Ellie

by Lesley Pearse

  Bonny looked at the money, relieved she wouldn’t have to go back to London entirely empty-handed, and that he seemed to accept her plans. ‘I’ll pay you back. Next leave you get I’ll make sure we have a wonderful time. I’m so sorry I’ve been awful to you.’

  ‘Bonny, you aren’t awful.’ Jack smiled broadly, exposing his broken tooth. ‘I told you before I’ll love you for ever and I will. I love you even more for telling me about your friend, I’m proud of you standing by her. Just don’t tell me any more lies, sweetheart, we can’t build a future on anything but truth.’

  Bonny stood on the platform until the train was almost out of sight and Jack’s waving arm just a speck of distant khaki, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Don’t take on now,’ Bert Baker said at her elbow. ‘It’s not long until he gets demobbed.’

  ‘I miss him so much,’ Bonny sobbed, allowing Bert to draw her into his arms for a comforting hug. ‘There’s no one else quite like Jack, he’s all I want.’

  After their talk yesterday morning it had been such a lovely day. The sun came out at midday and Mrs Baker made them a picnic to take down by the river. All afternoon they’d cuddled and dozed in the long grass, then off to the pictures in the evening. For that short time all her troubles seemed to melt away, and she found herself believing it could be like this for ever if she married Jack and gave up dancing. Maybe she didn’t seem to feel quite as strongly about Jack as Ellie did about Charley, but she was sure today she really did love him.

  Bert was deeply touched by this unexpected public display of emotion from Bonny. ‘It’s when you’re apart you see how much people mean to you,’ he said, patting her slender back. ‘Me and the missus hardly speak sometimes when we’re at home, but when I gets in, and she’s out, the place seems like a bleedin’ morgue. Now why don’t you pop in to see her? Michael’s gone fishing with his pals and I expect she’s missing Jack already too. She said this morning how nice it were having you to tea last night.’

  Bonny disengaged herself from Bert’s arms. She couldn’t face Mrs Baker alone; the woman had a way of looking right down into her soul. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said, dabbing at her face. ‘But I promised Aunt Lydia I would go straight back.’

  ‘Another day eh?’ Bert tweaked her cheek, the way he always had when she was small. ‘Just don’t leave it so long next time.’

  Lydia was putting on her hat in front of the hall mirror as Bonny came down the stairs, her suitcase in her hand.

  Jack’s departure for the barracks at Aldershot the previous morning had left Bonny very tearful. But fortunately Ellie had telephoned during the evening to say she’d landed them both a six-week job in Great Yarmouth, starting in four days’ time. Bonny had cheered up immediately, and gone to pack her case, saying she’d better leave in the morning so she had time to go and see her parents before setting off for Norfolk.

  Lydia pushed the pearl-ended hatpin in securely and turned. Bonny was wearing a pale green frock, her hair scraped back in a rather unflattering bun.

  ‘Got everything?’ she asked, suddenly full of remorse that she hadn’t found it in her heart to believe Bonny had food poisoning. Now she wished she’d insisted Dr Noakes examined her, because Bonny really didn’t look well. She could hardly fake her pallor or that listlessness. She’d only picked at food in the past few days, and Lydia had observed her clutching her stomach several times as though in pain.

  ‘I think so,’ Bonny said in a small voice. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt this morning. She was thrilled Ellie had come up with a job for them, but she wasn’t sure she was well enough to dance again yet. On top of that she wanted to smooth things over with Lydia before she left and she didn’t know how to.

  ‘Take this and put it in your purse,’ Lydia said, holding out a five-pound note.

  ‘No, I can’t.’ Bonny brushed it away. ‘I can manage.’

  ‘You won’t get paid for another week.’ Lydia pushed the note right into Bonny’s hand and closed her fingers around it. ‘I’d worry if I thought you couldn’t afford to eat proper meals. You still look a bit fragile. I’m sorry if I’ve been unsympathetic.’

  Bonny gulped. Lydia wasn’t one to apologise, any more than she was herself, and this effort to make things up brought a rush of affection for her aunt. ‘I was ill Auntie,’ she said quietly. ‘But I don’t blame you for thinking otherwise. I have told you some whoppers in the past.’

  Lydia had no desire to launch into a lecture at this late stage, but there were a few points which had to be made. ‘I love you, Bonny,’ she said, reaching out to draw her close. ‘I think I did from the first moment I saw you. But you have a terrible tendency to use those that love you. Me, your parents and Jack. I want you to think about this on your way home. Go and see your parents, write to Jack and come and see me again because you want to see me, not just because it’s the only place you can think of. Do you understand what I’m getting at?’

  Bonny nodded, ashamed of herself.

  ‘That’s all, lecture over.’ Lydia laughed lightly. ‘Drop me a line as soon as you get to Great Yarmouth so I know you’re safe. Now let’s get to the station. Bert Baker won’t hold up the train, not even for you.’

  Bonny stopped at the flower barrow outside Becontree station and selected a bunch of dahlias. She had got back to Stacey Passage yesterday afternoon. Today she’d persuaded Ellie to come with her to see her parents.

  Ellie looked around curiously as Bonny was paying. She’d never been to Dagenham before, and it wasn’t a bit how she’d imagined.

  The station entrance was built over the tube lines, and the road sloped down towards a row of shops. Ellie knew this whole vast estate had been built during the twenties to rehouse people from the slums in the East End, and she could imagine how overjoyed people were to be given nice new modern homes. But it had a remarkably soulless feel about it, despite the wide roads and neat houses. Dagenham had had more than its share of bomb damage during the war, but in this part it was only superficial.

  ‘Are you sure your parents won’t mind me turning up with you?’ Ellie asked as they walked down past the shops. Many still had tired-looking VE Day displays in their windows, probably because there was still a shortage of other goods.

  ‘These will make it all right.’ Bonny indicated the flowers, grinning impishly. ‘Besides, you are my escape route, we can leave as soon as we’ve had tea.’

  Flamstead Road looked pretty. Almost all the front gardens were full of flowers and net curtains at the windows were uniformly sparkling white. A group of children were playing cricket in the street. They paused in the game to watch the girls go by, and one boy of about eleven, with a grubby face and much-patched baggy shorts, whistled cheekily at them.

  ‘Mum never let me play in the street,’ Bonny whispered. ‘See how close the school is?’ She pointed to the low building opposite the house. ‘She even used to walk across to meet me!’

  Ellie remembered the grim, dark Bancroft Road school and thought Bonny was lucky to have been in classrooms overlooking playing fields. A couple of men were digging and raking. Presumably the grass had been dug up during the war to grow vegetables, and it looked as if they were going to replant it with grass seed now.

  ‘Bonny!’ Mrs Phillips’s eyes widened in astonishment when she opened the door to find her daughter on the step. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I’d have done some baking.’

  Bonny kissed her mother and introduced Ellie, though in fact Ellie had met her briefly once before, when the Phillipses came to see the show at the Phoenix. Then, before her mother could get a word in edgeways, Bonny informed her they couldn’t stay long.

  Within minutes, Ellie felt for herself Doris Phillips’s obsessive adoration of her child. From the moment they got inside the door, Doris never stopped wittering.

  She couldn’t listen to the answer to one question before starting on another. Why had they left the show? Why did she go to Miss Wynter’s instead of c
oming straight home? How did Bonny know it was safe in Great Yarmouth? What if the digs were dirty?

  Doris Phillips seemed an improbable mother for a girl like Bonny. She was short and stout and shared none of her daughter’s sparkle. Only her eyes showed her to be Bonny’s real mother. Doris’s had faded a paler blue, their size diminished by wrinkles and folds of loose flesh, but somehow Ellie knew they were once identical to Bonny’s.

  Ellie sat in the brown Rexine-covered armchair and studied the living-room as Bonny attempted to get through the fabricated story of her food poisoning and of Ambrose sacking them both for missing performances. The room was full of photographs of Bonny, from a plump, smiling baby sitting on a fur rug, to more recent ones taken at the Phoenix, and all the stages in between. Bonny in a tutu, Bonny at the seaside on a donkey, posed ones from studios in gilt frames, small snapshots in cardboard mounts. Bonny had said her bedroom was like a shrine to her babyhood; this room was a chart of her progress.

  Everywhere there was evidence that Bonny was Doris’s sole reason for being. Her ballet and tap exam certificates framed on the wall, knitting needles and pink wool sitting on a cardigan pattern which could only be for her. Little cross-stitched mats on every surface, clearly Bonny’s handiwork.

  Ellie thought wryly that Grace Gilbert would approve of the scrupulous cleanliness of this room. Like everywhere now, it needed redecorating, but Mr Phillips had patched up the wallpaper damaged during the Blitz and the curtains had been starched. Everything was just so – cushions plumped up, highly polished brass ornaments arranged with precision. Even Mr Phillips’s pipes, spills, ashtray and gardening books were placed carefully by his armchair. He was still at work. Mrs Phillips kept harping on about how she had kippers for his tea, but she’d have to find something else for them.

  ‘But I still don’t understand why you didn’t telephone Mrs Parsons and get her to run and get me if you were ill?’ Doris’s blue eyes were full of reproach as she looked at her daughter.

  ‘Oh, Mum, I didn’t want to worry you,’ Bonny said, looking at Ellie and winking. ‘Besides, Ellie was looking after me.’

  Doris looked hard at Ellie. She suspected her of leading Bonny astray, but she couldn’t see anything about the girl to confirm this suspicion. She spoke well, with good manners, she was quietly dressed, and she didn’t seem to be a trollop. Doris wanted to be reassured by this new friend, the only one aside from Jack she remembered Bonny having for more than a few days, but she felt a little jealous.

  ‘You will look after my Bonny in Great Yarmouth?’ she asked. ‘Make sure she eats properly and gets to bed early?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ellie smiled. ‘The sea air will be good for her, she’ll soon get over her food poisoning.’

  Arnold Phillips arrived home on his bicycle at ten past six. Through the window Ellie saw him remove his bicycle clips from his trousers and take his sandwich tin out of the saddle bag. She thought he looked weary, but as Bonny ran out to greet him, his face broke into a wide smile of pure delight and suddenly he looked younger and less stooped.

  Ellie soon realised that she liked Arnold. She had fully expected him to launch into a repeat of his wife’s cross-examination, but he didn’t. He accepted Bonny’s brief story, showed concern that she’d been ill and pleasure that she had another dancing job, and left it at that. Ellie noted how Doris insisted he put on a cardigan once he’d removed his jacket, even though it was hot, and frowned when he attempted to take off his tie, and she felt sorry for him. He was obviously terribly henpecked.

  Doris announced tea was ready almost immediately after Arnold arrived home. ‘I’ve been keeping this tin of salmon for something special,’ she declared, placing the dish with due ceremony on the table. There was little space left in the room with the folding dining-table opened up, and she had to squeeze round it to get her best tea service out of the sideboard.

  Arnold had his kippers and mashed potato, and Doris and the girls the salmon and salad. ‘Goodness knows when we’ll find such things in the shops again. I was queuing for nearly an hour at the Co-op this morning to try and get a couple of slices of ham for Mr Phillips’s sandwiches, but it was all gone by the time my turn came. I think they keep it under the counter for their favourite customers. Mrs Salcombe next door always seems to get what she wants, but then she’s a fast baggage.’

  Bonny giggled. ‘Mum! Mrs Salcombe fast? She’s at least fifty!’

  Doris sniffed. ‘You don’t know her like I do. While her husband was off in the army she was out every night. She drinks and she plays cards for money.’

  ‘Come now, dear,’ Arnold said patiently. ‘She was an ARP warden, that’s where she went at night, and she was very kind to us when our roof was damaged.’

  By the time tea was over, Ellie could understand exactly why Bonny was so reluctant to come home to her mother. She never stopped fussing, forcing Bonny to eat more, urging her to chew her food properly, remarking on her pallor, and constantly firing questions about whether she ate greens, drank enough milk and what time she went to bed. When Bonny said they’d have to leave after tea, Ellie couldn’t wait to get out of the door. Not once during their four-hour stay had she heard the woman laugh, and she guessed that if Bonny had come alone, the questions would have been of a very much more intimate nature.

  Ellie watched the leaving ceremony with near disbelief. Mrs Phillips had made some sandwiches ‘for their journey’, and she’d miraculously found some tinned food and half a fruit cake ‘to tide them over’. Two pairs of delicately embroidered knickers went into a bag, and yet another dress specially made for Bonny. These gifts were touching, but it was the constant barrage of instructions and warnings that made Ellie cringe.

  ‘Make sure you get in a “ladies only” carriage when you travel to Great Yarmouth. Don’t sit on the toilet seat or you’ll get germs and don’t wash your hair while you’re having a period.’

  Once she’d run out of warnings, Mrs Phillips began to cry. ‘But I don’t know when I’ll see you again,’ she sobbed, clutching Bonny to her plump bosom.

  Bonny rolled her eyes at Ellie over her mother’s shoulder. ‘It’s only six weeks, Mummy,’ she said between clenched teeth.

  Mr Phillips had stood back while all this went on. But as his wife finally let Bonny go, he came forward, hugged Bonny briefly and put a five pound note in her hand. ‘Look after yourself, sweetheart,’ he said gruffly. ‘Write to us won’t you? Good luck with the show.’

  ‘Phew,’ Bonny exclaimed once they had turned the corner and she no longer had to keep looking back to wave to her mother. ‘I swear every time I come I won’t go back. Aren’t they awful?’

  ‘Your mum is a bit much’ Ellie agreed. ‘But I wouldn’t mind a dad like yours, or a real home.’

  Once on the train. Bonny fell asleep, her head lolling on to Ellie’s shoulder. Ellie thought again about Sir Miles Hamilton and smiled as she imagined how excited Bonny would be if she told her.

  But she wasn’t going to tell her friend, not tonight, or ever. Bonny couldn’t be trusted with a secret as big as that!

  They would be off to Great Yarmouth on Monday – a brand new start at the seaside, with no reminders of the past. The pay was awful, just two pounds ten shillings a week, plus their board and lodgings, and three matinées a week on top of the evening performances. Edward would be joining them too; Mr Biggs had been delighted to find a pianist. Everything was going to be just wonderful. She might even be able to forget Charley.

  Chapter Twenty

  August 1945

  Edward played the introduction, the curtain drew back and Ellie and Bonny appeared through an archway before a painted backdrop of a country mansion.

  ‘We’re a couple of swells,’ they sang, dressed as tramps in battered top hats and frock-coats, canes swung over their shoulders with the inevitable red polka-dotted bundles on the end. ‘We stop at the best hotels. But we prefer the country far away from the city smells.’

  Edward smiled up at th
e girls. This, their first number in the show, was always a crowd-pleaser. The Majestic Theatre didn’t live up to its name – it was a seedy little place, tucked away in a side street, desperately in need of new seats and redecoration. But tonight, like every night since they’d arrived in Great Yarmouth over four weeks ago, every seat was taken, with people standing at the back.

  On the world stage, dramatic events had taken place in the last few weeks. First, in July, Labour had won the general election. Then came news of the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was little sympathy for the seventy thousand Japanese thought to have died in the blasts, only delight in hearing that the Japs had surrendered on August 14th, bringing the Far East war to a close.

  Edward and the girls read in the papers that crowds flocked into the West End of London for VJ Day, but here in Great Yarmouth the celebrations were restrained. There were severe shortages of alcohol, and perhaps people on holiday felt no need to break out.

  For Edward, Bonnie and Ellie, world events meant little. This show with Mr Biggs was a picnic compared with working for Ambrose Dingle. There was the beach, the funfair, sunshine, and their digs were right on the sea front. They didn’t really care what was happening elsewhere.

  Edward had discovered he could be happy. Each day here he felt he was moving closer and closer to a state of bliss. Sometimes he had to remind himself that the show had less than two weeks to run and that unless another job like this was offered to him and the girls he might be plunged back into isolation. He often made himself look closely at his tiny room in the attic above Ellie’s and Bonny’s, and tell himself how frowsy the boarding-house was, that it was only the heady, holiday atmosphere and Ellie which made it fun.

  He had so much to thank Ellie for. If she hadn’t put his name forward to Mr Biggs, he’d still be stuck in Wiltshire with his grandmother, holding her knitting skeins and mowing the lawn, all the time brooding on his sexuality, wondering if there was a place, anywhere for him, where he wouldn’t feel an outcast.