Paint on the Smiles (16 page)

‘We’ve discussed it and Gladys Davies will look after Claire until she starts nursery school.’

‘That’s settled then.’ Cecily hid the irritation she felt at everything being arranged before they had discussed it fully. Wasn’t that what Ada always accused her of doing?

So Cecily’s routine altered again and disrupted her peace of mind more than other changes had done. She couldn’t accept leaving the shop every morning in the hands of Ada and Phil, afraid it wouldn’t be run the way she had always insisted. She still wanted to have the reins in her hands, feel the pulse of it throbbing through her veins as she had ever since their father had died in 1930.

But once in the large store and ensconced in the office overlooking the shop floor, she found so much to do, experiencing a similar challenge in the vastly different trade, her dismay was quickly put aside. It was only in the evenings, when Ada and Phil discussed the happenings of their day, when they told her things they had done that she would have handled so differently, that she felt cut off and no longer a part of her home.

‘Dig for victory’ was a growing cry during the first years of the war. Besides the allotments, which flourished under the care of older men, boys and a great number of women, plots could be seen in unlikely places. Women were planting potatoes in the gardens of bombed-out houses. Along the banks of streams and road verges, the soil was turned and planted when it became obvious that ships were no longer getting through regularly and the need for home-grown food was increasing.

‘Every time a ship is filled with food, it means fewer guns and less support for your boys’ the newspapers warned. But apart from growing thyme and parsley in tubs in the yard, there was little Cecily could do to help that particular call.

At the end of 1941, food was rationed further by the introduction of
a points system. Each ration book included a page of small tokens which had to be exchanged as well as money for various tinned and dried foodstuff. This added to the burden of the shops and they had to be counted and used when they gave their orders to the wholesalers. It was a boring task which Cecily found waiting for her both at Watkins’ store and at home.

There was so much to do that at times she felt she was riding a merry-go-round that was out of control. Working all day with Van, rushing home to prepare a meal before dashing out to attend lectures on putting out incendiary bombs, starting savings groups, or helping Dorothy organize a flag day in aid of comforts for the troops. There was the fire-watching rota, meaning loss of sleep, and it seemed sometimes that she dragged herself from one place to the next in a semi-doze.

Peter came regularly and helped in many ways, delivering orders and collecting goods from the wholesalers, which had changed its address after being hit by an incendiary bomb. He was there when Danny came to say goodbye.

‘I’m joining the navy, me having a bit of experience, like,’ he said excitedly. ‘Damn me, it’s bound to end soon now, with Willie sorting out the army and me soon in charge of the navy. We’ll be back victorious before you’ve had time to miss us.’

Cecily sat close to Peter and listened to the three men discussing the latest news of the war, and arguing about the rights and wrongs of it all. She was feeling older than her years. This war was robbing her of her youth. She showed no more emotion than the rest when Danny shook their hands and kissed her and Ada with the same amount of affection before departing for the station. She stood in the shop porch, the door closed tightly behind her to stop any light showing, and there wasn’t a waver in her voice as she called her final goodbyes. Only Peter guessed how she was feeling.

‘Come on, Cecily, my dear, I feel like going to the pictures. Margaret Lockwood’s on in
The Stars Look Down
.’

So they queued in the dark street and went in to the picture house to be transported away from the present and into another world where their problems and fears were far away. Cecily was glad of Peter’s utterly reliable friendship and of the hand which held hers with such understanding.

On the home front, 1942 was a year of scrap collecting. There were arrangements for gathering waste paper and to aid this valuable recycling,
children were admitted to the pictures free if they brought two pounds of paper. In that way, three tons were collected. Bones were valuable too to make glue, foodstuff for animals and fat for lubricating heavy guns – the rumblings of which filled the air night after night as raids continued.

The salvage drive also included rags and tin and iron and other metals. Saucepans and frying pans were shown on posters flying through the air in an effort to persuade people to part with any surplus utensils. Railings disappeared from gardens, all taken to build planes, the householders were told. Rubber was another need and heels from shoes and boots and hot water bottles were all gathered in.

At Christmas time, people were asked to save string and wrapping paper from their parcels. Ada began a string collection in the shop adding every piece that was brought in until she had three balls, one measuring more than three feet in diameter and which would hardly go through the door when the collectors came. There were appeals for books and nearly 40,000 were pulped as well as a thousand being added to depleting libraries and 13,000 sent to the forces. Again picture houses helped, allowing children in free when they carried four books.

There was an unusual appeal, this time asking householders to invite members of the forces into their homes and allow them a few hours of luxury away from camp. This the sisters felt unable to support – their lives were far too full – yet they hoped that somewhere, someone would be kind enough to give some comfort to Gareth and Willie and Johnny Fowler and Danny.

Cecily fell into bed exhausted most evenings, having begun her work at six and worked on her many activities until late in the evening. She took no part in running the shop and was too weary to do more than ask a few questions about its progress.

One morning, as she stood waiting for the rain to ease before running up the hill to start her day with Van, she became aware of how empty the shelves were. Rationing had cut down dramatically on the foodstuff but there were other lines available. Tinned food no longer filled the shelves behind the grocery counter; the vinegar barrel was missing from its stand. There was no chicken meal or dog biscuits. Small shelves Willie had made to hold the spices their cosmopolitan customers demanded were no longer there, only marks on the paint showing there they had once stood. The top shelves where soap, scouring powder, mop heads and brushes were normally displayed were empty, or filled with old cards advertising things they no longer stocked.

‘Ada, love, why are the shelves so empty?’ she asked, looking round for some sign of rearrangement.

‘We don’t see the point of ordering stuff we rarely sell,’ Ada said. ‘When Phil and I do the ordering, we check to see how long since we last ordered the item and if it’s slow we don’t re-order once it’s gone.’

‘But Ada, that’s the way to let a business die! It’s because we stock so many items that people come to us. We save them walking up to the main road. Remember how we painstakingly built up the stock after Dadda died? How happy we were to do it our way? If once a customer comes and can’t find what he wants we’ve lost them to the shop where they do find it. Don’t you see? Ours is a handy shop, selling everything.’

Ada’s face showed incipient anger. ‘It’s my responsibility now, mine and Phil’s. Van agrees with us and she knows about business. She advised us to avoid overstocking on things that sell only occasionally. We know what we’re doing, holding only fast-selling items and forgetting the rubbishy stuff that’s only money lying idle.’

Cecily was horrified, finding it difficult to believe that Van would give such illogical advice, but she backed away from the confrontation which, from the look in Ada’s eyes, was highly likely if she continued.

‘Go on, you, up to make a fortune for Van,’ Ada said after a moment, to allow the anger to subside. ‘Phil and I will see to everything here.’

That night, when Ada and Phil were in bed, Cecily went down to the shop and examined the books. It was a disaster. The points system had discouraged people from buying from Owen’s shop. With so little choice they had taken their points and their ration books elsewhere. Not even to Watkins’ she noticed. They’d be too embarrassed, her being there to note their disloyalty. No, it was probably Lipton’s or the Home and Colonial who had their business now. ‘Oh, Ada, what have you done?’ she said aloud.

She couldn’t sleep so she settled down to write some letters. Since they had been called up, she wrote a weekly letter to Gareth and her cousin Johnny Fowler; him with the disobedient hair, who at thirty-two, still seemed too young to be amid the horrors of war. Willie also received a regular letter since he had reluctantly left them to serve in the army, a short time before Danny.

Willie didn’t receive the letter she wrote that night to dull her mind from the realization that Ada had lost the business they had so painstakingly built. He was injured only hours after she wrote it, and although it followed him to various hospitals, he was home before it caught up with him.

Annette didn’t know how badly Willie had been injured. In his letter telling her he would be coming home while a wound healed, he didn’t explain the nature of the problem.

‘With you expecting again, he wouldn’t want to frighten you, leave you imagining something worse than it is,’ Cecily said after reading the letter.

‘But his writing, Auntie Cecily. All skewiff it is. It isn’t his eyes, is it?’

‘Try not to let your imagination run away with you, love. He doesn’t say he’s being invalided out, does he? Just home for a wound to heal. That doesn’t sound too bad, having him home for a while, does it?’

Later that evening, Cecily had a phone call. It was from Willie, asking her to be with Annette when he came home. He refused to explain his injury and, guessing it troubled him to talk about it, she didn’t press for details, just promised to be there.

‘I’m coming down tomorrow afternoon,’ she told Annette. ‘I feel like mitching I do. I haven’t had an afternoon to myself for ages. All right if I come for a cup of tea, love? And see you and the children?’

She sat in the neat living room, where Annette knitted a tiny woollen vest for the baby expected in time for Christmas, and they talked about everything except Willie.

He walked through the door without either of them seeing him come down the green lane and across the road. Annette gave a cry and ran to him. Then she pulled back, staring at him, searching for a sign of discomfort, and asked anxiously, ‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’ She looked him up and down, then she saw that the lower part of his sleeve looked odd. Willie, her capable, clever, talented Willie, had lost a hand. She pressed a hand to her mouth and her agonized eyes stared at Cecily.

Cecily picked up the three-year-old Claire and said firmly, ‘Well, you won’t want us around for a while.’ She kissed Willie, adding, ‘Willie, I’m so glad to see you safe home with us. Whatever’s happened, you’re home where you belong. And that’s the very best news for us all. Now, Claire and I will go to the park for an hour, right? Then we’ll meet Victor from school. We’ll all have tea when we get back.’ She forced gaiety into her voice as she dressed Claire and went through the door and up the green lane, then, to Claire’s amazement, she sobbed uncontrollably for almost ten minutes, grieving for Willie and for all the others whose lives had been irrevocably changed.

When she calmed down, she pushed Claire on the swings, rode with her on the roundabout and helped her up the long slide which should have gone for scrap but which some kind person had seen fit to overlook. Then she bought a shilling bar of chocolate with the sweet coupons she had intended to save for Christmas. After an hour she met Victor and they walked back down the green lane to share the treat after tea.

Willie didn’t mention his lost hand. Cecily stayed to have tea with them and heard more news to upset her. Willie told them that Jack Simmons was dead, the bright, quick-tempered boy who had lost his job at Watkins’ after fighting with Willie so many years ago. Cecily wondered how his family would manage and wished she knew them well enough to call. She didn’t even know where they lived.

All the way back to the shop she cried. She was so tired and depressed and told herself that was why it was impossible to hold back the tears. But what chance was there of having a break? Perhaps a few hours over at the beach sometime would help. It was the end of summer and, despite the war, a busy time. When she and Ada had run the shop it had been their busiest time too but now the beach trade which she had enjoyed so much was, like so much of their business, in other hands.

Injured soldiers appeared on the street in growing numbers, bandages, plaster and crutches giving endless variety to the signs of battles against Hitler’s armies. On the streets children played amid the ruins of houses, playing at war, thinking it an exciting game. One day on the way to visit a customer with a complaint, Cecily was horrified to see a small pair of boots sticking out of a pile of rubble. A child had obviously been caught in a fall of loose and dangerous walls. She went in and began scratching away at stones and bricks to find a cheeky dirty face grinning up at her. ‘Ever be ’ad, missus?’ he called as he ran off. She chased after him and slapped his dirt-stained legs and he yelled with all his might.

‘I’ll tell our dad about you,’ he wailed, running into a nearby house, to return a moment later with a large, unkempt man who began complaining about her treatment of his son.

But although at least a foot taller and five stone heavier, it was he who backed away from Cecily’s anger. She asked several people where she could find Jack Simmons’ family and no one knew. That made her angry too.

A
MID ALL THE
tragedies, arrangements were made to encourage people to stay at home instead of travelling further afield for their holidays. People needed to have fun and each town was determined to provide plenty. Dances and fun days, children’s choirs and the town’s silver band gave concerts and entertained locals and tourists alike. The Pleasure Beach, with its beautiful golden sand, remained open and free from the dangers of mines and barbed wire, and the shops and stalls flourished.

There were Punch and Judy shows, swing boats and roundabouts on the sand, free entertainment from small groups of actors and clowns. Fancy dress competitions were always popular and talent shows brought out the most enthusiastic singers that ever faced an audience, plus a few brave comedians.

Although most of the regular summer staff had moved on to war work, the tea rooms continued to open for business with older women and young girls taking their place. The town was a haven amid the tragedies and deprivations of war.

It was a forced defiant gaiety during those wartime summers and Cecily worked with Dorothy and dozens of others, when her full schedule allowed, to help make them a success. Schools stayed closed for two more weeks, and the children were bronzed and healthy despite restrictions on food.

Danny came home on leave but didn’t call to see Cecily. She learned from Willie that he spent his precious time with either Jessie or Danielle, who was now eight, or with Willie and Annette, where they discussed plans to take on a trainee when the conflict finally ended.

The war effort continued to keep Cecily and hundreds of others busy for hours of each day. There was a special Wings For Victory savings scheme to raise £250,000 to build four Lancaster bombers and ten
Hurricanes. The following year a penny a week collection saved to send parcels to a growing number of prisoners of war. Every moment of every day was filled and there were still requests for more help as new schemes began.

‘At least,’ Cecily told Peter, ‘it doesn’t give me much time to worry over what’s happening at the shop!’

Gareth came home on leave and he and Rhonwen called to see Cecily and Ada. Cecily thought he looked well as he smilingly thanked her for her letters.

‘And thanks for looking in at The Wedge to see that everything is running smoothly. I don’t know how you find time for all you do.’

‘By not thinking about it!’ she said with a laugh.

Johnny Fowler was another who called when he could manage it. They were surprised to see that his hair was now very short and standing stiffly up all over his head.

‘Poor dab,’ Ada said. ‘He looks like a paintbrush.’

Johnny’s difficult hair clearly didn’t worry him, as he called one day in 1943 to tell Cecily and Ada that he was getting married.

‘I met her in Somerset when I was on a forty-eight,’ he told them, smiling widely. ‘She’s with Mam now. Already making arrangements, they are, for the wedding. On my next leave it’ll be. You’ll all come, won’t you?’

‘What’s her name, what does she look like, what does she do?’ Cecily demanded, encouraging him to talk as he obviously wanted to.

‘Her name’s Sharon and she’s thirty-seven,’ he said proudly. ‘Got three daughters she has: Victoria, Debora and Leonora. Little beauties they are.’

They all wished him luck and promised to attend the wedding and filled his haversack with cakes and a few sweets and waved him off affectionately.

The sisters had a second visitor that day. Late in the evening there was a knock at the door and it was Ada who answered it, shading a torch as she opened the shop door to avoid trouble from the ever-vigilant wardens. A man she didn’t know stood there, and he seemed hesitant to explain who he was.

‘This is a bit difficult, like,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some news. It’s about – oh, hell, can I come in? It’s as dark as looking up a chimney out here.’

‘Phil?’ Ada called, and the man stepped back as if expecting trouble.

‘I want to talk to Miss Cecily Owen and Mrs Ada Spencer,’ he told her.

‘You’d better come through.’ Phil pulled Ada aside and allowed the man in, leading the way to the back room, where Cecily opened the door once the passage door was closed.

The man was very large. His army great-coat looked as if it were padded, Cecily thought. He had black hair cut short, and his bull-like neck was red with the chill of the night. His dark eyes looked around the room as if selecting the best position and he chose a chair and sat with his feet close to the fire, without being invited to do so.

‘It’s about your mother, see,’ he told them. ‘There’s been an accident. Well, not an accident, more an act of God, you might say.’ He might have gone on waffling around the subject for an age if Cecily hadn’t intervened.

‘Our mother?’ She and Ada drew close and reached for each other’s hand. ‘What about our mother? Who are you? Where is she? What’s happened?’ They asked questions in turn, confused and frightened by what they were about to be told.

‘It’s your mother, see, Kitty.’

‘What about her!’ Cecily demanded.

‘Well, she—’

‘For heaven’s sake, man, say it!’

The sisters moved closer, thinking the worst, guessing it was her death he was trying to tell them but refusing to say it for him. She was dead, the mother they hadn’t seen for many years and who had never contacted them.

‘It was a bomb, see. Direct hit on the house. Dad’s dead and Kitty, your mother, well, she’s on her own.’

Relief hissed out of them like air from a punctured balloon. They both felt relief peppered with anger for the devious way they had been told. He had put them through agony for nothing.

Ada was the first to find her voice. ‘And who are you?’

‘I’m Paul Gregory. It was my dad who Kitty – your mam – you know, lived with, like.’

As he went on, their anger changed to sympathy.

‘My dad’s gone and I haven’t got another soul in the world, except Kitty. My own mam threw me out when Dad went to live with your mam. I don’t like to think of Kitty being on her own, see, with me in the army and never there to look after her. I thought I’d tell you rather than write. She wants to see you, sure of that I am, but she isn’t sure of a welcome, see. I thought that if you wrote a letter I’ll see that she
gets it. Fond of your mam I am. She’s been good to me has Kitty Owen.’  

His voice distorted as he spoke and he swallowed a lot as if clearing his throat of sobs. Cecily and Ada felt sympathy growing, but then Cecily caught an expression in the young man’s eyes and felt a chilly, stomach-churning shock. The eyes were cold and calculating and showed no real distress at the bereavement he was talking of. It was an act. He was pretending to feel the emotions of a broken-hearted son. She was frightened by him and wanted him gone. He was a stranger getting in the way of thoughts about her mother returning. She wanted solitude and the chance to think, to take in the news of her, but instead here was this man faking grief at the death of a man they didn’t know, whom they hadn’t even met. The man who had taken their mother from them.

She tried to ignore him and allow her thoughts to dwell on her mother, whether they would be strangers after all the time that had passed, or friends. But Paul’s presence refused to allow it. He sat there waiting for her to speak. What did he want? Why couldn’t he see they needed to be left alone?

Ada was still clinging to Cecily, until Phil peeled her away, taking her into his arms and leaving Cecily standing alone. She realized that Ada was sobbing, and Phil was whispering to her in a soothing way, and Cecily moved away from them, fussing over cups and saucers.

‘Do you have time for a cup of tea? Or do you have a bus to catch?’ she asked the soldier, hoping he would take the hint and go. ‘We mustn’t take any more of your time.’ It didn’t sound very polite but the silent way he was staring at her made social niceties irrelevant.

After a silence that went on too long, he said, ‘Tea? I’d rather something stronger, Cecily.’ He smiled disarmingly and she felt ashamed. He had come to tell them about their mother being on her own, using his precious leave to do so. She was just being fanciful thinking there was anything other than kindness in his expression.

‘Take off your coat, boy,’ she said then. ‘Look in the cupboard over there and you might find a flagon of beer.’

He stood to take off his great-coat and in the uniform underneath he looked equally large. His battle blouse stretched across his huge chest and the sleeves bulged with muscles. Three stripes showed him to be a sergeant, the badges that he was a gunner. He found the flagon and a glass and settled to enjoy it. Phil watched but didn’t complain about not being offered to share it. Phil had a strange ability to make himself unnoticed
at times like this, almost invisible, when someone else was taking all the attention.

‘And you are Paul? Paul Gregory?’ Ada rubbed her reddened eyes. ‘I’m afraid we’ve seen nothing of Mam since she left with your father. She was always sickly, mind, and we brought ourselves up, so we didn’t get really close to her even before she left.’

‘Sickly? Auntie Kitty, as I call her, has never even had a cold since I’ve known her! Full of fun she is, a damned good laugh. Hell, yes, she makes the house ring with it.’

The sisters looked at each other. Could there have been a mistake?

‘Our mam? Lively and full of fun? But – you’re sure you’ve got the right place? I mean, silly things happen in wartime and it doesn’t sound like our mam. An invalid, she was. Spent a lot of time in bed.’

‘She’s your mother all right. I’d have recognized you two easily from the photographs she has on her bedside table. Damn me, she talks about you enough too. I’d have known you two anywhere.’

‘And our mother is lively? And a lot of fun?’ Ada delved into a drawer and handed him a photograph of their mother.

‘Yes, that’s Auntie Kitty. She said your father made her into an invalid, trying to make her into something she wasn’t.’

‘Rubbish!’ Ada said at once.

‘Was it?’ Paul poured himself the last of the beer. ‘She said he wouldn’t allow her to do anything except stay in the house and mind the girls, who didn’t want minding. She escaped into the life of a bedridden old woman, to be pampered, to read books, listen to the wireless and dream of a life where she could be herself.’

‘I don’t believe any of this.’ Cecily agreed with Ada.

‘You don’t? You’re Cecily, aren’t you? You’ll never marry, according to Kitty Owen, until you find a man willing to allow you to be yourself. She says you’re a free spirit and will never make the mistake she made. Is she right? I don’t see a ring, so perhaps she is and you haven’t found the right man yet.’

‘You are impertinent!’

He smiled and nodded agreement.

Cecily wanted to throw him out. She watched him drain the last of the beer and go to the sideboard to find more. He was big, confident and intrusive, an alien in their safe living room.

Paul waved a new flagon at Phil, who sat beside his wife, leaning forward in a protective way, poised to leap up to defend her.

‘Want a glass?’ Paul asked. Phil shook his head.

Cecily’s brain was struggling with confused thoughts. The way he had walked in, found himself a place at their fireside, and told them things about their mother’s life had disturbed her. His grating personality made her postpone her thoughts on her mother until he was gone. She wondered how she could help him on his way.

The second flagon of beer was half emptied and she watched as he refilled his glass. As the liquid went down, so the moment of his departure drew closer. She wished Phil would take some and make the moment come sooner.

Paul Gregory looked at her over the rim of the tilted glass and his dark eyes closed slightly as if he were smiling. Had he guessed her thoughts, seen her discomfort? Was he prolonging his stay to torment her? There was something frightening about him. She wasn’t imagining it. She was unable to control a shiver of apprehension from travelling down her spine.

They heard the doorbell tinkle as it opened to admit Van. She and Edwin had been to the pictures and Cecily hoped he would come in, although he rarely did. Van walked through the shop and went into the passage to hang up her coat. She poked her head around the door.

‘I’ve called to pick up the order book. Uncle Bertie said he wanted to have a look at it,’ she called out. ‘I’ll stay tonight as I want to have a chat.’ Then she saw Paul and, recovering from the shock of seeing him, demanded rudely, ‘Who are you? You aren’t taking in lonely soldiers now, are you, Mam?’ The words were directed at her mother but she stared into the appreciative eyes of the soldier, not showing with even a flicker of a smile that she and Paul had met often at her grandmother’s house.

Almost sullenly, Cecily introduced her daughter to Paul, who stood up and held Van’s hand for what seemed to Cecily an interminably long time. He too hid the fact that he and Van were friends.

‘So, you are Myfanwy.’ He smiled, showing strong white teeth in a wide, aggressive jaw. ‘My sort of cousin by non marriage, you might say.’

‘You are not related,’ Cecily said at once.

‘Now there’s a lovely thought,’ Paul said. He was admiring Van, who stared back boldly, her young face slightly flushed and very beautiful. ‘Seventeen and never been kissed?’ Paul teased. Cecily saw the charm being turned on as Van and Paul sized each other up. She was upset, wanting him to go, never to appear again, wishing Van wasn’t looking at him in that way.

‘Good for us to meet at last. Like my own family, you are.’

Ada laughed and the sound cut into Cecily’s agitation. She turned to see Ada and Phil watching the young couple with obvious delight. They clearly didn’t share Cecily’s unease.

Ada stood then and whispered in Cecily’s ear, ‘Don’t tell her why he came. We’ll tell her about Mam later, when we’re on our own.’ Cecily nodded agreement.

‘Well, thank you for coming, Paul.’ Cecily implied it was time for him to go.

Van said, ‘Sandwich, anyone? I’m starving and sinking for a cuppa.’

Cecily’s heart dropped as Paul at once nodded. Ada nudged Phil and went with him into the back kitchen to prepare food, leaving Cecily and Van with the young sergeant. It came out then, his father’s death and why he had called. He went on to explain why Kitty and his father had never married.