by Maureen Lee
‘Oh, sod it,’ he said out loud.
‘Is that you, Nick?’ A woman’s voice he vaguely recognised.
‘Yes,’ he said curtly. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Doria Mallory. I work in the office next to yours. Do you mind if I hold on to you? I’m absolutely lost here. Have you any idea where we are? I always lose track the minute I step outside the building.’
‘Opposite Charlie’s, I reckon.’ If you turned left coming out of Dover Street, it was twelve paces down.
‘Charlie’s?’
‘It’s a bar. I’m hoping to go there if I can get across the road.’
‘Oh, may I join you for a drink? That would be wonderful. A gin and It is exactly what I need right now.’
‘Are you old enough to go to pubs?’ She didn’t sound it.
‘I’m eighteen; nearly nineteen.’
‘Oh, all right then.’ He would have preferred her to go away once she had helped him across the road.
She was unfortunately on his left side, which meant she had to hold on to the empty sleeve that he normally tucked in his pocket. Somehow they managed to get to the other side of Piccadilly all in one piece and Charlie’s was quickly located, next door to Osborne’s, an exclusive gents’ tailors. Nick lifted the curtain for his companion – he had already forgotten her name – and let it fall before opening the door and being met by the sound of the music coming from below.
For Nick, the music held almost as much attraction as the drink. It was New Orleans jazz, being played at its loudest on a gramophone: Bunk Johnson, Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong. Listening to King Oliver play ‘Canal Street Blues’ was an experience of which he would never tire.
‘Gosh, I like the music,’ his companion said. ‘Is this what’s called jazz?’
‘New Orleans jazz,’ Nick told her. So far there were only a few people in the bar, but it would quickly become crowded. He led the way to a table some distance away from the entrance.
The young woman smiled as she sat down. ‘You’ve forgotten my name, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he was forced to confess.
‘Oh well, it’s not surprising when I told you it under such chaotic circumstances,’ she said kindly. ‘It’s Doria Mallory. And the Doria isn’t a variation of Doris, which I hate, but the feminine form of Dorian, which is Greek.’
‘My mother and father are Greek,’ Nicholas told her. They had gone to Canada at the start of the war and he hadn’t seen either of them since.
‘My parents are as British as an oak tree, but my mother was determined to give her children names that she – and she presumed everyone else – had never heard before. My brothers are Pierce, which is also Greek, and Fabian, which is Roman.’
‘I’ve heard of Fabian. I think Shakespeare had a Fabian in one of his plays.’ He couldn’t remember which one.
Doria laughed. ‘I shall write tomorrow and tell her – my mother, that is – that she’s not as clever as she thinks she is. Oh, and Pierce calls himself Peter, which rather annoys her.’
‘I don’t blame him.’ Nick was actually enjoying the sheer triviality of the conversation. The waiter, Albert, who Nick knew well, came and asked what they’d like to drink. He added a knowing wink and the suggestion of a grin when he glanced at Doria. Nick had never brought a woman here before.
Nick ordered a gin and It and a Pimm’s. The evening called for more than his usual whisky and soda.
‘Yes, sir,’ Albert said with another wink.
After he’d gone, Nick looked properly at Doria for the first time, while she searched for something in her handbag. He was taken aback by how pretty she was, how absolutely perfect. Her hair, curled tightly in childish ringlets, glinted like gold in the subdued light of the bar. Her wide, innocent eyes were bright blue and her cheeks a delicate pink. She was the ideal woman to be seen with to incite the envy of his male friends. Her picture would have looked well on an expensive box of chocolates.
She looked up and caught him watching. Perhaps she saw the admiration in his eyes, because she said, ‘You’re not so bad yourself, Flying Officer Stephens.’
He could have sworn he blushed. ‘Call me Nick,’ he said. ‘And I’m no longer in the forces.’ After losing his arm, he hadn’t expected any more flattering comments on his attractiveness to women. ‘How long have you worked in Dover Street?’
‘Eight months,’ she said accusingly, tossing the ringlets. ‘I’ve been trying to catch your eye since my first day. In fact, I’ve been flaunting myself in front of you quite outrageously, but apparently you didn’t notice.’ She made a face. ‘You didn’t even know my name.’
‘I do now,’ he assured her. Albert came with the drinks and Nick picked up the Pimm’s and drank it as easily as if it were lemonade. That was the trouble with fancy drinks; he found them impossible to sip slowly like whisky.
‘I followed you tonight, you know,’ Doria said, blue eyes sparkling. ‘I thought to myself, if the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain – it goes something like that, doesn’t it? It wasn’t by chance I asked if I could cross the road with you. It was part of my plan – I only hatched it when I noticed you passing my office to leave.’
‘I’m married.’ He felt he ought to be honest about his position right from the start, in case her plan included having him as a boyfriend – though he couldn’t imagine why any young woman would want to.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Your wife and child are in Liverpool. All the girls know that, but it still doesn’t stop us from trying to capture the most handsome man in the office while he’s living in London.’ She licked her lips and looked at him slyly. ‘And not only is he handsome, but a hero to boot.’
She was flirting with him! Nick couldn’t remember the last time he’d flirted with a woman. His relationship with Eileen had been deadly serious right from the start. She’d been married to a man who was a beast, and her little boy, Tony, whom Nick had grown to love as a son, had died in an air raid along with his father. It had all been so tragic – and it was still tragic now. When had they last laughed? Would they ever laugh together again?
He signalled Albert and asked for a whisky and soda. He had a strong and pleasurable feeling about what the evening had in store for him, and he knew he’d need quite a few drinks in order to play his part.
He felt guilty next morning when he woke to find Doria Mallory stark naked in his bed. It had come as a shock as well as a relief to discover that she wasn’t a virgin; that at the age of eighteen she had done this before – how many times? he wondered, and was glad he hadn’t been the first.
His guilt, though, wasn’t great enough to cancel out the pleasure he had experienced, which had made him feel like a man again.
On 4 March, the submarine Thunderbolt was sunk off the coast of Sicily with the loss of all hands. It wasn’t the first time this ship and its crew had been destined for an early death, for the sub’s original name was the Thetis, and it had sunk in Liverpool Bay on its first trial voyage three and a half years before. Ninety-nine people had died, that day most of them from Liverpool. The vessel had been raised, refurbished, and christened Thunderbolt, but it must have been cursed and it sank a second time. It was another terrible tragedy for the people of the city.
Chapter 3
On the first Sunday in March, Sheila Reilly went to see her sister Eileen in Melling, taking baby Mollie for her first big outing. Her other six children went with her, along with Brenda and her two girls, and Lena Newton, who had been looking forward to the visit for weeks. Lena really enjoyed making herself useful by carrying Oona and helping Mary and Ryan, still only toddlers, on and off the buses and trams.
‘I’m afraid Nick isn’t home,’ Eileen said when the guests, all twelve of them, arrived at her pretty cottage.
It was still quite early, and little wisps of mist hung over the garden, where the trees were sporting a faint coating of green, heralding the fact that spring was on its way. Lena could see a m
an hard at work, digging like fury and throwing the soil to one side. He was well into his fifties but ruggedly handsome. This, she discovered later when they were introduced, was Jack Doyle, Sheila and Eileen’s father. They were a handsome lot, the Doyles – there was a son, too, Sean, who she had yet to meet. Lena felt over-conscious of her plainness and her ugly round glasses, though it didn’t usually bother her.
Eileen, who she was meeting for the first time, had a smooth, quiet beauty, though her blue eyes were incredibly sad. Nick, her husband, worked in an office in London. There’d been a bit of a crisis, she explained, and he’d had to stay for the weekend.
‘Didn’t the same thing happen the week before last, sis?’ Sheila remarked.
Eileen’s head drooped like a flower. ‘Yes, apparently it’s the same crisis come back to haunt them, Nick says.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to haunt them a third time,’ Sheila said bluntly. ‘It must be dead lonely for you and Nicky being in this place on your own.’
‘I like it here, Sheila,’ her sister said quietly.
Lena felt sure they would have had an argument about it – at least Sheila would – had there not been other people present. Then Nicky, Eileen’s son, came running into the room, and he was such an endearing little boy that Lena couldn’t stop herself from picking him up and giving him a hug. Being among these women, all younger than she was, all with children, made her own need rise like a ball of pain in her throat. But all she could do was blink back the tears.
It was nearing Easter, and Eileen was hosting a garden party on Easter Saturday, as she had done since moving to the cottage. ‘You’re invited, of course,’ she said to Lena. ‘Are you any good at making stuff like gloves and embroidered things to sell? Mind you, food sells best – fairy cakes, scones, cheese straws – though you’ll only be getting rations for one, won’t you. You won’t have anything to spare.’
‘I can make dolls,’ Lena said eagerly. ‘I’m really good at making rag dolls. The place I worked in Birmingham used to have a summer fete. One year I made a really big doll and it was a raffle prize.’
Eileen looked pleased. When she smiled, it was dazzling and made Lena feel that she would do anything on earth to please her. ‘That would be very helpful, Lena,’ she said. ‘I’ll make a note that you’re providing the raffle prize. Oh, and don’t forget to ask Brenda for some scraps of cloth.’
The midday meal was eaten round a big wooden table that took up almost half of the long room that served as a living and dining room. There were beams on the ceiling, lace curtains at the windows, daffodils on the sills and bottles of preserved tomatoes and plums on the table. Sheila had brought half a pound of boiled ham, Brenda a small tin of corned beef and Lena a large bag of toffees and dolly mixtures. ‘I hardly ever use my sweet coupons,’ she explained, and Sheila said that would certainly make her popular with the children.
There was a groan when Eileen placed a loaf in the centre of the table with a loud thump.
‘Oh no!’ Sheila said.
‘I don’t want any, Mam,’ Caitlin cried.
Jack Doyle, who’d temporarily abandoned the garden for something to eat, said sternly, ‘It’s good for you, girl. In fact, it’s full of goodness. It’s called the National Loaf.’
‘But it’s dirty,’ Caitlin argued.
‘Of course it isn’t dirty,’ her grandad said indignantly. ‘It’s that colour because the husks are in there as well as the wheat. A slice of that, girl, will do your belly a load of good.’
Caitlin regarded him disbelievingly. ‘Won’t it make me belly dirty too?’
‘Your belly will do somersaults when it sees that bread on its way down.’
‘Oh Dad!’ Sheila said, exasperated. ‘I don’t like that horrible stuff either.’
Jack reached out, cut himself a huge chunk of the offending bread, covered it with margarine, added almost a tablespoon of home-made gooseberry jam and stuffed it in his mouth. ‘Mmm! It’s the gear,’ he mumbled.
‘I think I’ll just have the jam, Mam,’ said Caitlin.
It had begun to grow dark when they left to go back to Bootle, not quite time for the start of the blackout. Jack had returned to the garden and Eileen, with Nicky in her arms, stood in the doorway waving goodbye.
‘She looks so lonely standing there,’ Sheila said sadly. ‘I’m worried about Nick. He’s had to stay in London a few times before, but never twice in a single month. I hope things are all right between them. Nick lost his arm when his plane crashed,’ she explained to Lena.
‘How awful,’ Lena gasped. But so romantic too; just like a film.
That night, reluctant to stay in on her own, she went to the pictures to see Three Smart Girls with Ray Milland and a new actress called Deanna Durbin, who had a voice like an angel. She sang ‘Someone to Care For Me,’ a song with the most beautiful words.
Lena walked back to the house in Pearl Street in the blackout, singing the song inside her head and feeling as if parts of her that had been asleep before were being woken up by new emotions. She hadn’t realised how dull her life had been until now.
Did that mean she considered Maurice to be dull? Surely not! Yet he didn’t possess the cheerful good looks or outgoing personality of Calum Reilly, or the gritty attraction of the much older Jack Doyle. As for the absent Nick Stephens, there’d been a photo of him and Eileen on their wedding day in the cottage, and he was as handsome as a film star – as well as a genuine war hero. Beside them Maurice was – well, she couldn’t say exactly what attributes Maurice had when compared to these other men.
Anyway, he was coming home next week – well, not exactly home, but to Liverpool – and Lena realised that she wasn’t looking forward to seeing him nearly as much as she usually did.
She was approaching Pearl Street when a man’s voice called from behind, ‘Hello there. It’s Mrs Newton, isn’t it?’
Lena turned. The man caught up with her and raised his hat. ‘George Ransome, I live quite near you,’ he said politely. ‘Number seventeen.’
She could just about make him out in the milky moonlight. She didn’t feel nervous; there were other people about. What was more, she recognised him, having noticed him some mornings leaving his house just before she did herself. He was fifty-ish, with a Clark Gable moustache and a rather wolfish air. Smartly dressed, he could have easily just stepped out of a Burton’s tailors’ window. Someone must have told him her name.
‘Good evening,’ she said.
‘What did you think of the picture?’ he asked.
‘Oh, were you there? I really liked it.’
‘So did I. It took me mind off the war for a couple of hours. I think they’re called “escapist”, those sort of pictures.’
‘Are they really? Well, that’s true enough. I didn’t think about the war once while I was watching.’
‘Do you go often to the pictures, Mrs Newton?’ They had stopped outside the old dairy.
‘Most Sat’days,’ she said. She wouldn’t have minded asking him in for a cup of tea, but it seemed terribly forward; he might get the wrong idea.
He tipped his hat again. ‘Perhaps we’ll see each other again next week. The Cat and the Canary with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard is showing. It’s a comedy – I saw it at the Palais de Luxe in town when it first came out.’
‘When I was in Birmingham, I sometimes went to see the same picture twice,’ Lena confessed. ‘Good night, Mr Ransome.’
‘Good night, Mrs Newton.’
He stood there until she had unlocked the door and gone inside. Lena was sure he would have appreciated being asked inside for a cuppa, though of course he might have a wife indoors who he couldn’t wait to get back to.
Nick was at a party. It was being held in the top flat of a four-storey house in Queen’s Gate and was so crowded it was virtually standing room only. Apparently an equerry to the King or someone of equal importance lived on the ground and first floors and a woman who made clothes for well-known actresse
s on the second.
Everyone was drunk, Nick included. He was propped up against the wall, attempting to overcome the inclination to slither down and sit on the floor, where people would stand on him or fall over him. Though at least then he would be out of sight of the fair-haired chap standing opposite, who had been watching him for ages. If you could describe a gaze as ‘truculent’, then his was. He was a little younger than Nick, and not wearing a uniform. Despite having drunk far too much, Nick was trying hard to remember who the chap was. He felt sure he wasn’t from the office, nor had they been in the RAF at the same time. Perhaps they’d never met and the man merely didn’t like the look of him, had hated him on sight, in fact. Or maybe he just didn’t like people who only had one arm.
Doria was dancing in another room. Dancing was something else that made Nick lose his balance; not waltzes, where you could hold each other up, but quicksteps and rumbas. The ‘Hokey Cokey’ was the worst. For that you definitely needed all four limbs.
Doria didn’t mind if he refused to dance with her – quite frankly, Nick wouldn’t have cared if she did. He wasn’t in love with her and assumed she wasn’t with him. It was just that there was a war on and it was the sort of thing that happened. People behaved in a way that, ordinarily, in peacetime, they would have avoided like the plague.
The pianist finished a tune and began to play ‘We’ll Meet Again’. Nick’s heart almost stopped beating. It was their song, his and Eileen’s. He closed his eyes, and there they were, back in that hotel in London, dancing together, Tony asleep upstairs.
And oh, it was heaven, an utterly perfect moment. Except … except that was the night he’d had a word with some RAF bigwig, pleading with the chap to get him into the forces. Eileen hadn’t been pleased, understandably. Anyway, the man had obliged, Nick had been delighted, and as a consequence he was now standing here minus an arm and Eileen was pretty damn mad with him for having joined up.
Someone came and stood beside him. ‘Are you all right?’ It was Doria. She really was a sweet little thing.