A Girl in Wartime (26 page)

‘We heard shouting,' Dorothy said. ‘Woke the baby and Ronnie got all worried. So I thought we should come and see what was goin' on.'

Stephen might not have been here for all the notice Ronnie had taken of him as sat staring out of the window, his head twitching, painful to see, and embarrassing, Connie had to confess, hating herself for the thought.

But Stephen had started towards him, whispering, ‘Beg your pardon, sir,' as he passed her father, who moved aside automatically. Approaching Ronnie, he held out his right hand. ‘I'm sorry to have barged into the house like this, disturbing your small daughter. But I've come to ask for your sister's hand in marriage. I hope I've won your parents over but I'd like your consent as well, if that's all right. I promise to look after her, take every care of her, and you'll be my brother-in-law. What d'you think, Ron, about us being brothers-in-law?'

Connie saw her brother look up at him and give a faint smile; it was the first time since coming home that he had looked anyone straight in the eye, much less smiled, other than when gazing at his daughter, and she wanted to burst into tears. Glancing at her mother, she saw tears on her cheeks too.

Then a whimper came from the baby and all eyes turned to her, the sound breaking the tension. Then Ronnie's voice, clear as a bell, ‘That- that's m-my d-daughter, Vi-Vi-Violet.'

In the few days he'd been home he'd not spoken a word. It didn't matter that his stutter was painful to hear – he had spoken and her Stephen had been the one who had prompted it. Even so, there was still no ready welcome in Dad's eyes and Connie felt that he resented Stephen for his sudden ability to break through – if only temporarily – to his son when he himself had not yet been able to. Connie felt her anger rise towards him. But Mum too was noticeably wary, nibbling at her lower lip as she looked from her daughter to Stephen and back again, as if she felt Stephen had taken advantage of the situation.

Connie felt the muscles in her stomach tighten in anger even as she smiled at her mother, keeping her father at bay, for if she won Mum round, her mum would make sure to bring him round in that usual quiet but dogged way of hers. But Mum wasn't on her side yet. She would need a lot of persuading – her daughter looking to marry a man who'd already been married once, albeit a widower, and he years older than her daughter, where she'd always expected – dreamed of – her bringing home a nice young boy of her own age.

She could see that Stephen had already sensed the tension. ‘Maybe I had better go,' he said in a low voice, which made Connie start.

‘No!' she burst out. ‘We've come to get my parents' consent.' There was still this angry tension in her stomach. ‘And if they don't intend to give it, then I'm ready to go away with you and we'll get married without it.'

She heard her mother's sharp intake of breath. ‘Connie …' warned Stephen.

‘No, Stephen, I mean it. ‘Either we do that, or—' She was about to add, ‘we can part for good', but couldn't bring herself to say it.

But Dad with his usual lack of tact suddenly burst in, ‘An' another thing – why ain't he in the forces, fightin' fer 'is country?'

She swung round on him. ‘He's tried, Dad. But they won't take him. He had a serious illness when he was a child that left him profoundly deaf in one ear, and they won't have him.'

‘Connie—'

‘No, Stephen, I'm not having him accusing you of cowardice.'

But her father had more to say. ‘Be that as it may, you're under age and until you're twenty-one—'

‘It's wartime, Dad!' she flung back at him. ‘It's not the nineteenth century any longer! Girls my age go off all the time the way things are to get married without their parents' consent – if they go to the right places and by special licence. There's no time for niceties any more.' She turned to Stephen. ‘I love you. I want to marry you, and if I don't marry you, I shall never marry anyone, and I mean that with all my heart.'

The room had fallen silent. She could see Ronnie gazing at them, his head beginning to jerk again, his brown eyes looking a little wild. All the good Stephen had done him earlier on had been undone by a stupid, squabbling family.

‘Ronnie!' she appealed to him. ‘Ron – what would you do?'

He seemed to be trying to gather his wits. ‘I … I w-w-would m-marry him if – if – if I w-was … was you.' His words caught in his throat as he said them.

She wanted to run to him and hold him to her, but common sense told her that if she did so he would dissolve back into the shell-shocked man he had become.

‘Thank you, Ron,' was all she said. Then turning to Stephen, ‘Come on, darling, let's go. We'll sort this out ourselves.'

With those few words she knew she was estranging herself from her family and it suddenly felt as if her heart was about to break. Why had she said them? But she was already out of the room, making her way towards the front door. Stephen was coming after her, calling her back, telling her to apologise, that she wasn't helping things by getting herself into a state unnecessarily.

She turned on him at that. ‘Do you want to marry me, Stephen, or not?'

He stopped short. ‘Yes, of course I want to marry you.'

‘Then—' She broke off as her mother came hurrying from the room.

‘Connie, love,' she began in a voice low enough not to be heard in the room behind them. ‘Let me talk to your father. You ain't doing yourself no good going off in a paddy. You and Stephen – I like him, I have to say. I have to think he's the one for you, love, and it don't matter about him being, well you know … older.'

Dad's voice from the parlour called her name. ‘What you doin' out there with them two?'

‘I'm
talking
to them!' she called back, her voice firm enough to shut him up, and turned back to her daughter, her voice now an urgent whisper. ‘It might be that him being older, he'll look after you more than some youngster with no idea – I mean some round 'ere I wouldn't give the time of day to. And you've got the promise of a comfortable life, a nice home, if I'm right. And a man what'll look after you.' She looked purposefully at Stephen. ‘You go now. Let me talk to your dad. And sometime next week we'll see how things go.' She looked up at Stephen. ‘Nice to've met you, Mr Clayton …'

‘Stephen,' he said quickly, and she nodded.

‘I pray everything works out well for you – for you both – but I know it will. Don't worry, you leave her dad to me.'

With that, she opened the front door for them, calling purposefully after her daughter as they went out, ‘And don't be too late 'ome, Connie, love, there's a dear.'

Connie knew exactly what she meant.

Connie's mother had invited him to Sunday dinner this week even though as they left, she had given Connie her usual instructions not to be too late home, looking at Stephen as she said it in an unspoken warning to him to honour her daughter's precious state. He couldn't be off knowing exactly what she was alluding to and maybe it was that which made him suddenly do what he did.

In his flat, he'd kissed her tenderly and gently to the quiet music of the gramophone. She expected his embrace to become stronger as their needs mounted. Instead, he had drawn away from her and gently pulled her up from the sofa. She thought that he was about to hold her to him and dance in a gentle foxtrot to the slow regular beat of the music. Instead he whispered, ‘I've made a few changes, darling, come and see.'

Taking her hand he led her towards the bedroom door, which he had always kept closed. To her surprise, still holding her hand, he opened it, leading her into the room, letting go only to switch on a small table lamp beside the bed.

Instinctively she looked around, noticing instantly how large it was and how sumptuously furnished, as she had always guessed it would be.

‘I've bought a new bed, my love.' Had anyone else made such a bland statement she'd have laughed, but she understood. He'd finally put the past behind him. She was his now.

It was strange and a little terrifying undressing to her knickers and slip. She was going no further than that for now. As he too undressed, she had turned her back so as not to look at him as he slipped between the silken sheets. He pulled back the top sheets on her side for her to creep in, which she did, not daring to look at him, and turning her back to him in a silly effort for him not to see her in her underthings. He couldn't know that her heart was beating like a mad drum while her head told her that she should not be doing this, that it was far too sudden. She wanted to leap away, say it was so, but was too overwrought to even say that.

‘I'll set the alarm clock for ten thirty p.m.,' he whispered as she finally lay next to him. ‘In case we fall asleep.'

She knew what he meant, taking notice of her mother's pointed advice not to be too late home, the woman well aware that lovers could be carried away. She had to smile for it didn't take lying together all through the night for such a thing as she feared to happen. But she knew what Mum meant, and so did he. She was also confident that even in a bed he would continue to look after her.

Now as they lay together, she nestling into his arms, he said quietly, ‘When would you like to marry me, Connie?'

Joy surged through her like a fierce flood and she leaned toward him, kissing his face. ‘Oh, darling, you say. When?'

In the darkness she could feel him smiling. ‘What would you say to September?'

‘September?' She lifted her head a little to gaze into his face, only just able to make out its handsome shape against the small light of his bedside table lamp. ‘That's only six months away. It takes much longer than that to arrange a wedding.'

‘Things have to be done in double quick time when there's a war on,' she heard him chuckle.

‘But the cost, it needs saving for. My parents don't have … They'd never save enough for a wedding in just six months.'

‘They don't need to worry,' he said quietly. ‘I'll pay for everything.'

But instead of gratitude she knew her parents would feel insulted by his offer. They had their pride.

‘It's not just that,' she said, her body growing taut beside him. ‘It could look as if it's being done in a rush and you know what people are like – I don't want to be the centre of speculation that I'm
having
to get married. It doesn't matter that they're proved wrong later on. The thought would still have been there.' She let her voice die away and he was silent for a moment.

‘When would you think it the right time to get married, then?' he finally asked.

She felt herself relax, her voice falling to an easier tone. ‘I'd like it to be a summer wedding ….' She broke off. ‘Not this summer. That would be even worse. Or a spring wedding, say March or April, when the daffodils are out and buds are on trees …'

‘That's a year away,' he broke in, sounding alarmed. ‘How can I wait that long to claim you for my own, my sweetest? I can hardly contain myself now.'

She smiled in the dim light. ‘What about December, then, near my birthday?'

He thought for a moment, then said whimsically, ‘I don't think I can last that long.'

It made her laugh and with that laugh, she felt herself being gathered up into his arms.

‘All right, darling,' she murmured. ‘September, then.'

The next hour was bliss. As always he was careful, but to have him lie so close, little between them but her panties, easily discarded, then with the feel of the silk sheets caressing the two of them, she became his.

There was an hour to go before they must get dressed, tidy themselves and Connie taken home before her parents began to fret where she was. The last thing she wanted was for him to fall out of favour with them for bringing her home even half an hour later than he'd promised. Nothing must be allowed to alter her father's continuing suspicions of him for the worse.

She must have slept a little, awaking gently to the small disturbance of Stephen turning over. Moments later he was sitting bolt upright.

‘Christ Almighty!'

She too sat up. ‘What's wrong, darling?'

‘The fucking time!' She couldn't remember ever having heard him swear, certainly not like that. ‘Connie! For God sake, get up, get dressed!'

‘What is it, Stephen?'

‘It six thirty in the morning! The alarm clock didn't go off and we slept right through the night. Oh God! Your parents!'

It was then she became aware of thin daylight trickling through the drawn blinds.

How she got through that morning, she hardly knew.

Standing on the front doorstep at seven thirty, the sun only just rising, she and Stephen faced her mother. Connie's heart leapt with relief that it hadn't been her father who'd opened the door to them. He had already left home to pick his coal cart up from the coal company's yard.

But her mother's expression was no less intimidating than his thunderous one would have been. Staring down at her daughter, her expression of silent accusation pierced right through Connie's heart.

‘It's not how it looks, Mum,' she began, but felt the grip of Stephen's hand holding hers tighten in warning.

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Lovell,' Stephen said. ‘We had dinner last night at a restaurant. There must have been something wrong with the food. After we came away, Connie was terribly sick.' He was talking fast as he continued. ‘She looked dreadful. She would not get into a taxi to bring her home lest she was sick in the vehicle. I was so worried. She looked ghastly. So I suggested we try to walk it off and I took her to back to my place where I let her sleep on the sofa until she felt better.'

Connie had never heard him lie before. To her ears he was far too glib, and she found herself looking at him as if he were a stranger. It came to her, suddenly and maybe unfairly – had he ever lied to her and had she, loving him, believed everything he said? The thought came and went in an instant but something had changed, if only subtly. Now she felt forced to go along with his lie.