A Girl in Wartime (10 page)

‘Not at all,' he responded, getting up from behind his desk and coming towards her. ‘It was just that I felt you could be an asset to the paper.' He'd come to stand just a foot away from her.

‘Not because you felt something for me?' she blurted out before she could stop herself. He gave her a sharp look then turned, moving away from her as if embarrassed. ‘I'm not sure what you mean, Miss Lovell.'

He had resorted to using her surname, which he'd not done since first calling her Connie, except when in the outer office with other people listening.

Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, ‘Are you married, Mr Clayton?'

Immediately she wanted to bite off her tongue as he swung round to glare at her, the look instantly fading as he regarded her, alarming her to see pain in his eyes. As silence between them stretched, she saw a depth of emptiness in those eyes that would stay with her the rest of her life. Moments later, he lowered his gaze and gave a small shake of his head. ‘I'm afraid I lost my wife two years ago.'

‘I'm so sorry,' she heard herself exclaim. It sounded so wrong. She stood silent, at a loss for what else to say.

After a long pause, he spoke again as if miles away. ‘I was twenty-four when I married her. She was twenty-one. Neither of us knew it then, but she had cancer. Six months later, I lost her.'

Connie suppressed a gasp. That made him twenty-six, nine years older than her, yet he looked so young. But there were still nine years between them and that made her realise what a child she still was. Why would he want her?

His words so matter of fact, coupled with a shrug that, had she not seen the expression in those blue eyes of his, his flat tone would have fooled her as it no doubt fooled others.

‘My parents are dead too,' he went on, as though carrying on a normal conversation, ‘my father recently, of a chill, my mother when I was fifteen.'

Without a break he straightened up, executing one of his charming wide smiles as if nothing sad had passed his lips. ‘Good to know things are working out okay for you, Connie. Your chance to make the most of it.'

Not knowing what else to say, she said, ‘Thank you.'

Last night there had been a zeppelin raid over London, one of several this month: homes bombed indiscriminately. This morning Connie was at one of the devastated sites. No one noticed her standing a little apart from her paper's interviewer and its junior photographer. She could have been a bystander, ignored by those whose lives had been torn apart. She sketched: an elderly woman, her daughter and her daughter's two children, one eleven, one seven, standing in front of what had been their home while soldiers did what they could to help get their possessions to safety before looters stole away whatever they could.

The women's faces betrayed their sense of loss; they were desperately trying to keep it private and it tugged at Connie's heart. It was painful to see but she had a job to do: to commit to posterity that look, that need to hide their grief, that sense of loss in front of strangers. While all the interviewers displayed sympathy, the photographers busy with their cameras, it would only take a small thing to slip for the older woman to burst into tears and shriek at them to go away. For a few hours earlier she had watched her husband die. He had escaped injury, being outside in the street with them and most of their neighbours as they watched the huge airship glide across the inky sky, glowing silver, caught in the crisscross of searchlights – a sight to see. But the shock of the blast had keeled the man over, and there on the safety of the pavement he had passed away of a massive heart attack.

Connie gathered that only a week before, her daughter's husband – her son-in-law, her grandchildren's father – had been killed at Ypres. And now the last man of the family was gone, not from the bomb that had demolished their home, but definitely related.

That empty look in the eyes of these people pushed out all other thoughts as she sketched, her pencil moving rapidly back and forth, up and down, outlining, shading. By the time she'd finished she was totally exhausted. Her work done, she tucked the drawing away out of sight and stood staring along the road, not wanting even to glance at the bereaved little family in case she burst into tears, making a fool of herself. Minutes later a taxi pulled up, no doubt hailed by a neighbour; the two women and the children clambered in to be whisked away to relatives and privacy.

Back in the office she laid the sketches on Stephen's table for him to see. For a moment he stared at them as if mesmerised. Then slowly he said, ‘Good God!' before taking a deep breath. ‘This they have to see!' he burst out and hurried from the office with them, leaving her gazing after him.

She was still there when he reappeared with Desmond Mathieson, their chief editor. She could hardly recall what he said other than she had the paper's permission to accompany photographers to whatever dramatic event presented itself. Her work, if suitable, would go on the appropriate page carrying that particular news item.

She felt her heart swell – a proper position at last, along with a rise in salary.

‘It's a start,' Stephen said after Mathieson left. ‘And I know it's going to be a damned huge success.'

His face had lit up. His blue eyes shining, he reached out, drew her towards him and planted a kiss on her cheek, startling the life out of her.

She could hardly wait to get home and tell Mum about her promotion. Her mum listened intently, every now and again breaking in with, ‘fancy that', and ‘well, I never did', and ‘wait till your dad hears', and ‘I knew you'd do it one day'.

The one thing she did hold back was the kiss Stephen Clayton had exuberantly planted on her cheek, making her blood pound through every vein of her surprised body in a hot surge.

Mum was in the middle of even more exclamations when a knock came at the front door. As she went to go and answer it, Connie heard her give a little scream. Instantly she was out of the kitchen, making her way down the passage to the street door, in time to see her mother throwing her arms around the neck of a tall soldier, her son, crying out, ‘Bertie! Oh, Bertie love!' All the while she was kissing first one cheek then the other.

Reaching the door, Connie could see Ronnie hovering behind him, his own face wreathed in smiles. It was then she realised how filthy both their uniforms were, that they had actually travelled home in that state.

As they came into the house, Mum having transferred her embrace to Ronnie, Connie took her turn to hug Albert, before noticing something moving on one of the shoulder-straps of his khaki uniform. She pulled away instantly. ‘What on earth's that?'

He grinned down at his shoulder. ‘Lice – they won't hurt you.'

Her mother gave a small horrified squeak, then, with a supreme effort, collected herself. ‘For God's sake, love, go through into the backyard and take your things off, quick as you can. I'll get the bath down from the wall and boil up all me saucepans of water so's you can have a bath, both of you. Get you clean. To think the both of you was sent home like this!' She paused, head tilted questioningly. ‘Why've you both come home without letting us know? You've not been hurt, have you?'

‘We've been given four days' leave,' Albert said, taking off his battered army cap, and struggling out of his tunic.

His mother stared at him. ‘Four days?' she repeated stupidly. ‘You mean you've got to go back to the fighting in four days?'

He didn't answer. Instead he said, ‘They give blokes some sort of leave every now and again – or they'd go barmy with all what's going on over there. Still—'

He was cut short by her cry. ‘Oh, love! We do hear awful things of what's 'appening, and I get so worried and frightened for the both of you. In case—'

‘We get by,' he cut in sharply. ‘I don't want to see you worried, Mum,' he went on in a more gentle tone. ‘Me and Ron look out for each other and we don't do so bad – we're pretty well fed and ciggies are free and every now and again we get sent back behind the lines to rest away from …' He let the rest fade away. ‘Well what about that bath, Mum?'

While the two had a good wash in the tin bath, getting into it together for a stand-up wash to be quicker, Connie and her mum stayed in the back parlour, the kitchen door tight shut.

Connie could clearly hear their deep voices through the thin walls: the laughter of fighting men free for a while of the fear and harassment of war.

She heard the back door open suddenly and a gruff voice give a startled exclamation followed by more laughter, voices raised in greeting. She could not help a smile, visualising her father coming in on such a scene of two naked men standing up in a tin bath with ten inches of water to wash in.

She and Mum listened as their voices – the boys' and their father's – came low through the wall, questions asked and answered: how it was over there, questions that couldn't be asked in front of women.

Eventually the conversation ceased, and there came the sound of clearing up, the bath being manhandled out to the backyard to be emptied. Moments later, Connie's father came into the room, his face still not cleansed of coal dust from his job.

‘You can go out there now,' he told them. ‘They're both decent. And they've 'ung the bath back on the wall and cleaned up after themselves.'

‘They needn't have done that!' Mum burst out. ‘If they'd left the water in the bath I could've soaked their uniforms in it before they went back. Them uniforms is full of 'orrible—'

‘You couldn't, Mum,' Albert said, coming into the room in his civilian shirt and trousers. He looked shiny and human once more as if he'd never seen the sight of a uniform or a war; Ronnie came in close behind looking just as clean and bright. ‘They wouldn't have been dry enough before we 'ad to put 'em on again to go back.' At the mention of going back his voice lost some of its exuberance.

‘Then I'll buy some disinfectant,' she said. ‘What we use to get rid of them bugs what come out in the summer from where they've bin breeding all winter, 'orrible little things! Most of us round 'ere 'ave trouble with 'em. Well anyway, that'll do the job,' she ended firmly. ‘At least you'll go back cleaner than you arrived.'

Ronnie grinned. ‘I wouldn't worry, Mum. It won't make much of a difference. Like them bugs, the bloody things'll be back in no time.'

In her mind, Connie could see her brothers crawling alive with ticks as they fought for their country. She saw tears glistening in her mother's eyes and knew she was seeing the same thing. But moments later Mum was herself again, her voice firm and authoritative.

‘Well, you're both looking respectable now, and it's about time I got a decent meal ready for you. You must both be starving.'

‘We are,' Ronnie laughed. ‘A cheese sandwich on the boat and what passed for a cuppa tea – ditch water more like – nothing on the train.'

‘Well, I've got sausages,' she said promptly. ‘I'll do mashed potatoes, baked beans and fried onion. It's what I was going to do for Connie and your dad anyway. You both look as if you need feeding up. You're skin and bone, the pair of you. And there's apple pie and custard for afters.'

‘Sausage and mash,' Albert murmured as she hurried out. ‘Apple pie and custard. Sounds really great.'

To Connie it was as if they had both just come home from work.

The feeling continued as they sat down to their meal. None of them had touched on the war, the acute shortage of supplies with cargo ships being sunk by submarines, food getting harder to come by daily, resulting in soaring prices, though Mum did remark that the introduction of rationing might help to keep costs down when it came into force. To which they all nodded, the talk going on to other harmless subjects.

Yet beneath the easy conversation there was tension. It showed itself suddenly when Mum casually spoke of something she intended to do next week, her words fading as she realised that by then her boys would be back over there fighting the enemy, their lives at risk once more.

The look in each member of her family's eyes tore at Connie's soul. If she'd had paper and pencil she could have caught that bleak expression, but it would have been sacrilege to have done so. She knew it would stay with her for a long time to come and she had to swallow hard to avoid breaking into tears.

Her father was the first to stem the thoughts that had stolen into all their minds. ‘Well, I'll be off to the pub in a while,' he announced heartily as he pushed away his empty afters plate. ‘You two fancy a drink?'

‘You and Ronnie go,' Albert said. ‘I have to go and see Edie.'

Mum got up to make a cup of tea, Dad saying, ‘Not for me – tea and beer don't mix.' His sons also shook their heads, preferring to be among men and surrounded by the warm smell of beer and the sound of deep voices.

They were making ready to leave when they heard the back door open then close. Seconds later George came into the room, and stopped sharply as he saw his two younger brothers standing there. He looked utterly stunned but before he could say anything, Albert spoke for him.

‘It's 'orright, George, we're 'ome on four days' leave, 'ave to start back on Sunday evening. You do get 'em if you're in the forces, y'know, even if you risking your life fighting over there. But you wouldn't know about that, would you, George?'

The sarcasm in his words was inescapable and their mother's hand flew to her lips to stem a gasp while his father gave a warning cough.

George said nothing. He just stood there for a moment, then he said in a voice much too hearty: ‘It's nice to see you both and looking well. But I … um …' He hesitated and drew himself up a little. ‘Well, I've got to get ready to go out again. Sorry. A meeting I've got to be at. I won't need anything to eat, Mum.' He threw her a brief glance, speaking fast as if to stop any further remarks. ‘I'll have something out after the meeting. It could go on for a bit so I'll probably stay with a friend afterwards. Maybe see you tomorrow, then, or if not, look after yourselves.'