The Heart of the Family (27 page)

‘We’re working down the docks, love, doing our bit for the war effort that way,’ Barney, the fourth member of the quartet, who had been dancing with Carole and who seemed to speak for all of them, answered.

‘So come on then,’ Danny was trying to cajole
Katie. ‘Tell us all about them love letters you get to read. Maybe we can pick up some hints.’

Katie was relieved to see the twins approaching the table. She stood up and told Carole, ‘I promised Jean that I wouldn’t keep the twins out late, so we’d better make a move, I think.’

Carole’s mouth fell open. She looked as though she was about to object but Katie had no intention of allowing herself to be talked into staying. And just as soon as she got Carole on her own she was going to have something to say to her about letting on to the lads about their work. Not that people didn’t know that the mail was censored – you only had to get a letter from someone overseas to know that it was – but officially they were not supposed to talk about even the innocent side of what they did, never mind all the rest of it.

‘Enjoying yourself?’

Francine gave Brandon a wry look. The truth was that she should not have been enjoying herself since she had tried her best to refuse his invitation to this reception at the American Embassy, but the reality was that she was enjoying it very much indeed. But then during the short time she had known Brandon she had come to learn that he was adept at overturning her preconceptions about a wide variety of things, not least the fact that on every single one of the dates he had either tricked or coaxed her into accepting, he had not so far made a single move on her sexually. Rather than feeling offended as she might have done had she been younger, she actually liked knowing that their dates were not going to end in an unseemly scuffle, Francine admitted. What was
more, she liked Brandon and enjoyed his company as well. On the outside he might be a brash young American ‘fly boy’, all too willing to boast about his success with the Flying Eagles, but on the inside Brandon showed an awareness of the problems faced by humanity, and spoke about them so directly and from the heart that Francine often found herself choking up a little listening to him.

Had Jack lived, Brandon was the kind of young man she would have wanted to see him grow into, and although the age gap between Brandon and herself was nowhere near big enough for her to have been Brandon’s mother, she did feel rather like a ‘big sister’ towards him, especially on those occasions when, as she had done when he had called for her this evening, she had noticed how tired he looked. So tired, in fact, that although she had not been able to smell alcohol on his breath he had almost stumbled as he had escorted her to the waiting taxi. Luckily she had managed to hold on to him whilst he steadied himself, and it had been a poignantly sweet sensation to feel him leaning against her as a child might lean against its mother, again making her think of her own Jack.

The reception had gone on longer than planned, and she guessed that it would be close to midnight before they were able to leave. Francine shrugged inwardly. She was used to late nights.

Locked in the ladies’ lavatory, trying not to cry, Grace reflected miserably that the evening had been even worse than she had dreaded. Of course, it wasn’t Seb’s fault that the only place to sit had been at large tables, and it wasn’t his fault either that Sybil and her pals had chosen to sit at their table, not with so
many of the others being occupied by locals, and several of Seb’s male colleagues already having claimed chairs round the table with her and Seb. She probably couldn’t even blame him for the fact that Sybil had leaned over her in the way that she had to ask Seb for a light for her cigarette and had then ‘accidentally’ knocked over Grace’s drink, which had soaked the skirt of the new pewter-grey wool frock she and Katie had worked so hard together to make, from one of the lovely lengths of fabric that her mother’s sister Francine had brought home from Egypt and had sent up from London for them. With long sleeves, with white cuffs and a little Peter Pan collar, the dress perhaps wasn’t exactly a dance frock – she hadn’t after all expected to be dancing – but Grace had been so thrilled and proud when she had put it on. With its neat fitted body and its gently shaped skirt cut so as to use as little of the precious fabric as possible, and worn short as the new fashion dictated, Katie had clapped her hands together the first time she had pinned it on Grace and said that she had the perfect legs for such a style.

The wool would dry, of course, but the drink – even if had only been lemonade – was bound to leave a stain. Even worse, though, in Grace’s eyes than the damage to her lovely new frock was the damage that had been done to her heart. Perhaps it was only natural that when Sybil had dropped her cigarette before Seb had had time to light it for her, his glance should have followed it and thus taken in Sybil’s exposed cleavage in her low-necked sweater, but Grace still had not liked it, and she had liked it even less when only half an hour ago Sybil had pulled Seb to his feet without a by-your-leave, to demand that
he dance with her. And she was a good dancer, Grace was forced to admit.

She wished desperately now that she wasn’t here alone in Whitchurch and that she had one of her own female friends with her to support her – one of the other nurses or, even better, Katie; someone who could keep Sybil occupied and away from Seb. But at the same time part of her felt hurt that that should be necessary, and angry too, because if Seb really understood how she was feeling he should have brought an end to Sybil’s behaviour himself. When Sybil had grabbed his hand like she had and insisted she wanted a dance, he could have told her to go and dance with one of her friends because he only wanted to dance with his fiancée.

Grace heard the door to the outer ladies’ room opening and then the sound of female voices. She couldn’t stay in here for ever, she warned herself, but before she could open the door she heard one of the women outside saying, ‘Honestly, some girls just can’t take a hint, can they? You’d never catch me trying to hang on to a chap by his engagement ring when he didn’t want to be held on to.’

Grace couldn’t move. She just knew that the girl outside was talking about her.

‘That’s the trouble with this war, if you ask me. You get these girls grabbing all the best men because the chaps feel obliged to propose to them, because there’s a war on.’

‘It’s the poor men I feel sorry for.’

That was Sybil’s voice, Grace recognised.

‘They tell you in confidence that they are just desperate to escape and have some fun but they can’t bring themselves to be the one to break things off.
Personally, if it was me in that situation and my fiancé was showing any sign of wanting to end things, I’d be the first to tell him he was free to go, but some girls just haven’t got any pride or self-respect at all. Come on, you two, hurry up. I don’t want to miss the next dance.’

Grace could hear some good-natured grumbling, the snapping shut of handbags, then the opening of the door and finally, to her relief, silence.

The powder room was empty when she emerged from the cubicle. The mirror threw back to her an image of herself she hardly recognised. Her face looked pale, her eyelids swollen and faintly pink, whilst her mouth was trembling so much it took her three attempts and the wastage of some of her precious new ‘Pretty Pink’ Yardley lipstick – another gift from Egypt from Francine – before she had redone her lips. She couldn’t go back out there after what she had just heard, but she knew that she had to. Was it true that Seb wanted to end their engagement? Grace was no fool – after all, she had worked with members of her own sex for three years now and she knew both how kind they could be and how unkind. She was pretty sure that Sybil had somehow engineered the conversation she had just overheard as a way of taunting her. The old Grace, the Grace she had been before Seb had been transferred to Whitchurch, would have come out of the lavatory and laughed at the absurdity of anyone even suggesting that Seb didn’t love her any more. But that was the old Grace, and the new Grace, the Grace who felt so insecure and afraid that Seb wasn’t really her Seb at all any more, felt more like hiding herself away in shame.

Well, that was another hurdle successfully managed, Bella congratulated herself, as she unlocked her front door and bustled Lena – dressed in the bold checked wide swing coat Bella had fortuitously bought the previous winter, and which she had put away virtually unworn because she had then seen something she had liked more – protectively inside ahead of herself, after their morning attendance at church.

Thanks to her position with the crèche Bella had been able to speak with the vicar’s wife and alert her to Lena’s situation, and naturally, given the somewhat fictionalised version of events Bella had relayed, Lena had been welcomed into the congregation sympathetically with a discreet veil drawn over her supposed ‘bigamous’ marriage.

Sadly, without Maria there was no lovely smell of roasting meat to greet their return. Bella and Lena were having to make do with mince, mash and veggies. Bella was no cook and she had had to turn to the cook at the school for help in her determination to follow the doctor’s advice that Lena and the baby she was carrying were to be well nourished.

Bella had been considering hinting to her mother
that she and Lena had their Sunday lunch with Bella’s parents, but her mother, whilst outwardly supporting Bella’s fictionalised version of Lena’s supposed marriage and pregnancy, had been tight-lipped and hostile with Lena herself when they had come out of church. Fortunately the dank November weather had meant that no one wanted to linger for chat, so her mother’s omission had gone unnoticed.

Of course, she could understand that her mother would be thinking of Charlie and the potential damage it could do to him if the truth were to get out, Bella acknowledged fair-mindedly as she bustled about, instructing Lena to stay in front of the gas fire and keep warm whilst she sorted out their lunch, but that wasn’t going to happen and it wasn’t Lena’s fault that Charlie had lied to her and treated her so badly.

‘There’s Wilhelm.’

Emily tried not to colour up self-consciously, and act as though she hadn’t already seen the German when Tommy, waving with one hand, tugged on her coat sleeve with the other to draw her attention to the prisoners of war lined up waiting for their transport back to the farms on which they were billeted, as they emerged from church.

Emily had as good as expected when summer came to an end that the farmer would feel that her vegetable garden no longer merited Wilhelm’s attentions three times a week, but the farmer’s wife had laughed at her for being a townie and had told her that there would be autumn and winter crops to be sown and the ground to be put in good heart for the spring, and that it would quite simply be bad
husbandry and unpatriotic for her not to allow Wilhelm to keep on tending her garden.

‘Hmm, more like bad for their bank balance,’ Emily’s neighbour had announced when Emily had told her all this, ‘seeing as she’ll be claiming money off the Government for feeding him and giving him a bed, whilst it’s you that really gives him his meals.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind doing that,’ Emily had been quick to assure her neighbour. ‘It’s more than worth it to me to feed him when he’s doing such a good job on the vegetable garden. He’s even managed to get that little greenhouse that was falling to bits sorted out.’

It wasn’t just gardens Wilhelm was good at maintaining, though, as Emily had discovered that day the iron had stopped working and then again when one of the kitchen taps had started dripping.

If Sunday hadn’t been the Sabbath and it not strictly right for anyone to be working, Emily would have invited Wilhelm in to share her and Tommy’s Sunday dinner with them, as a thank you for all that he did, but since she could not do that, she now made sure instead that she cooked her Sunday roast on a day when Wilhelm was there, and if either he or Tommy thought if was odd to be sitting down to a good roast dinner on a weekday, neither of them had embarrassed her by saying anything about it.

‘Come on we’d better get back before this damp air gets on your chest,’ Emily urged Tommy, his wave in Wilhelm’s direction enabling her to smile and lift her own hand without feeling that she was doing anything out of the ordinary or risking making a fool of herself.

Grace was feeling so desperately unhappy, what with last night and the fact that she and Seb had hardly had any special time together at all, that she almost missed noticing Tommy as he turned to wave to Wilhelm.

Her eyes widened as she grabbed hold of Seb’s arm and whispered urgently, ‘Seb, look over there, that’s him. That boy I was telling you about that looks like Jack.’

Seb did his best to do as Grace was asking, but Emily and Tommy were several yards away from them and then Seb’s boss caught up with them and wanted to ask Seb his opinion on some staff rotas, and by the time Seb had answered him Emily and Tommy had gone.

‘It couldn’t possibly be Jack,’ Seb pointed out to Grace later as they chewed their way through an unappetising Sunday dinner in a local hotel – a meal that was supposed to have been a special treat but which in no way compared with Jean’s Sunday dinners.

As they ate their dinner Grace noticed Seb looking surreptitiously at his watch. Why? Because he was fed up with her and was looking forward to it being time for her to leave so that he could enjoy some of the ‘fun’ that being engaged to her was keeping from him?

She had hardly slept last night after what she had heard in the ladies at the dance. Instead of feeling close to Seb and loved by him, she felt more as though she was an outsider and unwanted. She had heard about couples breaking up because of the pressures of war but she had never thought that that would ever happen to her and Seb. She had been confident
that their love for one another would withstand anything and everything, but now she was beginning to question if she had been too confident.

Bella and Lena had just settled down to listen to a wireless programme together when the telephone rang. When Bella went to answer it the exchange put the call through and Bella heard the voice of her mother’s neighbour saying unnecessarily, ‘Bella, it’s me, Mrs James from next door to your mother. I think you should come round as quickly as you can. Your poor mother is in a dreadful state.’

Muriel James had replaced the receiver before Bella could ask her any questions, leaving Bella irritated and half inclined not to do anything as she suspected, given her mother’s behaviour after church, that she had worked herself up into a state over Lena.

However, her promotion to crèche manageress meant that she had a certain position to maintain, Bella acknowledged. Impatient though she was inclined to be with her mother, she certainly didn’t want Muriel James setting it about Wallasey that she, Bella, was not a fit person for the promotion she’d been given because she neglected her own mother.

‘I shan’t be very long,’ she told Lena, adding, ‘And make sure that you keep warm and that you don’t overdo things.’

Lena gave Bella a grateful smile. If she could have chosen anyone in the whole world to rescue her she could not have chosen anyone better than Bella, who had been and was being so very kind and lovely to her.

It didn’t take Bella very long to walk round to her parents’ house. The gates were open and her father’s car was in the drive.

As though she had been watching for her from behind the net curtains at her front-room windows, the door to Muriel’s house opened and she beckoned to Bella from her front step, telling her in a hushed voice, ‘Your poor mother, such a terrible shock, no wonder she’s in the state she is. Who would ever have thought it?’ before going back inside her own house and closing the door before Bella could ask her what was going on.

Bella still had a key to her parents’ house, and she used it now, her parents’ raised angry voices so loud, even through the closed door to the kitchen, that they drowned out the sound of Bella’s arrival. As she stood in the hall Bella could hear every word they were saying.

Her mother’s voice was shrill with fury as she demanded, ‘How could you do such a thing? You, a member of the council, and as for that … that slut …’

‘Pauline is not a slut, she’s the future Mrs Firth,’ Bella heard her father retorting, ‘and a far better Mrs Firth than you’ve ever been.’

Bella stood in the hallway, rooted to the spot as the enormity and the reality of what her parents were saying began to sink in. Her father was having an affair with his assistant – no, more than an affair if he was talking about her being ‘the future Mrs Firth’. Nausea and anger churned together inside Bella’s chest. She might have grown irritated and annoyed by her mother since she had started working at the crèche, seeing her in a new light and recognising that
she wanted more from herself than her mother had ever asked from herself, but Vi was still her mother. Bella shook herself out of her shock and went to open the kitchen door.

Her father was standing facing the back door with a bulging suitcase on the floor at his feet whilst her mother was standing in front of him barring his exit.

It was Vi who saw Bella first, exclaiming, ‘Here’s Bella. Now you can tell her what you’ve done and see what she has to say about it.’

‘I don’t give a damn about what either you or Bella have to say about anything any more, Vi, and you’d better understand that. Pauline is right, the pair of you are costing me thousands and I’ve been a fool to put up with it. Well, I’ll tell you something: I won’t be putting up with it any longer. Just as soon as my divorce is through—’

‘Divorce? You can’t divorce me. I won’t let you.’

‘Oh yes you will. Pauline’s a respectable young woman and, like she says, I owe it to her to make sure that she’s treated properly and that means her having a wedding ring on her finger.’

‘What about treating Mum properly, Dad?’ Bella stepped in, pointing out acidly, ‘After all, Pauline does already have a wedding ring on her finger, and I dare say those who know her well won’t be too surprised to hear that she’s been helping herself to another woman’s husband’s affections. After all, she’s quite plainly that type—Ouch!’

Bella’s hand flew to her cheek to sooth the pain caused by the hard slap her father had just given her. Edwin had always had a nasty temper, but he had never hit Bella before and for a minute she was too shocked to do or say anything.

‘I’m not having you speaking like that about Pauline.’

‘Edwin, Bella is your daughter – how could you?’

‘Some daughter, going and getting herself married to that wastrel and expecting me to go on paying her bills. Pauline’s right, I’ve spoiled the lot of you rotten. Well, I won’t be spoiling you any more. It’s high time you stood on your own feet, Bella. Look at Pauline and take a leaf out of her book. She’s supported herself ever since she lost her husband.’

‘Yes, and we all know how, don’t we, Daddy?’ Bella couldn’t resist saying, but this time she stepped out of reach of her father’s violence and watched from a safe distance as his face turned puce and a vein throbbed in his forehead.

Ignoring Bella, Edwin turned to Vi and told her coldly, ‘I’m warning you, Vi, you’d better agree to divorce me because if you don’t I’ll make sure that you wish that you had. You’ll be out of this house, for a start, and Bella out of hers as well. After all, they both belong to me by rights, and you can forget about me paying you anything. Of course, you can always go and ask one of your friends to take you in – or Charlie’s in-laws, perhaps.’

Bella could see that her mother was looking more distressed with every word that her father was uttering. Vi was a terrible snob and Bella knew what her mother would be thinking and how much she would be dreading the shame and gossip that a divorce would cause.

‘You can’t do this to me, Edwin. You can’t and I won’t let you. Just because that … that slut has turned your head …’

‘Pauline is more of a lady than you ever were
Vi,’ Edwin announced brutally. ‘I’ll come back in the morning when you’ve had time to see sense. Like I’ve already said, I’m prepared to do the decent thing by you if you agree to divorce me. You can move in with Bella, and I’ll give you a bit of an allowance for your pin money.’

Bella gave her father a sharp look, which he returned with one of angry determination.

‘Pauline reckons that there’s no need for the pair of you to have a house each and I agree with you. Me and her can move in here until the war’s over, and your mother can live with you.’

‘You can’t really expect Mummy to have to put up with you and Pauline living in her house,’ Bella told her father, genuinely shocked. ‘I’m surprised that Pauline would want that herself.’

Bella suspected from her father’s shifty look that she had caught him on the back foot. From what she had seen of Pauline, Bella doubted that her expectations were limited to moving into her predecessor’s home. Bella knew that her father was making a lot of money, Pauline knew that too, and Bella had no doubts whatsoever that Pauline would be expecting that money to be lavished on her.

‘I’d have thought she’d want to live somewhere like the Wirral.’

‘It doesn’t matter where she wants to live, because I am not giving up my home and I’m going to divorce you either, Edwin,’ Vi said, adding virtuously and vehemently, ‘It’s for your own sake, Edwin. You’ll come to your senses, I know you will, and when you do you’ll thank me for stopping you from making a fool of yourself over that … that slut …’

‘You’re the one who’s making a fool of yourself,
Vi, if you think that anything you say can change my mind. I’m leaving you and one way or another you will divorce me.’