt Tilly and the rest of ’em tried to welcome her. It’s best to leave things be now.’

‘You’re happy with the way things are between your mum and dad?’ Grace asked, surprised. Over the past weeks they’d talked in depth about wedding plans and she’d picked up on Chris’s frustration about the tricky relationship between his parents.

‘I’m happier than I’ve ever been, but that’s because of you, not them. If me mum and dad can keep being a bit civil to one another it’s enough for me. Can’t expect things to be any better’n that between them considering what’s gone on, I know that now. It was pie in the sky expecting the three of us to start playing happy families.’

‘Nobody would blame you for wanting that,’ Grace replied huskily.

‘I’ve got what I want.’ He turned her about to cup her face in his hands. ‘And if we’d waited and had a big do with all the trimmings and all the family, just to please them, I reckon we might not have been so happy as we are today.’ He smiled wryly. ‘We’d have been broke, for a start. And it’s said weddings and funerals can bring out the best, and worst, in people. I’m glad we went off and did it quietly, just the two of us, and didn’t risk it all falling flat.’ Grace still looked a bit subdued, so he added, ‘We didn’t want any slanging matches, did we, about who sits where and who gets up and says what?’

‘No,’ Grace said with a wry chuckle. ‘We certainly didn’t want any of that.’

They had talked for hours during the past month or so about the cost of a wedding, and the organisation needed to get everything planned within a short time so they could be man and wife by the end of September. Finally, they’d realised that getting married and getting their own place was what they wanted, but everything else was negotiable.

Scrimping for a cheap do hadn’t appealed to either of them; they’d sooner put their meagre savings towards a deposit on a house. Neither had they wanted to ask either of their families for financial help. And constantly niggling at them was the worrying thought that, once the drink started to flow at their wedding reception, bitterness might float to the surface bringing trouble with it. Chris knew very well that the Wilds were no strangers to blunt speaking, or family tear-ups.

So, caught up in the excitement of the imminent Coronation Day celebration, they had both simply agreed to do it, without telling a soul, because they realised people would try and talk them out of it and make them stick to tradition. They had arranged for the banns to be read and then yesterday had gone to the Town Hall and emerged at three-thirty as man and wife.

‘We had a perfect day, didn’t we?’

Grace nodded then jokingly complained, ‘Not much of a honeymoon though … a couple of nights in a hotel.’ After the brief wedding ceremony, with two strangers acting as witnesses, they’d had an elegant afternoon tea, followed by a wonderfully sleepless night in a Piccadilly hotel. They had a room booked there for this evening, but after that they weren’t sure where they’d be staying.

‘Once we get sorted out in our own place, I’ll take you somewhere really nice for a week.’ The promise was whispered against her lips.

‘Where is our own place?’ Grace asked with a frown. The practicalities of their situation were constantly niggling at her. She hadn’t changed her mind about being reluctant to camp out with either of their families, and she knew Chris felt the same way.

‘We’ll have to rent for a while,’ Chris said on a sigh. ‘I’ll get straight onto finding somewhere tomorrow morning. If we get a cheap room we might be able to keep on saving for a deposit. I don’t want to waste too much on rent though. Dead money, is rent. I want us to buy our own house, with a mortgage.’

‘Me too,’ Grace said emphatically. ‘You know I’ve always wanted to own my own little home.’ She paused, staring at the revellers, and beyond. ‘If you think I’m talking rubbish go ahead and say so and I won’t mention it again but …’ She twisted about to face him. ‘How about if we set up home here, just while we save. Won’t get anywhere cheaper to stay than The Bunk.’

Chris stared at her in astonishment. ‘You want to live here?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘No, I don’t want to, but I will for a few months if need be while we save for our deposit. If we’re not paying out for our lodgings we can save almost everything we earn.’ She sounded enthusiastic. ‘If your Aunt Matilda doesn’t mind roughing it a bit, at her age, I’m sure I can do it.’

Chris’s eyes were glimmering with a sort of wonderment. ‘You mean you really would live here … in one of those dumps … with me?’ he croaked.

‘Live anywhere with you,’ she said shortly. ‘And I know you’ll tidy it up the best you can for us. I’ll help,’ she offered immediately. ‘I don’t mind doing a bit of painting and decorating.’ She started to giggle. ‘Besides, it’ll suit you down to the ground. You’ve got no excuse to be late for work …’

Chris jerked her against him and kissed her hard on the mouth. ‘You’re bloody wonderful, know that? Not many girls would even dream of …’

‘Never mind about other people,’ she said briskly. ‘I reckon I could just about stand six months living here, if you can.’

‘I can, Grace. And I’ll find the best room there is and turn it into a little palace for you,’ he vowed.

‘Good. That’s settled then.’ She gave him a serene smile.

‘It’s time to go and tell them,’ Chris murmured against her forehead. ‘Ready, Mrs Wild?’

Grace nodded and took a deep, inspiriting breath. Suddenly her smile wilted a bit. ‘We’re not going to ruin their party, are we, by telling them now? I’d sooner own up tomorrow if we might put a dampener on things.’

As Chris stepped out from behind the fire, Grace nibbled at her lower lip and remained in the shadows.

‘We could just say we’ve been held up somewhere then come clean another time,’ she reasoned.

Chris held out his hand, beckoned. ‘Come on. Time to do it,’ he gently urged. ‘They’ve spotted us, anyhow.’ He raised a hand to his father who’d stopped dancing with Pearl to squint at him. Stephen began striding towards him, his face splitting into a joyous grin of recognition. Suddenly Stephen turned to bawl out news of the couple’s arrival to the others.

‘No going back, Grace,’ Chris teased. ‘You’ve got to pretend you’re ten again and just jump with me, straight in at the deep end. Come on … sink or swim together.’ With her hand in his they went, laughing, to join their family.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to:

HBS for some amusing tales about building site shenanigans. Juliet Burton, Susan Opie, and last but by no means least, the great HarperCollins editorial team that commissioned this book to tie-in with our marvellous Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.

About the Author

Kay Brellend, the third of six children, was born in North London but now lives in a Victorian farmhouse in Suffolk. Under a pseudonym she has written sixteen historical novels published in England and North America. This is her third novel set in the twentieth century and was inspired by her grandmother’s reminiscences about her life in Campbell Road, Islington.

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

East End Coronation Party © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

East Ender Cleaning Doorstep © Hulton-Deautsch Collection/Corbis

Queen’s Coronation Procession © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

Party Smiles © Getty Images

Jolly Time © Getty Images

Sweet Gift © Getty Images

Coronation Party © Getty Images

Copyright © Kay Brellend 2012

Kay Brellend asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EPub Edition © May 2012 ISBN: 978 0 00 748146 0

All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

LEAH FLEMING

The War Widows

Dedication

For Jan, Madeleine, Menna, Lyneth, April, Kathryn and all the Lichfield Register friends, past and present.

‘We have eaten bread and salt together, sorrows and joys shared…’

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1 - Business as Usual

Chapter 2 - The Telegram

Chapter 3 - An Unexpected Legacy

Chapter 4 - The Leftover Brides

Chapter 5 - The Day War Broke Out Again

Chapter 6 - Farewell to Freddie

Chapter 7 - The Olive Oil Hunt

Chapter 8 - Maria

Chapter 9 - Balancing Books and Entertaining Angels

Chapter 10 - Invitations to a Feast

Chapter 11 - Susan to the Rescue

Chapter 12 - The Olive Oil Club

Chapter 13 - A Dickens of a Christmas

Chapter 14 - Dancing in the Snow

Chapter 15 - The Miracle Cure

Chapter 16 - The Joys of a Family

Chapter 17 - Cinderellas in Ballgowns

Chapter 18 - Moses Heights

Chapter 19 - Changing the Guard

Chapter 20 - A Bit of Blackpool Air

Chapter 21 - Here Comes The Bride

Chapter 22 - Dancing in the Park

Chapter 23 - The Mission

Chapter 24 - A Brief Encounter Moment

Chapter 25 - Gretna Green Temptations

Chapter 26 - A Mystery Tour

And Afterwards …

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

Prologue

August 1947

Her big day was here at last, after all those years of daydreaming how it would be. The bride opened one eye and peered over her bedroom. It felt as if she’d been courting sleep all night and not a wink in her direction. But what sort of girl slept like a top on the eve of her wedding anyway? Except hers was the wakefulness of the wary, not the excitement of a nervous bride.

‘Bless the Bride’ was the popular song that went round and round in her head like a needle stuck on a gramophone record.

Her eyes skimmed across the room to where the outfit was hanging on the back of the door; not the white slub satin, cut on the bias, with beaded sweetheart neck the family would expect, nor the fancy rig-out that Princess Elizabeth would be wearing to parade down the aisle of Westminster Abbey in November. The linen two-piece suit was sensible, fit for the simplicity of Zion Chapel and all the dos thereafter. It would get a lifetime of wear and probably be cut down into cushion covers or a kiddy’s party dress one day. This was 1947, after all, and there were few coupons to lavish on new clothing when there was a home to furnish.

It was just that she didn’t feel like a new bride-or a shop-soiled one either-and pink was not really her normal shade, but it would brighten up a grey Division Street for the few minutes it was on show.

Her ensemble was a modest Grimbleton version of the New Look that was all the rage in Paris, with its tight-fitted jacket and full skirt to her calf.

A year ago, she would never have imagined herself wearing anything so daring.

A year ago, she hadn’t even known the women who’d sewn it up, embroidered the lapels and sorted her matching gloves, hat and shoes with such loving care.

A year ago, they would’ve been just strangers’ faces in a crowded street.

A year ago, she would have chosen Glacier Mint white or caramel cream, not rose pink. What a colour to put on Lily May Winstanley!

She sank back down onto the bed with a deep sigh, burying her head under the eiderdown, not ready to face the morning. Who would she be at the end of this momentous day?

One thing was for certain. She owed everything to the bunch of dolly mixtures chance had thrown her way last November. Their arrival had turned her world upside down. Where would she be now without her Olive Oil sisters? What must she do next? How had it all begun?

1

Business as Usual

November 1946

It was a normal Monday washday rush at 22 Division Street, Grimbleton. First there was a mound of coloureds and whites to be sorted out, young Neville Winstanley’s silk blouses and knitted jumpers separated for hand washing, a pail of his soaking pants to be scrubbed, last week’s overalls from the market stall and Levi’s boiler suit left until last.

Polly Isherwood, the daily help, came in early to watch the setting-up of the new Acme Electric Agitator enthroned in the outside shed. Esme Winstanley came down in her tweed dressing gown to inspect the whole procedure. She still couldn’t believe a machine could do a week’s washing without shredding seams or blowing up the whole building.

‘If that thing tears all our smalls, don’t come asking me for coupons, Lil,’ she snapped at her daughter, never at her best first thing. ‘It’s the slippery slope to idleness in the home, relying on machines to do your dirty work. I don’t trust those paddles. Whose big idea was this? Someone’d better stand over it, just in case.’

‘I’d have thought you of all women would be glad to see the back of all that slavery in the scullery, pounding dolly tubs and winding up the mangle. What’s wrong with a bit of help in the home?’ Lily argued back.

Mother was always preaching how women were the backbone of this country and had kept the Home Front going in two world wars. She had marched the streets in her Suffragette colours in her youth, on fire with indignation at not getting the Vote. Middle age was softening her militant ideas.

There was no time for anyone to be standing around like a statue with three generations in one house. The Winstanleys were lucky enough to be the first in the street to own this labour-saving device and Lily, for one, thought it was a godsend.

‘I’ve no time to stand and watch over it,’ she said. ‘Polly’ll be around for the morning. She’ll keep her eye on it with the handwritten instruction sheet stuck on the wall, and she can slip a few of her own things in the washer.’

‘All that electric it’s using up-what if the power goes off and all our week’s wash is trapped in the drum? Your father would turn in his grave…’ Esme snorted back, wanting the last word on the matter.

‘Don’t start all that again. Dad was all for progress. He’d be pleased no one has to rise before dawn to heat the copper boiler. We’re living in the modern age now. I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up. Business is doing nicely; we’ve never missed an electric bill yet.’

‘When you’re a married woman with a home of your own you’ll worry about bills and lights left on. We’ve spoiled the lot of you, giving you driving lessons, a van and a fancy education. Now you’ve all got ideas above your station.’

There was no arguing with Esme when she had got her Monday mood fired up.

‘Oh, Mother! I’m duly grateful so let me get on with my breakfast or I’ll be late for work! There’s many round here who’d give their false teeth for an Acme.’

‘Lily, that’s very cruel. You know I can’t stand for long without my hip giving me jip.’

‘All the more reason to let Polly get on with her job then. That’s what we pay her for.’

‘I suppose so, but it doesn’t feel right to be standing around like Lady Muck, giving orders. It’s the thin end of the wedge. Vacuums, irons…it’ll be refrigerators next. It wasn’t like this in my day,’ Esme sighed.

‘Lil’s right for once. We’re the envy of the street for having a washing machine,’ said Lily’s sister-in-law, Ivy, from the doorway, carrying yet another armful of her little son’s clothing.

She was wearing her glamorous pink quilted dressing gown, which puffed out like a satin eiderdown. The effect was spoiled by a line of steel waving clips in her hair, making her look like one of Flash Gordon’s robots.

‘While I remember, Lil,’ she added. ‘Remind my husband to fetch some butterscotch sweets back from the Market Hall. Callard and Bowser’s, the best, not that cheap stuff from the corner shop, and a quarter of dolly mixtures for the little laddie. No use me asking Levi, he’ll only forget.’

‘Neville’ll choke on them,’ sniffed Esme, who disapproved of all the sweet bribery dished out to her grandson.

‘Never! He can pick them over while he’s on the potty. It helps him concentrate.’

‘You spoil that bairn. All my children were clean and dry by the time they could walk, none of this pandering to whims and fancies. I’ve seen that little monkey sitting until his bottom has a rim round it and then you dress him up like a doll and off he goes in a corner to relieve himself. He needs a smacked bottom, not dolly mixtures.’

‘I know,’ Ivy simpered, ‘but we do things differently now. Oh, and, Lil, grab me something from the lending library while you’re passing. Something lighter than the last rubbish you brought me. What would I be doing with War and Peace?. We’ve seen enough of war in this house.’

‘What did your last slave die of?’ Lily muttered under her breath. What was the point? Since Levi’s return from the war, she’d slipped down the pecking order at number 22. Still single and the daughter of the house, she was at everyone’s beck and call.

‘Lily’ll open the shop this morning and do a stock-take so Levi can have a lie-in. She won’t have time to be doing your errands, young lady,’ replied Esme, coming to her daughter’s rescue for once. ‘He made a right racket last night tripping on the steps, and I never thought to hear such language on my stair carpet.’

At last, some welcome support, but it was short-lived.

‘But while you’re there, can you try and get me the latest Nevil Shute novel or another Forsyte Saga?. But not the first two-I’ve read them. I’d go myself but it’s the Women’s Bright Hour committee, followed by a speaker from Crompton’s Biscuits this afternoon. I’ll be giving the vote of thanks, of course, seeing how Crompton’s is a family business, so to speak. How’s Levi, still in the land of Nod?’

‘Sleeping it off, so Lil’ll have to take the bus this morning,’ Ivy replied. ‘He’ll be needing the van. They made a bit of a night of it at the Legion, an Armistice night lock-in. Beats me how they get the booze, with all the rationing, but parading is thirsty work. You know how it is when the lads get together. Well, no, you wouldn’t, Lily. Walter never made it to the Forces, did he?’

Why did the woman always have to rub in the fact that her fiancé, Walter, failed his medical?

‘He’ll need a stomach liner for his breakfast, then,’ Esme added.

Bang went all their bacon rashers for the week again. Levi’s nights out at the Legion were getting to be a habit, leaving his sister to open up and set the stall in order. Not that she minded back when the war was on. She was proud to be holding the fort while the men were away, but now he was back he was happy to play at being the manager while she did all the work. It wasn’t fair.

Esme had seen the pout, the flash of steel in Lily’s grey eyes. ‘Now don’t begrudge your brother a bit of extra, Lily. We’re lucky to have our boys in one piece when there are so many families still in mourning. Being a prisoner of war took it out of him. He was nothing but skin and bone when he came home. You had it easy, my girl.’

But that was two years ago. It was Freddie who was still out in the Middle East doing his duty. There’d not been a letter this week. Perhaps that meant he was being shipped home for Christmas, as they’d promised. She couldn’t wait to see him again.

Levi had milked his hero’s return for all it was worth, though his limp and scraggy bones were long gone. Time to make a fuss of her little brother, who had been on active service since 1940.

Freddie wouldn’t recognise his big brother. He was not the lad who marched away all those years ago; the ace outside half who once had a trial for Grimbleton’s professional football club, the lynx who could shin up and down an apple tree faster than any of the boys in the street, who used to have a spring in his step when he swung the girls around the Palais de Danse in a quick step. Levi had gone to seed.

If it wasn’t for the Winstanley wavy hair and grey eyes, Levi wouldn’t pass for a Winstanley. Now those eyes were dull like damp slate, and he stooped and had grown a paunch, the only one in the family to grow fat on austerity rations. He never looked them in the eye when he was talking and was always turning up late.

Marriage to Ivy Southall had done him no favours. Of all the girls in Grimbleton he could have had his pick-the cream of the grammar school prefects, the tennis club and Zion Chapel-but he’d landed himself with a painted doll who whined like an air-raid siren and put on an accent so thick you could spread it on toast. She’d spun a sticky web of false glamour around herself and he’d flown into her trap, wedded and bedded within a year.

That was mean, Lily thought, as she was biting her toast and Marmite on the run. You’re just jealous because after all these years you and Walt have not got round to naming the day.

It was only right that Levi, who was the eldest, was married first. He’d been to war and back. He deserved to be settled down with his family in the upstairs best bedroom, but she’d done her bit too. It just wasn’t the same as wearing a uniform and doing proper war work, though. Someone had to keep the family business-Winstanley Health and Herbs-in the pink, help Mother with the stall and keep the Home Front loose, limber and productive. No one worked fast when they were constipated.

All those dreams of leaving Grimbleton to join the WAAF or the WRNS and travelling abroad were sacrificed. It was only fair to hold the fort. Freddie had been all over the world: the Far East, the Mediterranean serving with the Military Police, and Levi served in the army on the Continent, in France and Belgium, until he was captured. The furthest Lily had been was the Lake District and Rhyl. There was no time to gallivant when there was a war on.

Stop this. It was too bright a morning to be nitpicking. Time to gather her sandwiches and flask and run for the next bus into town.

It was a new day, a new week. ‘Every dawn is a new beginning,’ said the Reverend Atkinson from his pulpit in Zion Chapel. She was lucky to have a life to live. The poor names etched on the war memorial had nothing. ‘For your tomorrow, we gave our today.’ How could she forget that?

With a bit of luck Levi would show up at lunchtime and she could nip to the library and to the fent shop to look for some off-cuts for the Brownies’ costumes. The Christmas review would be upon them before long, rehearsals and costume-sewing bees, choir practice. No wonder there weren’t enough hours in the week for all her jobs. No wonder Walter complained he never got to see her alone. Bless him. With a bit of luck he’d be on duty at his uncle’s stall and they could have a sip of Bovril together and plan their wedding day.

Lily stood at the bus stop looking up at the bright blue sky. It looked set fair for the day. There was still a tinge of bonfire smoke in the air. The leaves had turned crisp and golden. The world was lighting up again after years of darkness. There was hope in the air. The parson was right: a new day was a new beginning. No more moaning.

The Winstanleys had survived the worst Hitler could throw at them. They were all in good enough health and in little Neville there was a new generation to follow on. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world, she thought, smiling, and jumped on the bus.

It took a native to admire the finer points of her home town, Lily mused, peering out at the rows of terraced houses that grew smaller and smaller as they drew closer to the edge of Grimbleton town centre, rows and rows of neat red-brick terraces, with whitened doorsteps and cotton net valances at the windows.

The mill workers had long gone to their shift, and the schoolchildren had yet to throng the pavements, but the bus was full of familiar faces all muffled up against the frost and chill. A bus full of grey gabardines and brown coats, sombre hats and gloves holding wicker baskets, printed headscarves hiding iron curlers and pin curls. Not a glamour puss amongst them in pompadour kiss curls and high heels; a drab world of duns and greys, a tired world, weary after so much turmoil and uncertainty, trying to get back on its feet.

But this is my home town, Lily sighed, all I’ve ever known.

The route into town got darker as they passed Magellan’s Foundry, with its chimney belching smoke, the sparks flickering from the half-open door of the engineering works, the smell of tannery where piles of cow hides lay in the sun, and the bomb sites still gaping with half-built walls and rubble that grew purple with rosebay willowherb in the summertime.

Then came Horton’s garage, which had taken a direct hit. No one had survived. It still saddened her to pass that spot. Wherever she looked there were the telltale signs of black-sooted buildings, empty half-boarded-up houses in need of repair. It would take years to freshen up the town.

Yet only half a mile into its heart were majestic civic offices, the town hall, with its Palladian portico, a bustle of shops and streets, and down the side street the magnificent entrance to the Market Hall.

It still gave her a thrill to walk through the doors, to see the huge iron-vaulted glass roof high above her head, the smell of brewing tea, meat paste and fresh baking mingled with cardboard boxes, cheese rind, starched linen and newly mopped tiles.

The market was quiet on a Monday morning. Everyone was spent up after the weekend. Only the usual customers wanting a tonic or to use the weighing scales would grace the stall before noon. Plenty of time for Lily to dust over the stock, sort out the warehouse order, and chat over the football results with passers-by.

She drew back the canvas curtains and sniffed the familiar smells of dandelion and burdock, liquorice roots, cough linctus, linseed, herbal smells mingled with embrocation oils: a heady brew that filled her with nostalgia.

Winstanley Health and Herbs was more than just an alternative chemist’s shop, it was a piece of Grimbleton history. Lily’s grandfather, Travis Winstanley, was one of the first stallholders, a founder member of the Market Traders’ Association. No one could accuse him of being a quack selling remedies from the back of a wagon. He had studied the science, kept himself up to date and advertised his cures far and wide in the district. He had patented his own ‘Fog and Smog Syrup’ to clear chests of soot and grime. In summer the family made up elderflower skin cream and, in autumn, elderberry cordial, roaming the highways and countryside for produce.

Travis’s son, Redvers, took over the business in due course and trained up his children to respect their calling. Thank goodness people got piles and warts, stomach upsets, skin rashes and embarrassing itches as regular as the four seasons. Dad knew more about the internal workings of Grimbleton bowels than any quack in the district. No one wanted to shell out for a doctor’s bottle, though there was talk of a free health service that might affect them one day. So far so good, though.

But despite their father’s efforts, Levi was always halfhearted about the business and Freddie had no interest whatsoever. The one thing that united all of the family, young and old, male and female, was an undying passion for football and devotion to Grimbleton Town United in particular. ‘The Grasshoppers’ were now making slow progress through the ranks towards the First Division. It was Lily’s father who suggested the team use an osteopath to sort out any bad backs. He even found them Terry Duffy, who got some tired legs up and running in the Cup tie against Bolton Wanderers that nearly went to a replay at Burnden Park, alas to no avail.

Then Dr Baker kicked up a fuss and said Terry was taking his trade away and got him kicked out. Redvers threatened to resign from the Board but it was an empty threat. When the Grasshoppers were doing well the whole town was on fire; when they slumped it was as if a blanket of cloud hovered above the mill chimneys. A win was the best tonic for all. Lily supposed it was because football and romance ran side by side in her family.

Esme had been a player in her younger days, turning out for the Crompton’s Biscuits ladies’ team. They had played a friendly on the town pitch and that’s when Redvers and Esme eyed each other up across the turf and the dynasty was founded.

Even Lily and Walt had met standing side by side to watch one of the special friendly matches laid on during the war. It turned out they both worked in the Market Hall, he at the far end in his uncle’s stationery stall. Small world indeed, and now when they could match shifts, they went together to see their team of local lads.

Sometimes when she drew back the stall curtains Lily half expected to see her dad smiling, pristine in his white coat, waiting to help his customers, his thick wavy hair slicked back, his moustache waxed and with that twinkle in his blue eyes that charmed the ladies.

How she had missed him over the years since a sudden stroke took him from them! Mother had taken to ailments and fits of misery since he had gone. She blamed his early death on the Great War and his time in the trenches. He was one of the few of the Grimbleton Pals Brigade to make it home in one piece.

‘It weakened him, took the stuffing out of him. Not that he would ever say a word about it, mind,’ she sighed. No one talked about the Great War much. She was glad he hadn’t known both his sons went into another war so quickly after the last.

He had his own theory how to keep world peace. ‘If only we could play life fair by the football rules,’ he would say. ‘There’d be no more war. We’d just get on that pitch and give each other hell until full time. Sort it out clean and proper.’

Not that he practised what he preached, for standing next to him at a match was a revelation. He would yell and rant and cuss and swear. ‘Get them off, the pair of sissies! Hang up yer boots, lad, yer shot was a twopenny bus ride from the goal!’

If only the Zion minister could have heard his trusty steward letting rip at the goalie, Lily smiled.

Theirs was a special bond built on his delight in having a girl in the house. ‘This one’s the sharpest blade in the knife box.’ He would point to her with pride. ‘Not the fanciest to look at but she does it right first time, my Lily of Laguna. If you want owt doing, she’s your gal!’

He would be proud that, like the famous Windmill Theatre Revues, they never closed for the entire duration of the war. Together with Esme, Lily had kept the stall going against the odds when all the rules and restrictions came into force. Many herbal stores were forced to close but they decided to open half the stall as a temperance bar, serving juices, hot cordials and a good line of medicinal sweets and herbal homemade cough candy, dispensing what little stock they could.

It was a tough time, fire-watching in the evening, keeping the Brownie pack alive with badge work and salvage drives, but nothing to what her brothers had to go through in Burma and on the Continent.

She was looking at her wristwatch, surprised that it was mid-morning already, when a welcome figure tapped her shoulder.

‘Time for our cuppa?’ Walter towered over her in his brown dust coat, pointing to the café opposite. She could sit down and keep her eye on the stall at the same time.

‘You bet,’ she smiled, pecking him on the cheek. ‘Where were you yesterday at the Armistice parade? I missed you at the cenotaph.’

‘I was there with Mam but you know it gets her all upset. We went home early.’ You couldn’t fault a man who was kind to his mother, but Lily had been hoping to invite him back for tea.

‘Hey, you missed a cracking match on Saturday, two nil to the Grasshoppers. They’re on a roll this season.’

‘Yes, I’ve been hearing reports all morning,’ she sighed. ‘I had to stand in for Levi again.’

‘I saw him in the directors’ box with all the toffs, lucky beggar.’

‘I just wish he’d give me a Saturday off, once in a blue moon. When did you and I last get to watch a match together?’

‘It was the best game this season.’

‘So everyone keeps saying, so shut up,’ she snapped.

‘The lads were on form, Wagstaff dribbling the ball down the outside right, passing to Walshie and he spins it straight in the net, brilliant!’

‘Walter Platt, don’t torment me.’ She tugged his sleeve but he was oblivious.

‘The second goal came just before half-time. I reckoned we finished them off there and then.’

She missed the crowds gathering, the noise and cheering, a chance to let off steam. Redvers had taken them all as a treat and left them at home as a punishment. There were chips in newspaper on the way home, which no one was to tell Esme about, for it was too common for a Winstanley to eat in the street.

‘When we’re married we’ll bring all our kiddies to see the game,’ Lily sighed, imagining a five-a-side of gleaming faces.

‘Oh, no, love, it’s not a place to bring youngsters with all that swearing and rough talk, and there’s germs to think about.’

‘It never did us any harm,’ she replied, surprised by his attitude.

‘Mother says it’s all that standing as did my back in. I grew too tall for my bones.’

‘I thought the doctor said you had a bit of a curved spine…’

‘It’s the same thing,’ he replied.

‘No, it’s not. It means you’re born with a bend in your back,’ she continued.

‘Oh, you do like to go into things, Lil. All I know is, it never bothered me until I was out of short trousers, when my legs just sprouted like rhubarb. I bent over one day and couldn’t get up. Never bin right since. You’ve no idea what it’s like to live with backache.’

‘I’m sorry, it must be a pain,’ she said, seeing the grimace on his face.

‘So you should be. You’re going to have to nurse it when we’re wed, with one of your liniment oils.’

‘Shall I give you a rub down later?’ she winked.

‘Lily Winstanley, none of that sauce from a respectable woman! Mother can see to it, thank you very much. By the way, could she have a few more liver pills? Her stomach’s playing up again.’

‘Has she thought of trying a lighter diet? She does like her pastry and her chips,’ Lily offered, knowing that Elsie Platt was a little beer barrel on legs.

‘A widow’s got to have a little comfort in life. We’ve no money spare for fancy diets,’ he said, staring across at her stall. ‘It’s all right for your family.’

Money was always a sensitive topic between them. His wage was small but steady, and her family had two wages and a war pension and shares from Esme’s connection with Crompton’s Biscuits. Better not to go down that route again.

‘It must be hard,’ was all she could say. ‘Did you go and see that house for rent in Forsyth Lane, the old cottage by itself? It’ll need doing up. But it’s worth a second glimpse, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, no, love, Mam says they’re built over wells, and damp, and it’s a bus ride away from Bowker’s Row. It’s much too far for her to travel.’

‘You didn’t even look, then?’ Lily felt the flush in her cheeks. When would he do anything off his own bat? ‘That’s a pity because I thought it was ideal for us, half in the country but on a bus route. It was you who wanted to have fresh air and a nice view.’

‘Perhaps we should try for something bigger and bring her with us? She gets mithered when I’m not there.’

And I shall go mad if Elsie Platt is on the other side of the wall listening to our sweet talking, Lily thought, but swallowed her words back just in time. ‘It says in my Woman’s Own that a young married couple should be alone for a while to set up their home.’

‘What about your Levi and his wife? They live with you.’

‘That’s different…’

‘No it’s not.’

‘It’s just that Waverley House has five bedrooms. They have their privacy and a baby.’

‘So, we’ll be having babies and Mother can look after them for us so you can do all your gallivanting.’

‘I’m not gallivanting, just serving my community. I’d hardly call choir practice and Brownies gadding about!’

‘There you go on your high horse over nothing. It was just a suggestion,’ he barked.

‘I’d like us to start off together on our own,’ she repeated, sipping her Bovril and noticing his shirt collar was frayed at the edge and needed turning round.

‘Then we’ll have to keep on looking until we find something that suits us both.’ His voice was hard and his lips were pursed up just like Elsie’s whenever they arrived back late.

Lily looked at her watch. There was still no sign of Levi. ‘I’d better get back. Are you coming for your tea tonight? We can look in the Gazette to see if there’re any more flats to rent, then borrow the van and go and view them together.’

‘If you can give us a lift back home first and get my mam’s washing. Now you’ve got that new-fangled machine, she was wondering if you’d lend us a hand and throw a few things in for us.’

Anything to oblige, Lily mused. Word travelled fast and Elsie was not one to miss a trick. Would she expect the washing to come back ironed as well?

Oh, don’t be mean, she sighed. Walt’s mother was widowed young in the Great War, her son is the sun, moon and stars to her. The thought of him leaving her clutches is painful and threatening. Be grateful you can help them out.

They were just about to part company when Sam Parker from the upstairs office suddenly appeared round the corner, waving to Lily. ‘There you are…I’ve just had a phone call from Levi. Can you shut the stall and come home?’

A flush of panic rushed through Lily’s body. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I don’t know, he didn’t say, but he said you were to get back to Waverley at once.’

Her mind was racing with possibilities. Had Mother been taken ill? Had the washing machine blown up and left them homeless, or was it a pleasant surprise? Was it the one surprise they were all waiting for? Freddie was back at last! That was it. He had docked and turned up without telling them, sprung a big surprise on everybody. That was just like her young brother, giving them no time to make preparations. They ought to have bunting fluttering over the street, and flags flying and lots of balloons if there were any in the shops.

‘Freddie’s come home. Oh, Walt! He’s sprung one on us, the devil. Mother’ll be beside herself. What wonderful news! I’ll call out Santini’s for a taxi.’

‘That’s a bit extravagant,’ he said. ‘Fred won’t be going anywhere fast.’

‘I haven’t got the van and I haven’t seen my brother for six years. I’m not missing a precious second of him.’

Ten minutes later she was riding through the town with a grin from ear to ear. Just wait until she saw that cheeky monkey. She’d be giving him an ear-bashing.

Suddenly the whole town looked brighter. They rose up the cobbled street to the top end where the Winstanley residence stood foursquare on its own.

It was at the point where the grime turned to greenery, the country met the town and houses were spreading out with gardens backing on to fields. Waverley House had four bay windows edged with cream bricks, a smart tiled porch and steps leading to a small path with gaps where the wrought-iron railings had stood before they went for salvage.

She paid the driver and turned to face her home. Only then did she notice that all the curtains were drawn tight.

2

The Telegram

Esme Winstanley watched the colour drain out of her daughter’s face when she saw the telegram in her lap.

‘No! No! Not our Freddie…The war’s over. I don’t believe it. They’ve made a mistake.’ Lily collapsed in a heap, sobbing, and Neville stared up at her, not old enough to understand that their world had just fallen apart.

‘I thought he’d come home to surprise us…I was so sure…I never thought it was bad news. The war’s over…’ she repeated.

‘Not in Palestine, it’s not. That’s why he was sent over there to quell the terrorists. You know what happened when they blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Things have got worse since then,’ said Levi, not looking at her.

‘Have they got the right name? It could be all a mistake. They get things wrong, don’t they, Levi? Look how they thought Arthur Mangall was dead and he turned up as right as ninepence.’ Lily turned to her brother for comfort but he just stood there stunned, silent, shuffling while Ivy fussed over them, trying to be the ministering angel, putting a cup of tea in Lily’s hand.

‘I’ve put you some extra sugar in it,’ she smiled.

‘I hate sugar,’ Lily brushed it aside. ‘He never said it was dangerous, or am I the last to find out?’

‘You don’t tell your nearest and dearest you’re living on a minefield that could blow up any minute. I’m sure there’s a number to ring for more news and there might be something on the six o’clock Home Service.’ Levi turned to his mother for support but she could only shake her head. The news had not yet sunk in.

‘They don’t tell you anything on the news. We found that out in the war,’ Lil snapped. Her face was ashen. ‘It’s not fair.’

Whoever said life was fair? thought Esme, but she bit her tongue. The girl was not up to listening to home truths and she hadn’t the energy to move from the chair and reach over to her. It was as if someone had kicked all the stuffing out of her.

‘Another cup of tea, Mother?’ whispered Ivy, hovering like a wasp about to strike.

Esme shook her head, wiping her glasses on her apron, trying to suck the last ounce of information from the telegram itself.

A patrol of 3 vehicles moving west along the Tel Aviv-Wilhelma was mined going over a small wadi. The charges were detonated to catch the rear vehicle of the convoy that caught fire. There were 3 stretcher cases, one of which was Sergeant Winstanley who sustained serious injuries. He died of his wounds in the 12th British General Hospital.

Not much to go on but enough to flood her imagination with dreadful pictures. She peered around the sitting room for comfort, but all the familiar objects were drained of colour: the patterned Axminster carpet square faded by the sunlight in patches, the holes burned by Redvers and his cronies smoking cigarettes; the grease stain that 1001 wouldn’t shift; the one when Freddie sneaked engine parts in to repair and didn’t put down newspaper.

How she’d shrieked at him! ‘Take that dirty thing out of my best room!’ He was always getting into mischief. But never to see her handsome son again…Now she could look Polly Isherwood in the face, a mother who had lost both her sons on the Atlantic convoys. There were no words for what she must have gone through.

Never to hear him shouting through the door, ‘What’s for tea? I’m starving!’ Not to see his size elevens dirtying her sofa covers as he lounged over the armrests, listening to the wind-up gramophone, driving them mad with his jazz records. Never to ruffle her hand through his curls and clip his ear in jest. He knew just how to wind her up into an elastic ball.

She turned her face to the fireside but it was only lunchtime and no fire was lit. Rations were strict and they needed to save supplies for the winter. She glanced at the ghosts smiling from the row of silver frames lining the top of the pianoforte: baby Travis, her firstborn in his broderie anglaise christening gown, who never made it to his first birthday; Levi and Lily sitting on the piano stool in sailor collars, trying not to wriggle and squirm.

Lily had a face on her like a wet weekend and Redvers said that portrait had gone all through the war in his breast pocket waiting to scare off any Hun who dared get too close. She was always the serious one of the three, too tall and lanky for a girl, with her donkey-brown hair, straight as a die which was a dickens to tie in rags to make ringlets. It was the boys who got the looks in their family.

She stared at Freddie’s picture in a tortoiseshell frame. Her son would smile forever, as young as the day they waved him off from the station; their precious Victory child born after the Great War, now sacrificed in biblical lands.

You shouldn’t have favourites, she scolded herself, but he had stolen her heart the moment he’d snuggled into her breast.

None of this, Constance Esme. Bestir yourself! There’s a lot to do. They must think about a burial service, speak to the minister, inform the newspaper of their sad loss. Happen it was better to be busy after a loss. Less time to think.

Curtains closed on to the street meant only one thing, and soon the neighbours would come knocking. She must make sure they got her name right for the obituary notice. She hated her first name and had dumped it as soon as she left school in favour of Esme. Constance had always felt like a tight corset, while Esme was a softer free-flowing garment like the white gown she wore on the Votes for Women marches, before marriage and the Great War put paid to all that gadding about. A lifetime ago.

She stared at her wedding portrait. She was so pinched and laced up tight there was a look of agony and apprehension on her face. She needn’t have bothered, for Redvers Winstanley had been a thoughtful husband and a good lover.

Freddie had had those same blue eyes and thick lashes, wasted on a lad, but Lily had got her own pale face and brows, and identical scowl when under threat.

There in her son was Redvers’ cheeky grin, which had wooed her across a football pitch. There’d been such an uproar about her wearing a short divided skirt in public but Richard Crompton’s daughter was not one to be put off in those days by a bit of derring-do. Pity Lily, with her long legs, hadn’t got her own get-up-and-go…

Both her lads had that mop of curls. A wide grin and curls were a fatal combination with the ladies, she reckoned. Even little Neville was going to sprout a fine crop of dark curls.

It was a pity poor Lil’s fiancé, with his jug ears, had nothing to recommend him but height. They were both stay-at-home birds, not fly-by-nights. Perhaps they were well suited; neither would set the world on fire. He would run her ragged with that mother of his, and she would be like a lost sock in the Acme, going round and round after them. From where Esme was sitting he looked a lazy lummock, but she could be wrong.

Redvers took life at thirty miles an hour round the bend, lived fast and died early. His loss was such a blow and left a gap no other man would fill in her life, but to lose a child went against nature; to lose two was more than she could bear.

She could see Lil and Levi were too stunned to take it all in. Ivy would do her best for her husband. That one knew where her bread was buttered. Sometimes Esme caught her eyeing up her china cabinet as if she was making an inventory of all her best pieces.

Ivy was a jumped-up factory girl who was put in Crompton’s office to help out and began to call herself a secretary. She had collared Levi almost off the troopship home. Now she did nothing but moan and groan how hard it was to rear a baby on starvation rations. The doctor said her insides were all mangled up and she must have no more babies. Neville was to be an only child.

What a sissy they made out of him, in his silk romper suits and smocked blouses! His hair was still in ringlets and needed a good cut, and Levi never put his foot down enough. It would all end in tears.

I don’t know what’s happened to this new world, Esme sighed. In her day the Almighty just dished out kids and that was that. He then took a fair few of them back again one way or another. She would have words with Him about that. With family planning they could pick and choose the size of their families but the country was crying out for more babies now. Everything was topsy-turvy.

Lily was right. It wasn’t fair to go through all that bombing and shortages, worry and uncertainty, sacrifice and service. What a relief it had been when it was all over-and now this…

Crompton’s Biscuits had turned production into special orders. She had helped in their nursery and on the market stall, joined the WVS and Welfare Clinic. ‘Family First’ was the Winstanley motto.

The town had pulled together like a family: rich and poor, old and young, in one valiant effort against the enemy. Now the threat was over it was as if everyone was scuttling back into their burrows. Neighbours were becoming strangers again, scurrying away behind their net curtains, and the pews of Zion Chapel were emptying fast now the threat was over.

You shouldn’t deal with the Almighty like that, picking and choosing your moment when to worship or mow the lawn. It was a matter of trust. She didn’t understand what He was playing at, robbing her of half her family, ripping her heart with such pain, but He must have a grand plan, like those Turkish carpets the Reverend was on about last week.

Every carpet had a deliberate flaw in the pattern somewhere to prove that men were mortal and no match for Allah. Well, now it seemed as if the Almighty would have to explain Himself in due course. She wanted to shout in His face, ‘What do you think you’re playing at, taking my children? Have we been that wicked that we need bringing down a peg or two?’

No, she prayed. Forgive me. You gave us Your only son to show us the way…Help me bear this pain.

Solace would not be coming from the usual treats: a glass of Wincarnis Tonic Wine, the latest Mazo de la Roche novel by her bedside, afternoon tea with the old Suffrage Society members in the Kardomah Coffee House. This was a time when a family closed in on itself and drew strength from memories of happier times. She wanted her children wrapped tightly around her for company. Family First…

In the days that followed there was a constant stream of visitors to their door and it was Lily’s job to sit them down and give them tea, explain that they knew little more than what had appeared in the local paper. Freddie was buried in some far-off military cemetery with full honours. There were letters from his commanding officers and the padre, from his friends in the Military Police, cards of sympathy from neighbours and school friends.

Even the Grasshoppers sent a deputation to ask about the funeral: Barry Wagstaff and Pete Walsh stepped into the parlour, caps in hand, and sat while Lily rehashed the same story over and over again, trying not to cry.

‘If there’s anything we can do, Lily, you’ve only to ask. Freddie was always one of our gang,’ smiled Barry.

‘Just get promotion in the league, that would make him proud.’ It seemed a silly thing to say but she wasn’t thinking straight or sleeping. Dr Unsworth, their local doctor, brought Esme a sleeping draught, which made her groggy, but Lily had refused pills. Someone had to keep alert when there were so many details to arrange. Levi had drowned his sorrows once too often and now had a bad cold, so Ivy was fussing over him.

Walter kept Lily company when he could but all their plans to talk weddings seemed out of order now. It was ‘Family First’ time.

‘The Winstanleys’ve always been good to the club. We’d like to send a wreath from the lads,’ offered Peter Walsh, the star centre forward and on stand-by for the England Reserves.

It was strange to see the boys with scabby knees, who had kicked balls between pullovers in the playground, now smartly dressed in navy blazers and grey flannels, full-time professionals earning five pounds a week.

Lily always had a soft spot for Barry when they were kids. He had once rescued her from a fierce dog on the walk home from school. He had lost his right back friend, Stewart Higgins, on D-Day The team was still struggling to get back some form and grow some good players from the youth sides.

Pete was a surprise find amongst the boys, who had come into form just at the right time. He looked very dashing, not a bit like the skinny mallinky long legs who used to tear round on his go-cart with Freddie hanging on for dear life.

Suddenly the days were racing on from that terrible Monday morning. Enid Greenalgh, ever the faithful friend to the family, stepped in to open the stall while Lily saw to the answering of letters and trying to coax Esme to eat.

There was still a pile of unopened mail on the mahogany hallstand waiting for attention, but Lily had neither the time nor the energy to see to everything.

Reverend Atkinson suggested a memorial service. ‘It will give you all a chance to say goodbye,’ he advised. ‘Freddie should be honoured in his own town and his friends given a chance to attend.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Lily replied, only half listening. She was too angry to pray. Then practicalities began to distract her flittering brain. How would they provide tea for hordes of guests? Where would they get the extra rations? Who should do the readings? What hymns would be suitable for a fallen soldier? Would Mother hold up under the strain? Would Levi stay sober enough to be of use?

Ivy produced a list of guests to invite, people Lily had never heard of from the Green Lane end of the street, the posher part of their district. Ivy took the hump when it was ignored in favour of chapel friends and Freddie’s pals.

Then Lily found herself awash with tears, fingering the letters he’d sent, full of jokes and rudeness.

What’s fresh in the street, Sis? How’s the Acid Drop [his pet name for Ivy, whom he had never met but summed up accurately]? When are you and Walt going to name the day? If there’s not a date on the calendar when I get back, I’ll be buying you two a ladder and bus tickets to Gretna Green. How’s the old canvas on two tent poles? Have you straightened out that bad back of his yet? In Burma there were lovely ladies to do that sort of thing most effectively. Believe me, once he’s had a massage he’ll be able to go five rounds with Joe Louis.

He brought the fizz into the family when Redvers died. He carried on with the same practical jokes, silly songs and roving eye. The house was always full when Freddie was home. Now there was a sadness and silence that hung over them like a grey pall of fog, separating each from the other in their grief.

Neville was playing up, sensing the atmosphere, screaming and having tantrums at the slightest thing. Freddie would have been Walter’s best man, even though the speech he would have given would not have been for the minister’s ears. Lily had always been the shadow to his sun, stealing warmth from his glow. Now it was dark, grim and oh, so cold, and winter hadn’t even arrived.

Later that evening they all passed the cards and letters around the fireside, trying to work up some enthusiasm for planning the memorial service. No one was in the mood to make any decisions. Ivy was sulking, Levi was trying to catch the nine o’clock news for a bulletin on the situation in Palestine. There had been no mention of the explosion so far.

It was time to make another foray into the unopened mail that had progressed from the hallstand to the back of the mantelpiece. A London postmark took Lily’s eye. They had no relations down south so it must be from one of Freddie’s comrades’ mothers who had heard the news and wanted to send her own condolences.

She opened it quickly, read it, read it again and passed it round.

Dear Family Winstanley,

It gives me pleasure to introduce myself to you as the intended fiancée of your son, Frederick.

He told me to write to you if ever I came to England and inform you of my immediate arrival in your town.

The kindness of your loving son is manifold. We met at Church Parade in Rangoon where I was of assistance in the canteen of the Women’s Voluntary Service, Burma. Distance has separated us many years, but not affection. I have carried your address with me for just such an occasion. I look forward to meeting you.

Yours sincerely,

Susan L. Brown

(Certified teacher, Rangoon College)

‘What do you make of this?’ Lily asked. ‘Do any of you know a Miss Brown?’

Esme peered over her glasses at the thin blue tissuey paper. ‘I don’t understand. The woman says she’s “his intended fiancée”. What does this mean?’

‘Either she is or she isn’t,’ Levi quipped, not taking much notice.

‘Sounds as if she’s just arrived on a troopship from Burma. She’s been teaching in Rangoon,’ Lily added.

‘She must be a missionary then,’ offered Ivy. ‘He’s a dark horse, your Freddie. Not a word about a fiancée, was there?’

‘No, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one…It’s nearly a couple of years since he left the Far East.’

‘Perhaps he was going to spring her on us when he came home. “Mother, meet the girlfriend. By the way, she’s soon to be my wife.”’ Levi mimicked his brother’s voice. ‘Trust our Freddie to keep a pretty girl up his sleeve. He never could resist a beauty but a missionary’s not exactly his style.’

‘She says they met in the church in Rangoon, wherever that is.’ Ivy turned the page over. ‘She’s in some centre awaiting instructions and will send us a telegram when she can come north…Funny she hasn’t gone home to be with her family.’

‘They’ll be serving out in Burma. Well, fancy, Freddie…’ For one dizzy second Lily was talking as if he was still alive, as if the joyful reunion was soon to happen. This poor girl knew nothing of his fate. What on earth would they say?

‘We can’t just let her go on thinking he’s coming back. Better write and tell her,’ Ivy advised.

‘That’d be too cruel. No, we must tell her properly. It will be such a shock. She might want to be at his memorial. Why didn’t he tell us about her?’

‘Don’t ask me! I’m only the brother-how would I know what went on in his mind? You’re the one who he wrote to, Lil. He was your blue-eyed boy,’ Levi sniggered.

‘Levi! That’s enough. All will be revealed in the fullness of time,’ Esme sighed, and turned her face to the fire. ‘It’s out of our hands now.’

They didn’t have long to wait. The telegram announcing Susan L. Brown’s arrival at Ringway Aerodrome was in the post the very next morning. Someone was going to have to break the bad news, and quick.

3

An Unexpected Legacy

‘Someone’s got to fetch that poor girl from the aerodrome,’ ordered Esme, still clutching the telegram as if it was going to bite her. ‘I think I’m going to have another of my turns. My head is spinning.’

‘Someone’s got to open up the market stall, I’m late already, Mother,’ shouted Levi as he waltzed through the door. ‘Count me out.’

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Ivy. ‘I’ve got to take Neville to the clinic. Lil can do it. It’s her morning off.’

Lily was making a list of arrangements for the funeral tea. ‘I was hoping you’d all come to give me support.’

‘Take Walter with you then,’ snapped her sister-in-law.

‘You know the seat in the van gets to his bad back.’

‘That’s not our fault, Lil. If he got off his backside a bit more…’ sniffed Esme, reaching for the aspirin bottle.

‘Don’t start that again. Leave him alone. He can’t help it.’ There was no getting out of this taxi service now.

‘What you see in that lad—’

‘I’m not listening.’ Esme could be so cussed when one of her heads struck without warning, but with this terrible blow none of them was on top of the job.

‘I’ll go on one condition-that you tell this girl…I’m not. Poor lass’ll be wondering why he’s not there to meet her.’

‘You’d better not wear black then,’ suggested Ivy, looking her up and down with dismay.

‘I’ve never worn black, not even for Dad, and I don’t intend to now. I’ve no coupons left,’ Lily replied, knowing her suit was looking shabby.

‘I bet you’ve squandered them on that Brownie show again. You’ll never get a trousseau together at this rate. I had to beg, borrow and steal to get mine.’

‘No one’s thinking about weddings,’ said Esme, putting another spoke in that wheel.

‘Who said anything about trousseaus? Walt and me just want a simple do, no fuss,’ Lily snapped.

‘Just as well, for the Platts will be too tight to fork out much when it comes,’ Esme continued, wiping her glasses on her apron.

‘I’m not listening. You don’t know him like I do,’ Lily replied, making for the door and out of the gloomy atmosphere. Why couldn’t they all pull together in their sorrow, not keep picking at each other?

‘Fetch us a cup of tea before you disappear,’ Esme yelled from her chair.

‘Ivy can do it. I’m off! Mustn’t be late.’ Lily was out the front door and down the steps, not waiting for reply.

*  *  *

‘Come on, Gertie, old girl, don’t you let me down,’ she urged the van to start, rocking back and forth. ‘I’m coaxing you gently so no explosions.’ She didn’t want passers-by scurrying in all directions for cover. Time was getting on, and she prayed there was enough petrol in the tank to get to Ringway Aerodrome. Levi had a habit of running the van on empty.

Thank goodness the war was over and road signs were back up again or she’d be in trouble. Still ten miles to go and no petrol coupons left for emergencies. It was a good job there was an inborn magnet in her nose that knew when she was heading in the right direction. This was no drive for the faint-hearted. Why did she always land the worst jobs?

Driving would give her time to sort out her thoughts, to catch her breath, to mourn her brother. She still couldn’t take it in. It seemed like only yesterday that he was born and she’d seen him in the Moses basket. He was her own toy, better than any dolly; she was always the one to push him, pick him up, carrying him to school, kicking and screaming, when he wanted to run home. Miss Sharples had called her into the infants’ room when he’d wet himself and refused to sit in the chair.

She smiled, thinking of the time she’d shoved her exercise book down his backside when he was outside the Head’s door waiting for a caning. He’d bunked off to play football in the park. One scrape after another but she was always there to cover for him.

That precious vow of silence, one for all and all for one, was their secret code. No telling Mother and Dad when Levi and Freddie met girls in the park instead of going to Sunday School. She always managed to sneak three stickers for their attendance card so no one was any the wiser.

Football was always there somewhere in the mischief. It was forbidden to play on a Sunday but that never stopped their practice matches with Pete and Clive down the field by the dell. Everyone assumed Lil Winstanley was a Goody Two-Shoes, the white hen who never laid away, but she knew that if ever she had needed a favour, they’d be quick to honour the bargain. The trouble was it was too late now. There was no one on her side, not even Mother.

In normal times, being at the wheel was fun but being the only available driver today was a thankless task. How did you break such terrible news to a total stranger who was coming halfway across the world full of hope and expectation? Who was going to tell this poor bride-to-be that she was already a widow?

She hoped she looked the part. No one could accuse her of being a fancy bandbox but she did try to be neat and tidy. This was no ordinary errand. These were not ordinary times.

The bucket seat was low down, bagging her skirt, and the bit of rust by the door had kept snagging her lisle stockings the last time she was out in the van. How many times was Levi asked to get it seen to?

There was a pile of other mail addressed to Freddie waiting at home, letters from foreign parts that none of the family had the heart to open yet. It was years since they had waved off the youngest son. Lily could hardly recall his gruff voice except when she read his cheery letters.

Tears were rolling down her nose again. It was hard to drive. Now she must tell lies to a total stranger. No wonder Polly Isherwood looked so pinched. She carried her grief with pride but it was etched into the lines on her face.

How did people survive such loss? Walter lost his own dad in the Great War and his mother clung to him like a limpet. There are always those who’re worse off than you, she sighed. But now war was over and the streets were full of demob suits, it was so painful.

At least Gertie, usually slow to warm up, was purring gently while Lily was daydreaming. Where were the peppermint chews in her handbag? Dash it! She swerved, missing the turning to the left.

‘Where on earth’s the aerodrome, Dolly Daydream?’ she muttered. Talking to herself helped to pass the time, but she needed to concentrate.

The Winstanley family was a right box of liquorice allsorts. Mother was a sherbet lemon-sharp on the outside but soft and fizzy inside, after a glass or two of Wincarnis in the evening, and took a bit of softening up. Dad had been a bar of Fry’s Chocolate Cream. Ivy was definitely an acid drop and Levi was a brazil nut cracknel, sweet one minute and tough the next. Walt was her favourite, a Cadbury’s Chocolate Caramel with the squidgy centre.

As for her own attributes, a Fox’s Glacier Mint, plain, serviceable, good in an emergency, would just about sum her up.

Sweets were something special now, being so carefully rationed. Neville got everyone’s ration in his ever-open mouth. He liked dolly mixtures…Sweets, food…no time to think of such stuff now.

Rationing was worse than in the war these days. Levi had hollow legs to fill but he somehow managed to scrounge a few extras from the U.T.C.-‘Under The Counter’-brigade. Not easy when there was always Ivy’s sweet tooth to satisfy. Her big brother needed to have his comforts when he was married to such an ambitious woman. Ivy was always making big plans for them.

They were living rent free in Division Street so the couple could save for a new house across town, one day. Ivy had her son, her husband and a dream of living on the south side, close to the golf club. She knew where she was heading.

If only life was that simple, Lily mused. It was two steps forward up the slippery slope to the pinnacle and one step backwards most of the time.

Esme blamed Ivy’s scheming on going to the pictures. ‘It might cheer you up for a few minutes but it gives simple girls like Ivy big ideas, American dreams,’ she explained.

It wasn’t as if Lily didn’t have dreams of her own: dreams of travelling abroad, a baby in a Silver Cross pram, dreams of the Grasshoppers winning the Cup at Wembley, of going to watch them in London to cheer on Freddie’s old gang. Even the dream of a cottage full of babies with Walter seemed far off now. There was always one crisis or another.

Someone on the wireless said what the world needed were babies to keep the numbers up. Dolores Pickles at number eight had yet another bump on show-was it the ninth or the tenth?-and all the reward she would get for being faithful to her Church was a tin of biscuits. Ten kiddies and she’d get a tin of biscuits for her suffering. The Pope himself would be hard pressed to find a tin of biscuits anywhere in Grimbleton, and Mother should know. Lily’s grandfather was one of the big noises in Crompton’s Biscuits. How did the old slogan go?

Put your taste buds to the test

Crompton’s Biscuits are the best.

‘Just concentrate! Where am I now?’ She peered out into the gloom. ‘Getting nowhere fast. Come on, Gertie, we were volunteered for this mission whether we liked it or not so keep on top of the job for once.’

She felt like a lost sock in the Acme agitator washing machine of life, like the juggler’s dinner plates. Spinning around from one job to another, that’s me, she sighed. No wonder there was never any time for daydreaming except when alone in the van. That was the time to think things through. There was no justice in this world. Two world wars and what was there to show for all the suffering but exhaustion, drabness and telegrams like this one landing in their lap? There were thousands of families like them still mourning the loss of loved ones, unsure of the future, trying to hold everyone together in harmony.

At last! The barbed wires of the perimeter fence came in view. Ringway Aerodrome was in sight and it was not too late. Lily’s hands were trembling as she plonked on her brown felt hat with the pointed brim and fingered her gloves. The moment of truth was nigh.

In the pictures, airports were scenes of adventure, romance and the promise of far-off places. How she longed to be boarding an Air France Dakota for Le Bourget and Paris, or even a trip out over the runway would be fun. Arrivals and departures were exciting, but not this time. This was going to be a nightmare and the sooner it was over the better.

4

The Leftover Brides

The plane landed with a judder onto the wet tarmac and Ana Papadaki looked out of the window with relief and dismay, her insides fluttering as if a flock of doves were on the wing. This was Manchester, her new home. Soon she would be meeting a new family. She hoped they could read the broken English of her letter well enough to be waiting for her today.

The classes in the transit camp in London were very basic. Speaking was no problem. It was writing that was a strain but she was determined to make herself understood.

Dina, her baby, started to whine and she gave her the strap of her leather handbag to chew on. She was still cutting teeth but her little mouth opened into a howl of protest. There was a dampish patch from her nappy seeping into Ana’s flimsy skirt.

Ana lifted up her child, jiggling her at the window to distract them both from the unexpected delay. There was nothing to see but Nissen huts, brick buildings, grey skies and concrete. She could be anywhere in war-torn Europe. This was not how it was supposed to be.

Such excitement had soared within her when she’d stepped aboard the plane. At last! This was the last lap on their journey towards a new life, a fresh start away from the horrors of the past years.

Dina brought worries as well as hope into her life, but stepping off the plane into the autumn chill, Ana felt as if a damp cloth was slapping her face. So this was Manchester.

The passengers clucked like chickens when the plane landed, jittery women with babies puking on their shoulders, all dying for a pee. Her first thought was, would the soldier’s family recognise her in the crowd? Would he be there to meet them?

She could hardly recall his face. It felt so long since their tender farewell at Piraeus eighteen months ago.

First there was a rush for the toilet. Dina was tugging at her hair. Ana was glad of the Red Cross clothing parcel with its little siren suit and pixie hood: warm clothing for a baby in this dampness.

Her own thin dress felt like underwear, and the oriental mother opposite had only a silky summer dress covering her tiny frame with an ill-fitting suit jacket; probably her very best outfit. How shabby she felt in a headscarf alongside other passengers in fur coats and fancy hats.

Ana held on to the woman’s little toddler in the queue so that the Eastern beauty could relieve herself. Together they had watched all the other mothers jumping into the arms of their sweethearts, one by one, lots of hugs and kisses and children thrown into the air with glee.

Perhaps his family were delayed or the bus was late. Perhaps she had given them the wrong date or the wrong address. She was grasping the well-thumbed envelope for comfort. This was her ticket to a new life, this proof of their correspondence, and the address was the one link with her lover. He must have filled in the forms to sponsor her and their child or she wouldn’t have got this far.

There was a draught on her bare legs, and she wrapped her jacket tightly around her skinny body. Five years of labour and hunger had taken its toll on her frame. She still hadn’t recovered from the camp years of starvation. How she managed to fall for a baby so quickly she would never know; a woman brought back to life by the kindness of one Tommy soldier who wooed and won her in a dance hall in Athens.

He was not like some of the other Tommies, who could only shuffle across the floor, but moved with grace, gathering her up in his arms like a fair Rudolph Valentino. He treated her nursing uniform with respect. She was not some easy whore ready for a quick fumble in return for a bar of soap. He was tender and understanding when she recoiled from his lovemaking at first. There were so many bad memories to expunge of her time in the labour camp.

Now she looked so shabby in her faded frock and felt hat covering her dark copper hair. ‘My ginger Greek with freckles,’ he called her, surprised that not all Grecian women were black-haired and doe-eyed. Her hair was straggling across her cheeks and she could feel tears welling up.

She was not just any Greek woman; she was from Crete, the home of the gods, the most ancient of all the islands, and the most beautiful, in her eyes. It was an island torn apart by war, where the women were descended from Minoan gods, pale and golden, and the men fierce fighters for independence, a proud race. So proud of their women, that someone like her could never return to its shore.

Dina was struggling out of her arms, staring at the other little girl, who was muffled in the same Red Cross cast-offs. The oriental mother smiled and reached for her own child.

What a pity her little one was so plump-faced and plain-pug-nosed, Ana observed. It felt mean to be making a comparison but anyone could see Dina was prettier.

There were just the two of them left now, sitting in the draughty arrivals hall of Ringway Aerodrome like abandoned luggage, watching every movement in the doorway, every coming and going to no avail.

Suddenly Ana shivered and her heart went thump, thump. No one was coming. She would be sent back home, abandoned. Did they not know she could never go back home: an unmarried woman with a child, dishonouring the family name for ever? It was better they thought her dead.

A strict code of honour had been broken. On Crete women like herself were shadows, fit only to live in caves, out of sight. It would kill her mother to bear such disgrace. If there was anything of her village left since the Germans invaded Crete in 1941…But why think on those things? What was done then was done in the name of duty. What she did in Athens was done for love and gratitude. He would not let her down. It tore her heart to be an exile but that life was over. To open such memories was like unlocking her battered case left behind in Canea, her hope chest, smelling of camphor, stuffed with postcards, embroidered linen, lace work, damp and discoloured with age, her frayed dowry never to be redeemed: all those long-faded hopes and dreams like butterflies that have lost their wings.

War washed away all that past life and the age-old customs that went with it. Her only duty now was to survive for her child’s sake. This was the start of a new life together.

But dreams betrayed her each night when the island came alive: a wine-dark sea shimmering at sunset, the green mountains of the Apokoronas, snow-capped, stretching high in the distance, and the soft breezes off the shore stroking her cheeks. She could smell the scents of home: wild thyme, lemons, and watermelons like footballs. She tasted honey and sand on her lips. In the shade of the vines the zizzies screeched.

Suddenly the scene would change to smoke and darkness, the stench of burning rubber and cordite, on that first morning of invasion.

Ana was too busy in the makeshift hospital to watch more parachutes descending into the olive groves around the city of Canea. The daily bombardment crushed the harbour buildings, trapping whole families, men and boys digging them out with their bare hands. Everyone lay in wait for the one doctor while she and the other nurses wiped blood and tried to clean bandages. Her apron was filthy, her copper hair spilling out of her headscarf, but there was no time for neatness.

‘More white devils’ umbrellas from the sky,’ shouted a terrified woman. Their beloved island was being attacked again. Around her were British Tommies prostrate with mortal wounds. The bombs had done their worst and they were soft targets. This was no time for politics. It was enough to know Stelios, her brother, was out there shooting anything that moved. Their stone house had a cool cellar; she hoped Mother, Eleni and Aliki were hiding. How many times had this town suffered the aggressor?

‘Look, Ana…it’s like shooting birds out of the sky…pot shots,’ someone laughed. Parachutes descending like coloured balloons onto the shore, the groves, rooftops. Guns blasting out from Malaxa’s hilltop battery.

For months they’d been waiting, feeling the tension as British troops built defences-tired men evacuated from the mainland, ill equipped, with sallow-cheeked pale faces, who were wondering just why they were there. Her father was fighting with the Fifth Cretan Brigade far away in Northern Greece. With all their crack troops far from home, now the city was left to boys and old men, who must defend their honour or die in the effort. Freedom or Death! This was their slogan.

All morning they brought in wounded men. There were tales of Germans butchered on the roofs even as they fell, but this was the Red Cross and they must accept any wounded, whatever the uniform.

‘That’ll teach them,’ sighed Dr Mandakis, grim-faced as he covered the sheet over yet another enemy soldier, hacked to pieces by the fury of the mob.

Now the wounded were piled alongside each other, enemy, defender, stranger and known faces from the city streets. The medical staff worked by lamplight, stitching, sewing flesh together, mopping brows of amputees, giving sips of precious water to the dying.

I shall recall this day for the rest of my life, thought Ana, seeing sights no decent woman should have to witness, and still they came…

There were rumours, rumours of street-to-street fighting, children carrying scythes and axes going out to meet the foe and showing them no mercy.

If they win, we shall pay for this, Ana sighed, with a chill in her heart. There are too many of them.

Her back ached with weariness. It was looking more like a butcher’s shop than a makeshift hospital. Someone had made a Red Cross flag out of sheets and daubed it with blood to hang over the roof. Perhaps when the bombers returned it might save them.

The young nurses took it in turn to relieve themselves, sip lemon water, bite on the hard dacos bread, anything to stop the hunger.

At dusk, Ana found herself by the temporary mortuary, no longer sickened by the stench of blood and death. It was not a place to linger but it was cool and quiet. She sat down, too tired even to pray. How could things happen on such a beautiful May morning, when all the roses and flowers were still in bloom?

Then she heard a strange moan. Her heart jolted: a groan was coming from under the sheet, then another groan. Someone was alive under that sheet, waiting to be buried alive in a shroud. She thought she was dreaming. Tiredness must be taking its toll. She walked silently towards the sound, stepping over a line of stiff bodies on the floor. There it was again, and she pulled back the sheet.

Under it was a soldier in olive-green fatigues, fair-haired, his blue eyes flecked with navy blue, staring at her in terror.

‘Hilfe…hilfe.’ His eyes cried out to her. Here was the enemy at first hand, a boy no more than her age, lying terrified, at her mercy, mistaken for dead. She saw the deep bruises on his battered cheeks.

In that moment, Ana knew she could silence him for ever, call for one of the guards to finish him off. But she was transfixed, unable to think. The world stood still. She was a Red Cross nurse, dedicated to taking no sides. But he was the enemy, this bronzed, handsome boy. His eyes were pleading for life. This man had a mother and family far from home. He was serving his country, doing his duty, but on her island.

‘Oh no!’ she panicked, pulling the sheet off him. There was a side door where the carts came to collect the bodies. It was dark.

He staggered to his feet, dazed, wobbling.

‘Go!’ She pointed to the door.

‘Danke, Fraulein…Mein Name ist Otto…Wie heissen Sie?’ He towered above her. This boy wanted to know her name?

‘Oxi…no name,’ she croaked in broken English, having no German. ‘Go!’ she ordered, opening the door into the dark narrow street. The boy staggered out into the alley, defenceless but alive, soon swallowed up into the night.

Ana slammed the door, pulled away the sheet and dragged the bodies to fill his gap, appalled at what she had just done. I have betrayed my country, God help me! She crossed herself. No one must ever know of this treachery or her family would be dishonoured for ever.

Feeling sick, exhausted and defiant at her action, she struggled to justify what she had just done. Surely the boy would be felled before he left the winding alleys of the Venetian port? He was an easy target, even for a child. Ana shuddered. Her duty lay with the living, not the dead.

‘Ana! Ana! Where are you? Have you been asleep?’

Perhaps it was a dream, just a nightmare, and tomorrow she’d find it had been all a figment of her imagination.

But when the sun rose like a ball in the east, nothing had changed. She had met the enemy and his name was Otto. His face haunted her dreams. For that one act of mercy, she’d been punished over and over, but now there was no time to dwell on such horrors.

The two women sat together on the bench, moving closer as if to gain courage from one another. The daughters on their knees reached out to one another. A tall woman walked past them, staring. Someone brought them a cup of tea and they sipped it politely. Ana did not know what to say to introduce herself to the oriental girl, even though her English was better than most.

‘You wait also for soldier boy to come?’ she asked, looking again at the clock on the wall. ‘It is late.’

‘Mr Stan will not forget. I wrote many times,’ smiled the young woman, sipping the tea, her back straight. Her voice was clipped but the English was good.

‘My man is at camp, maybe come. Maybe he send someone,’ Ana nodded. ‘Where you stay, in Manchester?’

‘No, it is a town called Grimbleton. I will live with his family when he is a soldier. I sent a telegram. He will come soon…This is not tea.’ She grimaced, trying to swallow the terrible taste, and Ana laughed. She would never get used to this dishwater either.

‘We go Grimbleton also,’ Ana nodded, wishing this drink was hot strong Greek coffee with glyka–lots of sugar-but she had not tasted real grains for years. ‘My man has a house there for us to stay, my fiancé.’ She paused. She wanted to be thought respectable, even to a stranger.

‘We shall see each other in the village then?’ answered the other mother.

Ana nodded at the tiny woman, who was sitting so pert, her glossy, black hair in a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Her face was heart-shaped. With those wide eyes and dusky skin, she looked delicate, like a china doll. ‘Where you come from?’ Ana asked.

‘London…it has been a long way, a long story to tell,’ the other woman replied, her eyes lowered as if she did not want to be reminded of her past. ‘And you?’

‘I come from Athens…Greece.’ Ana did not want to give her true identity. ‘It is a long story how I come to Manchester with my Dina.’ They smiled politely and fell silent.

‘Your child has hair like gold,’ sighed the oriental girl. ‘My soldier has hair like a sunset too. It is not a colour we see often in hair. Somewhere I have a picture. Would you like to see my intended?’ She was rummaging through her straw holdall but stopped suddenly to inspect a man as he hurried over to the desk looking in their direction.

He was tall and lanky, dressed in a black suit with hair flattened down into a centre parting, on his face a thin moustache. The officer looked at them both, gathered up his papers and strode across towards them.

‘No one’s come for you yet? Are you sure you’re in the right place? This is Manchester. You can’t stay here much longer.’

Ana looked at her neighbour and promptly put her cup down. ‘I go nowhere. I wait here. They will come.’ She had been in too many displaced persons’ camps not to know how to get attention. Making a fuss had saved her life, got her food, got her and Dina safe passage. She would open her blouse. That soon got them going. She was a proud daughter of Crete but she knew how to fight. But first she must give him the facts. ‘I have letter. This is right town. I not move. I have baby to feed,’ she pleaded. One thing she had learned about the English was they didn’t like a fuss: no loud voices, tears or wailings. They liked fair play but done quietly, no digging in of heels.

‘I also have a letter,’ chirped in her neighbour. ‘We will wait.’

‘Please yourselves, but if no one’s come to collect you soon…’ the official sniffed.

‘They will come,’ they said as one, more in hope than certainty.

By the time Lily made her late entrance through the foyer of Ringway Aerodrome there was no one waiting for her; only an escort officer giving two foreign girls an ultimatum.

‘I’m sorry, ladies, but yer time’s up. I did warn you. If no one comes to collect you, it must be reported and you’ll be sent back to your own country.’ He looked at his list and at his watch, brushing his hand over his Brylcreemed hair, clearing his throat.

They were the only people left, sitting with toddlers on their knees in the draughty arrivals hall, looking forlorn as they scoured every coming and going, to no avail.

Suddenly the oriental girl stood up and flung herself on the floor on her knees in a bow of total submission, her black eyes peeking from beneath a battered straw hat while the child, in brown leggings and pixie bonnet beside her, watched open-mouthed as in halting but perfect English her plea was made.

‘Honourable sir…this is a big mistake. I have my letter here. I send a telegram. He will come for me,’ she pleaded. ‘We do not want to go back out east.’

This is terrible, Lily thought. That poor lass must be desperate to be humbling herself before a stranger like that. She could hardly watch. Poor refugees coming all this way by sea and air to a strange country that demanded papers, checks, medicals and questions, and no one to greet them. It was a disgrace.

And just who was the other reject in the printed headscarf? She looked like one of those displaced wanderers of war you saw on the Pathé News: a war bride or perhaps the bona fide fiancée of a British citizen. The two girls seemed such forlorn figures, abandoned by heartless Tommies who had, no doubt, promised them the earth. They looked so helpless Lily just couldn’t sit by and do nothing.

Her heart went out to them but where was Susan Brown? Did she think she too had been abandoned in the cold, clutching her bags in a panic, Freddie’s letters burning a hole in her pocket? What must she think of his family?

Lily watched the golden-skinned child cowering into her mother’s blouse for comfort until the mother pulled her away and the child’s mouth opened into a huge howl of protest. There was a tincture of dirty nappy she recognised only too well.

The muffled toddler was lifted up. What a welcome to Manchester! To be left behind with no one to greet them was a dreadful fate.

Passengers from the next flight were already hurrying through the hall, looking out expectantly as they were met by waiting relatives. Was Susan Brown among them? She would be searching for Freddie in the crowd, not a stranger. She must have wandered off somewhere, but where in this rabbit warren of buildings?

Perhaps the girl was in the toilet trying to spruce herself up after such a long journey, putting on warmer clothes? If only Lily knew what she looked like. Better to ask again at the desk, but the plight of these two Orphan Annies and their babies moved her to offer some help.

It was those summer dresses with ill-fitting suit jackets-probably their very best outfits-that moved her to pity. Their offspring at least were well padded in siren suits with pixie hoods, wide-eyed with terror. She would have to do something. She was a Brown Owl and Guiders knew their duty.

Perhaps there was some hiccup at Immigration and Susan Brown was delayed somewhere. Freddie must have filled in the sponsorship forms or his girlfriend wouldn’t have got this far.

The second mother looked thin and shabby in her faded frock with a striped headscarf covering her dark copper hair. Wisps were straggling across her cheeks and there were tears welling in her eyes as she helped the oriental mother from the floor. Suddenly they both started to rock back and forwards, keening and hollering so everyone stopped to stare and the children howled in sympathy.

No one was coming for them. It was a terrible sight, tugging at Lily’s heartstrings. Something must be done.

‘What is going on?’ she asked the official.

‘These lasses’ll have to go back. They are the third lot of abandoned refugees I’ve had to sort out today. More paperwork and more tears. If only our chaps wouldn’t promise these girls the earth, but that’s soldiers for you. Where that Greek comes from she’ll be in trouble. Women like her end up put out of the family for bringing shame.’ He was pointing at the headscarf, shaking his head.

‘Can we get them a cup of tea?’ Lily asked, feeling even more sorry for the two rejects, who were now huddled on the bench together as if to gain courage one from the other. It would give her something to do and a chance to search for Miss Brown, but with no photograph to guide her, Lily was beginning to panic. What if the girl set off for Grimbleton on her own in the dark? There was no direct bus route without going into the centre of Manchester first. Anything could happen…

A woman in an overall brought some chipped cups of tea on a tray and Lily handed them out to both strangers with a smile.

‘Your soldier boys will come,’ she said in her brightest voice. It was late. Perhaps Miss Brown was on the next plane from London.

‘Mister Stan will not forget. I wrote many times,’ smiled the oriental young woman, shaking her head at the teacup. ‘No more tea, thank you.’

‘My soldier is at camp. He come. He send brother,’ said the other.

‘Where are you from?’ Lily asked, hoping to take their minds off their predicament.

‘London,’ answered the tiny woman.

The two of them were like peg and prop. One was tall and statuesque, the other tiny like a bird.

‘And you?’ Lily turned to the girl in the headscarf.

‘I come from Athens…Greece.’

They all smiled politely and fell silent, lined up like a set of jugs against the wall until the official Lily had spoken to at the information desk hurried over. He was beaming with relief, looking at each of them and clutching his papers.

‘Winstanley…Any of you for Winstanley?’ he mouthed slowly.

At last, thought Lily, her enquiries were bearing fruit.

At the sound of the name the two women rose as one. ‘Yes,’ they replied in unison, standing expectantly and then immediately stared at each other with suspicion.

Lily sat down with shock.

‘This is Miss Winstanley, she’s come to collect one of you,’ said the officer, but they both also sat down promptly and shook their heads.

‘There must be some mistake. I’ve come for Miss Susan Brown from Burma,’ said Lily.

The man was pointing to the oriental girl, who was back on the floor, prostrate again, her head buried in her palms.

‘Honourable sir, I do not know this lady…She is not my Mister Stan,’ she sobbed, pulling her child into her chest away from them.

The other girl grabbed her hand. ‘Get up, Miss Susan. Your Mister Stan has sent for you. Lucky, lucky you.’ She turned to Lily. ‘I wait for Sergeant Winstanley. She wait for a Mister Stan.’

Lily felt her knees shaking. There couldn’t be two Winstanleys anticipated, could there?

‘Not to worry,’ she whispered. ‘If your name is Susan Brown, then it’s me come to collect you. I’m Lily Winstanley, Freddie’s sister. I’m sorry I was late.’ Stretching out her hand as if to gather up Susan in one fell swoop, there was no hiding her relief. ‘Freddie said you were bonny but I was expecting…never mind…’ There was no hiding her surprise.

‘Freddie, you know my Freddie, Miss Lily?’ said the Greek lass, jumping up excitedly. ‘I have his address: twenty-two Division Street, Grimbleton.’ A piece of paper was shoved under Lily’s nose. Arms were flung round her. ‘He is coming for me too?’

‘Hang on,’ Lily gasped, stepping back quickly. ‘Not so fast…It’s her I’ve come for: Susan Brown from Burma, Freddie’s intended. I don’t know anything about you. Show us that address again,’ she said, peering at it intently and then at them both.

‘But that is my address too,’ cried Susan, peering at the lettering. ‘My Stan lives at twenty-two Division Street, Grimbleton. It is written on my heart.’

The other girl folded her arms. ‘But I am Anastasia Papadaki. Sergeant Freddie Winstanley is my man and Konstandina is his child. I name her after his mother, Konstantia. It is the custom, yes?’

‘No, No! I am Susan Liat Brown. Mr Winstanley is my intended,’ screamed Susan. ‘And this is his child, Joy Liat. He is my man. I have his address. You, lady, are a big liar! I have a photo…See!’ Susan produced a tattered sepia photograph. ‘It was taken in Rangoon before he left on a ship, when I was a teacher. See…we are in a concert party.’ Her smile was triumphant.

Lily peered at it with dismay. There was no doubting that was Freddie grinning at the camera, dressed in a Pierrot costume.

‘Give me here. On the bones of Agios Vasilios…Ne! Ne! Yes! That is Freddie, my Freddie. We meet in Athens when I was nurse,’ said the Greek, refusing to give way. ‘She is liar. Susan is dead!’

‘How am I dead if I am here with little Joy?’ Susan shouted back, clinging to the toddler. ‘She is his little Joy.’

There was a deafening silence as they both stared at each other. Lily’s heart was thumping a drumbeat. It would take the judgement of Solomon to sort out this mess.

‘Oh heck,’ she said, scratching her head. What have you been up to Freddie? she sighed.

They were all looking to her for guidance. ‘What do we do now?’

‘These women go nowhere,’ ordered the officer, already pink in the face. ‘Not until the man in question comes to collect them in person. He can’t have two wives in this country, whatever he’s been up to. So one of you is going to be disappointed, I’m afraid. Sergeant Winstanley must choose his bride.’

‘That might prove difficult, sir. Can I have a word in private?’ Lily whispered to the officer.

He pointed to a corner out of earshot, both looking over at the mothers, who were each wishing that the other would disappear into thin air. How on earth was this mess going to be sorted out?

Miss Brown was standing frozen like a statue, tears rolling down her face. Anastasia was standing with her arms folded. And there were the two kiddies to consider: were they both really Freddie’s little girls? The two of them then came storming across, led by the Greek, who was all fired up.

‘Come on, missy…I no trust them. They hide words from us. We have daughters. Maybe there are two Freddie Winstanleys. One for each of us.’ Miss Ana was taking charge. ‘You and me is going to sort this out.’

The officer stood in their path. ‘There’s been a development,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry but under the circumstances, you must both go with Miss Winstanley and sort this out amongst yourselves, the two of you and the family. His mother is waiting to meet you. Good luck!’

He looked relieved to be shovelling this awkward problem on to the stunned woman in the tweed suit. And Lily was too shocked to do anything other than gather up their luggage and propel them towards the door like a taxi driver.

It was raining hard as they trooped towards the black van with no time for Lily to put on her mackintosh so it would hide the black armband sewn onto her sleeve. The mothers would be far too upset to note its significance or the fact that they were getting soaked.

Somehow cases and bodies and children were crammed into the back of Gertie. The gloomy ride back to Grimbleton was a blur of steamy windows accompanied by the ammonia smell of wet nappies and the sniffing of tears in the back. Gertie coughed and spluttered in protest at the extra weight but trundled them northwards. If only she was driving the bigger Rover saloon but it was still in the garage, standing on bricks, out of action for the duration.

What on earth must these two poor lasses be thinking? Lily felt her hands shaking at the wheel. Perhaps it was lucky that the windows were steamed up so they missed the worst of the soot and the grime, the gaping bomb sites around Manchester, the dark satanic mills.

Lily’s heart was thudding as the streets of Grimbleton came into view.

What on earth was she going to do with two of them? What would the family say to two women with the same address? How did they explain away two little girls, not the size of tuppence halfpenny? What would the neighbours think, and Walt too?

This would be the biggest bombshell to hit Division Street since the air raid in ’41. I’d like to give that brother of mine a piece of my mind. He’s gone too far this time, she thought.

Then she remembered he was dead and these two didn’t know. None of them would ever see him again.

The baby, Dina, was whimpering, tugging her back to reality. Freddie may have passed away but he’d sure as hell left quite a legacy behind.

5

The Day War Broke Out Again

Susan peered at the back of the driver’s head, at the roll of brown hair anchored with pins and at the felt hat. What was she doing in this clanking van? Had they been kidnapped? Why was she crushed in the back with strangers and the smell of stale bottoms? This was not how England should be, surely?

It should be a beautiful carriage and horses like the picture on the tin of chocolates that Stan brought as a gift to Auntie Betty, her guardian. There was a pretty house with a golden grass roof. Roses tumbling from the walls and a blue, blue sky. She had read many school books with castles and great stone palaces in them, wide parks with tall trees, but nothing like this.

Outside it was all grey and sooty, no moonlight on this wet afternoon. Gaslamps flickered like troubled spirits. For all she was brought up as a Christian girl, she believed her grandmother when it came to honouring the nyats, those guardian spirits of house and home. She whispered, ‘Kador, kador,’ so as not to incite their anger. It was bad enough to be sharing this van with the imposter who claimed Mister Stan was the father of her child. The liar! He would not be so quick to take another woman after their tender embrace.

After all the preparations to get to British soil, home of her late father, Ronnie Brown, the hoarding of rations and planning, the obtaining of permits and passports, nothing was as she had dreamed. It was true British soldiers liked Burmese girls but never got round to marrying them, but she thought Mister Stan was different.

‘If anything happens and you need my help, beautiful flower, just write to this address,’ he promised when his leave was cancelled quickly. She had carried his words close to her heart in her tunic pocket when other Tommies asked her for a date. Was it all the lies of a cheating man?

She clutched ‘Precious Teddy’, the teddy Auntie Betty had given to Joy for comfort. It smelled of home, of spice and pickle, cigarettes and the ship. Something was wrong. But she had not walked hundreds of miles out of Burma, fleeing the Japanese through the jungle, to be stopped now.

Burmese ladies might look like delicate orchids but their will was made of iron. Sometimes in her dreams, she was back in those hills on the trek north from Rangoon in the summer of 1942. Fear stalked them all the way. There was one valley where the sun hovered over the ridge of hills above them, and when it slid away the hills seemed to crouch down and whisper, ‘You’ll never get out of here alive.’ They called it the valley of death and many succumbed to dysentery and bite infections. They were town people, not used to rough terrain. She was younger and more nimble. She walked with the children, cajoling them to keep going, singing songs to cheer them. ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ was their favourite.

One night they were attacked by bandits who torched their camps and stripped them of their bundles, cigarettes and rings, and separated the girls from the men. The women clung together, fearing the worst of fates. They would be sold into slavery but not before the men had sampled the goods, she was warned.

How wonderful are the ways of God’s angels when rescue came that very night from a patrol of young Japanese warriors who saw the flames. They killed the bandits and gave the Burmese rice, sharing their rations.

Su could never understand how the enemy could be kind one minute and vicious the next. An officer took her aside and asked if she was British.

‘No! No! Burmese,’ she protested. ‘I am ayah to these children,’ she lied. ‘I’m taking them to safety. War is not a place for children!’ He nodded and let her go.

Under cover of darkness, they were allowed to slip away unharmed. How strange that it was the enemy who showed mercy.

Wrapped only in her long skirt, she had trekked for hundreds of miles with rope tied around the soles of her sandals for shoes. She had lived while others died of sores, starvation and exhaustion. Their bodies were consumed by the creatures of the jungle. Of the hundreds who set off on that epic trek, only the young and the tough survived to reach the Assam border.

Here there was respite, food and medicine, and she found kindness among the nurses. It was they who persuaded her to turn round and walk back to join the Women’s Auxiliary Service of Burma, helping the wounded men off ships and giving them char and wads, smiles and dances.

Mister Stan was her reward for all her duty, waiting at the station to guide them, parading in the church, dancing and singing. He was a good man and Ana was a big liar!

When they got to his house and they saw she was a real lady who could drink tea from a china cup with her little finger held just so, everything would be ‘tickety-boo’. She had brought real tea in her case, not the floor sweepings she had drunk so far. The truth would come out and the Greek girl would be sent packing. They would see she-Susan-was a true lady with proper manners.

‘Manners maketh the man’, she had been taught. She knew her Shakespeare. She held herself straight with neat ankles and slim waist. She wore an English dress with almond oil on her hair. Her skin was not dark like an Indian’s. She was true Anglo-Burmese, with skin the colour of warm ivory. When she walked down a street heads turned. Once they saw her they would know she was true fiancée of Mister Stan. The big liar would be found out!

*  *  *

Gertie glided to the kerbside without breaking wind and drawing attention to their arrival.

Lily peered out into the gloom and took a deep breath. ‘This is it. Come inside, ladies,’ she smiled, trying to look in control.

The two women didn’t budge, transfixed with terror, shaking their heads at her request. Their girls were fast asleep. There was no coaxing the two of them out of the back. If only there were interpreters, liaison officers, on hand to negotiate this tricky situation. They would know how to diffuse the time bomb waiting to go off.

At least there was no reception party waiting on the doorstep. It was dark and the curtains were drawn. What if Mother had been standing stern-faced with a bolstered bosom and breath like dragon smoke belching into the night air, and Ivy hovering to inspect the ‘missionary’? To Lily’s relief, the coast was clear.

‘Come inside, it’s cold out here.’ She offered her hand but they shrunk back in unison. Admittedly, Waverley House was not looking its best in the dusk and mizzle, with its blackened brick fascia and windows bulging from the sides like frog’s eyes. The shadows on the pavement, lit by gaslamps, flickered like her failing courage. There was nothing to do but leave them in the van and run up the steps to open the vestibule door.

The mosaic tiled floor smelled of Jeyes Fluid. Everything was spick and span. Polly had been busy, a fire blazing in the hearth and twinkling brass ornaments flashing. All was in readiness for the new arrival to inspect. Lily crept towards the parlour, hoping to find Esme alone. Better to isolate her, explain the little local difficulty before she jumped to the usual conclusion that it was all Lily’s fault.

Ivy was standing in the bay window pointing to the van outside, all dolled up in her best skirt with box pleats and John West salmon twinset, her hair fixed in cardboard waves. You could be seasick on those crests. How did she have time to titivate her hair when it was as much as Lily could do to roll hers up like a hosepipe round her head?

‘At last! We nearly sent out a search party for you.’ Ivy paused for breath. ‘Well, where is this mysterious ladyfriend then? I hope you drove her up Green Lane to show her the better end of the street. No one wants to see rows and rows of terraces and factory doors, and it’s a good job we had a cold meat platter waiting or tea would be ruined. I’ve had to feed Neville and now he’s all messed up.’

Lily hovered by the door, clutching her driving gloves, flushed with anxiety.

Levi was quick to seize the moment. ‘What’s up with you? You look as if you’ve lost a bob and found a tanner. She not turn up then? I thought so, and all that wasted petrol,’ he moaned, glancing up from his Evening News. ‘I knew you’d be hopeless…’

There was no response to his jibe.

‘What is it? The cat got your tongue?’ snapped Esme. ‘I can see summat is up with you.’

Hang on, why did they always expect her to pull the rabbit out of a hat, make a tanner do a bob, dance a fire dance? Good old Doormat Lil, the oily rag that did all the dirty work. Well, now they were going to get such a jumping jack up their backsides and no mistake!

‘There’s been an unexpected development.’ That got their attention. ‘It’s just…there’s two of them in the van so I thought I’d better come in and check with you first,’ she blurted out quickly, shuffling from one foot to the other like a child waiting to be told off for scuffing her best shoes playing football.

Ivy was pushing her out of the way, making for the door. ‘Two of who? Don’t stand there like one of them girls in Lewis’s Arcade. Show me!’

‘Wait!’ Lily whispered. ‘There’s two ladies, two, er…Mrs Winstanleys, or so they say, and they won’t come in.’

‘Don’t be daft, Lil. You dozy brush, you’ve brought the wrong lasses! No wonder they won’t come in. I’m going to see for myself,’ snapped Ivy, storming down the path.

‘They both had our address, Mother. What was I to do? The airport wanted shot of them once I told them about Freddie. I said we’d sort them out but then there’s the kiddies…We have to do right by them.’

‘Kiddies!’ Esme was on red alert now.

Ivy shot back through the hall like a bullet out of a gun, speechless, her mouth opening and shutting like a goldfish gasping for air. ‘Levi! You’d better get out there. Call the police! There’s two foreigners with screaming kids in our van. We can’t have them in here. What will the neighbours think? And one of them’s…Chinese,’ she mouthed in a whisper. ‘I’m taking Neville upstairs. We don’t want any part of this. Wait till I get my hands on that brother of yours,’ she screamed, storming up the Axminster stairs two at a time.

Esme, winded by the news, sat down in a heap. Ivy had no tea strainer between her brain and her mouth, Lily sighed. Freddie couldn’t help them now. She stood in the hall, not knowing which way to turn. ‘At least they do speak English of sorts, one better than the other,’ she offered. ‘Poor souls had no idea about each other. Both sat there waiting for the same soldier to pick them up. You could cut the ice in the back of the van. What was I to do? I couldn’t leave them, not with little kiddies in the middle of winter.’

‘Levi, come up here. We’re keeping out of this mess!’ shouted Ivy from the top of the landing.

‘You’d better calm your wife down.’ Esme took a deep breath and rose again, her chest heaving under the gold link chain she wore when expecting company. ‘I suppose I’ll have to deal with this mess myself.’

‘Perhaps I should get Walter over to help us,’ Lily offered, feeling in need of some support.

‘Whatever for? He’d be neither use nor ornament, Lil. Leave him be.’

There was nothing to do but follow Mother down those steps, throwing prayers to the Almighty, hoping for once that she would find the right words to calm the frightened passengers and not have them running through the dark streets in fear of her fury, Lily thought. Better to push in front and get the first word in herself.

‘This is Freddie’s mother, Mrs Winstanley. She wants to speak to you,’ Lily mouthed as if to a child. ‘We have tea for you inside and milk for the little ones, yes?’

The two girls looked at each other and then at the grey-haired matron who hovered over them, gold chains clanking above a smart grey two-piece jersey suit.

At least her face softened at the sight of these waifs and strays taking the sting out of her bite momentarily.

‘Come in, ladies. We must talk to you and outside is not the place. There’s obviously been some terrible mistake.’ Esme pointed the way, looking up and down the street to see if there was an audience.

Were the curtains twitching across at number nineteen? Doris Pickvance, the local ‘News of the World’ was going to get an eyeful if she spotted the little procession of refugees, babies and baggage squeezing out of the black van. It would be all down Division Street by chucking-out time at the Coach and Horses that the Winstanleys were opening a hostel for displaced persons.

Slowly the girls edged themselves out of the back, crumpled and forlorn, unravelling their clinging toddlers. Lily picked up a fallen doll as they made their way up the steps.

‘Where is my Stan? Why is he not here to greet me? I wrote him many letters. What is wrong?’ Susan was clutching her struggling child, who was draped over her shoulder, her eyes on stalks as faces peered down the stairwell.

‘Come inside and sit down,’ said Esme in a soft voice, moved by the plight of these orphans of the night.

They sat down shyly, not looking at each other.

‘Lil will get you a drink.’

‘No, thank you,’ replied the Burmese woman, sitting upright like a ramrod. ‘Please, where is Stan? I wrote and he said I should write to you. No one came to the ship to meet me.’

‘You are Miss Brown still, or did my son make you his bride before he left?’ Mother was looking down at her ringless finger. Lily didn’t know where to look so she bowed her head.

‘It was our wish to marry but the Army, it said there was no rush to “marry foreign”. I told them straight, no beating bushes, Mister Stan made promises and he gave me a gift.’ She unlaced her shoe and fiddled in the toe, bringing out a pair of solid gold earrings studded with bright rubies. ‘I kept them safe with our precious baby.’

‘That’s as may be, Miss Brown.’ Esme glanced briefly at the jewels, trying to look unimpressed by the size and depth of their colour. Then it was the other girl’s turn for a grilling.

‘We don’t even know your name…Miss…? We had no letter from my son to say you were coming.’ There was the sharp edge back again.

The Greek girl shuffled in her bag for papers. ‘I am Anastasia Papadaki,’ she said. ‘Freddie gave this address to write him. It is lucky I arrive the same day as this woman.’ Her eyes were flashing like steel daggers at Susan.

‘Are you engaged to my son? Have you got a ring in your shoe?’

Anastasia shook her head. ‘He was good soldier. I have terrible time but I help Tommy soldiers get out of Kriti island. We meet in Athens at the end of war. He bring me food. He give me your name to come to England. I come to find him and show him Konstandina. See…’ She whipped off the little pixie hood to reveal a head full of sandy-red curls. There was no mistaking those curls or the sea-blue eyes and long lashes. She was the image of Freddie.

‘How do I know you’re telling us the truth?’ said Esme, standing firm. ‘Neither of you has any proof.’ She was weighing them up while Lily passed round the silver tray of biscuits laid in a cartwheel of pink wafers and bourbon creams, the last of their rations for the month, hidden in an old tin from Ivy and Neville. Suddenly the toddler was alert, curious, stretching out fingers to snatch a treat, but Susan shook her bowed head.

‘Just look at that child, Mother. She’s the spit of Freddie,’ Lily hissed. ‘I think we should tell them the truth and get the others down.’ Lily drew in a deep breath and swallowed. ‘There is no easy way to say this—’ she ventured, looking at the two women.

‘No, this is my duty as head of this family. I’ll do it,’ Esme interrupted. She drew herself up and turned to them both. ‘I’m afraid my son, Freddie’s, had an accident. He is…was in Palestine on duty. There was an explosion. I am so sorry but he did not survive. He will never be coming home now.’

There was silence as the words sunk in.

Anastasia crossed herself and Susan shook her head. ‘I saw the black scarf on your arm. I think something bad is going to happen. Black is for sorrow and sorrow is etched on Daw Winstanley’s face.’ The Burmese girl spoke softly, bowing her head.

‘What we do now?’ sobbed Anastasia.

‘Make a cup of sweet tea, Lil,’ ordered Esme.

‘Poor Mister Stan. Poor Susan Liat with no Stan to welcome me. No home, no village, no grass roof house and roses by the door, no sitting in the cool of the evening while Stan smokes his pipe. Do you know how many gold bracelets Auntie Betty sold to buy our ticket? The journey was so long and the war so terrible. I walked through the jungle from the Japanese. Many died. Mister Stan says he loves me and will send for me one day. What do we do now, Daw Winstanley? I am not going back.’

Susan sat there weeping, and Joy touched her tears with her podgy fingers, unaware all their plans were in ruins.

Then Levi slithered into the room like a snake coiling his way round the furniture, followed by Ivy with her pinched cheeks and puckered lips, smelling of setting lotion and pre-war perfume. They were curious enough now not to want to miss out on the story unfolding. Ivy sniffed a quick glance at the two women as if they were a bad smell.

‘Whatever they have to say, Mother, better be said in front of both of us,’ she snapped, pointing at them.

Lily sometimes wondered about Levi and Ivy’s marriage and what private disappointments had so quickly soured the two of them.

‘We won’t speak ill of the dead. Freddie is not here to defend himself. It’s what we do with them now that’s my greatest concern,’ said Esme.

‘I am sorry to bring trouble to your door,’ Susan sniffed through her tears. ‘I was not brought up to be a nuisance. My father, Ronnie Brown, was a British soldier. He died of sickness and when my mother remarried I went to live with her sister, Auntie Betty. I know English ways. I went to a Christian school. I have my teaching certificate from Rangoon College in my trunk. I have sold everything I have to be with my intended. Now I don’t know what to do. Do not turn us from your door.’

Lily shook her head. ‘You’re both tired and shocked. There’s a bed upstairs prepared for one of you but we can find a camp bed for the other. We’ll not turn strangers in distress from our door, will we, Mother?’ Suddenly it became important to stand up for these strangers. ‘You were friends of my brother and you must stay until you sort yourselves out.’ That got the hand grenades flying overhead.

‘Mother! There’s hardly room for four extras! What about ration books and bedding? Neville’ll be upset,’ whined Ivy, lips tight like purse strings.

But Esme was standing firm. ‘Lil’s got a point. Neville should have been out of a cot months ago. He can kip down on a mattress in your room. He’s too big for the pram in the hall. Our guests will have to share the boys’ old room in the attic and the kiddies can top and tail in the cot for a night or two.

‘But, Mother, it’s not right to encourage immorality. They may be lying to us, for all we know.’ Ivy was clinging to her argument and her territory, but Lily knew that the first salvo had reached its target when Esme came to her defence.

‘Just look at that kiddie, the one with the long name…Concertina. Anyone can see who her father is. It tears my heart to see those kiss curls. And as for the other lady, school teachers in my experience don’t lie. What’s done is done. We won’t turn them from this door, not at this time of day and after such bad news. It’s hardly Christian, is it?’

The girls flashed her a look of gratitude but Ivy wanted the last word as usual.

‘Levi, tell your mother it’s not decent. It’s not fair on Neville, having heathens in the house,’ she said. There was not an ounce of sympathy in her voice. At least Levi had the decency to stare up at the ceiling, saying nothing.

‘Come on now, if our Freddie led them up the garden path then it’s our responsibility for the moment not to make matters worse,’ Lily replied in their defence.

‘Judas!’ Ivy spat in her direction.

‘Come on, ladies, Lil will show you to the top floor. You can freshen up before we have some supper. There’s enough hot water for the kiddies to have a bath with Neville. They smell as if they need changing,’ Esme replied.

‘Mother!’ yelled Ivy up the stairs. ‘Neville must go first. I don’t hold with girls and boys together. You never know what ideas they might get. Our Lily is right out of order.’

Lily followed behind, reluctant to leave them alone.

How terrible to have to share a room with someone who’s shared a bed with your fiancé. How would she feel if Walter produced another girlfriend out of the blue? What disappointment and grief were bottled up inside these two lasses and no one to understand them now? Each one wishing, perhaps, that the other was dead instead of Freddie. How could she leave them in this state?

Su climbed the stairs with a heavy heart, up three flights and turns to a large attic room with windows in the roof. Levi brought up the cot piece by piece, huffing and puffing, eyeing them both as they unpacked their cases.

‘Here we go, ladies, one cot and some spare nappies from the airing cupboard. There’s warm milk in the kitchen when you are ready.’

‘Joy needs no nappies. She’s a clean girl now,’ Su said.

‘My child is still at the breast,’ said Ana.

Levi blushed and fled downstairs.

Alone for the first time since they both stood up together in the aerodrome, they turned their backs on each other, trying not to cry. Su wondered how she could share a room with someone who had shared a bed with her Stan. The disappointment and grief was hanging over her back like some heavy blanket. If only they had married in secret. If only he had stayed in Burma and set up home with her, but no, he got aboard a ship and forgot all about her.

For Joy Liat, no Daddy with a pipe and medals. All her dreams were crumbling to dust.

‘I do not understand. Stan is my man, not yours,’ Su said, pulling out one of her precious heavy silk longyis, a sarong of dark blue embroidered material, brought as a token of her heritage. Now it would serve as a curtain to hide her modesty. She would make a screen of it.

‘He say you dead, his foreign girl in Far East. No letters come from you.’

‘How could I write when he did not write to me?…This screen will help us sleep,’ she said to Ana, who nodded. Su could see she too had been crying.

There was a knock on the door and Lily hovered in the doorway, drowned in a baggy man’s cardigan. ‘If you would like, I can bath your little ones. I’d love to have a play with them. Neville is done now. The water is still warm. You must be so tired. It is such dreadful news. We still can’t believe it. Mother is taking it badly. None of us has seen Freddie for six years, and now this. We’ve so much to ask you about him…but now is not the time.’

She smiled as if she meant every word, such a bright smile and kind grey eyes in such a pale face, not a bit like Stan at all, Su thought. The little ones seemed to sense she loved children and did not protest when she lifted them.

Su stood on the landing, listening to them splashing and laughing as Lily sang with a rich voice, ‘Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey…’

Stan had a rich voice too. They had played in a concert party together. She fell onto the bed exhausted, curling up into a ball, dreaming of the veranda at home and Auntie Betty fixing jasmine around her coiled hair. She shivered. This England-it was so chilly and dark.

When she woke, Lily had given Joy a cup of warm milk and tucked her in one end of the cot. Ana had opened her blouse to her child and Su saw her magnificent white breasts. She herself was like a child in that department. Anglo-Burmese did not have breasts like melons. Perhaps Freddie was disappointed by her tiny frame and that was why he abandoned her?

It was time to change into her one remaining clean blouse and go down to supper.

They sat in the chilly dining room with a paraffin heater belching out fumes, choking the air with its acrid smell. The wind was rattling at the windowpanes.

‘Wind from the north means snow,’ said Levi, making polite conversation. ‘I don’t suppose you two have ever seen snow.’

‘I was a guest of the Germans for many years. I have seen terrible snow,’ snapped Ana. ‘And you?’ She turned to Su.

‘Just on a Christmas card,’ she answered.

‘Oh, you have Christmas in your country then?’ sniffed Ivy, picking at her tinned salmon for bones.

Su put down her fork. The fish was tasteless and she could barely swallow for anger at this bitter pickle. ‘My father was a British soldier. We have Christmas carols and a tree and “Away in a Manger” and Jesus in His cradle. I am baptised Church of England, like my father. I’m not a heathen,’ she answered with cold politeness. That would shut up the snake woman.

Ivy turned her venom to Ana instead. ‘What religion are you then? Catholic?’

‘No understand,’ she said, and refused to say another word.

‘We are going to hold a service in church in Freddie’s memory,’ said Esme. ‘You are welcome to attend but I don’t know how I’m going to explain you both. One, yes, but two of you…?’

‘Number one wife and Number two wife,’ chuckled Levi until someone kicked him under the table and he howled. ‘What was that in aid of?’

‘That is not funny,’ snapped Ivy with her mouth full. ‘We could say one of them was his widow but the other one…’ She was looking at them with disapproval.

‘Pity there isn’t another one of us to go round,’ sneered Levi, fingering his moustache, licking his lips and giving Su the onceover.

‘Don’t be silly. This is serious. People will want to know who these foreigners are. They should stay at home,’ said Ivy.

‘Levi has a point,’ said Lily. ‘You don’t suppose if we said that one of them was his widow, we could then say the other was one of his comrade’s friends, come to pay last respects?’

‘One look at those ginger curls and they would soon guess the score,’ Esme chipped in.

‘Stop this. This is no time for careless talk…Shame on you! You talk as if we weren’t here. I have come a long way. I am very disappointed. Now I don’t know what to think, and I have no home to go to either.’ Su found herself so angry she was spitting out the words.

‘Steady on, lass, we meant no harm,’ said Lily, reaching out to tap her hand. ‘What if we were to claim one of you as Freddie’s widow and the other the widow of his…cousin, say?’ she offered.

‘What cousin?’ snapped Ivy. ‘Levi has no cousin.’

‘Who’s to know but us? A cousin from down south who was killed in the war. That would explain two Mrs Winstanleys at the funeral and their offspring, and no questions asked,’ she added. ‘I don’t know why I’m concocting all this but it’s better than the truth.’

There was a hush as everyone digested Lily’s plan.

‘I don’t like the idea. They should not be coming to chapel,’ said Ivy.

‘Have a heart,’ said Lily. ‘They’ve every right, and their kiddies too.’

‘Lily’s right. For the sake of those little blighters upstairs we can bend the truth so no one gets hurt.’

‘It’s a downright lie. They haven’t got a wedding ring between them,’ Ivy insisted.

‘Hah!’ laughed the honourable Esme. ‘They’d not be the first women in Grimbleton to go down to Woolworths to buy a brass ring and hope nobody asked for their marriage lines. It’s for appearance’s sake we’re doing this. No one need know but us. Then we can all hold our heads up high. What do you think, ladies?’ she asked.

There was a pebble in Su’s throat, choking any response. Opposite sat her rival, who said nothing, only half understanding the conversation.

‘Ana, we are going to draw lots and choose who is to be number one wife Winstanley-wife of Freddie-and who is number two wife of…’ Su paused to think of a suitable name, ‘of Cedric.’ She bowed her head.

‘Who is Cedric when he’s at home?’ asked Levi, puzzled.

‘I met Cedric on the trek to India, a very nice American boy. He gave us a tin of cocoa from rations. It saved our lives. I like the name Cedric.’

‘Then you can be his wife,’ Ivy answered with her sour lemon smile.

‘Oh, no! I will be number one wife. I have a British passport and photograph of my intended. Joy Liat is his older daughter so I am number one.’ She was thinking on her feet, but then Ana burst into big sobs and blew her nose on her napkin.

‘These continentals are so emotional,’ said Ivy. ‘She’ll be weeping and wailing in church, making an exhibition of herself. Let them draw lots for who comes and who stays, I say.’

‘There’s no need to get upset. We will leave it to chance. Come on, son, fetch me my hat and some scrap paper. This is the fairest way,’ said Esme as she passed a clean hankie to Ana.

I am dreaming all of this, thought Su: the wind blowing outside the window rattling the panes, rain lashing down on the glass like tears, the flames of the heater and the flickering gaslamps on the walls, the black scarf over the family portrait of my beloved on the mantelpiece. Perhaps I will wake up and it will all be a bad dream. The girl next to me will have disappeared and I will wake in the bunk of the troopship, and my lover will be waiting at the dockside.

This was hardly the way to sort out such a pack of lies and half-truths but it was the best they could manage for the moment, thought Lily. Everyone was punch-drunk with shock and exhaustion, and resistance was low. Better to sort it out now and get their stories straight from the start.

‘There you go, girl, dip your hand in the hat. You go first.’ Levi was shoving the hat into Susan’s face. She picked out a folded slip of paper but did not open it. Then Ana picked out the other, opened it and smiled.

Lily saw the words, ‘Mrs Winstanley, Mrs Freddie Winstanley, number one widow.’ She sighed and Levi winked at her. It was a fix.

Susan rose from the table without a word and made for the stairs. Ana rose too but Lily held her back.

‘Let her have a few moments to herself. It has been a long day for all of us.’ She turned to Esme. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best if Miss Papawhotsit claims to be his proper wife. Susan has a British passport. Anastasia has nothing going for her but the fact that any dumb cluck can see that Concertina’s a Winstanley.’

The Greek girl sat down promptly.

‘Tell us about Freddie in Athens. How did you meet? Was he well? Tell a grieving mother about her son. How did he look?’ Esme pleaded.

‘I knew him very short time. He is kind man. We go many dances and I teach him Creta dancing. He told me to come…’ Then she burst into tears again.

Lily did her best to comfort her but half her mind was upstairs in the cold bedroom with the weeping Susan, the frozen girl who looked so lost. How could anyone not feel pity for them both?

She tiptoed upstairs, peering into the cot to see the sleeping half-sisters, top and tail, looking like little angels. Her heart was relieved to see that Susan was fast asleep. By her bedside was the tattered snapshot of Freddie in a Pierrot costume with a golden halo of curls sticking out of his cap, the snapshot the girl had carried halfway across the world. Lily didn’t know whether she wanted to cry or wring her brother’s neck for bringing this trouble to their door.

In that faraway world, he’d given them both comfort and loving. These girls knew lives she could hardly imagine, had journeyed into dark places just to bring their kiddies to safety and find Freddie again. It made her own world seem so small. No wonder Susan found everything so grey here. Their Grimbleton world was colourless and predictable but at least it was safe and would shelter these storm-tossed wanderers for a while…

Freddie would want her to give them protection but how to explain them away? Not even Walt knew the full truth yet. And his mother had a mouth on her the size of Morecambe Bay.

Still, the Almighty in His wisdom had dumped them here for a reason. It was up to Him to sort this lot out, and soon. All she knew was that tomorrow would begin the Winstanley family’s life of lies.

6

Farewell to Freddie

‘Where’ve you been? I thought you’d run away with the coal man,’ whispered Walter as he pecked Lily on the cheek. ‘And what’s all this about Freddie’s wife and kiddy? I never knew he were wed.’

The jungle drums were at work already. Lily sighed as she struggled to bring in the washing from the line in the back yard of his house in Bowker’s Row. It was starting to rain and his mother was dozing in the leather armchair, blissfully unaware. There would be just time to iron Walt a clean shirt and unpack the shopping she had brought before they must set off for the memorial service.

‘We’ve not seen much of you these last weeks,’ yawned Elsie Platt, rubbing her striped brown slippers with holes cut out to accommodate her bunions. Her bulk was wired tightly, like an overstuffed mattress, into a black funeral outfit. A winter coat lay over the back of the chair with a fur tippet and black felt hat. Elsie loved a good funeral tea and a chance to give Waverley House the onceover.

‘Levi says it’s the talk of the Coach and Horses about the foreign girls who turned up at your place. Why am I the last to know anything?’ Walter sniffed, standing over her while she plugged the iron into the lampshade.

‘What’s wrong with the shirt he’s wearing, Lil? It was clean on yesterday,’ Elsie snapped.

It was hard to explain that a clean shirt and cuffs were important when the whole family was on show. Sometimes after a day on the stall and a night in Yates Wine Lodge, Walt was not as Lifebuoy fresh as he ought to be, poor lamb. She blamed Elsie, whose idea of housework was just to keep the smells down in the two up, two down terraced house. That inbred Lancashire pride in being spick and span with bright white nets, donkey-stoned steps and starched washing had somehow passed her by.

The Platts’ weekly wash was a steeping of smalls in the sink and hung out overnight, where it gathered sooty smuts, unless Lily took them back home herself. It wasn’t as if Walt’s mother had anyone else to look after, but it took all sorts, Lily supposed.

The Winstanleys would only pick holes in Walt’s appearance if he turned up shabby. They all needed to put on a united front on this sad occasion. She wanted no more sly digs about his appearance.

‘What’s all this about your Freddie? What’s the sly beggar been up to? I hear there’s nappies on your washing line?’ Elsie sniggered.

‘You’d think folk had nothing better to do than to count washing. It’s a long story and we’ve not time to be gossiping when there’s a service to be going to. I’ve brought the van to give you both a lift.’

‘His back won’t stand it in the rear of that, dear. You’d better take me and return for him later,’ said Elsie, rising to don her outdoor finery. ‘Will there be a collection? It’ll have to be a widow’s mite from me. You know how we are placed.’

‘I expect so, but don’t worry about it. You’ll have to make do as best you can with one trip, though. It’s not far and I’m running out of time.’

Did they think she was a taxi service and a laundry maid? There were a hundred jobs on her list and no time to get dressed properly. They were lucky that guilt at neglecting Walt had made her come early to sort them out. He was hopeless without her chivvying him up. That was one of the things she loved about him. He needed her.

When they arrived at Waverley House there was another fuss going on.

‘They’re not going dressed like that?’ Ivy stared at these new upstarts. She was bedecked in a dark suit with a fox fur draped over her shoulders. ‘Here, I found some mittens for them to cover their fingers. It’s chilly outside. I hope there’s a good turnout. We don’t want these two showing us up, do we?’

This was not a fashion parade or a celebration, thought Lily with only five minutes to tear off her old clothes and put on her winter best frock and tired coat. There was no time even to powder her nose. Usually Ivy would have nothing to do with Ana and Susan, sniffing down her nose every time they came in a room, and the offer of a pair of knitted gloves each was only so they could hide their ringless fingers from view.

The family assembled outside the house for the short walk to Zion Chapel, ambling slowly, flanking the two strangers on all sides to keep them out of view. There was a goodly crowd gathered by the church steps, waiting for the family to process in.

It was left to Lily to kit out Ana and Susan for church with warm coats and hats, stockings and suitable underwear for the chilly climate. They had no coupons for anything new.

Susan was so tiny she fitted into Lily’s old school gaberdine mac with a lined hood. Ana was wrapped in Grandma Crompton’s old fur coat, which hardly fitted across her swollen bust. But winter was coming early this year. They would not look out of place all muffled up.

Lily held little Joy’s hand as she struggled on the slippery pavement in her pixie hood and warm gaiters. Word was out about the strangers at Waverley House pushing a pram. It did cross her mind that half the crowd might be gathered today just to ogle. Esme covered her black hat with net veiling to hide her grief and her confusion. She was very quiet, too quiet, and Lily wondered how they would get through the service without someone breaking down. There was nothing to do but brazen it out.

‘You’ve heard about our big surprise then?’ Lily smiled up at neighbours, trying to look casual, hoping they wouldn’t notice how her voice was quaking.

‘It’s all round the Coach and Horses that young Freddie left his mark in Burma,’ whispered Doris Pickvance.

‘Then they were wrong as usual!’ Lily whispered back.

Bar-stool gossip could be so crude. Lily’s heart began to thud. What if everyone thought Su was Freddie’s wife? How could they pass Anastasia off as his bride instead? Perhaps they should change them round again. All this lying was hard work, so many pitfalls and tracks to cover over. Perhaps it was better to tell the plain truth.

All eyes were on the two strangers as they were led down a side aisle into a series of boxed cupboard pews. The mourners were put at the front in full view, waiting in silence until Reverend Atkinson, wearing his black gown, stood before the assembled family to welcome them and began the special service with the hymn ‘I vow to thee my country’.

Lily felt herself choking up. The tune brought back memories of schooldays. Why did she suddenly think of Pamela Pickvance and the ice slide?

It wasn’t that Pam was always horrid to her, it was just that she couldn’t rely on her as a friend. One minute she was all over her like a rash and then she ran off and ganged up with girls in the playground, pulling faces and calling her names.

Pam across the road was in the top class and ‘bonny’, which was a polite way of saying ‘fat’, round as a barrel with a nip on her like pincers. Her brother was even bigger and when the two of them stopped her on the way home to snatch her bus money, it made for a long walk on a wet night.

Funny how she would hand it over without a fight until Freddie started in the infants’ and she had to drag him along into the infants’ playground. Pam and Alf would wait until she had shoved him in the yard, then pounce. If she’d spent her pennies, they pulled off her ribbons and that meant bother at home. Mother thought she was careless and made her pay for some more. There was no point in telling tales when they lived across the road. She just put up with it hoping their bullying would go away.

Then came the bad snow and a chance to make an ice slide on the pavement, sliding down until it shone like glass. Pam and Alf started shoving her off, making her legs go sideways out onto the road. That was scary and she cried in front of them.

Freddie was watching, open-mouthed, seeing his sister sobbing, and suddenly he rushed at Pam and knocked her over. He pulled her by her pigtails until she screamed and when her big brother came to the rescue, he kicked him in the shins.

The scrap that followed was like Goliath beating the hell out of David until he had a busted lip and a bloody nose and his new winter coat was torn.

‘You lay off my sister or I’ll shove you down!’ Freddie snorted.

‘You and whose army?’ sneered Alf Pickvance.

‘I’ll get my big brother on you and he’s got boxing gloves and we’ll come and get you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ snivelled Pam, a hole in her lisle stockings. ‘I’m telling on you!’

Doris was round next morning complaining that her darling Pam had been set upon by Winstanley ruffians, and what was Esme going to do about it?

Esme rose to her full height with an icy smile. ‘What happens in the street between children is not our affair. My children don’t fight unless provoked…Thank you and good day!’ She slammed the door in Doris’s face and turned her fury on her own.

Lily was sent to her room. Freddie got his bottom paddled, but neither broke their vow of silence, their omertà: All for one and one for all.

Funny thing was, Pam was as nice as pie after that, and Alf gave them a wide berth. It was then that Lily realised that having two brothers had its advantages. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for them then.

Lily buried her nose in her handkerchief. She could still see Freddie as a little lad, not a grown man. In six years all she had of him were a bunch of letters full of jokes and pleasantries, she sighed. They knew nothing of his real life, his war, his lovers, nothing about the real Freddie. He was a stranger.

Both her brothers were strangers and that was what war had done to this family: torn them apart. In truth she’d lost Freddie years ago.

This can’t be a real church, thought Ana as she stared around the bare walls as they were escorted down a side aisle into a series of boxed cupboard pews. The mourners sat in silence until a man in a suit and teacher’s gown stood before the Winstanley family and began the service.

To her a church was the very soul of a place, set high on a hill or in the market square, painted white, shining in the sunlight, not tucked up in some grimy street like a factory, she mused. Where was the rainbow of colours: ochre, crimson, azure wall paintings? Where were the bells, candlelight and smell of incense?

The walls of Zion Chapel were painted white, the woodwork was dark oak polished to a mirror finish. There were no flowers, no silken robes and vestments, shimmering purples and crimson velvets, embroidered with silver and gold threads, no wall hangings and frescoes, nothing on which to rest her sad eyes for comfort. Where were the scenes from the Gospels, painted between the windows and the walls, by monks centuries ago, some depicting the miracles wrought by St Andreas, Archbishop of Crete? Did Grimbleton not have its own patron saint to adorn with jewels and gold leaf?

She looked up to the wooden rafters holding the ceiling. Where was the risen Christ in glory arching over the cupola in mosaic tiles glistening gold and silver and sapphire in the heavens?

There was nowhere to light a sacred candle of intercession for Freddie. She could not hate him for his weakness. He was a man and men had needs. He brought her back to life after years of darkness. He was her candle of light and she wept that their time together had been so short.

There were no jewelled icons to pray before, hanging with silver tamata, those precious votive offerings, flowers, silver templates with eyes and legs and bodies, offered for a cure. There was no cure for death, only the resurrection in the fullness of time.

She did not understand this English plainness. How could anyone find comfort in such stark surroundings? It felt an insult to all that was holy in her heart. Freddie would not rest in peace until she had found a proper church and lit candles and all the rituals were performed.

She was weeping not for her loss now but for herself and memories of the little white chapel of St Dionysius, the patron saint of her village, weeping for the comfort of familiar faces processing to the great Easter ceremonies and Christmas festival, weeping an exile’s tears. There was no going back now.

There was such a silence, no weeping and wailing of death songs, no mother and black-clad widows keening. The sounds of grief could purge away suffering. Her family had kneeled prostrate over her sister’s grave, wailing in agony, only to rise and prepare a meal for the living family as if that beautiful girl was not in the graveyard.

Eleni was the first of many deaths in their village, the year the Germans came from the sky, floating down into their olive groves. But no, she could not think of all that again.

They were singing hymns now, ones she could not understand, and there were words, so many words. There was no ceremony in this memorial. There was no body to wash with wine and rosewater, no linen to bind up, no body to bury. How could you lay to rest a man who was not there?

She twisted the brass ring around her wedding finger. It was loose. What would a real priest make of these lies? Susan Brown was sitting in front, prim with her straw hat bound with black ribbon, her luscious coil of hair constrained in a hairnet. She was used to English worship. She was wearing her gold earrings, showing them off for all to see.

Ana sensed there were curious eyes in the congregation, wondering just who these strangers were. There would be more stories to make up when they went back home for the funeral tea and guests sidled up to her with polite questions about her connection to the family.

I will never get used to this chilly air, she sighed, the dampness of the rooms, the smells of soot and smoke and burning rubber, or people with faces like doughy white bread rolls. You made your bed, now you must lie on it, she thought. There is no other way, sigara, sigara… take it easy.

However many layers she borrowed from Lily she could not keep warm. It was as if a mist of forgetfulness and lethargy clouded all her resolve and energy, sapping her hope away. Only Dina gave her a reason to rise each morning to do all the chores her mother-in-law insisted they divide between them. They must earn their board and lodgings until they had achieved their independence from the Winstanleys.

They had been taken down to the town hall, a soot-black building like a Greek temple, where she had to sit in a long queue for hours with Dina, waiting to register as a refugee with child. It was all papers to sign in a language she couldn’t read very well, but Lily tried to explain why she must do this.

It felt wrong to be sitting in her best clothes, not in black widow’s weeds. Black and grey were the colours of this drab town. What on earth was she doing here?

There were other queues she must stand in to register for identity papers, rations, welfare. She was a refugee with no status. Susan had a passport. Susan had gold bracelets stuffed in her bag to buy extras for her child. Despite their ruse, Susan was still thought to be a regular wife who was just a visiting relative here under sufferance.

Ana’s only relief was to borrow the bucket pram and walk up Green Lane to the top shops where the family was registered for groceries. Here she could pretend to be an ordinary housewife with her baby, not a lonely exile trapped by winter in an alien land.

Freddie, I hate you, she sighed, shaking her head. But how can I hate the man who brought me back to life?

The man with the smiling face and freckled nose who waltzed into her dreams. How could she forget the brush of khaki on her cheek and the smell of eau-de-Cologne. ‘Moonlight Serenade’, dancing under the stars, strolling through the village square.

You told me about the other woman, how she never wrote and you feared she might be dead, thought Ana. You were sad and I was sad, for I had lost my home and my sister. You filled the hunger in my belly with food from the NAAFI and wine from cellars that loosened our limbs. You filled the hunger for love with your caresses and promises. I heard what I wanted to hear. Were all your words lies as we lay among the stars?

I cannot hate you. You were a gift from God, a candle in the darkness to guide my path. May you rest in peace.

Susan sat in a trance listening to the hymn, such a familiar hymn but in such a strange place. Memories came flooding back, of the high-vaulted roof, the fan whirring, the heat of the old church. She was so cold she could hardly think for the chattering of her teeth.

I am a prisoner now, she decided, a prisoner in a cold dark dungeon with no escape, only lies and sleeping next to the enemy: the girl who stole my sweetheart; the big liar with dark eyes and big bosoms.

Her spirits sank so low she wanted to fade away but Joy bounced on her knee, unaware that she was fatherless and nameless. Joy was the one true precious trophy.

So many babies took sick and died on the trek north, bundles passed down and buried at the border on Burmese soil, little graves in the track. Her child was round and rosy and full of life, a special gift. Big Ana’s baby was plain and too thin and cried. Joy was the true number one daughter.

She would be strong for her, fight for her and make her a true Winstanley. She recalled the night Joy was made. Her cheeks flushed and for a second she felt the heat of the tropical night.

It was a night of a thousand stars. They had danced and she had worn her best silk skirt with a blouse the colour of orchid pink. They had walked back slowly to the veranda where Auntie Betty would be waiting, Susan’s heart aching, for it was Freddie’s last night of leave.

‘You go and forget your Susan,’ she whined.

‘Never, it will be just like the song, ”We’ll Meet Again”’.

‘Have you told your mother about me?’

‘I’ve told my friends…Don’t look so sad.’

‘Why will they not let us marry?’ she pleaded.

‘It’s rules, army rules. We’ll be together soon though, and now you’ve got those earrings…’

‘They’re beautiful. I love you so much. Come close. I’ll let down my hair so you can see how long it grows.’ She swished a coil across his nose. ‘It smells of fragrant oil?’

‘Come here and let me kiss you one more time,’ he sighed, pulling her close.

‘Now I will give you a special gift in return. I am not a bar girl or quick-and-easy girl. I give my loving so you will remember me.’ She flung herself in his arms and led him down the path to the little wadi, burying her face in his shoulder while he covered her eyelids with kisses. She felt his lashes like butterfly wings on her cheek.

‘You think Susan is wicked to love you? Am I bad?’ She unwrapped her skirt and they lay on it, making love under the shrubs to the music of the night.

She breathed in his kisses; he smelled of the barracks’ tobacco, a soldier’s scent. He kissed her tiny breasts and fingered them lovingly, whispering her name like a cool fan. She melted under him, opening up to him with such joy and eagerness. As he entered there was pain and wonder. Then it was over and she longed for something more.

In the dim light it was hard to see where she ended and he began but the lemony dawn light rose in the sky all too soon. Their limbs were coiled around each other. She could hear his heart beating. They had become as one.

‘You’re so beautiful. How can I leave you now?’

‘You will write?’

‘I will write but if danger comes I might not be able to. When the war is over but there are still pockets of resistance in the hills. Stay with Auntie Betty and I will come for you.’

‘Promise?’ she pleaded.

‘Promise. Here’s my address in England just in case.’

But you didn’t come. You left me for her…You forgot your Susan.

One day soon she and Walt would stand before the congregation for their wedding ceremony, Lily mused. Here was where Freddie sucked gobstoppers under the pew and kicked the back panels, squirming until the clock got round to twelve, when Polly would be dishing out the Sunday roast. Here was where they brought Dad before his burial.

The church was full of memories-celebrations and sadness. It was right they should see off their brother with due honour. What a turnout! Looking up at the congregation spilling out into the balcony above, she felt comforted by the sea of familiar faces. There was all the Grimbleton football team staring down at her. What an honour that they should come and pay tribute to an old school pal. What a show for her kid brother! Tears bubbled to the surface-tears of sadness, not only for herself but for those happy childhood memories, the longing to live happier times again, knowing she’d never see him or Dad again. Then there were the two young girls who sat like statues, lost in their own thoughts, salty tears of disappointment running down their faces. No going back for any of them now. A Brown Owl knew her duty and responsibility. How could she think of abandoning them in a strange country?

Don’t you worry, Freddie, I’ll be their champion, come what may, she vowed. I shan’t let you down whatever the cost, she thought, twisting Walter’s engagement ring round her wedding finger for comfort. It had been chosen from a tray of second-hand rings: a tiny hoop of sapphire chippings, modest but so precious, the best of the bunch within his budget and post-war shortages. Walter insisted she chose it herself and he’d pay on the drip. Now it was loose. With all the worry of the past week there was no time to eat. She hoped they’d done Freddie proud.

He’d never been religious but she knew he would have liked the hymns they’d chosen.

Susan was sitting in the front and she was obviously used to English worship. The ruby and gold earrings shimmered in a shaft of light from the side window. Ana sat hunched over, not understanding much, trying to be invisible, clutching her restless baby. What a contrast these strangers were: a copper knob with her golden-haired girl, and the little dark one with her plump toddler whose fingers were into everything.

The organist attempted Freddie’s regimental march and they shuffled out, trying to look dignified, spilling out into the street like a flow of black lava. The sky was threatening more fog and ice. The pavements were piled high with dirty leaves from front gardens, the cart horses left pools of frozen dung staining the cobbles brown and yellow. There was no disguising the ugliness of this damp afternoon but hands must be shaken and condolences received before they made for Waverley House and the funeral tea.

Everyone had chipped in to make food for the guests. Crompton’s Biscuits even provided traditional spice biscuits. The Chapel Ladies’ Bright Hour were organising sandwiches, rolls and tray bakes for the usual suspects, who liked to have a nosy round and scoff anything going. Not that Lily begrudged giving hospitality, but she sensed most of them were here because of the new arrivals.

Ivy was showing off little Neville in his velvet trousers and knitted jumper. The other toddlers were whipped out of sight for their nap and Esme was giving orders from her seat in the parlour: ‘Concertina needs a nappy change…’ She had that pained look etched into her jaw when her corsets were digging in too tightly but her eyes were dull with grief and shock.

Ana whipped up the child with a scowl. ‘We say in Greece, husband’s mother is cross all wife must bear,’ Ana whispered to Susan. ‘My Dina is not called Concertina.’

Lily pretended she had not heard as Walt made a beeline for Susan.

‘Well, I never! This is the new Mrs Winstanley then? He beat us to the altar, Lil,’ he winked as Susan lifted her finger so everyone could see.

‘No, this is Cousin Cedric’s widow from London,’ Lily announced loudly.

‘I never knew you had a cousin,’ Walt continued. ‘So that one over there’s the bride,’ he said, pointing his sausage roll at Ana. ‘Blimey! I never thought Fred’d settle down with a copper knob, a ginger biscuit. Who’d a thowt it!’ He burst out laughing but Lily wasn’t amused. He plonked himself down in the softest chair by the fireside and got out his cigarettes. That would be him settled for the afternoon now.

Ivy was on the warpath, passing tongue sandwiches along a line of guests with that pained expression of hers, no doubt wishing she was a thousand miles away. Susan stood in the shadows looking awkward. This long-lost relative, dressed in her one decent silk blouse and thin skirt, was wearing Lily’s borrowed cardigan, which smelled of mothballs. Ivy edged herself round the sides of the room as no one was bothering to talk to her. Esme was receiving condolences from the neighbours. Better then to make those girls useful clearing up plates to take to Polly in the kitchen. They were banging down the cups and saucers onto trays until Esme caught their eye.

‘That’s my best china you’re cracking,’ she muttered, turning to Lily. ‘If you want any left over for your cabinet one day, I suggest you leave Polly to clear away. Take them upstairs, and what’s all this I hear about you and Walt naming the big day?’

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ she replied, puzzled. The two of them had scarcely passed two words on the subject for weeks. What was he playing at?

‘I’m glad to hear it. A funeral is enough for my nerves, and with that lot upstairs to sort out…Is it hot in here?’ Esme was fanning herself like fury. ‘There’s no brass to fork out on weddings yet. I’m not made of money, Lil. We need you here now.’

‘I know, I know. I expect he was just trying to cheer you up,’ she sighed. It was good that Walt was showing some initiative but he should have asked her first before blabbing about dates. Weddings were the last thing on her mind at the moment.

‘The thought of you hitched up with that lazy loon over there gives me no cause for celebration,’ Esme added.

‘Oh, give it a rest! It’s been a long day,’ Lily snapped back, making for the stairs.

‘Lily Winstanley, that’s no way to talk to your mother!’

‘Oh, shut up, all of you,’ Lily muttered under her breath. There was only so much of her family she could stomach in one day.

Esme was trying to pin a smile on her face and look in control, but Lily’s words were out of character. Giving cheek back like that! All this ‘Family First’ was exhausting, keeping up appearances and fending off awkward questions. Trust neighbours to smell something fishy going on, but she’d not give them the satisfaction. It was like being in the goal mouth, trying to parry off an attack. It needed everyone knowing their right position on the pitch, no gaps in the defence to let in a winning shot or an own goal.

She’d been touched to see so many of Freddie’s old pals. She’d welcome any one of them on board their team, but not Walter, all fingers and thumbs. Lily had scored an own goal in choosing him. Why didn’t she fancy one of the young Grasshoppers?

Esme kicked off her court shoes with relief and loosened her back suspenders. She’d put on a bit of weight since this outfit was made, a bit of middle-age spread, and it didn’t suit her. Then she saw Pete Walsh heading in her direction, wobbling his tea cup, the Royal Doulton bone china looking in peril on its saucer.

‘I’m glad I caught you, Mrs Winstanley,’ smiled the tall young man with hands like boxing gloves. ‘The lads and I want to thank you for the spread. You’ve done Freddie proud…’ He hesitated. ‘But I wonder if I could have a word as I’m a bit flummoxed.’

She ushered him into the bay window recess.

‘You know that Susan? Well, someone said she was his cousin’s wife from London, only when Freddie wrote to me from Burma, he did mention a Susan.’ He paused, searching her face. ‘It’s not her, is it?’

Straight in the net like a cannon ball: one nil! She glanced to see if there were any onlookers.

‘So you know about her then?’ she whispered.

‘He told me about her but not about the kiddy.’ Pete looked her straight in the eye.

‘What else did he tell you?’

He had the courtesy to blush, ‘Just lads’ talk and stuff…’

‘I can guess,’ she smiled. ‘You’ve put me in an awkward position, young man.’

‘My lips are sealed, Mrs Winstanley.’

‘Who else knows the score?’

‘Not a soul. I thought I’d better check it out first,’ he said, showing a set of impressive straight teeth.

‘I’d rather keep this in the family, Peter. Not a word to our Lil. She’s enough on her plate.’

‘Silent as the grave, I promise. Scout’s honour,’ he smiled, and he sidled away as Levi approached.

‘You two were in a holy huddle. What did he want? I hope you asked him for tickets for the Cup tie.’

‘Just giving his condolences. He’s a grand chap.’

‘The boys were saying how good the foreigners’ English was.’ He winked and tapped his nose. ‘Don’t look like that. I gave them the party line. I told them they’d both had good sleeping dictionaries.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean, son?’

Levi chuckled. ‘Well, let’s put it this way, Mam, the closer you get to someone the quicker you learn. There was this German girl I knew who was fluent in Cockney when she got a Tommy boyfriend.’

‘I don’t want to know about consorting with the enemy.’

‘What enemy?’ asked Lily, suddenly at her shoulder.

‘Never you mind. Just go and rattle some cups and show the guests the door. I’m whacked.’

‘We did Freddie proud today, all of us,’ said Lily.

‘I wish he’d done the same to us, and that’s the truth of it,’ Esme sighed, feeling old and worn out. What a web of lies we weave…Perhaps she should tell Lil that Pete Walsh was in the know, perhaps not. They would just have to play the game as it unfolded now.

Ana couldn’t wait for the last guest to leave. Susan went upstairs with the girls, who were covered in chocolate. Someone had brought them a treat. Lily’s man was sitting in a chair chain-smoking, being waited on hand and foot on account of his bad back. Women were made for men, her mother once said, but this one was a greedy pig. He ate a plateful of biscuits at one go. The room was a fug of cigarette smoke. Ana finished her duties and went upstairs with relief.

She found Susan undressing Dina, who was bouncing with delight naked, and making a joyful din. It was the last straw.

‘What you do with my baby?’ she snapped.

‘I’m getting them both ready for a bath. I will save you the trouble,’ Su replied, putting up her fingers to peg her nose in disgust.

‘She my baby…I do that,’ Ana insisted.

‘Yes, but she is dirty and her bottom is red, you see?’ Su answered.

‘You fuss. She can wait, I am tired,’ said Ana, furious. ‘Leave her alone!’

‘Sorry, Ana, I was trying to help you,’ Su said, putting down the child, but Dina held up her arms and reached out for her, making matters worse.

‘Don’t. I no need help from you. She can wait,’ she snapped, but Susan for once snapped back at her.

‘Everything waits for you…you are a lazy mother. You never wash under your arms, you smell and your baby smells. You stink this room out. I don’t like to live with your smells.’

Ana sniffed her armpits. There was a stain under her blouse but she smelled of milk and woman. What was wrong about that? The blouse needed a wash but so what?

‘I am clean. I washed yesterday. It is too cold to wash all over when the ice freezes the water. You fuss,’ she said, seeing with satisfaction the look on Su’s face. ‘You have plenty money for soap and new clothes.’

‘That is none of your business. I am a British citizen. I know how to do things proper,’ Su argued, brushing down her skirt and fiddling with her bracelet.

‘Look at you. You all gold bangles and earrings. I have nothing.’

‘That is not my fault. You make everyone sorry for you…poor Ma Ana…in a labour camp, a prisoner of war. How do we even know you speak the truth? You stole my Freddie. You told him lies too? I have had a bad time too. Why do you quarrel with me when I am trying to help you?’ she shouted back at her. ‘I have done nothing to you.’

‘He think you dead. I not steal him, he was ripe for picking,’ Ana argued, gathering the dirty clothes up in a huff of indignation. ‘All these silk curtains you are hanging up-you shove your silk skirts in my face every day. You think you are number one wife. I have nothing and now you take my baby as well,’ she sobbed.

‘I try to help you but you do not like anything I do. You are one sorry lady, always moaning like the wind through the trees. It is cold and dark. It is cruel weather. I cannot help the weather in England. If you want sun go back to Greece. If you stay then pull up your socks and get on with job,’ said Susan, folding her arms determinedly.

Lily was standing in the doorway listening, her eyes wide. ‘What is going on?’

‘What is all this pulling up of socks, Lily? I no wear socks. It is too cold. I have only one pair of stockings and if I pull them they tear. Then I have nothing on my legs. I have no clothing coupons,’ Ana sobbed.

Susan shook her head and smiled. ‘It is a typical English saying. It means you grit your teeth and smile when you are hurting inside. No one wants to see your hurts. The British want you to get on with “jolly good show,” go to work and keep the train on the track no matter what happens,’ she slowed her words so that Ana could understand. ‘Forget your troubles and try harder. Troubles pass like walking by fire, you have to walk through smoking darkness with a stiff upper lip and no tears, until you see blue sky again. “Keep Right On to the End of the Road”-we sang that song on the long march out of Burma.’

‘But there is no blue sky in Grimbleton. It is all fog and grey clouds, smoking gun chimneys and sulphur. Where has the sun gone, Lily?’ Ana wept, turning from Su in disgust. ‘I no speak to her any more. She is dead. Freddie say she is dead. She tell stories.’

‘So you think I am a liar, that Joy is not his girl? You tell her, Lily, you tell her she smell! I am used to sweat and heat and warm sun, the heavy warm rain of the Monsoon weather but this is where we are and we must be grateful, Ma Ana, grateful for a roof over our heads that does not leak, food at the table. Daw Esme does not turn us away. We must give respect to dragon mother. She is sad. She has lost a son and we have our beautiful daughters,’ Susan shouted. ‘In death we have life, that is what the vicar tell us.’

Ana stared down at the face of the tiny woman with delicate cheekbones and flashing eyes. ‘How you be so still like boat on a lake, no ripples?’ she asked. ‘You have no tears. You not honour the dead.’

‘Oh, yes, I do! I went on living when all around me were dying. Here is a better life for me. The Japanese bombed our beautiful cities. It was a terrible time. I trekked to India with my family through the jungle. I will not talk about the time of walking bones and skellingtons, when we ate roots and drank water from leaves. I saw terrible things too, many die. What do you know? Better forget what is past. We shall make the best of living here, I know.’ She paused and gave a big sigh. ‘When it is cold and dark I think of blossom on trees, orchids and perfume of jasmine flowers. I think of spices and making balachan pickle with my mother. Her spirit looks down on me with kindness. She expects me to behave like a good Anglo-Burmese so I will. I have Joy and she is my sunshine. I will make sure she walks in sunlight always. We have a friend in Lily, who looks after us all. Then it is not so bad.’

‘This is bad! I wanna go home but how can I go home with no husband and a girl child? I have no dowry. Who will wed me now? There is nothing but war amongst my country and ruined towns. There is nothing for me there but starvation.’

‘Then we make our own sunshine, Ma Ana,’ Su said, passing Dina back into her arms. ‘Come, the bath water will be cold and the snake woman will shout at us again.’

‘I don’t want bath. I want fresh tomatoes warmed by the midday sun, the golden oil of olives ripe in the heat of the afternoon. I want to sit with a glass of retsina, watching the oleanders swaying in the evening breeze. How can I have any of that here?’ she replied.

‘The Bible says, ask and you shall receive, seek and ye shall find…’ said Su.

‘You believe that if I pray to holy St Aristaeus my dream will come?’ Ana looked up in amazement. How could a Greek saint perform miracles so far away?

‘It is written in the Holy Word. Everything comes to him who waits,’ added Susan.

‘How long I wait?’

‘As long as it takes.’

‘You talk riddles to me,’ Ana snapped.

‘I am trying to help you lift up your socks,’ Su replied with flashing eyes. ‘There you go again, moan, moan. What shall we do with this miserable bag of bones with baggy bosoms?’

‘You are a selfish pig. You think you are better than me with your fat baby,’ Ana snapped back. ‘I not speak to you again, ever…’

‘My baby is beautiful. Tell her, Miss Lily.’ Su looked for support but Lily had beat a hasty retreat downstairs.

‘What on earth is that racket going on upstairs?’ said Esme as they tidied away the remnants of the funeral tea: soiled napkins and crumbs, a forgotten umbrella and gloves. ‘Go and see to it, Lil, I’m done in.’

‘I’ve been up once. Better to just let them sort it out like squabbling children,’ she replied, too weary to want more conflict.

‘And what would you know about that?’ Esme snapped.

‘A pack of noisy seven-year-old Brownies teaches you enough. If I chased after all their fallings-in and-out, we’d never get a badge done. Better to let them sort themselves out.’

‘But they’re mothers, not children…’

‘Then you go and sort them out,’ Lily replied. It was all so tiresome.

‘I don’t like your attitude these days. We never had this before—’

‘We never had to deal with Freddie’s girlfriends and babies either. Everything’s changing.’

‘They can’t stay here for ever. It’s like Manchester Piccadilly, all comings and goings, and you’ll want them on their way if there’s a wedding to plan.’

‘You won’t send them away, will you?’ The thought of her mother chucking them out was real now.

‘Oh, it can wait a while longer,’ Esme replied, not wanting another argument. ‘Family first and foremost, after all.’

‘Ana is crying ’cos she’s cold and the food is strange. She wants olive oil and a taste of home, just a bit of comfort.’

‘Well, she’ll have to want. This is Grimbleton. What’s the olive oil for? Is she sick?’

‘They cook with it in Greece and in the Bible lands too.’

‘What’s wrong with lard?’

‘Don’t ask me. She’s homesick.’

‘Then she can go home on the next boat and solve one of our problems.’

‘But little Dina, your own granddaughter-why must she suffer?’

‘I can’t think about that now,’ came Esme’s reply. ‘My head is throbbing with all that talking. At least they’ve shut up now.’

‘I expect they’re not talking to each other. The silence is deafening.’

‘So what would a Brown Owl do about that?’

Lily smiled. ‘Sit them down side by side and see what it’s all about, I suppose.’

‘What’s stopping you? Go to it!’

‘Not tonight, Mother. I’ve had enough for one day. Walt and me have hardly passed the time of day. I miss Freddie too, but the man they talk about isn’t the brother I remember. How many more girls did he make promises to? How many more seeds did he scatter?’

‘Don’t talk ill of the dead, lass. They can’t answer back.’

‘I’m not so sure about that. I think our Freddie has left us quite a few messages one way and another…’

For two days Ana and Su stomped about in silent protest, speaking politely only when spoken to. For two days everyone tiptoed around them as they glared at each other, hissing like angry snakes. When Su went right, Ana went left, in and out of the house like weather girls in a cuckoo clock, coxing and boxing.

Then there was Ivy and Levi, dodging the flak, and Esme trying to ignore them. Lily was at her wits’ end. Should she intervene or stay silent, bang their heads together or go out and get on with her busy life and leave them to come to? Waverley House, big as it was, couldn’t contain all the warring factions, or keep the nosy neighbours from prying.

A house divided falls apart, Lily mused. It was time to stand in the firing line and say her piece, but why did it have to be her?

Don’t be a marshmallow, be a nut cracknel, she decided, gathering her courage. Let them all chew on that!

7

The Olive Oil Hunt

It was the children who brought the feud to an end. Placid little Joy began clambering to be picked up and fussed while Su was busy tidying the bedroom clutter.

‘Lazy slut, she never helps me,’ Su muttered loudly whilst picking up scattered clothing. ‘How Freddie made a baby with her…’

‘I not listen. She think she is Queen of England. I not listen.’

Joy began to cry and that set Dina howling.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’

Lily knew it was now or never. ‘Girls, girls, this has to stop right now,’ she barked in her sharpest Brown Owl voice. ‘What is the matter with you? If I can help I will, but this must stop. The business with my brother nothing can change, but sit down like ladies and let us clear the air.’ She pointed to the bed and the basket chair.

‘All she talks about is olive oil. What is so important about olive oil? She cries and beats her breast and upsets my Joy,’ said Su.

‘I think Ana is sad, yes?’ Lily turned to the Cretan girl. ‘You want to go home? Yes?’

‘Yes…óchi… I not know.’ Ana looked up with tears in her eyes.

‘No one is stopping her going to her island. I am sick of this beautiful island with olive trees, oranges and melons. It makes me hungry,’ Su responded.

‘No go back. Village is bombed. No one there.’ Ana shook her head, and Lily wondered what it must be like to have no family at all. Whatever she thought of her own, she couldn’t imagine not having anyone left at all.

‘I lose family too. There is just Auntie Betty but I will not go back, never. Here is the best place for my Joy.’

‘A girl with baby and no man not go back to Crete. All the men are dead. I bring shame on family name,’ Ana sobbed.

‘Don’t be so sorry for yourself.’ Su was losing patience again. ‘You have made it safely to England. You are lucky.’

‘But my sister…How I say it…soldiers come from sky like falling umbrellas to fight Tommies in the fields. We shoot them down like birds. My brother Stelios hide in the hills and Eleni takes food and guns strapped to her legs. Many Tommies are hit and we hide them in houses. The doctor at Red Cross show me how to tie up bleeding and keep them safe. Then the Germans march into village and search all the houses, smash our door, push us outside. We line up in square and they take the men away. They turn to see if women hide guns. They tear our shirts and shame us. Eleni have big mark on her shoulder from shooting gun, the pressing make a mark. They take her too. I have no mark on my shoulder, I am not taken.

‘My mama is screaming and we follow to where they take them. They tie their hands and shoot them and leave them in the sun. My beautiful sister is lying there. The flies buzz over her. How I go back now?’

Lily felt sick just picturing the scene. ‘You did your best. No one blames you, Ana.’

The girl shook her head. ‘I feel bad inside. Everyday I feel bad. When I run in the hills and down into the town, I think of her. I help in the hospital. I see terrible things…’

Lily sat beside her trying to comfort her.

‘Terrible things happened in the jungle too,’ said Su. ‘My cousin stayed to help wounded soldiers and bring them to the border crossing. They caught him and tied him to a tree and stuck bayonets in his belly. I heard cries over and over in my head, ashamed that I am alive and he is dying and ashamed how much I want to live. A girl must flee the Japanese. They like fair-skinned girls to send to whorehouses. I have to run away but it is over now. We have to look forward.’

Ana nodded and wiped her eyes.

‘Soon Dina will walk like Joy and talk proper English like the lady on the wireless,’ Su offered.

‘No, she will talk Greek,’ Ana replied.

‘What for?

‘So she knows who she is: Konstandina Eleni.’

‘That name makes her foreign. Dina is better, like the film star Dina Durbin.’

‘Who is Dina Durbin?’ said Ana, turning to Lily.

‘I think she means Deanna Durbin, the Hollywood star.’

‘Huh! Deanna, Diana, Dina-all the same pretty name,’ sniffed Su. ‘An English name. She must be a proper English girl. You are in England now so why do you need olive oil?’

Ana looked up and smiled. ‘Oh, no. You cannot live without the olive tree. We crush the fruit into golden oil. I just want to smell it and touch it one more time before I die. It is the oil of life, oil of the Gods…’

‘There she goes again! There is plenty of time before you die,’ Su snapped.

Here we go again indeed, Lily sighed, just when things were calming down. ‘I’ve got some Palmolive soap.’

‘Tommy soldiers use the oil for piles on bottom,’ Ana grimaced. ‘All they want is chips, chips, chips.’

‘If it’s piles troubling you…we can try the chemist, love, the pharmacy? Timothy White’s or Boots will do. It’s too cold to grow olives in this country. We did have some little bottles on our stall before the war,’ Lily chipped in.

‘How can you cook without olive oil? We have big pot in the corner of kitchen. Creta oil is best in world. Does pharmacopia have some for me?’

‘We could go and find out,’ Lily offered with a twinkle in her eye.

‘Will you come with us?’ Ana asked with shyness in her voice.

‘If you wish, we will all go together in search of this golden oil and stockings. I will buy you a new pair to put a smile on your face,’ said Su.

‘If it’s stockings you are after, try the Market Hall. Levi knows someone who sells them without coupons…but don’t say I told you or Ivy will have my guts for garters,’ Lily added.

‘Guts and garters-where can we buy these things?’ giggled Su.

Ana shrugged her shoulders. It was going to take a long time for them to learn the subtleties of the local lingo, and they’d need a referee for all their fallings-out, but at least the pair of them were agreeing on something. Perhaps a joint expedition into town would be a good place to start.

It snowed all night, to Lily’s dismay. The morning after, Susan was in the back garden screaming with delight.

‘Look! Look, Ana, Christmas card snow!’ she screamed, scattering the powdery white with her shoes like a child.

The girls were going into town for the first time. Perhaps the trip would be better postponed for another day, but they were already kitted out for the weather.

The sky was heavy with more snow to come and everyone was out in the back field, jumping, making tracks in the snow and throwing snowballs while the babies toddled and Neville shrieked in delight.

‘This is not proper snow,’ Ana declared. ‘In Germany it was as high as a house.’ But even she was racing around, helping to roll snow into a huge scrunching ball. Lily fell backwards, flat out with her arms outstretched. ‘I’m making a snow angel.’ Soon Su and Ana joined her, lying in a line like paper cut-outs, holding hands.

‘Get up at once!’ screamed Ivy from the back gate. ‘Don’t make an exhibition of yourselves. What will the neighbours think?’

‘That we’re having a jolly good time,’ Lily yelled back. ‘Don’t be stuffy. Neville’s fine.’

Ivy clomped through the snow in her gumboots and snatched her child away. He kicked her and struggled so she fell onto the freezing ground in a heap.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’

Serves you right, thought Lily, but she bit her lip. They needed Ivy’s big pram for the outing to town.

Lily was accompanying them, to keep the truce and make sure they could navigate the streets into town. The little ones were muffled against the chill and topped and tailed in the large bucket pram, a blue Silver Cross and Ivy’s pride and joy. It had taken Lily hours to get this concession from her. Time to go inside and sweeten her up again.

Esme lent Ana a pair of galoshes but Su’s feet were so tiny that she wore overshoes that fitted over her bootees.

They picked their way down the pavements, sometimes walking in the road where the kerb was piled high with black slush, over cobbles that rattled the pram springs, making a jiggling ride for the children. It was a slippery downhill slide towards the town centre from the better end of Division Street, past the tannery and Magellan’s Foundry, the railway station and over a slippery wooden footbridge. The cold wind stung their cheeks and Lily was glad of thick knitted mittens over her chilblained fingers.

In her pocket was a list from Esme and instructions for Levi from Ivy. Could she risk leaving the two girls alone while she covered for Levi on the stall? They had the price of a cup of tea and a bun each, and were told not to dawdle on the way home for it would get dark early and there might be more snow.

‘It’s madness letting those two out by themselves,’ said Ivy. ‘I don’t want them hanging around the market, making an exhibition of themselves…You’ll have to keep an eye on them, Lil. I don’t trust them.’

‘We can’t keep them cooped up out of sight like prisoners of war,’ Lily argued. ‘Have a heart. Don’t you think that two women who’ve faced jungle and mountains, prison and interrogation, lived by their wits, scavenging for food and shelter in makeshift tents and first-aid posts, can find their way around Grimbleton without us sending out a search party?’

‘I don’t know why you’re getting so pally with them all of a sudden. I’m sure Walt’s not enamoured with all the fuss you make of them,’ Ivy sneered. There was a mean glint in her eye. Whatever Levi saw in this woman was a mystery. Why did she have to rub the sore spot on Lily’s conscience that since Freddie’s wives arrived there was no time to run round after him like before? If she could split herself in two it would help-no, make it three counting the market stall.

Before Freddie’s memorial service, the last time she had made the effort to call into Bowker’s Row, Walt was down the pub and she sat all evening listening to the rumblings of poor Elsie Platt’s stomach and fending off all her questions about the new arrivals. That thought reminded her to make up a peppermint tisane for Elsie’s indigestion.

It was not as if she was deliberately avoiding her future husband and mother-in-law, but it seemed important to keep Freddie’s affairs strictly within the family and Walt wasn’t family, not yet. Elsie could fish all night but Lily wasn’t rising to the bait.

The pavements were clearer in the town but the pram was splashed by trams and buses and children throwing snowballs on their way home from school. They sauntered through the shopping parade, looking in all the windows, but there was nothing to see but cardboard pictures of stock and notices for coupons. How many they would need. They found their way to the outdoor market stalls where the men shouted across the aisles and Ana smiled.

‘It is like agora in Canea where village people sell eggs and fruit, honey and chickens.’

Here there were only potatoes and roots, and not many of them. No fruit, no eggs, no honey, but further on there were stalls selling cotton material, stripes and spots and plain colours by the yard.

‘I make pretty dress for Joy,’ said Su, shoving through the crowd, picking over the fabric remnants in a basket and barging into the fray. ‘And Dina.’

‘I make lace for them,’ Ana added, not wanting to be outdone, digging into the basket too.

‘Here, you lot…wait your bleedin’ turn!’ shouted one irate shopper in a woolly checked headscarf.

Su looked up, surprised. ‘There is no queue,’ she smiled sweetly.

‘And which jungle did you come out of?’ the woman retorted. ‘Go back to where you came from! We don’t want your sort in our country!’

‘But I am British, like you,’ Su said, puzzled by her outburst.

‘Pull the other one! I don’t see many your colour in my street,’ the woman laughed. She turned to Ana, seeing her all muffled up. ‘And you don’t want to be hanging about with darkies, young lady, not if you want to get on in this town.’

‘Parakaló? Please, no understand.’ Ana stared at the stranger.

‘Hell’s bells! Two of them as bad as each other…You’d better learn some proper English. We don’t want you sort round here!’

Lily rushed over, red in the face. ‘Take no notice of her, she’s just a rude old biddy!’

‘’Ere, who are you calling old?’ came the reply, but Lily was already guiding the girls quickly out of earshot. Perhaps they weren’t so safe in town as she had thought.

There was a wet fish stall, which was closed, and a butcher selling scrag end bits. Finally Ana found a bag of pot herbs, green, red and white bits of herbs, and sniffed it. The stall woman looked at them with suspicion.

‘Nowt wrong with my stuff,’ she called out. Ana nodded politely. ‘I just like smell,’ she said, and they walked away.

They were fingering everything and then putting it back, making Lily pink with embarrassment. Everyone was staring at them. ‘We don’t touch before we buy,’ she suggested.

‘How do you find a good chicken if you do not smell it?’ said Susan.

‘Chicken is for Christmas, if you’re lucky. We’ve not had one for years, just scraggy potboilers from the allotment. You have to get what you’re given here.’ Lily tried to explain how food shortages were hitting both shops and customers.

‘War is over. Why no chickens, no eggs, no fruit?’ Ana shook her head. ‘England is poor country now. Poor Lily. At home we have chickens and eggs and fruit-oranges, lemons, cherries in our yard-but Jerry steal all food on the island though we hid oil in caves and bury food in hills. They bring dogs to find it.’

‘You have sun and so things grow quickly.’ Lily tried to explain how damp and cold and long the winters were. ‘We have to eat food that keeps us warm: potatoes and stew and hot soup.’

‘I don’t like that,’ Susan said, looking at the stalls. ‘It makes plenty ladies fat, but not you, Lily. You are a bamboo pole.’

Lily was not sure if that was a compliment or not.

The search for olive oil took them to three chemists, all to no avail. ‘No call for that here,’ an assistant said, pointing to castor oil and ointments. ‘What’s yer trouble?’

‘She wants to cook with it,’ Su said, and the assistant stared at Lily as if they were mad.

‘We cook with lard and dripping,’ the lady explained, shouting as if they were all deaf. ‘Oil is for engines and rusty iron.’

‘But we cook meat with olive oil, and make soap.’ Ana was puzzled.

‘This is England, not the Continent. I’ve got a bar of Palmolive,’ smiled the chemist. ‘Will that do?’

They dawdled down to the indoor Market Hall, a huge vaulted building with wrought-iron rafters and a glass roof. The stalls were dotted around the floor in ovals divided into four, with canvas curtains they could pull round at night. There was that oh-so-familiar smell to welcome them.

‘We will find oil in here,’ said Ana determinedly. ‘It smells of market.’

There were clothing stalls and delicatessens, grocery stalls and millinery, sweet stalls and pastry makers, and tucked in the middle was Winstanleys, with a big poster on the back advertising: ‘BLISS. NATIVE HERBS. The great purifying kidney and liver regulator. Herbal medicine vendors for 100 years.’ Levi was standing in a white coat as if he were directing traffic, while a little woman in a striped overall darted hither and thither at his command.

‘Now then, Enid, come and meet the two Mrs Winstanleys,’ he winked.

Lily was getting tired of his insinuations but smiled politely at the little woman with iron curls clipped around her head so tight she looked like a pinwheel. Enid Greenalgh helped out when Lil wasn’t around, and knew the contents of each box of remedies better than anyone.

‘Pleased to meet you…Dreadful news about Fred,’ she whispered to Lil. ‘Which one is the widow? He was allus one for a lark. It were a right good turnout for the memorial. It was the best that could be done with such a sad do…’ She paused, looking at both the girls with sympathy. ‘And them so young to be widows. I do know what it’s like. My Harry went west at Passchendaele…sad job all round,’ she sighed. ‘Are you staying long?’

Levi was quick to jump in with a, ‘Just till they get settled…bit of a shock all round. Can I help you ladies or are you on a sightseeing trip to view the natives at work?’ he quipped.

‘Ana is looking for olive oil,’ Lily replied, searching the shelves.

Levi looked as if they had asked for diamonds. ‘Ooh…no, no. Not had any in for months. Can’t get that sort of stuff yet, not since before the war. I can give you Macassar oil or beechnut oil, but that tastes like engine cleaner. There’s castor oil to clear your system but no olive oil. Sorry, there’s no call for it. Some of our lads saw a bit too much of that stuff in Italy…you know how it is. They want fish and chips and lard. You could try Szymanski’s, the stall the Poles go to. They sell foreign stuff or you could ask the Eyeties at Santini’s. I bet they use it on their hair.’

Lily hadn’t thought about Santini’s. That might be just the place to try.

‘You’ll find them by the King’s Theatre,’ she offered. ‘Out of the door, turn left and up towards the church. I’ll come and join you later.’

‘Don’t you go telling Mother and Ivy you’re into fancy cooking. They like stuff plain and NO garlic. It smells the place out.’ Levi tapped his nose in mock conspiracy and Lil felt like hitting him. If ever someone needed taking down a peg or two it was him. Brother and sister they might be, but they had no common ground, not since he came home and took over the management as if he was cock of the midden. It was sad he wasn’t the big brother she’d had as a kid. And she didn’t like the way he was eyeing Su as if she was a piece of pork tenderloin.

By now Joy was fighting over ‘Precious Teddy’ and wanting to get out of the pram for a toddle, being nearly a year older than Dina.

‘They’ve got their hands full,’ smiled Enid. ‘As it is their first outing, you should go with them and I’ll hold the fort. I’ve got my sandwiches in my tin box.’

‘But it’s your break, love,’ Lily replied, knowing how desperate she herself got to get off the stall on quiet mornings.

‘I’m fine here, honest.’

Enid was one of life’s givers, Lil thought. If only there were more of them in the world. Meanwhile Susan had found the stocking bar and was negotiating for a pair of lisle stockings. She was gathering an audience of onlookers, transfixed by her golden skin and exotic looks. They stood staring at her silk scarf with tassles, the colour of peacocks’ tails.

‘My friend here is a refugee, a relative of the Winstanleys. She has no stockings without holes. We have money. We can buy some from you, yes?’ she ordered like a pukka memsahib.

Shirley, the stall owner, was all fluffed up in an angora jumper in traffic light stripes. She shook her head until Lily sidled up to her and whispered in her ear. Then she ferreted underneath the counter and shoved something into a paper bag.

‘You tell Levi that is one book he owes me now. I can’t keep doing him favours.’ She shot a glance in his direction, patting her hair.

Susan paid for the goods and shoved them under the pram top.

‘Thanks, Shirley, love. We owe you,’ Lily whispered. It was embarrassing to find out just how many coupons Levi was squandering at that stall. Ivy was behind it, she must be.

‘Come on, we’ll find Santini’s, one last try and then home before dark,’ she smiled, guiding the big blue baby barge out of the hall as they launched forth once more on their quest. Everyone was tired and thirsty and ready for a sit-down. Santini’s ice-cream parlour was sandwiched between the theatre and the cinema in Kirkgate, with an alley on the other side.

Just to say the word ‘Santini’s’ was to conjure up a world all of its own, snug and warm, buzzing with chattering shoppers, an oasis where the weary of Grimbleton could rest aching legs, smoke, sipping steaming mugs of Bovril, tea or dip a spoon into an ice-cream soda.

There was no room for a pram so they lifted out the infants and put it outside the window. They stood waiting for a corner seat until someone got up to leave. There was a smell of cigar smoke and chicory, the clink of the sugar spoon chained to the table. The tables were wiped clean by a waitress with satiny black hair tied with a scarf, gypsy fashion, around her curls, who darted in and round the bar like a black beetle, while the owner, with a black moustache and greased-back hair, kept the orders coming. It was going to be a long wait for service. Perhaps, Lily thought, she should leave them here and go back to relieve Enid on the stall?

There was always a buzz and a certain smell. She could hear the rattle of Italian being shouted in the back kitchen and the operatic voice of someone singing while they worked. The ice cream came in coloured glasses with fruit syrup on the top and golden wafers stuck at an angle. Ana ordered a scoop in a glass of fizzy pop to share with Dina, but the others ordered hot cocoa to warm themselves through.

‘Isn’t it cold enough outside?’ Su laughed.

‘I want to shut my eyes and dream of hot summers. There was bar on Canea harbour. Italians made the best ice-cream sundae in Crete, all the colours of the rainbow. I see “la volta”–the evening parade-when everybody walk and show off their clothes…before the war come and spoil it. You try it?’ Ana sighed, waving her spoon in the air like a sword.

Lily dipped her spoon in the ice to savour the moment. It tasted of cornflour and tinned milk, not much else, but it was sweet and gritty and there were ice particles clinging to her tongue. It would do. ‘Very nice but very cold.’

Joy was in raptures at the taste.

Ana’s breasts were beginning to leak. She needed to nurse and opened her blouse, but Susan gasped, ‘You can’t do that in here! It is not done in a public place to open your titties to view. Is it, Miss Lily?’

‘I have no choice or I leak all over blouse. No one can see. I tuck her into my coat, look. She is happy. I am dry. Everybody happy,’ Ana said.

‘You are so Greek,’ Su replied, trying to distract Joy with the spoon, but Joy was watching, alert, and began to tug her own shirt open. ‘Now look what you’ve done. Dina is too old for the breast milk. She is a big girl. I used a bottle, more hygienic and polite. We do like the British ladies in Burma.’

‘British have no time for baby,’ Ana snapped. ‘They wrap them up and put them out of sight. They do not take them out at night. They like only quiet babies. Here it is like home,’ Ana argued. ‘I like it here.’

‘I thought you were enemies, Italy and Greece?’ Lily asked, knowing a little about the conflict between the two countries.

‘I hate Mussolini and his men but I have friends in Canea. Many Italians were my friends. The war is over now. We are all far from home,’ Ana sighed, sucking the dregs of the soda, trying not to slurp.

‘I hate Japanese, all of them,’ said Su, rising quickly.

The truce was over. It was time to pay their bill and gather up the hats and mittens. It was going to be a long journey uphill before nightfall. When they got outside, it was snowing lightly and the pram was nowhere to be seen. They all looked at each other with horror.

‘Oh no!’

Only the tracks of its wheels, disappearing down the dark alley to the side of the theatre, were visible, tracks fast covering over with snow.

8

Maria

There was a kerfuffle in the doorway as they tripped back through the entrance of Santini’s shouting, ‘The pram’s gone! Our shopping is gone!’

‘Anyone see pram go walking?’ pleaded Susan, her English collapsing with emotion. Lil was trying to hold on to both children, while feeling sick.

There was much staring out of the steamed-up windows, and shaking of heads, but little action. After the sympathies no one was showing much interest except the waitress, who came running at once.

‘Can I help?’ she asked, seeing the panic on their faces.

‘While we came in for a drink, our pram was stolen,’ Lily explained.

‘Now Daw Esme will shout,’ Susan butted in, all of a tremble, her eyes wide like jet coat buttons, full of fear.

‘And stockings. I have no stockings,’ sobbed Ana.

‘A cup of tea is what you need…on the house,’ said the young waitress.

‘What is on the house?’ Susan asked.

One of the regulars, who was blowing cigarette smoke into their faces, winked, ‘Free, gratis, cost you nowt, love. A good ’un is Maria, allus on top of the job.’

‘Shutta that flannel, Percy, ’snot for you…Capisci? He can buy his own cuppa,’ came the reply from the counter. ‘That man sit all afternoon with his teacake until pub opens. If I seen you with pram, I warn you. Leave nothing with four wheels outside shop in centre of town unless it is chained with lock. You stay warm in here, Maria will sort you out.’ She scurried to the boiler and made a cup of tea for each of them.

‘All my shopping and Ivy’s pram, oh dear, oh dear!’ Susan shook her head, trembling.

‘Far away in back street, long gone,’ shouted the waitress from over the bar. ‘No good people, pickpockets, nick spoons off table till we chain them down, toilet paper from washroom and soap, ashtrays…all disappear. Anything not stuck down, it walk.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Now war is over, it is all cheating. No one care. It is all looking after number one.’

‘It’s just the pram’s not ours. We borrowed it for the day,’ Lily sighed, knowing it was gone for good and it was all her fault. They were not used to taking it into town. Neville was pushed only to the local shops and the park.

‘How can we go back with nothing? It is getting dark and so cold. I am Susan,’ said Su, holding out her hand. ‘Susan Winstanley, and she is Ana Winstanley This is kind sister, Lily Winstanley.’

‘Bene… All you Winstanley girls no worry. I find my brother-in-law, Angelo. He bring taxi and take you home, pronto. I am Maria, Maria Santini,’ she smiled back with a warmth that made Lily feel slightly better.

‘We’ve no money left for a taxi, I’m afraid,’ Lily explained, embarrassed to be caught short. With shopping and paying for the drinks, she had just a few coppers left.

‘You pay me later. My fault I am not warning you. You must always keep pram in sight. So many bambini since war and not many prams. Are you visiting?’ Maria asked.

‘We came to find our husbands but he is killed. We bring our girls to see Winstanley,’ Susan lied. ‘I am the widow of a cousin down south, come for funeral, didn’t I?’ She looked to Lily for support.

Lily flushed. The poor girl was doing her best to sound convincing but her heart wasn’t in it.

‘I’m sure Mrs Santini doesn’t want to know all our sad business, Susan. I’d better go and get the van from Levi and collect you later.’

She rose as if to leave but Maria darted forward, almost pushing her down. ‘You sit. You all have shock. Sit and drink tea.’

It was not that Maria Santini didn’t love a drama to break up a long afternoon serving sodas and sundaes, cups of tea and hot Bovril, but her husband was home from hospital and it was not one of his better days, and now there were these three women to sort out.

‘Maria! What are you doing?’ She could hear a plaintive cry from the top of the stairs.

‘Marco! Don’t you strain yourself! I’m coming soon,’ she yelled back. Leaving him to play with little Rosaria for a few minutes until Nonna Valentina took over in the flat was too exhausting.

Enzo was a lazy boy in the kitchen and she didn’t trust him at the till. Not all the Santinis were as honest and hardworking as she was, or feared the wrath of her mother-in-law. They were Nonna Valentina’s sons and grandsons, and could get away with anything. Maria was only an in-law.

There was something familiar in the faces of the foreign girls, something she recognised so well: that wide-eyed look of strangers in a foreign land, cold, conspicuous, unsure of the lingo, straining to understand. It was cruel to give them tea but the coffee was not much better, milky and weak.

It was only a few years ago that it had been Maria’s own fate; brought over from Palermo by Nonna Valentina to marry Marco, a distant cousin, the youngest of the Santini brothers. She was soon put to work behind the counter, in the kitchen; one of a succession of brides and cousins expected to cook, clean, have many bambini and keep the ice-cream parlour up to scratch while the men expanded their growing empire. The war had changed everything when they were interned for being aliens but the good people of Grimbleton missed their ice creams and made a fuss, bringing them all home.

Marco went to war and now he was upstairs wheezing, not fit to be out of the sanitarium. Rosaria spent her waking hours with Nonna Valentina, or sometimes in the kitchen. She sat in her high chair supervising the preparations with an eagle eye, but it was good for her to see something of her daddy.

‘Come and meet my Marco while you wait,’ Maria said, taking the tray out to the three women. ‘You meet my Rosaria.’

‘Thank you,’ said the English girl with slumped shoulders, who towered above her. ‘We don’t want to be a bother.’

‘You no bother. Come up the stairs and meet my Marco. It is good for him to have company…’

‘Marco, I have a surprise. Poor ladies lost their pram-no-good thieving scum again. You talk to them while I finish orders,’ she smiled, ushering them up the wooden stairs to the rooms above, which looked out across at the King’s Theatre. ‘Susan, Ana and Lily Winstanley…meet my husband.’

He shuffled forward like an old man. The trousers hung off his buttocks, once firm and strong. His face was ashen but his eyes were still black as coal and his hair smooth as jet.

‘I ring Angelo for taxi,’ Maria smiled. ‘Find bambini biscuits in the tin.’ It was time to leave them and clatter downstairs. ‘You tell them all about us. How your papa and mama come to England for better life. That will keep them entertained.’

After the mix-up all their sons were proud to be called up, for they were British citizens. Now Valentina, the Widow Santini, hovered over them all like an avenging angel. Antonio was running the local billiard hall and American bar. Angelo owned two taxis and a private charabanc coach. Marco ran the ice-cream parlour and the horse and cart selling cones around the parks.

Angelo had failed his medical. Toni did his duty and Marco got a direct hit in his chest on D-Day, coming home a physical wreck. He now spent his time out on the moors in the Moses Heights sanatorium, trying to breathe and gather strength.

There were plenty of grandsons helping run the place but none of them was Maria’s son. Rosaria was born prematurely when everyone despaired of the two of them ever producing a child to satisfy Santini honour. Marco was proud and everyone was happy.

Now Maria had to work all hours to keep body and soul together and give Marco the comforts he craved.

During the war the making of real ice cream was forbidden, but the Santinis devised ices made from condensed milk and sweeteners, flavoured with fruit syrups that passed regulations. There were four other rival establishments in the town, all touting for business on the streets, but everyone knew Santini’s ices were the best. Thank goodness Lancashire folk liked their ice cream in cornets and wafers, sundaes and floating on fizzy pop.

‘I scream, you scream, we all scream for Santini ice cream’ was painted on the side of many a horse-drawn cart.

Santini’s had the finest site in town, a café squashed between the Regal Cinema and the King’s Theatre, with some of the better shops and the parish church close by. It was handy for the theatre queues, audiences nipping in for cones between shows, parades, afternoon shopping. It was a good place for an evening rendezvous, to wait for buses and within easy reach of several pubs.

Children came for knickerbocker glories when they came to see the pantomime, and theatricals called in for snacks between shows. Maria made it her business to know who was in town in Grimbleton, and Angelo got business from her customers. She was training up Enzo, one of Antonio’s sons, in the back kitchen but he needed watching. Without a son of her own, Enzo would be expected to take over the parlour when he was a man.

‘Ragazza for the kitchen, ragazzo for the business-girls for the kitchen, boys for the business’ Pepe’s old rule held in the family and Maria was not proper family until she produced a son. Nonna Valentina Santini had made that clear enough.

Maria and Marco lived above the shop in the flat on the top floor. It was just two rooms and a kitchen where she grabbed a few precious hours with little Rosa before finishing the shift as a cleaner in the King’s Theatre to earn some extra money. It was lucky that she didn’t need much sleep. Being busy kept her from thinking about the past and Marco’s deteriorating condition.

Every Saturday she lit a candle in the Catholic chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, pleading on her knees for an angel to wake Padre Pio of Pietrelcina from his dreaming so that the blessed healer of the sick would work a miracle on Marco’s smashed lungs.

She was young and fit and lonely. Marco was tired and weak, without hope, and she felt more like a widow than a wife. It was not his fault that he could no longer make love to her. They still tried but it was hopeless, and Marco cried in her arms every time. Rosaria was a miracle, a gift from God that neither had ever dreamed would happen.

Their marriage was so brief, separated by war and now sickness. At the weekend he came home if he was well enough but his weeks were spent up on Moses Heights in the sanatorium with glass windows and doors flung open to the four winds.

She would take the bus after work and wave little Rosa to him through the window, leaving her to sleep on a bench while they spent a few minutes chatting about all the goings-on, trying not to let him know how she was coping without him, trying not to worry him. He was growing weaker, his eyes were often misted over with sadness.

She felt so guilty to be relieved when the visiting bell rang and she could escape back to the bustle of the town away from his sickness.

On Saturday Angelo fetched him home for the night and they cooked a special meal to celebrate.

Sunday nights, after Angelo picked him up, were the worst. There was no café, no theatre crowds, no cinema queues. The town fell silent and she was so alone. Sometimes then she felt like a bird trapped in a cage, a silent canary whose heart was bursting with song yet whose throat was choked so not a note could come. That was when the loneliness stalked up her stairs and rattled at her door. Only being busy took her mind from such fears.

It was not as if she didn’t love the ice-cream parlour. It was her own living opera, in which all the dramas of life unfolded before her. It was a cosmopolitan haven in this northern cotton town. The walls were plastered with autographed photos of stars of the music halls, theatre, ballet companies, all the stars who had trod the boards of the King’s over the years: Charlie Chaplin in Fred Karno’s Circus, the Lupinos, George Formby, Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels, Nosmo King, Izzy Bonn and Richard Tauber; all the greats had stepped inside their parlour for a snack.

She loved to creep up into the sixpenny gods, the topmost balcony of the theatre, to see the finales of musicals and operas.

Sometimes she stared at those stars on her walls with faraway eyes. If only she had had her chance to dance and sing, to make music in costumes in the limelight, shine in the footlights. She loved the sad ballets and operas, the dying maidens, the star-crossed lovers; all that drama of life and death unfolding before her into a climax of passion, the soaring orchestra, the tears and the silence. Then the National Anthem was played and everyone rushed out, leaving her to the empty theatre, the smell of stale ale and cigarettes, all passion spent.

It was better than any cinema screen to see actors in the flesh. Some stars would chat to her at the stage door. They looked so ordinary without their face paint, muffled in headscarves and trilby hats, creeping back to their digs for the night. Some went straight next door to the Bear and Staff to drink away their wages, then stagger out, waking her in the small hours. She knew their secret admirers, their secret peccadillos, and she loved them all for they brought the world to her door.

It was easy to transfer these daydreams on to her customers, who crowded her bench seats each day. There were the regulars, shoppers, Charlie Lunn, the uniformed booking attendant who worked the queues in the foyer of the King’s and let her know if anyone special was performing. There were visitors and strangers who intrigued her.

In the quieter moments, when she was busy cleaning the chrome coffee maker and the glass domes of the soda fountain, polishing the marble counter top, she would look again and see Romeo and Juliet in the eyes of the couple holding hands over table five in the corner. She was sure the couple who came each Thursday afternoon, who gazed into each other’s eyes before leaving separately, were lovers from Brief Encounter with ‘Guilty’ written across their foreheads. Then there were the tearful eyes of the soldier and his girlfriend, saying their fond farewells. Would the girl betray him, like Carmen? Some of the local women behaved like pantomime dames, gossiping and mouthing their secrets like Norman Evans in Over the Garden Wall.

There were the poor old souls full of tales of woe, faded actors in shabby tweeds, Svengali illusionists, who paused over their drinks, holding court and signing autographs recalling better days. There were the boasters who scattered famous names into their conversations like sugar cubes into their tea.

There were also some of Angelo’s army compatriots from Manchester, who hung around for free drinks, the worst of her countrymen, with greased, slick hair and thin moustaches and lecherous eyes, who would feel up her legs given half a chance: Iagos and Malvolios the lot of them! She loved the Shakespeare plays even if she could not always understand the words, but the coming of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company with Gilbert and Sullivan operettas she loved the best, and she managed to make it to every performance.

One day she was going to take little Rosa up into the gods to see the ballet. It was never too soon to give a child a taste of the theatre. Angelo’s wife, Tina, said there was a new dancing class starting in the top of Church Street Buildings, with a baby class. She could not wait to sign Rosa up for it when she was out of nappies.

Classes and ballet shoes cost money, and she must keep the family happy, keep a roof over their heads in the hope that one day Marco would come home for good, but there was a look in his eye that reminded her of Camille, of Mimi in La Bohème, a faraway look in his dark eyes she dreaded. It was as if he had already gone.

The family tried to help. His mother was on her knees in Our Lady of Sorrows every day pleading for his recovery. His brothers visited him when they could, but they were always very busy so it was up to her to visit every moment she was off duty. Sometimes she resented his illness so much.

When she walked into the ward he was grateful, pleased to see her, and yet exhausted by her visit so that there was never a right moment to ask his forgiveness. She had not been to confession for months and it had not gone unnoticed by Nonna Valentina.

Maria was so tired of being the strong one, the breadwinner, the tough little sparrow with not an inch of flesh on her, with cheekbones pointed like ice-cream cones. Always she must smile at the customers, see to Enzo, and keep Nonna Valentina off her back.

Now there was a lull, so she dashed upstairs again.

‘I’ve phoned Angelo. He not be long for you. Where you come from? How long do you stay in Grimbleton?’ she asked, curious about the two foreign ladies.

‘I am from Greece. She from Burma,’ said Ana.

‘Soldiers bring you back home,’ Maria smiled. There were two Italian war brides who popped in to chat just to hear their own language and moan about the English weather.

‘We come alone. We are widows,’ said Su, as if she must speak for the both of them.

‘My Marco make you welcome? You like this town?’ Maria asked, sensing tensions. Ana burst into tears. ‘Is all my fault…I come to find olive oil and there is none, no tomatoes, no orange and lemons, nothing but fish and chips and white bread,’ she cried. ‘We come here to ask you to help us and now we lose Ivy’s pram. I no want to go back there.’

‘There is not a drop of olive oil in this town. Perhaps little bottles in chemist that taste like cat pee,’ she smiled and tapped her nose. ‘But not impossible for Santinis to find some for you. Everything you can get at the right price if you know who to ask and you ask right. I can find you a little now, if you wish.’ She pointed to a cupboard door.

‘No, no…not from your rations. We can wait,’ said Lily, embarrassed. ‘You’ve been kind enough.’

‘I have a list too,’ piped Su. ‘Where can I get chilli peppers, garlic, mangoes, green tea?’

‘Hey, one at a time! Mamma mia…I can spare you a little oil, real thing from Italy. The rest I don’t know. Garlic we grow in garden and tomatoes in shed but it is too cold now. The oil here is no good, rubbish, best for engine in car or suncream. I find something for you next time you come,’ she added, knowing they were honest and would return with their taxi fare.

‘Efaristo’, whispered the Greek girl with the sad green eyes. She looked as if she was carrying the troubles of the world on her shoulders, homesick, cold and pinched in the face. ‘You are kind.’

Not bad coming from the lips of a Greek to an Italian. It was hard not to hug her right there, to reach out to her and tell her it would be ‘OK’ but Maria knew better than to make false promises.

She still yearned for the bustling streets and the heat and dust of Palermo, for all she had left behind, battered by war. Instead she patted the bambina’s golden curls. ‘She looks like an angel. What’s her name?’

‘Konstandina Eleni, and this is Joy,’ said Ana. ‘Rosaria is a pretty name too.’

‘Will you stay in Grimbleton?’ Maria asked, knowing there was not much work for widows now the men were coming back into the mills and factories.

The two girls looked at each other with anxious eyes.

‘We will go back to Division Street with no shopping, no pram and no money for the taxi, and so we must find jobs, I think,’ said Susan. ‘But we will pay you back,’ she added hurriedly.

‘We’ll come back to pay you, I promise,’ Lily smiled shyly.

‘If you come on a Sunday I make you tea and the bambini can play together and I find you some oil,’ Maria said.

There was a hooting from the pavement and a battered Austin saloon car was parked, with Angelo leaning over for his passengers.

‘Angelo is here for you. You come next week, yes?’ Maria ushered them out of the door, waving, and they nodded and waved back.

I have made new friends, she thought: girls who are not related to Santini men through work and marriage with their myriad ties to the Italian community; lonely hearts, two young mothers with little girls for Rosa to play with.

It was an answer to her prayers. They would keep her out of mischief, give her someone to cook for. It would make her hospital visits bearable and keep her loneliness under control.

How many times had Lily rested her puffy ankles in this café, never knowing what a little firebrand lived only a staircase away, she thought as they made their way home. They might have lost a pram but they’d all found a friend.

Marco had done his best to entertain them but he was a spent fuse. He must have been so handsome before his injury. ‘You make self at home,’ he had smiled.

Lily had reached out to grasp his handshake but it was limp like an old man’s hand. His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets and his hands shook when he dragged on his cigarette. How sad to see someone so young look so broken and infirm. A puff of wind would blow him over; yet another casualty of war.

Here she was thinking herself hard done by in Waverley House, when poor Maria was trying to run a business, care for a sick husband and little girl in this tiny flat. It made her feel ashamed of all her recent bad temper and frustration. Time to count her blessings.

‘You will come on Sunday,’ Maria shouted as they were leaving, ‘all of you and Lily?’

Why not? Suddenly Grimbleton seemed full of possibilities. One visit to Santini’s wouldn’t rock any boats. There’d be time to see Walter later.

‘It is good you make friends, mia cara, but Greek and foreign all together, Mamma might not like it,’ Marco said with a look of concern on his tired face after the three women had left.

‘It is good for me to make friends of my own. I am lonely. They need friends, I think.’

‘I understand. I am no good husband, finito,…’ he sighed.

‘You get better every day. I can see it in your cheeks,’ she lied.

‘You think so? I feel so tired. I’m letting my family down.’

‘No silly talk,’ Maria smiled, kneeling by his chair, leaning her head on his knees. They felt so sharp and bony. ‘You are my big hero, my sposo, and Rosa’s papà. We need you to get better soon.’

‘But I can’t work for you,’ he said, slumping back into the cushion. ‘This is no life.’

‘But I’ll work for both of us until you are strong again. I will make you better. All you need is time and rest. And NO SMOKES!’

‘You are a hard woman, Maria. The best of all the Santinis.’

Then there was an almighty crash of broken crockery coming from downstairs and some fine Italian swearing in the kitchen. They looked at each other in horror.

‘Enzo!’ Maria screamed, and made for the stairs.

The following Sunday, Lily and the girls took the bus down to town to collect the Santini pram. They were in disgrace and all hell had broken loose when they’d returned without the Silver Cross.

Lily rapped on the café door and Maria shot down the stairs to greet them.

‘You came! Welcome! Come in but first I give you this.’ She pointed to a shiny metal go-chair. ‘It has a seat front and back. You like? This is for your bambini. Keep it as long as you like.’

What could they say, thought Lily. It was a bit battered but serviceable. ‘You’re very kind,’ she said. ‘But there’s no need—’

‘No! It is nothing. It will fold up for the bus. I am sorry, but these people around here…I not understand.’ Maria waved her hands in the air as if gathering all of the town. ‘In the war they steal and they smoke. They smoke and drink in our café, very cheery, and then they smash all windows. Just because we are Italian. They come one night. I was woken by a terrible noise. They take Papà, Marco’s father, to the police station and ask, “Where are your sons?” He tells them, “All my sons are in the British Army in the Lancashire Fusiliers.” It is crazy so they arrest him and send him to Bury. It is a terrible place, a camp in a mill with no water and no beds. He is an old man. But the priest make a big fuss and he comes home.

‘We had to paint, “We are British Citizens with sons serving in the Forces” on our windows. So I think now that foreigners must stick together.’ She finally drew breath.

Lily felt ashamed. She’d seen the graffiti and had read about the riots when Mussolini came to power in 1940. A bunch of local hotheads began daubing paint on the Italian ice-cream shops, barber’s and other premises. No better than the Nazis in their ignorance. Even citizens who’d been living here since before the Great War were marched out as aliens but everyone was very jumpy then, expecting invasion any day.

They climbed the narrow stairs up to the flat and there was a wonderful smell wafting down to greet them, spicy, tomatoey, unfamiliar but exciting.

Lily sat upright on the sofa, draped with lacy antimacassars. There were holy pictures on the mantelpiece, a bowl of waxed flowers in the window and lace doilies everywhere. Pride of place pinned to the wall were postcards from Sicily, showing a sea as blue as sapphires.

‘Beautiful, yes?’ Maria said, following Lily’s gaze. ‘My country was pretty, not like this mucky town. We have dust and poor people, but not smoking chimneys and black soot. But you get used to anything.’ Maria sighed, looking towards the picture of Marco in his army uniform. ‘He is handsome, yes?’ she smiled.

‘Definitely,’ Lily offered. ‘And Rosa…’ Rosa looked up from her toys as the children were plonked down beside her, grabbing at her bricks, bowls and wooden spoons. She was the image of her mother, with black ringlets and dark eyes. She was wearing a little smocked overall on top of her dress. How sensible, Lily mused, to save on washing.

Ana and Su sat upright in their chairs while Maria fussed around them. It was awkward at first. ‘You’ll have a drink?’

They all nodded. ‘Tea will be fine,’ said Lily.

‘You not want to try my beautiful wine? A present from Italia!’

Lily wasn’t sure. It was Sunday but she’d not signed the pledge or anything like that and she didn’t want to give offence. ‘Go on then. I’ll be daring for once!’

The wine was sweet and unusual. Ana knocked hers back with relish, and sighed. Su sipped hers politely while Maria bustled around in the kitchen.

‘Won’t be long. I hope you like spaghetti. My own special sauce.’

Lily had only seen spaghetti in tins like a can of little worms in pale orange juice. They’d just eaten a good Sunday lunch with apple pie and custard to follow. It was only five o’clock. Crumpets and tea would have been fine but Maria had gone to so much trouble. How to face another heavy meal?

‘That’ll be lovely,’ she shouted.

Maria opened up the table, put on a beautiful lace tablecloth that looked handmade, and some candlesticks. She produced an enormous bowl of wriggling pasta, hot and steaming, doused in a rich tomato sauce that smelled of herbs and salt, and something Lily couldn’t quite describe. How on earth would they eat the twirls and snakes of spaghetti without a spoon? All there was on the table was a fork.

Everyone sat politely waiting for Maria, not sure how to tackle the dish. She sat down and stared at them. ‘You no like?’

‘It looks lovely but how do we eat it?’ Lily asked.

Maria burst out laughing. ‘Like this!’ She twisted the pasta round and round her fork and scooped it up into her mouth.

Su tried first but the dancing swirls just jumped off her fork and back onto her plate. Ana stabbed hers and beat it into submission while Lily tried to suck hers through her lips, dripping sauce everywhere.

‘Oh, I forgot the cheese!’ Maria jumped up. ‘You must have some Parmigiano.’

She brought a slab of hard, crusty cheese and grated it over the bowl, the flakes falling like snow.

Wasn’t this the cheese in Robinson Crusoe, or was it Treasure Island? Lily mused. It tasted like nothing she’d tried before, sharp and pungent. She wasn’t quite sure about it but swallowed. This was the strangest Sunday tea: warming, comforting, filling and oh so different.

‘I bring ice cream if you like.’

‘No, no, please. This is so good and I’m full to the brim. You have taken so much trouble,’ Lily insisted, feeling her waistband tightening by the minute.

‘It is nothing. I am glad of your company.’

‘But you’ve shared all your rations with us. It wasn’t your fault about the pram.’

‘Your mamma was very cross when you got home?’ Maria pierced them with her dark eyes.

Lily blushed at the memory of the row they’d received. Ivy had been hysterical with rage. But she lied now. ‘They understood how these things can happen.’

‘We are in big disgrace.’ Su butted in. ‘No one is speaking to us.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ Lily countered. ‘Oh, I see, you have a gramophone,’ she pointed out, hoping to distract Maria. ‘What music do you like?’

‘Gilbert and Sullivan, and opera. You’d like to hear some?’ Maria jumped up and found a record from a case, winding up her handset.

It was something dramatic, played loud and so sad that as they listened, tears streamed down Maria’s face.

‘When I hear this I fill buckets with my tears. You like it? Poor Madame Butterfly is deserted by Mr Pinkerton. I think of Marco and all the lost boys. I think of so many sad things. War is terrible.’

Su was sniffling into her hanky. ‘Poor Mr Stan. We all lose our men in the war.’ Now they were all weeping. It must be the wine and the music.

‘Have you anything to gladden us up a bit before we go home?’ Lily asked, seeing gloom descending like a fog.

Maria found some ballet music, much more cheerful, from the Nutcracker Suite.

‘I watch the ballets when they come to the King’s. I clean the stalls and watch the rehearsals. As soon as she is clean, I take Rosaria to the dancing class. It’s never too soon to learn to dance. Thank you for coming. Will you come again?’

‘Only if you will come to us,’ said Su. ‘It’s only fair, isn’t it, Lily? Titty for tat!’

Lily sighed. What was Mother going to say to that?

9

Balancing Books and Entertaining Angels

‘What did I tell you? I knew they couldn’t be trusted out alone.’ The righteous wrath of Ivy on the war path was a sight to behold. The bedraggled bunch had arrived back full of apologies and explanations. A week later she was still going on about the pram theft.

‘It wasn’t their fault,’ said Lily, doing her best to smooth the situation to no avail. ‘I should have known not to leave it outside. I’m sorry. Maria Santini’s given you a pushchair in its place.’

‘It’s just a greasy hunk of tin. I bet she sold the Silver Cross on the black market before the night was out. They’re worth a fortune. How am I going to take Neville to the park?’

‘Oh, give it a rest, Ivy. Let him walk and build up his legs. You coddle that bairn. It’s not as if you’re going to be needing the pram again after what the doctor said about your insides.’ Esme couldn’t resist a snipe.

‘Mother! That’s private business,’ Ivy sniffed. ‘I’m sick of this lot cluttering up the place. Listen to that Joy making so much fuss in the playpen. It’s like bedlam.’

‘If you hadn’t shouted at her mother and sent her upstairs in tears perhaps it would be a bit quieter,’ snapped Lily.

‘I’m not giving into her,’ said Esme, turning her back and plugging her ears from the din. Joy was howling in protest at being caged into the wooden frame. Dina was yelling now too. ‘It’s for her own good. Truby King says all children must learn to be obedient and I’ve got tea to see to. Polly’s gone home. Shush! Your mother won’t be long.’ Ana had offered to help out on the stall to make up for taking board and lodging. Dina was missing her.

Esme couldn’t think for the noise of the screaming infants. Lily was hovering, wanting to give in to her, but Esme waved her back. ‘You’ll only spoil them.’

Dina’s cheeks were puce with rage as she rattled the bars, refusing to be pacified by a line of Neville’s wooden cars laid out for her amusement.

‘That’s right, you tell her,’ yelled Ivy from the door. ‘It’s good for them to scream. They have to learn who’s the boss of the playpen. Neville was never any bother.’

‘How did you get on at the clinic? What did the doctor say?’ Esme asked.

‘Just a tickle in his throat,’ said Ivy, who never took any chances with Neville’s health. ‘You can never be too careful, and what with a house full of foreigners you don’t know what germs they are breeding. He told me to get his hair cut. But it might rob him of his strength.’

Lily bent down to lift Dina out of the pen. ‘Come on there, it’s not natural to cage them up like puppies.’ She smiled sweetly.

Ivy was scowling down at her with a withering ‘What do you know about it?’ sort of look. ‘You don’t have to clear up after their trail of havoc or wipe sticky fingers up the stairs. Nothing is safe from wandering fingers. They’re into cupboards and through doors in a flash. Those two could roam around unchecked and teach our Neville bad habits.’ She paused to nail her mother-in-law with a sharp look. ‘How long do we have to put up with these women in our house? It’s been weeks now. Time they were finding themselves rooms of their own.’

‘You know they won’t get rooms to let with small children in tow,’ Lily answered, jiggling Dina on her knee. She was getting far too fond of those youngsters, in Ivy’s opinion.

‘I don’t see why they should be living at our expense,’ Ivy snapped. ‘You don’t know the half of it, trailing in and out as they please.’

Esme stood back and let them bicker. It was not an unreasonable request for Levi and Ivy to want things to go back as they were. At first they were too shocked to turn the visitors out of the door. Now the Christmas season was upon them, such as it was, with meagre rations to share and snow up to their back door. How could she send them packing in the snow?

Every night she struggled with her conscience over how to deal with the tissue of lies they were building around these girls. Every night she knelt on the linoleum and did her eternal accounts before the One who knew the secrets of all hearts.

On the one hand, Ivy was right. Esme had gone beyond the call of duty in taking them in the first place. To her credit she had fed them and protected them from public shame, sorted out their paperwork with the authorities and perjured herself in the process. To her credit she had taken in foreigners and it sometimes sounded like the Tower of Babel with them jabbering away to their babies in Greek and Burmese and pidgin English. She made them part of the family, even helped them out financially to start with. Lily was befriending them and now they were all pally with the Santini woman, another foreigner, and a Catholic too, from the ice-cream parlour.

Every Sunday they all took themselves off to her flat for tea so the girls could play with their new friend. They came back scented with garlic, wine and other funny smells. It was not right on the Lord’s Sabbath.

‘All this gallivanting on the Lord’s Day, these spaghetti Sundays…you needn’t go with them. You ought to be with your young man,’ Esme argued.

‘I’ve only been twice and Walt doesn’t mind. I’ve never missed church yet. Marco is now permanently in Moses Heights. Maria is glad of company.’

‘I should think she’s got enough company in that family. They say Santinis breed like rabbits.’

It was Lily who argued that it was no different from them all going to visit other Winstanleys for Sunday tea or entertaining company themselves after church. Esme didn’t hold with going on buses into town in the evening after dark. Lily kept borrowing the van to give them lifts. They were not a taxi service.

That was another thing. The Greek wanted to take a bus to Manchester to light candles in some church on Bury New Road-Greek Orthodox, would you believe, a church full of golden idols-while the Burmese took herself off to St Matthew’s parish church with the parishioners from Green Lane. She was driven back in a fancy car and that got Ivy all het up about nothing. Zion Chapel, it appeared, was not good enough for them now. Esme blamed the Eyetie for putting fancy ideas in their heads.

Part of her struggle each night with the internal workings of this spiritual book-keeping was to weigh up the debits, as well as the pluses.

First, there was the bad grace with which she did all the creditable stuff. It was hard to smile and look relaxed when you were harbouring your son’s secret lovers.

Ivy was always on guard duty, reminding her of any infringements to their rules, any liberties taken with Neville’s toys, and the loss of the big pram was hard to explain away. She watched to see if they used the wrong rations, or left lights on, or the paraffin heater.

Esme had to admit they hardly put a foot wrong. They crept around the house in carpet slippers, made no noise, were very polite and deferential when there was company. They were eager to find work. They saw to their own washing when everyone else used the electric agitator in the outhouse. They kept their rations in a separate cupboard and didn’t eat much, shared any shopping and delivering and mending duties. They paid their way as best they could.

To her credit, she bought the little ones warm clothing with her coupons and Lily was knitting jumpers for them. They were doing their Christian duty to ‘suffer the little children…’ It wasn’t easy.

There was an atmosphere growing that she didn’t know how to deal with. Ivy was rude and Levi let her go unchecked. The foreigners were pretty girls, full of life, and that reminded her she was getting old and fat and not as fit as she once was.

‘Freddie would be proud of you, Mother, but enough’s enough,’ Ivy would scold, that shrill voice bending her ear.

What if they were entertaining angels unaware? What if this was some spiritual scholarship test the family had to pass? What if she had to make up in life for all of Freddie’s failings?

Yet there was something about having a house full of toddlers and young people, the rush of feet on the stairs and laughter of children, that gave her heart a lift better than Wincarnis and feet up by the fire. It was a sign her life wasn’t over yet and she was still needed.

The girls lived up in the attic room and sometimes when they were out she crept upstairs to peek at the sleeping infants and gave herself a pat on the back that she had done right by them all.

They were her grandchildren, illegitimate or not. Only the four Winstanleys knew that secret. If some of her neighbours were curious and wondered why the widows were staying on it was easy to talk about room shortages and bombed-out houses down south, and how families must help each other out. It felt right as she was saying it, but was it another debit?

Telling lies was not in her nature; white lies told to protect the good Winstanley name were a burden she must bear to preserve their respectability. Surely that wasn’t a debit on her Eternal account? They were honourable lies, she argued.

‘Oh Lord!’ she prayed. ‘You’d better balance my books yourself. It’s not easy. Show me the way to righteousness.’

Lily handed over the child into Esme’s arms, the Concertina child who bore the name she had always hated but hadn’t the heart to confess. She plonked her down in the playpen again to a wail of protests just as Ana came in from the hall with Levi, back from the stall.

‘What is Dina doing in the cage? I told you, no cages. I see too many cages in war. Cages no good for children.’ Ana pulled her out again and the child, hot and bothered, looked pleased.

Suddenly Esme caught a glimpse of Freddie, defiant and naughty, with those blue eyes looking up at her. It was like seeing a ghost.

‘I have to keep her under control for her own good. She might put something in her mouth,’ she argued, but Ana was angry, her eyes flashing.

‘She is my baby. Dina is too big for a cage.’

‘Don’t you talk to Mother like that,’ said Ivy. ‘Does she argue with customers like this? They won’t understand a word she says.’

Levi shrugged and left the room, not wanting to get involved in the bickering of women. Ana was jabbering away to the child in Greek.

Esme’s heart lurched to see Freddie in the girl. How could she let this bit of him go, perhaps never to see her again? How could this bit of her son grow up never knowing her granny? There would only be Neville left, and he looked just like Ivy with curls.

‘I wish you would speak English so we can all join in,’ Esme said with a sniff. ‘Speaking two languages must confuse the child. We don’t want her in the backward school.’

Susan had taken her teaching certificate to the Education Department Office to find work with a nursery unit. She was no trouble. Susan had British manners and a politeness that charmed people, and she knew her place.

‘We speak home tongue to them and you speak your tongue and they know which is which,’ said Ana with defiance. This one didn’t know her place yet. There was something rock-like in those green eyes that could not be moved. ‘Konstandina is forward girl, not backward girl. You see.’

All this argy-bargy was making her head spin. Perhaps the kiddie was too old for a playpen after all. It was too strange and she was frightened. The bairn had had so many changes in her life.

‘I am trying to make Concertina safe from fire, and from Neville when he’s got a mood on him,’ Esme mouthed slowly. ‘I have to get on with my jobs. I am not a nursemaid,’ she said, and hoped it would be the end of the matter.

‘I know. You good woman but my Dina must be free to explore. Susan says it is good for children to explore. In my country they had white sand and green hills and fields to play in, plenty of aunties and uncles to watch over them,’ Ana sighed.

‘Well, this is Grimbleton and my house, and I don’t want any more ornaments being shovelled into the bin. You need eyes in the back of your head, Anastasia, with that one.’ There it was said. ‘She will have to go into a nursery if this carries on.’

‘I take her to watch dancing class soon,’ Ana smiled, and went to make herself a cup of tea with no milk.

‘Never, she’s nobbut a baby still,’ Esme said. Where did this girl get these notions from?

‘Maria is taking Rosa, and Susan think good to let girls dance to music. What Joy has, Dina must have,’ she said, looking pleased with herself.

That’ll be a waste of money, lass, the kiddy can’t even walk yet, she thought, but for once she bit her tongue. It was a struggle but it would look good in her Eternal account book. Joy was a pudding, a lump of lard. How a tiny bird like Susan could produce such a round thing was way beyond her but the Winstanleys were big-boned and hefty.

‘Whatever you like,’ she managed. ‘But you’ll have to pay for it yourself.’ It was a struggle to keep her gob buttoned up when Ivy was hovering, looking daggers.

‘I do extra on Saturday for Levi. I find another job but it not easy,’ Ana added.

‘As long as you’re trying, that’s all we ask,’ Esme said, knowing she could not ask when they were leaving now.

Ivy was sitting with a face like thunder and when Ana left the room she was waiting to pounce.

‘You’ll never get rid of them now! Dancing classes, would you credit it? Where do they get their fancy ideas from? “Lemody Liptrot School of Dance” indeed. I remember when she was plain Lizzie Liptrot, the fishmonger’s daughter, who went on the stage and came back full of airs and graces and a plum in her mouth. I saw her advert in the Mercury: Greek dancing, tap dancing and ballet. It’ll give them ideas,’ she argued.

‘I thought you were the one for big ideas.’ Esme couldn’t resist the jibe, seeing Ivy so put out. ‘It’ll keep them out of mischief. I expect it teaches girls to hold themselves proper and understand rhythm.’

‘Little show-offs is what you’ll get,’ snapped Ivy. ‘Prancing about like Shirley Temple, and you don’t hold with all them theatricals.’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps Neville could go and be the next Fred Astaire. Now he had a good sense of rhythm. I don’t hold with all that lovey-dovey stuff, but him and Ginger Rogers could fair move across the floor. That’s healthy and wholesome, gets your lungs working and heart pumping,’ she argued. She wasn’t too old to recall the thrill of a bit of romance.

Ivy was looking up with raised eyebrows. ‘I’m going to send our Neville for elocution lessons when he’s older so he can better himself.’

Esme could see that she had sown a seed of interest. There was nothing Ivy would not do to make Neville stand out from the crowd.

It was after tea was cleared away that the two girls hovered behind Esme and followed her into the sitting room where she liked to listen to the wireless and knit without interruption. It was her time of day for a bit of peace and quiet with a good book on her lap. They closed the door behind them and she wondered what was coming next. They always hunted in pairs, waiting until Ivy and Levi had gone to the pictures so she would be on her own, vulnerable to their pleas with no Ivy to bat off their suggestions. They sat down opposite and smiled. She tried to keep her Eternal account book in mind.

‘Daw Winstanley,’ said Susan, using her most polite term of address. ‘We want to ask your advice.’

Esme sighed with relief, relaxing into the chair. Giving advice was what she was good at. ‘Oh, yes? How can I help?’ she smiled.

‘It is our new friend, Maria. She is having a very bad time. Her husband is very sick in the sanatorium. She has been very kind to us. She has made us dinner many times.’

‘So she should do. She cost you our pram and a taxi fare.’

‘But she found us a new pushchair from her sister-in-law,’ Susan was quick to defend her friend.

‘And we had to scrub it with Lysol it was so greasy. It must have been dipped in the fish fryer,’ she replied. Ivy had scoured it for nits and other nasties, and refused to let Neville near it for fear of germs but it was not a bad go-chair. It collapsed and took up less room in the hall, and they could squash the two kids in at a pinch.

‘Every Sunday she cooks pasta for us-spaghetti-and we have ice cream and tinned fruit. How do we say thank you?’ Ana asked, her eyelashes blinking as she leaned forward hanging on the coming words. ‘It is polite to return gift with gift, yes?’

Esme was trapped if she said no. It would look as if she was condoning bad manners. If she said yes…oh heck, they’d caught her in their net but not without a struggle.

‘You can repay the dinners by taking her out for another meal in a café as a thank you,’ she said, hoping that would satisfy.

‘Yes…but it would be as you say, busman’s vacation?’ said Susan, so sweetly that Esme hardly felt the hook turning as she wriggled.

‘So what are you suggesting?’ she said, knowing their request was better laid flat on the table.

‘Can we cook a meal for Maria here, one Saturday evening after work? She can find someone to finish off her shift and she can catch the bus to visit Marco and come for her tea. It would be a big thank you,’ Susan said hurriedly.

‘You want to use my kitchen and my dining room and cook…foreign stuff for her?’ Esme gasped, knowing they had hooked her good and proper.

‘We cook for everyone, big thank you meal for all of you too,’ Susan added, glancing up as Lily appeared.

‘What a lovely idea,’ Lily smiled, looking hopefully in her direction. ‘A sort of thanksgiving-cum-Christmas meal all rolled into one.’

It was time to give her daughter one of those withering ‘you’re letting the family down’ looks.

‘We like our dinner cooked at lunchtime. Tea time is tea time and nothing fancy in the evening to talk back to me in the night.’

They must know the strict rotation of meals by now. Roast after church on Sunday, leftovers cold on Monday, rissoles on Tuesday, mince on Wednesday, fish on Thursday when the fish van called. Potato pie on Friday and pasties from town on Saturday. It didn’t do to change routine.

Then she saw the blessed Eternal audit hovering high in the corner of the room. It would be good to score up another credit. Be generous and accommodating for once, she mused.

Let them try entertaining company on rations. It was not as easy as they thought.

‘You’d have to use your own rations. I don’t hold with fancy food but you can have my kitchen if you give plenty of advance notice. I don’t know what Ivy will say. It’s her kitchen too.’

‘But you all come to our meal, Ivy and Lily, all are invited,’ said Ana.

‘Then you’ll need everyone’s meat ration but I don’t want any funny smells wafting down the street,’ Esme said, knowing there would be hell to pay when Ivy got home.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ the widows shouted in unison, and jumped up and down as if they had been given the Crown Jewels. ‘We make special dinner for everyone and we have singing and dancing. You will like Maria.’

‘I’m sure for a Catholic and Eyetie, she’ll do,’ was all Esme could manage. I’ve let the side down again and given into my better nature, she sighed, but she would square it all up on her knees with the Almighty later.

10

Invitations to a Feast

‘You will come, Walt, to the thank you do? The family has to give them support.’ Lily was telling him all about the prospective supper as they sat in the café on her lunch break the next day.

‘So I’m family when it suits you. Pity I wasn’t in on them coming in the first place,’ he said with his mouth full of barm cake.

‘None of us knew they were going to turn up out of the blue. I thought you understood that.’ She patted his hand. Sometimes he could look so peevish.

‘It’s none of my business, Lily, what your family does, but Mam thinks you should never have had them girls in the house.’

‘I’m surprised at her, being a widow and taking that attitude. It’s the middle of winter and freezing cold and nearly Christmas. Have a heart!’

‘I wish you’d give me a bit of your heart. A man’s only flesh and blood, and talking of flesh and blood, come here and give us a kiss.’ Walt lunged forward to smack a sloppy kiss but it misfired as her cheek turned from him and his lips sucked in only air.

‘None of that now!’ she blushed. ‘Not in public. I’ve got Brownie costumes to sew, buttons to find. Not enough hours in the day as it is.’

‘What’s it this time?’ He peeked at the flimsy material in the brown paper bag. ‘I was hoping this was summat for your wedding dress. When are we going to name the day? What about next July or August, the mill holidays? It’s quiet in the town. It gives us a chance to find a place to rent, just like we promised, and it’ll take your mind off all these foreigners.’ He smiled a toothy grin, turning to his News Chronicle.

He had a point, Lily thought. It was time they set a date and planned ahead. Mother would just have to get used to the idea of her leaving Waverley House but now was not the time to daydream about dresses and bouquets when there were ten soldiers’ and sailors’ outfits to cobble up for the Guide and Brownie Review dress rehearsal at St Matthew’s church hall next week.

It was her big idea for the Brownies to stage the story of Daisy Darling and the little tin soldier. So far she’d ordered military hats and let the mums loose on tricky jackets. The results had been disastrous.

‘I can count on you for next Saturday night then?’ she said, standing up to pay the bill.

‘I’m not sure, Lil. Eating foreign is not my cup of tea. It’ll play havoc with my digestion. Let’s go to the pictures and have a fish-and-chip supper instead. You know we’ve a Cup tie on Saturday afternoon. Has Levi got the tickets?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’ve promised to help the girls out. It’s their way of being sociable and it’s not polite to refuse.’

Walt shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Suit yerself, but count me out this time, love. Perhaps it’s better if it’s just ladies.’

‘Could you lend us some coupons then to eke out the rations? I’ll pay them back.’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry, no can do. Mam is the guardian of the ration books and she’s saving up for Christmas. We don’t want her to do without treats then, do we?’

‘I suppose not,’ Lily replied bitterly. Elsie Platt loved her son and puddings far too much to deprive them both of any luxuries on the Christmas black market.

Was this a glimpse of what life might be like in the future, him slumped by the fireside, stuffing her baking into his mouth and no conversation, stuck out in their cottage on the moor, miles from any of the excitement going on down town?

Where was that fluttering tummy, pounding heart, the passion of being together? She got more of that watching Pete Walsh dribbling down the centre of Grimbleton Park to Barry Wagstaff when the Grasshoppers played at home. Something wasn’t right but there was too much to do to worry about it now.

Whose big idea was it to give a thanksgiving dinner for Maria and the Winstanleys? sighed Ana. Where would they start? She chewed over the menu like a dog with a bone as she stood sentinel at her new post in the Market Hall, trying to look busy, straining to understand the customers speaking while Levi slept off his beery lunch in the cubbyhole that served as his office. Here were kept all the more expensive items and spare stock. It was awkward brushing past him to reach up for boxes. He was not to be trusted.

Ever since that first meeting his lecherous intentions towards Su were plain for all to see, but now he gawped at her with interest too. She tried to ignore his suggestive tone. The jokes she didn’t understand but sometimes Enid looked at her with pity when it was time for her to leave. ‘Take no notice, love, it’s the beer talking.’

When Enid was around it was easier to dodge his hands, but once she’d gone it was better just to stay close to the side of the stall. Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings they were busy. That was when workers got their wages and came to buy their supplies.

The beginning of the week was worst. Levi would prowl behind her when she was stocktaking and dusting, far too close for comfort. He had not laid a finger on her yet but she sensed the time was coming and she desperately needed to distract him. She was not used to working alone with a man. In Crete before the war, women in villages were treated with respect and were never left alone in a room, even with their own father or brother, for fear of losing their reputation. An unmarried girl wore a headscarf to cover her beauty from display, and public appearances were kept to festivals and church. In towns it was different, and the war had changed everything. She’d even taken to wearing trousers while tending wounded soldiers, living in hill camps with partisans who honoured their womenfolk by ignoring them. When they were captured and transported over to the mainland, she was imprisoned in a women’s labour camp, cooped up like cattle, working the land in terrible weather. All hope left her of ever surviving the hardship and starvation, but somehow she had done.

No use looking in a mirror to see the fairness of her youth. Her features had long shrunk to sharp bones on a craggy frame-starvation and the wind had seen to that. Yet Freddie and his soldiers had taken pity on her friends in Athens, picked her out, given her enough food and shelter to restore some bloom. There was never any danger of assault when Freddie was her escort with his Military Police red cap.

Levi was no gentleman, though, and she was not going to stand for any nonsense. There had been too many shameful incidents with guards in the camp. She knew how to defend herself now.

‘Can I go look round stalls? I need to find food for the big dinner,’ she shouted. ‘It is very quiet. No customers to bother you.’ She didn’t wait for an answer as she sped out of sight to the safety of the vegetable stall. There were plenty of stalls but little to buy that interested her, and she was not speaking to Su since last night.

‘What shall we cook?’ she had asked, but Su had shrugged her shoulders. ‘You said you cook for Tommy soldiers in canteen?’ Ana pressed.

‘Ah yes, with Chindhe ladies of the Women’s Auxiliary Service when we march back into Burma. I follow them. I wash and serve and tidy but no cook. I had to do servant jobs. We all muck in for poor boys who worship us from afar. That is where I met Mister Stan.’

‘I don’t want to know where you met your blessed Mister Stan this and Mister Stan that…’

‘And you go on like a record on a gramophone, Freddie this and Freddie that. He only had you because he thought me dead. I am number one wife whatever Daw Esme say.’

‘We’re nobody’s wife,’ Ana screamed in frustration. ‘But we keep tongues under hat. That is what Kiría Esme say or we’ll be sent home. I no make big dinner all alone.’

‘I am not a good cook. Auntie Betty had a boy to do all that, but I can make lepet, nice juicy pickle and pretty flowers for table. I will be your helper.’

That was when Ana realised she’d be on her own. Susan had found a post in a nursery school so she must pay for the extra food and help in the kitchen. The meal must be cheap and simple and not use up too many coupons.

Grimbleton seemed to live on a diet of flour-and-water soups, stodgy pastry, soulless bread and sausages that tasted of sawdust. No wonder the herbal stall was so popular. Customers queued for liver pills, indigestion tablets, laxatives and flatulence potions. There were packets of dehydrated vegetables and eggs in a powder. There were shelves of canned meat and tinned fruit, jars of pickles. Where was the life in the food? These provisions were tasteless to her, cooked without love.

In Crete they could live on mountain greens, horta and wild spinach, pick living fruits and nuts from their own trees. They did not pour yellow custard over green shoots and call it salad.

The Tommies had turned their noses up at olive oil, at first saying it was fit only for lamp oil but some of them grew to love the delicate flavours of vegetables grilled with oil and lemon juice. Oh, just to pick a lemon from a tree!

Before the war came the Cretan market stalls were full of raisins and fresh fish, the scent of roasting coffee, sacks of beans and rice, barrels of feta cheese and rounds of hard cheese from their sheep, thyme honey, kegs of raki, blocks of chocolate, Turkish delights, halva and fruit syrups and every colour of olive oil; before the tanks came and flattened the olive groves and there was not a walnut or raisin to be had.

If only there were chios here, shaped like eggs with their soft flesh, kalimata, black and purple bittersweet, earthy old Cretan wine, olives marinated in oil and vinegar dressing.

The taste of the olive was a taste as old as the world itself, a taste of life and love and home. How she missed the silkiness of its texture on her tongue.

How quickly you could learn to exist on boiled porridge dotted with snails and mountain greens, rough corn breads and goat’s-milk yoghurt thinned out with stream water. The enemy stole everything from their cellars, their sheep and goats, chickens, their fruit and olive harvest and their honeycombs. They were left destitute. Hunger was a terrible thing. It changed people into animals, scavenging, stealing.

In the labour camps it was worse: in the harsh winters living off soup made from stolen greens and roots and the bones of anything they might snare for the pot. Sometimes Ana lay on her bunk, dreaming of the day when her belly would be full of oil and wine and cheese, dakos and sharp spicy sausages.

Cretan food was full of colour and guts and strong smells. There were always garlands of garlic and mountain tea, onions and dried herbs hanging from the kitchen rafters. The family had lived from their garden, the mountains, from hives and orchards. There was kid and lamb for festivals and a harvest from the shore.

The Papadakis were just village folk, her father worked leather. They were proud and wanted for nothing in the stone white house close to the church. She had gone to Canea to help in the Red Cross station until it was overrun, then escaped into the high hills above the port. She was lucky to be alive when so many of her school friends were dead. Sometimes she dreamed that Eleni was chasing after her into the fields. When she turned to wait for her, she vanished and Ana woke with tears down her face.

Ana didn’t know whether any of her relatives survived when the village was razed to the ground in reprisal after an ambush in the hills on that terrible day when Eleni died. They were scattered like seeds into the wild wind.

There was no point going back. The country was at war with itself now. She dare not write for fear of more bad news. Here she could pretend all was well now the war was over. This was where Dina must grow up, in this strange town in this foreign country amongst the people who had taken them in. It was the honourable thing to do.

All this daydreaming would not put a meal on the table, she sighed, knowing she must go back to the stall. Maria would help her out with food if stuck, but she was already beholden to their new friend. Why should a guest provide her own dinner?

Getting out of Division Street each Sunday afternoon was the treat they most looked forward to. Maria was always so full of life and energy, scurrying round the tiny flat that she kept like a palace. She hardly stopped to draw breath, with her two jobs and her husband, Marco, making such slow progress. Ana sensed that if Maria stopped for a second she’d collapse and sink down with exhaustion. Keeping busy was how she dealt with her pain.

Everyone was keeping busy after this war, queuing, cleaning, tidying up the bomb sites, making the best of very little. The Winstanley women never stopped, and if she was married to Levi she’d not stop until she’d run a mile from him.

For a moment she could feel just a flicker of sympathy for the sharp little wife who must share his bed. There was a bitter taste to the two of them and Levi’s eyes were hungry for something sweeter.

Ana’s own sadness made her feel lethargic. It was an effort to eat, to sleep in the middle of the night, to get up in the morning, and now she had a big meal to prepare so Su must help with the shopping. Su had the money for extras but how to manage a meat ration for eight people?

As she scoured the butchers’ stalls for inspiration she thought of pig for souvláki chunks skewered on knitting needles and marinated in lemon, herbs and oils. That was out, for a start, and they could only get meat from the counter where they were all registered. Perhaps some beef or lamb for stifado, cooked slowly and eked out with vegetables, but beef for eight? Impossible.

Lily said Walt couldn’t spare any coupons because his mother was old. Ivy refused to give a single coupon because Neville needed extra rations, and Levi thought the idea of a meal made from ‘foreign muck’ a big joke. When she’d asked him to order some olive oil he refused, saying she must use dripping like everyone else. Then he’d laughed and said he might get hold of some if she made it worth his while.

‘I will pay good price,’ she smiled, but he just winked.

‘What I’m after don’t cost money, love, just a little time,’ he said, pointing to the cubbyhole and she fled, blushing. If his mother found out that his wandering hands were also in the till perhaps that would cool his passion.

With a heavy heart, Lily watched Levi ogling Ana from the cubbyhole that served as an office. Business was quiet and they didn’t need three staff on duty.

Taking the Greek girl down to Winstanley Health and Herbs to work was not such a good idea. It was nearly Christmas and shoppers were too busy trying to eke out their ration coupons to want to bother with pills and potions. Their rush time would come after New Year, when the winter gloom set in proper: a time for tonics and pick-up remedies to prepare, stocktaking and weighing those who wanted to lose their winter excess baggage.

They kept all the more expensive items and spare stock in the back cubbyhole, and when Ana brushed past Levi to reach up for the boxes he would lean back on his stool to feel the brush of her skirt. There was often the smell of liquor on his breath in the afternoons these days, but should she say anything to him?

She sighed. If Ivy got even a sniff of his inclinations, never mind his breath, she’d banish the girls from the house, Christmas or not.

Levi was becoming a worry. Ever since Ana and Susan arrived he seemed to think Freddie’s lady friends were his personal harem. When she was on guard there was no bother, but out of eyeshot she guessed he was up to his old tricks. A pass was a pass in any language. It was up to her to put a stop to it and sharp.

‘If Levi is bothering you, I’ll have a word,’ Lily offered.

Ana shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. ‘It is nothing. Men are worse during the war. In my country a woman not work with a man alone,’ she said. ‘A single girl might be a slave to the kitchen and the fields but she has respect. All we have is a good name and I have bad name now. We keep headscarf over our face. War has changed everything. Now there is flesh everywhere and men are tempted.’

Sometimes when Ana talked a shutter came over her eyes like a veil, her eyes would flutter and the subject was changed. Ana was suffering in ways Lily could only imagine. She was learning to respect this withdrawal into silence. ‘Look at me, just skin and bone. Who would want to look at such a face?’

There might be silver threads in her hair but her eyes still burned brightly and Lily could see how Freddie would have been attracted to her fierce spirit, her courage and kindness.

‘Lily, what shall I cook with no meat ration? This is big worry now.’ They had scoured the food stalls for ideas for that special supper, something that might remind them of warmer climates and better times.

It was the knitting patterns on the wool stall that did the trick: a picture of a matinée coat with a fluffy bunny embroidered on it. Lily suddenly remembered Allotment Billy, who’d kept them in rabbit meat all through the war. Rabbits were cheap and plentiful. The flesh was sweet and tasted like chicken if cooked slowly, and he might have an onion or two to spare if they explained their dilemma. Allotment Billy was an old pal of her father’s: another survivor of the Grimbleton Pals Brigade.

‘There’s always fresh rabbit,’ she offered in desperation.

‘You are angel from heaven, you save bacon. I can do plenty with rabbit and herbs.’ Ana flung her arms around her in gratitude.

No one had mentioned anything about herbs. Herbs were going to be a different challenge altogether, but she’d not be defeated now. If Winstanleys couldn’t rustle up a spice or two it’d be a poor do!

Mother was a plain cook and didn’t bother to flavour food with anything other than white pepper and salt and sometimes stalks of parsley. There was Oxo cubes, of course, but Lily preferred to drink them like tea. The drink was harsh and salty, and warmed her through on cold days.

No one touched garlic except as a medicine, but if she threw in enough garlic salt and pearls from the stall perhaps no one would notice. It was the nearest they could offer in the way of exotic.

There were bay trees growing like ornaments in the Green Lane gardens. Perhaps Su could beg a few leaves when she came home with Dr Unsworth’s daughter and family from the parish church. Her being Church and not Chapel was causing quite a stir.

If the worst came to the worst they could scour the local park gardens for the last stalks of thyme, but the ground was under a foot of snow.

‘How can we serve a fresh salad when there’s nothing green?’

‘It’s not the season for cold stuff,’ Lily advised. ‘We can have tinned peas.’

The Winstanleys didn’t eat much salad. Levi called it rabbit food. There was not a tin of tomatoes or dried herbs in the house, but sardines or pilchards in oil would flavour the vinegar.

The first course was to be a mezéthakia, little plates of olives or cheese, little tastes to whet the appetite. Ana said Greeks never drank without a little food.

‘We’re a teetotal family, although we haven’t signed the pledge and I suppose we’ve sort of slipped a bit. There’s brandy in the medicine cupboard and tonic wine. How about starting with tripe and onions from the U.C.P.? Cows innards are very healthy.’

‘No, I do cheese and spinach pie then,’ Ana smiled.

‘Cheese is rationed. And it’s not the season for spinach,’ Lily replied, trying to veer her away from big ideas. It would be impossible to find an olive in Grimbleton. ‘The only thing in the pantry I can think of is a tin of anchovy fillets in oil but you won’t be wanting that, will you?’

Ana snatched the idea with glee. ‘We fry potatoes and boil eggs. It is perfect meze.’

Lily hadn’t the heart to mention that fresh eggs took some negotiating. There was also the pudding problem. Her mouth was watering from all the tempting desserts that rolled off Ana’s tongue: honeyed pasties with walnuts and sweet raisins, fruits poached in wine. All there might be on Billy’s allotment were precious sticks of forced pink rhubarb, grown in his secret way especially for Christmas. It would take the promise of a knitted jumper to get some of those off him.

‘We’ve got plenty of bottled fruit in the larder and Bird’s custard to go with it.’

‘But that is not feast food, that is Wednesday food. I will make yoghurt. I know how from pan of warm milk and flask. You watch. It is delicious with honey…’

Where on earth would she get honey? ‘We’ve got some golden syrup.’

‘No. Honey from hills in Grimtown!’

‘You mean Grimbleton-oh, I don’t know, love.’

‘Yes, Grimtown. We will find it for our feast. You will help?’

I will help, though Lord knows how, Lily smiled to herself. Planning this feast was a mad idea and taking so much time. But it was yet another distraction from her thoughts about Walter-not that she had much time to spare him a minute. The poor lad had slipped down the pecking order of her ‘must dos’. Days would go by with only a cheery wave across the Market Hall for contact. She was so pushed for time, he never volunteered to help her out and she was too proud to ask. It wasn’t right but if she could just get Christmas over with then she’d make up for her neglect. Now they were late from their tea break.

‘What time of night do you call this? I don’t pay you to go sightseeing.’ Levi puffed out his chest in indignation, then ordered them to dust all the stock down. Within minutes he was off meandering round the market himself, doing deals and coming back with booty for Ivy and Neville’s Christmas stockings.

On the Friday morning before the dinner party there was still no honey, but Ana’s yoghurt, after two disasters, had set perfectly. Lily now needed to make a trip up to the Jubilee Allotment to see Billy Eckersley and collect the rabbits.

The doorbell rang and there was Pete Walsh, grinning, and Lily in her curlers looking like a rat bag.

‘I brought you these,’ he smiled, ‘for you and your mother.’

In his hand was a pair of precious tickets for the Cup tie against Everton. People had been queuing for hours to get these. Lily felt herself blushing.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she smiled, wishing her face was washed and her turban wasn’t full of curlers. ‘Mother’s been under the weather. I’m not sure she’ll be able to brave the chill. I would love to go only—’

Levi sprang down the stairs, two at a time. ‘Now then, mate, did I hear the mention of tickets? You should be on that pitch training, not chatting up my little sister on the doorstep. Where’s your manners, Lil? Fetch us a cup of tea for the lad.’ He snatched the envelope from her hand without a by-your-leave.

‘They’re for Mother, not you,’ she snapped back.

‘She’s in bed with a cold. It’s your turn on the stall then. Walt can have the spare. Thanks, Pete. I owe you one,’ he winked.

Lily was so furious she could hardly speak.

‘Peter gave them to me, thank you very much.’ She snatched them back. ‘You made sure you got yourself a ticket ages ago.’

‘Quite a spitfire, when she’s riled up,’ Levi replied as he climbed the stairs in a huff. Pete stood there saying nothing.

‘I’d ask you in only we’ve got a flap on,’ Lily lied. ‘Susan and Ana are cooking us dinner tomorrow so we’re having a rehearsal: they’re temperamental cooks, I’m afraid, and I’m the referee.’

‘You’ll make the game, though? It’ll be a cracker.’

‘I’ll try,’ she offered, knowing there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of her being let off duty. ‘It’s so kind of you to think of us.’

‘It’s just that I know what a strain you’ve all been under lately. A seat at a Cup tie match sort of passes the time, takes your mind off things. Your mother said…’ he stuttered.

‘Mother said what?’ Lily looked at him, his cheeks were bright pink as he leaned forward, smelling of Lifebuoy and Brylcreem. ‘You see, Freddie did write to me about Susan. I know it’s all a bit awkward for you.’

She was looking up into his grey-green eyes dotted with amber flecks like tweed. ‘I see,’ she snapped. ‘You can say that again. She’d no right to go blabbing our private business.’

‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

‘I’m sure it wasn’t, but just right now I’d better see to the girls. There’s a lot to do. I’ll make sure Mother gets her tickets. Thank you for your concern but we’re coping as well as can be expected.’ Lily ushered him quickly back into the vestibule and out on to the street. How dare he come in here with his charity when all he was doing was fishing for information? Who did he think he was?

She was all flustered. Pete must know that Susan and Joy were Freddie’s girls, not anything to do with the imaginary cousin down south. What if he let slip? She raced up the stairs to Esme’s bedroom and banged open the door, throwing the tickets on the bed. Mother had her head under a towel, bent into a steaming bowl of friar’s balsam, feeling sorry for herself.

‘What’s all this about Pete Walsh knowing our business?’

‘Don’t fuss, Lil. I said nothing he didn’t already know.’

‘I thought we had to keep it in the family as usual.’

‘That young man is as sound as a pound. He won’t tell anyone.’

‘He’d better not or he’ll have me to answer to for offering us Cup tie tickets to salve his conscience…’

Suddenly the towel was off Esme’s head. ‘That’s very generous of him. Happen I ought to make the effort and oblige,’ she replied. ‘The air will do me good.’

‘Levi wants them,’ Lily snapped. ‘You’ll have to join the queue.’

‘Give them here. Levi can find other tickets to tout round his cronies. These are ours’

Lily suddenly felt like Cinderella, banned from the ball with the sweeping brush at the hearth. ‘You’re not having mine. I’ll decide who uses this,’ she whined, feeling peevish and silly. How rude she’d been to Pete, and for no reason, how prickly, and him only trying to be kind. She hadn’t even wished him good luck.

Then she heard a rumpus in the kitchen and made for the stairs.

Ivy was busy preparing lunch before her shopping trip to town and refused to yield an inch of space at the sink for the preparations.

The yoghurt bowl was across the table next to a bottle of Neville’s Welfare orange juice. They were going to sweeten it with a little juice; the nearest they had got to an orange for months. Lily hoped by adding it to the yoghurt it would soften the bitter taste, strange to her palate.

Ana was just tipping in the juice when Ivy caught her in the act, screaming, ‘What are you doing, stealing Neville’s juice? How dare you steal a baby’s rations? Pour it back…’ Ivy snatched up the bottle as if it was the best sherry.

‘It’s actually Dina’s bottle, not Neville’s, so keep your hair on!’ Lily yelled from the door, but no apology was forthcoming.

‘We can’t leave you alone five minutes before you ruin perfectly good food. Look at this curdled milk. It’s gone sour with all your meddling. If you think we’re going to sit down and eat your messes, you’ve another think coming,’ she shouted so the whole house could hear. ‘My child is not touching your foreign muck with all that grease in it. We are going to the King’s to see the Repertory Company tomorrow. Mother will be in bed and Lily and Walt will stay at his mother’s and listen to Saturday Playhouse if they’ve any sense.’

Ana looked crestfallen.

Ivy was in full flight of indignation. ‘You’re not welcome, you know; you and your crony, creeping around Mother. I know what you’re after…getting your slippers under the table, but it doesn’t wash with me. If you think Esme Winstanley will leave you or your bastards a penny ha’penny…You don’t fool me with your greasy stews and fancy dishes,’ she hissed like a poisonous snake.

‘Please, I no understand, Lily. I have no slippers under table. You will not eat my dinner?’ Ana appealed to Lily, but Ivy was halfway out of the door.

Lily flushed with shame in that cold kitchen with the green and white tiled walls. Their grey Jackson gas cooker stood foursquare as the milk pan began to boil over and the pot of vegetables hissed on the flame.

‘Ivy, you’ve said enough. All the more for us if you don’t turn up. You’re that sour you’d turn the milk,’ Lily snapped back

Tears were pouring down Ana’s cheeks when Su came in with the two girls.

‘No one is coming to the feast,’ Ana howled. ‘We have big meal for you, me and Maria. No one will eat our food,’ she sobbed, as Susan sat her down at the kitchen table to calm her.

‘Don’t worry. I have found a bottle of wine and paper lanterns for the decorations. Don’t ask me how. Shall we open it now and drink all of it? Then we will not care who comes,’ Su laughed. ‘We will not worry about the dinner pot. It will be a jolly good show! If the dragon mother and snake man and wife do not come to eat then we will do as in the Bible and find good people to share the table. That is right, Miss Lily? We will ask Maria. She will know plenty of hungry people. We will feast and we will sing. We will talk of old times and show those silly buggers how to have good time. It will be a beautiful stifado. The dinner smells good. I will set a table fit for the King with folded lily napkins,’ she said with a look of mischief in her eyes.

‘Wipe those tears, Ana. Don’t let Poison Ivy see she’s upset you.’ Did I just say that out loud? Lily thought. Poison Ivy-it just about summed up her sister-in-law.

Nothing and no one must spoil their feast but all the fun of the preparation was slipping away fast. They would not disappoint Maria. No way. Whatever happened, the show must go on and Lily was determined as never before that that would be the case.

*  *  *

They wrapped up Dina against the cold wind and put galoshes on their feet, making for the top of the road and Green Lane. Lily promised them a walk to show the child Billy’s fields where the rabbit hutches were.

Ana was still smarting from Ivy’s insult and the injustice of being accused of stealing. Everything was going wrong and now there were no guests for Maria. What was wrong with this English family, not to gather round the table and talk, laugh, drink and feast until they were sleepy? Why must their girls always be tucked up in bed out of the way? How she wished she had not asked Maria for tea.

There had been a thaw, the snow was melting and she could just see the earth peeping up from the dark ground. There was mist swirling through the trees and a smell of bonfire in the air. It was good to be out of the stuffy kitchen away from Ivy’s withering looks.

Lily opened the gate into the field where there were strips of ground, little huts and old men bent over the ground, ferreting for vegetables, men in thick trousers and caps, with moustaches just like the old men of home. There were beans withering on canes, patches of fruit bushes and the smell of rotting leaves. It smelled like home.

‘What is this place?’ Ana asked.

‘This is the allotment where people with no garden can grow their own food, keep chickens and ducks, feed up a pig.’

‘You have one of these?’

‘We did when Dad was alive, but now there’s no time. We buy our stuff where we can,’ Lily replied, scanning the field, looking for Billy. ‘There he is, over in the far corner. Come on.’

‘Don’t worry, I got them hung for you,’ Billy smiled, walking towards them. ‘And who’s this then?’ The man, who had a scar slashed across his face, smiled at the baby and stared at Ana with interest.

‘This is Ana from Greece. She’s Freddie’s…’ Lily always gulped when she told a lie.

‘Aye, the lass from Crete, I’ve heard. We were that sorry about young Fred, but let me shake your hand.’ He grasped her hand tightly, shaking both her and the hand. ‘If it weren’t for you lot my Kenneth would be dead and buried years ago. He were in the Battle for Crete, a gunner. He were marched over them mountains down to the beach, three weeks in that heat, but they got him out to fight again. Brave men in the mountains kept him alive. I won’t have a word said against them. You are very welcome.’

She was taken by surprise at the warmth of his embrace.

‘Thank you,’ she replied.

The rabbits looked skinny and she was glad there were two of them for the pot. She looked round the hut with interest. There was a battered leather chair, a little stove and kettle, the smell of pipe smoke and compost.

‘Did you force some rhubarb?’ Lily asked.

‘Sorry, love, too early. Try me again after Christmas. I got you some fresh eggs.’

‘Where is your ground?’ Ana asked Lily.

‘Just over there,’ she replied, pointing into the far corner of the field. ‘But someone else is using it now.’

‘And a right pig’s ear he’s making of it. The committee is all for giving him his notice.’

‘I can work the land. I can grow my tomatoes, garlic, herbs here,’ Ana smiled, seeing it all in her mind’s eye.

‘Oh, no, lass, no ladies here. This is men’s turf.’

‘Why?’

‘We come here to get away from the missus. It would only upset things,’ said Billy, looking puzzled at her suggestion.

‘In Crete women work in the fields and men go the kafenío to play games and chat.’

‘This is Grimbleton, we do things our way but I dare say there’s merit in your suggestion,’ he winked.

Lily looked at them both and then ferreted into her handbag. ‘I have something here that might change your mind,’ she whispered. Billy looked at the precious tickets. ‘Now that is what I call temptation, lass. But it’s not up to me to decide. There has to be a committee meeting first. Get thee behind me, Satan!’

Lily put the tickets back and smiled at him. ‘Pity. You’ve got an interesting hut.’

‘That’s my little palace, the lion’s den. This is where I can close the door on the world, have a game of cards and a brew, champion.’

‘What’s a brew?’ Ana asked.

‘I’ll show you a brew to put hairs on your chest. Come inside and mind the babby on them sharp slate edges.’

They sat sipping something out of a brown bottle that was thick and tasty, and made Ana’s legs wobble when she stood up. Lily was feeling at peace with the world. Putting her hand on the shelf to steady herself, Ana felt a dusty jam jar with a sticky web around it. It was golden.

‘Honey! You have honey! Look Lily, honey from the bees. How much?’

‘Take it, lass. I can’t stand the stuff. This owd geyser keeps giving me jars.’

‘I buy it from you,’ she offered.

‘No, you won’t. It’s a gift from one grateful dad to a Greek, for services rendered to his son. I’ll be telling him all about you.’

His eyes were twinkling. ‘But if the Winstanley lassie here were to swop yon jar for one of them tickets, I won’t say no!’

11

Susan to the Rescue

Su climbed the stairs with a heavy heart. They’d still no guests for the feast. Miss Lily wore such a worried face. Ana was skinning the fur off the rabbits in the kitchen. Too much cooking and not enough people didn’t make a good party. It was a pity.

She kneeled by her little shrine; a bedside table filled with photos, pressed flowers and pretty berries she’d collected from the park. What would Auntie Betty think? Was her kindly spirit watching over her with a favourable smile? She was trying to do her best to be a good Christian woman, but at times like this perhaps it was better to place offerings of rice and petals to the shrine of the holy Buddha to watch over proceedings too. This was her first dinner party and it must be a success.

Now she had a proper job, thanks to a kind lady at church, Diana, daughter of Dr Unsworth in Green Lane. It was right to keep tradition and go to the biggest church with a high ceiling and dusty banners suspended way above her head. It was lonely at first, sitting in the back row. People stared at her, even in the House of the Lord. Sometimes Joy wriggled and made a noise, and they scurried out into the porch so as not to be a nuisance.

On her second visit it was raining hard and it was a wet walk home, but Diana stopped her car. ‘You must be one of the Winstanley girls,’ she yelled. ‘Collapse the go-chair and hop in. You must be soaked.’

She spoke just like the Chindhe ladies who’d run the Burma canteen, very pukka, but nothing was too much trouble for them in the jungle.

‘My cousin was in Burma. He said it was a beautiful country. I never got that far,’ Diana added. ‘Pity, I think they could have done with a few more Fanys out there. Must be terribly strange for you here.’

Miss Diana Unsworth wore a military-style felt hat and a thick tweed jacket with a cravat in her shirt collar. She had a warm smile and English-rose complexion. Su told her the well-rehearsed story of how she’d landed to some terrible news about Cedric and how the Winstanleys had taken her in. Diana nodded and sighed, and said she would make sure she got a lift each Sunday but they’d have to go early as it was church parade. Su smiled as she told her about the military parades in the church in Rangoon and how she had been a teacher there.

It was Diana who suggested she went to the Education Office with her certificate and try for a post. Now Su could escape to Moorlands School each day, out on the bus up into the high moors above the town, where she could look down over the forest of smoking chimneys in the valley and breathe fresh air, away from the blanket of belching smoke that settled above the mills and factories. No wonder everyone coughed and sneezed.

She loved to sit upstairs on the bus, climbing high past the grander avenues and roads; Victoria Drive and Albert Circus, Regent Rise where the mill owners lived in old houses hidden behind tall trees. She counted roof tops and chimneypots, especially the tall, sculptured, layered-up ones with golden crowns on top, like pagodas. The richer the house, the more chimneys with crowns on, she thought.

One day, she mused, Joy will live in a grand house like that and she would drive through the iron gates in a big saloon car and Auntie Betty would be glad she had sold her bangles to give her niece the chance to be a true English girl.

Moorlands was a special school and not the sort of teaching she had hoped for. But she must try to help simple minds, poor children cast out from their families to live out on the hillside in this stone school. There were children of all ages in there, handicapped toddlers, some lying in cots or sitting in wheelchairs, others sitting like dummies, motionless, with wandering eyes and flickering hands fanning their faces, rocking back and forth. Moorlands was not a happy place.

She was nervous for Joy in their infant nursery, but the little girl paddled around oblivious to the handicapped children, playing with the few toys while the others rattled their cots and shouted. Not the best of jobs but she was doing her best, for she felt so sorry for the abandoned ones.

The staff tried to make the place cheerful with posters and bright colours, stencils of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse on the walls, but the corridors were dark and they smelled of Lysol mops and soiled nappies. The ceilings were high so it was always chilly.

On dry crisp days they were allowed to let the children out into the grounds in basket chairs and on crutches, a line of them tied by the wrist to each other so they didn’t run off. There were some swings and a slide, but it was too cold and icy to let them play properly.

Su’s teaching certificate had not equipped her to deal with these children. She was used to lines of eager faces, chanting words from the board in singsong voices. These poor kids should be in the heart of their families, not out of sight in an institution.

She guessed no one wanted this sort of work and so that’s why they’d been quick to take her on. She didn’t like to dwell on the fact that perhaps she was taken on because she too was different.

It didn’t count that she had an English father and name and education, or that she was well-spoken and well travelled. She was different and it hurt. Thank goodness Joy was lighter-skinned, plump and rosy-cheeked. She must be protected from such hurtful comments and her English would be perfect, so it was worth doing anything to see that her baby got the best out of their new life.

There was no cruelty to the children here. They were well fed and watered, exercised and contained, but days were ruled by the bell and they had a strict routine that the principal said gave their charges a sense of time and normality. But something was missing; something that would make every day different and exciting and stimulating, to distract them from some very bad habits.

The staff sat around the staff room, smoking, knitting, eyeing her with interest. One guy had his feet on the table in defiance when she entered. ‘It’s come to a poor do when we’ve got to employ foreigners,’ he sneered, loud enough for everyone to hear.

‘Come off it, Alf. We were quite happy to let the Poles and French and Czechs come to our aid when it mattered in the Battle of Britain. Give the lass a chance,’ said another, coming to Su’s defence.

‘I’m a qualified teacher. I know Shakespeare and Wordsworth. I was taught by fine English ladies in a Christian girls’ school. It is true I have no experience with,’ Su hesitated to find the right word, ‘such special children, but if you will help me I will try,’ she replied.

‘I’m sure you have qualifications, Mrs Winstanley…such as they are. You should be grateful for work at all, considering your status, and once our men are retrained and come back to claim their rightful places in our schools…’ the bald man with the ugly sneer snapped back. ‘But if you’re not happy here…If it’s not good enough for you…’ he threatened.

It was better to ignore him and the embarrassed looks on the faces of the other staff members and sit as far away as she could.

She needed this job and the nursery place, but it was sapping her spirit to feel so out of her depth and helpless. If only someone would show her what to do!

It was a relief at weekends not to have to travel through town away from the noisy normality of Division Street. It was hard to pretend her job was anything other than a miserable chore. Ana was jealous. If truth were told she’d much prefer to swap places with her any day, such was her frustration.

She opened her Bible at random for inspiration and guidance. There had to be a way to make the Winstanleys come to their dinner. She didn’t want Maria to be disappointed by the poor turn-out after all she’d done for them.

She closed her eyes and prayed again, then read the text and burst into a beam of pure delight.

Susan came bounding down the stairs at the double, waving her little leather Bible. ‘I have the answer to our prayers.’ The boycotting of their feast had lain heavy on everyone’s heart. Now she had a grin on her face from ear to ear.

‘This morning I am reading a passage from St Luke in my Bible Notes: the parable tells how rich guests refuse to come to the feast and the servant is told to, “go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring hither the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind.” Suddenly it comes in a flash. That is what we do now, Lily. Trust me, but hurry!’

There was no need to whisk the go-chair down the cobbled streets back into Grimbleton when Gertie was already parked ready and willing. There were no beggars by the bus stops on the way to Santini’s as they rattled through the football traffic, afire with a mission to find replacements.

The café was crowded out, and Lily slipped into the back kitchen in search of Maria. There was a cheery large woman with a head full of curlers wrapped in a headscarf serving customers as Maria came bounding down the stairs, took one look at their faces and stopped in her tracks. ‘Tonight, it’s not off, is it?’

‘No, no.’ Susan swallowed, seeing that Maria was so eager to come. ‘It’s just we have a few spare places due to Daw Esme being indisposed with a bad cold, and the honourable brother-in-law having a prior engagement,’ she lied.

‘Yes, poor Mother is full of germs,’ Lily said, backing her up. ‘If you want, you can bring a friend or one of your sisters-in-law,’ she suggested, but Maria threw up her hands in horror.

‘No more Santinis! I have enough of them They drive me crazy, and Enzo no show up so my friend, Queenie here, leave her cuppa to help me out. Queenie, come and meet Burma Su. I’ve told you about Su, and Ana from Greece, and this is Lily…Queenie Quigley, shampooer to the stars, come for a rest from old man Lavaroni’s hairdressers. Help me out until that lazy son of Toni turn up. She is very good friend, like you,’ said Maria, rushing off with a tray to see to her customers.

It was time to seize the moment. ‘A friend of Maria’s is very welcome to join us. We’re making dinner and there is plenty to go round. We don’t want any empty seats. You’re welcome to join us.’

Queenie mopped her brow and smiled. ‘That’s the nicest thing that’s happened all week. I’d be delighted. My hubby works shifts. I go in one door and he goes out the next. Having a meal cooked for me will be a real treat, thanks, ducks.’

So that was how Queenie Quigley came to be sitting opposite them at the table, in a paisley print blouse with smocking across the shoulders and all her brown curls pinned neatly into a pompadour film-star style, smoking a cigarette from a holder, next to the other guests they had managed to rake up at the last minute.

The Almighty worked in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. His cohorts must have been hard at work on their behalf this afternoon. He had provided some hand-picked ’uns here and no mistake. How else could they have found such wonderful guests at such short notice, Lily mused with satisfaction much later. It was all a matter of heavenly timing.

On the way out of Santini’s, who should be rushing in the opposite direction but the lovely Diana Unsworth from Green Lane, daughter of Dr Unsworth, the girl who gave Susan regular lifts back from the parish church in her smart Morris 8 Tourer? Lily recognised her from the Girl Guides’ Association. She was Captain of the Parish Church Troop and a nursing sister in the hospital. Soon they would all be collaborating together in the Guide and Brownie Review. Her reputation for being a stickler for detail went before her, and Lily was a little in awe of this striking girl in her riding jodhpurs and headscarf. They stopped to greet each other.

‘I am so glad to meet you,’ said Susan, turning to Lily for approval. ‘This is Miss Diana who gives me a lift to church. You are the answer to my prayer.’

‘Oh, I say,’ said the young lady, smiling at Lily, ‘how intriguing!’

‘We are having a last-minute supper, Ana and me, a thank you for the kindness of Grimbleton friends.’

Lily hovered, holding out her hand. ‘We’re so pleased to see you. We’d be honoured if you would join us tonight, if you are free. I am sorry it’s so last minute,’ she added, hoping the Lord would understand the necessity of a white lie.

‘I always think that the best suppers are usually impromptu, Susan. I would be delighted but I’ve a guest of my own from the hospital staying tonight. You know Eva Matin, the coloured girl from South Africa training to be a midwife? She comes to church whenever she can, but living in the Nurses’ Home is not much fun, so I was just looking to see what was on at the King’s Theatre.’

‘Then bring her along too. The more the merrier at our table, I say. It’s good to meet new people,’ Lily found herself saying, much to her surprise. This was no time for shillyshallying. Seize the moment, she smiled. Her resolve was stiffening against any opposition now. That would make six guests and that was enough to make the party go with a swing.

‘Eva sits in front of me in church. She always looks so tall and elegant in her navy-blue nurse’s uniform and cap; an interesting woman, I think,’ said Susan, her eyes bright with excitement.

Once the missing Winstanley place settings were accounted for, they spluttered back to Division Street in Gertie to tell Ana the good news.

It was true that the newly acquired guests might not be poor or maimed or blind, but two of them were nurses and Maria and Queenie ministered comforts to the hungry and weary, and deserved a treat. That would have to do.

‘I was obedient to the spirit of the text. This is the Lord’s work,’ Susan muttered as she searched for napkins to fold into cloth lilies.

The afternoon was spent trying to keep little fingers out of mischief. Ana was putting the finishing touches to her special rabbit stew and the meze. Everyone had gone to the match. The streets were deserted. Esme had left wrapped up like a fur parcel, determined to sit out the match in style.

Lily did her stint on the stall with bad grace. There were a hundred and one little finishing touches she would like to do to the dining room. The Market Hall was like a ghost town. She stood in the entrance, listening for the roars that meant a goal had been scored. It echoed right around the streets but the silence was deafening.

Nil, nil at half-time. A goalless draw was the worst of results. And then one of the butcher’s boys ran in: ‘They’ve scored. Walshie has scored! We’re winning…’

How Lily wished she was side by side with Walt, cheering the lads on to victory. She hoped Billy was enjoying his ticket. He had sent them a bunch of late chrysanthemums as a thank you.

One of these days she’d make Levi do the Saturday shift. Someone had to keep the Winstanley till ringing, but why was it always her? She arrived home tired and jaded among the crush of exuberant football fans chattering on the bus. Mother had already disappeared up to bed with hot milk and brandy.

‘I shouldn’t have stayed for full time but it was that exciting.’

‘It was silly to go,’ Lily replied, having little sympathy.

‘Someone had to represent the family. Yer dad wouldn’t have wanted us to miss the match. I’ll give tonight a miss, though.’

‘Please yourself, but you’re going to miss a good evening. Why don’t you get up and come down later to meet our guests? It’s not like you to give in to a cold.’

‘I don’t know what’s come over you, Lil. Not an ounce of sympathy for a mother with flu…’ Esme turned her face into the pillow, looking rather washed out.

‘It’s just a cold, not flu. It’ll pass,’ Lily snapped. This was Esme’s way of opting out, an excuse not to take sides, and Lily had no sympathy. The whole bunch of them, Walter included, had let her down with their feeble excuses.

Ivy kept out of the way at first, and the toddlers were bathed and put to bed early after Neville. Nothing must ever spoil his routine. The dining room had a display of fresh flowers in the crystal vase and an embroidered tablecloth with lace edging. There were pretty tablemats with ladies in crinolines, which came out when company was entertained. The fire was stoked up when Ivy’s back was turned so she didn’t see how much coal they were sneaking from the ration. This was not a night for skimping.

By now, Ivy was huffing and puffing in the kitchen, sneering at everyone’s efforts but curious to know why there were still seven place settings on show. No one was going to enlighten her.

‘I wish I could beat her out of here like my Auntie Betty would shoo the servant boys off the veranda with a switch brush,’ Susan smiled while making up a little bowl of leaves and shavings of petals and chopped apple, and placing them by the door. ‘This is what we do for good luck,’ she smiled. ‘To ward off evil,’ she finished, looking pointedly at Ivy.

Ana stared at the jam jar of precious olive oil, green and golden, shining before her. She sniffed the top and smiled. The kitchen table was laden for the feast: potatoes and boiled eggs, sardines and anchovies, chopped dried herbs, the best they could find.

The rabbits were seared in a pan. The pickled onions and shallots was pierced with a few cloves. She had begged a tin of plum tomatoes, bay leaves and some of Maria’s rough wine. As it all bubbled away the aromas drifted into her nostrils. She could see Mama’s cooking pot on the fire simmering. It was as near as she could get to home and it was enough. Everyone kept coming in to sniff the air and taste the juices.

The yoghurt wasn’t quite set. In desperation they had added rennet to make a sort of junket, with orange juice and bottled raspberries, and it had turned out quite delicious. Lily contributed butter to make some pastry balls, dipped in fat with honey topping. They kept disappearing as fast as she made them until she shooed everyone out of her domain.

It was funny that she didn’t mind doing all the work while Susan did the fancy bits. Su had found them special guests but she would get all the praise for her food. Lily held everything together like sticking plaster. They were a good team.

Yet in her mind’s eye was the field where the rabbits were kept and the overgrown lines of rotting vegetables lying neglected. She wanted to dig and grow things again, feel the earth between her fingers. The back garden was too small, but Billy’s field was the place. Somehow she would make herself a garden and grow all the things her heart yearned for, and no one was going to stop her just because she was a woman.

12

The Olive Oil Club

They waited nervously for the first guests to arrive and everyone was introduced with a small glass of Christmas sherry that Mother had been hoarding, a peace offering for her cowardice. Maria’s gift of a bottle of Italian wine, alongside Susan’s bottle, soon loosened the shyness and conversation flowed so that the room was filled with noisy chatter and no one noticed how late it was getting.

Lily dressed with care in her winter woollen dress with cross-over lapels. It was in a saxe blue that complimented her eyes. It was sad that her family chose to miss a rare treat. There was even a scoop each of best vanilla ice cream, which Maria had carried here on the bus, wrapped up in thick newspaper.

Lily wondered if Walt would change his mind and join them, but in truth she was quite relieved when he didn’t arrive. All girls together was turning out to be much more fun.

Diana Unsworth arrived with a hunk of best Lancashire Tasty, which must have used up all her rations for weeks to come.

‘One of the advantages of being a good doctor’s daughter is we’re always getting gifts left on our doorsteps and no questions asked,’ she offered.

Queenie Quigley brought a large box of pre-war chocolates in a heart-shaped box, and everyone stared at them in amazement.

‘Where did you get those?’ sighed Diana, rolling her eyes and licking her lips in anticipation. For a proper English lady she was turning out to be good fun.

‘Ask me no questions and I tell you no lies, me ducks,’ winked Queenie. ‘Let’s just say I relieved old man Lavaroni, him being a diabetic, of an embarrassing gift from a grateful client for services rendered.’ She nodded and winked again. ‘I may only wash the heads and sweep the cuttings, but let’s put it this way: a certain star treading the boards of the King’s Theatre, even as I speak, is not quite the gentleman he appears, and not quite as young as his black hair would suggest. My lips are sealed but the proof is here.’ There was dye still clinging to her fingertips. ‘We had to open the shop at midnight so his secret might not be revealed.’

Queenie and her husband, Arthur, came north after being blitzed out of their house in Kent, evacuated with their children for the duration and somehow they had never got round to going back. She’d taken to Grimbleton, finding her niche doing even more jobs than Maria.

Gianni Lavaroni’s Hair Salon was the classy establishment favoured by the theatricals, and the old man was taking on a new barber. ‘He’s got one of them POWs from Macaroni Camp starting soon, now they’re being released from prison. This chap jumps off a lorry, walks in and asks for a job. Old Lavaroni can’t resist cheap labour-I should know,’ she laughed. ‘He takes the lad on there and then. I shall send him down to you for his lunches, Maria,’ she winked.

‘You will do no such thing,’ Maria snapped. ‘My brothers no like prisoners of war. No like mixing with lazy Italian scum.’

‘The war’s over now,’ Ana said gently.

‘You tell that to Angelo and Toni, with poor Marco still in bed,’ Maria replied bitterly. If only he would grow stronger, but the least effort tired him out. He was shrinking before her eyes.

They were all used to seeing lorries full of prisoners, in their funny uniforms with circles on their backs, going out to the farms and working on the road repairs. The Italians were always singing and shouting and whistling after a pretty pair of legs.

Lily looked around and smiled, contented by this rich company, such an unlikely roomful of guests, another motley bunch of liquorice allsorts. It was worthy of a photo line-up if only there was film in the box Brownie camera.

Queenie and Maria were dark and spicy, loud and sharp-edged. Maria’s cheeks were flushed with wine. Her delight at being given a feast was worth all their efforts. Then there was quiet Eva, with chocolate-brown-coloured skin and fine cheekbones. How gracefully she sat, observing everyone with interest.

Ana was wearing a bright emerald spotted blouse, made up from remnants from a market stall, which set off her coiled red hair. She was flushed with the success of her dishes.

Diana was wearing a bright coconut-pink knitted jumper with intricate lacy stitches, which set off her rose complexion and blonde curls. She sat like a mannequin, straight-backed.

She and Lily were the same age but had never socialised together because Diana went to Harrogate Ladies’ College and then joined the FANY in the war. She was a perfect lady, a good listener who asked questions of them all, interested, but saying very little about herself whilst encouraging Eva to join in as best she could.

Eva was full of her work at Grimbleton General and the shortages of staff and the new National Health Service to come, and how many of their staff came from overseas as refugees. She was hoping to go back to South Africa once she had completed her training.

Ana was listening intently and told them about her voluntary work with the Red Cross in Crete. She lifted her glass and smiled across the table.

‘Yámas! Cheers.’

‘Yámas, Billy Eckersley!’ Lily replied.

‘Thank you, Lily. Without your rabbit friend we are stuck.’ They toasted Allotment Billy for his services.

‘Yámas, thank you, Maria, for many happy Sundays,’ added Susan, raising her glass too. She was wearing her best silk striped longyi in silver and black as a traditional touch. Her ruby earrings glittered in the light and she looked like the wrapper from a blackcurrant liquorice sweet.

‘To Maria, and Marco, may he get well soon,’ they toasted. ‘Yámas?’

‘Bottoms up! Let’s have a singsong,’ said Queenie, jumping onto the piano stool. ‘I’ll have you know I’m going to be playing for the new dancing school if I can fit it round my afternoon shift.’

‘Not so loud then, Daw Esme is sick,’ Susan whispered with alarm, not wanting to cause any trouble.

‘Don’t be minding her,’ Lily shouted back. ‘It’ll do her good to hear a bit of fun. She likes a bit of a singsong and if you put some ballet music in it, she’ll think it classy. Classy, she can stand. It’s marching bands she can’t abide since our Freddie went.’ There was a pause. ‘Well, you know how it is with the war, memories.’

Maria bent her head, thinking of Marco, back on the ward, fighting for breath, and the handsome soldier who was sent to war and came back a cripple. If she had not come here tonight, she would have sat alone in the flat. Nonna was taking Rosa home and to church tomorrow morning.

Diana thought of the lines of shrouds she had ticked off, the nurses caught in the blast of gunfire, the mess parties, the concert shows and the smell of the desert air. How far away all that was now. Why had she come back? Grimbleton was so damp and predictable, but tonight it was turning out to be fun.

Su had never seen the room sparkle as it did tonight, firelight and fresh flowers, pretty things and dresses and smiling faces, rubies, pearls, bangles. The room had come alive and it was all her doing. Thank you, she thought, seeing the little bowl of offerings and the Bible.

They stood around the piano, singing songs from the shows while Queenie rattled the tinny keyboard with gusto: ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’.

‘Let’s dance, come, I show you…’ shouted Ana, springing to life, gathering them all in a circle, raising her hands in the air, circling around the table in time to the music, laughing, her curls shimmering in the firelight. ‘See, this is how we dance in Crete.’

They linked arms and circled and laughed as they kicked their legs and folded them across in a pattern, round and round until Lily was dizzy.

Then there was a rattle of the door in the hall and the sound of the other Winstanleys returning home from their evenings out. Was it really that time, already?

Lily scuttled to the door, not wanting any unpleasantness to spoil their fun.

‘You decided to stay, then?’ said Ivy, taking off her felt hat and sniffing the air. ‘You can hear the racket in the street, and the curtains still open for all to see.’

‘What a grand do you’ve missed. Ana and Susan did us proud, a proper feast with cheese and then chocolates. What a treat! Now we’re having a bit of a dance.’

At the mention of chocolates, Ivy made for the door. ‘Is it still going on? I hope you saved some for us, seeing as it’s our electric and gas you’re using up.’ She peered round the door with a look of amazement. ‘I hope you didn’t wake our Neville with that racket? You were right, Levi, it’s a right League of Nations in there, even a darkie sitting at the table…The house reeks of olive oil and garlic…a right olive oil club they’ve got here.’

‘Come in, Ivy,’ shouted Ana, drunk with the excitement of good company. ‘Come and join the dancing.’

Ivy was in the room like a shot, looking down at the disarray of plates and glasses. ‘They’re all drunk, and Lil’s made herself right at home with Mother’s best china, I see,’ she sneered.

‘Keep your hair on. Mother said it was the least we could do, seeing how many there would be of them and how few of us,’ Lily replied with a hard edge to her voice. That woman had more neck than a giraffe, trying to muscle in on their party food like a vulture at a carcass.

‘Let me introduce you to our guests, This is my sister-in-law, Ivy, and my brother, Levi,’ she offered, going round the table slowly so that Ivy would catch every name. ‘Maria Santini from Italy, Queenie Quigley, late of Kent, Eva Matin from Cape Town, South Africa, and Diana Unsworth from Green Lane. I’m sure you recognise her name.’ She couldn’t resist making the point and the last name hovered in the air with promise.

‘Diana Unsworth? What, Dr Unsworth’s daughter?’ whispered Ivy, all of a quiver. ‘How nice to meet you…I did not realise you would be coming.’ She turned to Levi who was hovering in the hall, half whispering with embarrassment, ‘Mind your P’s and Q’s, one of the Unsworths is here!’ The shine of her saccharine smile fooled no one.

‘Of course, we had a prior engagement otherwise we’d have loved to join you all,’ she minced, sitting down in Susan’s empty chair, stretching across for the chocolates, disappointed to see that there were only wrappers left.

Lily smiled. It served her right to miss the treats. It was worth all the washing-up and clearing-away just to see that look of disappointment on her puckered lips. The box was empty and the wine all drunk.

It hit midnight but no one wanted to leave, and when they did, everyone promised to meet up again for another supper. Ivy and Levi soon disappeared, leaving the three women to clear away the debris.

Ana surveyed the table with relish, wine and cigarette smoke, all the pleasures of a feast. Her belly was full and her heart content. It was good to entertain strangers and welcome them into the home. In Crete it was the custom to give the guests the best of all you had, however little.

She fingered the leftovers with a smile. If only Aliki and Stelios, could see how women could entertain as well as men, cook and drink, dress up, gossip and dance. These were not the smells of home but friendship and kindness smelled the same in any country. She thought of that old saying about friendship: we have shared bread and salt together, joy and sorrow.

Joy there had been in abundance, but the sorrow of their secrets lay heavy on her heart. Only when the truth was shared about Freddie would true friendships ever begin.

But it was enough for tonight, she sighed as she crept into the attic.

‘It was good tonight,’ she whispered to Su as she climbed into her narrow little bed. ‘Good to be giving, not always taking charity…yes?’

There was no reply but Su lay smiling in her sleep. One thing was certain: women may be made for men, but women together could have just as good a time. She was already looking forward to the next gathering.

13

A Dickens of a Christmas

‘No more carols on the piano, Lil, they’re giving me one of my heads,’ shouted Esme, who hated Christmas with a fervour bordering on obsession. But it was no use pretending as the weeks were ticked off to the festivities that the season could be ignored any longer. ‘Nothing jolly this year, not after all our sorrows. It wouldn’t be right to be giddy.’

‘There’s never been a giddy Christmas in this house, and certainly not after Dad or Freddie. But we’ve kiddies to think of now. I know how you feel but we have to do something for their sakes.’ Lily was hoping for dinner in the dining room with the fire lit and a few token decorations, a proper Christmas tree on display, a bird and all the trimmings. ‘Freddie wouldn’t begrudge us cheering up his children, now, would he?’

‘You know, it’s just a pagan ceremony. All that expense for a few days of indigestion.’

‘Oh, Mother, it’ll be different this year with Su and Ana. They’ve never had a proper English Christmas. It’ll take your mind off things,’ Lily argued.

She loved Christmas: all the smells of spices and cooking, tinsel and lantern lights, carols by candlelight and the excitement of hidden presents. She wanted to see the faces of Dina and Joy on Christmas morning when they unwrapped their knitted dollies and toy cot.

It had taken an advert in the Gazette to acquire those items second-hand at extortionate prices. Walt mustn’t know that the cash came out of her wedding fund. He thought she spoiled them enough as it was. Perhaps when they had children of their own he’d understand how important it was to give them a good time. Poor old Walt had had so little fun in his life, she sighed. It was hard to ever imagine him young and acting daft.

Why must Christmas Day be a cold quick affair: overcooked chicken pieces, a currantless steamed pudding and no crackers? She wanted Ana and Su to feel the warmth of festive joy in this arctic weather; a Dickens of a Christmas that would sweep away the gloom and chill of this terrible winter freeze.

If they could find olive oil for their first thanksgiving dinner then somewhere they could scrounge spices and dried fruit, extra sugar for treats. Levi would not see Neville and Ivy short. Walt and his mother, Enid Greenalgh and her mother too, would come for their dinner, so all their rations would add to the feast. No one would want to be left out of the fun and games.

Since Diana was taking an interest in Susan and Ana, Levi’s wife was not so quick to miss out on any social events on offer. They were even going to attend the Messiah in the parish church, much to Esme’s dismay.

‘I hope you’re not all going Popish on me,’ she sniffed, but in the end the feast of sacred music was too good to miss. Mother dolled herself in her best camel coat with a fox-fur tippet dangling, and a fierce military felt hat.

What a formidable bunch the Winstanleys were, Lily thought as they walked en masse down the tunnelled paths into town by torchlight and gaslamp, dressed up in furs and macs against the chill. Three generations of family in harmony for once, a show of strength, she hoped, for the future.

Next year Walt, by then her husband, would be taking her arm, but choral singing wasn’t his forte. Being tone deaf must be a terrible burden. Bless him! Walt was being so patient with all her busyness. The whole town was cockahoop since the Grasshoppers were into the next round of the Cup. This time she would not be missing the game. The paper was full of the team, and Pete Walsh in particular. She’d seen him stop to sign autographs at the end of the last home match. He’d looked up at her and waved, and she’d felt her legs go all wobbly. Feeling guilty, she’d scuttled off before he could catch her up.

If only Freddie and Father were here too. Christmas could be such a lonely time when childhood memories came flooding back.

They all enjoyed a good sing, and stood for the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus. This effort to be sociable was Mother’s one token to the season, however, and it was Lily who ended up buying gifts for the family on her behalf and overseeing all the food preparations.

If Christmas was ever to happen at Waverley House it would be up to her to organise the troops, but it was getting harder trying to fit in with everyone’s plans. Mother thought it disloyal to want any seasonal fun, but the children ought to have a bit of what she’d had as a child: carols and sleigh bells, parties and stockings too. It felt like treading on eggshells trying to please everyone but herself. Freddie wouldn’t begrudge a bit of singing and dancing, especially in this cold spell. Her chilblains were red raw.

When Lily was playing with Dina and Joy it was easy to forget there was a dark winter outside. She could almost forget that half the family was missing. Children stopped her looking back to what once was and made the future all there was to cling to now. Her promise to watch over them growing up was precious.

But what would have happened if Fred was still alive and they had both turned up? That would have been a right facer. Now there were only secrets to hide, she sighed, and it wasn’t getting any easier. Then there was the Guide and Brownie Christmas Review looming large.

It was funny how you never saw someone for ages and then kept bumping into them all the time, she smiled. Diana kept popping up in shops and round corners. At the first joint rehearsal there she was directing proceedings like an army drill parade.

The Guides were doing sketches and the various Brownie packs individual items. ‘Daisy Darling and the Tin Soldiers’ was not going very well. It was the costumes that let them down, and the hats hadn’t even arrived yet.

‘There you are, Lily. Nice to see you again.’ Diana sprung down the hall. ‘Is this lot yours? Who made the rig-outs?’ she sniggered. ‘Quite an interesting interpretation of a military theme.’

‘They’re awful. Susan’s tried to re-jig them but they can’t stand up like that,’ Lily replied, looking at the costumes with dismay.

‘Can’t you make them sailors, then?’

‘Nope, they are meant to be tin soldiers,’ she said. ‘The hired hats with pompoms will look good.’

‘In my book, best to keep it simple. Get them to wear a school shirt and make some epaulettes with tassles for their shoulders. That’ll do.’

‘We can do that in a jiffy, thanks.’

‘Wish everything was so easy,’ Diana sighed. ‘I have to keep telling myself that if I can open a field hospital in a desert storm, with sand and flies and dust, I can lick a few Guides into shape. I did enjoy the supper. You must all come to me next. Eva was thrilled to be asked too. She wants to cook some South African dish, billy bong, I think she said. Ana and her olive oil did well, not tasted that for years. How’s Maria’s husband?’

‘They settled him down again. He’s hoping to be out for Christmas.’

‘Frightful shame about his chest wound. It must have done some damage for it not to heal. Still, where there’s life there’s hope, and he’s young.’

‘So are we,’ Lily sighed.

‘Sometimes I feel about fifty in this dreadful Guide uniform. There are plans to change the design. Why do I live my life permanently in uniform? Boarding school, then the FANY, now guides-where will it end? I suppose it saves on clothing coupons. My hunting jacket is so threadbare, Mummy threatens to carve up Great-Grandmama’s riding habit. Listen to me, must dash…Jennifer Wolstencroft, I can see you slouching. Stand up straight. You’re too young for a dowager’s hump!

‘Don’t forget the dress rehearsal, Lily. I’ve got a few surprises up my sleeve. You don’t fancy being the back end of a cow, do you?’

And that was how Lily came to be slithering across the stage in a dusty old pantomime costume instead of sitting in the pictures with Walt.

She was coughing and blind as a bat, with Diana pushing her forwards. ‘One two three, collapse, one, two, three, kick out…’ Damn, that was her shin! When would she ever learn to say no?

The following evening, Ana was tearful, watching the faded paper twirls being fixed to the corners of the room, trying to explain to anyone who would listen how different Christmases in Crete used to be.

‘We have feast of Agios Vasilios, we sing kalenda songs with Christmas pie and special bread, roasted kid, oregano, potatoes. On Christmas Eve we give thick soup and sausages, smoked meats-the nine cooked dishes-and afterwards honey and sweetbreads.’

‘Stop! My mouth is watering,’ Lily laughed.

‘It was before the war. We share our food around the village,’ Ana sighed. ‘I know it is not the same here. If only Freddie was here…but I will do best for Dina’s sake,’ she whispered, hoping Esme was out of earshot.

There was still the one unspoken rule in Division Street that Freddie’s name was never mentioned, especially in front of Esme. The shame of his antics and the sorrow at his untimely death were her daily burden. He was banished to the top right-hand drawer of the cabinet.

Cedric, the mysterious cousin, lived in there too, brought out and dusted down like some best china ornament, put out on display for company if awkward questions were asked. His photograph had been cut out from a magazine and stuck in a frame. He explained Su and Joy’s presence in the family home. Everyone was told that her husband had died of some awful wounds somewhere far enough away for no one to enquire further.

Then the phantom husband was put back in the locked drawer full of secrets in the mahogany dresser, which contained strange birth certificates, letters of sponsorship and the one photograph that showed Freddie under a pagoda in Pagan alongside a smiling Susan.

Then Su decided to bring out this snapshot to share in the celebrations.

‘Put that away,’ said Ana.

‘Why should I?’ snapped Su. ‘He is family, my family. Why does he have to stay out of sight? I want Joy to see her daddy on Christmas morning.’

‘You tell her, Lily. Put it away! He is my husband. I am number one wife, not her!’

‘That is rubbish. This is me and him, not you. Find your own photograph. I am number one wife. He will stay…’

Everyone knew Ana hated that photo and would have shredded it many times. Now she lurched forward to flatten it down. Su pushed it up again. Up and down the poor snapshot went

‘Miss Lily, I am number one wife.’

‘She is big liar!’

‘Stop it, you two! No one is number one wife,’ Lily snapped, at the end of her tether. ‘Stop this quarrelling. I’m tired of everyone snapping and snarling. This is supposed to be the season of goodwill to all men. I’m sick of it. Do your own Christmas!’ She fled upstairs to her back bedroom and flung herself down on her blue satin eiderdown.

Let them all go hang. She’d had enough argy-bargy. Even Walt was acting peculiar because she hadn’t made their date. Every time she had called at his door he was down the pub, or so his mother said. Let them make Christmas happen without me. See if I care. She stamped her fist on the pillow.

Earlier that week, preparations for the Review had been frantic. Lily had thirty excited Brownies to contain, all wanting to be front of stage. Kathleen Walsh had a sweet singing voice and she was Daisy Darling, the heroine. She was the young sister of Pete, whose mother was ‘caught on the change’, Esme had whispered once. This unexpected happy event was the talk of the neighbour-hood at the time.

The paper hats were dished out on pain of death of tearing them, and the simplified uniform was passable. Diana was trying to organise everyone, despite a hacking cough and an obvious temperature.

‘Go home,’ Lily suggested.

‘Not until I get the girls singing “Nymphs and Shepherds Come Away” in tune,’ she croaked.

‘I don’t think they’ll make the Manchester Children’s Orpheus Choir, however many times you practise. Go home.’

‘I should have chosen “White Christmas”,’

‘If you don’t go home, there’ll be you in bed and us without a director. Go home!’

‘We need to practise the cow with the pianist.’

‘I’ll find someone. Go home.’

‘Are you sure? You will all be coming on Boxing Day to our gathering? I’d like Mummy and Daddy to meet you all. They are intrigued. Bring the whole family, if you like.’

‘We’ll see, but if you don’t go home, Nurse, it’ll be your hospital bed we’ll be visiting.’ Lily found herself being as bossy as Diana for once.

The Guides soon disbanded in a thunderous rush from the stage and the little ones were put through their paces. Mothers were gathering at the back of the church hall, waiting to collect their offspring, waving and distracting the artistes from their performing.

Muriel, the pianist, wanted to practise the cow dance. Lily didn’t see the point.

‘I need to get the timing right,’ Muriel insisted, turning to the waiting relatives and asking for a volunteer.

‘Come on, will anyone give Brown Owl a helping hand?’ No one spoke.

‘Will a chap do?’ yelled a familiar voice as Pete Walsh, who often came to collect his sister, came striding down the hall with a silly grin on his face.

‘There’s no need.’ Lily blushed beetroot. ‘We can skip it, Muriel, for tonight.’

‘Not so fast. There’s a volunteer. Let’s be having you, hero of the hour. Oh, it’s you, Pete…saw you on Saturday. Like a stag, you were, leaping across that pitch. They must feed you on Guinness. They said there was an England scout in the stand. Wait till my husband hears about this…’ Would Muriel Scott ever shut up?

Lily didn’t want Pete up so close. She hadn’t made it up with the footballer since the morning of the tickets in the hall, even though he always tried to be friendly.

‘Do you want me front or back?’ He burst out laughing at his words. ‘No offence.’

‘What’s he on about?’

‘Don’t be saucy, young man. Lily here is far too innocent. She leads and you follow.’ His mischievous eyes got Lily all confused.

‘She’s the gun turret and I’m in the rear?’ he asked.

‘Now stop your cheek and concentrate,’ said Lily. ‘We haven’t got all night. Kathleen needs to be going to bed. I stand and you grasp my waist and listen to the counting. We’ll do it without the costume so you’ll get the gist,’ she ordered, trying to pretend this was not in front of all her girls.

‘I see…like this,’ he chuckled, and grabbed her by the waist.

‘Not so tight. I can’t breathe,’ she croaked. ‘It’s one, two, three, and lift your left leg…’

They fumbled and tried again. It was a disaster and everyone roared as they collapsed in a heap on the stage. His weight was dragging her down. She looked up into his eyes, all hot under the collar.

Muriel banged out the chorus line from a Laurel and Hardy film. ‘Doop di doop. Doop di doop, Tiddly pom. Tiddly pom…Doop di doop,’ came the voice in the rear.

‘Stop it, you’re making me laugh,’ Lily giggled. If Walt could see her now, he’d have a fit. She was glad she had clean underwear on.

‘Synchronise your legs,’ yelled Muriel. ‘One, two, three, up. One, two, three, down, and change over. Then turn.’

‘How do we turn?’ Pete called. Then he trod on the back of her heels. ‘Sorry, sorry.’

‘Not half as sorry as I am,’ she snorted back, trying not to laugh and lose her balance.

‘What we need is two pints of Wilson’s best bitter and then we’ll make sweet music together. It’s all in the timing, isn’t it, Mrs Scott?’

‘Now stop that, young man, or I’ll tell the Gazette just what a naughty boy you are. One more time after two…’

‘Play it again, Sam,’ he whispered, and this time it worked. In step with the music they ambled across the stage and managed a turn without falling over.

There was a clap from the back of the hall.

Now they had to put on the costume and hope for the best. Lily was so hot she couldn’t breathe. ‘Stop, we’ve done enough.’

‘Oh, no, I’m not coming out of here until we’re feet perfect,’ Pete said, squeezing her in a ticklish spot.

For the first time in years she felt like a girl again, tousled, light of foot, harum-scarum, chasing Freddie’s gang. For a few precious minutes she forgot she was Brown Owl and Walt’s bride-to-be, and that troubled her. She hadn’t felt this fun when she rehearsed with Diana.

‘If you need a permanent replacement, you know where to come,’ Pete laughed, and Lily felt her neck flushing up.

‘Thanks, but Diana will make it on the night. I’m sorry I was short with you the other week, only we were that busy…’ It was the best she could think of on the spur of the moment.

‘Not another word, love. I know how things are for you with Christmas coming up. It’s not a good time when there’s folks missing at the table. Your brother thought the world of you, you know. He wrote many a time. He was worried for you…’

‘What about?’

‘Nothing. I spoke out of turn. He said you were the backbone of the family.’

‘The doormat, more like,’ she said.

‘No, he didn’t say that…I’m sorry.’

‘It’s what he meant-Doormat Lil.’

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Pete said, pulling himself out of the costume.

‘Don’t worry, you’ve done your good deed for the day,’ she snapped, not looking him in the eye. Why did he have to spoil things by reminding her of Freddie? What had her brother been saying in his letters home?

The moment was over, the magic gone.

Now Lily sat sulking in her room, going over that conversation when there was a knock on the door, a gentle tentative tap of knuckles on wood. ‘Miss Lily, we’ve made a cuppa char for you. We are sorry to upset the applecart. We’ll help you make a jolly Christmas do. You tell us what to do…’

Ana and Su were careful not to break their truce. Nothing was too much trouble. Su made a little altar of winter jasmine flowers and holly berries, and Ana brought pictures of the Holy Virgin and saints framed with shells and gold paint from the Greek Orthodox church in Manchester as peace offerings for Lily’s bedside table.

‘You are number one friend to us. Forgive us, we are silly girls who quarrel over no-good boy.’

‘I’m sorry, but the festive season is such hard work and it’s bringing back so many memories,’ was all there was left to say.

The Review had gone down a treat. The hall was jam-packed with proud parents and Lily’s Brownies had not let her down. Diana turned up for their star turn in the cow costume and they got lots of laughs. Even Walt thought she’d done well and that was praise indeed.

Now she must turn her mind to all the last-minute preparations to make their Christmas Day as bearable as it could be under the circumstances. She used to love the hustle and bustle in town, the falling snow and the pretty decorations in the shops, the tinsel trimmings, decorating the tree and making secret purchases, but it was so hard to get in the mood this year. Then she recalled the heart of the Christmas Story, about a babe in a manger, refugees and visitors, and it sort of cheered her up. There must always be room at the inn at Waverley House. Freddie would have wanted it that way.

On Christmas morning Joy was tearing open everyone’s parcels and Dina chewed on the paper, not really understanding what it was all about. Neville had a stocking full of toys and wouldn’t share them. The house filled up with ancient relatives and friends, and the joint of pork miraculously stretched to fill all the plates.

Enid brought a tin of mincemeat pies, which Su and Ana had never eaten before, and Walter’s mother brought an apology for a Christmas cake that cut into crumbs. They sat hugging the fire, waiting to be entertained.

They sang carols and played charades whilst the older ladies dozed in armchairs. Ivy was decked up in a new velvet dress and was as sweet as pie for the day, knowing that Diana Unsworth and her parents had invited the family for a drink at Green Lane on Boxing Day and she was desperate to be included.

Why couldn’t every day be like Christmas Day-no back-biting, plenty to eat, surprises round every corner, Lily wondered. Ana and Susan rose to the occasion. Where they found that gift of perfume she daren’t guess. No one had ever bought her perfume before. This perfume would be saved for her wedding night.

Walt’s gift was a warm football scarf and a diary, such a sensible thought. Thank goodness she had knitted him a new jumper with a Fair Isle border earlier in the year and put it away.

If only Dad was here to give her away, but Levi would expect to do the honours if he stayed sober. It was still hard to believe that her little brother was never coming back. Sometimes she dreamed he’d turn up with a knapsack over his shoulder and smack a kiss on her forehead. ‘Hello, Sis.’ She kept waiting for one of his funny Christmas cards to pop through the letterbox but it never came.

The gathering at Dr Unsworth’s house on Boxing Day was a select one. All the years Lily had walked up and down the lane and never realised what a secret treasure their black-and-white timbered farmhouse was. It was crammed between two Victorian villas with a large garden hidden at the back. It was an ancient house with mullion windows, the original manor house of the district when everywhere was just fields and forests, not cul-de-sacs and avenues.

She had never seen such a huge fireplace, with benches set in the side, oak beams in the ceiling and a fuggy smell of woodsmoke and cigars. It was festive, shabby and welcoming, like Diana herself, who had filled the drawing room with neighbours and nurses, friends and relatives.

The more Lily saw of Diana, the more she liked her, but there was always a sadness in her gaze, the wariness of a private person who carried many burdens. They were kindred spirits despite the difference in their education and social standing.

Maria was visiting Marco with Queenie, but Eva was here, off duty, sipping sherry in the corner. Ivy’s eyes were on stalks, taking in the large drawing room, the tasteful arrangement of greenery and berries, the family portraits on the walls. Neville and the girls were banished to the kitchen for treats with other small children.

It was Diana who came up to Ana with a brilliant idea.

‘We’ve got this recruitment going in the New Year, an exhibition for trainee nurses and assistants at the Infirmary. They’re looking for domestics and ward helps and auxiliary nurses for the special wings for the elderly. With your wartime experience you’d be ideal. Think about it,’ she smiled, drifting away to serve her guests with pinwheels of white bread filled with tinned salmon, leaving Ana agog at such a suggestion.

‘Once they know I’m unmarried with child, I won’t get work,’ she whispered in Lily’s ear.

‘You don’t know that,’ she replied. This was too good an opportunity for her to miss. Diana would give a glowing reference. No one was likely to ask for her marriage lines. Surely with her Red Cross experience in Crete it was obvious here was someone already hardened to the realities of death and injury? Diana’s influence and name would get her through to the final interview and a chance to work as an auxiliary nurse with a view to further training.

Su was pleased with this news, much to everyone’s surprise. She had been given notice the week before Christmas, dismissed from Moorlands School because a soldier returned to take up his old position.

‘What’ll I do?’ she asked now.

‘You could take Ana’s place on the stall,’ Lily offered.

‘But beware of the Levi’s walking fingers,’ Ana warned.

‘I’ve tried to speak to him but he thinks it’s all a joke,’ Lily blushed. Her brother was being more stupid than ever. Thank goodness Enid was close at hand to keep an eye on things.

‘I will spike his ardour,’ Su laughed. ‘In my country we say an unmarried woman is not honoured even if she has ten brothers. Did I tell you about my great escape on the boat? This sailor comes to my cabin, face as sweet as a choirboy, and asks for a mug of water. I turn my back and in he comes, shutting the door. It wasn’t water he was wanting, so I smile and say I must slip into some pretty clothes and he must close his eyes. I pick up sleeping Joy, shut the sailor in the cabin and call the guard. I know all their tricks. Levi will not win and I can help you until I find another position. I will see more of Joy. She is such a bright child. I am going to teach her to dance Burmese pwe while her feet and wrists are young and pliable. She will shine for us.’

Susan liked to brag about her daughter’s beauty and dancing ability. She was going into the baby ballet class with Rosa in the new term.

‘When shall we all meet again?’ said Diana as they all dawdled in the hallway to gather coats and cloaks and put on ancient wellington boots and gumshoes. It had started to snow again and the paths home would be treacherous.

‘Soon. I think Maria has plans for an evening,’ Lily smiled.

‘What plans are these?’ interrupted Ivy, who had been trying to catch the ends of conversations all afternoon. Lily ignored her as they made their farewells and thank yous at the door and slithered back round the corner to Division Street.

‘I hope you’re not on with another of them dinners,’ muttered Ivy on the way home. ‘Walt’ll have something to say about that! That man’s a saint to put up with all your gallivanting. He should put his foot down. People are beginning to talk.’

‘About what?’ Lily was curious, despite herself.

‘How you prefer the company of foreigners to decent English folk like a…’ She was struggling for the word, ‘like one of them calculators in the war.’

‘You mean a collaborator.’ Lily corrected her ignorance with a smile. ‘The war’s over now and if more nations got together over a meal there’d be a lot less fighting.’

‘Don’t you get clever with me! It’s your fiancé you should be dining with.’

‘Oh, don’t talk daft! Walt understands. It’s only once in a blue moon,’ Lily retorted with a lot more conviction than she was feeling.

*  *  *

The big surprise for all the children was a trip to see Puss in Boots at the King’s Theatre; a treat to tide them through the long winter ahead.

‘I do not understand,’ said Su. ‘This is a nursery rhyme story with music, boys are ladies and girls are boys?’

How can you explain pantomime to foreigners, Lily mused, all those performers and dancing girls getting mixed up, or why men are dressed as women and girls dressed as boys? Then there was the business of everyone shouting from the audience and the actors racing on the stage and being chased by ghosts.

Rosa and Joy hid under their seats, and Neville had a tantrum when it was time to go back to Maria’s for ice-cream sodas. A good time was had by all but Lily was glad the festive season was now over.

If only the winter would melt away as easily. They’d not seen anything like it for years. It hadn’t stopped snowing since November. There was talk of power cuts and freeze-ups, coal shortages and more rationing. Still, it was all good for business if they could find supplies. Colds, flu, bad chests, sprains and chilblains, catarrh, stiff joints and runny noses are what they liked. Winstanley Health and Herbs was in for a busy time.

In the New Year came the visit to Ana’s hospital for the recruitment exhibition. The Infirmary was like a little town on its own, with huge red-brick buildings topped by towers and turrets like a fortress. In the olden days it was a place feared because if people were old and poor they would have to stay there until they died, wearing uniforms and shawls and starched caps to show they lived by the public purse.

Diana warned them of the smells in the long corridors. ‘I know it looks like a soldier’s barracks on the outside. It was built in a time when charity was cold and calculated, measured out in spoons not buckets. Now we’ve got new wards and a hospital built in the grounds but it does look grim.’

Esme had thrown her hands up in horror at the thought of Ana working in such a depressing place. ‘Once those gates are closed, it is still the workhouse,’ she said, shaking her head and sighing. ‘I don’t suppose you had those back home.’

‘No,’ Ana replied. ‘In Crete, a family looks after its own. Our monks and nuns take care of the sick. There are hospitals in the towns. We look after our own in the village…but who know what happens now?’

There was sad news from her Manchester church of many brave priests who were shot for harbouring escaped soldiers and partisans, their monasteries burned to the ground. The news brought that film of mist and tears into her eyes when she spoke of her homeland, a far-off place, like heaven, out of reach until she died.

Perhaps one day, Lily mused, their children might be able to visit places where associations with Freddie were strongest: Rangoon, the Mediterranean Sea, Athens and Palestine. One day she hoped they might find where he was buried and take his children to mark the spot. At least it must be warm in Palestine.

‘The wards are short of attendants. I will get good training. It is not a prison. Prison is in the mind,’ Ana said. ‘Diana says they have many plans to brighten up the wards now there is new National Health Service to come.’

Ivy was listening, ready to splash her words with cold water. ‘I think it’s a disgusting place. I’ve been sick after visiting there with Zion Chapel. It gives me the creeps, all those cots and barred windows. Why do you want to work with feeble oldies and dribblers anyway? The place must stink of wet beds, and worse. You’ll get nothing out of it but a bad back,’ she added for good measure. ‘And there are tramps going up there to the refuge house every night, a load of dirty men and women hanging around scrounging from bins, full of fleas. How can you even think about it, bringing back germs into this respectable house?’

‘Ivy, your words make me sad,’ Ana said quietly. ‘Praise God that you have no idea what it is like to tramp the roads of Europe, itching, starving, selling your body for some scraps of food, not knowing when you will find your way back home!’

No one had ever heard Ana speak like this and there was a stunned silence.

Ivy shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m only giving my opinion,’ she said, looking for support, but there was none.

‘I have seen bad, bad injuries. You cannot know,’ Ana continued. ‘I am happy to serve old people. I know what it is to suffer shame.’

‘All right, you’ve made your point.’ Ivy was silenced for once.

‘I think I will like this work. I like the old people. The staff will show me ropes to pull. They are brightening the wards with curtains and new paint, and Queenie comes to set their hair. She brings sunshine and songs to sing.’

‘Do they know you are a refugee?’ Ivy asked, her ever-waspish questions ready to sting like needles.

‘No one asked to see my papers. I will be just Winstanley. I do what I am told. It is better than sit all day on bum like some,’ Ana replied pointedly, knowing full well that Ivy was at home with Neville.

‘Well, don’t be asking us to rub your back.’

‘Diana found me the job. Queenie helps. She works for Lavaroni now. Perhaps you’ll all have a job there,’ Ana replied.

‘Oh, we all know Lavaroni’s Hair Salon, where they charge twice as much as anywhere else, just to be fingered by that greasy Eyetie with fancy ideas. It’s all right for some,’ sniffed Ivy, lowering her eyelids and looking martyred as usual.

No amount of Lavaroni’s pin curlers would ever make Ivy look like an elegant mannequin. She was a painted doll, pretty enough, but with a hard face when she was thwarted. Now she made a face, pulling her lips in tight but carried on folding the washing.

‘Has no one ever told you, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?’ The words came tumbling out from Ana’s mouth before she could stop them.

‘Pardon me for breathing! I tell the truth as I see it and if you don’t like it, lady, you know what you can do. I don’t know how Mother puts up with all that traipsing over her best rugs. If the Greek is in and out at all hours, working shifts, how are we ever to get a decent night’s sleep?’

‘I work night shift so I can see my child in the day, and she is no burden to any of you. I am doing my best to please everybody—’

‘That’s enough, Ivy. Turn the record off. You’ve made your point,’ Esme interrupted. ‘The girl is only doing her duty as she sees fit. It was in the paper about the shortage of trained nurses, and one day we’ll all be in need of a good one. Dr Unsworth’s daughter must think highly of her to speak up for the girl. Let’s start the New Year as we mean to go on. Think on?’

When Esme laid down the law like that everyone jumped. Ana’s face was a picture…

Already 1947. Who’d have thought it! Lily sighed, wondering what the new year would bring; more joy than the last, she hoped. There was a wedding to plan, a new home to find away from all this bickering, but Ana and Su would need sorting out first.

So far, so good, with Ana’s new job. Su still needed watching, though, when it came to Levi’s tricks.

14

Dancing in the Snow

The highlight of Lily’s week, come rain, sleet or snow, was always Wednesday. Not because it was half-day closing, but because it was dancing class day and she got to take Dina to collect Joy from the baby class when their mothers were busy.

The Lemody Liptrot School of Dance took up the top floor of Church Buildings, up a winding wooden staircase, past a photographer’s studio and accountant’s offices, to a glass-roofed studio with mirrors round the walls, barres on two levels, a pile of grey blankets to save bottoms from splinters when exercising and a box of resin for pointe shoes.

There was a small anteroom where the mothers sat around the walls, which were lined with notice boards, and peered at the portraits of Miss Liptrot in her heyday with the Carl Rosa Ballet Company.

There was the teacher, balancing precariously on the edge of a fountain in diaphanous Greek costume, which left nothing to the imagination, standing in a line of buxom dancers who looked frozen stiff.

Mothers waited for the end of the rehearsal for the annual charity dancing display in the King’s Theatre, the concert in which the new baby class would make its début and which was already a sellout.

They were doing Babes in the Wood mime and dance, but who were going to be budding stars: the two babes, and the lead robin who carries in the leaves to bury the sleeping pair and summon all the little birds to guard them from the wicked huntsman?

‘Is it dancing in the snow day?’ Joy asked each morning. She was quite the chatterbox now. Where had the months gone since her arrival, wide-eyed and silent, on Su’s knee?

After Christmas, the three of them had fallen into a routine of sorts. Sunday teas were at Maria’s house. Monday was washday, the clothes hanging around the kitchen since nothing could be put out with the freeze-up. Tuesday was work and shopping. Then it was dancing class, sitting looking up at the ridges of snow on the glass rooftop, watching yet more flakes falling. Thursday was on the market stall and Brownies for Lily. Friday Lily helped Esme and Polly with cleaning and shopping. Saturday was the stall again and a football match with Walt if Lily wasn’t on duty. Walt was fitted in amongst it all like wadding.

The girls and their new friends had all met together on the first Sunday of the year at Queenie’s lodgings, squashed into the living room around the dining table for a game of housey-housey.

Queenie had made her own set of number cards and counters and smart little number boards on the back of Christmas cards to place the markers on. Diana was very impressed. ‘Last time we played this was in the field hospital in the desert…We played for ciggies, and then there was a sandstorm and everything blew away, knickers, brassieres hanging up, the lot. Great fun!’

‘Why do we shout “House”?’ asked Su, not quite getting the hang of it at first, but soon she was roaring with exasperation, waiting for the right numbers to come up to complete a line.

Mother would have a fit to know she was gambling on the Sabbath, thought Lily, but surely dolly mixtures didn’t count, and the children were wolfing them down under the table where no one was looking.

Arthur, Queenie’s husband, worked shifts at the tannery and her older children slept on the sofa, oblivious to the noise. There was a pile of home baking on the table but her tiffin cake, made from biscuit crumbs and cocoa, was soon scoffed along with Arthur’s parsnip wine.

Drinking and gambling, it was getting worse by the hour.

‘Let’s have a singsong!’ Queenie shouted, and it was round the piano for the old favourites. Maria always sang her heart out and gave them a turn. Diana told them tales of all the famous people she’d seen in Cairo in the nightclubs.

Lily just sat and listened and soaked up the atmosphere of chatter and laughter. This was such a treat after the squabbling at home.

Queenie was now playing the piano in the studio, standing up to watch and play at the same time. Miss Liptrot would be deciding this afternoon which dancers would get solo parts. Madame had big ideas about her dancing school, attracting the best mummies in the district with promises of national examinations and certificates and a smart uniform of purple crossover cardigans and pleated lilac tunics, a colour that seemed to suit everyone.

Rosaria Santini looked so pretty in purple, with her dark curls and olive complexion. Even Dina’s sandy mop of curls would look good when her turn came. Joy’s black straight hair was so different. Maria was taking orders for knitting cardigans, working into the small hours for the smartly dressed young mothers in fur coats from the Victoria Drive end of town.

Some of the little girls even had nannies carrying small hatboxes with their pumps in, driven by chauffeurs, but none of them was as good a dancer as little Rosa who excelled at skipping and pointing toes.

‘Look at your feet, not the sky, Joy!’ shouted Madame Lemody.

Joy was really too young for the class but pestered them silly to be included, a right little diva in the making. Dina watched from the safety of Lily’s knee.

Dancing had never been Lily’s forte. Hockey, rounders, anything with a bat and ball took her interest, but then she’d always played with brothers. Ballroom dancing was something old folk did, and courting couples. Not that she and Walt ever danced.

Maria and Su were worried about making robin costumes with all those graduated feathers and hoods and beaks. Lily had promised to help them make them up but they needed a sketch to work from. She was still recovering from the shame of those awful soldiers’ outfits.

Joy looked like a little pudding in her mock-up outfit, with two left feet and no sense of rhythm, but she was still only a baby.

With the loan of Ivy’s Singer sewing machine Lily and her friends had managed to create the costumes from just the teacher’s pattern. Susan tacked it all up carefully and Madame was pleased with the result.

I ought not to be here, Lily sighed. If she and Walt didn’t make time to find somewhere to live after the wedding, there’d be no dancing daughters or footballing sons to follow on. Somehow there was always something stopping them taking the plunge. Take this awful snow that froze Gertie’s tyres to the kerb and made the buses scarce. It was as much as they could do to get to work on time and open their stalls. There were that many colds going round, they’d even run out of Nurse O’Brien’s herbal linctus. It was an ill wind…

After all the disruptions of war it felt wimpish to be defeated by a blizzard or three, but it sapped spirits and no mistake. It was not the weather to imagine herself walking down the aisle in some flimsy get-up with an arctic gale blowing up her smalls.

Ana and Su were always frozen to the marrow, no matter how many layers she piled on their backs. The Olive Oil Club had put their coupons together to help buy Ana’s new nurse’s uniform. She ought be saving hers for a trousseau, Lily frowned to herself, but seeing Joy prancing around like a sack of potatoes made her laugh and forget the cold. Susan thought she was going to be the next Margot Fonteyn. Those kiddies were the only bright rays of sunshine in this wintry world.

All the Santini family were putting the Winstanleys to shame, drummed into buying tickets for the matinée show. Tina, Angelo’s wife, Maria, and Toni’s wife, Sonia, and all Maria’s customers were bombarded with a once-in-a-life-time chance to see Rosaria Santini’s first appearance on stage. They would take pictures to Marco, if he didn’t manage to get out of the san for the day. He’d made one home visit but couldn’t manage the stairs so was staying with Nonna Valentina, which upset Maria.

Dolores Pickles down the road said Marco was a saint in his suffering. Father Michael of Our Lady of Sorrows took the sacrament to him each week. He was clinging on to life by a thread and they were praying for his recovery, lighting candles to all the saints. It looked as if Maria would have yet another job to add to her collection. That woman didn’t know how to sit down, but when she did she fell asleep at her knitting. It was as if she had the troubles of the world on her shoulders. Lily wished there was something she could do to help.

One more row and then I’ve finished the back, dreamed Maria as she was knitting in her sleep, with the chatter of the dancing school waiting room fading into the background.

She could see Marco striding towards her with Rosa on his shoulders and she leaped up to greet him, only to watch the picture fade. Then another face came into view and she fought herself awake.

Knitting cardigans almost paid for Rosa’s lessons and it stopped Maria’s hands from shaking. She worked every hour and visited her husband dutifully, but the best nights were spent with her friends, sharing suppers, going to the pictures. Lately, however, something unexpected had crept into the few gaps in her busy life, something that was churning her stomach upside down. Something had happened to shake her world even more.

It started when Queenie gave her and Lily a free hair-dressing appointment each as a treat. ‘You work so hard and no one gives you anything. You spend loads on the children and never a penny on yourself,’ Queenie argued, plonking an appointment card on the counter.

For weeks Maria kept changing the appointment until she hadn’t the nerve to look Queenie in the eye. She kept tying up her hair in scarves to keep her locks out of the ice cream and as it got heavier and longer, taking a tin of Kirby grips to hold it up.

Lavaroni’s was setting the trend for the soft waved look. Not that she would ever need a permanent, not with yards of heavy curly hair, but a shorter lighter style on her head might suit the new look of the times.

She had seen Diana Unsworth off duty from the hospital sporting the new look. If Diana was going with the times then so could she. Ana was so striking to look at now she was filling out, and Su was always so neat and prim in her tailored suit and blouse, her hair caught up in a tight bun in the nape of her neck. She never changed her style, but something inside Maria was aching for release, something to distract from the sadness of Marco’s slow progress, from the drudgery of all her chores. She was a businesswoman, mother, wife, daughter-in-law, cleaner. Where was the old Maria? Who was the real Maria?

In her dreams, she floated across the stage like Mimi in La Bohème, or strode proudly like Tosca. She was six feet tall like a Valkyrie riding to her doom. There was not a heroine on the stage at the King’s Theatre that she didn’t weep for and imagine herself acting out the great dramas.

She sat in the gods with her mop and brush at rehearsals, wiping tears from her eyes as they died so bravely in the spotlight. Why couldn’t life be so full of drama and colour, with velvet, net and satin?

Her life was drab and she was always tired, but lately she had perked up because of her new friends and their kindness. It was time she took herself in hand.

What would Marco think if she walked into the san wearing new clothes and a new look? He would think she had forgotten about his suffering but she could not ignore the kindness of a friend and she asked him what she should do.

‘You go and have your hair done all new and give me big surprise, mia cara’, he laughed. ‘Make all the other men jealous of my beautiful wife.’

With his blessing it was easier for Maria to go ahead and keep the appointment.

The salon was in the smart arcade with a discreet window with screens, and each cubicle was partitioned off so the client could have privacy. There were large black hoods to dry the hair, attached to wires and plugs, and a smell of bad eggs and chemicals that no perfumed soap could disguise. For a second Maria wanted to flee but then she saw Queenie, who acted as receptionist, cleaner, shampooer and teamaker.

‘You’re in luck. It’s Sylvio’s day to take new clients. He’s very modern. All the young ones like him.’ She winked and Maria half recalled Queenie’s story about the prisoner of war who had come touting for work when he was released.

She thought fondly of that first gathering at the Winstanleys’ house, the night they formed the supper club. Last Saturday they took themselves off to the first house of the pictures next door to see It’s a Wonderful Life and she’d cried all through it, great sobs that set Lily off and then Queenie, until the people in the row in front turned round and told them to shut up or go outside. The soulless pigs!

That was the trouble with the English. They had no sense of drama. Poor Jimmy Stewart, doing his best and getting it all wrong. She felt like that sometimes. However she tried to please the family, it was never enough.

They’d all trooped upstairs to sample her new spaghetti Bolognese, sitting in silence as if they’d just been to a funeral not a cinema.

‘What is the matter with you all? Where is your soul? It was a happy film with a happy ending. You don’t get many happy endings in the theatre. They all die so bravely: Tosca jump off the castle, Mimi is sick. It is so sad. Giselle goes mad and the poor swan maid and her love jump into the lake. I love a good cry…you get your money’s worth of tears with opera.’

The week before they’d been to dinner at Diana’s house, dining off bone china and silver cutlery, and Eva had cooked a strange beef dish that was delicious.

It was a change from Maria’s own cooking but she liked it best when they came to her.

There was always some friend of a friend-a Pole, a Ukrainian exile, off-duty nurses from the Infirmary where Ana was now working as an orderly, who joined them. It was getting a crush to fit them all in upstairs so they spilled out into the downstairs and piled the tables and chairs together.

Eva got them knitting squares from leftover wool to make into blankets for the refugee camps. Everyone was clacking away, jabbering and gossiping. Some were thoughtful, like Lily, who brought her sugar ration. Others brought what they could spare. Maria lived for those evenings, especially when news from Moses Heights wasn’t good.

When Marco had a bad week, she panicked and prayed. When he’d had a good week she could relax and sing, but she could always forget her troubles when the girls came round.

She could never understand the set-up in Division Street. The women stayed on there, despite the sister-in-law who hated their guts and called their friends ‘that Olive Oil Club’. They never talked about their dead husbands in her presence. It was as if they had never existed.

It was a strange family, not falling in and out like the Santinis, but coming and going and never meeting up together. Even dear Lily-she was supposed to be getting married soon and they’d never even met her beloved.

One stolen pram had changed all their lives for the better. Salt and honey they might be, but they were the best mamas in Grimbleton, wanting a better life for their daughters than the hard struggle they were living now.

Su said dancing classes made them stand tall and straight, and Madame said it grew a good ear for music and rhythm. She was impressed that all their instructions were in French: plié, arabesque, port de bras. She had cut out the article in the Mercury, showing a line of babies from the class all smiling at the camera. ‘Babies who know French before English and not yet three years old!’ They looked so cute in their uniforms, and Rosa looked the brightest of them all. Maria was picturing Rosa’s name in neon lights, shining for all the other mothers to admire, when she became aware of a man standing behind her, fingering her hair with interest, ruffling it up and examining her in the mirror.

‘This is good hair, madam, but too heavy. It all need big cut,’ he smiled, flashing a pair of shiny jet-black eyes over her head. She suddenly felt protective of all her hair and ashamed of daydreaming. She launched instinctively into Italian. He responded in a torrent of his mother tongue with a thick northern accent and the rest of the discussion was a rattle of questions and answers.

Sylvio Bertorelli was from the north, from the industrial heartland, used to chimneys and smoke. He liked Grimbleton and had no desire to go home to a defeated country. He had been the barber in the camp on the moors and decided to make the best of his captivity and train himself to be a ladies’ hairdresser, and he was ambitious.

As he was chatting, so great chunks of Maria’s hair were floating down onto the tiles.

‘Stop!’ she cried, wondering if there was any hair left on her head.

‘You wait and see. It’ll be good. Now it is easy to dress and let the curl come through. You have fine thick hair, the very best, Signora Santini. Make your husband very proud,’ he laughed, and suddenly it was easy to tell him all about Marco and his family and his chest not healing properly, and all her worries about the ice-cream parlour.

Queenie shampooed her hair thoroughly in a sink contraption that was very efficient but looked too much like a guillotine to be restful.

‘I see you like our Sylvio…Quite the ladies’ man,’ whispered Queenie. ‘Poor old Gianni gets all the old dears, now everyone wants Sylvio. He did Bebe Daniels’ hair last week when they were on at the King’s. She was very pleased and tipped him five bob.’

Maria suddenly realised she had no money for a tip. It was hard not to feel self-conscious swathed in towels and sitting still while he finger-curled and pinned coils of hair around her head with setting lotion.

He was full of plans to go on courses in Manchester and bring the latest styles back to the mill town. ‘I do great hair, win competitions so everyone want shampoo from Sylvio’s,’ he smiled.

His film-star looks were striking. He had one of those faces that must have fallen off a marble pillar: thick straight brows, black eyes fringed with long lashes, a wide smile and even, white teeth. He was slim but not thin, broad-shouldered, and had neat hips like a dancing man. His fingers were long, tapered and artistic. It was worth coming to the hairdresser’s just for the floor-show.

Common sense said he would be charming with all his clients so that they would come back time and time again. Yet there was something innocent in his enthusiasm and flamboyance that reminded Maria of Rosa with a new toy, of Marco listening to the football scores on the wireless when the Grasshoppers were winning at home.

Sylvio was used to silly women flashing their eyes at him but Maria was not going to demean herself. When she saw the results of his efforts in the mirror, however, she gasped with pleasure.

‘Is that really me?’ she said, staring at the transformation of the old careworn Maria, she of a hundred chores and jobs, into this young girl with soft curls framing her features and highlighting her own large brown eyes.

‘You like?’ he said. ‘Now we’ll see your bright eyes and long neck like swan. We can see the shape of your head, yes?’ No wonder he was looking pleased with himself.

Queenie stood back. ‘Crikey Moses, Ria. Marco will have a new visitor tonight and all the ward’ll be jealous,’ she winked, and Maria could not resist giving Queenie a big hug.

‘Grazie… Thank you. I am a new woman now,’ she laughed, wanting to walk around town and savour the moment when heads turned and wondered if that was really Maria Santini.

‘It will need cutting every six weeks or it will all drop,’ Sylvio warned, and she nodded and promised to come back again.

She’d meant it at the time but the weeks went on and the style was growing out and there was never any money to spend on herself. There were clothes and ballet shoes for Rosa and extra fruit for Marco. The walls needed distempering. Always something.

Weeks later, one afternoon when she was rushed off her feet, Maria saw him sitting in the window table drawing on his cigarette, sipping a cup of cappuccino from their new chrome Gaggia steam coffee machine. He looked up when she went over.

‘I come to see how my new look model is doing. It is grown…’ he said, and she blushed.

‘I’m sorry…no time and you are expensive,’ she added.

‘I know but the best is expensive. However, I need plenty of practice and a model gets her hair cut free. I have ideas. Will you sit for me?’ he asked, flashing her one of his high-octane smiles. ‘I need someone with a good neck, good hair and a strong face…’ He was pleading with his eyes and she tried to stay businesslike in her reply.

‘That would be a fair arrangement but I work many hours. It would have to fit in. I must bring my little girl,’ she whispered in Italian, not wanting her business to be broadcast all around the town. Nonna Valentina would not approve, nor her brothers-in-law. Sylvio was not family and Santinis only worked for family.

Her heart was thumping when she walked away. This was dangerous, this excitement, and she knew where it could lead. Only once had she slipped before D-day, when the town was invaded with Yanks going south. There was this GI from New Jersey, one of a gang who hung out at Santini’s. He used to sing and dance and make a fool of himself and he made her laugh and forget the war. He had a roving eye and flattered her loneliness. They had gone dancing and one thing led to another, a brief encounter in Queens Park. She vowed never to betray Marco again. Then Marco came back on embarkation leave and her shame sent her to confession and back into the arms of the Church.

She had promised the Virgin that she would be a good wife and mother, and resist temptation when it walked through the door again.

This is just a business arrangement. She would be chaperoned by Queenie and Rosa. What harm would there be in having her hair done regularly? Customers liked to see a smart woman behind the counter. She planned to tell Marco all about this exciting venture but somehow she never got round to telling him about Sylvio’s offer.

Somehow they always had their styling sessions when Gianni had gone home and Queenie was busy at the dancing class. Nothing improper was ever suggested but it hovered unspoken like smoke above the ceiling.

Every time Maria decided not to go, but every time there was always some reason why she could not let him down. Sylvio was an artist and an artist needed a model.

She felt so exposed when he washed her hair and she was lying backwards in his hands. He always smelled of cologne, and his hands were gentle but firm, massaging her head. How she ached for the touch of a man on her neck, even if it was only his hand with a towel.

He sat so close to her when he styled and trimmed her hair she could feel his warm breath in her ear.

Sometimes she took Rosa along but she only fingered all the trays of curlers and brushes and distracted her from sitting still, fearful of some accident with scissors. This would have to stop.

Yet everybody was commenting on the transformation, especially when she began to treat herself to a few sample lipsticks and pots of foundation cream. She found new earrings to dangle and show off her style. When strangers in the café asked who did her hair she gained solace in advertising Sylvio’s skills. The thought of letting someone else be his model was unthinkable. The dates of their sessions were ringed on her calendar with crosses like kisses. The very thought of those meetings set her heart thudding with anticipation. She tried not to think of them as assignations but why did Romeo and Juliet keep coming into her head?

There was no time to think about Sylvio’s hands on her neck, his burning eyes and the stirrings so deep in her groin when she thought of kissing him. It was mortal sin, it was madness, but these wicked thoughts warmed her cold bed better than any hot-water bottle. I must be strong, she thought, knitting in the waiting room. Just one more row, she thought.

‘Wake up, Maria,’ whispered Ana as she picked up the knitting off the floor. She was here to collect Joy from the rehearsal. ‘You were far away.’

‘Eh?’ She jumped up. ‘I fall asleep over my knitting. I am getting old,’ she sighed, gathering the wool into her shopping bag.

‘You are too much on your feet. When you sit you sleep,’ Ana replied as the girls came spilling out of the studio, closely followed by their teacher, who beckoned the two of them into the studio, away from the other mothers.

‘I have decided to make Rosaria one of my Babes in the Wood. She’ll need a long dress,’ she smiled, pushing paper sketches into their hands. ‘They all do their mime well and are reliable. I don’t think they will freeze in the spotlight. We will do extra rehearsal for them,’ she added, and as they went back into the waiting room there was a frisson of jealousy as the little dancers were wrapped up against the winter cold.

It is a sign if I am good then my child will do well, Maria smiled. This is my reward. Rosa’s talent was already showing and she would have the brightest, prettiest dress she could find.

Ana beamed with pride. ‘I knew Rosa was a good dancer,’ she said, and then, looking at Joy, they both paused. ‘What will I tell Su? She will have to help make clothes.’

‘You could ask Lily to help you. Poor Joy, she will be disappointed.’

Joy skipped ahead down the stairs, unawares until she stopped on the bottom step, turned round and gave them all a beckoning call with her hand, very exaggerated but the meaning was clear.

‘Look at me, this is how you do it. Miss Lip-rot says I am number one robin. I go first and when you lie down I cover you with leaves, very slowly, and then I bring in all the baby robins. Miss Lip-rot says I’m a star. I have note for my mummy.’ She looked at them, producing a piece of paper from her pocket.

‘Is this true?’ said Maria to Rosa, who was jumping down the steps as fast as she could.

‘Yes. Joy is first robin because she’s fat and robins have round tummies,’ said Rosa with a sneer.

‘Shush. That is not kind,’ Maria said, trying not to smile at the truth of her words.

Ana looked at her with raised eyebrows.

Later that week Maria sat with Marco in the wings of the theatre, watching the dress rehearsal as the lights flashed around the stage and her child tiptoed through the make-believe forest in a flurry of bright pink satin edged with cream lace. It was Rosa’s Cousin Angelika’s first communion dress, cut down, dyed and trimmed with lace stained in tea. Rosa looked a little angel. It had taken all of Marco’s strength to climb the stairs to watch the rehearsals. They held hands as tears rolled down their cheeks, tears of pride. Rosa was so young and yet so confident on stage. They saw no other child but her.

‘One day she will be a star,’ Marco whispered. ‘Santini girls can be as good as boys, you’ll see. I’ll give Rosaria what she needs: sequins, bouquets and encores. Then everyone will be proud, yes?’ he said, smiling.

Maria nodded and kissed his cheek. ‘You are so right,’ she replied, knowing it would take all of her hard work to make this dream come true.

15

The Miracle Cure

If Levi patted her bottom one more time she would whack him like Auntie Betty used to beat the mali from the veranda. Ana had warned about his wandering hands but Su was never quick enough to swerve away.

‘Oops,’ he mocked. ‘You are such a tiny lass but in proportion. No wonder our Freddie took a fancy to you.’ His eyes were sludgy grey, nothing like Mister Stan’s blue sapphires.

How silly and naïve she felt, so gullible like some stupid loose woman. Why did she stay on in this cold country and take these insults? She realised now that Stan had never intended them to marry. He was like all the other thakin who kept their mistresses happy with false promises, lengths of silk, but now it was as if he had never existed and in his place was this fool.

I am the daughter of a British man with a proper English name, she thought. No one can take my passport from me, but still she was treated as some foreigner. Customers gaped at her but she would never give them the satisfaction of seeing her discomfort.

She liked the stall and the bustle of the market, the smell of the potions and herbs, and the foreign-sounding names on the boxes of herbs reminded her a little of the great markets of Burma with spices all the colours of the rainbow. In a town of soot and engine oil, fish-and-chip fat and fog, their stall smelled of sunshine and faraway places.

She had a good eye and ear, and was quick to improve her knowledge; what to give to whom and how much and when to ask for help. Levi knew his herbs from his roots and spices, but he was cheating Daw Esme and that worried Su.

There was a box of dried leaves on the top of the store cupboard that they were not allowed to bring down for dusting or to serve. It was a box regularly emptied and refilled but no accounts of its sales were ever kept in the books. Levi insisted that he alone must dispense this remedy and she wondered what sort of powerful medicine it was. They were allowed to portion it out into tiny packets so it must be very efficacious.

‘What’s this for?’ she had asked Lily one Saturday.

‘It must be one of Winstanley’s cure-alls, a secret recipe handed down from father to son, I expect.’ Lily sniffed at it, turning up her nose at the smell. ‘Something soothing and cooling, I expect, or something to loosen the joints. We get a lot of call for rheumatics round here…’ she added.

‘It may be a special potion for floppy dicks,’ Su whispered. ‘That is why only a man serves it. Business is good for it.’

‘Susan!’ Lily was blushing and giggling. ‘It’s the cold that’s bringing in customers.’

‘So why doesn’t the sale go down in the book?’ She was curious how much Lily knew.

‘Levi has his own system with special customers and his regulars, and is very particular about serving them. You’ll soon recognise them,’ Lily smiled, and turned back to her packaging.

His regulars were a strange bunch, not the sort of customers who usually came to the herbal store: smart ladies in large brimmed hats, wanting remedies for headaches, constipation, skin complaints and neuralgia, ‘old biddies’, as Levi called them, with swollen ankles and bunions, who needed tonics and remedies for flatulence and bladder control. Then there came vegetarians, who bought special tins of nut cutlets and vitamin drops, and old men in mufflers wanting tonics for chests and aching joints.

Levi’s specials were younger men in long mackintoshes and no hats, sometimes wearing berets and bicycle clips, ex-soldiers with war wounds and scars, the coloured man who played drums in Toni Santini’s billiard hall and American bar off Mealhouse Lane. There were toughies with cold fish eyes, who undressed her with their stares.

They came only when Levi was on shift. Money was exchanged and packets were handed over and not a penny of it went in the till. Her curiosity was aroused until one day she asked him outright, ‘What is this stuff?’

‘A special tobacco to ease the joints,’ he answered, not looking at her for once when he spoke.

‘Shouldn’t it go in the book?’ she continued, trying to catch his eye.

‘No need for you to bother your pretty little head with any of this. I’ll deal with it in my own way. I like to deal with these customers direct. It is strictly my business so no more questions,’ he said, dismissing her curiosity.

One afternoon when Levi was out at one of his endless meetings and she was alone on the stall, she found the wooden steps that folded into a chair and climbed up to examine the shoebox more closely. She sniffed the herbs, inhaled and shut her eyes. There was something in the distinctive odour that took her back to that troopship journey to England, to the back streets and music clubs of Rangoon where men chewed roots and grinned, the sort of dens of iniquity that the headmistress of her school warned her girls never to go near but all had risked a peek in, nevertheless.

It didn’t look like tobacco but it was dried and crushed, hidden up there for a reason. Perhaps it was a potent concoction, as Enid had said, highly prized and efficacious, subject to strict rationing. It was not fair that Levi gave it only to his men friends, so she pulled out two packets and stuffed them in her overcoat.

Maria’s mother-in-law had a terrible backache. Why should she not have some relief from her pain? How could he be so mean as to ration it only to men?

If Daw Esme only knew about his cheating heart it would ‘upset the applecart’, as she often said. Daw Esme was a fair woman, distant, strict. A mother deserved more respect from her son but as the proverb said: bone in chicken, relatives in man, that one can’t avoid.

There were so many secrets in the household. Division House, it should be called, not Waverley. How the two lodgers and their daughters were closer relatives than everyone thought, how Lily’s wedding day never came, how she, Susan, had kept her own store of pure gold bangles hidden from prying eyes to buy extra treats for Joy, how they must always lock the bathroom door from Levi’s Tom peeping. Nothing was as it seemed but as the proverb said: ‘You can stop speaking to someone but you can never stop being related to them.’

Ana was training to be a real nurse, thanks to kind Diana and Eva. Maria spent more time now in Lavaroni’s with Queenie, but the gang always met up at dancing class to watch their girls blossoming into star turns. Joy was a little slower than the others but Su was teaching her to dance Burmese style and one day Miss Liptrot would give her a solo spot in the big display. She would have to wear the full pwe costume and that would cost money.

If Auntie Betty, God protect her eternal soul, could see her standing like some common servant here, she would be shocked. But it would do for now until that great day when Joy Liat would make them all proud. She must be educated to marry well and then she would repay her mother for all her sacrifices by producing many grandchildren in the big house with many chimneys. That was what was keeping Susan smiling.

Everything she was doing was for Joy. Only the best school, the best clothes, the best chance for her to shine would justify all her sacrifices.

She did not trust the Winstanleys to help her achieve this goal. Only foreign mothers shared the same dream. Su, Ana and Maria would make a good team if they stuck together.

She smiled to herself, thinking of all the ammunition she had about Levi’s devious scams: the false accounting, private prescriptions and the obnoxious attempts he made to seduce her. If only he knew how repulsive he was to her, a mere shadow of his brother’s handsome features.

Levi was a big bellied man with a flabby mouth. How had Ivy ever managed to kiss such a horror. He reminded her of one of the gargoyles grinning from the roof of the ancient parish church, lewd-eyed, bold and grotesque. Yet there was something compulsive in looking on such a sight, if only to mock it. This made all his fumblings bearable.

His weaknesses made her feel strong and strangely superior. I am smart biscuit lady, she thought. I will watch you and bide my time.

One day he would go over the top and she would be waiting then to show him up for what he was. She had the family name to think of, she had the ear of his mother and the Olive Oil Club to back her up. He would get what was coming to him in spadefuls for all he had dumped on to her in the past.

When Lily came to collect Joy for her dancing class, Susan slipped the packets in her pocket for Maria.

‘Tell her to give this to Nonna Valentina for her bad back. It is a very special herb to give good relief. She must brew in tea or put it in a pipe and smoke it, I think. Let me know how it works. There is more where that came from,’ she laughed.

‘If it’s that good, I’ll take some for Walt to try out. His back’s been playing him up again.’

It was a week later that Maria rang the house and asked them to stay for supper after dancing rehearsal and babysit while she had another session with Sylvio. ‘I can’t ask Nonna. She thinks it not right for married woman to go out alone at night.’

‘How’s her back?’ Lily asked.

‘I need to talk to you about that,’ Maria said. ‘But not over the telephone.’

Su made a note to slip some more packets of the potion into her bag and when they arrived at the flat, bringing Rosa back with them, Maria was chopping onions, tears rolling down her face.

‘Watch out, your mother-in-law’s talking about you,’ laughed Ana, who had Greek sayings for every occasion.

‘Not me…not me, but Susan. Nonna Valentina lives in praise of your wonderful remedy. She has had the best night’s sleep in years but sadly I told her there was no more. Do you know what that stuff is?’ She turned her black eyes, red-rimmed with crying and laughing.

‘It is Winstanley’s Wonder Weed.’ Su winked at Lily. ‘You like it? I have some more here,’ she smiled, pulling a packet out of her bag.

‘Put it away! You want we all go prison and lose our girls?’ cried Maria, crossing herself. ‘It’s hashish!’

‘What you mean, hash…How you know?’ cried Ana, crossing herself as well.

‘I give my mother-in-law the packet to make tea but that greedy woman grabs one of the Santini boy’s pipes and mixes with tobacco and smokes it. Suddenly she is not dragon but sweet smiling lady full of joy, and then she falls asleep. Then Toni comes in and shouts. “What’s that stink?” and look at me with dagger eyes. “Where you get this?” he screamed, and threw the packet on the fire. I said it was a gift, that you gave it to her in all innocence, but he started laughing and told me that it was not something to give his beloved mamma ever again.’

‘So what is so special about it, then?’ Su asked.

‘Susan, it is marijuana, hemp, dope…not allowed. If they find I smoke dope I will lose my job, we’ll lose café. Where did you get it from? Not your shop? Get rid of it or you and Lily will be in heap of trouble.’

‘Not before I try it for size. If it is so special I want to know what the fuss is about,’ Lily answered, making to take the bag. ‘Let’s have some and see for ourselves.’

‘Not in my flat you won’t. The smell can drift down the stairs and anyone in the parlour might recognise it. I warn you, it’s not the stuff to smoke around babies or children. If the police get hold of your source, Winstanley Health and Herbs will be history,’ Maria said, wagging her finger.

‘We could make herbal tea,’ Su offered, but Maria was having none of it.

‘Toni and Angelo know you’ve got it. They think you all make fool of Mamma. I tell them you innocent girls, just trying to help Mamma. Just get rid of all of it, for everyone’s sake. You are holding a grenade in your bag. It go off and we are all in trouble.’

‘What shall we do, Lily? If Daw Esme finds out what Levi’s up to, she will close down the stall and there will be no job and no money for you. She will blame us and I will lose my job too. I am sorry,’ Su cried. ‘I wish we had never looked, but we wanted to give Nonna Valentina some relief. If she has no pain, she is kind to you and will let you have your own life. I’m sorry.’ Su suddenly felt a wave of panic at the piles of hash in the shoebox. ‘Levi is a crazy man.’

‘No, he is clever man. What better cover for a drug than to put it on a shelf in a herbal shop? Who would ever suspect?’ said Maria. ‘You’ll have to get rid of it.’

‘How?’

‘We’ll think of something.’

All the way home Lily wrestled with this terrible discovery. What should she do? If the police found out what Levi was up to, they’d close down the stall, and with no business there’d be no money. What a disgrace if it all ended in the courts!

‘So sorry, all my fault,’ wept Su from the back seat of Gertie. ‘I want to help everybody and now I bring shame on Daw Esme.’

What on earth were they going to do? The drugs must be got shut of to save the family honour, but how? Freddie would’ve known what to do, Lily thought. He must have seen plenty of that stuff in the Far East. Oh heck, and now Walt’d got some in his pocket too.

Lily tossed and turned all night. A time bomb was waiting to go off on the cubbyhole shelf and the clock was ticking away. Their good name was at stake. Her brain ached with thinking of schemes to dispose of it all without drawing suspicion. Her dreams were full of leaves, dried tea leaves floating like confetti over the town hall steps.

‘Must go early,’ she yelled from the door the next morning, grabbing a piece of toast and Marmite and rushing for the first bus into town, to open up the stall before Enid arrived. How could she live with herself if such an innocent was brought before the court as an accomplice? It was all Levi’s doing, so it was up to her now to sort the matter out once and for all.

She should just face Levi with it, challenge him outright, but she felt a coward. Although what the eye doesn’t see, the heart won’t miss, she thought as an idea slowly formed in her mind.

Her hands were shaking as the shoebox came down off the shelf and she opened it. One by one she unwrapped each twist, shook out the contents into a paper bag and replaced each sachet as best she could with a mixture of dried herbs: sarsaparilla, meadow sweet, camomile and lemon balm and a sprinkling of the weed on top so it smelled right. She replaced the twists carefully in the box so it looked undisturbed. The hemp she siphoned into a jam jar for future use and popped it in her shopping basket under the counter.

Only then could she relax and only then were the canvas curtains opened to reveal the stall to the public. She put on her white shop coat and smile.

Enid was surprised to see her in so early but Lily fled to find some sequins for Joy’s special pwe headdress. The jam jar was burning a hole in the bottom of her basket.

No sign of the tampering was noticed and, anyway, Levi would say nothing. How could he confess to dealing in drugs? No one was supposed to know about this secret hoard or its significance.

Lily was going to watch to see who came for their supplies. She was still too shocked at Levi, still couldn’t believe he was capable of such treachery. What had happened to her brother to make him do this?

Over the next few weeks it became clear that he hadn’t a clue what he was selling. She didn’t flush the herbs down the pan; something stopped her. No, this was her insurance. It was proof. If Levi ever turned nasty she would confess everything to Mother. Two could play silly games.

When he appeared at the breakfast table the following week with a black eye and bruises, Esme was quick to give him a grilling.

‘Son, whose war have you been fighting?’ she asked, but he shrugged it off.

‘Just an argument with the coalhouse door in the ice,’ he replied as he tucked into his fry-up.

Ivy said nothing but she turned to the others and snapped, ‘Don’t go looking at me! I’d nothing to do with it so you can take that smug look off your face, Susan Brown.’

Later in the morning Levi darted down to the telephone kiosk and returned with a face like thunder.

‘Anything the matter?’ Lily couldn’t resist, her eyes wide and innocent.

‘Nothing I can’t handle. You can’t trust anyone,’ he muttered. ‘No one’s been fiddling in the back, have they?’

Now was her perfect chance to confront him but she flunked it. ‘Why should they? But you’re right, though, not to trust anyone, not even your own kith and kin.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Think about it,’ she said.

None of his special customers ever came when Lily was on duty. She’d eyed him all morning like a hawk. The telltale jar was hidden in her hope chest at the foot of her bed alongside the embroidered tablecloths, pillow slips and nightdress holder.

Curious, she had sniffed the weed. It sort of smelled harmless, like stale Weetabix. It certainly looked harmless.

The box on the shelf stayed empty for weeks, much to Su, Lily and Ana’s relief, but there was still the matter of Walter’s little package to deal with.

The two of them were sitting in the van overlooking Leaper’s View, the beauty spot and lovers’ rendezvous above the town. The snowplough had been through and cleared the lane. It was good to be out in the fresh air, Lily thought. It was the first time they’d been alone for ages.

‘Have you thought about our honeymoon yet?’ she asked. ‘It would be nice to go somewhere romantic.’

‘Blackpool or Llandudno?’

‘Let’s try further afield…the Continent-Paris or Rome. I’ve been looking in some magazines for ideas.’

She’d scoured the newspapers for weeks. There was a whole world of travel opening up now the war was well and truly finished, ships turning back into cruise liners and planes to whisk tourists abroad. There were permits to travel to certain resorts. Why should they have to watch it on the silver screen and not try to go there themselves?

‘Let’s be daring and sell some of Granddad’s shares, forego the fancy wedding spree and go to Paris! It would be so exciting, don’t you think?’

‘I thought you’d prefer hiking in the Lake Distrct,’ Walter said, yawning. ‘You mustn’t go spending your inheritance.’

‘We could try Switzerland, in the Alps,’ she said, suddenly feeling excitement at the thought of snowcapped mountains and yodelling cowmen.

‘I’ve seen enough snow this winter to last a lifetime,’ Walt yawned again.

‘Am I that boring?’ she snapped. ‘We’ve waited years to wed so let’s push the boat out and do it in style, give the Mercury something to write about…’

‘I thought you didn’t want a big do,’ he said, staring down at the flickering lights of the town.

‘I don’t, but I want a proper honeymoon, away from smoke and the grime, just the two of us together, all alone, sightseeing and trying new things.’

‘It’s a long way to go for just a week, Lil.’

‘We could fly. I’ve been doing some research. They’re beginning to expand commercial flights out of Ringway. There’s a whole new world for us to explore. We’d be the first in Grimbleton to have a foreign honeymoon, like royalty!’

‘I’d rather not think about flying through the air in a tin can, love,’ he offered, stifling another yawn.

‘Where’s your sense of adventure? There are all sorts of new jobs on the go now, jobs for girls on aeroplanes as stewardesses. I read it in the paper. I’d love to have a shot at doing that.’

‘No wife of mine’ll go out to work. You’ll have enough to do looking after us,’ Walt yawned loudly this time and she could see the plate of his false teeth.

‘A girl can dream, can’t she? If only I’d been born a few years later…Still, our children will get those chances. I do want to go abroad.’

‘We’d need a passport,’ he said as his eyelids closed into a doze.

‘Walter Platt, what’s got into you tonight?’ she shouted, shaking him awake.

‘It’s them tea leaves Susan give me for my back. I made some up and drank it. It tasted terrible and now I can’t keep my eyes open. Don’t bring me any more, I’d rather have a sore back.’

Oh, no! thought Lily. How was she going to explain this away? ‘You’d better let me throw those leaves on the fire if it’s not doing you any good. Shall I get us some passport forms then?’ she continued, changing the subject and knowing this was an opportunity not to be missed.

‘Do what you like, love, but let me get some kip.’

Lily gazed over the snowy landscape with relief. This was no romantic rendezvous, but in Paris it would be different…

A week later the men in shabby overcoats and trilbies came back to the stall, in dribs and drabs at first, hanging around smoking in the café opposite, waiting for Levi’s return from the pub. The box was full again and each sachet was twisted and sealed.

Su wasn’t here to help her. It was her sewing and mending afternoon. Enid was taking her mother to the doctor. Lily hung back while Levi totted up the takings. The chance would come when he took the money to the night safe at the bank and she was left alone to lock up.

The dried parsley and mixed herbs were all ready to package up. She would use the same twists and tape, adding just sufficient weed to make them look genuine and make sure the first few were all weed, just in case. Her hands were shaking and her heart thudding. She must not leave a crumb of evidence.

A few days later, Lily closed up as usual, taking the short cut behind the Market Hall to catch the bus home. She always scurried along the dark alley as the lamps were dim and she had some takings to bank.

There seemed to be some kerfuffle ahead, people crowding around a drunk on the cobbles, but it was a bit early for anyone to be drunk yet. The man lay in silhouette, prostrate, in a bad way.

‘Lad’s bin set upon,’ an old man in the flat cap and muffler said. ‘They ran off when we turned the corner. I don’t know what the world’s coming to when a working man can’t go about his business. Did we fight a war for this?’ He looked down at his wife, who was kneeling, dabbing blood off the man’s face. ‘Better get the bobbies, Ethel. This lad’s going nowhere.’

It was only when Lily bent over to see if she could help that she recognised the battered face of her brother. ‘Someone get an ambulance quick! He’s unconscious…Oh, do hurry!’ she cried, holding his hand.

‘Oh, Levi, what’ve we done?’ she whispered in his ear, trying to rouse him. It seemed like hours before Levi was stretchered off to hospital and Lily gave the policeman all his particulars, trembling with the shock of what had happened. Her cheeks were burning up with shame. This was all her doing.

She rescued the van keys from Levi’s pockets and drove home like an automaton. What if he died? How was she going to break the news to her mother? She let herself in through the porch, her hands shaking, calling everyone into the kitchen to tell them the news.

Ivy was hysterical, grabbing her coat and hat, Neville was howling, and Esme was as white as a sheet.

‘What’s going on? Ivy, I’m not daft. First a black eye and now a beating? What’s he been up to? Another woman, is it? Hubby found out?’ Esme stopped her at the door, her eyes glassy with tears.

‘No, no…it can’t be that…Someone’s got it in for him. He wouldn’t say,’ she croaked.

‘Is he in debt? My son’s no saint but if it’s money…You’ve allus lived above your means. Word gets about if a debt is not honoured. I should’ve been told,’ Esme continued, barring her exit.

‘No…I don’t know. He said some supplies had gone missing. Someone was cheating him, I don’t know. You know Levi,’ she cried, sobbing.

Lily bowed her head. It was time to own up. She took a deep breath.

‘There’s something you should know. You see, I think this is all my doing…’

‘No! Is all my fault, Daw Esme. Don’t listen to Lily. Please, I was only trying to help. I have made it worse,’ Su confessed later on.

Esme sat down in shock.

‘No!’ Lily shouted. ‘Don’t say any more.’

Out it all poured, like sugar from a sack, spilling out in all directions-the guilt, the worries of the past weeks. ‘I found these herbs that did not go in the book. I asked and he told me it was for bad backs. I think it would be good to give to poor Mrs Santini and Walter…I try to save you all from prison,’ she said. ‘It was me. I changed the tobacco for herbs. I switch the packets with Lily. I did it for you, Daw Esme, so no one is harmed,’ she cried.

‘Whatever are you on about, Susan? What has tobacco got to do with this? We don’t sell tobacco,’ Esme said.

There was nothing for it but to explain the whole sorry scam.

‘Your son, he sells hash from a shoebox. They came to the stall for supplies to smoke in their pipes. I gave some away and we found out it is a bad smoke. Lily and me, we took it away in a jar and put old herbs in its place. He sold them harmless herbs, not dope. Then they were cross with him and he finds out and brings new stuff and we did it again. I don’t want us to go to prison. It is wrong to sell mystic smokes. I think they were angry and set on him in the alley and made it look like a robbery.’

There was a deafening silence as her words sunk in.

‘You have a good business and he was cheating you,’ she added, but Ivy lashed out as if to hit her.

‘Don’t believe a word of it! Levi would never do that. She is making up lies. She is jealous of us because she can never be one of us!’

‘I am a good woman. I do not cheat, Daw Esme. Every time he sells a packet and never puts it in the ledger, he cheats you, Daw Esme. Every time he changes prices and pockets the difference, he cheats you. When he buys and sells ration coupons under the counter-and selling hash will ruin a good business-he cheat his mother!’

‘What exactly is hash tobacco?’ asked Esme, with a weary voice.

‘Mother, surely you know about narcotics: laudanum compounds? This is hemp, another narcotic plant. You drink or smoke or breathe it and it gives you nice dreams,’ answered Lily. ‘I’ve been reading up in Dad’s old books.’

‘Lots of herbs can do that. What’s so bad about giving people a good night’s rest?’ said Ivy.

‘It’s illegal to use these drugs. You go to prison if you deal in drugs for pleasure. Maria told me,’ Lily replied. ‘It was Maria who recognised what it was and warned us to get rid of the stuff’.

‘You mean my son runs an opium den?’ croaked Esme, with her head in her hands.

‘I might’ve known the Eyetie woman would be mixed up in this. Kettle calling the pot black, in my opinion,’ Ivy hissed. ‘You should watch your back with her.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Lily asked.

‘Far be it from me to spread gossip, but surely you’ve noticed what a bandbox and fashion plate she has become lately. Don’t tell me with a sick husband in Moses Heights she has the spondulicks to go tarting herself up to the nines. Every time she comes round here she’s had a shampoo and set, and more besides,’ Ivy snorted with satisfaction.

‘Maria’s a hairdresser’s model. That’s no secret. If you worked half as hard as she does, perhaps there’d be time for all of us to get glammed up,’ Lily answered.

‘Trust you to stick up for foreigners. Mark my words, it’ll all end in tears. That Romeo at the sink is on the sly. Walls have ears. If her in-laws find out she’s being soft-soaped by that ball of grease there’ll be slaughter on the streets. I’ve seen what gangsters do to their molls.’ Ivy was wagging her finger in righteous indignation.

‘Oh, go and boil yer head! Talking rubbish, as usual. Why do you always see the worst in folks and ignore what’s staring you in the face?’

Su had never seen Lily so fired up. Now Ivy would get her overturning.

‘Pardon me for breathing, Miss Hoity-Toity I tell the truth as I see it. If you don’t like my words—’

‘If you don’t believe me, come and see the stuff I’ve got in the jam jar. I wonder why our Levi had to deal in forbidden drugs. To keep you in all the fancy goods no one else can afford. You’ve made a criminal of my brother with your pestering! It’s not right to use our stall to fund that extravagance so I had to protect everyone.’

Now at last the pennies were dropping. It was Su’s turn to join in the fray.

‘Ask Ana why she was so eager to leave the stall. Go on…A man like that is not worth protecting but the good Winstanley name is. My Stan would cry in his grave to see his mother shamed. If you don’t believe me, wait a second and we’ll bring down some evidence that will speak for itself. Ask your precious husband to explain that to his mother. I shall be pleased to hear what he says then!’

‘I’m not taking this from you. Who do you think you are? One of us? Hah, just you wait! You’ve not heard the last of this, blaming a sick man who can’t defend his corner. Just you wait, you lot’ll pay for this!’ Ivy ran out of the room.

What a to-do! Esme sat in the chair with her head in her hands, not looking at any of them. Ana was crying, slopping tea over the cups. Su feared that the Battle of Division Street was about to begin.

Lily was silent, ‘What have we done?’ written all over her face. She was going to get all the blame.

Su sighed. Girls were the same the world over. As the proverb said: ‘An unmarried girl has no honour even if she has ten brothers.’

It was as if poor Lily was the villain, not the son, in the mother’s eyes. Those two rubbed along like shoes on the wrong feet.

16

The Joys of a Family

Esme Winstanley looked down at her son lying in the bed with dismay and relief. He was still out for the count and under sedation but he would live.

‘What were you playing at, son?’ she sighed. What was happening to her family? First Freddie and now Levi letting her down. What had she done to deserve such disappointment in her children? She sat slumped like an empty sack, sipping hospital tea that young Sister Unsworth had brought for her. What must Diana be thinking about all these antics? The Winstanleys used to be a respectable family and now they had more secrets than the Secret Service.

No one must say a word out of turn. She had laid that on thick with a trowel.

‘Family first and only, Lily. No blabbing to anyone, not Polly, Enid or even Walt. Let’s just say Levi fell and banged his head and knocked himself out on the ice.’

The nurse had said the ward was full of broken hips, and legs and ankles. If only this winter ice would shift. There had been three power cuts last week, but the hospital had its own generator and was safe. They’d lit candles and storm lamps, huddling by the fire. The coal in the bunker was shrinking and still the blizzards came. No wonder people wanted cheering up.

Was that what these funny tea leaves did? Cheered you up so the world looked sunny and warm and full of good cheer? What was wrong with that, then?

Out came the old white coat from the back of Esme’s wardrobe. It had shrunk since she’d last put it on, but she was down at that stall first thing next morning to examine the books and sort out the stock.

There would be no more layabouts and dodgy dealers shuffling up when they saw her on the warpath. A hundred years of respectable trading was not going to be jeopardised by the stupidity of her son. She would stand sentry for as long as it took until everyone got the message that families stand firm in a crisis.

Susan was a bright girl, and Enid scuttled around wondering what was up but asking no questions. Lily’s mind was not on the job. Esme was worried about that girl. The Lord was certainly sending her her share of trials.

Levi must learn to shoulder his own burdens and not rely on her for handouts. Lily must stop shillyshallying and name the wedding day. The trouble with children was they all needed kicking with a different foot.

She made up a proper roster for Saturdays so Lily could have time to sort out her wedding plans and Susan had time to spend with Joy. And what were they doing still harbouring these two lodgers? Truth was, Freddie’s ladies were the least trouble of all lately.

If only Redvers was here to guide her. What should she do next? Wasn’t it enough to have lost one son without now being in danger of losing another to greed and meanness? How could she bring back Levi from the dead? Put that in your Almighty pipe, Dear Lord, and smoke it, she prayed, looking to the ceiling in defiance. It’s over to you now!

The terraces were filling up slowly for the last match of the season. Lily was impatient, standing in the dampness on a rare afternoon off. Spring was in the air at last. No more snow but the pitch was waterlogged and the concrete stands were sodden. Walt was late, having stopped off for a pint or two of Wilson’s best bitter.

I don’t know what I’m doing here, she thought, looking around the familiar faces huddled against the chill. She supposed it was a relief to get out of the house and the bad atmosphere. Since the funny business with the stolen hash Levi was not speaking to anyone. His bruises were healing and no bones were broken, but his temper was that foul. He had a face on him like sore feet. Ivy and the war had a lot to answer for. It was her fancy ideas that pushed them to spend what they hadn’t got. Neville was being a pain in the bum, throwing his dinner across the kitchen. He’d got the girls playing up too.

Ivy ignored everyone and the atmosphere in Division Street was like a blocked sewer. Mother went around as if there was a big black cloud above her head. Ana scurried off on hospital duty, out of the way, while Susan spent her time upstairs sewing sequins on a costume for Joy.

Lily was the pig in the middle, as usual, and Walt didn’t help matters. Where was he when she needed him? Everything was going wrong

The supper club wasn’t meeting any more. Maria and Queenie were caught up in Sylvio’s latest hairdressing competition attempt. Diana and Eva had nursing exams to pass. Soon it would be the summer season and the dancing class would close. It ought not to matter but, to her consternation, it mattered. She missed the gatherings, the gossip round someone’s fire, the outings to the pictures. Perhaps she ought to organise something herself.

It was not as if there weren’t a hundred other things she ought to be doing. Only last week she and Walt had sat in the vestry of Zion listening to the Reverend Atkinson going through all the paperwork and arrangements for their summer wedding. It had finally been booked for the first Saturday in August. They would be sitting down to a cold meat salad in Zion Sunday school hall with a small square fruit cake covered in a plaster of Paris icing, a gift from Crompton’s Biscuits. Dina and Joy would be the little bridesmaids and Neville the pageboy, if Levi and Ivy turned up at all to the do. Susan was going to help Lily make her outfits.

It all ought to be exciting, but here she was, thinking about a day out at the seaside with the Olive Oils when there was the business of applying for passports casting a cloud on the horizon. Her forms were signed and sent off, but Walt had done nothing about his. He said he’d lost his birth certificate! He was still not convinced about going abroad and suggested they went to the Isle of Man instead. Why couldn’t they agree on anything?

There was some good news. On one of their jaunts to the edge of the moor they found a small stone-built cottage to rent, a house with thick walls and an outside toilet, a long garden with a wonderful view. It would need bottoming out from top to toe, and distempering in bright colours. They ought to be up there now sorting it all out. As newlyweds they could claim extra coupons to buy furnishings. At last, here was a home of her very own to plan, away from all the feuding. Roll on August!

So what was the point of standing here watching a lacklustre end-of-season game?

Even Pete Walsh was injured and out of the team. Barry was playing like a one-legged blind man. It was wet and windy, and she was not in the mood for cheering and catcalling. They were out of the Cup and second in the league.

Walt was late for the kick-off. They always stood on the same terrace, third row from the back, with the Division Street fans. She waited another ten minutes and then turned back down the stairs and out of the stadium. The two of them seemed to be on parallel tram tracks, side by side but never close enough to touch, these days. She blamed it on all the funny business going on and having to hide things from him. The sooner they were wed and together, the sooner all their misunderstandings would be sorted out.

The thought of all the preparations was making her nervous. She hoped they didn’t end up like Levi or Ivy, bickering and rowing. Nothing was turning out as she hoped.

Perhaps it was this blessed chill. What was needed was a bit of cheering up, a cup of hot Vimto and a seat in Santini’s to cheer her flagging spirits. It would be good to see Maria’s bright face in the café. She could relax and make a list of all her plans, and pop in the travel agent’s on the way back to see what was on offer. She was determined to make their honeymoon special, even if she had to do it herself.

‘You look bellissima,’ Marco smiled, sitting on the open balcony of the sanatorium in his dressing gown. ‘You have the big show tonight?’

‘I can’t stop long but I just wanted to show you.’ Maria kissed him, patting his head like a dog. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘How do you think? I am sick of this vista, snow on hills. Nice on a Christmas card but I’m sick of living in a Christmas card. I wanna come home and see Rosa and Mamma, not sit like a lump of dough in this chair. I am trying to get strong but when I walk too much, I can’t breathe. I wanna go home with you…All this costs too much money.’

‘Be patient, the dottore says not yet. It is too smoky and sooty. Perhaps in the summer.’

‘The summer’ll never come for me,’ he whispered, turning his grey face from her in distress.

‘Soon the snow will melt on the hills and the garden will grow flowers. Rosa and I will come to have picnics with you, and she will show you her dancing steps.’ It was hard to stop the panic rising in her voice.

‘Make it soon, mia cara….’

*  *  *

Maria sat on the bus home with a heavy heart. This has got to stop, you mustn’t see Sylvio alone again, she ordered herself, repeating it over again, fingering her rosary for the strength to resist temptation.

If only it were that easy to shut off the excitement, the longings and the fantasies. He was everything Marco was not. He was young, fit and full of energy, full of creative dreams. He was talented and eager to succeed. Everything he’d achieved was by his own hard work. His path was not smoothed over by family connections.

Perhaps Marco would have returned from war with such vigour if he’d not been so badly wounded. They would’ve made plans to change the décor, improve the café and have more babies.

Now his poor body was like a sack of straw, his spirit so fragile and tired, but he clung on to life for her sake, patient in his suffering like a saintly martyr. But I don’t want a saint for a lover, I want real flesh and blood, strong arms to hold me, strong thighs to press on me, the warm breath of sucking lips, she cried in shame.

No one could accuse her of neglecting her husband. Every possible visiting hour, she turned up. She should have shares in the bus company, so many tickets she’d purchased to get to the ward on time and back between shifts. Faithful in her presence but not in her body.

This evening she sat on the upstairs deck in the twilight, watching the twinkling lights of the town fading as the road rose higher onto the moor and the dark starlit night. She could do this journey blindfolded: round the bend out of town, up under the arched railway viaduct and past the grammar school with its windows ablaze with light. Onwards and upwards to the terminal stop and the iron gate leading to the long flat single-storey sanatorium, with windows open to the sky and balconies facing the windswept lawns, facing away from the foul air and the dust, catching the west wind over the Pennines.

No one could accuse her of not doing her duty by Marco but duty didn’t warm her toes at night, duty put no skip in her step. Duty kept her at her post behind the counter and doing the books at night.

She’d sensed the loss of him the minute he was carried from the troopship on a stretcher. He was as much a victim of war as all the names on the Grimbleton cenotaph; a Tommy with an Italian name, while Sylvio was the enemy, defeated, despised by her family. Marco was a frail shadow of what he might have been and it was not his fault. In the eyes of the Church he was her marito and she was dirt, a faithless wife. How could she think of betraying him?

She had done her duty and come from Sicily to marry one of the brothers. That was the arrangement and she was grateful for the chance of a new life. The family had once visited from England and it was an honour to be betrothed to such a successful famiglia. By the time she’d arrived the other brothers were spoken for and it was assumed she and Marco would make a fine couple. He was gentle and shy, and she was so naïve and ignorant.

The wedding was lavish, with dancing and music. They had taken the train to London for their honeymoon and saw all the sights. Then came the miscarriages, one after another. Marco joined up and one brief reunion resulted in precious Rosaria. Now when she looked at him all she felt was loving pity.

How could she be honest and tell him she didn’t care for him in that way any more? No words would ever come out of her mouth to hurt him. The truth would kill him and she couldn’t do that to such a brave man. It was tempting to blurt out all her feelings and dump them on him once and for all, but the price of loving Sylvio was to carry all this guilt like some huge rock on her back.

It was her burden, not Marco’s, and yet of all the men she knew she sensed he might understand and forgive.

She was dying too, living a half-life of secrets and lies, trying to stay cheerful and busy for Rosaria’s sake. Yet Rosa was not enough. How she yearned for another baby at her breast and the clutter of little ones to distract her from this constant aching.

The ice-cream parlour was not enough. It would never be her business without Marco by her side. Santinis only gave to the sons, so it would be Enzo’s café one day, not Rosa’s. It wasn’t fair. The cleaning jobs kept her so active she slept with exhaustion each night.

The only consolation in her life was those stolen moments with Sylvio when she could forget the dreary world. She loved how he styled her hair this way and that, trying new cuts and lotions. Her head was like a lump of clay from which he created such amusing sculptures for the competitions.

Their next job was to prepare the mannequins for the Fashion Parade in the town hall, the one that Diana’s mother was organising for the Hospital Comforts Fund.

Levine’s would be showing off their most exclusive range for the smart ladies of town. Rumour had it there would be some of the ‘New Look’ fashions on display with frilly underskirts and merino wool boleros.

For one evening, perhaps, they could work together and no one would suspect. Time disappeared when she was lying in his arms and there was only the hush of the silent salon and the flicker of neon lights flashing outside as they made love on the floor. This was the time of dreams, when they wished great falling stars full of wishes, silly love talk, the ‘what ifs’ when the world they knew faded into the distance, with its rationing, coupons and drabness. For these few hours she lost all her ‘must dos’ and feasted on these precious stolen moments but when they separated she was back in the real world, pacing the floor in the small hours of the morning, seeing the pain on Marco’s face.

This life of lies was tearing her apart and it couldn’t go on. Marco would want her to have some life of her own but not this treachery. He thought the Olive Oil Club and Rosa’s dancing success were enough.

He’d nearly killed himself to see Rosa dance. If only he knew the way things were. Of all men he would understand, but he trusted her and how easy it is to be believed when you are trusted completely. Once that trust was betrayed it could never be repaired. Better to carry the burden alone and not hurt him any more. Better to give up her lover and sleep easy.

Our Lady of Sorrows, please help me!’ she prayed. ‘A mamma must put her children first and make sacrifices.’ She prayed for the strength to resist Sylvio and walk away. This could not go on.

Now, as the moon rose over the dark purple hills and the stars shone like icicles in the clear sky, she sensed resolve and purpose and a cleansing. It was going to be a fresh start. From now on she’d devote herself only to her husband and child and the success of the business.

She was blessed with good friends in Lily, Ana, Su, Queenie and Diana. They believed in her. They must be enough. Giving into passion, to temptation was a sin. No more fancy hairdos and vanity. From now on her mind and heart must rest only on the blessings she’d been given. There was a roof over her head and they wanted for nothing. Marco need never know about her little lapse, as he’d never known about the GI, all those years ago. A terrible thought stabbed her in the gut. Was Marco being punished for her sins? Surely not? Better to sort it out now.

Tomorrow she would face her first confession for months, do every penance and attend Mass once more to blot out this backlog of sinning and make him better.

There was chaos in the café when Lily arrived. Enzo was struggling to keep up with the afternoon shoppers.

‘Is Maria in the back?’ she asked.

‘She’s upstairs, lazy cow!’ he snapped.

It was not like Maria to shirk a busy shift. Time to find out what was wrong.

She was curled up on the little sofa, covered in a blanket, sobbing.

‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Lily said, going to put the kettle on the stove.

‘I’m bad woman, Lily.’ Her sobs shook her whole body.

Maria was not making any sense, but Lily knew a cup in her hand and a chance to talk it over might help. ‘You’re a good woman. What’s brought all this on?’

‘I have to tell someone. I am terrible woman in mortal sin. What will I do, Lily?’

‘Shove this down you. I’ve put sugar in it,’ Lily replied. ‘It’s not that bad, surely? No one could do more than you for Marco.’

‘It’s not how it should be with us. We are married. We should share bed and loving and now I betray mio marito. I am lonely. I do my duty for the Santini family but my toes are cold at night and I find warmth in the arms of Sylvio Bertorelli. They will kill me if they find out. I disgrace the family name.’

So Ivy’s gossip was true. Lily sighed. Not that it was a surprise when she had seen how those two looked at each other. This confession was way out of her league. What should she say? What did she know of such things? Better just to listen and say nowt but a friend needed support at a time like this.

‘It’s hard for you on your own. He’d understand. You’re only human.’

‘No, you do not understand our ways. They will kill me! Sylvio make me feel like a film star but it is wrong what we do but, oh, he loves me.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Lily whispered. ‘It must be hard.’

‘I am dying inside. One child is not enough for me. Rosaria needs brothers and sisters. I do not like this family. It is all making money. Angelo and Toni would kill me and take my child from me. I don’t deserve such a husband.’

‘You’re doing your best to protect him. You’re only human, Maria.’ What else could be said that was not going to make her feel worse?

‘When I am with Sylvio, we lie under the stars, make snow angels, wishing great dreams for the salon. We are like Romeo and Juliet. There are no rations and coupons or icy grass, just moonlight and kisses, but it is all ended now. I have to think of Marco.’

‘You were happy together once?’ Lily asked as she sat down, a wonky spring digging into her bottom. Better to let Maria get it all out of her system.

‘I was glad he was the only one left to marry. The others are…poof! It is hard to carry secret, Lily. It is like a big rock on my back that bends me in two. It is better to give up my happiness. Marco doesn’t deserve a faithless woman. I have to be strong for both of us.’

Lily nodded, thinking how she had to be strong for Walter. He was like a lost little boy sometimes who needed a shove in the right direction. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her in his own way but he was not good at showing his affection.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I will tell him,’ Maria sobbed, ‘Sylvio, I can’t see you any more. No more competitions. People talk and I can’t risk Rosa. I have such a pain in my stomach and my head.’ She was sobbing until she was hoarse.

Why did the film Brief Encounter come into Lily’s mind? She had queued with Enid to see it twice. The heroine had to choose between her doctor sweetheart or her family, and it all ended in tears. It was like going through the mangle watching that film, they were that rung out. Passion like that was unnerving and it worried her. The film music was ringing in her head at the very thought of all that pent-up emotion.

The only courtship she was experiencing was a very steady away sort of loving. But how did anyone do a day’s work after all those shenanigans?

‘We have to do Diana’s fashion show. I will tell him then,’ Maria sobbed. ‘The fates brought us together and showed us what might have been. It is cruel but life is cruel, I think. No more Lavaroni’s, no more shows. I go to confession,’ she sobbed, wiping her eyes. ‘Now I must go downstairs. How are things at home?’

‘It was as bad as you feared. I destroyed the hash. Levi was beaten up and now Mother is ruling the roost. We are all in disgrace.’

‘You are a good family. It will pass…’

‘Oh, Ria, if only you knew the half of it, but my lips are sealed. Believe me, all families have secrets.’

‘Don’t say a word to anyone,’ Maria was pleading. ‘I’d better go.’

‘You wash your face, go down there and I’ll fetch Rosa from her nonna’s house. I’ll make you both some tea and we’ll go and see Marco together. You ought not to be on your own tonight,’ Lily offered, glad to feel needed.

‘You are a good egg, Lily. You will make Walt a fine woman.’

Oh heck! Walt would wonder where she had got to again. There was just time to nip on the bus to leave a message and the shopping with his mother.

But when a friend was in trouble it was company they needed. Walt could wait.

There would be years together in that little house on the hill, years and years of it, not like Sylvio and Maria, the star-crossed lovers. It was so sad: just one moment of stolen passion. Who was it said that all passion ended in the grave? Now she was getting as bad as Maria with her romantic fantasies. Why hadn’t she ever felt like that with Walt? When she looked at him lately all she wanted to do was criticise. What was wrong with her? Was she jealous of Maria and Sylvio, jealous of adulterers? It was all so confusing.

17

Cinderellas in Ballgowns

‘I’m sorry, girls, but you’re going to have to sing for your supper tonight,’ said Diana, tapping her pencil on her wine glass in the Unsworths’ dining room. She had fed them on grilled trout with game chips and the last of the apples in the loft, made into a crumble with oats and ground nuts and a bottle of Daddy’s best wine. Someone had to fly the British flag when it came to cuisine.

‘Mummy has asked for the Olive Oils to help with her charity mannequin parade. It’s for the hospital so I want some good prizes for the raffle,’ she paused for breath and to read off her list.

‘Lavaroni’s have agreed to do the hairdressing, Battersby’s the shoes and Levine’s the clothes, but they want some local girls to model the outfits: tall girls who can stride out in the New Look.’ She looked straight in the direction of Ana and Lily.

‘Su, I want you to help with the raffle. Queenie and Maria are committed to Sylvio so, you two, you are volunteered.’

‘I’m no clotheshorse,’ Lily protested.

Why did that girl put herself down so? She would look elegant if she just bothered to stand up straight.

‘I no walk across stage,’ said Ana, who was blossoming by the day. She was another who slouched into her uniform.

‘Of course you will. It’s for a good cause and it will give Lily some practice for her wedding day. Once Sophie Levine is finished with us, we won’t recognise ourselves. Anyway, the audience’ll be looking at the fashions, not at you. I hope everyone here will sell at least a dozen tickets or else.’

The faces opposite her looked down at their dirty plates. Was she being bossy again? She couldn’t help being enthusiastic.

It was just that over the past few weeks, with exams, Diana had missed their gatherings and gossip. Everyone was going round with glum faces so they all needed something to cheer them up and what better than a late spring fashion show?

Keeping busy was what had kept her sane all these months since her return. Coming back to Grimbleton was not what she had intended, but when Binky upped and left her and found a new playmate, she had crawled back from Cairo with her tail between her legs.

She was too old to be living at home and Mummy was puzzled why there were no boyfriends calling round. How could she explain there never would be and that her heart was still aching for Binky Ballard?

The Olive Oils had saved her sanity. She loved their company and living all their mysterious lives at second-hand. Guiding was fun and her job was important, but being an auntie to all those little girls was like having her own nephews and nieces.

Being an only child was a pain at times: the golden egg that must deliver for all the expensive education she had received. They still treated her as if she was home for the hols, not as an adult, a senior nurse with years of experience in battlefield hospitals. There were things she couldn’t tell anyone of what she had seen. Daddy guessed but said little.

Friendship and loyalty to the team was what had seen her through the worst of times and the best.

She had thought that Binky would be ready to settle down and set up home, find work together, but Binky had other ideas. It was hurtful to know she was just a war time fling, not a lifetime’s love. It hurt so much she never wanted to feel anything again.

Better to go home and lick her wounds for a while, sob into her pillow and pull herself together, rise to the challenge and all that bosh!

Thank goodness she had found a bevy of lonely, limping women to mother along.

Each one of them was as tough as desert boots but they just didn’t realise it yet.

Lily was at the beck and call of her brood. Maria was having some sort of emotional crisis. Su and Ana were mystery guests-definitely a tale to tell there-and poor Queenie didn’t know which day of the week it was, she was so busy rushing from job to job.

If you want something doing ask a busy person, went the saying and it was true. No one protested too loudly, no one refused to lend a hand. All they needed was a bit of organising and she had that ability in spades. ‘Right,’ she ordered. ‘This’s what we’ll do…’

On the afternoon of the parade Lily found herself having her hair lopped and chopped and set into waves. She’d just been to a rehearsal in the town hall, learning to pace down the catwalk while Sophie Levine pointed out all the features of her outfit.

Diana had marched her off to the corsetiere in Silver Street where she’d been shovelled into the tightest boned corselet and brassiere, two sizes too small for her, yielding up precious coupons for the pleasure.

‘Foundations are basic, Lily. Like a body without bones, a dress without a corset has no structure,’ Diana insisted.

‘I thought buildings needed structure,’ she replied.

‘Exactly, my point…You know what happens to a house without foundations?’

What a surprise to discover she’d a bust after all, and the neatest waist.

‘I can’t breathe,’ she protested.

‘That’s the point! It’ll make you stand up and breathe properly, not slouch. Posture, think posture.’

It was all right for Diana-she was slim as a lath, more like a boy than a girl. Everything looked neat on her.

Ana was quaking in her shoes, trying to find an excuse not to turn up, but she was transformed by a good hoisting harness. When Diana was on the march there was no shillyshallying in the ranks.

Esme had lined up half of Division Street to support the effort by buying tickets. What if I stumble and fall and make a right fool of myself? Lily wondered.

It was funny how, once the clothes were put on, she felt a different person, no longer good old Lil, but more like a Lily or even Joan Crawford, American and glamorous. Until she saw herself full of curlers in the mirror.

Sylvio was stomping around, giving orders with a grim face instead of his usual grin. Had Maria done what she had promised and given him his marching orders? Happen it was for the best.

Maria was keeping out of everyone’s way, just shampooing and towelling off. Queenie was playing pig in the middle, pretending there weren’t any tensions in the salon.

Ana refused to have her hair cut, so now it was coiled in a sophisticated chignon at the back of her head and covered in a net headscarf.

Susan was sulking because she wasn’t modelling and she was the prettiest of the lot of them. Ivy had refused to buy a ticket so they saddled her with the babysitting, for once. Esme had put her foot down and insisted she pull her weight.

Maria couldn’t wait for the salon to empty, for the models to rush across to the town hall, for Gianni to disappear upstairs so she could catch Sylvio on his own.

It had been a long afternoon and she should have taken her half-day visit to Moses Heights but there were so many heads to do.

This time she wanted to face her husband with a clear conscience. She would go for visiting time as usual on the evening bus with Rosa.

Sylvio had been in a bad mood all morning. Gianni was breathing down his neck, saying what styles he must show. The trouble was they were yesterday’s hairdos, not suitable for the New Look clothes.

‘He won’t let me do anything new,’ Sylvio complained as he shot into the wash cubicle.

‘Il poverino’, Maria smiled. ‘Just be patient, one day everyone will want your ideas.’

‘We have to get out of here…start a new salon.’

‘Now’s not the time,’ she whispered. He was barely out of the POW camp, without any money to set up on his own. It was too soon for Grimbleton to accept him. ‘One day, perhaps…you will show them all.’

‘We will do it together, yes?’

Maria drew in a breath. ‘There is no “we”. I am married. I have baby and big family. I must work for them.’

‘No, I take care of you both. We go away.’

‘Stop this!’ she cried. ‘This is a silly dream. This can’t go on. You know it’s wrong. We will be punished.’

Sylvio grabbed her tight and shook her. ‘What are you saying? We are good for each other. I will wait for you…until Marco…’ He spoke in desperation.

She couldn’t believe it. ‘What are you saying? Jesu Maria, you are one crazy man! It is not our time. It will never be our time. I came to England to marry. You came to fight England. I am from the south and you from the north. We’re never meant to marry. Don’t say another word.’ She crossed herself in horror. ‘If the family finds out we are both dead.’

‘Fate has brought us together, Maria.’

‘And Fate is cruel, showing us what we might have had. I am sorry but I must go.’

‘Stay, don’t go. I love you. There will be a way.’

‘No, Sylvio, no more Lavaroni’s for me, no more secrets, no more sneaking, finito…Capisci?’ She tried to sound cold but her voice was shaking.

‘I don’t believe you. If you don’t come, I’ll go. I don’t care,’ he snapped. ‘Please, come back. We can be just friends.’

She stared at him. His eyes were full of tears, pleading with her. It would be so easy to fall into his arms, to forget all her vows just for another second of his loving.

‘I have to go. One of us has to be strong. Two wrongs don’t make a right.’

‘You never loved me…’

‘How can you say that? It is love that makes me walk away now. Love for you, love for your safety, love for my child and my husband, but Rosa comes first and always. I must do what is best for her now.’

She slammed the salon door behind her and did not look back.

The catwalk down the centre of the Civic Ballroom was lined with hot-house plants. It smelled like a floral pavilion. There were chairs lined in rows facing each other. The seats were filling up with the great and the good of Grimbleton, all sitting in frocks and hats, waiting to be entertained. It was a full house and the raffle prizes were good. Lily bought five bobs’ worth, hoping to secure the main prize of a ticket on a cruise round the Hebrides donated by Bill and Avril Crumblehume, the owners of Longsight Travel who were friends of the Unsworths.

Her hairstyle was a shock. She was expecting something like the concrete set Esme got from Mavis Tatlock each week. Gone was the hosepipe coil round her head and in its place was a sleek bob, more Veronica Lake with a bang over her forehead. Who was this stranger peeking at her through the fringe?

There was no time to be nervous as there were six outfits to fling on, one after the other. Her favourite outfit was a two-piece linen suit in a dusty pink with full skirt and frilly petticoat. You could make three dresses from the material in the skirt alone. After all the shortages it seemed so extravagant to be floating around in such luxury, but she wasn’t going to faint now and let the side down.

‘Next we have Lee, our English rose…’

‘Where’s Lee?’

‘It’s you, get on!’ Diana shoved Lily forward. It was now or never to the end of that long, long walk. She fixed her eyes on the clock at the end of the gallery and strode out onto the precipice with her smile plastered firmly onto her face.

‘By heck! Is that our Lil? What’ve they done to her?’ Esme stared in disbelief as her daughter swanned down the catwalk like a professional. ‘Who’d’ve thought it?’

‘She’s turned out right bonny,’ said Doris Pickvance with a sniff. ‘Just wait until her wedding day. You’re in for a treat there.’

Esme saw the rest of the parade through a veil of tears. Where had all the years gone? Lily Long-legs, with a pair of plaits like ropes, had gone for good, replaced by this swish young lady with a waspy waist and softly turned hair. When did our Lil get to be such a fine-looking lass? she wondered. It was as if the scales were falling off her eyes and she now looked at her daughter for the first time. How could she ever have dismissed her as plain? How come her sons had got all her attention? They had dazzled her with Redvers’ charm while all along Lil was blossoming into this lovely young lady.

When it came to the finale, she was floating past in a satin ballgown with a sequined bodice in deep midnight blue. Ana was by her side, looking very sophisticated in sea-green velvet that showed off her full bust and red-gold hair.

Diana Unsworth wore a figure-hugging black number and the bridal outfit was worn by one of Levine’s assistants. It was fitted with a long train. Perhaps, Esme thought, she ought to let the moths fly out of her purse in a good cause and buy Lily a wedding dress from this shop. She would stop the traffic in one of their gowns.

Esme was that proud and yet so sad that none of the men was here to see the transformation. Suddenly she felt as if life was passing her by. Her children were grown now and didn’t need her. She was getting old and faded, like a waning moon. Lily’s moon was waxing full. It was her turn now.

In the flurry of the changing room everyone was on a high. Lily slid herself out of the ballgown with a sigh: time for Cinderella to leave the ball and back to plain clothes and porridge. Time for Lee to change back to Doormat Lil.

For a few hours she had been pampered and preened but this wasn’t real. Time to be getting back to decorating the cottage and settling down.

Wearing these dresses was dangerous. In outfits like these, it was easy to pretend she was stepping aboard a Dakota and flying off to Paris and Rome, travelling the world like a film star, not a shop assistant, scrubbing floors and counting boxes of sennapods. It made her feel restless and ready for a change.

There was more to life than the stall. Levi and Mother could manage without her. Enid would always help out, and Susan. She was surplus to requirements. Time for a change. Then she remembered there was a wedding to organise and Walter to enthuse. Wasn’t that a challenge enough?

Someone was shouting for Maria but the funny thing was she had not appeared to see the display.

‘She’s wanted at the hospital,’ said Enzo Santini, looking as if he had run across town.

Lily buttoned up her coat and grabbed her handbag. There was trouble and Maria needed help. No more daydreaming. This was for real.

18

Moses Heights

In her eagerness to get away from Sylvio, Maria skipped the show and, with Rosaria, jumped on the first bus to the hospital. Rosa liked to sit on the top deck watching out of the window. It was just another outing with Mamma for her, but today it was life or death for Maria. There was so much to make up for. This time she didn’t mind the long walk up the driveway, or the chill air. To see her husband and begin again was her goal.

They’d arrived too early and stood in the foyer waiting for permission to go down to his open ward. She was surprised then to see Sister Jarvis scurrying towards her, her starched cap flapping behind her like sailcloth in the wind.

‘Thank goodness you’ve come. Did you not get my message?’ the nurse spoke softly.

‘No? What’s up?’ Maria’s heart was thumping now. She’d not gone home but rushed from salon to café, grabbed her child and jumped on to the bus.

‘I’m afraid Mr Santini has had a relapse. Rosaria must stay outside, of course, but you can come straight down. I think your family will not be far behind,’ she continued as they strode down the corridor at speed, shoes squeaking on the tiled floor, limbs pumping with shock and dread.

‘He was fine on Sunday…What’s gone wrong?’ Maria whispered, stopping in the doorway of the side room where her husband lay prostrate, breathing into an oxygen mask, his face the colour of ash and his eyes sunk into their sockets.

‘Marco, it’s me…what have you been up to now?’ she whispered in their mother tongue. She kissed his limp hand and sat down beside him.

‘One minute he was sitting up, his usual self, and then we found him collapsed. His heart isn’t strong. Come outside.’ Sister Jarvis pointed to the open balcony. ‘His heart is struggling after all these years with bad lungs.’ The nurse paused, looking into Maria’s eyes. ‘You may want to call his priest.’

‘Oh, no!’ she cried, her knees going weak. Surely it’d not come to that, not when she was coming back to him? This was too cruel. There’d been false alarms before but even she was shocked by the change in him in just a few days.

‘I want Rosa to be with us,’ she asked.

‘We don’t allow children, as you know. It’ll only frighten her and you don’t want her to make a fuss and disturb the other patients. Rules are rules for everyone’s good, Mrs Santini.’ The sister shook her head.

‘Please, he must see his child. It will give him hope and fight. He’s not been able to touch her for weeks. What harm can it do either of them now? Rosa is too young to understand what’s happening.’

‘I insist. No child enters a ward for fear of infection but she can watch from the balcony for a few minutes,’ Sister Jarvis replied, not looking Maria in the eye.

Maria made for the hall and took Rosa round the outside walkway whilst trying to explain what was happening.

‘Papa is sleeping and he’s very, very tired and must rest,’ she said, clutching Rosa’s mittened hand and willing herself to stay calm. ‘We’ll play peep-o with him out here. You can wave but not go inside. He’ll hear you and know you are there,’ she added. ‘Father Michael Grady will come and sit with him.’

Rosa stood by the open window, staring at her daddy as if he was a specimen in a jar. ‘What is that?’ she asked, pointing to the mask and the tubes.

‘It helps his heart to tick tock,’ Maria replied, torn between wanting to reassure her child and hold her husband, dreading the moment when the Santinis would flood into the sickroom and take over. She would be an onlooker then, the stranger in the midst. Her heart railed at sharing precious moments with anyone else.

Doctors came and went, nurses fiddled with the tubes, but Marco was slipping away, unaware of any of them. It was like sitting in some strange play going on all around her, a slow-motion action unfolding before her.

They watched Father Michael, who now knew the secrets of her heart in confession, administer the last rites, and Marco’s brothers lined up, caps in hands, standing silent and awkward. Nonna Valentina was on her knees, wailing as if he were already dead.

Then came the welcome news that Lily was waiting in the foyer. Trust her friend to be there. Leaving the balcony, Maria ushered Rosa towards her.

‘Say night, night to Papa, give him a kiss…’

Rosa stood back. ‘No…I can’t see him.’

Damn the rules, Maria thought, lifted Rosa up to the bed and let her kiss his forehead. Then she whisked her down the corridor, relieved to see a familiar comforting face even if it was coiffed and made up from the fashion show.

‘Thank God you come! This is no place for Rosa now. Marco is dying,’ she croaked, tears streaming down her face.

‘I’ll take her home with me…you go back. I’m so sorry. We’ll take care of her. Come on, Rosie, let’s go play with Dina and Joy.’

Nonna dozed on her knees, praying for a miracle. Maria sat wide awake, stupefied by guilt and disbelief at first, but now rigid with shock. She’d come to re-dedicate herself to her marriage, renew her vows, cleansed by confession only that morning. Now everything was turned upside down and all she wanted was for Marco to beat the odds and live.

‘Live, Marco,’ she prayed, but he slipped from them as the lemony dawn rose above the hills. His struggles were over.

She must embrace her old life, blameless, give him the honour and respect in death that she’d neglected to show him in life. She was a widow and free to make her own decisions but bound tighter than ever before by her guilt.

It was only when they laid him out and Nonna wept, ‘My poor son, he had no life,’ that the pain surged into every sinew of her body and a weariness like a cloak of lead made her slump into the chair in despair. She watched a skein of ducks flying in arrow formation silhouetted against the sky and felt a flash of envy for her husband.

‘No more pain, Nonna, no more beds and open windows and basket chairs now.’

Soon it would be time to leave but not before she had cleared out the clutter from his locker and bedside table, all the myriad little things that still smelled of him: the green sheets of their local sports paper, sacred pictures, a crucifix, a half-eaten bag of sweets and a little snapshot of the three of them taken on a trip to the seaside. She would leave everything tidy and neat, grief or no grief. It gave her hands something to do.

Scrumpled in the drawer, half hidden among the postcards, was a letter. Curious, she opened up the page and read it.

MR SANTINI,

YOUR WIFE, MARIA, IS A TART. ASK HER WHAT SHE GETS UP TO OF A NIGHT WITH LAVARONI’S NEW HAIRDRESSER. THE REPLY WILL NOT PLEASE YOU BUT IT IS RIGHT YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF WHORE SHE BE. READ HOSEA CHAPTER ONE.

A WELL WISHER.

Maria scrambled to find the envelope also typed in capital letters. It was addressed, ‘MR SANTINI, THE SANATORIUM, MOSES HEIGHTS, NR GRIMBLETON’.

She shoved the letter quickly into her handbag, out of sight but not out of mind. Never out of mind, every word etched into her heart. She felt it thumping through her ribs. Could Nonna Valentina see it throbbing with guilt?

You have killed your husband, came the words bursting through her eardrums. He had read that poisonous letter and the shock of it was too much for his frail body. You might as well have stabbed him in the heart with a knife yourself. What he must have suffered: shock, disbelief, fear and doubt, and all borne alone.

Someone hated them so much as to want to shame her and hurt her husband, but who? Who would do this to them? One of the family? Surely not. If a Santini had suspected anything, she’d have been banished from Marco’s deathbed long ago.

With his dying, for one brief moment she’d wondered if she’d escaped the wrath of God but no, she was found out and would be punished. There was now nothing she could ever do to make it right but pray for his forgiveness from across the grave, pray for his soul to be at peace, have Masses said for his release from such a torment and for the salvation of her own soul.

Only three of them knew of this dreadful exposé and one of them was now dead. She must find out who had done this and kill them, pay them back for all they’d done to an innocent man. She wouldn’t rest until she was avenged. Marco didn’t deserve this cruel end, with only his wife’s betrayal for company in his agony.

The Santinis need never know, and Rosa must never know, but this terrible guilt must live in her heart for ever.

That this was the work of a woman, she’d no doubt. There was something peevish and cruel that smacked of jealousy and malice, but who and why would be her life’s work to find out. When she found that devil, oh, how she’d suffer for this. An eye for an eye was too good for her but revenge was a dish best eaten cold.

She kneeled by Marco’s body and prayed in silence.

Marco, I will avenge your suffering. I take it upon myself to live like a nun until you are avenged. I will sacrifice any future happiness. I will live only for Rosa’s happiness. I will make you proud of me and honour your family name, but please forgive me for my weakness. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Forgive me for being weak when you were so strong. Forgive me…

It was almost dark when they parked in Division Street. Lily held the sleeping Rosa over her shoulder.

‘Where’ve you been, Lil? I’ve been that worried. Not another waif and stray to take in for the night?’ Esme was standing in the hallway staring down at the child. ‘Walt’s in the other room and he’s not a happy man. He’s been all over Grimbleton looking for you.’

‘There’s been an emergency.’ Lily sat down, suddenly exhausted. She told them the sorry news and then she made some cocoa for Rosa.

Su appeared and whisked the child upstairs. Ana was on shift and the house was quiet for a change. Walter was listening to the wireless and ambled in when his programme had finished.

‘I thought we were going to make a start on Well Cottage. I gather you’ve been all dolled up down the town hall. Mam said you could feed a man for a year on the price of one of the rig-outs.’

‘I’m very tired,’ Lily replied. ‘It’s been a rum do at Maria’s. They say Marco Santini’s not going to last the night so I brought Rosa back here. There was no time to get your shopping in.’

Tears were rolling down her cheeks, tears of sadness, exhaustion. If ever she needed a pair of strong arms around her it was tonight. ‘Hold me, Walter, hold me tight.’

‘What’s brought this on, old girl?’ He patted her on the arm.

‘Just hold me. I need a big hug. You won’t leave me, will you?’

‘You daft happorth! What would I be doing that for?’ he grinned. ‘I’ll get you a biscuit. You’ve had a shock. What on earth have you done to yerself…all that make-up, and who’s been chopping your hair?’

‘It’s modern. Isn’t it?’

‘It’ll soon grow out. You don’t look the same.’

‘I don’t feel the same, Walt,’ she whispered as he made for the kitchen.

*  *  *

The phone rang at seven on the Sunday morning. Marco had slipped away before dawn and Angelo was coming in his taxi to collect Rosa.

Later Maria phoned to thank them for taking her child for the night. ‘Oh, Lily, it is terrible. I have to see you. I was going to start all over again, clean slate, new start. Now it’s too late. How can I forgive myself? It should be me who is dead. I killed him!’

There was no making sense of her. Grief was controlling her senses. Maria was taking Marco’s sudden collapse hard. The Santinis would wrap themselves around her friend, make a big fuss of Rosa, buying her toys and sweets and treats as if to make up for her loss. It was not going to be easy to see her alone. Then there was the matter of Sylvio Bertorelli…

Three days later Kirkgate came to a standstill as the cortège left the café, pulled by black horses with plumes. It was a beautiful morning and all the shops and businesses were shut in respect for Marco’s passing. Mourners followed in a dignified procession to the Catholic chapel. Everyone was dressed in black, and the women wore lace mantillas over their heads.

The Italian community turned out in force: the Gambas, Morellis, even their ice-cream rivals, the Falconis, paid their respects and Gianni Lavaroni turned up with his wife in a fur coat. Snow was still covering the moor tops in the distance.

Maria looked so thin and haggard, and little Rosa, in a coat a size too big for her, held on to her hand.

All the Olive Oils turned up to give their support and sat at the back out of sight: Diana, Queenie, Su and Ana, watching the ceremony with tears in their eyes. It was Lily’s first visit to the ornate chapel, its walls lined with statues, alcoves with candles burning, the great crucifix hanging from the ceiling. How different from Zion and Freddie’s memorial service.

How different the Santinis and Winstanleys dealt with death, she mused. Here was passion and suffering, sacrifice painted on every wall, reminding everyone of their mortality. These age-old rituals were comforting in their familiarity but strange to her ears. Each to his own, she thought, praying that Maria would find consolation in the ceremony.

Lily called into Santini’s most days to see how she was coping but she was never alone in the kitchen or upstairs.

‘You’re worn out. Take a break. Marco wouldn’t want you to be so sad,’ Lily said the day after Marco’s funeral, offering her a brew of herbal concoctions to strengthen her blood.

Susan brought posies of flowers to cheer her table.

Ana looked her over with concern. ‘It is time you see a doctor. You can’t go on like this. You do your best. It was always going to end this way, surely?’ she added.

Now that Ana was training as a nurse she had strong opinions about everybody’s health. Out of her bag came her special icon of the Blessed Virgin to comfort Maria, and Lily noticed the soft walnut eyes of the Virgin filled with kindness. ‘Dina and me, we light a candle for his soul at our church.’

When Enzo and Nonna had gone, Maria broke down with relief. ‘It is me that should be dead. I killed him…I killed him!’ she sobbed, her head banging on the cushions of the sofa.

‘Stop this! It is grief talking.’ Lily hugged her. ‘You kept him alive much longer than his condition would predict. You were a good wife to him. You visited him. On Ana’s wards no one visits the old and sick. You did all what was expected.’

‘I betray him. I kill him.’ Maria continued crying. ‘I was too busy loving Sylvio…only you know we were more than friends. I betray Marco’s trust and the shock of it killed him. I am a bad woman. How can you say good things to me now?’

They sat on either side of her and held her. ‘We all knew about Sylvio. Anyone could see how it was for you…He brought a shining light into your eyes. You were discreet. These things happen,’ whispered Susan, taking hold of her hand. ‘And I should know.’

‘I am not a fit mother but I had sworn never to see him again. It was over and that is my punishment, and I have to live knowing Marco knew everything…I killed him. I broke his heart.’

‘You told him the truth?’ said Ana, her eyes wide, looking up at Lily with surprise.

‘No…I couldn’t bear to lose his trust but I find a letter, nasty letter by his bed when I was clearing his things.’ She pulled a crumpled note in an envelope from her handbag and shoved it in Lily’s hand. ‘Read it!’

Lily shared it with the others, each shaking her head in disbelief.

‘He gets that letter. The shock is too much for his heart.’ Maria bent her head. ‘Lily, it broke his will to live. Someone hate us so much they do this to a sick man.’

‘Who was it?’ Lily asked.

‘It can’t be family. What if they send them a letter too? There is no name, that is the coward’s way, but it is typed proper.’ She shoved the envelope into her hand.

‘How can anyone do this, Susan? I have to know?’

The two of them looked at the letter long and hard. It was stamped in Grimbleton on white notepaper, much crumpled with rereading, and fingermarked. They looked at each other but said nothing more.

‘Forget this filth and get on with your life. That will be your victory over this poisonous snake,’ Lily said. ‘But we’ll all help you find the snake, won’t we?’

‘No! You must tell no one,’ Maria pleaded. ‘Nobody knows about this, not even the priest. It is my burden, my punishment. I will seek revenge and you will help me?’

‘We’ll help you. What are friends for but to help each other through tears, bread and salt, sorrows and joy shared alike? I know what it is to be without hope,’ said Ana. ‘You came to our rescue and now we come to yours…if only you knew…’

Lily waited for the truth about the Winstanleys to come tumbling out but Ana stopped just in time.

‘You’ve had some beautiful cards. Let’s open these.’ Su pointed to a handful of unopened envelopes, shoving them into her hand to distract Maria.

‘This is from Queenie…Oh, no!’ Maria screamed pulling out a note.

Miss you at the salon. Sylvio walked out after the fashion show. He has gone AWOL. Look after yourself.

See you soon. Love, Queenie

As Maria read the note she fell on the carpet in a faint, lying flat out.

Ana kneeled over her. ‘Sip this,’ she whispered, feeling for her pulse. ‘You’re going to the doctor if I have to drag you there myself,’ she said.

‘Yes, Sister,’ Maria croaked ‘It’s too late for doctors now. I am in big trouble. I have to see Sylvio. There’s something he should know.’

What a sorry tale, Lily sighed. Just like Shakespeare, all ending in tears and tragedy. Timing was everything in life. Get it right and everything falls into place, but miss your cue and it’s curtains.

It still amazed her that Su and Ana turned up on the same flight, the chance in a million that was. What if only one of them had come? What would have happened then?

Then she recalled the big fight at Waverley House. Was it Ivy who said Maria’s romance would end in tears? Was it possible that…? Surely not? Had her own sister-in-law a hand in making sure that it did?

19

Changing the Guard

The racket coming from the kitchen would wake the dead, Esme thought as she hung over the banister rail in the hall, wondering what on earth was going on. This house was getting more like Bedlam and Paddy’s Market, with toys and clutter everywhere. Neville, Joy and Dina were squabbling over the Noah’s ark toys at the foot of the stairwell.

‘Mine!’ shouted Joy.

‘It’s mine!’ Neville yelled. ‘This is my house!’ whacking her on the head with a lead giraffe. Joy kicked him and he started to scream. It was time to step in before there was blood on the Axminster. Neville was yelling for his mum. All hell was breaking loose.

‘Get this clutter off these stairs before someone breaks their neck,’ Esme ordered.

Everyone could hear Ivy shrieking and Ana shouting back. They were having yet another barney.

‘There they go again, Lil. It’s like Mount Etna erupting, giving me a splitting headache. This can’t go on,’ Esme said, as they scurried in the direction of the fracas. A house full of temperamental women was getting on her nerves.

‘It was you! You sent letter. You killed Marco Santini!’ Ana was waving a kitchen knife in the air. ‘You are very wicked woman,’ she shouted, jabbing the knife in the direction of Ivy, who was trying to make Levi’s sandwiches.

‘I don’t know what this mad woman’s talking about,’ Ivy snapped, looking up as an audience gathered in the kitchen. ‘I don’t know what she is on about, do you, Mother? Foreigners, they’re all the same, making accusations. It was her as nearly got our Levi beaten to pulp,’ she retorted, stabbing a fork in Susan’s direction.

‘He get what is coming up,’ Ana shouted in her defence. It was funny how her much improved English fell to bits when she was angry.

‘Put that knife down, lass,’ Esme whispered to Ana. ‘There could be an accident.’

She was weary of all the bad feeling in the house lately. Susan and Ana wouldn’t speak to Levi and Ivy. Neville and the babies kept biting each other. She was fed up with the lot of them.

‘I just don’t know what’s got into you all. What sort of example is this to the kiddies? I’ve just about had enough of you lot going hammer and tongs, and now the kiddies are copying too. I thought we’d got over all that silly business. Levi explained his mistake about the herbs. It was all a misunderstanding. Susan and Lil had no right to interfere,’ she added, trying to be fair.

She knew her son was lying, not believing one of his excuses, but he’d made a big mistake and she must give him a second chance. He was her son, after all, and they were all having to live with Freddie’s even bigger mistakes.

Levi was shaken by his beating, nervous she might chuck him out of the house or cut off his wages. He would shape up now she was keeping the books herself. It was partly her fault for being lax and letting her involvement slide. Her lazy son always did need a kick up the backside.

You don’t choose your offspring, she mused. You get what you’re given and make the best of them if you’ve any sense. He was family and that was what mattered. It was up to them to sort him out but if he slipped up again he was out on his ear, son or no. There was only so much she could take from him.

Susan was leaving the market stall to try for another teaching post and good old Enid was back full time, keeping an eye on Levi.

‘I can’t have you making accusations like that, Ana. Why should Ivy have anything to do with anything? It’s sad about Mr Santini but he’s been ill for years. Come on, spit it out, what’s brought this on?’

‘Maria’s husband get nasty letter and it broke his heart with shock. Maria is in terrible state. She is very sick. We think Ivy sent that letter,’ Ana accused. ‘She was angry about the hash. She said she would pay back Maria. Lily and Daw Winstanley, they hear your bad words. I think you write out of evil heart,’ she spat out her accusation at Ivy, and turned back to her chopping, banging on the table. There was no stopping that girl when she got an idea in her head. Poor Freddie never stood a chance once she got her claws in him.

‘How dare that woman talk to me like that? Why should I write to a Wop?’ Ivy replied, her lips tied in a string purse of righteous anger.

‘Because you are bad woman who want to spoil Maria’s happiness,’ Ana replied.

‘We don’t approve of adultery in this house. Any woman who goes with another man when her husband is sick deserves everything she gets. It’s all round the town that she’s no better than she should be, that so-called friend of yours!’ Ivy furiously packed the pile of sandwiches in a lunch box, slamming the lid.

‘Is this true, Ana?’ said Esme, sitting down at the table to face the both of them. Better to be informed of the true facts before she made a judgement.

‘What Maria does in her private life is none of our business. Maria’s a kind woman and good to all of us. We all make mistakes.’ Ana refused to look her in the face but her cheeks were flushed.

‘So what proof have you got to blame our Ivy for some poison-pen letter? It’s a serious charge, my lady,’ Esme countered with a calmness that belied her racing heart.

‘I no need proof. I know in here,’ Ana shouted, stabbing at her heart with the knife again, thankfully with the handle rather than the blade but still giving them all palpitations. ‘That woman hate us. Her never like Maria and wanted to get back at my friend.’

Esme paused, folding her arms. ‘I think you should apologise to Ivy right now and it’ll go no further. You just can’t go making stories out of thin air. Why should Ivy risk her good reputation to write such an evil thing?’

Ivy was sitting with Neville, looking like innocence personified, her head bowed like a suffering saint, but Esme was cautious. No one spoke. It was time to talk turkey and get the steam out of this nonsense.

‘I can’t have all this argy-bargy in my house. It’s getting me down, the atmosphere amongst you. It’s time you all sorted yourselves out and made your peace. If you can’t live together then you’ll have to find somewhere else to go. Heaven knows, I’ve done my duty by you all for long enough. I want no more sniping and backbiting. Is it too much to ask for a bit of peace and quiet at my age?’

She rose and left them to stew in their own juices. For months now she’d done her duty, kept a roof over everyone’s head and covered up the family shame, months of lies and half-truths. They all needed a good shaking. Why should she put up with this rumpus any more? Three generations in one house was never going to be easy, even in a big house like this, but all the bickering was getting beyond a joke.

Esme retreated into the front room by the marble mantelpiece, too tired to knit or read or do the mending, sunk back in a chair with shut eyes. She was at a difficult age for women, ‘on the change’. All these hot sweats and flushes were playing havoc with her sleep and her concentration, but this accusation buzzed in her head like a demented bee.

The trouble was there was no one here to share her worries with, no one who could see the funny side of things, no one to tease and make them all laugh, no one like Freddie or Redvers. It was hard putting on a brave face in public, and she had cried herself to sleep many a night thinking about them.

What troubled her most was the thought that Ivy could be capable of writing such a letter. There was something in her tight-lipped silence and pious gaze that made her shiver. Ivy was all for number one, and precious little Neville was turning into the same. He was being groomed to expect better things without the cash to back them up and it had put temptation into Levi’s path.

Ana was on the way to becoming a right starched apron. She’d an answer for everything these days. It was ‘Dr Jacob says this,’ and ‘Sister Diane says that.’ Esme’s lodgers were getting too big for their boots. Had they forgotten just how much they owed to this family?

Susan was quiet enough, but sharp, and she fussed and overfed little Joy until she was far too bonny for her own good. Their whole lives revolved around the blessed dancing class and supper club.

The novelty of having such exotic grandchildren was wearing off fast. Much as she’d grown to care for them, she was glad to see the back of them at the end of the day, but as they grew larger and noisier what would happen then?

Suddenly she wanted to just get shut of the lot of them. Waverley might as well be a boarding house-in and out on shifts, creaking stair rods and pulled lavatory chains, waking the household, trampled carpets and strangers in her kitchen.

I’ve done my duty, she thought, looking at the men in her life, at Redvers and little Travis on the piano, and Freddie’s military portrait with his cap at such a rakish angle, which only now could she bear to display. The family were well established now. She’d seen them all through difficult months, kept the show on the road. Now it was her turn to retire from the fray.

At least she was lucky enough to have funds to give her some choice. Redvers said it was good for a woman to have a bit of money stashed away, and she was well provided for. It was about time there were a few changes in this house, and soon, before she grew too old to enjoy herself.

With her eyes closed it was pleasant to imagine another way of life. Then she recalled there was Lil’s wedding to pay for, and her heart sank. That must be the first priority.

‘Are you all right, Mother?’ Lily asked, creeping into the room, searching for the Gazette. ‘I’ve cleared them all off the stairs. Can I show you something in the paper?’

‘Not now, love. I’m done in. I don’t know what Redvers would make of this lot,’ Esme sighed, fingering his photo. ‘I’ve tried to keep the show on the road, Lil. It’s about time there were a few changes in this house, and soon, before I get too old to make them.’

‘I’ll soon be out of your hair. That’ll be one less to worry about,’ she offered. Her wedding day was only eight weeks away now.

‘I’ve been thinking about that. You looked that swish in the ballgown. Do you want something from Levine’s? You can have all my coupons.’

‘It’s all in hand, Mother. Can you imagine one of those puffballs going down the aisle in Zion? I’d get stuck on the umbrella stands. No, thank you.’

What had changed Mother’s mind? It was not like her to fling out compliments.

‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? I hear Mrs Platt is not well pleased with Walter giving up his housekeeping money to do up that place.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ Lily murmured, picking up the Gazette and leaving the room.

It was Diana who had pointed out the advertisement in the Jobs section of the Gazette.

LONGSIGHT TRAVEL: require the services of a reliable shorthand typist with telephone skills to help administer busy office, friendly manner essential.

‘It’s a new business organising bus tours around Britain and they’re hoping to branch out into the Continent if they can get petrol concessions. It’s got your name written all over it.’ Diana had shoved the page in front of her.

Lily had gone into the Crumblehumes’ office to collect the raffle prize and liked the set-up. She had a new hairstyle, soon to have a new name, so why not a new job?

But I couldn’t leave the stall, could I, she wondered. Why not? Levi ignored her, Enid could do the job standing on her head and needed the extra pay, and now that Su was going, Lily wasn’t needed for guard duty.

If truth was told, her heart had not been in the stall for a long while. All those years seeing the business through the war and no thanks for it. Why shouldn’t she do something new, something for herself?

Now the war was over people wanted regular holidays. For two weeks every August Grimbleton ground to a halt when factories, mills and schools shut down for the wakes weeks to go to the seaside en masse. Austerity and rations, nothing would stop the annual holiday.

Only last week she had read something in the Manchester Guardian that suggested that soldiers who travelled across the world would someday want to take their families to see just where they had fought. People might want to go further afield than Blackpool or Morecambe. Honeymooners might choose hotter climes than Scarborough and Rhyl. The prospect of a new challenge at work was irresistible.

A letter replying to the advert was written without a second’s hesitation.

The interview, when it came, was a surprise. Avril Crumblehume was heavily pregnant, a neat checked smock over her skirt.

‘I must tell you we’ve had many replies but we’re looking for someone who can see a wider picture than just issuing tickets, someone who would be prepared to travel with our customers and see to their comfort, to report back on any hiccups while I’m out of action. Do you have another language?’

Lily muttered something about French Matriculation. ‘I’m willing to learn more.’

‘So why did you apply for the position?’

Lily was ready for this one. ‘The idea of travel excites me. It always has. I’m already planning a trip abroad for my honeymoon. I read in the paper…’ she brought out the newspaper cutting, ‘there has to be a future in foreign holidays.’

‘That’s the spirit: enthusiasm, willingness to learn and an eagerness to please! Those are just the qualities we’re looking for. As you can see I’m going to be away for quite a time but I’m not quite ready for the kitchen sink yet. We all did our bit in the war so why should we gracefully retire out of sight so the men can have all the fun? I think not. Diana Unsworth recommends you highly. I hear your house is full of women on the move.’

They spent half an hour going through secretarial duties and Lily completed the shorthand test with ease, but had she done enough to convince them of her commitment and efficiency? She had never wanted anything so much for a long time.

‘You’ve done what?’ shouted Walter from the landing of Well Cottage when she told him. ‘And I wasn’t even consulted on the matter, not once?’

They were trying to tackle the peeling wallpaper in the upstairs bedroom. It was a losing battle. Well Cottage was aptly named. Lily discovered a well hidden under the scullery floor. This old house was built over everlasting springs and damp was a major problem.

‘Think about it, love. It’s a new company and they’re eager to try new things. They are wanting staff to try out new venues,’ she explained.

‘You mean we’d be their guinea pigs,’ he retorted, unconvinced.

‘It means, my precious, that we can go to Paris and perhaps get paid for part of our honeymoon. I hope you’ve sorted out that passport,’ she shouted from up a ladder while trying to paste the paper back on the ceiling.

Once they got some coal fires going to warm the stone, it might be a little less damp, but that fusty smell would take a bit of shifting. It might help if Walter could do his share, but his back couldn’t take any stretching and he had no head for heights. He was good at brewing up the tea and dishing out advice, but not much else.

Lily was not fazed by his infirmity. There was a brilliant osteopath who worked with Grasshoppers players. Pete Walsh swore by his efficacy. His injury had cost the team dear but now he was fully recovered. Only last week he’d come to collect his sister, Kathleen, from Brownies again. It was getting quite a habit, him hovering around while she cleared up and Kath went out into the playground to do cartwheels and handstands. He helped Lily put the chairs away and the stuff back in the cupboards. They often stood and chatted over the task. It was then she told him about Walter’s sufferings in the back department and he was so sympathetic. She also told him about her new job and the chance to travel.

‘Don’t worry, Terry’ll make a new man of him, I promise,’ Pete laughed, and she sighed, hoping it was true, for Walter Platt of late was pretty useless in all departments and she was fast losing patience with him.

The next week Pete asked her about her job as if he was really interested. Nobody else in the family had bothered much about the big change in her life. Why couldn’t they be enthusiastic for her? This new post in town was something she’d done off her own bat. For too long she’d been dependent on the family business. This was a new start and she decided there would be no more Lil or Lily, but she’d use her mannequin name, Lee, to mark this new beginning. It sounded much more snazzy and professional. Like Lee Miller, the famous war photographer, who took pictures of herself in Hitler’s bath!

‘What do you mean, you’ve decided to sell up?’ said Levi, choking at the news on his extra breakfast rasher of bacon the next morning. ‘What about the business? Have you gone mad, Mother?’

Esme was smiling as she shoved more fried bread on his empty plate. ‘I had the best night’s sleep for years. I can’t think why I didn’t think of it sooner. They’re building some bungalows up at Sutter’s Fold, with grand views and fresh air, a good breeze for the washing to dry and no sooty marks to worry about,’ she smiled, eyeing them all. ‘Or maybe I’ll flit to St Anne’s, by the sea. It’s about time you lot learned to stand on your own feet but I’ll want a bit of my share out of Health and Herbs. You’ll have to make yourself a living from it. The business’ll still be there for Neville, of course, if you don’t drink all the profits out of it, but I’ve decided to retire to the country and spend my money while I’m still game enough to enjoy it. It was Lil who gave me the notion.’

All the eyes at the breakfast table turned to Lily. What had she done now?

‘It was Lil getting that new job that gave me the inclination. If stay-at-home old Lily can shift herself as well as take on that lanky loon, a cottage with water running down the walls and a brand-new job, then I’m not too past it to make some changes here, myself.’

As Esme spoke it was as if the years were rolling off her, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

The look on Levi’s face was a picture. ‘I think you’ve had a bad turn. You need your head examining,’ he sulked. ‘Bungalows cost money.’

‘I may sell this house as an investment property and I’ve still got my Crompton’s shares. I won’t starve but I’m not scrimping just to leave you a tidy packet to flush down the loo of the Conservative Club. I fancy a change,’ she said, just as Ivy popped her head round the door.

‘Everything all right?’ she smiled.

‘No it’s not,’ said Levi, with his mouth full. It was not a pretty sight. ‘Mother’s decided to sell up and leave us all in the lurch.’

‘You can’t sell Waverley House? Where will we go?’ Ivy replied, looking at her husband in panic.

‘Why ever not? You always wanted a place for the three of you across town. You’ve never liked Division Street.’ Lily couldn’t resist adding fuel to the flames.

‘We can’t invest in the business and buy a proper house,’ snapped Levi.

‘And there’s Neville’s education to see to. We were hoping you would see your way to helping us send him to the preparatory school one day. He’ll need extra coaching to get a place at Grimbleton Grammar School,’ Ivy whined in the little-girl voice she used to get round Levi.

‘That’s the joy of a family, lass: all those decisions to make and sacrifices to ponder over. If you want my opinion I should get yourself a decent roof over your head first and forget about giving Neville airs and graces. If he’s not the sharpest knife in the Winstanley drawer, better to let him find his own level. He’ll be the happier for it.’

No one spoke and Lily kept her head down, sinking into her seat and trying not to smirk.

‘This is all your doing,’ Ivy said, pinching Lily’s shoulder as she went past. ‘How can you deprive our son and not pay his school fees?’ she asked Esme.

‘I’m not answering that one. I think it’s about time you cut your cloth to suit, young lady, as Redvers used to say. I’ve spoiled you all and it’s time for a fresh start. I’ve made up my mind.’ Once that steel glint was in her eye there would be no turning her.

‘You’re being very cruel, Mother,’ said Levi. ‘Did you know about this?’ He turned to his sister but she shook her head.

‘I half wondered if Lily might not like to come and join me, and leave that lazy fiancé of hers to get off his backside and do an honest day’s work for a change. She’s turned out the best of the bunch. I have to say my sons have been a bit of a disappointment, but I suppose I’ve only myself to blame.’

‘You’ve taken leave of your senses,’ said Ivy. ‘But I’d like to be a fly on the wall when you send those two foreign spongers packing with their noisy tribe of show-offs and that Olive Oil Club of theirs. They’ll have to fend for themselves at last.’

‘Don’t worry, I have plans for them too.’

‘I hope you don’t favour them instead of your own flesh and blood,’ Ivy hissed.

‘Joy and Dina are family too, like it or not, Ivy. What I’ll do for them is only fair. They are the future. I’ve had my day and you’d better get on with making the best of yours before it’s too late,’ she added.

‘Is this all because of that stupid letter?’ Ivy glowered around the kitchen. ‘Those two have turned this family upside down. We were happy enough before they barged in and ruined everything. I still think they are both having us on. You’re too generous, letting them stink out the house with garlic and oil. They’ve lowered the tone of the place.’

‘All the more reason why you three will be happier out of here in your own home. You never liked my friends much, did you?’ Lily replied. She couldn’t believe she’d ever been scared of Ivy’s tongue-lashings.

‘Well, at least we won’t be consorting with adulterers’ children. I hear that slick hairdresser’s done a runner and left that tart in the lurch. I knew she’d have to pay for her sins,’ Ivy smiled.

‘Mr Santini was a war hero and innocent. He didn’t deserve to hear that way. I worry about the twisted soul who wrote to him with such spite. I wouldn’t like it on my conscience that an innocent man had a heart attack on receiving such bad news from a stranger, with not even a chance to hear his wife’s side of the story. You never know what goes on behind closed doors…Look at all our secrets?’ Esme whispered.

The silence was deafening so Lily added her own pennyworth. ‘Imagine you were lying in bed and someone sent a letter telling you that Levi was playing away. You would want to have it all out with him, wouldn’t you?’

‘Why are you saying all this to me?’ Ivy was going red in the face. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Of course not,’ Esme chipped in. ‘I wouldn’t like to think my son was married to the vicious soul who did that to a dying man. I gather the letter was typed and the police can easily check a typewriter to see if it was the source of the typescript. They will soon find the culprit.’

‘Has she taken it to the police then?’ There was a tremor in Ivy’s voice.

‘Oh, I expect so. It’s a criminal offence, after all, but it doesn’t concern us, does it? I think justice will be done in its own good time,’ Lily smiled, turning to her mother. ‘So you’ve made an appointment to see the solicitors to sort out your affairs and rejig your will, no doubt, while you’re at it?’

The effect of such mischief was electrifying. Suddenly both Levi and Ivy were on guard.

‘Mother, you shouldn’t do anything rash.’ Levi’s voice was all squeaky.

‘Thanks for your concern, son, but my mind is made up. I’m leaving Division Street for pastures new. This old house’ll have to fend for itself from now on. I feel like a breath of fresh air and a bit of a change. Who’s for a trip to the seaside?’

20

A Bit of Blackpool Air

Esme’s unexpected treat took everyone by surprise but the weather had faired up and she was determined to have a change of sky. First up for attention was the Rover, sitting on bricks in the garage, for an overhaul, some acid to top up its battery and enough petrol to get them there and back. It would be needed for the wedding, so out of mothballs it must come.

It was going to be done in style or not at all, she smiled, recalling the days she and Redvers took trips to the Trough of Bowland before the war, snug with blankets, Thermos and picnic baskets, bats and balls and a change of tyre in case of a puncture.

She didn’t feel up to driving herself but Lily would oblige. She was competent enough these days, but fixing the day out around all her daughter’s work, meetings and decoration took a bit of doing. She wanted to give the kiddies a treat to remember. Freddie would want his kiddies to have a day out in the sun.

Levi was going to hold the fort at the market under pain of dismissal if there was even a penny out in the till. Esme had to start trusting him again.

Everyone was tiptoeing around her since she’d announced her decision to upsticks and move. It had even shocked her. Nothing could change these last bleak months, but a walk down the Promenade might just lift everyone’s spirits. Surely Blackpool had got itself together after all the wartime restrictions?

How she’d stuff them all in the car would take some planning, especially as Lily’d asked if Maria and little Rosa could be included. How could she say no to a poor girl who’d just lost her husband?

She still felt uneasy about that letter…If it was Ivy’s doing then they ought to make up for it somehow. Ivy was not invited but Neville would come out with his grandma. The mums would have to squeeze in the back with their babies on their knees.

Esme smiled. It would be like old times, with a car full of excited children watching out of the window. Who’d be the first to see Blackpool Tower?

Punctures permitting, they’d make the Prom by noon, and a fish-and-chip treat in Lyons Corner café, a snooze on a deck chair and some ice cream on the pier.

It was funny how she felt all perked up about moving on. Change was in the air. It was all very strange.

‘I want you all ready by nine sharp,’ she ordered. ‘Family in best bib and tucker, we’re on parade. Don’t forget the potty, nappies, a damp cloth for sticky fingers, and we’ll tie the pushchair on the luggage rack.

*  *  *

Maria sat in the back, squashed between Ana and Su, trying not to be sick. Rosa was bouncing on her knee in excitement, dressed in her best church cotton dress with frills, and her usual tidy smocked overall, and all Maria could think of was keeping her meagre breakfast down.

Perhaps it was a mistake to come but the chance to get away was too tempting. She stared out at Preston docks, the long brick walls, the funnels of grey ships reminding her of the harbours of home all those years ago.

Seagulls screeched overhead and through the window flap she smelled the salty air. So many memories came flooding back to her. Her life was in such a mess now. She could hardly breathe.

It was kind of Mamma Winstanley to ask them out. She was a widow too, and must understand why she had to dress head to toe in black, as was the custom, but it drained all the energy out of her. She felt such a wicked woman. If only they knew her shame. What was she going to do? Soon she must go away, leave Santini’s, take any job, but where?

Su stood on the edge of the sands looking out at the gunmetal sea shimmering in the afternoon sun. The golden sands seemed to stretch for miles but her mind was worried with news of Daw Esme’s move. Soon Lily would be leaving. Ana had her hospital work. How would she and Joy survive on their own? Perhaps she might find a job in service in a place that would take a widow and child.

The sun went behind the clouds and she was glad of her neat jacket. Perhaps she could take in sewing or try again for a teaching post.

The children were playing on the damp sand, eyeing each other up. Neville was trying to boss them about with his spade. Rosa bashed his sandcastle and there were tears. They were little more than babies. What would the future hold for them?

Esme was snoring in a deck chair, shoes off and stockings rolled down. They owed so much to this kind lady. She’d taken them in like a good Christian woman; now they would have to go.

Ana watched the line of grey donkeys plodding up the shore with children jiggling on their saddles. How different the sea was here, rough and speckled like fish scales, not the turquoise and silver of the Mediterranean. The donkeys were not pack mules or beasts of burden climbing up the mountain tracks, faithful warriors bringing supplies to the andartes hidden in the hills, but toys for children to play with. She didn’t understand.

The sands were dotted with families playing bat and ball, having fun. Her heart was heavy with longing. How were things back home? Would she ever return? A wave of homesickness rushed over her. What was going to happen to them now?

Lily watched her friends all looking out to sea, silent and sad, close to tears, each of them lost in her own little world. Mother was having forty winks, oblivious to the storm cloud above their heads.

Blackpool was doing its best to be cheerful but it looked so battered and tired, and there were still signs of war on the beach. She ought to be decorating at Well Cottage, not gallivanting, as Walt would say, but someone had to drive the car. It was quite an extravagance on Mother’s part. The moths had flown out of her purse and she’d treated the girls to everything. Was this guilt money for leaving them in the lurch?

Lily had heard said that ‘the change’ did funny things to ladies of a certain age. What was going to happen to Freddie’s children once Division Street was sold? It was all very worrying.

Here they all were, sitting in their own little bubbles of misery, and the sun was shining again, the sky was brightening up. There must be something she could do to cheer them up.

‘I’m just going down the Golden Mile to see if anything is open,’ she shouted. ‘Back in a mo!’

They found ice-cream cones as they strolled down the Central Pier to stand out into the rushing tide, and took a ride in an open-topped landau down the other side of the Prom, past the grand hotels. Then they made for the Golden Mile and the candy-floss stand.

‘I’ll buy you all some,’ Lily offered, laughing as Ana tried to bite into the pink fluff. ‘It’s nothing.’ She looked so disappointed. ‘Like cotton wool. You like, Ria?’

Maria shrugged. ‘It is big trick, just spun sugar in a machine.’

Esme pointed out the little rock stall. ‘We can’t go home without a bit of Blackpool Rock, but you’ll need your coupons.’

Through the window they saw a man working the toffee into long tubes like broom handles, then working it smaller and smaller, fitting in the colours into letter shapes.

‘It’ll crack my dentures,’ Esme called.

‘Come on, over here,’ yelled Lily, pointing to a striped booth with a thick velvet curtain. ‘Here’s a fortuneteller…Come on, my treat.’

Everyone hung back, uncertain. The notice said, ‘Gypsy Bolero, Psychic to the Stars. Satisfaction Guaranteed’.

One by one they all trooped in, but Esme held back. ‘I don’t hold with telling fortunes, Lil.’ But even she went in and came out smiling.

‘I have to hand it to her, she knew her stuff. She told me after many sorrows I’d be moving on to a higher plain with lovely views and my children’s children would travel to the ends of the earth, that I was blessed with many generations to come to make our family proud. What do you think about that?’

‘She told me that after my sorrow I will find great happiness and new work, and my little girl will be a big star one day,’ Maria smiled.

Ana nodded. ‘She tell me I have very clever girl and one day I will see my island again. I am happy.’

‘She said I have a very good businesswoman hat on my shoulders, I will sell houses and make lots of money,’ Su added. ‘But, Lily, you must go in too. Go on, it was your big idea.’

Lily was pushed through the curtain and sat down.

‘Did I do all right for you?’ smiled the gypsy, smoking her clay pipe. ‘In the right order?’

‘You did just fine. You’ve put a smile on their faces.’ Lily got up to leave.

‘Not so fast, dearie…have one on the house?’

‘No!’

‘Come on…only fair you do it too…hold out your hand,’ she ordered, and Lily sat down again reluctantly, opening her palm.

‘This is a strong hand with much heart. I see many changes here. I see foreign shores and a long and happy marriage…not yet, in a year or two. It is a good hand…’

‘Well, it can’t be mine then. I’m getting wed next month!’ snapped Lily, shooting out of the door.

‘Well?’ Everyone was waiting.

‘Come on, time for the paddling pool and a trip round Stanley Park. Might as well make the most of a beautiful day.’

Esme was left in charge of the little ones, wading into the paddling pool to play with them and pick them up when Neville pushed them over. She could see other grannies looking enviously at her brood, so different but appealing with their curls and baby chatter. What will life be like for them in the future? She prayed that there’d be no more wars or depression to spoil their lives.

‘I am thrice blessed,’ she smiled, knowing she really meant it.

They sang all the way home, from nursery rhymes to Maria giving a sporting rendition of the aria from Madame Butterfly, ‘One Fine Day’.

That girl had a lovely voice and a good heart. Esme hadn’t enjoyed herself so much for years. She’d let her hair down and no mistake.

Only Lil was silent. Something was up there and no mistake. How she’d changed in the last few months, grown stronger and more independent, but her eyes were heavy and sad. A mother could tell when her kid was unhappy.

They dropped Maria and the sleeping child back at their digs. Neville had hardly been a spot of bother. One sharp word from his grandmother and he did as he was told. That was the joy of being a grandma: she could hand them back at the end of the day.

Sleeping children always looked adorable but in Esme’s eyes those sleepy heads were the finest in all Grimbleton; the future Winstanleys in the making. They must want for nothing.

After a subdued supper Su, Ana and Lily trooped into the big room. The girls were hesitant and fearful, knocking on the door wide-eyed and ready to hear the worst.

‘Is it true, Daw Esme? You are moving and we must leave?’ asked Su.

‘One day soon I’ll be too old for these stairs. This is a home for families, not pensioners.’ But Esme was smiling.

What’s the old rogue up to now? Lily wondered. She’s enjoying this, watching everyone jockeying for position. Esme Winstanley was as fit as a butcher’s dog. Years yet of chapel flower rotas, welfare clinics, Ladies Guild meetings and missionary fund-raising bazaars.

‘We can’t buy your house…we shall be sad to go but your health must come first,’ said Ana.

‘Look, I’ve not right decided yet whether to sell outright or rent it. If I do, then you’re welcome to stay on and look after the property until such times…Who knows what will happen in the future? You are young still. You have to make your own lives now, but I’ve had enough of being a referee. Once Levi finds a place of his own to live, there’d be room to take in lodgers or bed and breakfast for commercial travellers. This old villa would soon pay its way.’

‘Would you trust us to run a business for you?’ asked Su.

‘I don’t see why not. You girls are honest and hardworking. You keep your own room spick and span. It’d be up to you to make a go of it,’ Esme replied.

‘You are a good woman, Daw Esme. How can we repay you?’ Su asked.

‘Just you let your daughters grow up to make us all proud that they carry the name but just let’s keep this to yourselves for a while. Don’t let on to Ivy or you’ll never get shut of them. Time enough to tell them when they’ve flitted house.’ She winked at Lily, seeing the look of relief on her face. ‘By the way, did Maria Santini really go to the police with her letter?’

‘No,’ Lily whispered. ‘She told me this afternoon she’s too ashamed. I think she’ll be looking for rooms to rent soon. If she asked, could she come here?’

‘If she can pay the rent and serve up breakfasts perhaps she can have my room when I’m gone. That’ll be one in the eye for our Ivy, having the Olive Oil Club under one roof. She’ll be out that door faster than a dog with fleas.

‘I have to admit I always did like that Italian’s spirit. Not afraid of hard work, is Maria, even if she is a bit on the theatrical side. You’ve made yourself some good friends there, Lily. Your dad used to say you’re as rich as your friends but to have a friend, you have to be a friend first. It shows your heart’s in the right place. But do you really think it was Ivy who sent the letter?’

‘Sadly we do, Daw Esme,’ said Su. ‘She knew what was in the letter before we told her, but it’ll go no further now. Maria has enough to think about.’

‘The sooner Levi gets his family on its own, the better. I’ve been too soft with him. I’ll see right by them, for Neville’s sake, and then I’m going to get myself up in the hills or by the sea. Squabbling children are like mountains, best viewed from a distance, but my door’ll always be open for you, our Lil, if you change your mind. I’m only a bus ride away.’

Why did Mother go on so about Walter? He was doing his best. His mother wanted her slice of him too. The wedding was only weeks away so it was time now to give it some thought.

For all her harsh words Esme had found them two gold sovereigns, the ones Granddad gave her for passing exams. The jeweller in town would beat them into a wedding ring and there’d be enough left over for two tiny crosses for the little girls to wear.

‘I’ll always keep my eye out for them both; no favourites, mind,’ said Esme. ‘They’re the last link I have to my son.’

21

Here Comes The Bride

There wasn’t an ounce of sleep in her that night. Lily, staring up at the bedroom ceiling, felt panic rising in her chest as she waited for the dawn chorus of sparrows chirruping on the slate tiles above.

The contours of each piece of furniture were so familiar: the mahogany tallboy, the little roll-top desk that came from Granny Crompton’s house, the oak dressing table. Two watercolours hanging from the picture rail, and the peony-flowered curtains were so much part of her childhood and growing up.

This room was always a quiet refuge at the back of the house away from the thunder of the traffic, away from noisy brothers, or now Neville screaming with colic in the night. Slowly, though, her home was turning into a house of quarrelling women. Nothing was as it once was. How could it be? The war had put a stop to that.

Of course Mother had the right to move on from Division Street some day, but the thought that her childhood home and all its memories were going to be broken up came as a shock to Lily.

It was scary enough to be moving out herself, but not to have Mother in her usual armchair in the front room was unsettling. What if Ana and Su fell out? She couldn’t always be there to sort things out.

Well Cottage was so tiny, with low ceilings and twisty stairs. The two of them were both beanpoles and kept banging heads on the rafters. How would they fit in?

And there was another thing. It was going to be quiet up there until she got used to the silence of the hills. It wasn’t really their first choice, but so little was on offer. A long way out of town on the bus, too far for visitors to pop in-who would come and see them there? She hadn’t even got the use of the van now, since abandoning the shop.

Levi was being so mean she was no longer sure that she even wanted him to give her away. Why did any woman of age need someone else to give them away? She was not a piece of furniture.

Transport for her new job was going to be a problem. The Rover was no longer on stilts in the garage, but that belonged to Mother. Without transport she and Walter would be reliant on buses, on lifts. Whose idea was it to move so far out? It was Walter’s dream she was following. It had been easy to be swept along by his schemes and go along with his plans at first but now she felt uneasy.

It all seemed so romantic and old fashioned when they first discussed moving out into the country, but now it felt impractical.

Bill and Avril Crumblehume, who owned Longsight Travel, lived above their business, but they were looking for somewhere bigger to rent now they were expecting twins in the autumn.

The one good decision she had made was in going to work for them. There was never a dull moment and so much to be done before the local mill holiday week. Not everyone could afford to go away when the mills shut so they were advertising mystery tours and day trips to the Lakes and Southport, to York Minster and Museum by charabanc, and seats on excursion trains to the seaside. Then there was the coach trip to Paris, via the cross-Channel ferry. This was to be Longsight Travel’s first continental excursion. Unknown to Walt, she’d reserved seats for their honeymoon on the bus. With so many regulations and details to finalise there was hardly time to think about her own wedding day.

Sometimes, during the tea break in the morning, she found herself staring out over Longsight Square, with its railings and statue of Abraham Longsight, one of the founding fathers of Grimbleton. The lilac bushes were almost over and the first of the municipal rose bushes was coming into flower.

In its own way this square was just as peaceful a setting as the surroundings of Well Cottage. The bustle of the town streets was muffled by trees, with everything ready to hand there: shops, work, the park and picture house.

The challenge of this new job excited her and she wanted to go to night school to improve her French skills. How would she arrive on time for classes when the wintry nights became snowy and dark and the buses infrequent?

Oh, what’s wrong with me? she sighed. It must be wedding nerves. Surely all she ever wanted was to be going down the aisle with the man she loved on her arm, a home of their own? All these wishes were coming true and yet her mind was full of the leaving of Division Street and its number eight bus route. This was crazy when there was so much to look forward to, and yet…

Everything was changing. Maria was free now. Ivy and Levi would soon be out of their hair too. There was so much to do. She ought to be glad for everyone, and most of all for herself. She should be excited about her marriage but so many ‘ought tos’ and ‘should dos’ and ‘must dos’ and ‘have tos’ were ringing through her head.

Walt had come up trumps with Well Cottage. Mother was going along with the wedding plans and not interfering. Elsie Platt was not complaining, for once. So much to be excited about, grateful for and yet…What was wrong with her?

Was Walt insisting they live out of town just his own way of keeping her close at hand? There was no doubt he was jealous of her friendships within the Olive Oil Club.

‘It’ll do you good to get away from that rum lot. I don’t trust girls in trousers. Ever since the war, you see them gadding about in slacks as if they were fellas. That Diana is a one for wearing pants. It’s not natural. Your shape isn’t made for trousers,’ he added, while she was bent double in a boiler suit, trying to make inroads into the jungle of weeds in the back garden. ‘And what’s all this about a party in King’s Park? We’ve enough to be doing here.’

This was the annual pageant party that started off the wakes celebrations with an open-air band and dancing, fairground stalls and a theatre display. Lily was taking the Brownie pack for the team sports races and meeting up with the others to go round the fair. It was to be her last outing as a single woman. She suspected the Olive Oils had some plan to dress her up as the mill girls did before a wedding but she didn’t mind. It would be good to get together again.

‘I have to go if it’s going to be my last time as a free woman,’ she snapped.

‘You’ve changed, Lil,’ he said, eyeing her long legs in the khaki boiler suit.

‘Don’t call me Lil. I’m Lee at work, now. Don’t you think that’s modern?’

She’d gone with her flash of inspiration when she started in her new job, introducing herself as Miss Lee Winstanley. ‘It sounds so professional, don’t you think?’

‘Why bother when you’ll be Lily Platt in a few weeks?’ Walt was not impressed by the initiative. He didn’t like change.

‘I know…but I’ve always hated Lil.’

‘You never said.’

‘You never asked. A new beginning and a new name.’

‘What’s wrong with being my sweet Lily of the valley? Look, here’s some under this wall. It smells a treat and looks beautiful in my eyes, plain and simple, a no-nonsense sort of flower. That’s what you are,’ said Walt, as he tugged at the weeds. ‘I’ve let you spend time sorting out that foreign lot but now it’s you and me together. That’s what we both agreed, wasn’t it?’

‘You’re right. We’ve waited such a long time. It’s a shame to spoil the fun with niggles, but I just wish…’ She hesitated, not sure where her argument was heading.

‘What’s up now? What niggles?’

‘We’ve never got carried away much, have we? I hope it’s going to be all right,’ she blushed. ‘You know, the marital side of things.’

‘You don’t want to be carrying on like that Santini woman. That’s just sex. I hope you know I’ve more respect for you than to try anything on before we’re wed,’ he stuttered. It was Walt’s turn now to fumble for words.

‘What’s wrong with a bit of sex? We’re engaged. We’ve got the whole place to ourselves but you’ve never suggested we have a proper practice…’

‘You want us to anticipate our wedding night. Lily? I’m shocked at you. Is this the sort of stuff you talk about with those girls? No wonder they all landed in trouble. It’s not like you to be so forward.’

‘That’s how I feel. Let’s be adventurous! Please don’t resent me going to King’s Park with them all. It’s for a good cause and I must support the dancing class and my Brownie pack. I’m their Brown Owl, after all.’

‘I’m glad you mentioned that. I assume you’ll be giving that up. It’s too far to travel after a day’s work. We won’t be making a habit of gallivanting after we’re wed. A man and wife should be just for themselves. It’ll be so cosy up here, just the two of us and no one to interrupt us. We want to be together, don’t we?’ He hugged her with such a broad grin on his face that it unnerved her for a second.

His words gave her a sleepless night. The thought of having no friends to visit, no more Olive Oil gatherings round the fireside, was unsettling. Modern marriage must be a partnership, not one of boss and slave, with the wife always the one having to give in to the husband’s decisions, surely? Not that that was the case in Levi’s poor marriage. They were both as bad as each other.

‘We’ll have to have visitors, to show them our house and thank them for their wedding presents. I can’t see Elsie wanting to stay away for long. And I do want to see the little girls too,’ she said, smiling across at his mud-splattered face.

‘Anyone would think they were your real family?’

‘But Walt, Dina and Joy are my nieces. Ivy and Levi have more or less cut me out of Neville’s life—’

‘What do you mean? I know Dina’s Freddie’s girl, blood but the other one-she’s only the London cousin’s kiddie, nothing to do with you!’

‘Oh, come off it, Walt! Why do you think Mother let them stay so long? There’s no Cedric Winstanley. Never was. Freddie met Susan in Burma. I thought you’d have guessed by now…’

‘No one tells me anything…the sly bugger! All the more reason to keep our distance from them now. You Winstanleys certainly know how to stick together. Who’d have thought it?’ he smirked, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what Mam’ll say, us being related to darkies! It just shows you never can tell, even with respectable folk. We’ll never hold our heads up in Bowker’s Row if they find out. It’s a good job we’re moving away!’

‘Don’t be like that. Su and Ana are more like sisters to me than Ivy ever was. That’s why the little ones are going to be my attendants-if we can get enough coupons together to finish their outfits. They must feel free to visit us as they please.’ This was non-negotiable.

‘Not likely! Look what they’ve done to your family: split it down the middle,’ Walter snapped back. ‘We don’t want them or their bastards coming up here.’

She didn’t like this side to Walt, this cold judgemental streak. And all this fussing about wearing trousers-where did that come from? There were echoes of his mother’s voice in those words. This mean streak must be sorted out early on. She would humour him into seeing the harshness of his opinions, alter his prejudices. I can’t be living with a little Hitler laying the law down, she thought.

He’d have to get used to her wearing slacks around the house. They gave her freedom to work and warmth round the ankles. She could work faster without corsets and stockings. It saved on clothes. Muhammadan women wore trousers all the time in Bible lands, Diana said. Besides, everyone was glad enough of women in trousers during the war, shinning up buses and factories, aeroplanes and batteries. Why did they want them all back in skirts now it was all over? Were they afraid they could do jobs as well as the men? Maybe better?

‘You didn’t mean all that, did you?’ she asked, looking across at him. He was hacking stubborn undergrowth with his knife and a steely eye.

‘Not another word on the matter, Lil. Let’s just get this garden sorted before it rains.’

Ana was hacking at the undergrowth with a furious satisfaction. The hand scythe sheared down the grass and nettles of the vegetable plot. Whack went Ivy’s head! Whoosh went Levi’s torso! Here, she could vent all her frustration on the hapless weeds.

It had taken the patience of a diplomat, the cunning of a black marketeer and the persistence of a marathon runner to get the committee to make a decision in her favour. Allotment Billy had proved to be versed in all three.

Just as she began to dig over the neglected soil, wheelbarrow tons of cow dung to enrich the neglected soil, came the news that Mother Winstanley was leaving, and who knew where they would be next year? Just when she had begun to settle in to this strange climate, this rough northern town and understand some of their ways, along came uncertainty again.

She had such plans for her plot. Here she would grow vegetables-beans and peas, salads, thyme and mint, sage and onion sets, soft fruits; fresh food. She loved free afternoons when she could wheel up Dina and busy herself just digging, thinking and dreaming. Here she was closest to the earth, and when the sun shone on her shoulders, it was easy to pretend this was Cretan soil. Here all the sadness of hospital duties, the aching limbs and the memories of her wartime suffering were forgotten once she got down to work.

It had been on May the twenty-first, the name day of St Konstantinos and his mother, Agyia Eleni: the name days of her sister and her daughter, that she’d taken possession of the plot. It was a good omen. At home they would bring cakes and little gifts to Dina; drink sherbet water. No one here understood how special that day was. They were all too busy shouting and fighting.

She brought orange juice and biscuits and a special picnic to the allotment, for her and Dina to celebrate together. ‘We must never forget who we are, Konstandina: daughters of Crete. “Freedom or death” is our island cry in times of trial. Your grandmother searched for the body of my papou, when the Turks fought him in the hills. She dug up his body with her bare hands from the rocky grave and brought him home. We are strong and proud. Your Aunt Eleni died a hero for our freedom. I named you well.’

Together they had sat sprinkling crumbs and good wishes over the plot and now all her efforts would bear fruit. Dina was toddling, engrossed by the ladybirds. Here they could speak their own language without interruption.

Now Ana didn’t notice Su standing behind her until a shadow fell over her patch.

‘I always know where to find you. How can you bear to get your hands so dirty? We have to talk.’

‘What about?’ Ana snapped, not wanting to hear what was coming next.

‘What we do when Daw Esme leaves.’

‘Do we have any choice?’

‘I think so. I pray every night for guidance. I think, mango among fruits, pork among meat, tea among leaves are the best, and Waverley amongst houses is the best lodging house.’

‘How can we stay?’

‘If Daw Esme will let us rent, then we can find plenty of good customers to live in. You have room, I have room and the rest we let. What do you think?’

Ana put down her spade. ‘You wanna share with me?’

‘Yes, I think we make better friends than enemies. We have enough of them,’ Su replied. ‘Our daughters are half-sisters. We share the same man who never came back and chose between us. We must make the best of a bad job, I think, and never tell the truth about Freddie. That must be our secret, yes?’

What could she say? ‘I am not going to do the cooking. I wanna be a nurse.’

‘Then I will learn to make a good English breakfast. The lodgers bring their own ration card and buy their own food. They use the kitchen. I think it’s a very good idea, yes?’

It was the best of ideas to stay put, and Ana need not give up the plot. Both would have separate space, and no Ivy sneaking around making trouble.

‘I shake your hand,’ Ana smiled, reaching out to grasp Su’s tiny fingers.

‘Ouch! You have the paw of a bear. How will you get a man if you crush him to death?’ Su winced.

‘I didn’t have much trouble in Athens…’

Su gave her a fierce look but said nothing. It would always hang between them, this rivalry, this envy of the time each had shared with Freddie, but somehow it didn’t hurt so much now. Better to live together than hang separately, went the proverb. It could work. It must work, for it was the only solution on offer.

‘Do you like them, Brown Owl?’ Ten faces were beaming in the circle as Lily unwrapped their wedding gifts with care. There was a striped tea cosy with a pompom, six knitted dishcloths, and six embroidered coaster mats. ‘We got our knitters’ badges. We unravelled two jumpers to make them. You do like the colours?’

‘They’re lovely.’ She beamed at the black and yellow football colours of the Grasshoppers.

Everywhere she went people kept shoving gifts into her hands: a tray cloth with tatted lace edges from Dolores Pickles, a lovely glass vase from Mrs Pickvance across the road, and now this. She suspected her little pack would be forming a guard of honour when she and Walter came out of Zion Chapel. All this kindness was making her weepy.

Esme had given her a hundred pounds.

‘Don’t spend it on the house. Buy something for you. It’ll go towards a second-hand car. I don’t want you stuck out in the wilds for the want of some wheels.’

Speechless, shocked by such generosity, Lily had burst into tears again.

‘It’s not like you, Lily. You do look a bit peeky. Have you collected your dress yet?’

Now was not the time to tell Mother that the idea of a long white gown had never appealed. It would drain what little colour she had from her cheeks. Anyway, what an extravagant waste of coupons to wear a dress only once. It smacked more of Victorian custom than the modern ways of doing things. All the extra coupons had been spent on beautiful material for the little bridesmaids and Neville’s pageboy suit in cornflower-blue satin and velveteen-if Ivy could be persuaded to let him come.

It felt mean to have kept everything a secret from Mother but it was Lily’s day and she was determined to do what she wanted for a change.

After all that had happened this year, it was only a minor rebellion. Elsie Platt would take one look at the colourful suit and think she had something to hide. Sadly she was still ‘virgo intacta’. There was no shifting Walt once he got an idea in his head. She just trusted he was worth the wait.

Su was helping her put together a two-piece linen suit in a deep rose pink that warmed her complexion and lightened her hair. Ana was spending hours embroidering blue flowers on the pockets and collar. All that was needed was the borrowed hat to arrive in a hat box from Diana Unsworth; a hat that had once graced Royal Ascot before the war; an extravagant straw affair straight out of a Gainsborough portrait. She felt like Anna Neagle in it.

‘Something old, something new, something borrowed something blue.’ Everyone was making quite sure that she would look the picture on the big day.

‘You must have a rehearsal so you feel comfortable and I can adjust those sleeves,’ Su ordered.

Since Ivy and Levi’s sudden departure into rooms near Albert Avenue across town, and Mother’s impending move, Su was planning to open the spare rooms to commercial travellers. Waverley House was going to have to earn its keep now.

‘I have a gift for you,’ she whispered, ushering Lily upstairs on the night of the party in King’s Park. ‘But first you must try on your outfit.’

Lily stood in front of the mirror, not recognising the reflection staring back at her. Who was this willowy blonde in the stylish dress, her hair softly curling around her face? Since the fashion parade she had gone the whole hog and had one of Lavaroni’s permanent waves. No more curlers and rags and wave clips torturing her scalp. She was a modern woman now.

‘Here, you like it?’ grinned Su, handing her a shoebox tied with ribbon. ‘It is for your wedding night.’

Inside the tissue paper was a film of soft silk, a whisper of coffee-coloured gauze, a nightdress that would add the finishing touch to her trousseau. Lily gasped and held it against her body in disbelief. ‘It’s gorgeous. Where did you get such stuff?’ She was blushing at the thought of wearing such an exotic extravagance in front of Walt on her wedding night.

‘It is from Auntie Betty. She sent it in parcel for you for all your kindness to me and Joy. You like?’

The tears came gushing again. ‘I don’t deserve such a lovely gift. Thank you.’

‘It is nothing. Come downstairs now. All is ready,’ Su ordered.

What was going on? There was the sound of voices in the hallway and the dinner gong was ringing a summons. She hung the wedding suit back in the wardrobe out of sight and put on her best summer cotton dress with bolero cardigan. It could be chilly in King’s Park after dusk.

They were all standing at the foot of the stairs, chanting, ‘Here comes the bride, sixty inches wide!’ Queenie and Maria, Rosa, Joy and Dina, Diana and Eva, Stefania, a new Polish recruit to the club who was training at the technical college, Ana and Mother, smiling from the doorway. Everyone was dressed up and raring to go.

‘Not so fast, Miss Winstanley We have a little something from us to you,’ said Diana, producing a parcel from behind her back.

‘It needs a bit of explanation,’ said Queenie.

They pushed forward a large box wrapped in brown paper and string. Lily tore it open. Inside was a leather suitcase with safety straps and brass buckles. It was a work of great craftsmanship. She fingered it with astonishment. ‘It’s beautiful. How thoughtful.’

‘Well, not exactly…We know how you want to travel abroad. It’s not exactly modern, but pre-war. My hubby knows someone in the tannery who buys up bits of leather and sews up bags. This is one he had made up out of pre-war hide. I got him to have it embossed with your initials but the daft happorth forgot you were getting wed and put L. W on it. I hope Walt won’t mind it’s not L. P.’

‘It’s perfect,’ Lily sniffed. ‘You shouldn’t have…’

‘Hey, none of that! We’ve got a supper to eat, come and see.’

It was all too much, the table groaning with pies and salad greens. There was a bowl of home-grown strawberries, trifle and a homemade sponge cake.

‘We thought we’d do English this time, in honour of the bride,’ Maria laughed. ‘No olive oil or garlic when we’re off dancing. Ana got eggs from Billy to make a proper sponge.’

Queenie sat down at the piano, playing a selection from ‘Bless the Bride’, and they all sang while Lily smiled through a veil of tears. She was too churned up to eat much.

What was going on? It felt like standing at the top of a huge cliff and the time to jump was nigh. But why must she jump off? This was where she belonged, right here, right now, not stuck on a moor miles from her friends.

For one brief second she wanted to stop the clock, unwind the hours, forget all the plans for the future. Why get wed when everything she wanted was right here? Oh, heck. She was going crazy. Nothing was making any sense.

Ana produced a handkerchief made of lace, and wild poppies from her allotment were pinned into Lily’s hair. ‘In Greece we dress up the bride-to-be like this,’ she laughed.

Tonight she would be paraded around the town. There was nothing to be done but to grin and bear it. It was only a bit of tradition, after all. No one begrudged a bride-to-be a little fun and games before her big day. You do this only once, she sighed, so make the most of it!

22

Dancing in the Park

The arboretum in King’s Park was strung with fairy lights. There was an avenue of plane trees lining the walkway festooned with banners left over from VE Day. Crowds thronged up towards the entrance to the sports field where the last remnants of Zion Chapel Brownie pack, those not away on holiday, were scampering towards the racing tracks to compete in the fun sports. In the distance a brass band was playing a Souza march. It was going to be a hectic evening.

There was no escaping from Lily’s gang of giddy minders as they marched her up to the gate. Someone pinned a card to the back of her cardigan saying: ‘Here comes the blushing bride.’

‘I’ve got to see to the races and cheer the girls on first,’ she insisted. This was her ploy to get rid of all the dressing up, but the others were sticking to her like limpets. Diana was searching the crowds, hoping to gather in all the stray Olive Oils. Maria wanted to watch her Santini nephews racing for Our Lady of Sorrows School, before she dashed off with Su to dress Joy and Rosa for the fancy dress tableaux when Joy’s dancing costume would be on show; hoping for first prize, after all those months of work, for her Burmese headdress. Ana pushed Dina along to watch the show in the very pushchair that had started their friendship all those months ago. Soon she would be old enough to join in the class.

No one could miss the fact that since Sylvio had left Grimbleton, all the sparkle had gone out of Maria’s eyes, and the fire from her face. Her skin was drawn over her cheeks and her black shirt and skirt hung loosely over her frame. Her hair was scraped back in a widow’s bun. They were all worried about their friend, whispering their concern behind her back.

Rosa sensed the atmosphere and whined for attention but Maria was lost in her own thoughts, pushing the go-chair grimly on.

Su looked like an oriental princess in her festive longyi skirt of printed flowered cotton edged with a rich emerald border and neat boxed jacket. Diana was in her Guide uniform, busy rounding everyone up like a sheep dog, pushing Lily ever forward into the crowds. It was going to be a long evening.

The sports races were duly run, the Brownies dispatched to their parents, and then it was time for the dancing display. Queenie was standing thumping out the tunes on the piano as turn after turn of Liptrot tinies cartwheeled and somersaulted over the grass in an exhibition of formation acrobatics and solo turns.

The fancy dress parade, on a British Empire theme, drew admiring crowds as the Union Jacks fluttered and each country of the Empire was represented by a little girl in costume-Britannia with her shield, South Sea island girls in grass skirts, an Indian wrapped in a sari and many other gaily dressed children in kilts and Welsh hats paraded past them. They cheered loudest when little Joy shuffled across the stage and struck her pwe pose in her sequins and silk, a tiny figure dwarfed by the other contestants, smiling and waving from the podium.

‘Already she is bright star,’ Su sighed.

‘Why is no Greek girls? We have nice costume,’ sniffed Ana.

‘You are not Empire. I am a British Empire citizen,’ snapped Su.

‘If they have countries of Europe then Ria and me, we dress the girls, and you can watch for a change.’

‘No squabbling in the back there, you two. We’re all citizens of the world now,’ Lily said.

Was it possible those two could ever be friends? They’d always be rivals after what her brother did to them. Yet in a funny way that’s what united them against the world. Who else understood just what they’d been through? Not even Maria, who was treading her own lonely path, could imagine their plight or the secrets that bound them together.

Ana and Su were chained together by memories and promises betrayed, but also by their golden girls, Dina and Joy, who’d never know they shared the same father.

No Winstanley must ever tell them. Esme insisted on that. What would become of them in the future? That’s why she had to live close by, to help them through. They were family no matter what Walt said. He could like it or lump it. Hark at me: a right Bolshie these days, Lily smiled to herself. A far cry from Doormat Lil.

After the fancy-dress parade, the judges walked around with their clipboards deliberating. This was holiday time and no one must be disappointed so all the children were given sixpences in little brown envelopes. Su was not impressed.

‘They are all winners,’ Lily tried to explain. ‘It’s the taking part that counts.’

‘Someone must get the cup. It should be my Joy. She is beautiful,’ Su insisted.

What was it with every mother that she thought only her child was the best, the most deserving? If ever she had kiddies, Lily decided, she would not want to brag about them all the time.

The cup was given to Britannia and her retinue, and everyone cheered.

‘That’s not fair!’ Su grumbled.

Lily walked away in frustration to listen to the madrigal singers who were fal, lah, lahing and trilling to everyone’s enjoyment in the evening sunshine.

It was almost like a pre-war summer fair, but Merry England on the green was now shabby and full of make-do-and-mend clothes. Candy floss and ice cream, hot pies and peas, crisps and pop were in short supply. The summer frocks on display were darned and tired, faded with washing, but who cared when the sun shone?

Lily kept thinking about the Winstanley outings of the past and memories of happier times: Freddie and Levi in the wheelbarrow race and the three-legged run, Mother and Dad strolling together, arm in arm, admiring the bedding plants made into a clock with plant dials. It was the little details long forgotten that tinged this event with sadness.

No amount of persuasion would make Esme come and join them. In the past they brought Neville to displays, but he was banned from contact with Lily until the wedding. She was still not sure if Levi’s family would turn up, having moved out of Division Street in a huff and a puff, but already the atmosphere was lighter.

Walt said he and his mother were expecting company bringing wedding gifts. He ought to be by her side too, sharing the jollifications, but since the last clearing-up session at Well Cottage, the night of her failed seduction effort, there was coolness between them that was troubling.

No wonder you did this wedding malarkey only once, Lily reflected. What an expense and palaver for just one day. So many decisions to make about catering and flowers and hymns, what to pack for the honeymoon and whether they’d scrape together enough coupons to furnish the cottage with curtains and bedding.

Feeding the five thousand at the wedding breakfast in the church hall was going to be a nightmare. Princess Elizabeth in her palace wouldn’t be going through this rigmarole when it came to her nuptials. There’d be no counting slices of ham for her.

Tonight was to be a night off, so why was it feeling like an endurance test: how to get through it without making an utter fool of herself and weeping into her sleeve?

It was as if the whole of Grimbleton was strolling through the park: young and old, old schoolfriends, now married and pushing prams, brothers in army uniforms on leave, members of Zion Chapel, linking arms and giving their children piggyback rides. The world and his wife was out that night, but how lonely it could be in a crowd.

Even the gang around her were distracted by their own troubles, whispering them in her ear as if she didn’t have enough of her own.

‘What do we do if Daw Esme decides to sell Waverley House, Lily?’ whispered Su.

‘I’m that worried about Maria,’ whispered Queenie.

‘Should I write letter to Sylvio? I not know what to do, Lily,’ whispered Maria.

Sometimes it felt as if everyone wanted a piece of her, pulling her loyalties in one direction and then the opposite. Walter wanted his old Lily back. Mother wanted sensible Lil. These women all wanted a listening ear.

The only bit of her life not complicated was the new job with the Crumblehumes. In the office she was just Lee, the new assistant. There was so much to learn about the travel business but she was enjoying every minute.

She never knew who was coming through the door or where they wanted to go. The other day an old man had thrown a bagful of five-pound notes down in front of her. ‘I want to go to China to walk the Great Wall and I want to go by train!’

The thought of giving up work to raise a family was now a serious headache, not a joy. She wanted time to enjoy being wed before being tied down by nappy buckets, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine she must just buckle down quickly and have a go.

Reverend Atkinson had given them both such a talking to about how there was no better calling for the modern woman, now the war was over, than to bring up a family and support a husband in his work. Lily’s heart hadn’t stopped fluttering since.

What’s wrong with you, Lily Winstanley? Get a grip. This is your night out with the girls, one last night of freedom before…what? When the cage door shuts, what then?

She dawdled behind the others, trying to lose them and slip off home but, turning down a path through the bushes, Queenie was quick to halt her.

‘Where’re you sneaking off to now? There’s the big band from the Astoria doing some numbers. It’s dancing time for you.’

‘Oh, no, not for me. It’s been a long day…’

‘The night’s still young. Come on, where’s your spirit of adventure?’ Queenie insisted. ‘If an old married codger like me is up for it, then the bride-to-be must polish the floor with her slippers and let her hair down.’

‘No, I’m not much of a dancer, really. I ought to be on my way. Walt wouldn’t like me to—’

‘What Walt don’t know won’t hurt him, duckie. Enjoy yourself. Don’t be a spoilsport. Time enough for sitting down with the old man when the wedding cake’s gone mouldy.’

There wasn’t much choice but to tag along and try not to yawn. Dancing was not their forte. Between the two of them, they had four left feet when dancing at the church socials, tripping over each other, apologising and laughing. Walt had no sense of rhythm, and with his backache they were both nervous in case sudden jerks might set it all off again. He was such a martyr to his back.

It wasn’t that swing music wasn’t exciting, but the church didn’t play that sort of stuff and Esme didn’t like it on the wireless. It was common and too lively for chapel tastes, but Maria was always playing music in the café and it always got Lily’s toes tapping. Just because your parent didn’t like something didn’t mean you had to go along with it too.

It was so easy to slip into old habits, she thought. Doormat Lil might be stuck with the Home Service on the wireless but Lee Winstanley would be up for the Light Programme and the big band beat.

The Joe Crombie Orchestra was letting rip on the makeshift dance floor, which looked more like a boxing ring than a cabaret. There were fairy lights hanging down from the trees and the moon was lighting up the purple orange sunset. There was still heat in the evening sun. ‘Very continental,’ said Maria, looking up wistfully as dancers were drifting across to a slow foxtrot. They were playing Glenn Miller and it brought back such vivid memories of the GI and that shameful episode in the park. Everything was conspiring against her at the moment.

‘You look tired out,’ said Lily, touching her elbow. Rosa was fast asleep. ‘Go and sit down. I’ll watch her.’

‘Grazie…’ What would she have done without her friends? But if they knew the truth…Since Marco’s death she had not stopped for one minute, cleaning, cooking, visiting Nonna, sewing-anything to take her mind off what was going to happen.

At first she thought it was all the strain that had stopped her period. It had happened before but she couldn’t recall when she had last had to buy sanitary pads. In the aftermath of her grief her body seemed to be floating six inches from her head. The sick feeling and tiredness was only to be expected, but suddenly her breasts were so tender and full, and she couldn’t bear the smell of the tea urn. It made her want to throw up so it wouldn’t take a soothsayer to tell her what she already knew deep in her heart.

‘Can you keep a secret, Lily?’ she whispered. ‘I have to tell someone. I am in big trouble. I can tell only you. I think there’s a bambino on the way. What shall I do?’ she gulped, sinking down onto the grass, not waiting for the reply.

‘So that’s why you’ve been fainting in the café? Ana was worried,’ Lily said, sitting down beside her.

‘If the Santinis find out, I will be banished for bringing them a bad name. What shall I do? I was making a fresh start and now this, and no man…’

‘You’ll survive. Believe me, you’ll not be the first to be let down.’

‘How can I tell everyone? I’ll have to leave. They will not want to eat with me…’

‘Of course they will. We’re your friends, and friends stick with each other no matter what. Believe me, we all have secrets. If I was free to tell you, I’d tell you one of my own but I made a promise.’

‘I know, you are good woman and good friend. I can trust you.’

‘Don’t worry, there’ll be a way through, Ria. We’ll think of something.’

Things just couldn’t get any worse for Maria, could they? She was going to need all the friends she could get, Lily mused. A baby on the way should be a moment of joy, not an event full of shame and dread. Maria had been longing for another child, but now…How could she explain it away? What a mess. Why was life so complicated? This news took the last ounce of pleasure from the outing, knowing that her friend was carrying such a burden. Sylvio ought to be told the news and do the decent thing, but it wasn’t her business to interfere and yet…how easy it was to solve other people’s problems from afar.

She watched the dancers gliding across the floor and a flood of envy flushed her cheeks. Why wasn’t she here with Walt, canoodling in the twilight? How could he prefer his mother’s company, the ‘Battleaxe of Bowker’s Row’ as Esme called Elsie Platt? Perhaps he was trying to keep her sweet.

There was no love lost between the two mothers-in-law. The newlyweds were going to have to play fair with both sides or there’d be trouble. Married life was already losing its appeal.

Anxiety was spreading right through her body, making her twitchy and irritated by the soft music. Diana was waving to a group of young men in smart blazers with badges on their pockets. The crowd parted in admiration as some of the Grasshoppers began to circulate around the dance floor, choosing partners. That was all she needed, seeing a bunch of Freddie’s friends enjoying themselves. They were the usual suspects: Barry, Clive and their gang making their way in her direction. Freddie would have loved the party.

Ana waltzed around with Clive, laughing at one of his feeble jokes. How she had changed in appearance and confidence from the frightened girl who arrived at Ringway on that wet afternoon so many months ago. Now she wore her nurse’s uniform with pride and her limbs were fleshing out at last.

It was strange to think that this time last year Freddie was alive, far away but alive and full of mischief. Lily still couldn’t believe he wasn’t coming home. One day she would pack that new suitcase, find where he was buried, and go and pay her respects there, however much it cost.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she spun round to see the broad face of Pete Walsh, smiling at her.

‘Fancy a turn, front half or back half?’ he joked, recalling their frenetic pantomime dance.

‘I don’t know, I’m watching Rosa here,’ Lily spluttered.

‘Get her on that floor,’ snapped Queenie. ‘I’ll see to the kiddie.’

There was no time to protest as Pete led her out onto the wooden planks. Now she was going to make a complete fool of herself. Her heart was racing as he lifted his hand into her own.

‘Young Kathleen tells me celebrations are in order,’ he whispered. ‘When’s the big day?’

‘Two weeks on Saturday,’ her voice squeaked.

There was silence as he led her across the floor in a waltz. It was like cruising down the dual carriageway in third gear, no double de-clutching, no stalling, no spluttering, just a smooth gliding waltz as if her legs took instructions from his. They were floating, swirling around like a top, dizzy.

‘You’re a good dancer,’ he said, holding her hand when the music stopped suddenly.

‘I’m not. I’ve two left feet. It’s you that’s the expert.’

‘Let’s do it again,’ he laughed. ‘I might as well make the most of you before you get snaffled up by old Plattie, lucky chap.’

There was no time to say no or remove her hand from his. For the first time in weeks she was enjoying herself. Someone else was making the decisions and sweeping her around. It was a revelation how a good dancer could change steps and direction, follow the music and take care of his partner at the same time!

Dancing with Pete Walsh-who’d’ve thought it? He was still unspoiled by his popularity in the town, still scoring goals but this was the off season when the footballers were on half-pay, going back to their old jobs part time. He was helping out at his uncle’s brewery.

She had been his biggest fan. Now dumbstruck by the scent of his breath on her cheeks and the flash of his bright eyes grinning at her, her heart was thumping.

‘What you staring at?’ he teased.

Thank goodness it was dark and he couldn’t see her blushes. ‘I was just thinking about Miss Sampson’s class seven and you being the ball monitor. I never thought you’d make such a good job of football.’ It was the best excuse she could muster.

How could she tell him what a warm smile he had or how she wanted to finger the dimple in the middle of his chin?

‘You’ve been going out with Walter Platt for years. I always hoped you’d get him out of your system and look in my direction,’ Pete whispered in her ear.

Was this some sort of joke? ‘I beg your pardon?’ she snapped, suddenly feeling hot. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Forget it, Lily. It’s the Wilson’s brown ale talking. I always did have a soft spot for you, even in class seven,’ he coughed, and she could see he was in earnest.

Well, now’s a fine time to tell me, she sighed. What a turn-up: Pete Walsh fancying me! Yet now she thought about it he was always popping in on his way through the Market Hall, and made a point of meeting his little sister from Brownies.

‘I think it’s marvellous the way you’ve championed Freddie’s friends. I always knew you had a good heart. I only wish I’d…’ He stopped, embarrassed.

‘Go on,’ Lily smiled. ‘It’s nice hearing compliments instead of curses.’

‘Walt must have told you a hundred times what a good-looking woman you are. Our Kathleen worships the ground you walk on. The trouble with me is I’m backward in coming forward.’

‘Not when you’re scoring goals you’re not. That last one against Arsenal in the Cup was a gem.’

‘You saw it?’

‘Heard it on the wireless when I was on duty in the market.’

‘How’re you enjoying your new job?’

‘You know a lot about me all of a sudden,’ she replied coyly, flattered by this interest.

‘I know you’re at Longsight Travel now. My uncle Ernie and auntie Glad are going on their tour to France. He was in the Great War. He wants to show Glad where her brother fell.’

The tune came to an end and Lily stopped. ‘You’re a good man, Peter Walsh, but I’d better stop you before the tongues start wagging. We’ve danced four dances on the trot.’

‘Who’s counting? Come on, one last one and then I’ll let you go.’

It was a boogie-woogie, another Glen Miller number. Everyone was jiving and jitterbugging. Lily felt all fingers and thumbs but suddenly she didn’t care. Dancing was fun when the man knew what he was doing. She would go along with it just this once. She was in the mood for a bit of frivolity. They twirled and she danced around him, not caring if she was showing next week’s washing. He spun her round and caught her and she raised her hands, waving to the others, who were watching her amazed. Then it was over and he caught her in his arms.

‘Just one kiss for old times’ sake,’ he laughed, then plonked a soft kiss on her lips and pulled her tight.

She felt a ripple of excitement from her toes to her suspenders. All her elastic was pinging, her head was swimming and her knees just crumpled. If only you could bottle that sensation up like a good piccalilli, sharp and sweet, tangy with a zing, she thought. You’d be a millionaire.

‘No, no more, please!’ She fled his embrace, covered in confusion, down the steps right into the path of Levi and Ivy.

‘Well! Who’s a sly horse then? Just wait until Walt finds out you’ve been setting your cap at Pete Walsh, kissing and canoodlin’. He was all over you like a rash,’ Levi smiled and winked.

The two of them must have been lurking down the side of the dance floor and seen the whole episode.

‘That’s no way for a bride to be behaving, Lil, and in front of the whole of Grimbleton. It’ll be all round the park that Brown Owl was making an exhibition of herself.’ Ivy was enjoying every moment of her triumph. ‘Not so much the pure little Lily of Laguna, are we, two-timing your fiancé on the sly?’

‘Oh, give over, Ivy. I was doing nothing of the sort. You’re only jealous. It’s none of your business what I get up to on my last night out. I expect my brother will drag my fiancé around all the pubs to make a right fool of himself and no one will say a word because he’s a bloke.’ No one was going to spoil this moment. ‘Why shouldn’t a woman have fun too before she’s chained to the kitchen sink?’

‘You’ve got very cocky since you joined that club of yours. You wouldn’t catch me with that greasy lot…’ Ivy added, seeing Queenie, Ana and Su eyeing her with suspicion.

‘And none of us would want a mealy-mouthed, jumped-up little hypocrite who sends poison-pen letters, as our friend,’ screeched Queenie. ‘We know about you.’

‘Say that again, you old bitch,’ Ivy spat out, unaware that Maria was coming up right behind her.

Face to face with the poisonous witch, Maria had heard all the jibes and she saw the worried look on Lily’s face.

‘You shutta yer mouth. You bring trouble wherever you go,’ she yelled, lunging forward to push Ivy out of her path.

‘And you’re no better than you should be. Get out of my hair!’ Ivy sprang back, lashing out with her hand to punch her. She ducked just in time.

‘You insult my friend! You kill my Marco. I kill you now.’ Maria was beside herself, spitting fury and grabbing at Ivy’s hair, tugging until lumps came off in her hand.

A crowd was gathering.

‘Get off me, you trollop! You’re all the same…rubbish, foreign scum, the lot of you. You’re not welcome here.’

Lily was trying to push in between them, pleading with Levi, ‘Get your wife out of here. She’s not welcome, can’t you see?’

He pulled Ivy away, but she turned on Lily. ‘You call these trollops your friends?’ Ivy spat the words in her face.

‘Just how many close friends do you have, my lady?’ yelled Susan, red in the face. ‘We’ve never seen anyone come calling for you, all the time we live with you. Poor Neville will be one lonely boy if you think you’re above everyone else. No wonder Levi has walking hands,’ she screamed back, not caring who overheard the row.

‘Who does she think she is, talking to me like that? Do something, Levi. Do her precious friends not know that she’s no more Mrs Winstanley than Madame Butterfly? Go on, Lily, you tell them who these two really are; a couple of foreign whores with bastards on the make, stealing your brother’s name, telling lies, worming their way into this town like grubs.’

‘Shut up, you’ve said enough!’ Levi was trying to push Ivy in front of him and out of the way. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘Just get her out of my sight,’ said Lily. ‘Will you tell Mother or shall I that your darling wife has just spilled the sack of sacred beans all over the park? Are you a man or a mouse? Sort her out or else I will!’

He was standing there staring as if he’d never seen her before. ‘Hell’s bells! You’re more Winstanley than I thought, our Lil. Never thought you had it in you. Poor old Walt doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for. Wait till I tell him what a spitfire he’s wedding,’ Levi replied, shaking his head.

‘Shut up and leave me alone, and never call me Lil again!’

‘I’m going to tell Walt what you’ve been up to tonight.’ Ivy straightened her skirt, pouting, red in the face.

‘I don’t care,’ Lily snapped, but her hands were shaking.

Maria took a swipe, a fine right hook that floored Ivy, sending her staggering across the floor while the band played on. ‘That is for my Marco, God rest his soul, and for my friends, capisci?’ She sucked up her mouth and spat an arc of spittle over the prostrate woman. ‘If you go to polizia and make big fuss, I bring letter for them to read.’

It was like the gunfight at the OK Corral, onlookers gawping and all those accusations shooting out like bullets from a gun. All Lily wanted to do was creep away alone to relive Pete Walsh’s kisses, hear his compliments soothing her ears and the touch of his strong hands on her waist. It felt so disloyal, so confusing, but so right.

Time to creep away and hide somewhere far away to sort it all out once she had given her friends an explanation. The vow of silence must be broken. She took a deep breath and began…

‘So now you know the truth about the Winstanley tribe,’ she said, relieved that the secret of Su and Ana’s relationship was now out in the open.

The Olive Oils were all sitting round in a circle on the grass with a tray of hot tea, too stunned by the fracas to dance on. The children were fast asleep in their pushchairs and the midges were beginning to bite.

‘Don’t bring that tea near me…it makes me sick,’ whispered Maria with a sigh. ‘I am up the spout, as you say, up river and no paddle. That is my secret. Now you know my secret too. Any more to share?’

Diana smiled. ‘None of us is Persil white, but golly, what an evening! Better than a night at the pictures. That Ivy got more than she bargained for.’

‘Mother’ll disembowel them when she finds out. The honour of the Winstanley good name is now in jeopardy and it’s all my fault,’ Lily said, dreading the scene to come.

‘Why? Because you were flirting with that handsome young footballer?’ laughed Diana. ‘What was wrong with that?’

‘Nothing but when Walt hears about it, there’ll be trouble.’

‘We’re not going to tell him, are we?’ Queenie asked.

‘We’re not going to tell anyone else any of our business,’ said Diana. ‘Mum’s the word, right, girls?’

‘All for one and one for all,’ Lily smiled. ‘Let’s have a powwow.’

They sat in a circle as darkness fell, each with their arms around the next one’s shoulders, huddled, whispering in the dark, telling secrets no one else would ever hear. They would have stayed out all night but for the park keeper.

‘Now, ladies, the party’s over. Hurry along.’

Next morning Lily rose early, not wanting to face her mother. She had not slept a wink, pacing the floor, going over yesterday’s excitement; trying to push the unexpected thrills of dancing with Pete, the embarrassing public row with Ivy and the secrets that they all confided in the park out of her mind. Something must be done about that and soon. But the jungle drums had been beating and Walt was round at the travel agent’s first thing, demanding an explanation.

‘I can’t leave you five minutes with that lot before you make an exhibition of yourself. I’m surprised at you,’ he said, pink with indignation and puff.

‘It didn’t take long for Poison Ivy to lash her venomous tongue in your direction,’ Lily replied. ‘It was only a bit of fun. She’s making a mountain out of a molehill as usual.’

‘But you were seen canoodling with Pete Walsh like a brazen hussy. Is that a proper way for a fiancée to behave?’ Walt’s lips were pursed into a peevish line just like his mother when she had a strop on her, a thin line of disapproval that did his face no favours.

‘It was one farewell kiss, for old times’ sake, nothing at all. Why didn’t you come along to the dance and join us and then none of this would’ve happened?’

‘Because I trusted you to behave yourself and not show me up like some giddy bitch on heat,’ he snapped, loud enough for Avril Crumblehume to hear and back out of the door blushing.

‘And what’s all this about Ivy being savaged by the Eyetie? Honestly, you can never trust foreigners with drink in them.’

‘Oh, Walt! Don’t show your ignorance. Sometimes you can be such a prude. My friends wanted me to have a good time and came to the rescue when Ivy was insulting me. Maria had her own score to settle.’

‘Fancy fighting like fishwives!’

‘It was Ivy who provoked them.’

‘So you say.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I don’t know any more. You’re not the girl you used to be, Lil.’

‘Don’t call me Lil. I’m Lee here.’

‘I’ll call you what I like. You’re my wife.’

‘Not yet I’m not!’ she turned on him.

‘What’s that’s supposed to mean?’ he snapped back, towering over her.

‘I’m not sure,’ she replied, storming back to her desk. ‘By the way, did your passport arrive in the post?’ It was time to change the subject.

‘Why should I want a passport?’ He cocked his head, puzzled.

‘For Paris, the trip and our honeymoon,’ she sighed. ‘For the ferryboat across the Channel.’

‘The only channel we’ll be crossing is the Irish Sea. The Isle of Man will suit us just fine. What would I want with snails and frog’s legs and all that foreign muck? Honestly, Lil, I don’t know where you get these big ideas,’ he said, searching the papers on her desk, shuffling them out of order. ‘Of course, I might have guessed. It’s that Olive Oil Club of yours, putting such fancy notions in yer head. The sooner I get you up to Well Cottage the sooner you’ll come down to earth. We’ll have to choose your friends more carefully next time but I’ll be on hand to guide you.’

‘But I thought we agreed. Avril is counting on us to help on the charabanc. It’s their first trip. Ernie and Gladys Walsh are going on it.’

‘So I suppose Pete Walsh will be going along for the ride too. If you think I’m spending my honeymoon with him in tow, you’ve another think coming,’ Walt snapped.

‘What’s Pete Walsh got to do with the price of beans? This is our honeymoon, our first adventure as a married couple. It’s what we planned.’

‘It’s not what I planned. The honeymoon is the groom’s decision.’

‘That’s so old-fashioned. Modern couples decide things together.’

‘Not in my book, they don’t. A man must be master of his household. Start as you mean to go on, I say. That’s why your Levi has trouble with his wife.’

‘I want our marriage to be a partnership. We each work and earn a wage. We’ve waited so long…Any road, what my brother does is his own affair.’ She carried on at her desk, pink with fury.

‘Perhaps we’ve waited too long, Lil…’

‘Oh? How come?’ she sighed, weary of all his arguing.

‘It’s all the strain of waiting to fulfil our love that’s getting to you, the strain of not having a man to guide you on the right path, too many women giving you the wrong advice and big ideas. Girls are the weaker sex. They aren’t meant to make big decisions and go their own road. Look what happens when they do: bringing up bastards, working all hours, straining their brains studying for jobs beyond their capabilities. A woman’s place is in the home, by the hearth, tending to the needs of her hubby, not gallivanting here and there with opinions all her own.

‘Look how happy you were when you ran Waverley House, before the invasion of foreigners spoiling everything. Who was it we could count on to see to the household chores and Neville, keep Levi and Ivy happy and your mother settled and content? Who was it who manned the stall yet had time to give my mam a helping hand and never a cross word? You were so reliable and easy to please. Once I get you all to myself, the old happy Lil will return to the hearth and be content.’

‘Is that how you see our future?’ she asked.

‘Of course, don’t you? Think of these past months as a bit of a blot on the landscape. Together we’ll put it all behind us, love, forgive and forget. I forgive you this time.’

She nodded and tried to smile but her lips stuck together. ‘I must get on with my work. There’s so much to do.’

‘Don’t you worry your head, love, about this,’ he replied, dismissing the whole office in one swipe of his hand. ‘As soon as we’re settled you can stay at home. Once you’re a married woman, this sort of work’ll be too much for you. Whatever the sacrifices, the doing without, no wife of mine will shame me by having to earn a living. So don’t be fretting. It won’t be long now until you can leave all this behind for good. Won’t that be exciting?’

He plonked a kiss on her forehead and squeezed her arm with affection. Lily felt dizzy with fear.

‘Is everything all right?’ Avril waited until the coast was clear. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost…Let’s have a brew.’

‘I’m fine. Sorry about the floor show…it’s all been a bit of a shock,’ she replied, still feeling weak. What on earth was she going to do now?

23

The Mission

Lily went round to Lavaroni’s Hair Salon the moment it opened at ten o’clock, knowing Queenie would be in early before Gianni began his morning appointments.

‘We have to find Sylvio Bertorelli and fast. Do you know where he went?’ There was no point in shillyshallying with Queenie, who had her ear to the ground when it came to gossip. Surely someone must know his whereabouts?

‘I wish I did, ducks, but he just disappeared and old man Lavaroni won’t have his name mentioned in here. He might be trying his luck in London but I can’t believe he’d just walk out on Maria. Perhaps he blames himself for Marco’s death. I’m not sure he even knows about it. He’s a good lad. Wherever he’s gone he’ll be a success. Do you want me to ask Gianni? He’ll bite my head off but it’s worth a try. I’m worried about Ria and little Rosa too.’

She eyed Lily up and down and winked. ‘It was a right humdinger in the park with that sister-in-law of yours. She deserved all she got. You just stood there and sorted her out without a flinch. That perm really suits you, by the way. If you’re not careful you’ll be turning into a right glamourpuss. Are you having it shampooed and set on the morning of the wedding?’ ‘I haven’t booked anything yet. We need to sort this out before I go away,’ Lily replied. Hairstyling was the least of her worries. ‘Can we meet up at Division Street later in the week? You’ll have to excuse the mess. Mother’s on the move soon and she’s having a fit of packing. There’s china in boxes, and books and water-colours stacked up. She wants a right sort-out before she leaves. We haven’t dared tell her what happened last night.’

The Olive Oil Club was in session behind closed doors. Diana was in the chair. There was nothing better than sitting at the head of a table giving orders, getting things done in her view.

‘We’ve got to find Sylvio,’ Lily started. ‘Don’t ask me why but I think he’ll not be far away. Between us all we can do it, but Ria mustn’t suspect. She’s too proud to seek our help. Did you find anything out, Queenie?’

‘Not much, but there is one clue. Gianni muttered he’s had a call from some hairdresser in Manchester wanting a reference for Sylvio. Needless to say he sent him off with a flea in his ear.’

‘Did he remember the name?’ asked Diana, hoping for a quick breakthrough.

‘Nope, or if he did he wasn’t going to tell me. I think he’s glad Sylvio’s gone. Now he’s got all his old clients back and no competition.’

‘That’s not much help,’ said Su. ‘Finding a guy in a city is like finding a hairpin on the pavement.’

‘I can ask at my church in Manchester. I can find out about hairdressers,’ offered Ana.

‘Brilliant!’ Diana smiled. This was a team effort. Then she remembered the Chamber of Trade. There were lists of shops in Grimbleton. There was bound to be one in Manchester. ‘If we can find out all the names of the hairdressing establishments in the city, we can visit and ask around for Sylvio Bertorelli. Someone will know of him. We’ll give them this number and get them to ring us.’

‘There’s all the Italian community to go at as well; café owners and ice-cream vendors, that sort of thing,’ Queenie added.

‘No,’ Diana interrupted. ‘The community is small and family links are long tentacles. Toni and Angelo might get to hear. There might be trouble for Maria. We don’t want her to guess what we’re up to. Who else knows the city well?’

Manchester was somewhere Diana avoided for shopping. Mummy liked Kendal Milne and St Ann’s Square. She found it quite depressing every time she passed the Salford hospital where all those nurses had been killed in a direct hit. Everything was bombed and gutted after the blitz. The cathedral was being rebuilt. Sometimes she ventured in by train to the Free Trade Hall to hear the Hallé Orchestra. The rest of the city was a mystery to her. She preferred London.

‘Bill and Avril at the travel agency might help us,’ Lily offered.

‘What about Pete Walsh and the Grasshoppers? They play United and City. What if young Sylvio’s joined a men’s barber, not a ladies’ hairdresser? Perhaps Pete could help us. This is going to take ages otherwise,’ said Queenie, not wanting to depress them.

‘What’s the big rush?’ asked Su.

‘Maria told us her secret. Where were you?’ snapped Ana.

‘And I want this sorted before my wedding,’ Lily said, still being the peacemaker.

She felt guilty that she had not confided her own precious secret to them all but it was not the right time or place, and she couldn’t be sure how they would react. Her head was buzzing with plans and ideas, half formed and too fuzzy yet to be put into words. Maria needed their help and that was enough to be going on with now.

Every time Lily thought about the coming wedding day her mind froze with panic.

Apart from the wonderful nightdress and the new suit, she’d not enough coupons to go rash with a trousseau, but she must buy some holiday slacks just to prove a point. But who could be bothered about clothes when a friend was in danger?

What’d happen if the Santinis found out Maria was carrying another man’s child? What if there was violence and shame, and she got thrown out of the flat? She needed Sylvio and her friends for protection. There had to be a way to find him but she was running out of time.

Walter’s demand that she cut down her circle of friends after their marriage was gnawing away inside. He was being unreasonable but he was jealous and that showed how much he loved her. This mission gave her something better to think about other than all his insecurities. Meanwhile she must get on with her tasks, the first of which she would rather enjoy.

‘I know this sounds daft but we need your help as a detective,’ Lily stuttered, standing pink-faced on the whitened doorstep of number ten Eccleston Place, the small terraced house where Pete Walsh lived at home with his family.

‘Come in, come in…It’s Lily Winstanley, Mam,’ he shouted from the vestibule.

‘Put the kettle on, Kath, it’s Brown Owl. Come and sit down.’ Pete’s mother ushered her in, ripping off her pinny in honour of the visitor.

‘It’s very kind of you but—’

‘No buts, Miss Winstanley, pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you. I hope our Pete’s not been up to any trouble.’

Lily was ushered into the neat front room with its three-piece suite, draped with lace anti-macassars. The piano in the alcove was covered in Pete’s trophies and team photographs. They were treating her like a guest of honour. Her cheeks were pink with blushes at such a warm welcome.

I hope he doesn’t think I’m chasing him, turning up at his doorstep, she thought. Who’m I fooling? I just wanted to see that grin on his face and the dimple on his chin. No one had arm-wrestled her to come and ask him to help. She was a more than willing volunteer.

‘I’m on a sort of secret mission to help a friend,’ she explained. ‘But it’s rather private. We were hoping you’d be able to help us-and the other boys, if they can.’

It was important to use the royal we, to distance herself from choosing to be the eager messenger on this quest. It was important to sit primly, straight-backed and not get distracted from her task by looking at his lips and recalling his impulsive kisses.

His mother closed the door discreetly with a, ‘Do you take sugar in your tea?’ This was going to be a best china occasion.

‘How can I help?’ he smiled.

She told him the gist of their investigation and explained that he might have some contacts in the city. His eyes never left her face as she covered the angles where he might prove useful.

‘You say Bertorelli was an ex-prisoner of war? He might have gone back to Italy under the repatriation order. There’s a lot going back home now.’

‘We never thought of that, but somehow I don’t think so. He was very friendly with a friend of ours here. I’m sure he’d want to stay but perhaps not in Grimbleton. It’s hopeless, isn’t it? A needle in a haystack,’ she sighed.

‘Not necessarily, but I’ll have a word round and see who goes where to have their hair cut. From what you’ve said, though, I guess he’s a ladies’ man, an artist with ambition. Short back and sides are not very inspiring, are they?’ Pete tapped his own crop. ‘Still it keeps you cool in the sun.’

‘What sun?’ There had been mixed weather for days, sunny then showers.

‘Just you wait, after a winter like last we’ll get a corker of a summer. You’ll have a sunny wedding day.’ He smiled and she felt herself blushing again.

‘I wasn’t thinking of my wedding day but of all those folks forking out for a week in Morecambe and it pours down.’

‘Trust you to think of someone else,’ he replied, staring so hard she dropped her eyes from his gaze. ‘Is there anything else, I can do? I can help you look, if you like?’

‘No, thank you, you’ve done enough,’ she squeaked. It was time to leave before she embarrassed herself.

‘Enough of what?’ said his mother, edging a tray of tea and scones around the door. ‘Sit down, lass. You need feeding up before your big day. Come on tell us all about your plans.’

There was no escape from their fussing and kindness. If only Elsie Platt would give her a welcome like this every time she turned up, things would not feel so desperate right now.

As Pete predicted, the weather turned just as the holidays were over. Out came the sun, streaming down on the sooty black buildings, the bomb sites decorated with rosebay willowherb springing up everywhere. The tarmac was melting and the pavements hot as Lily, Diana and Ana gathered in the shade under the cathedral with a map to carve up possible sightings and venues. The search for Sylvio was underway.

Susan was minding the children. Diana had brought her car, with Ana. It was the best they could muster on a Saturday afternoon. Queenie was working in the café after the salon closed at lunchtime, keeping an eye on Maria.

Ana had a list of good hairdressers around Deansgate and King Street. These were to be their first ports of call. Diana had the trade list, pages long; a daunting prospect. Queenie found them the trade newsletter in the salon, advertising local warehouse suppliers. Perhaps someone might recognise Sylvio’s name there on an order, but none of them would be open on a Saturday afternoon.

It was hopeless, and so tiring with not a single lead to show in this sticky heat. Heads were shaken politely and hands pointed to another salon up the road, round the corner, in the back street, down the lane. All their contacts yielded not one jot of hope of ever finding him.

Pete had sent a list of city barbers and the names of some footballer ex-prisoners of war.

As the afternoon wore on Lily sank into a weary slump, hot and thirsty, jaded and bad-tempered by the heat. Her toes were rubbing in her ancient sandals, unused to going barelegged. They met up by Lewis’s Arcade ready to go home. It was almost five o’clock.

‘I’m not going anywhere without a drink, an ice-cream soda, anything to slake this dry throat,’ said Diana, who was for once looking dishevelled and perspiring in the heat in an aertex shirt and smart khaki slacks. It was good of her to give up her day off duty but she seemed to enjoy ordering them about.

Diana was a bit of a mystery, bossy and kind, polite and yet distant, all at the same time. She had not spilled out any secrets, no handsome pilots or wild parties to confess. She was part of the club but not really at the heart of it as if she was holding something back.

Perhaps it was because of her public school education. She was local and yet not a Grimbletonian. She was their officer, not rank and file. She was leading her foot soldiers from the front, brave but distant.

They picked their way through milling crowds. ‘You’d think they were giving stuff away,’ Lily said, looking round in amazement. She loved the bustle of Saturday streets, the heat of the chase for bargains. Pavements trampled with the weary feet of shoppers carrying baskets and bags, window shoppers browsing to see if there was something they could afford. Manchester was abuzz, but even Grimbleton had its moments. How would the silence of Well Cottage suit after all this excitement? Was she really a gumboots and gabardine sort of girl?

In two weeks’ time she would be floating down the aisle and onto a coach bound for Dover, if she could persuade Walt to change his mind. It was not too late.

If it was as hot as this she would need some pleated shorts and a swimming costume in her new suitcase. It was sitting at the foot of her bed, waiting to be packed.

Finding seats in a café was a struggle, but eventually they sat round a table, ticking off all the places they had on their list.

Ana shook her head. ‘He gone to London. It is no good, Lily. We never find him.’

‘No, we’ve only just skimmed the surface. Perhaps he’s gone to Bolton or Oldham or Wilmslow. There has to be a way. I know he’s here. I just feel it in my water.’ It was hard to convince them of her instinct that the man was hovering just out of sight.

‘Time’s running out for you, old girl,’ Diana said. ‘Sylvio’ll have to wait. You’ve got a big day ahead. Down the aisle for you soon.’

As Diana was speaking, Lily’s eyes meandered out through the dusty window onto the street and the building opposite, to a tall red brick church rising above the other roof tops. ‘Aisle, Altar, Hymn,’ went the old joke about a bride’s personal vows. That was just what she was hoping would happen with Walt.

‘Aisle, Altar, Hymn and a church…Why ever hadn’t she thought of that before? She leaped up out of her seat, that stuck to her bottom in the heat.

‘Where’re you off to now?’ Diana shouted. ‘We ought to be heading home.’

‘Stay here. Give me two minutes, I’ve got an idea.’

Lily shot across the cobbled street, holding her breath as she walked into the church. It was dark and cool inside, silent with just the flickering of candles and women bent over in prayer.

It was late Saturday afternoon and she knew enough about the Catholic faith to know it was a good time to hear confessions. There was a cubicle with a curtain drawn that was doing good business. One by one the penitents rose and entered the box, coming out and walking down the aisle out into the daylight. She had time to think just what to say. When it was her turn she sidled into the seat, her heart thumping.

‘Before you start, I’m not a Catholic but I’m trying to help somebody who is…’ It was time to confess the whole sorry tale to the unseen priest. ‘…So you see, if you can find Sylvio Bertorelli for us…We’ve searched the soles off our shoes down your pavements but we’re strangers here. But I thought who would know his flock better than a priest, and priests know other priests…Sylvio is a good man. I’m not asking for confidences to be broken but for him to get in touch with us. You have to help us, please,’ she begged. ‘It’s for the best of causes. It will give the chance for two good people to find each other again.’

There was silence. Then the priest spoke with an Irish lilt. ‘How will I be making contact if I find such a man-and I’m not promising that I will?’

‘Give me a ring at Longsight Travel.’ Lily scribbled the number on a scrap of paper and shoved it through the grille. ‘Ask for Lee Winstanley, and if I’m on my honeymoon, ask for Queenie Quigley at Lavaroni’s Hair Salon, Grimbleton. Sylvio used to work there. Or Sister Diana Unsworth at Grimbleton General Hospital. He has to come back to Grimbleton, and soon. That’s the message. Thank you, I’ve taken up enough of your time.’ She made to leave.

The priest peered through the grille. ‘If everyone had friends like you, the world would not get into such a mess, now would it? God bless you. I’ll do what I can.’

The others were waiting outside the café, furious at her desertion. ‘Where’ve you been, Lily? We are so worried.’ Ana was pointing at the time on the clock tower.

‘I’ve sorted it. With the Roman Catholic Church on board now, we might just have a chance,’ she laughed. ‘Why didn’t we think of it before?’

‘You crazy woman, this is just a little church in back street here.’ Ana was not impressed.

‘The arm of the Church is long, Ana. Anything’s worth a try but come on, time to go home and paint my toenails.’

‘Lily, that’s not like you,’ Diana laughed.

‘I know. Isn’t it fun?’

Each morning at work when the telephone rang, Lily jumped just in case it was for her. On the Sunday night before the wedding, the girls were going to meet after church, as they’d recently resumed doing, for one last supper in Maria’s flat. If no one had heard anything from Manchester by then there was going to be such disappointment.

The following Monday Pete called in to the travel agency in Lily’s lunch hour to find out how things were going but the look on her face told its own story.

‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Just be patient. Come and bring your sandwiches out into the fresh air. We can keep an eye on the shop from the square.’

It was a beautiful afternoon, baking hot, and they sat on the nearest bench in Longsight Square Gardens. He asked her about her wedding plans and Walter’s back, and about her plans to chaperone the cross-Channel trip.

Lily would miss meeting up with him at Brownies. Watching him play football wasn’t the same as sitting next to him and seeing those eyes flash and those lips…Had he really kissed her? Had she dreamed all those lovely things he’d told her? Why was it when they were together she wanted the minutes to go so slowly and for the sun to stand still in the sky?

It wasn’t right to be fancying Pete Walsh like this, was it? It wasn’t natural. She jumped off the bench. ‘I’d better be off,’ she said. This was temptation. What if someone saw them together? Walt wouldn’t understand and he’d be hurt. It must be last-minute nerves or something.

She was about to take the biggest step of her life. The great steam train of wedding preparations was rolling into the station. It was time to jump aboard. Why did she wish she could stay on the platform?

‘I never knew I had this much stuff. Take what you want for the cottage, Lil. Where did we get so much clutter?’ Esme sighed, looking over her bare cupboards with grim satisfaction. She was going over each room, one by one.

She had her eye on a bungalow at Sutter’s Fold, halfway up the hillside. The building was coming on a treat, with its neat sitting room, two bedrooms and modern bathroom. It was small but she wanted it that way so no uninvited guest would come muscling in on her territory. She’d had more than enough of that in the past.

It had one of the best views over the town, and a garden that would be no trouble, but the best bit was that it had central heating from a coke boiler-cum-cooker in the kitchen, heating the radiators. No more coal fires to make every day. All mod cons, and far away enough for neighbours not to see your smalls on the line.

Now all that was left was to see the girl wed and settled, sort out the rental with the others and let them get on with it. But first there was the royal visit to attend to.

Walter and his mother had invited Esme and Lily for tea to discuss all the final arrangements for the wedding day. Sitting across from Elsie Platt was not one of life’s joys and Esme admired Lil for taking on that harridan.

If ever there was a home without warmth and welcome this was it, Esme thought, sitting perched at the end of horsehair with a smoking fire and that sour smell of boiled vegetables up her nostrils. She grimaced. All the corners of this front parlour could do with bottoming out.

‘This time next week, Lil, it’ll be your big day. I wish our husbands could be here to share your joy,’ said Elsie. ‘Only a widow knows what it’s like to be unwanted, alone without that someone special to care for your needs.’

‘I’ve done my best, Mother,’ Walt smiled.

‘I know, son but a son’s a son till he gets a wife, a daughter’s a daughter all your life. Isn’t that so, Esme?’

‘I hadn’t quite thought of it like that,’ Esme said, looking to Lily with raised eyebrows. ‘Think of it more that you’ve gained a grand lass in Lily rather than lost a son.’

‘But when he’s gone, who will see to me?’

‘Happen you’ll have to see for yourself as I have all these years since Redvers went to his rest.’ Esme’s hackles were rising now.

‘With respect, Esme Winstanley, your circumstances are different from mine. I hear you’ve bought a brand-new bungalow, out of town. You don’t have to make ends meet like I have, all these years.’

‘Mother…’ warned Walt.

‘No, you listen to me,’ Elsie continued. ‘This wedding is an expense, with all those guests we don’t know to cater for. You two’ve got your little cottage out of earshot. One day it’ll be me as is found at the foot of the stairs and no one will know I’ve gone to my Maker,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m too old to be left to fend for myself’.

‘Elsie Platt, you’re younger than me by a long chalk. None of this self-pitying talk. Young couples need a fresh start and no interference from us until they ask for it. These two have waited long enough-years they’ve waited-so don’t go spoiling their day. It’s not fair!’

‘What’s not fair is my son being wed to a house full of foreigners with babbies. It didn’t take him three guesses to know who their father was…You Winstanleys are no better than the rest of us. My poor son’ll have a wife who wants to work outside the house and gad about with her friends, day and night till all hours. I hear they can’t cook a square meal between them and they were all fighting in the street. I don’t know how you put up with it.’ Elsie folded her arms across her ample bosom. The first salvo had been fired across the bows.

Esme was not going to take these insults sitting down. She rose up and stared out of the window. The nets were a disgrace and the aspidistra was covered in dust.

‘What I put up with is my business! I’ll have you know my girls are capable and kind-hearted, like Lily here. You should be grateful she’s taking your spoiled son on. It wasn’t my wish to see her throwing herself away on a lazy loon who’s never done a decent day’s work in his life!’ She hoped this blast would meet its target.

‘Don’t you call my Walter lazy. It’s not his fault he has no bones in his back.’ Elsie was wagging her finger and spitting feathers of fury.

‘I rest my case,’ Esme replied. ‘Spineless, and you’ve only yourself to blame, Elsie Platt.’ Gloves were off now.

‘Don’t you go calling my poor fatherless son names! At least he’s never given me a minute’s worth of trouble, not like some sons I could mention! At least he’s not fathered a pair of bastards!’

‘Don’t you dare mention my sons in the same breath as him.’ Esme pointed a gloved finger at Walt. ‘They fought for King and Country. One died in His Majesty’s service. What did he do in the war but get under everyone’s feet?’

‘Stop this, both of you!’ Lily screamed. ‘I can’t stand any more of your sniping, Elsie Platt. It’s not you I’m marrying but him. I know what I’m taking on. You’ve made him what he is and I don’t want any interference from either of you!’

‘Well, that’s told us then, hasn’t it?’ Esme sighed, but she had to hand it to the girl for once. She was sticking up for her own. Pity he wasn’t much of a trophy.

There he was, sitting hunched up, miserable, his ears sticking out like jug handles, his body sagged down with embarrassment. What did the lass see in him, Esme thought. It was going to need some firm handling to lick him into shape.

‘I think we’ve all said enough,’ Esme said, plonking her cup of weak tea on the table and wrapping her cardigan around her shoulders, feeling a shiver go down her spine.

So it was out then: all their dirty linen was hanging on the line for everyone to see. Who’d spilled the beans?

‘Lily, I want a word with you. What’s been going on?’

‘It wasn’t me, Guide’s honour, Mother,’ Lil stuttered as they were driving home in comfort for once. The black Rover saloon was now in regular service, warming up for the big day.

‘Ask Levi what happened. Ivy insulted my friends and she spilled the beans in the park. She let rip as only she can. The rest just happened. Maria had a score to settle and settled it. Don’t worry, none of my friends will say anything.’

The more Esme heard the worse it was getting.

‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to. The sooner I’m on way out the better.’

‘Now you sound just like Ma Platt,’ snapped her daughter. ‘I’m sick of all these secrets in the family. Better out and dealt with. Now you’ve made things bad for Walt and me.’

‘You can’t mean to marry that drink of water in there. You can do better than the Platts. It’s not too late to call it off.’

‘Will you give over, harping on about Walt? Yes, I’m going to have to rescue him from all this mollycoddling, find him an osteopath to sort his back, get him some nice clothes to wear, but he’s my mission now, a full-time job. I can’t nurse everyone’s wounds when I’ve got him to sort out. Underneath he’s a nice chap-weak, I admit-but as the saying goes, “Aisle, Altar, Hymn”.’

‘If you really believe that, young lady, you’re a bigger fool than I thought.’

They drove the rest of the way home in silence.

The spaghetti was bubbling and the sauce ready to serve. There was the usual crush in her flat but Maria was glad of company. Diana was looking at her watch, Queenie kept peering out of the curtains and Lily was falling asleep, la povera. She should be at home getting ready for the big day.

When she had married Marco she had not slept for a week with excitement, sewing her lace dress and veil. She looked wistfully on the wall at their portrait. It was another lifetime ago. Now there was new life in her belly, life she didn’t deserve, a gift that would take a lifetime of penances to give thanks for.

Everyone was jumpy and chattering when she was just out of earshot. Were they talking behind her back? Had they changed their minds about her? Without the Olive Oils she was lost.

This meal she was preparing with love and gratitude. Ana had brought broad beans from her allotment and handfuls of mint to make a paste. She had found chopped nuts and fresh berries to add to the fruit sundae. Food had brought them all together and soothed their anxious times. How could she ever thank them? But they were ignoring her now, smiling to each other. What was going on?

‘Lily? Wake up! Last-minute nerves?’ Maria was bending over her. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll all be there to see you off.’

‘I don’t want—’

There was a loud rapping downstairs, a thundering on the café door.

‘Wadda you want now, Enzo? Forget his head if weren’t stuck on,’ Maria yelled. ‘Shutta that noise, you wake Rosa. I’m coming.’

‘You stay here, I’ll go,’ said Queenie, waddling from the door down the narrow staircase. ‘I can see to it.’

‘Who is it?’ she yelled. ‘Tell them I’m out.’

Queenie puffed up the stairs with a strange look on her face. ‘There’s someone to see you, Maria.’

‘Bring them up then,’ came her reply.

‘No, I think it’s someone you might like to see on your own, ducks.’ Queenie was winking and smiling. ‘Go on down.’

‘I go but why they can’t come uppa the stairs?’

What was all the fuss about? She turned for the stairs and looked down.

‘Santa Maria!’ From inside her came a scream, an animal howl as she clattered down the wooden stairs. ‘Sylvio!’ She galloped down into his arms.

The rest was a rattle of Italian, hugging, kissing with a passion.

The girls were all grinning, peering from the top of the stairs. ‘Thank you, thank you, everybody! How you find my Sylvio? You bring him back to me!’

She wrapped herself round his body with delight, kissing him as he clung to her.

‘I didn’t know, I’m so sorry. What has happened?’ Sylvio wept. ‘It is a miracle. I go to confession. I tell him everything and he say, are you Sylvio Bertorelli?’ He turned to the tearful faces. ‘How can I thank you?’

But they had already found their coats and hats, making their way down the stairs, leaving the couple to a private reunion.

The Olive Oils had triumphed so why was their passionate coming together making Lily feel so sick, so envious, so emptied of hope for herself?

‘We did it then,’ she sighed.

‘You did it, Lily. That trip to the church must have done the trick. I think the Italian Mafia is alive and well, praise the Lord! Time to be on our way. We’re not needed here.’ Queenie winked and skipped on the linoleum.

‘Your turn for joy next, Lily,’ said Su.

‘No, I don’t think so, not like that,’ Lily sighed wistfully.

The sight of those lovers clinging together like limpets clawed at her insides making her feel queasy. They were like two halves of a whole, separated and now back as one. Together they’d sort things out, find a way through the coming tunnel of disgrace into a place of their own in the sunlight, safe from the gathering storm. Lily wished she hadn’t seen them.

I should be glad for them, rejoice in their coming together, in them finding each other, she raged. What was wrong with her then? Why was she so put out? Her own wedding day was at the end of this very week, a new beginning to look forward to. These feelings were ridiculous.

Pull yourself together, Lily Winstanley. What are you thinking of?

There was no need to answer that question. She made her excuses and left.

24

A Brief Encounter Moment

After making a quick exit, the leftovers of the Olive Oil Club found themselves outside Santini’s in the deserted street. It was a warm Sunday night, hardly dark yet, only the screech of the swifts overhead broke the silence of the Sabbath. Nowhere to go and nothing to do, and no one wanted to play gooseberry on the young couple in the flat upstairs. They needed to be alone.

‘We can go window shopping,’ suggested Su.

‘What we would have, if we could have but we can’t…What’s there to see that we haven’t seen a hundred times? Windows full of cardboard cut-outs, posters promising stuff we can’t get hold of-what’s the point?’ snapped Lily.

‘Who trod on your toes?’ said Queenie. ‘I thought you’d be chuffed the two of them have found each other again and it’s all your doing?’

‘I am, I am…’

‘So?’

‘Nothing, nothing you’d understand. I’m fed up, tired out, but I don’t want to go home yet.’

‘It’s late, Lily. You need your beauty sleep,’ Su offered. ‘We must catch the bus.’

‘You go on. I think I’ll walk for a bit, clear my head.’

They walked on ahead, leaving her dawdling behind with Queenie and Diana. Soon Ana and Su and the others were out of sight.

‘Do you really not want to go home yet?’ said Queenie, her warm brown eyes scanning her friend’s with concern.

‘No.’

‘So what’s this about? Tell Auntie Queenie. Last-minute nerves?’

‘I need a drink, a large one.’

‘But you don’t drink,’ said Diana. ‘I’ve never seen you touch a drop, except a bit of wine when we have supper.’

‘I need something to get me on my way and cocoa won’t hit the spot.’

‘Are you sure? Everything’s shut now but I know a little club we can go to, down a back street,’ Queenie said. ‘I’m not sure it’s your sort of place but women go in there and don’t get bothered. Arthur’s taken me in there once or twice.’

‘Lead on, Macduff! Are you coming, Diana?’

‘Trust a Londoner to know the dives of Grimbleton better than a native! I’m intrigued. Lead me into temptation,’ she laughed.

They slipped down Cheapside, past warehouses and office blocks, turning into a side street, hidden from view until they came upon a scratched sign which said ‘The Coal Hole’ on a painted door. A surly man nodded them through, down into a cellar with steep stairs.

It was like going into the underworld, a secret tunnel under Grimbleton, a subterranean world Lily never knew existed. She felt a flicker of nervousness but it was too late to turn back now.

Women didn’t go into public houses-not respectable Winstanley women-but she was curious to see who was in the smoky twilight world, sipping beer, listening to a man tinkling tunes on the piano, a man she recognised as one of Levi’s infamous customers from the market stall. She could smell the perfume of the wonder weed in the air but said nothing.

‘I’m not sure this is quite what I wanted, Queenie.’

‘Don’t worry, you can get a cup of tea if you like. I know Paddy’s wife, Sadie. We do her hair. She’ll see you all right. You’ve led a sheltered life, girl. If you’re going into the travel business then you should know that every town and city has its secret dens, dives and boltholes. Grimbleton’s no different from London, just on a smaller scale, that’s all. You can get anything here if you know who to ask.’

‘Yes, I can smell it,’ giggled Diana.

‘You mean black market stuff from spivs, favours from ladies of the night, gambling?’ Lily whispered, her grey eyes wide with alarm. What if she was taken for a loose woman? At least there was safety in numbers.

‘We’ve no need to worry on that score.’ Diana grabbed her arm. ‘I think your honour is quite safe. Think of it as part of your education.’ They were peering round at the couples huddled in the corners.

Her eyes were getting used to the darkness, the only light candles flickering in old wine bottles. The smell of ale, cigarettes and spirits assaulted her nostrils. There were familiar faces from the market, customers of the Santinis, who looked up at her in surprise.

Levi and Freddie would know about this sort of place, but down The Coal Hole she felt like a visitor from Mars. Mother would have kittens if she found out about this den of iniquity in their midst.

The women sat huddled in a corner table. Lily ordered half a pint of Wilson’s mild, trying to look sophisticated; the only brand of beer that came to mind. It was Pete’s tipple from his uncle’s brewery. Queenie wanted a port and lemonade and Diana had a pint of bitter. It felt daring to be out so late but that chapel voice in her head kept whispering: ‘This no place for you, in Satan’s den, drinking Beelzebub’s brew. No good can ever come of defiling the Lord’s Day. Go home now and repent. Why are you exposing yourself to temptation, sister?’

Her first taste of beer was a bit of a shock. It was warm and nutty, comforting as it slid down the throat. No wonder men liked a pint at the end of the day to slake their thirst and warm their innards. The second slipped down even easier. The third just gave her a warm glow. Her spare budget was blown in the space of half an hour.

‘I’d go easy if you’re not used to it, duckie,’ warned Queenie.

‘Let me try yours,’ Lily smiled, tasting the port and lemon on the table. This was fun. ‘I’ll have one of those next.’

‘I think we should be on our way now, Lily,’ Diana interrupted. ‘We’ve work in the morning. I shall have to drive you home. They’ll be worried about you. Home James for you, before we have to carry you out.’

It was as she was turning for her cardigan on the back of the chair that she noticed a couple in the corner canoodling. It was Shirley, the bottle blonde from behind the stocking bar in the Market Hall, holding hands with an oh so familiar figure-her brother. Levi looked up and held Lily’s eye, frozen like a rabbit caught in a headlight.

‘Lil,’ he croaked, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘I could ask the same of you,’ she snapped, staring at him with glassy eyes, trying not to stumble with the shock.

‘What’s up?’ asked Queenie. ‘Oh…’ she added, seeing who it was.

‘Just get me out of here.’ Lily turned, but the ceiling was swirling above her head.

‘Hold on to my arm,’ ordered Diana. ‘This was not a good idea. Come on, fresh air for you.’

‘Don’t fuss. I can manage on my own. I’m not an invalid.’ Her voice sounded as if it was coming from her toes, and each leg stumbled up the stairs as if it didn’t understand orders, her mind befuddled by the sight of Levi and that floozie making eyes at each other. Queenie grabbed her other arm.

‘Look at the state of you. We can’t send you home like that. You’re going to have to come down my place and sober up. You’re going to have a head on you like a helter-skelter in the morning. Let’s get her out of here.’

Linking arms, they staggered towards Queenie’s house, passing the foot of Bowker’s Row where Walt was, no doubt already tucked up in the land of Nod. The sight of his street name stirred something inside Lily and a smile erupted over her face. It was suddenly important to tell him what she had just seen. Did he know about Levi’s little secret?

‘Let’s give Walt a surprise visit, see if he gives me a welcome like Sylvio did Ria. Let’s wake my intended up for a little chat.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Diana suggested. ‘We mustn’t disturb the peace. Come on, not long now. You can ring home from the telephone kiosk at the bottom of Featherstone Road or, better still, I’ll give them a tinkle and explain you’re unwell and I’ve taken you home with me. You can go on to work from my place in the morning.’

‘No! I have to speak to Walt first. It’s important.’

‘It can wait till the morning, ducks. Believe me, things said in drink don’t come out right. Let’s be having you!’ Queenie was pushing her out the way.

‘No! I’m just going to ring his bell.’ The idea was in her head and it was not going to be shifted. It wasn’t that late. It was funny how the cobbles kept sloping away from her but she was soon at number four and rapped the door knocker hard. No one answered.

‘Open sesame!’ she yelled. ‘It’s Lily of Laguna, with a sweet serenade.’ There was no movement but curtains twitched across the road and lights went on.

‘Lily! Come away now, you’ve made your call. That’s enough.’ Queenie was coming to drag her back again.

‘No! I know you’re in there, Walter Platt. What’s the matter with you? Shall I come up and wake you with a kiss…? I’ve got something to tell you, something you should know.’

The sash window was raised and a sleepy head popped out. ‘What’s going on? Is that you, Lil? What’s up? Who’s died?’

‘Come and give your fiancée a big kiss!’ she yelled with her arms flung open, looking up to see him in his blue striped pyjamas.

‘Lily, come away,’ Diana whispered, pulling the arms of her cardigan.

‘Not before I get a proper kiss from him. I want to know what it tastes like.’

‘She’s drunk,’ said another head, wrapped in steel curlers and a pink hairnet. ‘Go home, Lily Winstanley, and don’t show yourself up. Walter, shut the window! What’ll the neighbours say?’

‘Walter! Don’t take any notice of her, the old battleaxe. Come down here and give me a kiss! You’re marrying me, not her,’ she argued, seeing him looking down at her, his hair tufted up like a Roman helmet.

‘Lil, I’m not talking to you until you’re sober.’ With that the window was shut and the light went out.

‘I told you it wasn’t a good idea,’ Diana said. ‘Come on, time to go home. You’ll feel better in the morning.’

‘But I only wanted a kiss,’ Lily squeaked, feeling as if all the air was sucked out of her body.

She woke a little later in Queenie’s parlour on a hard sofa covered in a grey army blanket. Her tongue felt like cork matting and she had only the vaguest recollection of the jaunt to The Coal Hole. Then she recalled Levi’s guilty face, a little boy’s look caught stealing jam tarts from the cake tin.

In turn, they filled in the rest of the gory details and she turned hot and cold with embarrassment.

‘You weren’t yourself earlier,’ Diana explained softly as if to a patient. ‘There was no shifting you. You kept going on about kissing Walter. But he didn’t want to play at that time of night.’

‘He never wants to play,’ Lily muttered. ‘But my brother was playing away for both of us. Didn’t you see him?’

‘What’s new about that, ducks? Given half a chance most men play away, and if I was married to that Ivy…’ Queenie was shoving yet another cup of Camp coffee into Lily’s hand. ‘Drink up.’

‘I’m sorry to put on both of you. It’s not like me. This wedding is getting on my nerves. I’ll be glad when it’s all over.’

It was almost dawn when they drove up through the town. Diana had phoned Waverley House with excuses for Lily, but she was puzzled. Lily was acting out of character.

‘What did you mean earlier about being glad when it’s all over? It’s only just beginning for you two. The wedding is just for a day, marriage is a life sentence, so be sure it’s what you want,’ she said, staring at the road ahead.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lily replied, wrapping her crumpled cardigan around herself for warmth.

‘You heard me. I’m your friend and I’m worried. Think about it. Last night’s little episode was quite an eye-opener on all fronts. It’s just not like you.’

‘Put this down to nerves. Walt and me’ve waited that long, I’m bound to get jumpy.’

‘If that’s all it is, then fine. It’s your life, not mine, but think on.’

‘What are you saying?’

Diana pulled up by the pavement. ‘Listen, I’ve been watching you and you’ve been so edgy since that episode in the park. I’m concerned, that’s all. Not every woman has to be married to have a good time and be fulfilled. There are other ways…look at me.’

‘Oh, don’t tell me you’ve not got some bloke on the sly? That’s why we never see you hitting the town with some handsome doctor on your arm.’

Diana felt herself boiling up. ‘It’s not like that for me.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never been in love. I won’t believe you. All those pilots and officers you nursed in the war-I bet they were all round you like flies to the honeypot.’

It was time to put her straight. ‘Yes, I’ve been in love,’ Diana sighed.

‘Who was that then?’

‘Binky Ballard, an officer serving in the same hospital. We made plans just like you, but people can change and it didn’t work out. Not every romance ends with a wedding ring.’

‘I’m sorry. Why did it end? Was he killed or did he find someone else?’

Diana took a deep breath. It was now or never. ‘She found someone else, Lily. Binky was my best pal but one day she just packed her bags and left me. Not every love is straightforward.’ She was glad of the covering darkness so she couldn’t see Lily’s face as the penny dropped. ‘Don’t tell me you hadn’t wondered why there were no men in my life?’

‘To be honest, I’ve been that wrapped up in myself and the Winstanley dramas, I hadn’t noticed that you were unhappy too.’ Lily paused and turned to face her. ‘Is this your big secret? I’d never’ve guessed. You don’t act like a…’

‘Like a lesbian? That’s the proper word, a lonely word in a town like this. “The love that dares not speak its name” is all around if you know where to find it. You don’t choose who you fall in love with. It just happens and kept on happening to me at school, in the army. It’s difficult to explain…’ There were tears in her eyes and she bent her head.

Lily grasped her hand and patted it. ‘That’s why you came back to Grimbleton, is it?’

‘I suppose so. I thought it would be safe and predictable-which it was until I met you lot. One dead soldier and his two women, one drug-pushing brother and his snake of a wife. Romeo and Juliet at the hair salon, and you struggling to keep every plate spinning in the air, pouring oil on troubled waters. Each of us is searching for happiness, one way or another. It’s no different for me. Love, betrayal and rejection are the same feeling in any language.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lily smiled. ‘You must have felt so alone.’

‘No more, I think, than any other soldier returning from the war. One minute there’s danger and excitement, then its boredom and humdrum. You live as if every moment is your last. You dream of coming home and when you do…A war like that comes once in a lifetime and it’s hard to settle in civvy street after all that. Ask Levi or any of the men in drab demob suits, confused, disorientated, unable to settle to anything much. Their buddies are scattered, far flung, and some memories will fade, but the heat, dust and danger will never be forgotten, nor the blood brothers who shared danger together. Don’t be too harsh on him. You can never know what he went through that changed him so much.’

‘I’m just so sorry you felt you had to hide it from us. We’re on your side.’

‘Not everyone like me dresses like a man and smokes a pipe. There must be many sad souls out there, in this town, hiding who they really are for the sake of their families and their jobs.

‘I’ve decided to study psychiatry, perhaps retrain, move away for a while. If I stay here, I’ll only brood. But enough of my worries, it’s you we need to sort out.’

They were both crying now.

‘I didn’t share all this to make you feel sad or guilty,’ Diana continued. ‘Meeting up with the Olive Oils has made life here bearable and given me the oomph to make new plans. I can’t sit sulking at my misfortune and living like a child in her parents’ house. Time, I think, for us all to go and make our lives happen, doing the one thing that will give us the greatest satisfaction and fulfilment. If marriage is what you want, above all else, go to it! If you’re not sure…What is that saying to you? I trust you won’t tell anyone else about all my little quirks…One day when I’m not so sore, I’ll come clean, perhaps, or maybe not.’

Suddenly Diana was feeling lighter, hopeful and relieved. Better out than in, went the saying. It really was time for her to move on.

‘Thank you for trusting me,’ Lily replied. ‘I’ll not let you down.’

‘And don’t sell yourself cheap, Brown Owl. Go home and be prepared!’

Diana’s revelation was spinning round Lily’s fuzzy head all morning. How lonely she must have felt among them. How generous and trusting she was in confiding such a secret. If ever this came out, she would be ruined and her position at work compromised.

Minds were prejudiced against such loving. It had taken her aback for all of five minutes until she thought, why shouldn’t a caring woman like Diana be allowed to love whom she pleased?

Her suffering made the petty quarrel with Walt fade away but what was she going to do about Levi? If Ivy found out she’d skin him alive. Somehow she knew he’d be making contact. No surprise, then, when he was round at the travel agent’s first thing, cap in hand, looking washed out.

‘It’s not what you think, Lil. Shirley’s just a friend. We have a bit of fun,’ he whispered. She bent her throbbing head down, trying to keep a straight face.

‘Pull the other one. What’s got into you lately? I don’t know you any more. I used to look up to you. I would have done anything for you once. I ran the blooming business straight as a dye and who goes and cooks the books? Then there was that box of dope. Dad would turn in his grave to have a son into such stuff. You need sorting out good and proper. Tell me why I shouldn’t go and tell Mother some more good news about you?’

‘So you haven’t told her yet?’ His eyes were glassy, like a dead fish on a slab.

‘Who do you take me for, Levi? It’s as it always was. All for one and one for all. I don’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me, not like some I could mention. Right?’ she smiled, too exhausted to crow over his humbling.

‘Thanks. I owe you one, sis.’

‘You’ve got to sort this out for Neville’s sake. Ivy’s no paragon and she had no right to do what she did to Maria, but cheating on her doesn’t help,’ she added.

‘You’re right, as usual, Miss Goody Two-Shoes. I know about that stuff with Marco Santini…I know it was her and I feel bad about it. She gets these ideas in her head. I can’t keep up with her expectations of me.’ He sat down on the bentwood chair, his head in his hands. ‘Nothing’s turned out as I expected. I can’t seem to let go of things, memories, stuff from the war. I saw so many pals go west. Why should I be the one to survive, and now my brother’s dead? I can’t believe we’ll never see him again. I just want to blot things out. Shirley’s good fun, she takes my mind off things. Ivy just makes things worse.’

Lily recalled Diana’s words and suddenly felt for him. ‘Then put your foot down and say no to her wants, once in a while. Time to put up or shut up, Levi. Where’s your backbone? You’re a Winstanley and we’re made of granite. You’ve a good business to run, a little son to follow you, a future to build. That’s more chances than many of your pals got. I’ll not say a word if you buck up.’

‘Thanks,’ he croaked with relief.

‘You and I haven’t seen eye to eye for months but we can try and do better if you’ll keep your hands off skirts. It’s not the answer. Besides, you’re the only brother I’ve got now.’ She touched his arm in a gesture of friendship.

He looked up sheepishly. ‘You’re a good lass. Walt should be proud to be getting you down the aisle and I’ll be proud to escort you there.’

‘We’ll see about that when the time comes. I want you to make sure Mother is looked after. You’re head of the household now. Winstanleys expect. Go on, better open up shop and let me get on or I’ll be getting the sack. Think on, Levi. No second chances at this life, I reckon.’

The funny thing was he didn’t say a word about her own little jaunt to The Coal Hole; not a flicker of curiosity or disapproval.

Suddenly all she felt was pity for the man who’d been the bane of her life for months. He was family, after all, and they must stick together now. Family First into the next generation. Whatever was happening, she hoped that they’d seen the last of Doormat Lil.

Her second visitor came in his lunch break as she was sorting out the itinerary for the coach trip to France. ‘I hope you’ve got a good explanation about last night. I can’t leave you five minutes with that lot and you make an exhibition of yourself in front of the street. Mother hasn’t put her foot out of the door all morning because of you! I’m surprised at you in that state,’ he said, pink with indignation.

‘It was only a bit of fun.’ Where had she heard that excuse before?

‘That’s not what I’d call it, and on a Sunday night of all nights. What will your mother say? Honestly, Lily, I’m beginning to wonder about you. It’s not the first time this has happened, is it? What about the other week in the park?’

She hung her head. ‘We were just having a bit of a do, a celebration. My head’s paying for it now. Never again.’

‘Serves you right, but it’s beginning to be a habit. I thought we’d agreed to cut down on all those gallivantings with those wild friends? They only lead you astray. We don’t need people in our lives like that, do we?’

‘We need a bit of fun in our lives, a bit of adventure to compensate. If I give up the Olive Oils, I’m trusting that you’ve done right by me and sorted out that passport at long last. Avril’s banking on us to turn up and chaperone the old folks. That way we get a free trip. There has to be give and take in a marriage. I do this for you and you do that for me, even stevens. Start as we mean to go on, you told me. Humour me in this one thing and I’ll compromise on my friends.’

She watched him struggling with her words, trying to wriggle them one way and the other to his advantage.

‘They’ve been a bad influence on you. You never used to argue with me or get drunk,’ he answered, fiddling with his trilby hat.

‘I got drunk because you never show me any affection or kiss me like you meant it, not like Maria and Sylvio,’ she pleaded, knowing they must have this out once and for all.

‘Are they at it, again?’

‘“At it”? Is that all it means? I want us to desire each other so passionately that we don’t mind who sees us at it.’ There, her disappointment was nailed to the door.

‘That’s behaving like two dogs in the street. Sex has its place in the bedroom but it’s not the be-all and end-all of love. It’s there to control natural urges.’

‘Sometimes, Walt, I feel you’ve no urges towards me at all.’

‘It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, this sex malarkey,’ he argued.

‘How would you know? We’ve never tried it.’

‘Men just know these things. Besides, you and I are too old for all that steamy stuff. You’ve been watching too many pictures.’

‘How can you say we’re too old for passion? My mother missed my father something rotten. She worshipped him and he always had a twinkle in his eye for her.’

‘That’s not very ladylike. Mother says that nightly occurrences have to be endured, not enjoyed. Ladies do it to beget children.’

‘So that was why there was only one of you? I did wonder,’ she quipped.

‘You can be so coarse, Lil. Dad died for his country…’

‘Sorry, but I want more out of marriage than a quick fumble in the dark once every blue moon.’

‘And I want a lady for a wife, not a good-time girl cavorting round the streets at all hours, only after one thing.’ Walt was red in the face now.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lily said automatically.

‘That’s better. I’m glad you realise you’re speaking out of turn. We’ll be fine once we’re on our own; in heaven with the door closed,’ he smiled, patting her on the arm.

‘So you keep saying, but I want to be sure that you love me.’

‘Of course, I love you. I must do to put up with all of this nonsense.’

She leaped forward. ‘Then show me.’

He was backing off. ‘Not in your office. You never know who’ll come in. We save all that for the big day. It’ll be worth waiting for.’

‘OK,’ she sighed. Walter made a hasty exit, leaving her confused and disgruntled once more. Are you a stick of rock or a marshmallow? She sat down at her desk, all of a wobble.

Diana was right. The impulse of her heart was urging, Go to it, girl. It’s now or never, and it was Lee Winstanley’s voice she was hearing, not Doormat Lil’s. What was she going to do about that?

25

Gretna Green Temptations

It was dawn on her wedding day when Lily poked her head out of the eiderdown. She must have dozed off for a few hours, dreaming of how it had all come to this.

Everything was in place, ready and waiting. At the end of her single bed was the half-packed suitcase on the floor, the suit hung on its coat hanger. The hat was cradled in its leather hat box. She sniffed the leather of her unworn shoes-two-toned peep-toes in white calfskin with brown trim-and felt empty. The initials on her case blazed out in the sunshine from a crack in the curtains.

It was going to be a golden day, speedwell-blue sky, dry pavements and no muddy splashes on their outfits. Just the day she’d always dreamed of, and yet…Something wasn’t right. Perhaps a few more minutes under the covers again, snuggled down, and this panic would disappear.

What was it about those initials, the wrong initials embossed on that case? How unsettling was it to see L. W. not L. P.? Those letters had been haunting her all week; a reminder of the day she must change her name for ever, lose an identity and perhaps independence, along with the freedom to come and go as she pleased. Now everything was so muddled up in her mind.

Walt’s threats were ringing warning bells in her head, a noise she could no longer ignore. Why blame two gold letters on a suitcase for all this unease? It was too late for second thoughts.

It was all Pete Walsh’s fault for dancing with her and for kissing her and making her doubt. Perhaps it was Maria and Sylvio’s fault for showing her what real passion was about, showing up the lack of it in her own romance. Perhaps it was Ana and Su’s fault for showing her how to upsticks and follow a dream, however crazy, or Diana’s courage in facing her own loss.

Jumping from the bed, pulling open the curtains, staring out into the early morning with heart thumping, she sat down at her bureau and searched for her Conway Stewart pen among the pile of thank you letters waiting to be posted after the wedding.

Suddenly she knew what she must do. Eureka! All the fuzziness of the last frenetic days was rinsed clean away in her head by an ice-cold splash of clarity.

Her romance with Walt was one of those arrangements that had seemed so splendid at the time but felt a mystery to her now. When she conjured up Walt in her mind’s eye there was no spark of desire, no flicker of lust, nothing but an urge to mother him and sort his problems out. Doing that for the rest of her life was no basis for a marriage, surely?

When Pete Walsh danced into her dreams in his football shorts, she felt jumping jacks and Catherine wheels spinning inside, and rockets going off in all directions. He was like her favourite liquorice blackcurrants in the purple wrappers, fruity smooth on the outside but inside something to get your teeth into, rich and spicy, a sweet that lasted on the tongue.

Beside him Walt’s pecks of affection tasted of candyfloss, fluffy and sweet but all air and no substance when you tried to bite into it. It looked good until you tried it. You’d never get sweet satisfaction for your precious coupons. He wasn’t good value for money.

Her eyes were once blinkered by duty but not any longer.

The two of them were not suited and never had been. Better to call it a day now. What she was about to do was for the both of them before they made a big mistake.

How could she marry a man she didn’t fancy, and try to live a lie? Better to find it out now before the vows were promised. Now or never, that was the challenge, but how was she going to live this down?

Her hand was shaking as she rummaged in the drawer for fresh paper. The drawers were almost bare. Everything had been transferred to Well Cottage in boxes.

There was no easy way to let him down gently with this one. But start as you mean to go on was Walt’s motto.

They had hardly exchanged words since Monday, both being busy with arrangements, chasing trestle tables and linen cloths, enough chairs to sit fifty guests, ordering ham off the bone from the butcher’s, wine glasses for the toast in Vimto cordial as the church would have no liquor on the premises.

Being busy kept doubt at bay for a while. Avoiding him put back the moment of truth a bit longer.

As the week dragged on the cage door was looming ahead, getting larger and larger. No wonder she’d been like a bear with a sore head, and the new Lee kept bobbing up with words of wisdom in her head, unsettling things even further.

Now it was crunch time. Could she salvage the day? There was still time to hold back the tide of events. It was early in the morning, chance to slip out and put the note in his letterbox and seek refuge with the Crumblehumes. They would know what to do, but first she must concentrate and put her thoughts on paper.

I’ve eloped with myself, Walter. I can’t go through with our wedding. I know I’ve left it a bit late but not too late for all the catering to be cancelled. No precious rations will be wasted. The cake can be divided up between the families.

Apologise to your mother for all this upset but her heart was never in our union and neither is mine. I’m doing this for both of us.

You said yourself I wasn’t your old Lil any more. I hardly recognise myself sometimes. I’m not who I was, but then no one should stay the same for ever, I suppose. You have to keep growing on and changing or you get stuck in a rut. And you know what they say about ruts being more like graves than springboards to life? I don’t want to be buried alive.

You don’t love the woman I’ve become and I won’t be put down any more. I’m not ready to settle down just for the sake of it. There’s more to life than getting wed. There’s a whole world outside of Grimbleton I want to explore, and with my new job I can begin to see some of it for myself without having to rush home and make your tea.

I’ll be taking the coach to France with Longsight Travel, a working holiday just to get myself out of everyone’s hair. You’ll cope without me to worry about.

We’ll be a nine-day wonder in Division Street but that’s nothing new since Ana and Su arrived. You and your mother’ll happen be glad to distance yourself from my disgraceful family, but I love them all, and my friends.

You shouldn’t have asked me to choose. Either-or is never a good idea. Why not both-and? Compromise is part of a good marriage. The parson told us that in his talk.

I hope you find the happiness you deserve. Forgive me for the upset but I know it’s the right decision for both of us. Don’t be bitter. Think of it as a lucky escape.

Sorry and all that.

Lee Winstanley

She foraged for an envelope and shoved in the letter, making sure it was labelled as ‘Urgent’.

Now she must write a note to her family before slipping away quietly. Mother would see that the minister was told. He would inform the registrar and so forth.

Dismantling a wedding was like knitting waiting to be unravelled, stitch by stitch, loop by loop, layer by layer. The wool could be rolled up and used for something else, given time and a bit of understanding.

Everyone’s disappointment was another matter, she sighed, closing the lid of the suitcase tight.

No one was stirring. By the time she reached Avril’s, all hell would be let loose in Division Street. Let them get on with it for a change.

Esme had tossed and turned all night, trying to remember everything on her list.

It was no good, the sweats had got her and she needed a brew to cool her down, so she waddled downstairs, hoping not to give the milk man a fright in her faded candlewick dressing gown and hairnet; no point in wasting a good shampoo and set.

She could hear movements on the landing and the creak of the third step on the stairs. She stood by the kitchen door, mesmerised as her daughter struggled with a suitcase, trying not to make a noise.

‘So where are you off to at this time of morn, and with a suitcase packed?’

Lily froze, caught like a child with her hand in the biscuit tin. ‘I’m leaving Grimbleton. I can’t go through with it.’

‘And not a word to your mother?’ Esme shook her head in mock reproof. ‘I know mams and lasses aren’t always the best of friends but I think I’m owed an explanation, seeing as it looks as if it’ll be me clearing up your mess. The kettle’s on the hob, by the way. No use going on an empty stomach.’

‘You’ll not make me change my mind,’ said her daughter, looking relieved, ashamed and confused all at the same time.

‘Who said anything about changing your mind? Why is everything between us always such a battle? I’m on your side. If nothing else, Lily, remember that.’

There was such relief in her daughter’s face on hearing those words as she sat at the kitchen table, clutching a cup of tea in her trembling hands.

‘I feel awful, and I know it’s late in the day but I have to go.’

‘I’ve seen it coming for months,’ Esme answered. ‘I do worry about you. I’ve only wanted your happiness above my own, whatever you might think. Every time I tried to open the subject you jumped down my throat. I may be old-fashioned but I do know a thing or two, and you and Walt were never suited.’

‘I know, I know now, but this mess’s not what I wanted. All week doubt’s been crawling through my head, chewing up all my good intentions. It comes down to three choices. If only I can ignore his pompous attitudes and make it work. If only I can shut my eyes to his views and his mother and not let them get to me. I just hoped my fears would go away but they got worse, not better. I’ve been as jumpy as a dog with fleas.’ Lily looked across to the familiar lined face, her mother sitting in all her morning glory, as if she was seeing her for the first time.

‘We had noticed but thought it was wedding nerves. So you realised you couldn’t lump it. Did you try to change it then?’

‘It’s silly but it was when he wouldn’t even get his passport that it dawned on me that Walt was one of life’s stay-at-homes, a steady sort of chap with no ambition but solid as cement when it came to how his wife should behave. If he can’t listen to me now what hope is there after we’re wed? That’s when I knew I’d have to leave.’ Lily searched for her hanky up her cardigan sleeve. ‘Like it, lump it or leave-that about sums it up, don’t you think? I’m sorry I’m like a leaking tap,’ she wept. ‘I was daft to think I could change him. If he won’t budge before we were wed, he sure as hell won’t after he’s put the ring on my finger.’

‘I knew something was up. I just wish you could have talked it over with me. I’ve let you down in so many ways, putting on you.’

‘It’s not you that’s let me down. All the arrangements, the church, all your outfits…That’s what’s worrying me: all the expense, the disappointed children and embarrassment.’

‘Outfits can be worn any time, lass. Churches are usually empty on Saturdays. Nothing’s been baked that can’t be shared out. Money is only money, but this is your life and your future, and that’s far more important. You’re a champion, Lily. Your dad would’ve been proud of you and he was as good a man as ever put a shirt over his head. I miss him that much. You never get over the loss of a man like that. He was my strong wall in a time of crisis. I wanted a man like that for you but Walt’s weak and you can’t lean on a broken fence.’

‘Oh, Mam, what a mess I’ve made of it all.’

‘Better to be strong now than suffer a lifetime of regrets, I’m thinking. What’re your plans?’

‘I’ll catch the coach tomorrow. Today I’ll just disappear. The Crumblehumes have been wonderful. I might ask to rent their flat when they find somewhere bigger for their new family. It’s time I stood on my own feet. My friends will understand, I hope.’

‘You’ll do fine as long as you follow your heart this time. It sees clearer than your brain,’ she said, feeling her own tears welling up. ‘What a pickle we get ourselves into when we don’t talk things over.’

Lily got up and hugged her. ‘Thanks. I’m sorry.’

‘Now none of that, just get yourself back upstairs. You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. There’s nothing here that can’t be undone in time. I’m not having you wandering the streets on your wedding day.’

‘What about the wedding presents?’ There were boxes piled up in Well Cottage.

‘I’ll get Levi to deliver them all back after work.’

‘Ivy will be crowing with glee,’ sighed Lily.

‘Levi will understand. Believe me, if he could turn the clock back and do a runner before his wedding, he would. He’s got a life sentence there. Now upstairs out of the road.’

‘I’ve got a letter for Walt. He’s got to know first.’ Lily pulled the letter out of her handbag in a fluster.

‘Give it here. I’ll make sure he gets it, if I have to deliver it myself. Now upstairs. We won’t say anything till I’ve rung Reverend Atkinson. He’ll know what to do. This won’t be the first time this has happened. Just stay calm and say nowt. Upstairs, and I’ll bring you some breakfast, just as we planned.’

‘I couldn’t eat a thing,’ Lily sobbed.

‘Upstairs, my girl, and I’ll bring you a brandy.’

‘Just some hot water in a cup,’ Lily said, climbing the stairs. ‘What I need is a herbal tea and there’s something in my hope chest that might settle my nerves. Drastic times deserve drastic measures. I’ve got just the cure. Are you sure you can manage?’

‘I’m not in my dotage yet. Leave everything to your mother; she knows best.’

‘Thanks, Mam.’

When Lily had crept back upstairs, Esme was about to phone Levi when she looked up and saw him creeping through the back gate with an attaché case. What a relief!

‘Now, son, I want you to stay calm and give me a lift. This morning I want you to be chauffeur, postman and brother to your little sister for once.’

‘But I’ve left Ivy,’ he squeaked like a lost boy. ‘I didn’t go home last night. I’ve been wandering all over town. It’s a right mess…I’ve brought my suit.’

‘Be that as it may, your marital problems are the least of my worries now. It’s your sister who needs sorting out. Yours will blow over, hers won’t.’

‘What’s happened?’

Esme shoved the envelope in his hand. ‘We’re going to deliver this to Bowker’s Row. It’s her letter of resignation. Our Lil is declining the post of resident dogsbody to Elsie Platt and her gormless son, that’s what.’

‘Hell’s bells! Ivy’ll play pot. She’s cut up one of her best velvet frocks to make Neville’s pageboy suit.’

‘This is not about her or your son, it’s your sister’s big day and it’s going to be ruined if we don’t do something, and fast.’ She was in no mood to pander to Ivy Southall as was. ‘Family first, Levi, and it’s an emergency. We must look after our own.’

‘I don’t fancy facing the wrath of Elsie with a strop on her by myself,’ he replied.

‘That’s why we go together, to deliver the glad tidings like one of those sheriff’s posses. I never took you to be a coward.’

‘I never thought of myself as one either, until I came back to Blighty and found myself with an albatross of a wife round my neck. She’s making a right sissy out of my son.’

‘Then do something about it…but not today. Today is Lily’s big day, or was, and we’ve got to salvage something out of it for her. Redvers would expect, Freddie would expect. Give me five minutes to pin my face on. I don’t want to miss Elsie’s face when we present this summons at her door.’

‘I’ll put on another brew then.’

‘I think we’ll be needing something stronger before this day is out but first I must ring the Minister. We don’t want anyone turning up at Zion. He can put a notice on the door and tell them they’ve got a boiler burst, for now.’

‘But it’s high summer, Mother.’

‘He’ll think of something. I don’t want the world knowing our business. Won’t be long.’

This was going to be the biggest challenge for years but the Winstanley honour was at stake. She would wake the two in the attic to see if they had any ideas.

It sounded like bedlam downstairs, muffled sounds past her room, the phone ringing, the doorbell jangling as the bouquet and posies arrived from the florist and telegrams of congratulations arrived in the post. Someone was on overdrive down there, shouting instructions and giving out lists.

Lily lay smiling under the bedclothes, content to let them get on with it after a long hazy sleep and wonderful dreams. This was the life, being waited on hand and foot. All her quandaries had vanished in a fug of swirling dreams, floating over a lake in her midnight-blue ballgown, waltzing and laughing with not a care in the world. Levi’s herbal tealeaves had come in useful after all these months and hit the spot.

The deed was done. No going back or dithering. This was her decision and it was time to face the worried features peering round her door to see if she was still sleeping. Time to put on a brave front of courage and resolve.

You’re not a child, she sighed. Tomorrow it’ll all be past history, but how would poor Walt take this desertion? Perhaps he was already taking his comfort down The Coal Hole with his best man, Sydney Beswick, drowning his sorrows in Wilson’s best bitter? No one would blame him.

He didn’t deserve such humiliation but Grimbleton life would roll on whatever they did or didn’t do today. Families would be catching trains for Blackpool, visiting relatives, catching charabancs for mystery tours, mowing their lawns and going down town to the market, unaware that she was turning her life upside down.

She opened the door to see Levi’s best Masonic outfit, black jacket with pinstriped trousers, complete with a buttonhole white carnation in his lapel, hanging over the banister. He won’t be needing that today, she sighed, fleeing back into her room.

Reality was striking home at long last.

‘Are you all right?’ Su put her head round the door.

‘I will be when I know Walt’s got that letter. Have I done the right thing?’ she cried.

More tears and wet handkerchiefs followed when Ana and Su brought more cups of tea and sympathy. The phone was ringing and hushed voices in the hall muttered.

Lily sat on the bed, surrounded by Dina and Joy bouncing up and down, already dressed in their petticoats and puffy blue satin dresses with velvet sashes.

At least they had something new to show for the day and the little crosses made from the sovereigns were waiting in their boxes. They were still here. She’d forgotten to give them to the best man for safekeeping.

‘Everyone sends love.’ Ana tried to smile, but her eyes were sad.

Only last night she had brought in some crocheted gloves with a sugar lump squeezed into the palm. ‘You wear the sugar in the glove to make sure your life together is sweet,’ she explained. ‘It is Greek custom.’

‘I’m so sorry to spoil everything.’ Yet Lily was feeling as if a blanket of concern and love was being wrapped around her shoulders. ‘And it’s such a lovely day.’

They parked the Rover out of view of Bowker’s Row. Esme didn’t want prying fingers all over their polished bonnet. No use telling the world their business on this bright morning. The doorsteps were all donkey-stoned white for the weekend, the windows were open to let in fresh sooty air. Children were already playing hopscotch on the pavement and the paraffin man’s horse had just done a dollop outside Walt’s front door. Serve ’em right!

They marched up the street to number 4. This was not a back gate occasion. There was no reply so Levi thumped harder on the knocker. Esme peered through the valance curtains that could do with some starch and dolly-blueing.

‘Shall I shove it through the letterbox?’ Levi asked.

‘No. This is a face-to-facer. Bang again.’

A neighbour from across the road came to join them. ‘They’re not in, love.’

‘When’re they back?’ Esme asked, thinking the Platts’d gone to meet someone off the bus.

‘Dunno, love, not for a bit. They’ve gone on holiday. Cancelled the milk yesterday. I saw them off with their suitcases to the bus stop. That’s right, isn’t it, Hilda?’ Another woman, in wraparound pinny and turban, stood with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, watching them all. ‘The Platts’ve gone on their holiday?’

‘Caught the boat train to Heysham last night, Isle of Man; nice for Elsie to get a bit of sea air. She’s not a well woman. I thought Walter was getting wed soon, someone said so, but it all fell through. There was some girl making a racket at all hours last weekend. Happen he’s best out of it. Who are you?’ She looked them up and down as if they were tallymen come to collect the rent.

‘Just visiting,’ Esme replied, going hot and cold, stuffing the letter back in her pocket.

They walked back to the car in silence. She turned to her son. ‘Who’s going to break the good news, you or me?’

It seemed like only minutes before Levi and Esme appeared through the vestibule, looking hot and flustered. Lily was sitting at the top of the stairs and shouted down.

‘You’ve done it then?’ she sighed.

‘Not exactly,’ her brother stuttered, not looking her in the face.

‘You didn’t go and put it through the wrong door?’

‘There was no one answering the door.’

‘So what’ve you done with my letter then?’ Lily cried, suddenly panicking. ‘He’s got to know.’

‘Calm down, lass. A neighbour came out to see who was making the racket. You know how nosy they are round there.’ Esme looked up. ‘She said they’d gone on holiday to the Isle of Man.’

‘There’s no easy way to tell you this, Sis, but Walt and his mother have eloped to Douglas without so much as a word to any of us. Done a moonlight flit!’

Esme was sitting on the hall chair, puffed with indignation. ‘He got in first, Lil!’

Everyone looked up the stairs to the bride-not-to-be. The tears were rolling down her face.

‘Blood and sand!’ she roared. ‘I never knew he had it in him, the bugger, leaving me in the lurch.’ She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What a wedding day! In fact it was better than any romance from the library, and no mistake. What a relief! Walt’s own bid for freedom had let her off the hook. They’d done the dirty on each other. Even stevens and all that, but it was still a shock.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ she said, seeing the concern on their upturned faces. ‘I’ll survive. Give me that letter back. No one need know. I bet the jungle drums’ll be beating all over Grimbleton soon but it’s me that’ll get the sympathy vote, I hope. Let’s just keep it that way. We’ll just keep this under our hats, another Winstanley secret to add to our collection, right?’

Now they could relax for the first time that morning. ‘So what are we going to do with the rest of my big day? I suppose I’d better get changed. There’s still all the catering to sort out.’

‘Leave that to us,’ smiled Su, nodding to Ana. ‘You have friends to do that. You have enough to do. Your day is not over yet.’

‘You reckon? From where I’m standing, it looks pretty bleak.’

‘Wait and see, Miss Lily, you wait and see. A day not over until the sun goes down.’

The emergency breakfast meeting of the Olive Oil Club was held in Diana’s dining room in Green Lane at eight o’clock. There were Force flakes and milk, toast and crumpets, rhubarb and marrow jam and milky coffee to fortify the troops. Those present were looking to their commanding officer to chair the meeting and do something to salvage the day.

Diana was hoping for some kip before the wedding began. She had been on night duty and was hit with the news by a distress phone call from Su. There was no time to delay.

‘Let’s take this in order of priority. No chance of a change of mind?’

‘The groom put the Irish Sea between him and his bride last night.’

‘Righty ho…Vicar and church?’

‘Being done as we speak. Mother of the bride is seeing to all of that official stuff and making sure the Brownie guard of honour is disbanded,’ said Queenie, who had come straightaway on the bus.

‘Catering?’ Diana consulted her list.

‘Sandwich production at the church hall halted. Cake can’t be returned but the plaster of Paris decoration and silver tray have gone back. Maria will organise.’

‘Photographer?’ Diana queried.

‘Friend of Levi. He’s dealing with that,’ Su offered.

‘Transport?’

‘That depends on what we decide. Mrs W. would like things to look as normal. She wants Lily to have some sort of do.’

‘I see. And location of said “do”?’ A semblance of a vague idea was forming in Diana’s mind. Thank goodness she was used to thinking on her feet, improvising at the last minute.

‘I don’t think she’s got that far.’

‘And poor Lily, how is she coping?’

‘Sylvio’s going to set her hair. Ana is taking her out to the allotment to pick strawberries. We have a few hours to change plans but that is all,’ Su replied, looking anxious.

All eyes were fixed on Diana to pull a rabbit out of the hat. She shut her eyes for inspiration but nothing would come. All she kept seeing was a river, or was it a lake, with swans gliding across. Where was it? Of course, suddenly everything was clear and she knew just what they might do.

‘Right, folks, Operation Top Hat is what we’ll call it. And keep it under your hat until the appointed hour.’ She outlined her idea and how they might organise it. No one thought it was a crazy scheme. In fact they were all full of suggestions.

‘Queenie and Maria will be the quartermasters and forage for suitable supplies. I shall be in charge of relocation, logistics and overall command. I leave diversionary tactics to Su and Ana. Transport and communications will be left to Esme Winstanley and son. We will reconvene at noon, ready for departure at appointed time, thirteen hundred hours, when bridal party should be leaving for the church. Any questions?’

‘What if the bride wants to vamoose?’ asked Queenie.

‘You keep her, by force if necessary. Just keep her busy and get her and yourselves ready. Meeting is closed. If we’re to pull this off, everyone will need a phone, some foot soldiers and helpers. Find whoever you can to help and bring them along. Good luck, and thanks for coming at such an ungodly hour.’

‘You are a miracle worker,’ whispered Su.

‘No, if we pull this off, we’ll all be magicians,’ Diana replied, crossing her fingers under the table.

26

A Mystery Tour

She had come with Ana to the allotment just to get out of the house, away from the phone calls and reminders that this should have been a day of celebration not a funeral.

‘Come and see how my garden grows. We pick strawberries and Billy says we pick fruit for him too,’ Ana said as she marched ahead, pushing Dina, who was now back in her little leggings and jumper.

Ana’s patch had filled out since Lily’s last visit, with lettuces, saladings, onions, and garlic she had grown from Maria’s cloves. There were clumps of mint in pots and thyme, sage and other pungent herbs. Their plot had never looked so good.

They bent over the strawberries that peeped like rubies out of the green leaves. Dina was trying to help but treading on more than she was picking.

Lily could smell the setting lotion on her hair. Sylvio had washed it in the bathroom basin, trimmed it again and set it on soft curlers. He brought a black-hooded hair dryer, which Queenie had borrowed from Gianni.

‘I wanna thank you many times for finding me in Manchester. I heard about Marco from nurse in hospital who have her hair done. I felt so bad. I just ran. I was crazy man but I go back to Gianni and beg him to take me back. He call me no good, say no…so I tell him I will stay in town and join Pickering’s hairdressers. He change his mind pronto.

‘I will make Maria plenty proud but I ask one favour. She must leave the Santinis soon when they find out about us. It will be big trouble. She need to find house to stay. Is possible…she come here?’

With her head stuck under the hood and the racket from the whirring air, all Lily could do was nod. There was no way she could stay on in Division Street herself.

Maria could have her room and keep the peace between Freddie’s ladies. When Mother moved out there could be a whole League of Nations lodging in the house. Why not? That would give Doris Pickvance a bone to chew on.

Now she felt the sun on her face as they turned to Billy’s raspberry cage. Ana was picking bowls and bowls, as if she was feeding the five thousand. Was she going to make jam?

‘That’s enough, surely?’ Lily said, feeling hot and sticky.

‘Oh, no, plenty more. Come on.’

This was not how she planned to spend her wedding morning but beggars can’t be choosers. ‘You like it here?’

Ana smiled. ‘When I am here, I am honorary man. Billy has nice son, called Ken, see over there.’ She was pointing in the direction of a young man hoeing his patch, who waved at them. ‘If I am stuck, he help me. He was Tommy soldier in battle of Kriti. He knows my island. We talk many times.’

‘Oh, do you?’ Lily smiled. ‘And is this Ken married then?’

The look on Ana’s face was a picture. ‘I don’t talk to married men. He lives at home.’

‘I bet he works very hard on the allotment for his father then?’

‘Yes, he is very diligent. He makes krasi… wine from his berries like we make with grapes.’

‘Just you watch yourself, Anastasia. He thinks you are a widow.’

‘Oh, I will tell him truth one day, but not Dina here. She must never know.’

‘She’ll have to know sometime, but not today. Look at the time, we’ve been up here hours.’

‘You are right. Time to go back and get dressed up. Dina!’ she smiled and raced after her daughter.

Dressed up? What was there to get dressed up for now?

There was no point in packing again. Lily looked at her wristwatch and sighed. In another half-hour she should have been on her way to the church. Only Zion’s doors would be locked, and the waiting Brownies would be wondering what was happening. It was going to be a long day, skulking in the back garden out of sight. It was too good an afternoon to waste indoors. It was all very quiet downstairs. Everyone seemed to have vanished, probably busy taking stuff back to the shops from the church hall kitchen. What a waste of coupons.

The effects of Levi’s herbal tea were wearing off but it still felt as if all this was happening to someone else. Perhaps it was a dream and she would wake up to the ticking of her Mickey Mouse alarm clock and the day would begin all over again.

She felt a bit peculiar, a bit shaky. It must be too much sun on the allotment.

Not that her mind was changed. No matter what happened next, the relief was genuine enough. What to do to fill the rest of this day, though? Her mind was like a blank sheet. All she did know was it was better not to be on her own. The house had gone quiet. Where was everybody?

As if answering her prayer, Esme appeared with Su and Ana. They were dressed up in their best clothes; Mother in a gunmetal slub silk dress and jacket with a straw hat covered in dark cherries and dyed feathers. Ana was wearing a smart navy-blue dress with inverted pleats in the front and Su was in a bright orange silky concoction. There were marigolds pinned to her bun.

‘What’s going on?’ said Lily. Had she been dreaming after all?

‘You’re to get dressed, and sharpish. The car’s coming at one.’

‘What car? The wedding’s off, isn’t it?’ she croaked.

‘That’s for us to know and others to find out. The Daimler’s coming for you as planned. I don’t want the whole of Division Street knowing our business so put your glad rags on and a bit of lipstick.’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘You will. Trust us, we know what we’re doing. Here, put a comb through your hair. It’s a good job you had it done this morning.’ Mother disappeared round the door.

‘What’s going on? Has she gone mad? Everyone must know I’ve been stood up!’

It was hard to talk with clothes being shoved at her in all directions, her new corselet, petticoat, stockings and shoes. Then it was time to slip on the dress and jacket.

‘It is all about saving face, Lily,’ said Su. ‘In my country it is the custom. You not show the enemy your fear. “Wise man’s anger never come out.” You smile when you are sad and put on very best clothes. You fly the flag. We are flying the Winstanley flag today. You will see. It will all be right, but first we must go through a special play. No one has to know our business, where we go or what we do.’

Sitting down in front of the mirror with Ana teasing her set hair into shape and clipping it back, there was little room for Lily to manoeuvre. The hat came out of its box while she powdered her nose and applied a little Max Factor rosy lipstick. Her eyes were still puffy from tears and sleep, but once the hat was in place and pinned firmly on, Lily felt quite the glamour puss. Shame there was no wedding to go to now.

‘You look like a film star, Lily,’ Su said as they opened the bedroom door and she glided down the stairs in a dream.

Levi was waiting at the foot of the stairs with the two little girls and Neville in his velvet trousers and cream silk smocked shirt. His curls were plastered down in a parting like Little Lord Fauntleroy.

‘You scrub up well, Sis,’ winked Levi.

Esme handed her the bouquet of pink roses and ivy that sprayed out in front of her. She put on Ana’s lace gloves and felt the sugar lump in the finger. Perhaps life could be just as sweet without a man by your side.

‘I think you’re all mad,’ she whispered.

‘Knock ’em dead, Sis,’ whispered a voice in her head. Freddie was behind all this madness. Dad would be roaring with laughter at their antics.

‘The show must go on. Time enough later when everyone’ll see the funny side of it.’ Esme was eyeing her up and down with satisfaction. ‘You look champion. I’m not sure that picture hat’s going to get through the door. Whoever made that was on top of the job. Your dad’ll be proud of you today, and Freddie too. Come on, no time for tears. Let’s get the show on the road. Smile everybody, and look as if you mean it.’

Lily floated out of Waverley House like a Rose Queen with her procession of attendants, waving as the unsuspecting neighbours gathered to wish her well.

I deserve an Oscar for this performance, she thought. Vivien Leigh has nothing on me. She kept wondering if this was still a dream from the funny baccy, but the Daimler was real enough with the white ribbons on its bonnet.

The Winstanleys were on top form, not a flicker of embarrassment. Redvers would have been proud of his family, united for once. No one suspected a thing. Esme, Levi and the bride were all squashed in the back of the limousine, with the attendants on their knees. No one could say they were extravagant on transport, though. She turned to see if Ana and Su were following behind. What was going on?

They drove round the block, down Green Lane and out away from the town towards the moors, away from Zion and the puzzled onlookers, waiting for a show that would never happen. Eventually the Daimler glided to a halt.

‘What now?’ whispered the bride-not-to-be.

‘This is as far as we go by taxi. There’s the Rover parked up, and Levi will chauffeur us the rest of the way. No point in overdoing it on petrol coupons. We’ve made our point,’ Mother explained, ushering them all out onto the pavement.

‘Just tell me where we’re going?’

‘All will be revealed in good time. Be patient, lass. I’m not quite sure, myself.’

It was hard to be patient with Neville jumping on her knee as they piled into the Rover, still with its white ribbons too. All dressed up and nowhere to go. This was ridiculous.

Lily thought of Walt sunning himself in a deck chair on the beach. She hoped he had been violently sick on the ferry across. I’m never going to speak to him again, she whispered to herself. How dare he beat me to it!

Tonight they should have lain together on the new mattress at Well Cottage. She’d moved heaven and earth to get enough coupons for that. Then he had the cheek to suggest they postpone their nuptial bliss until they were settled. ‘Best not to rush things,’ was his excuse.

What would they have been like together, a couple of fumbling halfwits? It would have been a disaster from the start. What a wonderful feeling of release.

They were driving north now, away from the red brick of dye mills and factories, out towards the white stone villages of North Lancashire. The sun was shining as they turned into a long drive, through wrought-iron gates with rampant lions sitting on the top. On and on they cruised, winding through shrubbery and oak trees, the tyres scrunching on the gravel as they turned into a circular driveway.

‘I don’t understand. This is private land. We don’t know anyone round here, do we? What’s all this in aid of? Someone please enlighten me.’ Lily’s heart was thumping with excitement now. The mystery tour was turning into an adventure right enough.

Then she saw the white stone of the castle turrets. She’d seen it once on a postcard. It was Cardwell Towers. What on earth were they doing here?

There were blackout curtains still at the windows, and smoke coming from a chimney. Her hands were shaking. There were cars parked under some trees and one of them was Diana Unsworth’s blue sports car.

‘Well, I’ll be blowed! Trust her to be up to something. Come on, spill the beans before I burst my elastic,’ Lily smiled, pointing at the assembly of friends.

Esme turned from the front seat and smiled. ‘I take my hat off to you in your choice of friends, Lily. They’ve come up trumps and no mistake. Just wait and see what they’ve sorted out for you.’

The children spilled out of the car, crumpled, confused, blinking into the sunshine. Queenie Quigley’s black van was following slowly behind. Out poured Ana, Su, Maria and Rosa from the back, all dolled up in their wedding attire. Avril and Bill from the travel agency were waiting smiling, holding a basket of bread buns.

‘I don’t believe this!’ Lily smiled shyly. ‘What’s going on?’

‘The wedding may be off but the party’s still on. We’ve just jiggled things around, made a few phone calls, and Bob’s your uncle: a picnic in a private park, no prying eyes, no confetti, no awkward customers, just friends together. It’s too lovely a day to sit indoors and mope.’ Diana rushed forward to give Lily a hug. ‘I hope you don’t mind us taking over.’

‘Mind? It’s the kindest, nicest thing that has ever happened to me. I don’t know what to say.’

‘Then get your gloves off and help us unpack the picnic. We’ve got the run of the place until dusk. There’s a lake down there. I thought we could take the rugs and chairs down under the shade of the willows and set up our picnic. I expect everyone is starving. I know I am.’ Diana was already lifting boxes from the trunk of her car.

‘Did you know about this, Mother, and you, Levi? How did they manage this at such short notice?’

‘Co-operation, delegation and lists, the secret of any good enterprise,’ laughed Queenie, staggering with a basket of covered tins. ‘Diana’s not a hospital sister for nothing. As soon as she heard the news, she was on the blower, giving us orders right left and centre. Quite the tornado in full flight. We’re just carrying out orders.’

Levi was making himself useful carrying chairs down from a summerhouse with Bill Crumblehume, and a gardener who was looking askance at this motley party dressed up to the nines, making divots in his lawn.

The children raced ahead, excited, like figures in some Victorian portrait-Rosa wearing her Babes in the Wood lace dress with the sash, Neville in his knickerbockers. What they would look like at the end of the day was anyone’s guess.

Lily was speechless and shaking with excitement. This was ten times better than any stuffy wedding breakfast in the church hall. She didn’t want to sound ungrateful but it was worth all the drama just to be standing there, dressed like a toff in the midst of a set worthy of Gone With the Wind, amongst the people dearest to her in all the world. How on earth they fixed all this in a few hours, she would never know, but it was wonderful.

Levi made to go but she stopped him. ‘Have a picnic with us,’ she smiled, but he shook his head.

‘I’ve things to do, Sis, while Neville’s here, out of earshot. Ivy’s been ringing round. I’d better sort things out between us.’ He hugged her and promised to pick them all up later.

Poor man would get an earful from Ivy when she found out what she’d missed. The Olive Oils were giving their bride a blow-out to remember. If only her brother would stand up to his bossy wife and tell her straight that if she’d played fair with Lily’s friends she would have been invited too.

Well, what you sow you reap: wheat and weeds together sometimes. Now there was all this joy just because she picked up two strays and lost a pram. What a tale to tell her grandchildren one day-if she ever got round to having any children of her own, that was. There was a full contingent: Eva, Stefania, Polly Isherwood and even Enid Greenalgh. Lily was glad they’d brought Enid along for she didn’t get out much and would be company for Esme: ten of them, and children carting picnic baskets like sherpas in their high heels and finery. What a sight.

The shadows of branches flickering on the lawn was a scene from an old Master painting. The noise was of children racing, wood pigeons cooing from the rooftops. Was this really happening? She must find out more.

‘Why here?’

‘Let’s say you were bringing the hat back to its rightful owner. Cardwell Towers belongs to the Marsdens. Hilly’s a friend of Mummy. She’s District Commissioner. We sometimes take guides camping out here.

‘As soon as I heard the news, we had an impromptu meeting at HQ, by the way. Everyone wanted to do their bit. I got this vision and I just knew Hilly would come up trumps: Guider to Guider, Be Prepared sort of thing, you know how the rule goes. It’s her Ascot hat you’re wearing and it’s very becoming on you.

‘We’re just lucky that there were no events today in the park and they’ve gone to some sailing regatta at the Reservoir. Hilaret and Monty are keen yachtsmen. She was delighted to loan us the grounds. I expect we’ll meet them later on. Oh, and she said to tell you she once did a runner before the war, bolted from some dreadful army type, lucky escape and all that. Only happy to oblige with the hat and the venue.’

‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Lily replied.

‘That’s Guiders for you: always ready to fill the breach, so just sit down and eat up. We’re not going until it’s all finished. You’ve paid for most of it, after all!’

People kept coming up and patting her on the shoulder, touching her hand and giving their condolences as if she’d suffered a bereavement but it didn’t feel like that at all. How could she explain that a heavy lead cloak had disappeared from her shoulders or that there were coiled springs in her peep-toes? Even her head was fizzing like pop for the first time in months.

Chairs were brought out and a table laid in the shade with a fine linen cloth. A tray full of glasses sparkled on a wooden trolley with soda siphons and mysterious bottles coloured like jewels: emerald, ruby and rich topaz, and a jug of homemade elderflower lemonade. A picnic basket was groaning with fresh buttered rolls and slices of cooked meats under a net cloche-ham, pork, beef. A bowl of lettuce and tomato, cucumber and celery bulged by a huge raised pie with a golden crust. A pair of silver salad servers sparkled in the sunlight.

‘This is not the ham salad we ordered,’ Lily cried. ‘This is a feast.’

‘Allotment Billy gave us the tomatoes and the rest. We traded in some of the ham for the cooked meats, the piccalilli is last year’s from my pantry and Maria has made you a special salad dressing,’ Diana announced.

‘It is olive oil vinaigrette, Mamma’s recipe with summer herbs. You will like.’

She looked young again, with black curls, freshly cut by her lover, framing her face. Her dress was a silky mourning lilac with white polka dots and on her head she wore a peekaboo sun hat with a scarf wrapped round it.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Lily croaked.

‘Just eat up and we’ll be happy,’ laughed Esme, who had a napkin tucked under her chin like a bib. ‘Try and not get grease on your outfit. SOS, everybody.’

‘Yes, Mother. Stretch or Starve, folks,’ Lily said, watching everyone tucking in.

There was silence in the group, just the chink of glasses and forks on someone’s best china plates, the rustle of the breeze in the willows and the sound of ducks hovering for titbits by the lake edge. It was perfect. So much trouble taken to make this impromptu wonderful picnic happen.

From out of Queenie’s van came an ice tub of Santini’s best vanilla, a bowl of freshly picked bilberries and the strawberries and raspberries she had picked with Ana. So that was what the visit was for! There were also shortbread biscuits shaped like hearts.

‘The baker gave me those for you. He said to tell you he was sorry and that if he didn’t have a missus he’d marry you himself. You’re a good customer and he hopes things will buck up,’ Queenie said with lips stained purple with fruit.

‘So everyone knows then?’ Lily asked, fearing the worst.

‘Only the caterers when we took the cake decorations back and swapped them for these cream sponges. We’ve filled them with strawberries. Try some,’ ordered Diana, who was looking cool in the heat, and despite her organising, wearing a linen oatmeal dress with a printed silk scarf draped around her shoulders.

‘I’m stuffed to the gills,’ Lily smiled, eyeing the cheese with relish. ‘But I’ll try some of the Lancashire. Where did that come from?’

‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Let’s just say a little bird owed me a favour,’ piped Enid with a giggle. ‘This is the grandest do I’ve ever been honoured to attend. I was not going to come empty-handed.’

Soon there was the drowsy murmur of gurgling bellies, belts being loosened and stockings rolled down or taken off, bodies slumped in chairs as the sun rose high. No one could eat another morsel.

They lay content on rugs, in the shade, watching Neville and Rosa making daisy chains and Dina and Joy struggling to keep up. There was space for everyone to stretch out and snooze, but Lily was suddenly awake watching a dragonfly on the lakeside, its iridescent wings shimmering like mother-of-pearl. The setting was so beautiful, so peaceful and so unreal, and soon the sun would slide down behind the copse and her big day would be over.

‘I want to make a toast,’ she declared, stirring them all from their reveries.

‘I want to thank you all, Mother, family, friends, for your kindness and the honour you’ve done me in saving the day. There are no words to describe how I’m feeling now. I think you could go a lifetime and never have a day like this one, or friends like you lot. I’m that choked up. Thank you, one and all, and to the Olive Oils for saving my day!’

They raised their glasses and sipped the warm white wine.

‘Fill them up again,’ said Diana. ‘Here’s to our dear friend, Lee, the Lily as was. May she find true happiness one day soon.’

‘To Lee Winstanley!’

‘Bottoms up!’

‘To absent friends.’

‘And here’s to the one who got away. May his piles be many. Bottoms up!’

‘One last toast.’ Lily stood up. ‘To the friendships of our Olive Oil Club, long may they continue. Our name started out as someone’s snide remark but now I’m rather proud to be an Olive Oil…the first but not the last, I hope, of the Olive Oil brides…Pouring oil on troubled waters is what we’ve been doing these past months. Something magical has happened today and each one of you has played your part.’ She lifted up the salad dressing jar, watching the oil glinting in the sun.

Ana stood up then. ‘In my country we have saying for good friends. We have eaten bread and salt together, joy and sorrow. Today we, true friends, have tasted both. Yámas’

‘And thank you, Ana, for first setting us the task of searching for liquid gold. We may not be the United Nations but every time we sit down and talk, share a meal, talk about home, we learn something new. Together you and Susan-all of you-have changed my life and broadened my horizons. Cheers! There ought to be more clubs like ours.’

‘Hear, hear!’ They clinked glasses in unison.

‘Who wants a cup of tea?’ shouted Esme, reaching for the Thermos flasks in the last basket. Everyone groaned but no one refused.

Rosa was cartwheeling in a line and the others tried to follow, collapsing in a heap. It was time to stroll around the grounds inspecting the roses and the long border, admiring the view and pretending for just another hour that they were queens of all they surveyed.

Soon Dina wanted a piggyback and their linen skirts and finery were crumpled. Time to collect the plates and pack the baskets, shoo off the wasps and fold up the napkins. The gardener hovered, eager to see them off his lawn and into their cars.

Lily put the picture hat in its box with a sigh.

‘Let me take another photograph,’ yelled Diana, but Lily shook her head.

There was no need to record this day. It would be etched into her mind to that last dying breath; the day she discovered she was loved, valued and respected.

You’re a millionaire in friendships, she thought, but it doesn’t half take it out of you. Now she was bushwhacked, drunk on emotion. She’d take no rocking to sleep tonight. Tomorrow it was off to France, all on her own.

And Afterwards…

It was pouring down next morning, typical Grimbleton summer weather. The sky was as grey as it had been blue the day before. It was time for Lily to put the final touches to her packing, put on her trews and windjammer, sturdy shoes and headscarf. No point wearing fancy clobber if she was sitting in a coach for hours on end.

‘Have you got sandwiches for the journey, something to read, liver salts in case of any tummy bother? You are going abroad. Watch out for strange men. I hear they’re a bit free with their fingers out there.’ Esme was hovering.

‘Don’t fuss, Mother. I’m all sorted, passport, money, emergency money. I’m only going for a week,’ she sighed. ‘More’s the pity.’

‘I know that, but the sea can be rough. Shall I come and see you off?’

‘No. I’ll slip out quietly. Diana said she’d run me to the bus station. It’s wet and chilly to be standing around, but thanks all the same.’ She gave Esme a hug.

‘What’s that for?’ The Winstanleys weren’t huggers as a rule.

‘You know very well. For being so understanding, and for yesterday.’

‘Wasn’t it a grand do? Who’d have thought it, us living it up like the gentry, and what a blow-out! I’ve had to loosen my stays. No one will believe it.’

‘Let them think what they like when I’ve gone. I’ll be up at Well Cottage, clearing up, after that, and out of earshot,’ Lily said, gathering all her stuff together. ‘Then I’m going to rent above Longsight Travel. I’m a townie, not a country bumpkin.’

Just for today she would sneak out of the back door into the garden and out into the back lane. Diana would be waiting for her at the lane end. No one suspected she was still in Division Street.

Right on cue, Diana was revving up the car, waiting. She looked as if she hadn’t slept for a week.

‘How can I ever thank you for yesterday? It was better than any wedding day,’ Lily said.

‘Don’t say that. One day you’ll find the right chap and it’ll be music, sweet music,’ she replied.

‘I’m not going through that charade. Next time it’ll be Gretna Green, but not for a long time. I’m finished with men.’

‘That’s a pity. I did rather hope now that Walter’s history you might look in another direction. In fact I took the liberty—’

‘Don’t say another word on the subject. My ears are closed. Just get me and this suitcase onto that bus on time and I’ll send you a postcard.’

The bus station was deserted at first light on a typical Sunday morning. Diana dropped Lily off close by, shouting, ‘Have a wonderful time and don’t forget the Olive Oil!’

They were making an early start to catch the evening boat from Dover. The maroon coach, with gold lettering, had its hatch up for the luggage. Avril was counting the customers, checking they all had the right documents and coupons. The driver was having a smoke, watching the line-up of cars delivering his charges.

Glad and Ernie Walsh were fussing over their cases, and looked up and smiled. ‘Now then, hope it’s better weather over the channel, Miss Winstanley.’

Someone in a gabardine mac was lifting a case into the bowels of the bus. He turned and Lily blushed at the sight of Pete Walsh, no doubt helping his uncle and aunt with their luggage.

‘Sorry to hear about yesterday. I gather there was a bit of a mix-up,’ he said.

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Lily murmured, wanting to bluff it out.

‘You’re seeing Uncle Ernie off then?’ she asked, trying to look composed and casual.

‘Not exactly. There was this spare seat, a last-minute cancellation, so Mrs Crumblehume said. They gave me a call so I’m here to keep the numbers up,’ he said, glancing up to see her reaction. He had the cheek to wink. ‘All very last minute, of course. I was going camping in the Lakes but it seemed a waste of a passport not to fill the seat. I got one when I was chosen for the Reserves for the friendly International match against Belgium last March but of course everything was snowed off. Miss Unsworth said—’

‘I might have known she’d be behind the choice of replacements.’ Lily’s voice was squeaking as she looked down at her suitcase with renewed interest. Just wait till she saw her again!

Perhaps those letters knew more than she did. All was not lost, after all. If ever she might need the case for another honeymoon, well…Miss Winstanley might become Mrs Walsh-another L. W. Now that was a thought to chew on, she smiled.

Don’t be so daft! Lee was in charge again. After all she’d been through in these last twenty-four hours, how could she even think of such romantic nonsense?

But for now, the ‘Fair Stood the Wind for France Useful French Vocabulary List’ was in her bag to mug up the lingo on the coach. The big adventure was about to begin.

AN INTERVIEW WITH LEAH FLEMING

Q. How did you get the idea for The War Widows? Did it come to you as a complete story, a character, a theme?

A. I was in a swimming pool in Crete talking to a fellow guest who was half Cretan. She told me how her mother arrived alone into Manchester airport after the war and no one was there to greet her. Suddenly the idea came: what if…? I sat down and wrote the basic story line there and then. It pays always to have a notebook handy with your sunscreen. It came complete with all the main characters and the local setting I knew from childhood. The idea of The War Widows just grew out of this.

Q. What research did you do writing The War Widows?

A. Lots of reading about the Burma Campaign, the Battle of Crete and Austerity Britain. And research on food shortages and rationing and Mediterranean cooking-this of course needed tasting in Crete!

Q. What is your daily writing routine?

A. I write my journal early in the morning, noting dreams and ideas that come first thing. Nothing is lost then while I mess about doing chores until after nine and then write, research or read for most of the day. I keep office hours, being a morning person. If I work in the evening, I don’t sleep at all.

Q. Do you draw upon your own experiences with family and friends as you create characters and plots?

A. I may borrow bits of real people, steal bits of their lives but prefer to wait to see who turns up in my books and why. Once I have their name, the person seems to appear fully formed. A lot of my own life experiences are woven into my novels, transformed into something quite different by the time I’ve played about with things, e.g. I was a dancing child and the studio described is the one I attended as a toddler as was the ice-cream parlour.

Q. Which character do you feel most connected to and why?

A. I feel close to Lily because she’s someone I’ve met many times over, the woman who puts everyone’s needs before her own. I loved watching her transform from a doormat into a feisty independent woman able to make some better choices for herself. We are not related however. Anyone who knows me will soon tell you that.

Q. Who are your literary influences?

A. I suppose my literary influences are found in the wide variety of genres I read for pleasure: crime writers with a strong sense of place like Stephen Booth, Lesley Horton, Reginald Hill. I love the stories of Daphne Du Maurier, Elizabeth Goudge, Maeve Binchy, the prose of Susan Hill, Penelope Lively, Margaret Forster, Laurie Graham, Fannie Flagg, Barbara Kingsolver. I’d better stop there.

Q. What are you working on next?

A. I’m writing another Yorkshire Dales story about the lives of a bunch of evacuees who arrive in a hostel in a small market town in 1940. Two of the girls, from different backgrounds, swear eternal friendship but in later life rivalry and misunderstanding change this with tragic consequences. Also in my notepad are the stirrings of a natural sequel to The War Widows when the next generation of Winstanleys start to grow up in the 50s and 60s, unaware of their big family secret.

Acknowledgments

A chance encounter in a swimming pool in north-west Crete sparked off this story. Thank you Helena Charlton (wherever you are now) for sharing some of your history and giving me the idea. Thank you Manolis, Sofia and Marialena-the Tsompanakis family-for your wonderful hospitality and friendship.

Once again I’ve borrowed some of the landscapes from my home town, Bolton, but none of its people. I have used the premises of the Sabini ice cream parlour as I recall it as a child but my Santini family and their history is a figment of my imagination and their ice cream sodas could never have tasted as good as the ones I slurped through a straw all those years ago.

I am indebted to the following books for information:

A Detail on the Burma Front by Winifred Beaumont (BBC Books)

Wings of an Angel by Colin Barrett (Vanguard Books)

A Burmese Legacy by Su Arnold (Coronet Books 1996)

Chindhe Women (The Women’s Auxiliary Service Burma) by Sally and Lucy Jaffe

Crete: 1941 Eyewitnessed (Efstathiadis Group)

Crete: The Battle of the Resistance by Anthony Beevor (Penguin Books 1991)

Once again many thanks to Maxine Hitchcock, Sammia Rafique and the team at Avon for all their enthusiasm and help.

About the Author

Leah Fleming was born in Lancashire of Scottish parents, and is married with four grown-up children and five grandchildren. She writes full-time from a haunted farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales and from the slopes of an olive grove in Crete.

Find out more about Leah at www.leahfleming.co.uk and visit www.AuthorTracker.co.uk for exclusive updates on Leah Fleming.

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Leah Fleming 2008

Leah Fleming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-84756-013-1

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EPub Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007334971

Copyright

Harper and Avon

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

Copyright © Annie Groves 2013

Copyright © Pam Weaver 2013

Copyright © Kay Brellend 2013

Copyright © Leah Fleming 2013

The authors above assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: (London Belles) 9780007384563, (Pack Up Your Troubles) 9780007480449, (Coronation Day) 9780007481460, (The War Widows) 9780007334971

Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007565023

Version: 2013-11-20

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