by Nancy Revell
‘What, your biological mother?’ Hannah said. They all knew Martha was adopted. It had been obvious from the moment they had met both her parents. Either that or the apple had fallen many miles from the tree.
‘Yes,’ Martha said.
Gloria and Rosie sat back, shocked but relieved that Martha knew the truth.
As they listened to her tell the women about her ‘real mam’, a woman who didn’t deserve the title of mother, the one who was almost folklore in these parts, they couldn’t help but admire Martha even more than they already did.
Afterwards, it was decided they all needed a drink.
Hannah, who had been left in charge of the keys, locked up the drawing office and within five minutes they were all sitting in the Admiral.
‘Blimey,’ Angie was staring at Martha, ‘it’s amazing yer here – I mean, that she didn’t poison yer as well as the rest of the babs.’
‘I think she might have tried,’ Martha said, taking a sip of her shandy.
‘Really?’ Polly said. She had been particularly affected by Martha’s revelations. How could a mother do that to a child?
Martha nodded solemnly.
‘But nothing stops our Martha,’ Dorothy said, squeezing one of Martha’s muscular arms.
Polly looked at Gloria.
‘Does Helen know?’ Something told her she did.
Gloria nodded. ‘Yes. She was there that day – at the house.’
‘What? When you and Jack were there?’ Dorothy said, outraged.
‘No, not in the same room as us,’ Gloria said. ‘We didn’t know it at the time, but she was earwigging at the door.’
‘Was it her that told Miriam about you and Hope?’ Dorothy asked.
Gloria nodded. ‘She saw Jack when he came to visit me in hospital – that time after Vinnie laid into me in the yard.’
‘Blimey, that seems ages ago,’ Martha said.
‘Before Helen and I became close,’ Gloria said, not wanting everyone to apportion blame. It had taken a long time for Helen to win their trust.
‘I can’t believe you’ve been keeping this to yourself for so long,’ Hannah said. She had always known that Rosie and Gloria were behind her aunty Rina getting a job at the café, but not why they’d done so.
‘Me neither,’ Angie said.
‘Me too,’ Dorothy agreed.
‘So that was why Jack never came back for Arthur’s funeral,’ Polly said. It had struck them all as odd. The two men had been very close since Jack was a boy.
‘I can’t believe we didn’t realise there was something up before now,’ Polly said.
‘We thought something was up,’ Angie said, nodding over at her best friend.
‘But not that you were being blackmailed,’ Dorothy said, still shocked.
Everyone took a sip of their drinks.
‘So, that’s it,’ Hannah said, her hand around a glass of lemonade. ‘Jack has to stay in Scotland for ever and ever.’
‘Hopefully not for ever,’ Gloria said. ‘I’m sure something will happen.’
‘Yeh, like a ten-ton weight drops on Miriam,’ Angie said.
‘Is it all right to tell Bel?’ Polly looked round the table.
‘Course it is,’ everyone agreed. ‘She’s one of us.’
‘Yeah, even though she’s in the office,’ Angie said.
Polly looked at Martha. ‘You sure?’
‘Of course. I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.’ Martha looked at Gloria. ‘And I really would be all right if it all came out and everyone knew about my real mam. I’ve got broad shoulders.’
Angie spluttered on her gin and tonic. ‘Eee, yer have too, Martha. Dead broad.’
‘No, but honestly, I’d be fine,’ Martha reassured them again.
‘But it’s not just you, is it?’ Gloria said. ‘It would be awful for yer mam ’n dad. There are some wicked people out there. The kind that like to make other people’s lives a misery. Back-stabbers. Gossipmongers.’
‘Yes,’ Hannah agreed. She knew Mr and Mrs Perkins well. They were a lovely couple, but their shoulders were not as broad as their daughter’s. They would not do well with that kind of attention. ‘They would be looked at wherever they went. Everyone would treat them differently. People can be very cruel.’ Hannah’s words hung in the air. Hitler had taught them that the human capacity for cruelty and prejudice seemed to know no bounds.
They were quiet.
Rosie sipped on her brandy. She felt like she needed it.
‘I could try and have a word with my mam,’ Angie vol-unteered. ‘But I don’t think she’d listen to me. And I don’t think she’d stop seeing this bloke.’ She had been thinking about her mam since her date with Quentin. ‘I think she might even be in love with him.’
Dorothy looked at Angie.
‘You’ve never said that before.’
Angie just shrugged her shoulders. She wished she could tell Quentin all about what had happened.
‘I’ve had a go at my mother about …’ Dorothy looked around. The pub was starting to fill up, and a load of platers had just plonked themselves on the table next to them. She lowered her voice. ‘About you-know-what. But she just gives me short shrift, says no one will find out – that it doesn’t matter. She says she hasn’t seen my real father for God knows how long and she’s not doing anyone any harm.’
‘Does your stepfather know?’ Polly said. She wished more than anything she could tell Tommy about everything. God, she missed him.
‘No,’ Dorothy said. ‘And I think that’s what’s really at the bottom of it all. The fact that Frank doesn’t know.’
‘Oh dear,’ Martha said gravely.
Dorothy looked at Gloria.
‘Sorry, Glor. I feel that my blummin’ mother is stopping Jack from coming back.’
‘Aye, and mine,’ Angie chipped in.
‘And mine,’ Martha added. She had just taken a big mouthful of shandy and now had white froth on her upper lip. Hannah got out a hanky and wiped it off.
‘It’s no one’s fault,’ Gloria said. ‘If anything, it’s my fault fer falling in love.’
‘You can’t blame falling in love,’ Polly defended.
‘Nah, there’s only one person to blame in all of this,’ Angie said.
‘Yeah,’ Dorothy agreed. ‘Helen’s vindictive, callous cow of a mother.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
As it was now the summer holidays, and therefore there was no school to keep Charlotte busy, it had been decided that she should take on two part-time jobs. The mere suggestion might have had other young girls kicking and screaming in outrage, but not Charlotte. She had been over the moon to be splitting her time between waiting tables at Vera’s café and helping out at Thompson’s. She wasn’t sure why, but ever since what she called ‘the day of revelations’, she hadn’t wanted to be alone. She knew it was a pain in the backside for her sister, but she couldn’t help it.
Vera and Rina kept her busy and if it was quiet they showed her how to cook and bake cakes. They made it far more interesting than the old bag who taught home economics at school. She was also starting to like Vera; she wasn’t as scary or as awful as she had initially thought. On top of which, the old woman liked telling her about Rosie and Peter, and how their courtship had been conducted in her café – even though, she said, neither of them would admit they were courting at the time.
‘Ha!’ Vera said. ‘Yer should have seen the pair o’ them. All gooey-eyed, oblivious to anyone ’n anything around them. The number of times I had to stop myself banging their heads together to make them see sense.’
Vera enjoyed being the storyteller and Charlotte listened enrapt; her imagination spiked as the old woman related over tea and a buttered scone how she’d called them ‘the copper ’n the woman welder’, and how Peter always used to order cake even though neither of them was ever hungry.
‘Love does that to you,’ Vera said.
Charlotte looked at the old woman with spittle in the corn
er of her mouth and crumbs on her chin and couldn’t begin to envisage Vera being in love.
Peter, Vera told her, would always give her very generous tips and in return she would make sure their favourite table in the corner was always free when they came in every Wednesday.
‘That one there?’ Charlotte pointed over to the one set slightly apart from the rest.
‘Aye, that’s the one,’ Vera said, slurping her tea and eating her scone.
Hearing of her sister’s romance with Peter made Charlotte see Rosie in a different light. She and Peter were romantic lovers – not just boring husband and wife.
‘They got there in the end,’ Vera mused, before giving Charlotte a stern look. ‘He’s a good ’un, so you be nice to him when he gets back.’
She stood up and walked off, mumbling, ‘That’s if he comes back.’ Which made Charlotte think all the more.
At Thompson’s, Charlotte experienced a totally different working life. The offices were hot and stuffy and when she went out to have her lunch with the women welders, she understood why Rosie had always wanted her to have an education. The women would sit in the shade, their neck scarves flung to one side, the arms of their overalls dangling down as they attempted to cool themselves. Often, they were too tired to talk – all apart from Dorothy, of course, who saw silence as sacrilege.
They would often be joined by the ‘red-leaders’ – the women who painted the hulls of the ships. Charlotte thought that the splattered red paint on their overalls made them look as though they worked in an abattoir, not a shipyard. She decided that it must be the worst job ever. It looked boring and exhausting, and they all had similar dry coughs. It made her glad she was working in the office, the bonus being that she worked closely with Polly, whom she modelled herself on and wanted to be, minus the huge bump. If Polly had her hair in a ponytail, it was guaranteed Charlotte would come into work the next day with her hair in the same style. ‘If Polly shaved off all her hair, would you?’ Rosie joked one day, seeing Charlotte struggling to put her own thick, wayward curls into a bun. Charlotte, who had also taken to copying Dorothy’s dramatic facial expressions, had given her sister a scathing look and rolled her eyes to the bathroom ceiling.
If Lily thought that Charlotte’s busy summer holidays might give her a respite from breakfasts at the crack of dawn, she was to be disappointed. Charlotte was still for-saking any kind of a lie-in, and after hurrying Rosie out of the house and off to work, she would head off to West Lawn to enjoy several slices of Marmite on toast with the woman she adored and whose every word she hung on.
Polly and Helen also continued their regular catch-ups over a cuppa during lunch breaks. Helen knew her determination to see Polly give birth to a healthy baby was really about her own slightly irrational belief that it somehow went towards making up for her miscarriage. The irony that Helen’s baby would have been almost the same age as the baby growing in Polly’s belly did not escape her. She tried to wipe this fact from her mind but couldn’t. She had to accept what had happened to her, just as she had to accept that John could never be hers. The loss of her baby and the loss of her love still hurt. She just hoped it would lessen over time.
Polly suspected what had happened to Helen, having overheard Dr Billingham and Dr Parker chatting when she had been going into theatre to have her cervical stitch. She also suspected this was why Helen was so anxious that Polly’s pregnancy went to full term. It was why she didn’t want her workmates freezing Helen out because of her part in Jack’s banishment.
Agnes naturally continued to nag Polly to take it easy, and Polly continued to repeat that if she took it any easier, she’d grind to a halt.
The women’s excitement continued to grow along with Polly’s pregnancy, with Angie still fascinated by Polly’s growing girth. ‘My mam’s had six bairns ’n she’s never been as big as you are now – not even when she was about to drop.’
Gloria, as the eldest of Rosie’s squad, was finding the work under the unforgiving summer sun the hardest and was hitting the sack not long after she put Hope to bed, not that she minded. Telling the women the truth about why Jack was stuck up in Scotland, and seeing how grounded they were about their families’ secrets, had taken a huge weight off her shoulders. Perhaps that was why she was so tired, as though finally, having the weight lifted, she could rest and recuperate.
Hope was still no nearer to having a father in her life, but, just as Scarlett O’Hara said in Dorothy’s favourite film, Gloria resolved to worry about that another day.
And over in Ryhope, Dr Parker continued to see Claire. If they weren’t going out on proper dates, he always seemed to bump into her during the day – even though her base was the asylum and his the military emergency hospital. It had been a long time since he had courted and he had forgotten what it felt like to be with a woman, to kiss and caress, although he was always careful not to let himself go too much.
But despite his growing closeness to Claire, he still couldn’t get Helen out of his thoughts.
He’d tried, but it was no good.
And to make matters worse, she had now started to make an appearance in his dreams – as though her absence in his everyday life had forced her into his night life.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sunday August 15
‘… Happy birthday to you … Happy birthday, dear LuLu … Happy birthday to you!’
Everyone cheered and Joe lifted up an unusually shy-looking Lucille to blow out her candles. There were five of them on the cake and she managed it in one gusty blow.
Everyone cheered again, the sound filling Vera’s café and spilling out onto the main road as the hot weather meant the café door had been lodged open. The birthday venue had been Lucille’s present from Vera and Rina. They had moved all the tables and chairs to the side for the partygoers to sit and eat their sandwiches, leaving most of the wooden flooring free so that Lucille and all her little friends could run around and play.
‘Make a wish,’ Bel whispered in her daughter’s ear. She caught sight of Hope padding her way towards them – a look of determination on her face.
‘And remember,’ Bel said, giving her daughter a quick kiss on the cheek, ‘you can’t tell anyone, otherwise it won’t come true.’
In the corner of her eye she saw Dorothy whisk Hope up and away.
Bel and Joe watched as Lucille closed her eyes and scrunched up her pretty little face.
‘All done!’ she declared.
‘That didn’t take much thinking about,’ Joe joked.
‘That’s because she always wishes for the same thing,’ Bel mumbled.
Joe gave a quizzical look before he guessed.
‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
It was the same thing her mammy wished for every day.
‘LuLu …’ Polly had appeared, one hand on her huge bump, the other stretched out to her niece. ‘Are you going to help me cut the cake?’
‘Yeah!’ Lucille yelled as Joe put her back down.
Bel and Joe watched Polly take Lucille’s hand and walk around the table that had been used to display the cake. Hannah was there, ready with a stack of plates to dish out slices of the much anticipated chocolate sponge. Lucille teetered on tiptoes to put her small hand over her aunt’s and help cut the cake. Hannah stepped in and lifted her up so she could reach. Joe chuckled seeing that Polly was also struggling to reach the cake due to her bump.
‘I think my not-so-little sister will be glad when she finally has the bab.’ Joe glanced at Bel. She was also watching Polly, but seemed in another world. He took her hand and squeezed it. More than anything, he hoped that Lucille’s birthday wish was granted. And soon.
‘Please, my dear, don’t tempt me. I can feel my waist expanding just looking at it,’ Lily said, putting her hand up.
‘Are you sure,’ Charlotte said. ‘It’s a proper chocolate cake. Not one that looks like one but tastes like cardboard.’
‘I should hope it doesn’t taste like cardboar
d, the amount it cost to get all the ingredients,’ Maisie said, taking one of the plates.
Lily threw Maisie a disapproving look. ‘One should never talk about money in public, especially when it concerns a gift. It’s very uncouth.’
Charlotte bent down and handed a plate to a little boy who was standing waiting patiently by her side.
‘Well,’ Charlotte said, looking over to Lucille and her friends, who all had identical chocolate-smeared faces, ‘I think they would tell you it was worth every penny.’
When Charlotte left to continue handing out the cake, Maisie turned to Lily. ‘We haven’t had much chance to chat since I got back.’
‘I know, my dear,’ Lily said, looking over at Rosie, who was chatting away to Gloria and Helen. ‘We’ll have a proper sit-down tomorrow during the day.’
Maisie had been in London for the past month, checking all was well with La Lumière Bleue in Soho – an annual trip that Lily usually took, but this year she had sent Maisie. She couldn’t possibly have left Charlotte.
Maisie watched as Pearl crouched and gave Lucille a quick hug. She stood up and tugged her short skirt down. Seeing Maisie, she nodded over at Bill, making a face as though he was forcing her to go when more than likely it was the other way round; children’s parties were not her ma’s idea of a good time. Maisie waved her goodbye and watched as Pearl hurried out, fag in hand, still pulling at her skirt.
‘I was wondering,’ Maisie said, ‘whether you heard anything while I was away.’
Lily squinted at Maisie. ‘My dear, my short-term memory is now so short I walk into a room and completely forget what I went there for.’
Maisie suppressed a smile. She had seen Lily on a number of occasions walk into the kitchen or reception room, look puzzled and walk out again, only to come back a few minutes later.
‘Before I left, you wrote a letter to a certain someone,’ Maisie said, her voice low, not that it needed to be, though, as the cake had refuelled the children, who were charging about, laughing and shouting. She watched Martha help Angie set up for another game of musical chairs, while Dorothy rounded up the children. They had taken over from a tired-looking Agnes and Beryl, who were now enjoying a well-deserved sit-down and cup of tea.