Chocolate Girls

by Annie Murray

  ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘He’s quite happy.’

  Edie found herself looking round at everyone that evening, Davey and Frances, Ruby and her girls and especially at Janet – dear, kind Janet – and Martin, wanting to slow time down, for them all to stay together as they had done for so long now, their lives entwined both at Cadbury’s and at home, sharing all the day-to-day things. But now everything was changing and she could hardly bear to think of Janet and Martin moving so far away. Next year they wouldn’t be here at New Year. An urgent thought struck her. Martin wouldn’t be here . . .

  As midnight drew close, Martin handed out glasses of wine and beer to toast the New Year. Edie accepted a tot of red wine. Frances drank lime cordial.

  ‘Is young David allowed beer this once?’ Martin asked.

  Edie laughed at David’s eager expression. ‘Go on then – just a bit,’ she said.

  ‘When I was a girl, in Bournville,’ Frances said, ‘the young boys used to go out every New Year and run round the streets, into people’s houses and call out “Let the New Year in!” You were supposed to give them a reward for each room that they let the new year into – I believe it was sixpence. That seems to have died out now, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It must have got rather expensive!’ Martin said.

  ‘Come on everyone—’ Janet stood up, eyeing the clock. ‘Two minutes!’

  They all stood holding up their glasses, ready for the clock to strike its mellow ‘bong – bong . . .’ Janet jokingly conducted the seconds away with her glass. ‘Five, four, three . . . here we go! Happy New Year everyone!’

  They all hugged and kissed, wishing each other a happy 1955. Edie embraced Janet tightly and when she released her, both of them had tears in their eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ Janet said quietly to her. ‘It’s going to be so hard, Edie!’

  ‘I know—’ Edie hugged her again. ‘I don’t want you to go. But that’s me being selfish. I don’t like things changing. But you go and be happy there. Martin looks happier already.’

  ‘He is,’ Janet said wistfully. ‘And that makes so much difference.’

  Frances came up and embraced Edie. She smelt sweetly of rosewater. ‘Happy New Year to you, dear. Who knows what it may bring?’ Edie hugged her back fondly.

  She gave the young ones each a kiss, trying not to overdo it with David and embarrass him. Then Martin came up and she was wrapped for a moment in his long arms.

  ‘I hope you’ll like it there,’ she said.

  ‘Well – I’m hoping so – otherwise I’m dragging poor old Jan across the world for nothing. I know it’s asking a lot of her – and all of you. But I think it’ll be just the thing.’

  ‘Martin . . .?’

  He was waiting, looking down at her with an amused fondness.

  ‘Never mind.’ She touched his arm and moved on. ‘I’ll ask you later.’

  He had promised to drive Edie, Frances and Ruby home afterwards and it was quite a squeeze fitting everyone in the old Austin. Frances went in the front and Marleen and Greta had to sit on Ruby’s and Edie’s laps as they motored through the damp, deserted streets. They dropped Ruby off. She was still living in the Glover Road house. When they got to Linden Road Martin got out and walked round to let Frances out.

  ‘You two go on in,’ Edie said to Frances and David. ‘I want a word with Martin.’ Her heart was pounding suddenly, and she still felt flushed and strange after the wine.

  When the door closed behind them she and Martin stood by the car. His features looked heavier in the dim light and she saw he was exhausted.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said lightly.

  ‘If you’re going . . .’ She began, then trailed off, looking away down the road. In the silence the carillon began to ring from the tower.

  ‘Half past one,’ Martin remarked.

  ‘I need to find out.’ Her gaze was fixed steadily on him now. ‘Otherwise I’ll never do it. I need to find out anything I can about Davey.’

  Martin looked at her in silence for a moment. ‘And you’ll tell him?’

  ‘He needs to know – I suppose.’

  ‘I did say to you that I don’t really know anything. The only thing I can think of is that we root out that warden who found him. Someone will know, Edie. Quite a lot of people will know if we ask. Sometimes I think we should have asked years ago, but now we’ve left it so long . . . It depends on you being ready.’

  Edie gave a long, unsteady sigh. ‘I’m ready.’

  Thirty-Four

  Martin parked his car in a side road, opposite St Matthew’s church. The wrenching sound of the handbrake seemed to twist Edie’s nerves even tighter. She clasped her hands together and stared out through the windscreen at the branches of a tree. Its sharp twigs seemed to point accusingly at her. There was a silence and she knew Martin was looking at her, seeing how pale, how daunted she looked.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  Edie swallowed. ‘You think I should have done it ages ago, don’t you? That I might have deprived David of his real family?’

  ‘No.’ He spoke calmly, assuredly. ‘I think it’s very unlikely now that there is anyone. You did everything you could, Edie, you shouldn’t feel guilty. Look at all you’ve given him. He would have had to be fostered in any case, or gone to an orphanage.’

  She looked round into his eyes, feeling like a child who wanted him to tell her everything would be all right. Martin touched her hands for a moment. As he did so she realized they were clenched so tight that her arm muscles were beginning to ache.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said.

  She followed him to Bristol Road and they stood looking around them in the weak, January sunshine. The wind made her eyes water. Martin stood with the collar of his coat turned up, looking back and forth along the road.

  ‘Where on earth do we start?’ It felt hopeless to Edie suddenly. There were so many roads and houses.

  ‘I’m just trying to get my bearings. That night, we must have been . . . Goodness, it’s hard to tell. It felt almost like a different place. I think the warden stopped us – the ambulance – up there.’ He pointed in towards town. ‘We’ll start along there, shall we?’

  Edie walked beside him, her own mind full of memories of that night in 1940, so terrible for a great many people, but which ended with her holding Davey in her arms.

  A little way along the main road, three streets ran off it and they stopped.

  ‘Right,’ Martin said. ‘Where shall we start? My hunch is, it must have been Wellington Road.’

  ‘We might as well stay on this side,’ Edie said. ‘We can do Wellington and cross over if there’s no joy here. Do you remember the warden?’

  ‘I think I’d know him if I saw him again. Thing was, he stepped out into the road and suddenly he was there, slap bang in front of the ambulance. Could have killed him. Moustachioed sort of chap. He was getting on a bit – let’s hope he’s still alive.’

  They turned down Wellington Road. Edie was dismayed to see that it stretched on so far that she could not see the end of it. But then her attention was taken by the gaps in the long line of houses, the gaps from bomb damage common to almost every street within a mile or two of the centre, still not rebuilt, providing a playground for the games of local children and a breeding ground for weeds and rats.

  The street was quiet, except for a gaggle of children on the corner of an adjoining street and an elderly lady approaching them in the distance. People were resting after their Sunday lunches.

  ‘I suppose I should ask in one of the pubs,’ Martin said. ‘They’d know who the wardens were.’

  The elderly lady drew level with them. She was dressed in a black coat which almost reached her ankles, a black fur hat, and was walking with surprising energy for someone bent over a walking stick. She turned her head, peering from under the hat and said, ‘Afternoon.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ Edie cried, on impulse. She had to repeat it, louder, before the woman stopped, turning
her whole body round to speak to them. Her hand, holding the walking stick, was a waxen yellow, her veins a dark mesh across the bones. Two alert grey eyes peeped out from the folds and wrinkles of her face.

  ‘Are you trying to find yer way?’ she shouted. ‘You’ll have to speak loud if yer want my help, deary!’

  Martin took over. He asked if she remembered who had been the ARP warden for the road. For a moment the woman stared ahead looking so blank that Edie decided it was hopeless. Then she seemed to leap into life.

  ‘Oh now . . . well, one of them was Bob Ryman.’ She swivelled a little and pointed her walking stick towards the Bristol Road. ‘’E was up and down this end of the road. I live just up there, see, so I remember. Then down there—’ She revolved sharply and aimed the stick again. ‘They ’ad a lady doing it . . . I forget ’er name. Madge . . . no, Maud . . . Let’s see . . .’ She pulled a large hanky out of her pocket and wiped her nose, and during this pause, Martin said, ‘I don’t suppose you know what number Bob Ryman lives at?’

  ‘Ah—’ She looked downcast for a moment. ‘Oh!’ Her eyes brightened and the stick came into action again. ‘I do! Number twenty-eight!’

  It all seemed too easy, when so many years had passed. The door of number twenty-eight was opened by a plump, elderly woman in slippers who listened with sympathy and said she’d take them through to ‘my Bob’. They followed her down a long, tiled hall to the back room.

  ‘Bob – some people to see you!’

  The room was simply but cosily arranged. Two chairs, obviously his and hers, were drawn up by the fire and in one sat a man of about seventy, with a grey, trailing moustache. Edie thought of a picture book Davey had as a child containing ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’. Mr Ryman’s moustache made him look rather like the walrus.

  ‘I’m Martin Ferris and this is Edith Weale.’ Martin held his hand out and Bob Ryman shook it, charmed by Martin but obviously bewildered. ‘We have met before,’ Martin went on, ‘though you probably don’t remember.’

  ‘No.’ Mr Ryman had a low, rumbling voice and spoke with slow deliberation, looking from one to the other of them. ‘Can’t say I remember yer.’

  ‘Would yer like a cup of tea?’ Mrs Ryman said. ‘It’s no trouble.’

  ‘No – it’s all right, thank you.’ Edie smiled, nervously.

  Martin helped bring across two wooden chairs from the table and he and Edie settled on them. Mrs Ryman sat and picked up her knitting.

  ‘We’ve come because we need your help,’ Martin began. Edie was very grateful that he was there. ‘It’s about the time you were an ARP warden.’

  ‘Oh ar?’ Bob Ryman nodded, still cautious, filling the bowl of his pipe with tobacco.

  ‘One of those very bad nights in 1940 – November the nineteenth . . .’

  ‘Ah – terrible.’ He shook his head. ‘Just terrible.’

  ‘Well, I was driving an ambulance that night. And Edie here was working in the rest centre at St Matthew’s . . .’

  They had his attention now. He watched Martin, thumb still pushed into the bowl of his pipe.

  ‘You stopped an ambulance – my ambulance, and you’d rescued a baby.’

  ‘Oh ar—’ Mr Ryman pointed the pipe at Martin excitedly. ‘That little wench from up the road here. Oh, I’ll never forget that – one of the bloomingest things I saw all the war that was.’

  He stopped abruptly, and to Edie’s frustration spent what seemed like an eternally long time with the pipe in his mouth, struggling to light it. The sweet smell of smoke crept round the room.

  ‘Come on, Bob,’ Mrs Ryman urged, knitting furiously. ‘They ain’t come to watch you puffing on that – they want to ’ear.’

  At last the pipe deigned to behave itself.

  ‘It was one of the houses down here, had a direct hit, like – at the back. Killed the lot of them – except that babby. She must’ve been blown out through the front, somehow. When I got to the ’ouse, it was dark, of course, and there were that much mess . . .’ He made a pained face. ‘Oh, you’ve never seen anything like the state of it. I mean, I daint know anyone was in there then, but of course the neighbours said they must’ve been and when the lads came and cleared it . . .’ He looked down, shaking his head.

  Edie and Martin exchanged glances. The night was being conjured up for them again, the sadness of it.

  ‘But the babby – I mean it looked almost as if some-one’d put her there, deliberate like. She was lying out the front in the road, in this wooden cradle – only the side had come off of it. She was crying of course . . . And covered in dust,’

  ‘Shame,’ Mrs Ryman murmured.

  ‘Anyroad, I thought, well you can’t stay lying down there, bab – let’s get yer to safety. I carried her down the the main road and I was going to take her to the rest centre – only I saw the amb’lance coming . . .’ He indicated Martin. ‘And Bob’s yer uncle, as they say!’ He gave a chesty laugh.

  ‘Well,’ Martin smiled. ‘This is a great help, Mr Ryman.’

  ‘Where was the house?’ Edie asked, her heart thudding hard. They were getting closer every second. ‘Did you know the family?’

  ‘It were a way along the road – down on the right. I daint know ’em, no, and course they was all killed. Must’ve stayed on in the ’ouse.’ He shook his head again. ‘Terrible.’

  They explained to the Rymans why they wanted to know, and they were very interested to hear about David.

  ‘You must’ve brought him up very well,’ Mrs Ryman said as they were leaving. ‘He was a lucky lad, I reckon. Look – I’ll point yer at the house.’ She came out in her worn old slippers and showed them where to go. ‘See along there? It was the first out of those two.’

  They gave their thanks to the Rymans and went to stand and look at the remains of what had once been David’s home. The damage had been so severe that though a mass of rubble had been cleared away, there was little left to see except the low remains of walls, a sad shell. At the back of one room Edie could see the blackened remains of a fireplace. She stood trying to rebuild the house in her mind, to imagine who might have lived there.

  ‘Let’s find out all we can,’ Martin said. ‘I’ll try this side first.’

  There was no reply when they knocked at the neighbouring house on the left. The door of the house to the right was answered by a hard-faced woman in her fifties, grey hair scraped back into a bun. Her folded arms hugged a baggy brown cardigan round her against the cold wind. Martin, once again, explained what they wanted to know.

  ‘That lot?’ She sounded irritated. ‘All killed, they were. Made a right mess of our roof but we’ve fixed it up now – you can hardly see the damage. Bowles the name was. Funny sort of people – you know, never dressed right some’ow – and they were conchies. I don’t hold with that sort of thing when all our lads were out there getting shot to pieces. I lost my son, you know – Arnhem. Tell that to the conchies. Anyway – didn’t get them anywhere, did it?’ She nodded viciously at the remains of the house. ‘They’d taken in some Kraut woman and her child an’ all. Refugees, they said. I had words with that Mrs Bowles about it once, said I didn’t want Hitler’s spawn living the other side of the wall to me and she said they were victims as much as us. Huh! What d’yer want to know for, any’ow?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s rather a long story,’ Martin said.

  ‘Oh.’ The woman was uninterested, began retreating inside. ‘That’s all I know, anyroad – killed, they was, all of ’em. Can’t say any more than that.’

  They stood out in the road, the wind harsh on their cheeks. Edie felt the woman’s words hammering her, the loathing in them. It mirrored her own feelings. Germans . . . Hitler . . . Some Kraut woman and her child . . .

  ‘D’you want to ask anywhere else?’ Martin said. His voice was very gentle. Even in her stunned state, Edie thought how considerate he was, at his best when people were in distress.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not today.’ They walked slowly back, all they
had heard sinking in gradually.

  ‘Does this mean . . .?’ Edie spoke suddenly. ‘What does it mean? That Davey’s German, that his family, his mom, were German?’

  ‘It sounds like it. When you fit it all together. Some of the neighbours might know more – people who were closer to them. But by the sound of it they were refugees from Germany.’ He stopped and put his hand on her arm. ‘It looks as if Davey was rescued more than once if they’d escaped over here. I would think he might really be Jewish after all.’

  They drove back to Linden Road, talking in snatches, trying to fit together the little information they had. Frances’s face was anxious as they walked in, especially as Edie’s own expression gave away the fact that they had plenty to tell her.

  They found themselves whispering in the hall.

  ‘Where’s Davey?’ Edie asked.

  ‘Upstairs. Busy with something or other. Come through to the kitchen – I’ll put the kettle on.’ Frances limped ahead of them, tutting at the pain in her hip.

  As the water boiled they sat at the kitchen table and talked in low voices. Martin told Frances about Mr Ryman, and when it came to the lady next door, Edie took over. She described the remains of the house.

  ‘The lady didn’t like them – she was horrible about them really, wasn’t she, Martin? Thing is, Frances, she said they were conchies . . .’

  ‘Were they?’ Frances exclaimed.

  ‘She said they were called Bowles and they’d taken in a German woman and her child – so that must’ve been Davey.’

  Frances sat up very straight.

  ‘Bowles? Where was this?’

  ‘Wellington Road,’ Martin said.

  ‘Bowles . . . Bowles – of course! But they were Friends! The ones whose house was hit! Of course, she was a CO. She’d evidently been a pacifist even in the Great War. I mean Serena Bowles was getting on in age. I didn’t know her very well, but I know she’d been a widow for years. And they were bombed out, d’you remember me telling you? She was one of the ones who’d taken in refugees. There was a whole family first of all, until they found somewhere else to live. And then she evidently took in a young Jewish woman from Berlin.’