‘You’re sinful enough for the rest of them put together,’ Rose had said thinly. She didn’t altogether approve of Priscilla.
‘But bad girls have all the fun, sweetie,’ Priscilla had returned, only half-joking, ‘and who knows what the future will bring? This wretched war might go on for years yet, and where will all the young men be at the end of it? Where will we be? Those poor people at Midsummer’s Farm didn’t expect to have a couple of Hitler’s bombs land on them, did they? And that was only a few miles away, as the crow flies. Nothing is certain now, except the moment in which you live, and I don’t intend to waste my moments. No one should, and that includes you, Esther.’
Priscilla had a point, they’d all acceded, and Esther had found herself agreeing to accompany the others to the very next dance. Which was tonight. Weakly she said, ‘I’d forgotten the dance was tonight, and I’m shattered, Cilla. All I want is my bed. I’ll come next time, I promise.’
‘No doing, sweetie. Your promises regarding this particular enterprise are like Mrs Holden’s pie-crusts – made to be broken. Rose is listening out for Joy, not that your angel child ever stirs anyway. And you are coming out with us, to have some fun. The hours we work, we deserve it. Admittedly the old village hall isn’t exactly Covent Garden Opera House’ – this had been converted into a ballroom, to satisfy the desire of London’s civilian war-workers and the men and girls on leave from the forces to dance the night away, much to Priscilla’s envy – ‘but we’ll make the best of what we have, in true British spirit. There’s a band tonight too, so hopefully that’ll mean a good turnout.’
It would also mean a heightened possibility of bickering between the GIs and local lads, along with the injured British soldiers, who were recovering from their war wounds in an army convalescent home just outside the village. It had been a grand house before the war, but the owner, a retired colonel, had been happy to ‘do his bit’ for King and country.
Esther wrinkled her nose at her friend. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, I do. And tonight I’m not taking “No” for an answer, as the vicar said to the chorus girl.’
Esther had to laugh. Priscilla was full of outrageous quips and was totally irreverent. She’d thought it a great compliment when one of her GIs had called her a ‘sassy broad’ and had gone round for days repeating it to anyone who’d listen.
‘Oh, come on, Est,’ Priscilla said with beguiling charm. ‘It’s such a beautiful evening. Don’t waste it going to bed early. We won’t have long there as it is – it’s already nearly eight o’clock – but at least we can have a dance and a couple of glasses of Mr Sheldon’s home-made wine.’
Mr Sheldon was the local butcher, but his passion was his wine-making, as his constantly flushed face and bright red nose testified to. He always provided a good number of bottles for the monthly village dance, the proceeds of which went to the church-roof restoration fund; and be it rhubarb, elderflower, cherry or one of the other varieties that Mr Sheldon had stocked from floor to ceiling in his cellar, they all had a kick like a mule. Cider and home-made beer were also sold, but not spirits – by order of the WI, which hosted the events and maintained that strong liquor could cause ‘problems’, with so many young people gathered together. All the girls agreed that a couple of glasses of Mr Sheldon’s wine were more lethal by far than a bottle of gin!
‘Come and wash. The others are waiting.’ Priscilla took the decision out of Esther’s hands, pulling her across the yard and then standing over her while she got ready. Priscilla looked at her friend fondly, once she was dressed. Esther was lovely, inside and out, she thought, and she was determined not to let her hide herself away forever. She was too young to be a hermit.
Once the girls were walking into the village, Esther had to admit it was good to be out on such a mellow summer’s evening, dressed up in her glad rags for once. She tended to wear her brown breeches and cotton blouses from morning till night, and it never seemed worth changing before she washed and fell into bed after each exhausting day. Tonight, though, she felt young and almost carefree as she listened to the others chatter and rib each other, all of them giggling at Priscilla’s awful jokes.
The essence of summer saturated the leaf-bound lane they were walking down. Spring-sown crops grew in the fields on either side of the lane, ears of barley and corn thrusting their various shades of lime-green upon a lush landscape, along with the sweet perfume of honeysuckle and nettle flowers, and the creamy-white blooms of dogwood and elder. Esther found herself breathing it all in in great gulps, as though she didn’t work out in the open every day. But somehow it was different tonight.
She glanced at Priscilla walking beside her. The rule ‘Make Do and Mend’ had been the order of the day since the war began, and clothing had been rationed since the summer of 1941 on a points system: in principle, it allowed people to buy one complete new outfit a year. Much to many girls’ dismay, a wartime ‘Utility Look’ was the main emphasis, with sensible, flat-heeled shoes and square-shouldered jackets imitating the cut of uniforms. This all seemed to have passed Priscilla by. She had arrived at the farm with two suitcases full of clothes – all beautiful creations by Paris designers, the international centre of haute couture. And, as the war had progressed, she had declared that she saw no reason to become what she termed ‘frumpy’. Consequently she generously shared her original clothes with the other girls, and they had lovely evenings cutting and altering them to fit in with the current mode, but relishing the wonderful material and flamboyant colours that set them apart from wartime austerity.
With women’s magazines packed with tips on how to turn old lace curtains into a ‘dashing little bolero’ and the like, the girls weren’t short of ideas, and when Beryl returned from her one week’s annual leave with a parcel of parachute silk that her aunty had given her, they made the most of the unexpected bonus.
Priscilla, in particular, had the knack of wearing anything and making it look stylish. Whether this was a result of her year at an expensive Swiss finishing school just before war was declared, the others didn’t know, but they had many hilarious evenings with Priscilla showing them how to walk so that their hips swung and their backs were straight, their chins up as they took turns sashaying up and down the small cottage sitting room. Times that Esther had desperately needed.
Where would she have been, and what would she have done, without Priscilla and the others standing by her, when Monty cast her off so arbitrarily? Esther asked herself, slipping her arm through that of her friend as they walked on. If it had been peacetime and she hadn’t had the bolthole of Yew Tree Farm, she would have gone mad with the torture of her thoughts in those first few weeks.
But – she took a deep breath – she had had her friends, and dear Rose too; and most of all she’d had Joy, her wonderful, darling, precious Joy, and she was worth every tear and dark time she’d been through. Esther had never expected motherhood to be such a passionate, all-consuming thing. She had loved her daughter from the first moment she had looked into her dear little face, and it made any other kind of love – even the feeling she’d had for Monty – pale into insignificance. So perhaps that meant she had never loved him as she thought she had? She didn’t know, but it didn’t matter anyway. She had begun a new life, and the past was ashes.
As they drew nearer to the village, her stomach began to flutter with apprehension, despite telling herself that she was being silly. If she was being truthful, though, she knew it wasn’t because of tiredness or any of the other excuses she made regularly to Priscilla, in an attempt to avoid accompanying the others to the dances. She’d seen how the self-righteous matrons manning the food and drink tables looked at her, on the couple of occasions she’d weakened and gone with them, along with some of the local girls and lads. She’d even overheard one of the white GIs muttering something about ‘the one who did the dirty on her pilot’, when he’d nudged his cronies as she’d walked by.
It had upset her, she admitted reluctantly, in spi
te of telling herself that she didn’t have to justify anything to anyone. The folk who mattered to her knew the truth, and if the rest of the world believed she’d had an affair with a black GI whilst her husband was away fighting, then there was little she could do about it. And, surprisingly, it was the white GIs who seemed most upset, which she found difficult to understand. They were fighting with their black countrymen against a common enemy, and yet most of them were fierce about keeping the black GIs ‘in their place’, as they put it. It was clear they took it as a personal insult when local women danced and socialized with the black GIs, and Priscilla had been taken to task more than once because of it. Her friend had told her that there were fights, both within the GIs’ camp and outside, about the issue of black GIs fraternizing with white women.
For the first time in her sheltered life, Esther had been forced to recognize that life was full of cruel contradictions. Since she had become aware of her beginnings, she had taken an interest in the history of America – hitherto, merely another country across the ocean. And the more she had delved, the more things had puzzled her. Men, women and children from African countries had been snatched from their homes and taken as slaves to America, under appalling conditions; in some cases being treated worse than their owners treated their animals. And yet it was the white GIs – if they were representative of their country as a whole – who were eaten up with hatred and resentment. And of course Britain had her own record of inhumanity to man. Why had she never thought about such things before?
Because it had not directly impinged on her, Esther Wynford: daughter of wealthy parents, with a privileged and comfortable lifestyle to match. And, but for the wake-up call that Joy’s birth had brought about, she would still be living with her eyes closed to a period of the past that was shameful. And yet her mother had braved her family’s wrath, because she had loved her Michael; maybe she had hoped her family would accept him, because they cared about her and her happiness? Or perhaps she had loved him in such a way that nothing else mattered except that they were together? She didn’t know. Esther sighed softly. There was so much she didn’t know, and at times she ached with wondering.
‘Stop daydreaming.’ They had reached the village hall and Priscilla turned to Esther, smoothing a stray curl from her friend’s forehead in much the same way a fussy mother might, before a child went to a party. ‘You’re going to enjoy yourself tonight, sweetie. Okay?’ As the others went inside, Priscilla added softly, ‘Show the world you don’t care what they think. They’re nothing, these narrow-minded yokels, and the white GIs are even worse. They scorn any colour but their own.’
Esther knew Priscilla was trying to be encouraging and she appreciated her friend’s loyalty, but she felt intimidated about entering the hall and was angry with herself for feeling that way. She hadn’t been unfaithful to Monty; but even if she had, it was no one’s business but her own. But she knew she was further condemned in most folk’s eyes because her baby was mixed-race, and that was hateful. ‘I’m not ashamed of who I am, Cilla, and certainly not of Joy, but who do people think they are, to sit as judge and jury? And why do some white folk think they are superior just because of the colour of their skin? I want to punch them – that’s how I feel half the time. I’m me, that’s all. And Joy is who she is. Why isn’t that enough for other people?’
Priscilla took her hand. ‘It is enough, sweetie.’
‘Not for a good portion of people inside this hall.’
‘Then a good portion of people inside this hall are wrong – it’s as simple as that.’
The two girls stared at each other for a moment or two, and then Esther gave a reluctant smile. It wasn’t simple at all, they both knew that, but either she buckled under the weight of animosity and criticism, or she took the world by the throat and fought back. She might not know who her parents were – oh, she had two names and a little information about the girl who had given birth to her, and she knew her father must have been black, but what was that in the overall scheme of things? Hardly anything. She didn’t know what they were like, as flesh-and-blood people; their natures and personalities; even what they looked like, or whether they were still alive. But she had to live with that. She had Joy. Together they would create their own life.
‘So, we’re going in. Right?’ Priscilla grinned at her.
‘Right.’ And together they walked into the music and clamour of the village-hall dance.
Chapter Ten
Caleb McGuigan had no wish to be where he was, sitting like an old flame at a wedding, as he put it to himself. Why the blazes he’d allowed Kenny to persuade him to come along to this damned dance he didn’t know; he must have been mad. He glanced at his pal, who was sitting at the side of him supping at his glass of beer, and then at the others from the convalescent home gathered around the table. What a motley crew; they’d have a job to put one good body together from the lot of us, he thought with dark humour. There was poor old Kenny, his hands and face burned so badly even his dear old mam wouldn’t recognize him; and Wilf and Art, both missing an arm, and Art with a ton of shrapnel still lodged in his chest; Harold minus an ear and an eye, and half his face; and himself . . . He glanced down at the empty trouser leg where his left leg used to be. And him at a dance. A dance!
Kenny had said that at least it got them out of reach of Matron Griffiths for a while, but he’d rather have sat in the grounds of the home with a glass of the lukewarm ginger beer that didn’t have a drop of alcohol in it, but which was all the doctors allowed. He hated being a recipient of veiled, pitying glances or, in Kenny’s and Harold’s cases, shock and even horror, from those who were no good at hiding their feelings. At least Matron Griffiths and her nurses – bossy and tyrannical as they could be at times – treated them like ordinary men, not some poor excuse for such.
‘We’ll be for it, when we get back,’ said Kenny with a great deal of satisfaction. They hadn’t asked permission to come to the dance, knowing it would be refused, in a couple of their cases. The five of them shared a dormitory in what had been one of the ten bedrooms of the house, and had decided weeks ago that it was all for one and one for all – hence their absconding from the grounds of the home when they were supposed to be taking the evening air. As Kenny (the instigator of the escapade and the bane of Matron Griffiths’s life) had said, the evening air smelled so much better when the fumes of beer accompanied it. None of them had argued. If Kenny fancied a beer, then they were up for it; he’d recently undergone several operations to graft a new nose onto what was left of his face, and his hands were a work-in-progress too, but none of them had ever heard him complain. Caleb knew each of the lads would have crawled on their hands and knees to the village hall, if necessary, to get Kenny his pint.
‘Aye, well, just say “Yes, Matron” and “No, Matron” for once,’ Caleb warned drily. ‘She’ll be spitting bricks as it is, without you getting her going.’
‘Believe me, the last thing I want to do is to get Matron going,’ returned Kenny with a lascivious leer. ‘Now if it was that little Welsh nurse, the one with the come-to-bed eyes and wiggle, that’d be a different kettle of fish.’
‘In your dreams, matey,’ said Art. ‘She’s engaged to a major, no less, and rumour has it he’s built like a brick outhouse. You wouldn’t want to tangle with him.’
‘She’d be worth it. Have you seen the way she moves her hips? She knows a thing or two.’
‘And one of them is how to keep randy so-an’-sos like you at arm’s length . . . ’
Caleb swigged at his glass of beer, his mind only half on the banter. Two girls had just walked in the door. One of them he’d seen before, a tall, blonde piece who came regularly with some other girls; but the second was new to him. He expelled his breath in a silent whistle. She was something else too: a looker, if ever he saw one. He found he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He realized his face must have given him away when Harold leaned his way and murmured, ‘Your tongue’s hanging out,
lad, but you can forget about that one. Rumour has it she was married to a pilot, but when they had a happy event, it turned out not to be quite so happy, if you get my meaning.’
Caleb’s wrinkled brow was the answer.
‘The baby wasn’t his. She’d been messing about with one of the black GIs.’
Caleb stared at his friend. He had been born deep in the heart of Sunderland’s Monkwearmouth near the docks, and one of the things that had made him want to get out of the grids of terraced streets and back alleys was the knowledge that you couldn’t blow your nose without the whole neighbourhood knowing about it. Everyone knew everyone else’s business, and what they didn’t know, they would make up – always to the detriment of the unfortunate target of gossip. The streets were like one big family, but a dysfunctional family. One that could be as cruel as it could be kind; as unforgiving with its own as with any stranger who attempted to penetrate the unspoken codes and morals. He’d hated the narrow-mindedness, the poverty, the dirt and the blind acceptance of most people that they couldn’t change their lot. When he had joined the army a couple of years before war had been declared, his girlfriend of the time had called him an upstart, when he’d made the mistake of telling her why. And maybe he was an upstart. One thing was for sure: he’d discovered that, regardless of geography, people were the same the whole world over. And gossip spread quicker in this village than a dose of salts.
Quietly he said, ‘When you say rumour?’
‘Well, she’s got a kid that’s not white. Everyone knows that.’
‘I didn’t.’
Harold could have said that might be because Caleb rarely left the grounds of the home and was probably one of the most unsociable so-an’-sos he’d ever come across, but he didn’t. He was a pal, and everyone got through what the war had thrown at them in their own way. Instead, he took a swig of his beer, before shrugging. ‘It’s common knowledge – take my word for it. Don’t see, myself, what the women see in these GIs.’
The Colours of Love Page 12