Charley tried to enlist in January, but was turned down when the doctors discovered a hitherto-undetected heart murmur. Matthew took on both of the fish shops, proving himself to be an astute businessman and a very good fishmonger, which left Lucy and Charley to run the other side of the business. Ruby married her Ron in the autumn, and Lucy’s wedding present to the happy couple was the deeds of a small terraced house close to the shipyard where they worked. She had bought it outright for them.
And then it was Christmas again. Lucy no longer looked immediately to the hall table when she came home from work, and her heart no longer raced if the doorbell rang. If she had been going to get a telegram, it would have come by now. Jacob seemed to have simply disappeared, and the frightening thing – the terrible thing – was that so many other POWs had met the same fate. But she still believed and hoped. She had to. It was that which kept her going, along with the fact that everyone knew the end of the war was in sight.
As 1945 began to unfurl, a glimpse into hell – as the Nazi death camps fell – shocked even the most seasoned veteran of war. In March, Allied prisoners who had begun to be liberated were reporting horrific stories of life in German POW camps, with frequent beatings, starvation rations and no contact with the outside world. Only about thirty of the seventy known camps of Allied prisoners had been liberated by the first week of May when, strangely suddenly, peace came to a battered Europe on the seventh of the month in a small red schoolhouse in Rheims, where General Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, had his HQ, and where the German Army Chief of Staff signed the document of unconditional surrender.
The next day, VE Day, the whole of Britain took to the streets to celebrate the victory.
For Matthew and Charley and Daisy’s sake, Lucy went with them to the Town Hall in Fawcett Street, where a fanfare of trumpets and a speech by the Mayor, with the police brass band playing before and after the announcement and the National Anthem being sung with great fervour by the 10,000-strong crowd, heralded the celebrations.
Unlike London, where the whole population went crazy with joy, Sunderland’s celebrations were more subdued. Many local servicemen were POWs of the Japanese, some still fighting, and others like Jacob had been interned in German concentration camps and still had to return home.
Matthew, Charley and Daisy were disappointed by the lack of fervour, although some streets were decked out for parties and their houses had flags flying. Some sailors tried to liven up the day a little by firing off a gun on a ship berthed in the Wear. Around a dozen 20mm antiaircraft shells fell in the Roker and Fulwell areas, damaging houses, but no one was hurt.
Lucy didn’t say so to the youngsters, but the sober mood suited hers perfectly. It was awful, and she knew it was, she told herself, but she didn’t want to celebrate, not without Jacob. And not knowing if he was alive or dead was a hundred times worse now, with the war over and people happy and expecting you to be the same.
After they had listened to the band in the pouring rain and people were beginning to disperse, one of Daisy’s old school friends joined them and invited them to the party that her street was holding. ‘Everyone’s welcome,’ she insisted. ‘The more, the merrier. And my da and some of the other men have put tarpaulins up and whatnot, so you won’t get wet. Well, not much anyway.’ She smiled at Matthew and Charley, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘It’ll be a bit of fun.’
Lucy was reminded again, by the girl’s forwardness, that her own daughter was no longer a child. Daisy had turned sixteen at the end of February and although she was small and slight, she was turning into a beautiful young woman. She had insisted on leaving school the year before, the minute she could, working in a day-nursery with children whose mothers were occupied in jobs for the war effort, but it had only been a stopgap until she could fulfil her main ambition and start to train to become a nurse. As always, she knew exactly what she wanted.
Sixteen years old. Lucy’s breath caught in her throat. Sixteen years that she and Jacob had lived without each other. She smiled at the others. ‘Go and have fun then,’ she said, ‘and I’ll see you later.’
They began to protest, but she waved their objections aside, knowing they were worried that she would be alone on VE Day. But she wanted to be alone. Away from all the smiling faces and laughing and gaiety. And if it meant she was turning into a cranky old woman at the ripe age of thirty-two, so be it.
She walked home rather than getting a taxi, her tears mingling with the rain. Matthew and Charley were grownup, young men, and soon they would be courting, and her Daisy had determined her own road already. And that was good. All of it was good and right and how it should be. She had fulfilled her promise to Perce: she had brought his boys up and they were fine young men and would make good husbands and fathers. But they would leave her. And, again, she wouldn’t have it any other way; it was the natural order, but suddenly, today, it was also unbearable. She felt so alone, so lost. She wanted Jacob, more than life itself. To share everything with him, the ups and downs, to know that there was one person in this world she would always come first with, always be adored by.
Was that selfish? She blinked the raindrops from her eyelashes. Maybe. But she didn’t care. She wasn’t old, she didn’t want her life to be over, and it would be if he didn’t come back. She wanted to have more babies, Jacob’s babies, while she was still young enough to enjoy them. She wanted . . . Oh, she wanted it all. She wanted her miracle.
Two weeks later, on a fine May evening tinged with wood-smoke and the sound of children playing in the park opposite, a lone figure stopped outside Lucy’s house. After the hell he had been through, the evening was so quintessentially English that it was painful. He wanted to breathe it in, to absorb it, to roll in it and take it in through the pores of his skin. This was what had made him determined to survive the cruelties of the new camp commandant who had replaced Walther Von Brauchitsch when he’d been taken ill. Because this meant Lucy. And it hadn’t been the physical afflictions or the starvation rations that had nearly done for him – oh no. It had been the mental starvation he’d endured, that they had all endured, of having no contact with home. No letters, not even a postcard. The commandant had known how to break a man’s spirit all right, and he had broken a few. But not his. Because she was waiting for him. Heaven and hell might pass away, but Lucy would still be waiting for him. Of that he was sure. He hadn’t been sure of anything else in that hell-hole, but he had been sure of Lucy.
It was dusk, and it was beginning to get dark. As he stood there, he heard a mother calling her children in the park and then after a minute or two all was quiet. He had been travelling for more than twenty-four hours and he was tired, so tired, but he knew he wouldn’t rest until he saw her. Until he knew she was safe and well. Until she was in his arms.
He walked up the garden path and knocked on the front door, the nervous excitement that had sustained him over the last days not apparent in his exhausted face, where deep lines had been carved by pain and the terrible things he had seen done to his friends.
When she opened the door she was even more beautiful than he remembered. And then she fell into his arms, as he had imagined she would, and they were kissing, kissing, kissing until the breath had left their bodies and they had to take great gasping pulls at it.
‘Lucy, Lucy . . .’ He had been going to say so much, but he could only murmur her name, and his heart-cry was answered as she whispered his name in such a way it touched the soul of him. ‘I came as soon as I could, the very second . . . ’
‘I know, I know you would have, my darling.’
‘You’re so beautiful, I can’t believe how beautiful.’
He was aware of her drawing him into the house, her voice thick with tears when she whispered, ‘They’re all out. There’s no one here. I thought one of them had forgotten their key . . .’ And then they were half-laughing and half-crying and kissing some more.
A long time later they sat in the sitting room, trying to begin to fill in the
last two years, but unable to stop touching each other and kissing and caressing.
Lucy was shocked at how ill and thin Jacob looked, but at the same time he had never appeared more handsome to her. He was here. It wasn’t a dream. The war was over and Jacob was here. Between kisses she murmured, ‘You must be hungry. I’ll get you something to eat.’
‘You still wear it.’ He didn’t seem to have heard her, his eyes on the tiny silver heart at her throat. He reached out, touching the necklace almost reverently.
‘All the time.’ Her blue eyes were misty.
‘Dance with me, Lucy.’
‘What?’
‘Now, in the moonlight. Before anyone comes home. Dance with me again.’ He pulled her to her feet, his arm going round her slim waist. ‘Remember? Remember how it was?’
‘You told me about the stars,’ she whispered tremulously. ‘And the frost sparkled like diamonds.’
Jacob led her into the garden and the soft May night embraced them in scented warmth. ‘There’s no frost,’ he murmured into the soft silk of her hair as he took her into his arms and held her close, ‘but the moonlight is the same, and we’re together.’
They began to dance, wrapped in each other’s arms and flowing as one, as they’d done so long ago in that other life. Lucy shut her eyes, heady with love. The long years melted away and she was a young girl again, on the brink of womanhood, dancing in the moonlight with the boy she loved.
Their lives were about to begin . . .
Dancing in the Moonlight
Rita Bradshaw was born in Northamptonshire, where she still lives today. At the age of sixteen she met her husband – whom she considers her soulmate – and they have two daughters and a son, and several grandchildren. Much to her delight, Rita’s first novel was accepted for publication and she went on to write many more successful novels under a pseudonym before writing using her own name.
In any spare moments she loves walking her dogs, reading, eating-out and visiting the cinema and theatre, as well as being involved in her local church and animal welfare.
BY RITA BRADSHAW
Alone Beneath the Heaven
Reach for Tomorrow
Ragamuffin Angel
The Stony Path
The Urchin’s Song
Candles in the Storm
The Most Precious Thing
Always I’ll Remember
The Rainbow Years
Skylarks at Sunset
Above the Harvest Moon
Eve and Her Sisters
Gilding the Lily
Born to Trouble
Forever Yours
Break of Dawn
Dancing in the Moonlight
First published 2013 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-230-76623-5
Copyright © Rita Bradshaw 2013
The right of Rita Bradshaw to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
Dancing in the Moonlight Page 35