Polly's Angel (43 page)

‘So y'are,' Polly said stoutly, turning for the shore once more. ‘I doubt that Diane will ever forgive you for making her feel a fool though, Tad, and I did want you to be pals.'

‘Oh, pals,' Tad said, with a shrug in his voice, Polly thought crossly. ‘That's what you and me are – pals. But we go back a long way, so we do. I don't make friends wit' people that easy.'

‘Unless they're WAAFs,' Polly said under her breath. ‘Unless they're pretty little WAAFs who t'row themselves at your head, Tad Donoghue! Why, everyone knows that WAAFs are easy, and sleep around wit' anyone. It's only the WRNS who have a bit of discretion.'

‘What was that?' Tad called. There was laughter in his voice but Polly knew she could not possibly have been overheard and ignored him, continuing to swim for the shore. Presently she hauled herself out on the sand and went over to where Diane was already draped across a smooth, flat rock, her face blissfully held up to the sun and the salt water drying on her body. She opened her eyes a slit and smiled at Polly.

‘If it wasn't for your precious pal we could have sunbathed naked,' she murmured, then laughed at Polly's shocked exclamation. ‘Now, now, Polly, less of that middle-class morality! I know you want to learn to ride his motorbike, but don't you think it's a bit unfair to lead him on? I mean, you always say that the naval signaller is your real feller.'

‘Sunny,' Polly said. She lay down on her own towel and relaxed, letting the heat begin to soak into her sea-wet limbs. ‘Oh aye, he's me feller . . . but Tad and I have known each other for ever. I like him in the same sort of way I like you, Di. What's wrong wit' being friends with a feller?'

‘Nothing's wrong with that, so long as he understands that you're only going to be friends and nothing more,' Diane said lazily. ‘This chap seems to me to be rather more involved than you, though, Poll. Still, I daresay you know your own business best.'

‘I do,' Polly said a trifle huffily, and closed her eyes firmly. As the sun began to dry her wet hair and costume, she thought about Sunny. She knew she wanted to be Sunny's girl though she hadn't seen him for ages. She only had to think of his hand caressing her neck and moving round along her jawbone to find that her stomach had begun to churn in an exciting way, whilst her knees turned to water. Resolution seemed to disappear; it no longer mattered that she was a good girl, a decent girl, intent on saving herself for marriage. Sunny's touch made her feel wicked, daring . . . and it made her want to do something more, to . . .

With dear Tad, however, it was quite different. She and Tad had been exchanging blows, wrestling each other to the ground, kissing better, for more years than she could remember. His hand on her arm, or round her waist when they danced, brought warmth and a strong feeling of safety and security. It did not thrill her one little bit. It was a shame, she supposed idly, but there it was. Sunny was wickedly exciting, poor Tad was more like a brother, and you didn't go around wanting to marry your brother. So however much she might like Tad, he was not going to be the one for her.

Satisfied with her musings – and slowly beginning to roast in the hot sunshine – Polly rolled on to her face and gave the back of her a chance to swelter. And presently, without at all meaning to do so, she fell asleep.

When she woke it was because Tad was standing over her, flicking seawater on to her extremely hot flesh and telling her that if she didn't get a move on there would be no time for a motorbike lesson before he had to return to Valley. Polly, feeling stiff and sandy and rather cross, got stumblingly to her feet and saw that Diane, looking smug, was already fully dressed, as was Tad.

‘You're mean, Di,' she said accusingly, picking up her clothes and retreating to a sheltering rock. ‘You could have woke me. Come to that, you could have as well, Tad,' she added in an aggrieved tone. ‘Oh, I'm all burned, me legs is like lobsters and – and when I brush the sand off it hurts like hell, so it does.'

‘I did try to wake you, but you swore at me and went on snoring,' Tad said unkindly. ‘Look, Di, if you want to start cycling back we'll follow as soon as Polly's dressed.'

‘Don't you dare go, Di,' Polly squeaked, tearing her swimming costume off with scant regard for the proprieties, though since the beach was deserted apart from themselves and she was in a private tumble of rock from whence she could see nothing but the curve of the bay she was safe enough from prying eyes. ‘I won't cycle back wit' Tad on his motorbike very likely trying to hustle me to go faster than I can. Oh, and me shoulders feel like a couple o' burned steaks, so they do! You're a cruel pair, and I thought you were both me friends.'

‘Sunburn is a self-inflicted wound and you could be court-martialled for it,' Tad said smugly just as Polly, fully dressed but still sandy and cross, emerged from her hiding place. ‘Do you want to abandon your bicycle and come home on me pillion, though? I'll come back for the bike later, if you really can't use it.'

But this Polly refused to do, though she cycled along slowly, because the friction of her shirt against her skin was very painful. Since she was in uniform she had not dared to leave off her underwear and stockings, though even the thought of the long cycle ride, clad in full uniform, dismayed her. But still, hot and uncomfortable though she was, at least she would arrive back in Holyhead properly dressed. And once they got going it was a bit cooler, with the sun sinking now towards the west and the worst of the heat gone from the day.

‘I've never envied Sunny his Arctic seas before, but I do now,' she grumbled to Diane as they cycled slowly along the country roads. ‘Oh, I could murder an ice cream, so I could! Come to that, I'd give a small fortune for a nice cold bath. But when we get back to the wrennery I suppose I'll have to let Tad give me a lesson, after mucking up his afternoon.'

But by the time they got back to London Road, however, Tad told them that he would have to return to Valley. ‘Sure an' you're looking mortal hot, Poll,' he said, not unkindly. ‘The best place for you is bed, once you've had a bath to wash off the salt and the sand. I'll see you in a day or so.'

By this time Diane had disappeared into the house and Tad and Polly were alone in the small back yard. Polly tried to banish her bad temper and smiled gratefully at her companion. ‘Oh, Tad, I'm sorry to be such a grouch,' she said. ‘But I hurt all over, so I do; I don't think I could concentrate on riding your motorbike even if you didn't have to go back to the station. I'm really sorry . . . but next time, do ring up first.'

‘Sure I will,' Tad said. He glanced round quickly, then propped his motorbike against the back wall and came over, trying to take Polly gently in his arms. ‘Sleep well, alanna, and I'm sorry I codded you about being sunburnt. It's horribly painful, I know, and—'

‘Don't touch me!' Polly shrieked. ‘Honest to God, I'm as raw as a peeled shrimp and you go touchin' me! Gerroff, Tad Donoghue!'

Tad apologised and left and Polly stomped off indoors and presently she lay in a cool bath watching the sand float down to the bottom and feeling a good deal better and even a little ashamed of her abrupt dismissal of her old friend.

But it just went to prove, she thought drowsily, flapping her hands up and down in the water to make little waves, that she was right to wait for Sunny. And presently she got out of the water, patted herself dry and went and got into bed, where even the touch of the sheets was uncomfortable. I'll be all right once I'm asleep, she told herself, cuddling the pillow. And tomorrow I'll be right as rain, and I'll begin to have a lovely tan, just like Tad's got on him, the lucky feller. And when I see Sunny . . . Her mind drifted off into a pleasant dream in which she was back in Liverpool in peacetime, with the sun shining and Sunny holding her hand and telling her she was the only girl for him . . .

Polly slept.

It was decidedly odd getting off the number 24 tram on Stanley Road and heading for the O'Bradys' new home. Weird, really, Grace thought, that the area which she had once known so well should seem so strange to her because she herself had very likely been born on Snowdrop Street – certainly it was amongst her earliest memories. The Carberys had been at least the semblance of a family then, with a mother, a father and eight or nine children, Grace being the youngest-but-one, but by the time Grace was four or so, the family had moved away from Snowdrop Street and begun to disintegrate. Her mother was a mean, cowardly woman who would – and did – blame her children when anything went wrong so that the force of their father's wrath fell upon them rather than on herself. Stan Carbery had been a drunken brute of a docker who had become more violent and unpredictable as the years went by and the drink ate into him. They had been kicked out of the house in Snowdrop Street because they didn't pay the rent, Grace could still remember that much . . . as she could remember her father knocking her mother downstairs in a drunken fight one evening, and breaking her neck. The scuffers had come and decided to treat it as an accident, but the kids, all of them, even little Grace, had known better. They also knew that their father would keep his threat to strangle anyone who told the truth, so they had kept their mouths shut. Indeed, by the time Grace had been eight or nine she had rarely, if ever, returned to the filthy slum in a back-court where her father screamed and beat anyone who got in his way and drank not only all his own money but any that his kids might be lucky enough to make.

I wonder what would have happened to me if the Salvation Army had not taken me in and given me some pride in myself and a home at Strawberry Field? Grace wondered now as she walked, kitbag slung over one shoulder, and her greatcoat over the other, along Stanley Road. I'd never have amounted to much even if I'd lived – how could I? I was filthy, half-starved, in mortal fear of any sort of authority and constantly sleeping rough. I would certainly never have joined the WAAF, worn a smart uniform and helped to fight for my country. Indeed, she would never have gone off to America to help bring up Jamie. Yes, if it had not been for the Army and the love and schooling they had given her, her life would have been very different.

Grace reached Snowdrop Street with Thompson the tailor on one corner and the Manchester Laundry on the other and turned down it, squinting along the damp pavement, trying to remember which house the Carberys had once inhabited. Number 24? Or was it 26? She did not recall ever referring to the house by its number, she had just headed for the place which she knew was her home, though usually, in those very early days, she had been either carried or led along by Jess, her big sister, the one who had been like a mother to her until the baby, Mollie, had been born and had taken her, Grace's, place. She walked slowly along the pavement, trying to conjure up memories which were pleasant, but found herself almost totally unable to do so. It had been so long ago, and after Jess had died and Mollie had been lost, their stay here had been brief. As an older child she had once or twice been drawn back to this street, wooed by vague memories of a time when she had been Jess's little favourite and of her baby sister, but even then she had been unable to recapture those happy times, so why should she expect to remember them now?

She looked hard and curiously at the houses that she passed, though they were all very much neater and cleaner than she remembered. Their front door had had a great hole in it which someone, probably their mother, had patched rather badly with a wobbly piece of cardboard. She remembered one of her brothers coming in through that cardboard one night when someone, again almost certainly either their mother or father, had locked the door and sworn that any child not indoors by a certain time would sleep on the street. She even remembered that it had been a bitterly cold night, that there had been snow, and that the missing child had left the cardboard dangling on one side so that the draught had come sidling meanly up the filthy, bare boards of the stairwell, to rouse even the soundest sleeper with its damp and chilly breath.

But right now it was summer, though the rain was falling steadily, and Grace pushed aside her memories of this street and hurried, turning towards the house now occupied by the O'Bradys and tapped on the green-painted front door.

There was a short delay, then the door shot open and Peader stood there in carpet slippers, old grey flannels and a woollen jumper which had seen better days. But his smile could not have been more welcoming had it been his own daughter standing on the doorstep and the way in which he shouted ‘It's our Grace, alanna; come and help me to get her unravelled from her luggage!' was enough to warm the cockles of a heart far less susceptible to kindness than Grace's.

‘Oh, Uncle Peader, it's so good to be back,' she half-gasped, as he and Deirdre took her kitbag and somehow managed to detach her from her greatcoat and began to pull her across the narrow hallway and into the back kitchen. ‘Isn't it a rotten night, though? You'd never think it was summer, it's so damp and chilly.'

‘Never mind, love, I've got the kettle on and there'll be a mug of cocoa ready before you've so much as settled in your chair,' Deirdre said, pushing Grace gently into the shabby old armchair which she had last seen in the house in Titchfield Street. ‘We didn't know what time you'd arrive so I've got a liver casserole cooking in the oven which must be done to a turn by now. Are you very hungry?'

‘Starving, Auntie Dee,' Grace said, holding out her hands to the fire. ‘Liver casserole, my favourite.' She looked about her at the solid, comfortable kitchen furnishings she had known for so long. ‘Have you heard from Brogan or Sara and Jamie?'

‘Brogan's been posted to a base in Suffolk, Lakenheath,' Deirdre said, bustling over to the oven.