The Orphan Sisters: An Utterly Heartbreaking and Gripping World War 2 Historical Novel

by Shirley Dickson

  He stiffened and let her go. ‘Look here, I don’t need instructions.’

  Then the cosy atmosphere became one of suspicion and the knowledge of what she’d done with another man grew like an insurmountable wall between them.

  They didn’t mention the subject again but that night, as he climbed into bed, his face contrite, Trevor said, ‘Etty, I want yi’ to know that I think you’re absolutely gorgeous… and if it’s all right with you can we––’

  She put her hand over his lips.

  ‘Yes.’

  As he pulled back the bedcovers and took her in his arms, she thought of Mr Chipping. There was hope for Trevor yet.

  Trevor never did retrieve the key from his mam, nor did she stop calling in at their home at all hours.

  Trouble started when Etty came home early one morning from the nightshift. She crept along the passage so she wouldn’t waken Trevor and, opening the kitchen door, she saw Nellie stood at the range, a spitting frying pan in her hand.

  ‘What are you doing home so early?’ Nellie didn’t so much as turn her head.

  The smell of heated fat made Etty queasy. She drew a few deep breaths.

  ‘More to the point, Mrs Milne, what are you doing at my range?’

  ‘I’m cooking for me son. He hasn’t had a proper breakfast since the day he wed.’

  ‘Your son is capable of making his own breakfast.’

  ‘Call yourself a wife, you’re an apology.’ The outburst took Etty unawares and she felt her hackles rise. It was shades of Mistress Knowles again and she wasn’t going to let this tyrannical mother-in-law blight her life.

  ‘Another thing; me son can’t eat his bait because that national bread you give him tastes foul.’

  The vindictive look on her face suggested Nellie was gunning for an argument.

  ‘Your son is a grown man. If he has a complaint, he can speak for himself.’

  It rankled that Trevor had discussed her with his mam. Then again, she shouldn’t jump to conclusions. She didn’t know in what context Trevor had spoken, and Nellie might be out to make trouble.

  ‘Whatever happens in this household is no business of yours.’

  ‘Cheeky hussy.’ Nellie flipped a sizzling sausage with a fork onto its other side and as hot fat spilled onto the fire, angry flames whooshed up the chimney. ‘Mark my words, Trevor will rue the day he married you, if he doesn’t already, that is.’

  ‘I think you’ve said enough, Mrs Milne,’ Etty fought to stay calm. She refused to give Nellie the satisfaction of losing her temper. ‘I’ll take over now. I’ll thank you to go and you can leave the back door key on the table.’

  ‘I’ll do nee such thing.’

  ‘Trevor and I would like our privacy.’

  ‘I’d like to hear what me son has to say about that.’

  ‘In the future if you want to visit, rap at the back window and if we’re not busy we’ll let you in.’

  ‘I damn well won’t. Anyways, who takes notice of you? If it wasn’t for me––’

  ‘What’s all the commotion about?’

  Trevor stood in the doorway. He wore striped pyjamas, his hair mussed and his face puffy from sleep.

  ‘It’s her fault, son,’ Nellie clutched her heart and appeared to shrink. ‘I don’t feel well,’ she gasped a few breaths to prove a point. ‘That wife o’ yours says I’m not welcome in your home.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Etty told Trevor. ‘I said we wanted privacy and that I wanted the house key back.’

  Trevor looked from one to the other. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Seems a reasonable request to me, Ma.’

  Nellie’s face turned puce as an overripe plum. ‘You’re forgetting yourself, son, and whose flat you’re living in.’ There was a hint of menace in her tone. She stabbed a sausage with a fork and placed it on a plate heating in the oven. ‘I wonder what Mr Newman would think if he heard you’d turned your old Ma out of your home. An upstanding man is Mr Newman. I can’t see him employing you then, can you?’

  She cracked their one and only egg into the frying pan. Then with a smirk of triumph, she left.

  17

  December 1941

  Like most Shields folk, Etty kept up with the local news in the Gazette, growing despondent when she read of all the deaths. How many more young men must lose their lives?

  Two nights before, even though the weather was thick fog, the enemy had mounted an attack on Tyneside. The city of Newcastle suffered the worst and Etty’s heart went out to all those who’d lost loved ones, especially now when New Year loomed. She felt humbled – her own problems seemingly so insignificant against the backdrop of the world stage. Yet how she longed for her marriage to work and how she vowed for the bairn she carried to be brought up in a loving home.

  As her stomach swelled with her unborn child, Etty speculated about her own mother. Did she have maternal feelings? How could she have done such a thing, abandoning her daughters? She made a silent promise to the baby growing within her womb. Come what may, she would always be there for it. Never would she treat any child of hers as disgracefully as Mam had her and Dorothy.

  Etty wanted New Year’s Eve, her first as a wife, to be special – a foretaste of their future lives together.

  Minutes before midnight, she hustled Trevor over the threshold, indulging in the northern tradition of ‘first footing’.

  ‘Exactly what is it we have to do?’ she’d asked Trevor earlier on. Being brought up at Blakey, Etty had been deprived of the tradition.

  ‘It’s a ritual,’ Trevor explained, ‘where a man… preferably dark-haired as the saying goes… waits outside till midnight. When he steps inside he brings prosperity and good luck to the household for the New Year.’

  As she hustled him out of the door, Etty pressed a lump of coal and a twist of salt and tea into his hand.

  ‘What’s all this in aid of, then?’

  ‘I read in tonight’s paper that it’s customary to do this so we won’t go without.’

  ‘Daft carry on,’ he said, but Etty detected a hint of satisfaction in his voice. ‘By heck, I’ll freeze standing out here.’

  ‘It’s not long till midnight,’ she whispered, conscious of the other men who stood outside their front doors that might be listening in. She lowered her voice, ‘Then we’ll celebrate just the two of us.’

  ‘You’re on,’ he laughed. ‘Meanwhile, get yourself in the warm and wait for me knock by the fire.’

  Etty felt a surge of love at him for being so considerate of her.

  Since their row, things had dramatically improved. As the pleasure in their bedroom filtered into daily life, they enjoyed each other’s company and became friends as well as lovers.

  Pattering through to the kitchen, Etty anticipated the night ahead. She checked the clock on the mantelpiece. Seven minutes to go until midnight.

  She glanced around the darkened room and smiled at the little imitation tree where candles burned brightly in holders. The glow of flames flickering on the far wall from the fire opposite gave the night an expectant, magical feel, where everything seemed possible.

  It was a perishing cold night, when the moon shone and ice sparkled on the cobbled street. Trevor stamped his booted feet to inject life back into them. He was never one to be sentimental but there was something about New Year’s Eve and its reflective atmosphere that got to him. Here he was, a married man with a bairn on the way and, the icing on the cake, he had a foot in Newman’s door.

  Aye, life was looking up.

  ‘If you work for me, lad,’ the boss told Trevor, ‘it’ll pay you to remember that undertakers are like the clergy themselves, and people look up to us.’

  Aye, Trevor considered, as he waited outside his front door with a lump of coal in his hand, the boss was a pillar of righteousness in the community, all right, and if Trevor played his cards right, folk would think the same of him.

  That moment, as the bright moon sailed behind a cloud, a dart of unease clouded Trev
or’s jubilant mood. At dinner time he’d promised his mother he’d call at her house at twelve and first foot.

  She’d collared him at the front door as he was walking down the street from work.

  ‘A word, son.’

  Ma had turned indoors, hand on the banister rail, hauling herself up the stairs with an energy he didn’t know she possessed. There was nothing else for it; Trevor had followed. His favourite fish pie waited for him on the kitchen table – he should have known there was a catch.

  ‘I can’t stay, Ma. Etty will have me dinner waiting downstairs at home.’

  Ignoring him, she cut a wedge of pie.

  ‘You’ll be out first footing tonight, son, I presume?’ It seemed a trick question.

  ‘Dunno,’ Trevor hedged. ‘Why?’

  She placed the piece of pie on a plate and handed it to him. One bit of pie won’t hurt, he thought, hungrily taking a bite.

  ‘I suppose now you’ve got a home of your own, first footing yer old Ma is a thing of the past.’ She sighed like a martyr. ‘Even though you’ve never missed a year since you were a laddie.’

  Crikey Moses, Trevor wished he’d had the good sense to forgo the fish pie.

  ‘I’ll drop by tonight,’ he said, ‘but I can’t stop, Etty is expecting me to first foot at ours.’

  His mother’s smirk rattled him.

  Now, the commotion in the street, with doors banging, shouts of ‘Happy New Year’ and ship’s hooters blasting on the River Tyne, alerted Trevor that the New Year had begun.

  Strong northerly winds strengthened further, and a few flakes of swirling snow landed on Trevor’s head. All he wanted was to kiss his wife and wish her all the best in the new year.

  Guilt taking over, he moved a couple of paces along to Ma’s adjoining door, with grave misgivings. Finding the door open, he stepped inside.

  He’d only be a minute, Trevor promised himself.

  Meanwhile, downstairs, Etty couldn’t believe the time on the clock. Ten past twelve and Trevor still hadn’t knocked. Her eyes travelled to the ceiling where she heard thuds from upstairs. Footsteps made their way across the floor and Etty heard muffled voices. Suspicion grew, but she quickly dismissed it. Trevor wouldn’t!

  She rose, treading in her slippers along the passageway to the front door. Opening it, she looked out. Her heart sank – not a sign of Trevor. She stepped outside into the perishing cold night and moved along to Nellie Milne’s door. It stood ajar and Etty walked in.

  Standing in the lobby at the foot of the stairs, the obligatory smell of fish hitting her nostrils, she strained to listen. Noise drifted down the stairwell; the sound of high-pitched, excitable voices. It sounded like a party – a party no one had thought to invite Etty to, and she had no doubt Trevor was there. How could he? On the first new year in their home. She heard Nellie’s wheezy laugh, but Etty wouldn’t rise to the bait by rushing upstairs and making a scene.

  She felt deflated, and then so mad, that she wanted to wail and scream like a toddler. It was such a silly thought it made her smile, and her mood lifted. Etty was determined to rise above such a childish reaction. She wouldn’t allow her vile mother-in-law to turn her into a screechy wife. Neither would she play Nellie’s game of battling for domination.

  Trevor had let her down but, like the heroine, Mrs Chipping, in the film, Etty would remain patient. After all, he knew no better than to please his wily mam.

  Proud of her sensible self, she made her way back into the kitchen. Once again, she checked her watch. Twenty past twelve. She marvelled at how the atmosphere in the room had transformed in such a short space of time. The fire needed coal, the candles were burnt out, and the room, cold and dim, held a jaded feel. The spread on the table that she’d prepared earlier in case any revellers called by – sandwiches, jam tarts, homemade ginger wine – only intensified her loneliness.

  She considered going to her sister’s, then remembered that without Laurie to celebrate with her, Dorothy was retiring early to bed. The night spoilt, weariness overcame Etty but she decided to give Trevor a minute or two longer. She banked the fire and, pouring a glass of milk, settled on the couch.

  She must have dozed off for the next thing she knew she started awake, empty glass in hand. Something had woken her. There it came again – a noise in the passageway.

  ‘Trevor, is that you?’

  No answer. Too late, she remembered she’d left the front door open. Anyone could walk in. A sliver of fear shot through her.

  She rose and switched on the light. In its naked beam, she stood hypnotised as she watched the kitchen door slowly open.

  A figure in uniform emerged.

  ‘Billy!’

  His face was flushed and, somewhat unsteady on his feet, he swayed into the room and leaned against the wall. Taking a slim packet of cigarettes from his trouser pocket, he lit one with a match and, inhaling deeply, scrutinised her through a haze of smoke.

  She tried to remain composed but a fire ignited in her.

  ‘You married him, then, mammy’s boy?’

  His gait unsteady, he lunged forward and Etty smelt alcohol on his breath.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with you. Go away… you’re drunk.’

  Billy concentrated on standing upright and, tilting his head comically, said, ‘I’m only a teensy bit drunk. It’s New Year after all.’

  The desire to laugh overwhelmed Etty, but she stopped herself. The matter in hand was too serious.

  ‘How did you know where I live?’

  ‘I ashed May.’

  She should have guessed.

  ‘Trevor’s due home any minute.’

  Billy gave a silly grin. ‘Nah! He’s not. Saw him teetering down the shtreet into somebody’s house… there was a mob of them. A right seshion it looked.’

  Etty glanced at the clock. 2.a.m. Trevor should be home, her mind blazed.

  An exaggerated look of hurt crossed Billy’s handsome face. ‘Why didn’t you write? I waited, then I heard you married him. Don’t say you love him because I know different.’

  This was getting out of hand. ‘You’ve got May,’ she reminded him, ‘what about her? Don’t you love her?’

  ‘Course I do, in me own way.’ As he tossed the half smoked cigarette in the fire, Etty longed to touch his face, to trace the dimple in his chin. ‘Silly lass tries too hard, she suffocates us and I can’t stand it any more.’ He heaved a dramatic sigh. ‘I have to, though, cos it’s hard to be cruel to someone as nice as May. It’s you I want, though.’

  Those amazing eyes beseeched hers, yet there was obstinacy in them too. Where women were concerned, Billy was used to getting his own way. It occurred to Etty that she was just another challenge. The more she resisted him, the more he wanted her.

  Tipsily he slurred, ‘I had to see you.’

  This was getting them nowhere. She tried to make light of the situation, and laughing hollowly, said, ‘Billy Buckley, you’re drunk. Away home with you… you’ll rue making such a fool of yourself in the morning.’

  ‘Be honest. You want me as much as I––’

  ‘It stops here, Billy.’

  ‘Why? Who’s to know?’

  Even though drunk, his nerve astounded her.

  ‘I won’t have an affair.’

  Clarity sparked in his eye and he straightened up, ‘So, you’re going to walk away from what we have.’

  ‘We’ve got nothing, Billy. A chance affair, that’s all it was, in the shelter. Two people afraid they were going to die.’ In her distress, Etty raised her voice. ‘We’ve no future together. Go away. This time stay away for good. Is that clear?’

  Lord help her, as the words hung in the air, madness seized Etty. She was tempted to tell him the whole sordid mess; that the bairn she carried was his, and ask him what he was going to do about it.

  He opened his mouth to speak and then, as if he thought better of it, shut it again. His face became a mask and with a stiff little nod, unsteadily, he left the room.

&
nbsp; As the front door slammed, Etty wondered if the pain in her heart would ever heal.

  Some while later, Etty heard a key rattle in the front door, footsteps plodding along the passage.

  Trevor.

  He entered the kitchen and the cautious gleam in his eye said it all.

  ‘I couldn’t get away because me Ma had––’

  Etty held up a hand. ‘Please, no excuses, Trevor.’

  ‘Etty, I tried but Ma had a houseful of neighbours and they––’

  ‘I’m tired and I’m off to bed.’

  An acute sense of her hypocrisy overcame Etty – how dare she condemn Trevor? She was twice as bad, pandering to Billy when she should have shown him the door from the first.

  Trevor brought something from his trouser pocket. ‘This is for you, love.’

  Nellie’s door key lay in his palm.

  Weeks passed. On a Saturday evening in late February, Etty sat by the fire reading a national newspaper. With paper rationed and the publications restricted in size, she reflected that there was hardly any reading in them any more.

  She yawned, folding the newspaper and placing it on the couch, where Trevor could read it later. He was working the late shift at the pit and would soon be home wanting his supper.

  The fire, burning embers now, needed tending to. Etty picked two pieces of coal from the coalscuttle with tongs, placed them on the embers and watched them ignite. Trevor would appreciate a warm fire to come home to on this cold winter’s night. Coal was a precious commodity and every bit had to be conserved. Setting a place at the table, Etty thought about how hard miners like her husband worked, supplying factories to make weapons to help win the war and––

  As she heard the public alert from the air raid siren, Etty’s train of thought was interrupted. The kitchen door burst open and Trevor hurtled in.

  ‘Get yerself into the shelter,’ he demanded, throwing his haversack on the table. ‘I’ll boil a kettle of water for the flask.’