Paint on the Smiles (12 page)

Danny felt a tinge of guilt but not enough. He preferred to believe the story the papers had carried. Had she lied to the police and pretended that Phil had been in her room just to cover up her unkindness at refusing to help him? But no, that unwillingness to help wasn’t in her nature. It didn’t make sense.

Cecily was glad it had happened during the busiest time of the year, leaving her little time to dwell on the humiliation and accusations that filled the air around her.

Peter called one Sunday morning and invited Cecily and Van to lunch at a restaurant overlooking a beach a few miles out of town. She gladly accepted and the three of them set out in his car. Van seemed pleased to see him and chatted easily as he drove. As they ate, it was Van who brought up the subject of the night when Mrs Spencer died.

‘Phil is a confused man,’ Peter said when Van was asking why the papers had been so unkind to her mother. ‘He’d been caught with stolen goods in his hands and prison was a punishment he found difficult to bear. He wanted someone else to be punished too, and even though your mother wasn’t guilty of anything except in his mind, he chose to embarrass her like he did. I don’t think anyone can understand why.’ Van smiled but she wasn’t convinced.

Cecily was so glad to spend time with Peter. He was the only one apart from Danny who had heard the full story of that strange and frightening night visit. Phil’s story had been more convincing than her own.

‘You should have told the truth at once and not tried to protect Ada,’ Peter said as he and Cecily sat for a few precious moments of peace outside the beach cafe. ‘She must know how disturbed Phil is. You haven’t saved her from anything – just delaying the imminent and inevitable crash. Changing your story led the police to doubt you.’

‘Too late now.’

‘Too late to stop Phil’s stories but they’re dying down anyway. Are you sure Ada doesn’t believe you’re telling the truth? She’s an intelligent woman and she knows you better than anyone else does.’

‘She believed Phil then and still believes him. She insists he knocked on the shop door asking for help and I turned him away; that the story about coming into my bedroom was a nonsense. In fact, I’m being blamed for his depression. If I’d agreed to give him a job he’d be fully recovered now. That’s what she believes. My own sister. Oh, Peter, I wish Mam was here.’

‘That’s maybe what Ada says but I doubt she believes it. When trouble comes and there’s no way out of it it’s natural to look for a scapegoat.’

‘So I can add scapegoat to all the other epithets I’ve collected over the past weeks?’ She laughed without humour. ‘Why not? It makes a change from whore!’

‘Cecily, my dear, don’t! You know who you are, and the circumstances which make people so unkind will fade into misty memory. Phil isn’t going to miraculously recover, is he? And one day the truth will become apparent and Ada will have to face reality.’

‘I hope so, Peter. With Ada against me as well as all the rest, I’m finding it hard to take.’

T
WO WEEKS AFTER
the funeral of Mrs Spencer, the events which were to change all their lives began. Poland was invaded by Hitler’s German army in the early hours of 1st September and on the 3rd, war was declared.

It was a Sunday morning and the first night of the war was dark, with a moon hidden in an overcast sky. The blackout came into force immediately and people felt they had been transported to an alien land as they tried to make their way through the streets without the assistance of friendly lights.

They fell, bumped into each other as well as into lampposts and trees, and tripped over the cats which wandered, curious about the unusual blackness of the night. Dogs stood and barked their confusion and young people giggled helplessly as they made a pantomime out of finding their way home.

Special window net and tape were sold, both of which had to be dipped in water then fastened to the glass to hold it in case it was shattered, the tape in a criss-cross pattern and the net cut to size. Four and a half thousand Anderson shelters were ordered for the town and digging began on the deep holes needed to accommodate them. Vegetable plots, some cut in carefully nurtured lawns, were marked out and digging began.

People stood around in groups, watching the sky as if expecting a horde of enemy planes to swoop down on them, spreading death and chaos from the leading edges of their wings. Torches as well as car and bicycle lamps were allowed, but these had to be more than half covered with black paper to reduce the beams to a thread. A few lights showed from houses where the blackout restrictions weren’t taken seriously but as the air raid wardens began their beat, these were swiftly snuffed out.

The air raid sirens did a practice alarm and followed it with the sound
of ‘all clear’, but hundreds of people had not been told about the rehearsal and they ran, clutching their valued possessions, down the nearest shelter and spend the night there, coming out the following morning to be teased and laughed at by friends.

Everyone was busy making sure they didn’t fall foul of the new regulations. Many made wooden frames which they covered with blackout paper. These were pushed into place to cover the windows every evening and they stood, bulky and inconvenient, against a wall during the day. ‘Put that light out!’ became a regular call during the hours of darkness.

Cecily and Ada sewed thick curtaining for the window between the living room and the shop and were convinced that it was a lot of work for what must surely be a brief war.

Their greatest worry was the possibility of Willie having to leave them. They depended on him for so many things. Already thousands of soldiers, sailors and air men had been called away from the town and Willie and Danny were in the age group to join them. One hundred and fifty-eight-thousand troops were transported across the Channel to begin the task of halting the German army in its march of occupation. A million – mostly children – were evacuated from areas considered to be potentially dangerous and all theatre and cinemas were closed, fearing the large number of casualties if a bomb landed on one of them.

Ambulance training was increased and as Ada and Cecily were by this time quite expert on the cumbersome vehicles, they began training others. Dorothy found a niche for herself at one of the new Citizen Advice Centres, one of 200 set up to assist if homes were destroyed and families scattered. As the risk of conscription loomed ever closer, hundreds of couple made hurried plans to marry.

Among these were Gareth and Rhonwen, who met at the register office with only Rhonwen’s daughter, Marged, plus two friends to act as witnesses, were married and went back to live at Rhonwen’s terraced house near Dorothy, on Snipe Street.

Gareth told his mother while holding Rhonwen’s hand and with Marged giggling behind him. He knew his mother would be shocked but decided that one shock, giving her no chance to try and dissuade him, was the kindest.

‘But you’re leaving me all alone, and with Hitler about to invade,’ she wailed, wiping her long nose with a cologne-soaked handkerchief. Gareth didn’t point out that he would probably be joining the army and leaving her anyway.

‘No, Mam, you don’t have to be alone, there’ll be plenty of soldiers looking for accommodation. Take in a couple of boarders. By looking after them, you’ll be doing your bit towards winning the war. We’ll help with cash, you won’t go short.’ He knew he’d taken the coward’s way of beginning his marriage, but with the threat of call-up he didn’t want to go away without having someone of his own to come back to. Telling his mother before the event would have been a sure way of getting it postponed.

Gareth, Rhonwen and Marged walked towards the neat house on Snipe Street and stopped at the top of the hill leading down to Owen’s shop where they bought fish and chips to take home for their wedding breakfast.

‘Tomorrow,’ he told his wife and stepdaughter, ‘we’re off on a week’s holiday and we’ll have grand food every day.’ But on the following morning, Danny brought them a letter stating that the hotel he had booked had closed, taken over by the army for the duration of the war.

Ada was worried about Phil. He seemed untouched by the talk of war; it all went over his head as unimportant as an announcement that tomorrow it might rain. He still wandered about at night and for a while she wondered if he’d gone back to his old ways and begun robbing houses. But no talk of burglaries reached her and their finances were only what she provided.

He rarely slept in her bed; the sheets on his side were still untouched in the mornings although there was sometimes a dip on the counterpane where he had lain for a while with a coat wrapped around his shoulders, staring up at the ceiling. He still came to the shop with her each morning and returned every evening, not speaking to either Cecily or Van. Ada spoke of him to the doctor, who visited him occasionally and who offered little hope of an improvement, but said nothing about his behaviour to Cecily.

Cecily guessed from the drawn expression on Ada’s face that all was not well but since the accusations levelled at her by Phil, she didn’t risk opening up the subject of his mental state, although she was seriously worried.

Danny had started visiting again, arriving as Ada and Phil left each evening, sharing their meal and listening to the wireless for a couple of hours: programmes like
Band Wagon
with Arthur Askey and Stinker Murdoch provided a good laugh. Comedy shows were very popular; an
easing of tension was necessary during the early weeks of the war, when every time the sun went down there was fear that this might be the night when the bombers would come.

The shelter below the stable was stocked with emergency food and a bottle was filled with water every evening and placed against the back door, to be carried if they should hear the dreaded siren and have to run to the shelter.

Cecily and Danny both noticed that Van’s door was never fully closed. Perhaps she was standing guard against Danny’s nocturnal wanderings towards her mother’s room. But Danny was careful and although he spent many hours with Cecily, they were convinced she never knew. A fifteen-year-old sleeps soundly.

Familiar faces began to disappear as men joined the forces; some driven by the thought of regular if small wages to help their families. Others were goaded on by brothers, cousins and friends who had already joined and among the first to go were Gareth, the sisters’ cousin Johnny Fowler, and Jack Simmons.

Waldo was losing all his shop assistants and was regularly advertising for replacements. The situation was repeated in every business in the town and people with the right experience were hard to find, especially as the factories offered more money.

Gareth left his barber shop with its newly acquired ‘other half’ in the hands of his one-time apprentice. His plan to open the second half of The Wedge as a ladies’ hair salon was abandoned until after the war ended. The second half was simply an enlargement to the original business, giving more space for people to wait, and for display shelves on which he offered combs and brushes and shampoo for sale. The contraceptives remained hidden in a drawer and referred to as ‘a packet of them, you knows’ by his customers.

Owen failed his medical, much to Dorothy’s surprise and Owen’s relief. Young David, the sisters’ red-headed one-time assistant, joined up. Winifred Rees, the girl who helped with the housework, left too, hoping to find better paid work in the factories which were advertising for people to fight the enemy by making bullets and shells for our fighting men.

News of the fighting was sparse. The local papers made big headlines over items like whether or not to supply milk to all school children instead of those proved to be in need. Gareth’s mother gained notoriety for a while having been fined ten shillings for a blackout offence. There
was no mention of any air raids that might have taken place in other parts of the country, and no mention of the landmines and barbed wire fences being placed around many of the beaches.

The first local deaths of the war were bizarre. A soldier was shot by a guard on the docks who thought he was a spy. Several people were knocked down in the blackout and a car ran into the river, the driver unable to see the road in an intense storm. All victims who had never heard more of battle than the practice air raid.

It was during a mock air raid, another to test the organizational skills of the defence services, that the first death to affect the sisters occurred. During the noise and the sounds of the terrifyingly realistic mock air attack, Waldo died.

He woke from a deep sleep to the sound of heavy guns protecting the docks, forgetting in his fright that a practice had been planned. He woke Melanie and tried to carry her to the shelter and suffered a heart attack before he left the bedroom. He died almost immediately, still holding Melanie in his arms.

Cecily refused to believe it when the news was brought by Owen early the next morning. She stared at the fat, red-faced boy as though it were his fault, her eyes wide in gradually dawning grief.

‘Waldo? He can’t be! He’s always there when I need him. He can’t be dead, he’d never leave us.’ She rang Peter to tell him, crying as she said the dreadful words, and he promised to come at once. ‘No, not yet. I have to go to see Melanie.’

‘I’ll wait at the shop. It’s sad to lose a friend. Be brave for Melanie, love.’

She repeated the denials over and over in the time it took for Ada and Phil to arrive, and as she went up to tell Van, and as she walked through the house to where Willie was stocking the first orders.

She was still telling herself it wasn’t true as she ran up the hill to the main road where the large store stood, already – to her imagination – looking forlorn and engulfed in sadness in the dark early morning. No light showed. Within, everything was still and silent. What would normally have been a thriving activity with the staff behind the locked doors preparing their counters and displays for the time when customers were admitted was utter stillness. It was as if it too had died in the night.

The side door stood ajar and she went inside, wondering what she should say. What if the rumour was false? What if she blurted out something
so terrible and Owen had got it wrong? Waldo wasn’t dead. He’d just suffered one of his attacks. Anger filled her against Owen. The stupid boy, he’d got it wrong.

She stepped inside the dark shop and knew at once it was true. The staff stood about in small groups and anxious faces. A ship without its captain, Cecily thought as they greeted her with lips stiff and refusing to smile, eyes that did not meet hers.

‘Is it true?’ she whispered to Tomos Small, the manager, whose father had been on the docks when her father had died. She held her breath for that last moment of faint hope, until he nodded.

‘And Mrs Watkins? Is she at home?’

‘Yes, Miss Owen. She sent word to me and through me to others and now she’s home. She particularly asked that you were told, miss. I sent Owen as he’s related, like. I’m sure Mrs Watkins would be glad to see you, miss.’

It wasn’t far to walk back down to collect the car, but irritated by the delay, she wanted to walk, run, depend on her own self to get there and see her friend. She nodded to the staff, muttered a few words of sympathy and went outside. Willie was standing at the kerb, his flat cap in his hand, the other on the door of the car.

‘Thought you might need a lift,’ he said. ‘Terrible sorry I am about this. Dreadful shame. I know what a good friend he’s been to you and Miss Ada.’

‘Thank you, Willie.’ She cried then, at his thoughtfulness at turning up at the right moment. ‘Waldo has been a good friend, yes. And so have you,’ she sobbed. She got in and he drove in silence to Melanie’s house.

It was a large house, set on a corner and painted white. It was unusual in that there was no garden wall or hedge, but flowerbeds and green lawns running from the house to the pavement. The green grass was a splendid setting and the slope rising from the road gave the house an elevation which added to its impressive appearance. Today, although dawn had broken and the sky was bright with the promise of a sunny day, the blinds were still drawn.

As she stepped from the car and walked up the drive, Cecily saw there were lots of people inside the house. Through the open front door she could see them standing in small groups and from the kitchen a woman appeared carrying a tray of teas. Melanie saw her and came to meet her, looking smaller and somehow frail, shrunken both in size and personality by the tragedy.

Cecily clung to her friend and their tears flowed, each silently grieving for Waldo, who had added so much to both their lives.

‘I knew he was ill,’ Melanie said when they had recovered a little. ‘But somehow you refuse to accept what the doctors tell you. Death and illness are what happens to other people, not to this kind and loving man who made my life one long pleasure.’ She gave a deep sigh then added quietly, ‘He told me you are mentioned in his will and to arrange a reading when we are all together.’

‘I’ll do whatever you want of me. Would you like me to sleep here for a few nights?’