As she walked, she thought about the extraordinary events of the last five months. None of her mother’s fears of being penniless, or having to leave the house in Wykeham Street, had come to pass. In July, when her mother had lost her job and Nurse Pennymore had given in her notice, their future had looked bleak indeed. But Jess had got a job in a large chemist’s shop, just off the Scotland Road. At first, she had worked as an ordinary assistant and money had been short, but then customers had begun to come in with various medical problems and since the pharmacist was an elderly man who wanted to retire such problems were passed straight to Jess. Very soon, Mr Jarvis asked her if she would be willing to take the job of deputy manager and deal with medical enquiries when he himself was not present. Jess had agreed and was much in demand, though she never interfered with the commercial side of the business.
She had told her daughter, with a twinkle, that Mr Jarvis had said his rivals were very envious of the fact that he employed a real live nurse, and added that this was perfectly true, for her colleagues had admitted that business had doubled since Jess had joined them.
Then, of course, there were the lodgers. Pennymore had moved out and despite her mother’s fears two other nurses – the Fletcher cousins from a village on the Wirral – had moved into her room, announcing that they were happy to share. Jess had asked for the same rent from each of them as Pennymore had paid, and the young women had agreed willingly.
Then, after only a month, Pennymore had come round one evening, asking hopefully if her room was still vacant. It transpired that she and her flat share had fallen out and she wished to return to Wykeham Street just as soon as there was a room for her. Debbie had expected to be asked to sleep on the sofa in the parlour but instead Jess had told Barker that she could no longer afford to let one whole room so cheaply and Barker had agreed to share with Pennymore, for the two girls were old friends.
Then Debbie remembered the horrible affair of the detestable Mr Bottomley who had tried to bully them; he had come back several times over the course of the following weeks, until Jess had finally acted on her threat to tell the police, whereupon he had disappeared. However, it now seemed to Debbie that even Mr Bottomley had had his uses; her mother had resolutely refused to consider any male lodgers and seemed to distrust men in general. Once, Debbie had secretly worried that Jess might marry again, for men were attracted by her brisk self-confidence and pretty looks. Now she only went out with the nurses, or colleagues from work, relieving Debbie’s mind of the fear of being asked to accept a stepfather in the place of her own beloved daddy.
‘Debbie! Debbie, will you hang on a tick.’ Debbie swung round at the sound of her name and smiled as her friend Gwen came panting up beside her. ‘God, girl, you must be deaf as any post. I’ve been shrieking your name ever since I spotted you passing the market entrance.’ She peered, curiously, at Debbie’s shopping. ‘Wharr’ve you got there? And why’s you shoppin’ so late? Oh, I forgot; I s’pose, since it’s the Christmas hols, you’re back at Deakin’s.’ She sniffed disparagingly. ‘Rather you than me.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Debbie said placidly. Gwen had left the Dining Rooms at the end of her first week when she had been offered a job by one of her many uncles. He had a fish stall in the Charlotte Street market, and though the work was really no easier than preparing vegetables at least it meant that Gwen was not shut away in the smelly scullery, with no company except for occasional visits by the cook or one of his minions, come to collect the trimmed meat and to grumble that Gwen was slow.
Furthermore, Gwen’s Uncle Percy, though he did not pay as much as Deakin’s, saw that she took home any fish left over at the end of the day’s trading and usually managed to persuade other stallholders, in the nearby St John’s vegetable market, to bag up weary vegetables and bruised fruit for his niece. Unfortunately, the job had finished when the autumn term had started and by then the job at Deakin’s had been given to someone else, so Gwen was at a loose end for the time being.
‘Here, give me one of them bags. No point in you carryin’ them both all the way home,’ Gwen said, taking one of the carriers from her friend. ‘Tell me about Deakin’s; is it still as ’orrible as ever?’
‘It never was horrible, only you didn’t stick it long enough to find out how friendly everyone is,’ Debbie protested. ‘And it’s grand now that I’m waitressing, though I do help with washing up when the restaurant is quiet, which ain’t often. And today I asked the manager if I could waitress again after Christmas, to keep my hand in, like. And you’ll never guess what he said!’
‘He said, “No you can’t, you’re a dirty little washer-upper,”’ Gwen said, grinning. ‘Well, it’s what he would have said to me, anyroad. He never did like either of us, I don’t think.’
‘Wrong, wrong, wrong,’ Debbie chanted triumphantly. ‘Well, he may not have liked me at first, but he must quite like me now because he said I’ve worked hard and he had appreciated it and I could work as a waitress in the New Year so long as I was prepared to wash up when Ivy was away; Ivy’s ever so old and ever so fat, and normally she just helps out when we’re terribly busy. But she took over the washing-up earlier in the month, when I started waiting on, and now she’s permanent. Good, ain’t it?’
‘Ye-es. Perhaps I should have stuck to it meself,’ Gwen said, rather dolefully. ‘Money’s always short in our house, and if there’s any goin’ spare the younger kids gerrit. And, a’course, Uncle Percy don’t need me in the Christmas hols because there ain’t much fish sold at this time o’ year. Nor much caught, for that matter,’ she ended. Then she handed Debbie her heavy bag and turned into Daisy Street, calling back over her shoulder that she might come round the following morning, just to see what sort of presents Debbie had been given. ‘Because you’re bound to get stuff from your lodgers,’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘And I’ll show you me prezzies from me uncles ’n’ aunts.’
‘Okay,’ Debbie shouted back as she crossed the busy main road. She hurried along Fountains Road and turned down into Wykeham Street. Rattling on the front door, since she had no desire to lug her heavy marketing bags all the way along the jigger, she thought, a trifle enviously, that no one would expect Gwen to buy presents for her uncles and aunts whereas she, since she was earning, had had to buy presents for all her mother’s lodgers. She had wondered what on earth to get them but her mother had solved the problem for her. At Christmas Mr Jarvis bought in a supply of bath salts, talcum powder and scented soap, which always sold very well, and he offered his staff a discount if they purchased such things from the shop. Debbie had taken advantage of the offer and had bought lily-of-the-valley soap for all the nurses and a tiny bottle of Evening in Paris perfume for her mother and some thick woolly gloves for Gwen. Some of the staff at Deakin’s had exchanged presents but, fortunately, they had realised that Debbie was in no position to reciprocate. ‘But you’ll gerra bonus after you’ve worked the full twelve months next year, chuck,’ Ethel, the senior waitress, had assured her. ‘Now have a good Christmas; see you on the twenty-seventh.’
The front door shot open and Jess was there, with her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose and a letter in one hand. She swooped on the marketing bags and took them from her daughter, saying that they were too heavy for one person. Then she led the way down the hall into the kitchen. ‘Sit yourself down, queen, and I’ll dish up,’ she announced. ‘I reckon you’ll be hungry after doing so much shopping . . . my goodness, it’s past ten o’clock. Never mind; you can have a nice lie-in tomorrow.’ As Debbie took off her coat, her mother added: ‘And I’ve got my Christmas treat right here; it’s a lovely long letter from your Aunt Nancy. Want me to read it to you after I’ve dished up?’
When she was small, Debbie had been fascinated by the Sullivans and their lives in Australia. Nancy had written of monstrous crocodiles, of water snakes and of enormous spiders whose bites were poisonous. But she also wrote of pleasanter things: watching the young boys, when the river was in flood, coming down the torrent on homemade rafts; and corroborees, which seemed to be some sort of party, starting in the late afternoon and continuing long into the night. And of the pleasure she got from cultivating her kitchen garden on the banks of the river, of gathering in her crops . . . and even of her experiments with a flower garden which, as she grew more experienced, provided fresh flowers for the house for weeks at a time.
There had been many other things, all intriguing to the young Debbie, who thought the cattle station sounded wonderfully romantic. She imagined the homestead as a low white building, creeper covered, with the family sitting out on a wooden veranda, enjoying a meal in the cool of the evening. She knew Aunt Nancy had a number of sons but they were so far away and their lives were so different from her own that they seemed more like story-book heroes than real people.
The meal was a beef casserole with floury potatoes, and Debbie did full justice to her food whilst her mother read the letter aloud. It seemed that the Sullivans were prospering, for Andy and his men had added another wing to the homestead and the eldest boy was taking flying lessons. Nancy explained that the station covered many, many miles, so a light plane which could get quickly from one side of it to the other would be a great advantage. Debbie stared, open-mouthed, at her mother. Did that mean that the Sullivans were going to buy an aeroplane? It seemed unlikely, and, as the letter ended with good wishes for Christmas, she put it out of her mind. The Sullivans might be doing very well but so were the Ryans. Her mother was putting money away regularly and hoped to be able to buy a house, instead of renting one, one of these days. Purchasing the house in Wykeham Street might not be possible since the landlord seemed to have no desire to sell, but there were other properties which could be bought. Provided one was within easy reach of the city centre, lodgers were not difficult to come by, and though Jess was happy working for her chemist, Debbie knew her mother would have liked to stay in her own home instead of having to go off to the shop each day. But that was for the future; for the present, they could not have been happier. Debbie knew that their lodgers were comfortably settled and had no intention of deserting such a cosy billet and that when she left school the Dining Rooms would be pleased to employ her, though her mother had made it plain that she thought Debbie should aim higher than waitressing when she wanted full-time work.
And tomorrow is Christmas Day! All in a moment, Debbie felt she could see into the future and it was good. I wouldn’t change places with the Queen of England, she told herself. She may be eating roast peacock and drinking champagne but beef stew and a nice hot cup of tea will do me fine.
She said as much to her mother who smiled gently. ‘And peace,’ she reminded her daughter. ‘All those dreadful rumours that there was to be a war, all the awful stories coming out of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and Poland, must have been simply stories, tales made up to frighten children. Mr Chamberlain, bless him, has got a written treaty from the German High Command that there will be no war, and I thank God for it.’ She smiled affectionately at her daughter. ‘I feel now we can get on with our lives and stop worrying about tomorrow.’
Debbie smiled back at her but a tiny little trickle of cold doubt ran down her spine. Tales to frighten children? There must be more to it than that, but her mother read the papers, listened to the wireless, knew what she was talking about, whereas Debbie had little or no interest in current affairs. So she took a sip of her tea, then set the cup down carefully. ‘Tomorrow’s Christmas Day,’ she said, voicing her thoughts. ‘Do you remember telling me about that Christmas in the trenches, Mam, when the men had a football match, Germans against British, and exchanged little presents and talked to each other, as friends do? That was wonderful, wasn’t it? If only everyone had acted like that, then thousands of lives would have been saved.’
Jess sighed and stood up. ‘Aye, you’re right, but next day they were killing each other, same as before,’ she said bitterly. ‘Men are all alike; they enjoy war and fighting. If it were left to us women . . .’
‘But Mr Chamberlain’s a man and I suppose the German High Command are men as well,’ Debbie remarked, carrying the dirty crockery over to the sink. ‘And they seem to want peace or they wouldn’t have signed Mr Chamberlain’s piece of paper.’
Jess had been finishing off her own food, but suddenly she pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said abruptly. ‘It’s time we were both in bed, queen. Tomorrow’s another day and you may be sure it’ll be a busy one.’
She turned and left the kitchen and did not hear Debbie murmur: ‘Tomorrow never comes,’ as she, in her turn, made her way up to bed.
Chapter Five
October 1939
Debbie and Jess were sitting in the kitchen because it was the only room, so far, that they had been able to fit with blackout blinds. Debbie had been occupying herself working out mathematical problems whilst Jess was industriously knitting for, ever since 3 September, women had been urged to help the war effort by producing socks, gloves and balaclavas for men in the forces. Despite promises, Hitler’s storm troopers, aided by the Russians, had marched into Poland, spreading death and destruction as they went, and all Jess’s worst fears had been realised. The tales made up to frighten children had proved to be anything but fiction.
Because she was thirteen, Debbie had refused to be evacuated when the younger children at Daisy Street School were marched off to places of safety. She was still too young to take a regular job and had expected, gleefully, to enjoy herself mightily with no school and no teachers to bother about. However, she had reckoned without the strenuous efforts to keep the country safe which had closed all places of public entertainment and made life difficult for ordinary people. Instead of wandering the streets with Gwen and her other friends, she had spent countless hours trying to buy blackout material so that they would not show a light, and longer hours in the search for brown paper. This was supposed to be cut into strips and stuck over window panes so that the glass would not shatter if bombs fell. It was not too bad during daylight hours, but what with unlit streets and unlit vehicles it was downright dangerous to venture out of an evening. The newspapers reported heavy casualties as a result of the blackout, though they were unable to quote actual numbers from the Ministry of Information since it was feared that such reports might be used by the enemy.