Dancing in the Moonlight

by Rita Bradshaw

  As he watched from the other side of the road a car drew up a few doors down and two well-dressed women alighted. When the door of the house they entered was opened by a maid in a black-and-white uniform with a lacy cap perched on top of her head, it took him aback. A maid. It was further proof of the great divide that existed between him and this new Lucy. Did she have a maid? Maybe a cook too?

  He almost turned and walked away there and then, beset by a number of emotions and none of them encouraging.

  He stood dithering for a long time – how long he didn’t keep track of – but when the two ladies exited the house again and one of them said something to her companion and they both looked his way, it gave him the impetus to cross the road and walk up Lucy’s path, his heart thumping. He rang the bell several times and knocked on the door, but no one answered from within. He glanced at his watch. Half-past four. He would wait until five and then walk back into the town and get a bite to eat somewhere and return later this evening, once dinner was over. Aye, that’s what he’d do, if he didn’t have his collar felt by the local bobby in the meantime that was. Those two women had clearly wondered if he was up to no good. He smiled with black humour. That would put the tin lid on this whole daft episode – him ending up in gaol.

  He walked down the path back to the pavement, screwing up his face as he rubbed between his eyebrows where a niggling headache had started. When he raised his head, she was walking towards him and by her side was a child who could only be her daughter. The likeness was remarkable. Transfixed, he stared at them. Lucy stared back and he was aware of the little girl saying something to her mother, but Lucy didn’t seem to hear her.

  They were within a yard or two before he pulled himself together enough to say, ‘Hello, Lucy.’

  ‘Jacob.’

  The sound of his name on her lips impacted on him like a physical pain and the force of the feeling startled him. He wondered how he had managed to keep away from her for so long, but the answer was standing by her side. The child was the embodiment of the decision she’d made to exit his life without a backward glance at a time when he’d needed her most. She didn’t love him. His head had accepted it long ago, it was his heart that had the problem.

  And then the little girl stepped forward, holding out her hand with a confidence that took him by surprise in one so young. ‘I’m Daisy.’ She smiled at him and it was Lucy’s smile in Lucy’s face. And yet, not quite. The mouth was different, wider, not as full and bow-shaped as her mother’s, and Lucy had never displayed the self-assurance and aplomb that seemed to come naturally to her daughter. ‘How do you do.’

  ‘I’m Jacob.’ He took the small hand and shook it. ‘I’m an old friend of your mother’s. We used to live next door to each other when we were bairns.’

  ‘Did you?’ The smile widened. ‘You must have known my Grandma and Granda Fallow then? They died before I was born, and my Uncle Ernie too. I haven’t got any grandparents because my da’s parents died long ago, but I have got uncles and aunts, and two brothers. That’s not the same as grandparents, though.’

  ‘Daisy.’ Lucy checked her daughter by touching the child’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Jacob. ‘Daisy has always thought it most remiss of me not to provide her with at least one set of grandparents.’

  ‘Oh, Mam.’ Daisy leaned against her mother and the smile they exchanged was warm.

  Jacob felt awkward and it reinforced the doubts he’d had about coming. They were strangers now, poles apart. What had he been thinking of? He’d embarrassed her and she clearly couldn’t wait to get rid of him. He was trying to think how to finish the conversation and retain some dignity when Lucy said, ‘We’ve been to visit the Winter Garden, it’s one of Daisy’s favourite places. They’ve extended the summer break for the time being, but I suppose the schools will reopen soon. We were just going to have some tea and toast. Would – would you care to join us?’

  Jacob couldn’t believe his ears. He must have looked as surprised as he felt because Lucy was blushing as she said, ‘We can’t stand talking out here, and I presume you came to see me? I – I saw you at the door. I mean, you weren’t just walking past, were you?’

  Her discomposure steadied him. Suddenly she seemed more like the Lucy he had known and less like the prosperous businesswoman whose success had become the stuff of legends locally. ‘No, I wasn’t walking past, and a cup of tea would be nice.’

  They stared at each other a moment more, as though the invitation and its acceptance had been momentous, and then he found himself following the pair of them as Lucy led the way into the house. The hall was spacious, but that was all he took in before Lucy said, ‘Daisy, show Mr Crawford into the sitting room and open the French doors – it’s bound to be too warm in there.’ She glanced at Jacob. ‘It’s south-facing.’

  He nodded. He hadn’t liked the ‘Mr Crawford’.

  ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on, and Daisy’ – her gaze returned to the child – ‘come and help me set the tea tray in a moment, please.’

  In other words she didn’t want the girl talking to him if she wasn’t present. Feeling as though he was on one of the rides at the Michaelmas Fair that went up and down at an alarming rate, Jacob followed Daisy across the hall, past the foot of the stairs and through a door to his left. He watched the child as she ran across the room and flung open a pair of small-paned glass doors. The room had struck him as a mite stuffy, but immediately the breeze brought in the scent of flowers and sunshine. Turning back to him and speaking as though they were carrying on a conversation that had been uninterrupted, Daisy said, ‘My second name is the same as my grandma’s, my mam’s mother. Agnes. It’s a nice name, isn’t it? Did you like her, my Grandma Fallow?’

  A little unsure of himself with this fairy-like child, Jacob nodded. ‘Aye, yes, I did.’

  Daisy considered him for a moment, her head tilted to one side and her big straw hat shading her face and turning her blue eyes almost black. ‘I suppose you’d have to say that, wouldn’t you?’ she reflected thoughtfully. ‘It would be rude not to.’

  A great desire to laugh out loud came over him. Stifling it, he returned in like vein: ‘You could say that, but in this case I meant what I said. I was very fond of your grandma, everyone was. She was a kind, gentle soul.’

  ‘Like my mam.’ Before he could reply, she went on, ‘I’m not like my mother. Oh, I know we look like each other, but I’m not patient or kind like she is, not all the time anyway. Sometimes not a bit. There’s a boy at my school and he’s a bully – he’s always tormenting the little ones or anyone who’s shy or quiet, you know? Miss Price, that’s my teacher, took us on a nature ramble before school broke up for the summer holidays and I saw Lawrence holding Alfred Bell, who’s got bowed legs like a frog, at the top of a high bank, threatening to push him down into the stream at the bottom. He was laughing.’

  The blue eyes held his and Jacob found that he was holding his breath as he listened to this beautiful sprite of a child.

  ‘I crept up and Lawrence didn’t know I was there. I pulled Alfred away from him and pushed Lawrence down the bank. I couldn’t have done it if he’d known I was there, as he’s much bigger than I am, so I didn’t shout first and tell him to let Alfred go. He wouldn’t have done so anyway, he was enjoying making him cry,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Lawrence broke his ankle and hollered enough to wake the dead. Miss Price said I should have fetched her to deal with it, but as I was only trying to help Alfred and it was an accident and she knew I was sorry, we’d say no more about it.’

  ‘That seems fair,’ said Jacob, completely out of his depth.

  ‘But I wasn’t sorry. Lawrence deserved everything he got. I hate boys like him.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘My mam would have fetched Miss Price, wouldn’t she? My grandma too.’

  ‘Possibly. Aye, probably in fact.’

  Daisy nodded. ‘But by then it might have been Alfred who ended up with the broken ankle, and Lawre
nce would have lied and said they were only larking about. And because Alfred’s so scared of him he wouldn’t dare say different. So I’m not sorry.’

  Gently Jacob murmured, ‘But you might have got hurt too.’

  Daisy stared at him for a long moment. ‘I hate boys like Lawrence,’ she repeated. ‘They pull the wings off butterflies and cut up worms for fun, and the teachers say not to tell tales, if you report them. Lads think they’re superior to lassies, but they’re not.’

  Jacob looked into the earnest little face. By, she was one of this new breed of females – feminists they called them – already, at the age of nine, but he liked her spirit. ‘I would say that you’re more like your mother and grandmother than you think. You couldn’t stand by and see Alfred tormented and hurt. What’s that, if not kindness? You just deal with things in a different way from what your mother might do, maybe.’

  Daisy took a moment to consider this. It was clear she hadn’t looked at it this way before. ‘So you think I’m like my Grandma Agnes?’

  It seemed to mean a lot to the child, so Jacob gave a definite inclination of his head, going a step further when he said, ‘She would have loved you, that’s for sure.’

  His reward was a smile that lit up her face.

  ‘I’d better go and help Mam,’ Daisy said, skipping to the door, ‘but I just wanted to ask you about my grandma. I don’t know anyone who remembers her ’cept for my Aunty Ruby and Uncle John, but they just say what they think I want them to say, like Mam.’

  She left him staring after her. What an extraordinary bairn, he thought soberly. A child of great determination and strong passions, almost certainly, but tempered by a compassion and kind heart for the underdog, which she’d inherited from her mother. Had she got that fierce side from her father? He would have liked to have met him. And then immediately he repudiated the thought. No, no, he wouldn’t. Hell, what a stupid thing to imagine – it was the last thing he’d have wanted. But he had often wondered about the man whom Lucy had loved and married, the man who’d given her a bairn and, having met that bairn, he wondered all the more.

  He stood, cap in hand, looking around the room. This was Lucy’s home; he felt he was seeing her personality reflected in the elegant lines of the furniture it held and the calm, quiet colour scheme. The carpet and curtains were a pale green and the walls dove-grey, and there was little in the way of knick-knacks, apart from a number of china figures – ladies in crinolines mostly – standing on the wide mantelpiece over the fireplace. His mother would have called the room plain and sparse, in a disparaging fashion, but the cream couches and chairs (without a fringe to be seen) complemented the whole perfectly. An occasional table was covered in magazines and papers, and a knitting bag sat by one chair, a couple of homely touches.

  He walked over to the French doors and looked out into the garden. A well-camouflaged and protected Anderson shelter had been built at the very rear of it, a blast wall standing in front of the entrance. A blackbird was busy digging for worms in the layer of dirt and turf that had been placed over the domed roof and he smiled to himself. That bird wasn’t going to let the likelihood of Hitler’s bombs put him off searching for his supper.

  ‘The lads built the shelter a week ago. They’ve done a good job, haven’t they?’

  He hadn’t heard Lucy come into the room and now he swung round to see her standing with a tray. ‘Here, let me.’ He took the tray from her while she cleared the magazines and papers on the table into one corner. There were two cups and two plates of well-buttered toast and, seeing his glance, Lucy said quickly, ‘Charley, my youngest stepson, has just got in and Daisy’s eating with him in the kitchen. He’s been out fishing the whole day with his pals and he always manages to get mucky.’

  He didn’t comment on this. ‘I wondered if you’d have a maid,’ he said, sitting down in the chair Lucy indicated with a wave of her hand. ‘It seems the sort of area.’

  ‘No, no. We all have our jobs to do, and the girls and I take turns with cooking and so on. I wouldn’t like a maid.’

  She poured him a cup of tea and handed it to him across the table, and as she did so the cup rattled slightly in the saucer. The brief betrayal of her nervousness was comforting. She was wearing a cream dress and her wonderful hair was fixed in some fancy way or other on top of her head, and she impersonified cool control. But she was nervous, nevertheless. Like him.

  Jacob found that he didn’t know how to begin, or what to say when he did. There followed a silence during which their eyes met and then dropped away and, gathering his courage, he opened his mouth. ‘I probably shouldn’t have come here today, I’m aware of that, but I felt the last time we met it didn’t end well, for all sorts of reasons. We were close as bairns and I’ve always remembered that time with great affection.’ That was good, striking the right note, and emboldened he went on, ‘The thing is, I’m going to enlist and I didn’t want to leave Sunderland without explaining’ – he had been going to say ‘how I feel’, but realizing that was the last thing he could do in all truthfulness, he changed it to – ‘I don’t want any hard feelings between us.’

  ‘You’re going to enlist?’ She had put down her cup as he had spoken and now sat facing him with her hands clasped in her lap, her face white. ‘Why, Jacob? Why not wait and see when, or if, you’re called up? Something might happen. The war might be over soon.’

  ‘No one believes that now. Not the way things are going for Poland. And I’d rather jump before I’m pushed. That’s the only way I can put it. He’s an evil so-an’-so, old Hitler, and when you read about what’s going on in the concentration camps like Dachau and Buchenwald it brings home what you’re fighting against.’

  Lucy couldn’t argue with that. The inexplicable sadistic cruelty of SS camp guards, who were reported to be revelling and vying with each other in the authorized regime of brutality and terror, made grim reading. But Jacob going away to fight . . . She had felt dizzy and faint when she’d first seen him standing there outside, beset by such a flood of emotion that she’d felt she was drowning. And now, sitting talking to him like this, being able to look at his dear face and hear his voice, she wanted each moment to last forever. But he was talking again . . .

  ‘This war won’t be like the last one. This time the Nazis will make sure they crush us from the air before their army invades British soil, unless we stop them. They’ve got more bombers and fighters, more everything. They’ve been preparing for this for a long time while our government licked their backsides and talked peace.’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Sorry.’

  She made a throwaway movement with one hand. ‘When will you go?’

  He shrugged, forcing a smile. ‘I hear your signature isn’t dry before they’re shipping you off to training camp.’

  She wanted to ask him to stay a day, a week, a month, and spend it with her. They could go away somewhere, to another town and find a hotel and be together. To quell the madness she said, ‘Have you told your mother?’ And it was only in that moment that the thought hit that he could have a wife and bairns, a sweetheart at least.

  Jacob shook his head. ‘Only Dolly and Abe. I don’t see much of Mam and the rest of them these days, not now I live at the forge, but I’ll call in once it’s signed and sealed. It’ll be better that way. Fait accompli.’

  She had to know. She was wondering how to phrase it when a voice from the doorway said, ‘Jacob Crawford? It is you, isn’t it?’

  They both started at the sound of Ruby’s voice and, as she and Flora and Bess came into the room, Jacob said, ‘Aye, it’s me, Ruby, and these two young ladies must be the twins. You were both knee-high to a grasshopper the last time I saw you.’

  Hastily Lucy said, ‘Flora and Bess, this is Jacob. He used to live next door to us in Zetland Street, but I don’t suppose you remember.’

  ‘I do.’ Flora was more forward than Bess and had discovered the attraction of the opposite sex in the last year or two. Now she made what Ruby always termed disparagingly h
er ‘cow’s eyes’ at Jacob. ‘You used to come with us when we went to the beach and you had two brothers. No, three. And your mam used to feed us treacle toffee when we came round.’

  Jacob smiled. ‘And you and your sister always hid some in your pinny pockets for later and you thought my mam didn’t know.’

  ‘Did we?’ Flora giggled. ‘How awful. What other terrible things can you remember?’

  The moment to ask him had gone. Lucy joined in the ensuing conversation, but within a few minutes Jacob stood up and took his leave of the others before she walked him to the door. Once they were alone in the hall he said quietly, ‘I’m glad we’re parting as friends, Lucy. I’ve thought of you often over the last years.’

  She wanted to tell him there hadn’t been one day when he hadn’t been in her thoughts, but the spectre of his brother was there suddenly, dark and threatening. Besides, if he had a wife or a sweetheart she’d embarrass him, and herself too. He had said he had come because he didn’t want any hard feelings between them – that was all. The control it took to keep her voice from trembling made it sound stiff when she said, ‘Of course we’re friends, Jacob.’

  She wished Ruby and the twins hadn’t come home when they had, but it had been she who had insisted they close the shop early now that the blackout was causing so many accidents. Once it began to get dark, with no street lamps lit and black curtains at every window so that not the slightest chink of light could escape, cars were crashing and people were slipping off kerbs and walking into lamp posts. But perhaps it was for the best that they had been interrupted. She’d been about to make a fool of herself.

  Her tone of voice wasn’t lost on him. He stared at her for a moment more, drinking in every detail of her face, and then opened the door himself, stepping down into the dusky twilight that had fallen since he’d been in the house. He turned, and found that by standing on the bottom step as he was, his head was on the same level as Lucy’s. He had intended to shake her hand and tell her to take care of herself. Instead he leaned forward and brushed her lips with his own.