Dancing in the Moonlight

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘Jacob . . . ’

  He spoke over her breathless protest, his voice husky. ‘Write to me, Lucy? While I’m away? Please?’

  ‘I – there must be someone who’ll write to you? I – I mean someone special—’

  ‘I’m looking at her.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I tried. Heaven knows I tried, but women always know when you’re short-changing them.’

  She mustn’t do this. Somehow Tom would know, and even if Jacob was away fighting he wouldn’t be safe from his brother. But he was going away to war. Safety didn’t come into it. And he’d said he had little contact with his family. And, most of all, she wanted to write to him. To reach out and touch him with pen and paper and be touched in return. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

  ‘Take the day you know and leave the morrer to God, hinny . . .’ Her mother’s voice caressed her as the warm evening breeze ruffled her hair.

  It had been years, over a decade, since she had heard that beloved voice in a moment of crisis. She had never thought to hear it again. Without thinking any more, she reached out and touched his face. ‘I’ll write,’ she breathed softly.

  This time the kiss was long and deep as he stepped up to take her into his arms, and when he raised his head he looked at her for a long time before letting her go. When he walked down the path and the twilight swallowed him up, no promises had been made. How could they? No one knew what the next day or week, let alone month, would bring. Or even if they would see each other again.

  It was enough, though. For now, it was enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘Well, I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself, besmirching Tom’s good name like this, and you his da.’ Enid sat glaring at her husband over the kitchen table, where they were eating their evening meal and listening to the reports of the war on the wireless. ‘Who are you to say that he hasn’t got a bad heart, if he’s a doctor’s certificate to prove it?’

  ‘Give me patience!’ Aaron lifted his eyes to heaven as he ground his teeth. ‘You’re not a stupid woman, Enid, so don’t act like one. Doctors can be bought, if you know the right people, and our Tom knows the right people sure enough. He’s no more got a bad heart than our other three. There’s Jacob, who signed up in the first month, and Frank and Ralph both prepared to do their bit if it comes to it, in spite of having a wife and family apiece, but Tom’ – he flicked his hand in a gesture of disgust – ‘he’s a nowt.’

  ‘You’re wicked, Aaron Crawford. That’s what you are.’ Enid’s voice was trembling. ‘And are you saying you want Frank and Ralph to go over the water? Is that it?’

  ‘Don’t talk silly. Of course I don’t, but they’re willing to if needs must. At the moment they’re serving King and country better in the shipyard and it might be like that till the end of the war, but who knows? What I’m saying is that they’re not lily-livered.’

  ‘And Tom is?’

  ‘Aye. He is. An’ it gives me no pleasure to say it about me own, whatever you might think to the contrary. He’s bad, Enid. Through and through. And you’ve had a hand in that. Spoiling the lad from the day he was born and shutting your eyes to what you didn’t want to see. I could wallop the others when they were bairns and misbehaved, but if I raised my hand to Tom, the roof went off the house. And he was the one who needed it, not Frank and Ralph and Jacob.’

  ‘There you have it in a nutshell.’ Enid stood up, flinging back her chair so that it rocked on its legs for a moment before toppling over. ‘You never took to our Tom, not from when he was a babby. He kept this family going in the Depression before the government needed the shipyard workers back on side, but were you grateful? Not a bit of it. And you’ve turned Ralph and Frank against him. They’ve never got a good word for the lad these days.’

  ‘He’s not a lad, Enid. He’s a full-grown man and one who chose his own road a long time back – a dirty road. And aye, it is to my shame I walked it an’ all. I’m not proud of meself. But as to Ralph and Frank, they’ve made their own minds up about their brother, so don’t try an’ put that one on me. You want to ask them sometime what they know about him, and I don’t mean hearsay either, but you wouldn’t do that, would you? It might open the can of worms you’ve laboured for years to keep closed.’

  Aaron pushed his plate away from him, reaching for his jacket and stuffing his cap on his head. ‘I’m going down the pub, an’ don’t wait up.’

  After the door had banged behind him, Enid walked slowly to the table and sat down again. She didn’t finish the rest of her meal, but sat staring into space. She was tired, she thought dully. Tired of the state of war which existed in this house and was worse than the ‘phoney war’ that the nation had endured for the last eight months. After war had been declared, weeks of anxiety, false alarms and uncertainty had followed, and then the country had settled down for a wartime winter. The government had warned they were expecting tens of thousands of casualties during the first two or three months, and hospitals had been cleared in preparation for the wounded civilians, mortuaries stacked with piles of cardboard coffins, and lime pits dug to cope with the dead. It had struck terror into everyone. Every home had been issued with a hand-operated stirrup-pump and long-handled shovel to deal with the incendiary bombs that the government was sure would come raining down from the Luftwaffe, and every night folk had slept with one ear cocked for the air-raid sirens. But the blitzkrieg hadn’t happened.

  Enid reached for her cup of tea and drank it slowly.

  Instead they’d been bombarded by regulations, exhortations and petty officialdom, and the blackout had become public enemy number one. On New Year’s Eve the headline in the papers had been the news that more than 4000 men, women and children had died in blackout accidents, whereas during the same period only three members of the British Expeditionary Force had been killed in action. By February more than half of the evacuees who had fled in September were home again, and this added to the feeling of normality that had grown as bairns played their games in the streets and back alleys once more.

  Enid put down her cup and sighed heavily. But inside this house there’d been no relief or laughter. It had been bad enough between her and Aaron before Frank and then Ralph had left to get wed and set up house with their wives, but now . . . She brushed a wisp of grey hair from her brow. She just didn’t know what to say to him any more.

  Take tonight. She’d waited until she’d dished up the dinner and they were sitting eating, before she’d mentioned about Tom calling round earlier. Tom hadn’t wanted to worry them, she’d said, but he’d felt it only right to let them know what the doctor had found when he’d been to see him. She had expected Aaron to show some concern, she’d even hoped it might mellow him towards their firstborn, but he’d looked at her as though she was mad. And yet another row had followed.

  She poured herself a second cup of tea.

  And this on the heels of learning that the British and French were suffering heavy losses in their attempt to intervene against Germany’s invasion of Denmark and Norway. She didn’t understand strategy and the rest of it, but even she could see the war had suddenly hotted up. And her lad was out there, her Jacob. Aaron gave her no credit for worrying to death about him. Instead he’d gone on about Ralph and Frank going out there to join in the bloodbath. Men were a different species. Oh aye, they were.

  She shut her eyes, rocking backwards and forwards on her chair a while, her arms wrapped round her waist. She missed Agnes. It had been over fourteen years since she’d gone, but she missed her old friend like it was yesterday. She had never got thick with any of the other neighbours, she hadn’t wanted to – nosy blighters the lot of them – and Ralph’s and Frank’s wives were nice lassies, but they had their own mams.

  A moment of searing loneliness brought a pain to her chest. Only Tom loved her. The rest of them . . . She shook her head, a tear seeping from under her closed eyelids. No, only Tom cared, and she wasn’t going to pretend that she wasn’t g
lad he’d be staying close, rather than being shipped off over the sea to be blown to smithereens or used as fodder for German machine guns, whether he’d bought his way out of fighting or not.

  She stopped her rocking, wiping her eyes and reaching for her tea.

  She wasn’t daft, whatever Aaron might think. Deep down she’d wondered what was what, when her lad had shown her the certificate signed by some doctor or other she’d never heard of. But she didn’t care.

  She expelled a long breath. No, she didn’t care how Tom had come by it because it was his ticket to stay out of the war. She knew that if Tom had been called up she’d have become unhinged; there was only so much she could bear. The others she’d grieve over, but her lad . . .

  Across town, on the other side of the river, Lucy found herself glued to the wireless whenever she was home. The winter had been a savagely cold one, the worst for a long time according to the old-timers, and when John had been called up in January as one of two million nineteen- to twenty-seven-year-olds, she had been beside herself. But there had been nothing she could do about it, not least because John was raring to go. After that, the winter had been a time of petty irritations set against a background of endless waiting – for what exactly no one was quite sure. And then, as April turned into May, they found out.

  Jacob had written every week since he had landed in France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. With French troops occupying the Maginot Line, the British Army had proceeded smoothly to their positions along the Franco-Belgian border, where they’d built pillboxes and dug trenches. Once the Poles had been defeated, the German divisions had moved swiftly back across their country to the Siegfried Line.

  ‘It’s surreal,’ Jacob had written in one of his first letters, ‘but the general feeling among everyone here, French and British alike, is that the Germans have no intention of attacking us. Insults are exchanged daily through loudspeakers, but not a shot has been fired, and it seems the weather is the common enemy. Nevertheless, and I hope I’m wrong, I can’t help feeling that Hitler is playing cat-and-mouse again, like he did before the war.’

  He had been right. As the ice and arctic winds and snow became a distant memory and cloudless blue skies took their place, Germany invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg on May 10th. The ‘phoney war’ was over. In Britain, Neville Chamberlain had been totally discredited and forced to resign and Winston Churchill had taken his place as Prime Minister, forming an all-party coalition government, but many feared it was too late for their loved ones in France, who were facing a military catastrophe. The wireless had become an instrument of subtle torture overnight for Lucy and she barely ate or slept.

  Lucy hadn’t heard from either Jacob or John for three weeks when, in the middle of May, the Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, announced to the nation that the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers was taking place with immediate effect. Matthew signed that same day. With German forces now streaming across France and the Low Countries, an invasion of British soil was imminent, and in spite of little equipment and even less training, the LDV were prepared to wage a guerrilla war in their own streets. Matthew went off to the training centre after work armed with a pickaxe, along with many others, but what he and the rest of the LDV lacked in weaponry they made up for in spirit. And strangely, although the thought of Matthew engaging a German soldier in face-to-face combat was terrifying, Lucy was grateful to the newly formed organization. Since John had been called up, Matthew had been champing at the bit to do something, as he groaned umpteen times an hour. The elderly Sergeant Major who was in charge of the unit was treating as a soldier every old-timer, farmer, shipyard worker, miner, shopkeeper or young lad wet behind the ears who was under his command, drilling his ragtag-and-bobtail army ruthlessly.

  Matthew came home late at night full of the evening’s activities and with many a tale to tell. There was talk of the government kitting out the LDV with standard-issue army uniforms and guns in time, but for now most of the recruits merely sported a forage cap and an armband, and carried pitchforks, broom handles, hand scythes or, as in Matthew’s case, pickaxes. One old gentleman, Matthew had told them gleefully, had turned up for duty with an enamel colander tied to his bald head with a scarf. He claimed that his wife had insisted he have some protection from falling bombs. When the Sergeant Major had pointed out through gritted teeth that as yet there were no falling bombs, the henpecked husband had retorted that the Sergeant Major could take that up with his wife, because he certainly wasn’t going to argue with her.

  Such light moments were rare in a month that turned increasingly desperate for the Allies, and sickeningly worrying for their loved ones at home. By the last week of May every thinking man and woman in England could see that the suicidal decision by the Allies to leave the defensive positions they’d spent the bitterly cold winter so arduously preparing, and move forward to join the Belgian Army to form a defensive line running along the Dyle and Meuse rivers, was disastrous. They’d been lured into a cunning trap and driven back towards the coast by a large German force. Thousands of soldiers and refugees were mercilessly bombed and machine-gunned from the air as they tried to escape along the packed roads.

  It was this that was occupying Lucy’s mind as she left one of the shops John had had the responsibility of overseeing late one night. As yet she had been unable to replace him, so she had stepped into the role, which had meant an increase in her working hours to something like twelve to fourteen hours a day. Her head full of the latest report that the tanks and infantry of the German panzers had punched through the French defences and reached Boulogne and that British forces were heroically defending a doomed Calais, she didn’t notice a figure detach itself from the shadows and begin following her.

  It was only when the soft footsteps behind her quickened, and a sixth sense caused the fine hairs on the back of her neck to prickle, that the intense darkness of the blackout became frightening. She had seen Tom Crawford twice since Jacob had called at the house. Once, just before Christmas, his car had been parked across the road when she had returned home from a shopping trip with Daisy one Saturday afternoon. He had waited until he was sure she had seen him, doffing his hat as he’d smiled at her through the window, and then driven off, leaving her white and shaken. ‘Who was that?’ Daisy had asked, her eyes following the car as it sped into the distance.

  ‘No one.’ She’d steadied her voice, smiling at her daughter, but inside she’d been trembling. He was getting bolder.

  The next time had been a few weeks ago. She had met Ruby in town for lunch, as they did sometimes, there being a cafe across the road from the shop Ruby managed that they both liked, and as they had left the building he’d been there, straight in front of them.

  ‘Hello, ladies. Fancy bumping into you.’ His words had been casual, even jocular, but the look he’d given her had been long and concentrated, stripping away the last decade or more and reducing her to a terrified young girl inside. She had stared back at him, not trusting herself to speak, and it had been Ruby who said, ‘Leave her alone. She doesn’t want anything to do with you, Tom Crawford.’

  His eyes had shot to her sister and after a moment he had nodded slowly. ‘Ah, I see. A little bird has been whispering its lies in your ear. You shouldn’t believe everything you’re told, Ruby. There are two sides to every story.’

  Ruby hadn’t grown much over the past few years but she’d seemed to grow in stature as she’d said, ‘I know what I know, and nothing you could say would make me believe any different.’

  ‘Is that so?’ His voice was low, flat. ‘Did she tell you I wanted to marry her? Eh? That I was prepared to take the lot of you on and do right by her, even after she’d led me a dance and carried on with other blokes?’

  ‘I never led you on. I never wanted anything to do with you, ever, and you know it. You keep harassing me and I’ll get the police involved. I mean it.’ Lucy’s heart had been pounding in her chest fit to burst, but she’d been pleased
at how strong her voice had sounded.

  ‘What will you tell them, Lucy? That you bumped into an old friend in the street? An old friend who happens to be a town councillor and a man with a great deal of influence in the town? Be my guest, but they’ll laugh you out of court.’

  ‘Come on.’ Ruby had taken her arm and pulled her away, but once they were safely in the fishmonger’s shop she’d steered her through to the room at the rear of the premises and shut the door so that they couldn’t be overheard. Then she had hugged Lucy, before stepping back and looking into her eyes. ‘Has he done this before, lass? Waylaid you?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Seeing Tom so close, the sheer bulk and broadness of him, had left her thoroughly unnerved. ‘Not like today. He usually just lets me know he’s there, from a distance. Sometimes I haven’t even seen him, but I’ve felt he’s around.’

  ‘Why haven’t you said?’ Ruby had stared at her aghast. ‘You should have told me. How long has it been going on? Months? Years?’

  ‘Since he came to the shop that day after Perce died.’

  ‘And you never said.’

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you for no good reason. It’s not like he wants me any more, in that way. He doesn’t know for sure that Daisy is his and, like I told you at the time, he looked at me as if he hated me when he left that day. As long as I don’t get involved with anyone – a man – he won’t do anything.’

  Ruby looked more appalled, if anything. ‘But you can’t live like that, Lucy. And you’re wrong. He does still want you, it was plain in his face. He’s risen high and he’s never been thwarted by anything in his life, that’s the trouble. The fact that you’ve refused him is what spurs him on, don’t you see? If you weren’t the way you are, he’d have lost interest years ago. He’s a nutcase, lass, twisted, and to have pursued you all these years, tracking you like an animal, proves it.’