Dancing in the Moonlight

by Rita Bradshaw

  He swung round, his eyes gimlet-hard. ‘Keep it that way. I don’t know if the bairn’s mine, not for sure, you’ve seen to that, but my mam’s not hard of hearing and she doesn’t often make mistakes, so I’ll draw me own conclusions, if it’s all the same to you. And no one takes what’s mine. Keep that in mind if you get the notion to play Happy Families again, all right?’

  The sky had clouded over, the blue all gone and grey taking its place. ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’ she said dully. ‘You killed him because of me.’

  He didn’t answer, but after a few moments of staring at her face, he smiled.

  She had her answer.

  That same day, at two in the afternoon, as the first fat snowflakes began to fall from a laden sky, Lucy had another visitor. Ruby and John were minding the little ones upstairs and Lucy was scrubbing the shop from top to bottom. She had been working since she had come in from the encounter with Tom Crawford, needing the hard physical exercise to counter the consuming guilt and grief she was feeling about Perce’s death. Why had she married him? she asked herself over and over again. If she had gone right away from Sunderland, Perce would still be alive. But how could she have done? She’d had no money and there had been Ruby and John and the twins to consider. And if she’d gone when she’d found out she was expecting Daisy, her daughter wouldn’t be here now, because the way she had been feeling then, the river was the only answer. And why – why – had she told Enid Crawford that Daisy was so much younger? In Tom Crawford’s eyes it had been tantamount to admitting Daisy was his, once he’d asked around and found out her true age. It had been stupid, so stupid, but she’d panicked that evening and in attempting to throw him off the trail had made everything a hundred times worse. And Perce had paid the price.

  So the recriminations reverberated in her head hour after hour until she felt she was going mad. And that feeling was heightened when she heard a tap at the window and straightened up, to see Jacob standing outside the shop.

  For a moment Lucy couldn’t move; she just stared at him. He was taller than she remembered and well built, a man already at seventeen with no vestige of the boy or youth left. Of course that would be his work in the forge, she told herself numbly. And he was well dressed. Not as his brother had been, acting the toff, but Jacob’s overcoat hung full and thick and was the same dark grey as his cap.

  Somehow she made herself walk to the door and turn the key, and now her heart was pounding like a sledgehammer and threatening to jump out of her chest. As his eyes swept her from head to foot she was acutely conscious of the big calico apron she’d pulled on over her dress to do the cleaning and of the wisps of hair that her exertion had loosened from the piled coils on top of her head.

  His voice was just the same, though, deep with a slight catch of huskiness in it, which had always thrilled her in the past, as he said quietly, ‘It’s been a long time, Lucy.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’ It was a whisper.

  ‘I didn’t hear about what had happened until last night – we don’t have a newspaper every day. I’m sorry. About your husband.’

  Again she nodded, not knowing what to say or do. The snow was beginning to settle on his cap and shoulders and, opening the door wider, she said, ‘Would you like to come in?’

  He hesitated, and Lucy wasn’t to know that the sight of her was tearing Jacob apart inside. From the moment he’d read the paper the night before, he’d been beside himself. ‘Still no light on the murder of the fishmonger in Long Bank,’ the reporter had written. And then had followed a list of the fishmonger’s dependants, starting with his young wife, Lucy – his second wife, the article had emphasized – and her sisters, Ruby, Flora and Bess, and brother, John, and the fishmonger’s two children by his first wife, along with a thirteen-month-old daughter by the present Mrs Alridge. A family deprived of their breadwinner was always tragic, the article had gone on, but under such violent circumstances doubly so. It had finished with the usual, ‘If anyone knows anything about the events of . . .’ and so on.

  He’d read it twice, the blood thundering in his ears, and he must have looked like he felt, because Dolly had glanced up from her knitting and given a start, saying, ‘What is it, lad? What’s wrong?’

  It had been a long night and he’d counted every minute of it as he’d paced the floor of his room. It had to be her, which meant she had never left Sunderland and gone down south after all. She’d been in the town and she was married with a bairn. He had been at death’s door and eating his heart out for her, and she had been canoodling with some bloke or other and getting wed.

  Round and round he had walked, every emotion under the sun searing his breast, until he thought he’d lose his mind. By the time he’d come down to breakfast he’d known what he had to do. It wasn’t wise, he’d known that even before he’d told Abe and Dolly his intentions and they’d advised him to hold his horses and wait a while, but he had to see her today. And now here she was. In front of him. And if the fifteen-year-old girl had been lovely, the young woman she’d become was breathtaking.

  He had thought he was managing fine without her, that Lucy was his past and he was content for her to remain there. He was his own man now, wasn’t he? A partner in a good, solid business that one day would be his. He’d even bitten the bullet and started courting steady. Felicity was a nice lass, bonny, but not forward. He’d come to terms with the fact that the Lucy he’d danced with in the moonlight was not what she’d seemed, that he’d made a huge mistake and was better out of it. Events had proved that he hadn’t really known her. No use crying over spilt milk, that was a mug’s game, and at least he wouldn’t be fooled again.

  But he had been fooling himself. He looked into the azure-blue eyes, which he had never thought to see again, and nothing mattered. Not her betrayal, not her marriage to another man, nothing. He loved her. Still. It was like she was part of him. ‘Why did you leave the way you did, when I was in hospital?’ He hadn’t meant to say it. He’d told himself on the way here that, if he saw her, he would be polite but formal, express his condolences whilst letting her know that he didn’t think much of her treatment of him. Draw a line under things – that’s what he’d intended.

  ‘I had to.’ Her eyes had fallen from his. ‘Donald had left us and the little ones would have been put in the workhouse.’

  ‘You must have known my mam wouldn’t have let that happen.’

  ‘They were my responsibility, no one else’s.’

  He could not take his eyes from her face, but still he didn’t move from the doorstep. ‘You didn’t come to the hospital or even write to say where you were. We thought Donald had made you go down south with him.’ She did not reply, and he went on, stating the obvious, ‘But you were here in Sunderland with this man, the fishmonger. I didn’t know you knew him. You’d never mentioned him.’ Steeling himself, he asked the question that had tormented him all night. ‘Did you love him?’

  She made a little movement of her head, which could have meant anything. Her voice a whisper, she said, ‘Please don’t do this, Jacob.’

  Don’t do this? After all she had put him through, she said: Don’t do this? He had the right to ask, damn it. ‘Did you? Did you love him?’

  She raised her head, her blue eyes looking straight into his and her voice stronger. ‘Perce was a good man, a fine man. The very best.’

  Jacob nodded slowly, hurt afresh and wanting to hurt back. ‘And twice your age. A widower, the paper said, with two bairns, and his wife still warm in her grave when he wed you. Seems this good, fine man didn’t waste any time in making sure his needs were provided for.’

  She blinked, her face turning a shade paler. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘No?’ When she remained silent, he said tersely, ‘I understand you have a daughter. Thirteen months, isn’t she? And you say it wasn’t like that?’

  She wanted to take the look out of his eyes, to confess everything, tell him the truth, but to do so would be a death sentence for him a
nd maybe for her too, and there was Daisy to think of. He would go looking for his brother. Whether he killed Tom, or Tom killed him, the end result would be the same. Jacob would either be dead or would swing at the end of a rope. If she gave him the slightest inkling, fresh blood would be on her hands. This had to end. Now. Her voice hardly audible, she said, ‘You shouldn’t have come here today, Jacob.’

  She actually registered in her own body the flinch he gave. She was near tears, but she told herself she must not give way because, if she did, she would be lost. Enough people had been sacrificed because of her. First her father and Ernie, then Perce, but if Jacob was attacked a second time, he would not survive it. Tom would make sure of that. From the moment she’d seen Tom today she had been absolutely sure he’d arranged the beating Jacob had taken that night two years ago, and that he’d expected his brother to die. Maybe she had always known it deep down.

  Jacob stood looking down at her bowed head. He heard himself say stiffly, ‘I can see that’, while his mind shouted at him, ‘Tell her how you feel, man. What does it matter about her husband – he’s dead and gone. Tell her you love her.’

  But what was the use? And why humiliate himself further? Everything about her stated that she wanted him gone. He was an embarrassment, a reminder of things best forgotten, as far as she was concerned. She had said he shouldn’t have come. Well, she needn’t worry. Hell would freeze over before he’d come again. The finality of the thought came through in his voice when he said quietly, ‘Goodbye, Lucy.’

  He turned, striding away through the snow, which was now swirling and dancing in an already white world, and he didn’t look back. It would have served no purpose if he did. He could barely see a thing through the mist of tears blinding his eyes.

  PART FIVE

  We Shall Fight Them on the Beaches

  1939

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lucy closed her eyes to shut out the words in the newspaper she was reading – it was all bad news as usual. In the nine years that had passed since the day she’d sent Jacob away her life had changed dramatically, along with the world as a whole.

  She moved restlessly in her chair, her mind in turmoil. The world had become a place of boiling emotions as peace became more and more fragile, and lately she’d found it increasingly hard to sleep at night, for thoughts of what the unrest might mean for her menfolk. War was a terrible possibility.

  In Russia, Joseph Stalin – presented as the father of his people, like the tsars of old, in the media – exercised forced collectivization and incessant purges of all possible opposition to his plan of economic development. Lucy couldn’t see that he was anything other than a monster. Hadn’t he destroyed millions of lives and eliminated ten million of the wealthier Russian peasants, or kulaks as they were called? His slogan was ‘Liquidate the kulaks as a class’, but some newspapers reported that Stalin wasn’t just declaring war on the kulaks, but on the hundred million peasant farmers the country contained, both large and small. She felt for the ordinary men, women and children caught up in Stalin’s campaign of terror, and in Germany the rise of Adolf Hitler had followed the same ruthless lines.

  Once in power, Hitler had abolished democracy and begun to impose his racial policies against the Jews, Gypsies and other minorities. She swallowed hard; it made her feel sick to think of it. All those poor people, trapped in a country that had turned against them.

  Five years ago it had been reported that concentration camps had been set up in Germany for political dissidents, under the control of the black-uniformed Schutzstaffel or SS, and the June of that year had seen the ‘Night of the Long Knives’. Publicly, the Führer usually took pains to observe the legalities of a civilized society, but the ruthless purge of the brown-shirted SA – an army under the leadership of Ernst Röhm, who apparently had never fully accepted the supremacy of Hitler – had been an act of sheer gangsterism worthy of Al Capone. Just last year Hitler had again been in the news when he’d invaded Austria and brought the country into the German Reich, and no European nations had united to oppose him.

  Lucy shook her head, remembering what Matthew had said at the time. ‘He’s just a bully,’ her stepson had declared. ‘And if you don’t stand up to bullies, they think they’re unstoppable.’ Young as he was, Matthew had been right. And if her precious boy could see that, along with millions of ordinary men and women, why couldn’t the so-called experts in high places? But man’s need to conquer and subjugate was everywhere. Might against right. And the evil ones were banding together. Mussolini had publicly deplored Hitler’s anti-Semitism before the Italian leader had invaded Abyssinia four years ago. He’d been seen as a potential ally of France and Britain against the growing threat of the Nazis, but once the League of Nations had denounced Mussolini as an aggressor and had imposed sanctions on Italy, he’d changed his tune.

  Really, Lucy thought, it was like children in a playground with their separate gangs, but these ‘children’ had the power to destroy millions of people. Hitler, seeing his opportunity, had begun to court his old enemy with flattery and now Mussolini, emboldened by German support, had invaded Albania only this year. And the two leaders had got together and signed a ‘Pact of Steel’. Pact of Steel! What was that, if it wasn’t declaring: You’re in my gang now?

  She opened her eyes and looked down at the newspaper. The papers and the news reports on the wireless held a terrible fascination for her, even as they filled her with dread. She wished she could close her eyes to what was happening, but she couldn’t. World peace was crumbling. In the Far East the war between two of the world’s ancient civilizations, China and Japan, grew more bloody, and the civil war in Spain had ruined the country. Stalin and Hitler, hitherto bitter enemies, had their unholy alliance, and Britain and other countries sought to appease the Nazis by sacrificing a free nation, Czechoslovakia. How could God keep this country safe when they acted like that? She, like thousands of other ordinary folk, saw what Mr Chamberlain seemed determined not to see: Adolf Hitler wanted war, and John and many other young men would go away to fight . . .

  Her hand went to her throat and she worried at the skin there, before she realized what she was doing and brought her hands together in her lap. All she’d done over the last difficult years – the wealth and standing in the town she had carved out with blood, sweat and tears – would count as nothing, for she wouldn’t be able to save him. Every time she thought about what was happening abroad she visualized the women – mothers, sisters, wives, sweethearts – who’d been forced by their governments to send their menfolk into goodness knew what, and it chilled her blood. She had thought, when she’d made their family unit secure and affluent, that her loved ones were set up for life, but she couldn’t protect them if the worst happened and this war became a reality.

  Her mind wandered back over the last decade, which had been one of unrelenting grind, but through hard work and determination she’d expanded the business several times. Early on she’d seen the need to gain the custom of the well-to-do upper crust of Sunderland society in their grand houses, along with the large hotels, realizing that if she limited her sales to the mean streets of the East End, as Perce had done, profits would always be poor.

  With that in mind, within the first year she borrowed against the fishmonger’s property and bought a reliable second-hand van. By the time she felt confident to drive, Ruby had left school and she put her sister in charge of the shop, with a full-time assistant to help her. The soup venture had become so successful that Lucy hired a lad part-time to help her in the evenings, but during the day she drummed up business in the town, travelling as far afield as Hendon and Ryhope.

  Each morning saw Lucy setting off with the day’s deliveries, dressed in the attractive blue-and-white outfit she had made herself, complete with a pretty little mop cap. She knew a number of her customers had been tickled pink when she had first approached them. ‘A mere wee slip of a lass’ one hotelier had called her, when she had knocked on his door, not
unkindly but rather disbelievingly, when she had insisted that she could supply him with produce that was second to none – and for a competitive price. But she had persuaded him to give her a chance and slowly she had gained a reputation in the district for punctual deliveries, excellent seafood and, not least, a smile to brighten the dullest morning. It had proved to be a winning combination.

  In the stricken North and the poorer parts of most cities the slums seethed like coral reefs with predators and prey, Lucy thought grimly. Small fry were all but fleshless, but their vast numbers were enough to ensure the attention of money-lending sharks, by whom no bone was left unpicked. She had wanted to take the children out of an environment that she considered rife with danger, and she knew it was no good looking to the government for help. For those families eligible for the dole – a married couple with three children could claim one pound, nine shillings and thrupence – it meant running a gauntlet of petty officialdom and nosy neighbours, and the dreaded Means Test was purely an exercise in cruelty.

  She pictured the Hepburns in her mind. Little Tommy had got himself a paper round to help out his mother; he knew she often went hungry so that his da and the rest of them could eat, and a combination of exhaustion and undernourishment had left Mrs Hepburn prey to illness – anaemia, varicose veins and rotten teeth were the least of the poor woman’s problems. The family hadn’t declared the few pennies Tommy brought in, knowing it would be deducted from their allowance, but a neighbour had informed the authorities. The result had been the workhouse for the lot of them, where healthy children of pauper parents were often placed in the company of the senile, and physically and mentally sick adults, with devastating consequences for the innocent. There was barely a day that passed in which she didn’t think of Tommy and his nine siblings.

  Lucy shook herself. She had been determined they wouldn’t go the way of the Hepburns and so many others. Perce had provided her with an opportunity, and with it had come a deep conviction that she had to capitalize on what she had. Four years after starting the soup kitchen she’d opened similar premises in the heart of Bishopwearmouth. Due to the shallower financial waters of the slump, the building societies had trimmed the deposits required by mortgagers from 25 per cent to 5 per cent. Properties would never be so cheap again and she’d recognized this. The following year she’d moved the family out of the flat and into a large five-bedroomed terraced house on the outskirts of Bishopwearmouth, situated in a prime position overlooking Barnes Park, with gardens front and back.