A Wartime Wife

by Lizzie Lane

  ‘So’s—’ Lizzie had been going to say that Peter Selwyn was also going into the merchant navy, and barely stopped herself. She didn’t want any awkward questions.

  Instead she smiled. ‘Then we’d better head for home.’

  Inside, she harboured deep concern for both boys. She hadn’t expected to worry about either of them, especially Patrick. And yet seeing them clutching their recruitment papers, their faces tense with expectation, she shared their fears, the realisation that they had done something momentous, something they only now were coming to terms with.

  Luckily, they’d packed everything they would need for leaving so swiftly.

  Temple Meads Station was more packed than the recruiting office. Hundreds of men milled over the platform and the air here was as charged with apprehension and excitement as it had been at the recruitment office.

  ‘You promise you’ll answer my letters?’ Patrick asked Lizzie.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  Patrick smiled. ‘Thanks for that photograph. You don’t mind if I tell blokes that you’re my sweetheart, do you?’

  Lizzie had given him the photograph earlier. Daw had brought it from home and it was too late to give it to Peter. Besides, it wasn’t her best photo; she was about fifteen and still wearing a girl’s dress with frills around the sleeves, a shapeless skirt, cotton socks and sandals.

  ‘Yes, I do mind! It’s an awful photo. You’d better tell them that I’m your best friend.’

  He looked disappointed, but she couldn’t help it. There was and always would be a stigma associated with Patrick Kelly. It was sad, but that was the way of things. If only she’d known that Peter was going away, she would have made a point of choosing her best photograph and giving it to him.

  ‘There’s three trains for troops,’ the railway porter explained. ‘They’re going to three different training camps.’

  ‘And where would they be?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘You’ll find out when you get there,’ the porter answered and disappeared into the crowd.

  The fumes and noise of steam engines reverberated against the overhead roof.

  ‘It’s here! It’s here,’ shouted Patrick. ‘Come on, John. This one’s fer us.’

  John barely had time to hug and kiss Daw before Patrick dragged him off, Daw’s face smothered in tears as Lizzie pulled her away.

  The crowd pressed into the gap left by the two men. It was a useless task, but Lizzie did her best to console her older sister.

  ‘Wave goodbye, Daw. Wave goodbye. See? There they are … just over there.’

  She pointed to where John and Patrick were hanging out of a carriage window, waving for all they were worth.

  The two sisters waved back, Daw blowing kisses, as her nose began to run along with her tears.

  ‘They’ll be home in no time,’ Lizzie assured her.

  ‘By Christmas,’ said a woman beside her, her hat tipping over her middle-aged face. ‘My two boys are going to be home by Christmas. I told them to be sure of that.’

  ‘Do you think they will be?’ Daw asked.

  Lizzie didn’t hear the woman’s reply. Her gaze had drifted to the opposite platform where Peter Selwyn stood waiting for the boat train, his arms around his mother, who was sobbing profusely against his chest.

  She only turned away when she realised that Daw was whispering something against her ear.

  ‘What was that you said,’ she asked, her gaze still fixed on Peter Selwyn.

  ‘I said, we did it,’ said Daw, her face pink with embarrassment. ‘We couldn’t stop ourselves.’

  Lizzie was dumbstruck. She saw her sister’s dark eyes and bright red lips through a blur of guilty thoughts. Was it her fault she’d done it? Had she unwittingly encouraged her to give in to John?

  Daw’s bottom lip quivered. ‘You don’t think I’ll get pregnant do you, not from just doing it the once? It was the first time, Lizzie, honestly it was.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Lizzie shook her head and turned her attention back to Peter and his mother. There was no sign of them and the boat train to Southampton was moving out of the station. He was gone and she didn’t know when she would see him again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The knocking at the front door was polite but persistent.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming.’

  Mary Anne muttered angrily to herself at the same time as climbing over a pile of blackout curtains that she’d not quite finished hemming to the right length for the front parlour. Her attention was riveted on the door and whoever was hammering on it.

  ‘If it’s not the doctor or the vicar, they’ll get the sharp edge of my tongue.’

  At the same time she untied her apron and flung it on the hallstand. It was a rule that she never answered the front door wearing her apron, and few people used the front door. Customers wanting to pledge and borrow went round the back. Only important people like the doctor or someone from the taxi company to ask where Henry was, or Henry himself. Everyone else came in at the back door.

  The last person she expected to see was Biddy all done up like a dog’s dinner, smelling of Evening in Paris, a tawny red fox fur draped around her shoulders.

  Biddy’s face looked strangely tight, as though she had adopted a particularly singular expression that morning and was holding on to it for dear life.

  Mary Anne frowned. ‘What do you want? Is something wrong?’

  Biddy shrugged one shoulder, dragging Mary Anne’s attention to the snout of the long dead fox.

  ‘I wanted to pledge me fur. Our Brian’s joined the navy and I wanted to give him a good send off – so foxy here has to go.’

  Mary Anne folded her arms and adopted her own tight expression. ‘Then you, of all people, should know better. Why didn’t you go round the back as usual? Gone up in the world are we?’

  Biddy looked taken aback. ‘What? With him there?’ She jerked her dimpled chin to the archway dissecting the terrace and the only way to the back alley.

  A sense of foreboding swirled inside Mary Anne’s stomach, which already ached in the aftermath of Henry’s anger about Harry refusing to enlist. He couldn’t have found out about her business, could he?

  She followed Biddy’s pointing finger.

  ‘Him,’ Biddy said, nodding to where a matt black shadow fell from the archway. ‘He says he’ll stop anyone from doing business with you. He says it’s illegal. I told him I didn’t care, and who was he anyway to tell me where I should pledge me valuables. He told me that he’s a real pawnbroker and that you got no rights doing him out of business.’

  Mary Anne stared at her dumbfounded, then back to the figure in the archway. ‘Oh does he now!’

  Bundling Biddy inside, she told her to find her own way to the washhouse and to put the kettle on the gas on her way through the kitchen. Pulling the door almost shut behind her, she took a deep breath and rolled up her sleeves like a boxer ready for a brawl. This was her street, her territory. Ready to face anything, she headed for the archway.

  Although her knees trembled, her indignation kept her going. No one was going to stop her earning a shilling – legal or not.

  She recognised the foreigner who had accosted her in the back garden, nephew to the old man who had died. He had a wary look in eyes half hidden by thick, straight hair that fell darkly across his brow. Lines radiated from the corners of his mouth, surely too many for someone of his age? Surely he couldn’t be much more than twenty-five, and yet what was it about him that made her think he’d have some tales to tell if she had a mind to listen.

  None of your business! She forced herself to focus on the present problem. Never mind tales, what the bloody hell’s he doing here?

  The foreigner was taller than her, though not so tall as her husband or son, but he had a more hardened look, his brow throwing a shadow over his eyes.

  She stood directly in front of him.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked, knuckles resting on her hips – they were sma
ll and not likely to do him much damage, but she did look battle ready.

  ‘Why are you doing this,’ he retaliated.

  She felt trim and in control when she straightened herself to full height. ‘You’ve got no rights stopping people going round the back lane.’

  ‘I am not stopping anyone from passing as long as they are not doing business with you.’

  ‘You have no right to do that!’

  He jammed his knuckles on his hips, his stance echoing her own. ‘And you have no right taking the bread out of my mouth. I have a shop to run, taxes to pay. You are affecting that.’

  ‘How dare you! You, a foreigner here …’

  His face darkened. ‘I did not ask to be here. The war forced me to come here. You are not at war yet, not really. It is just words. You do not know how it is, what is happening. A few skirmishes at sea, an army sent over to France all sitting on their backsides waiting for the Germans to face them. Does no one in this country realise that the Nazis prefer to stab in the back?’

  Although her chest heaved with indignation, something in the way he spoke filled her with fear. But she couldn’t possibly relinquish what she did. Her family were the best dressed and fed in the street, but wouldn’t be without the money brought in by the business. Even the blackout curtains had been bought with money she’d earned from her ramshackle pawnshop.

  ‘Then if war is so terrible, why are we arguing? Surely there’s room for a small operation such as mine?’

  ‘I cannot allow it. I have responsibilities. I have a duty to my dead uncle to ensure that the business survives.’

  A cold breeze lifted her hair, exposing an unlined throat. She wrapped her pale-blue cardigan more closely around herself, tucking her chin into the deep collar.

  Michael had the impression she was hiding in it, trying hard to survive in her small domestic world, at the same time attempting to ignore the wider issues. People, especially women, did that, he’d noticed. His mother hadn’t necessarily believed in what his stepfather had believed in, she’d merely appeared to. Living through those she loved was more important than living her own life.

  Eyes unblinking, she studied his face, saw the hardness, but couldn’t help sensing it was only a barrier between the world and the man within. He spoke eloquently and in other circumstances she might have enjoyed listening to the melodic precision of his voice. As it was …

  She shook her head, her grey eyes dark with thought. ‘No. You cannot do this. It’s not fair. Not fair at all.’

  ‘Not fair?’ His voice raised an octave, echoing between the terraced houses lining both sides of the street.

  The men putting the finishing touches to the air warden’s hut at the end of the street stopped what they were doing and looked in their direction.

  ‘This is England,’ Mary Anne said. ‘Foreigners can’t just come here and tell us what to do.’

  Her voice carried to the workmen, just as she’d intended it to. Shouldering shovels and pickaxes, they came in her direction.

  ‘You all right there, luv?’

  Arms folded across her chest, she smiled triumphantly up into the pawnbroker’s face. ‘You see? This is England. It’s a free country and I can do what I want.’

  He looked over her head at the advancing gang. The shadow of his brow receded and she saw the fear in his eyes, sweat bursting like dewdrops from his forehead and finally all over his face.

  There was no way she could possibly know the secrets of his past, at least, not specifically, and yet she knew there were bad things. Could that be because there were bad things in her life too? The thought of them having something in common was alien, but would not go away.

  ‘Did you say he was a foreigner, missus?’ asked one of the men. ‘Can’t be too careful, you know.’

  The others brought their tools down from their shoulders as they gathered round, as though ready to beat anyone not home grown.

  The thought of it made her sick. The dizziness threatened to return. She looked over the heads of the grim-faced men to the women beyond – standing in doorways, cleaning windows, sweeping pavements – all still now and looking her way, wondering what the noise was about.

  No! She mustn’t faint. No one must suspect. No one.

  Grabbing the pawnbroker’s arm, she shouted at the workmen. ‘Just a long-lost cousin – from Australia,’ she added.

  Judging by their expressions they didn’t believe her.

  Without a backwards glance, she pushed the eloquent young man through the archway and out into the alley.

  ‘This way. You can go through the house and out the front door once they’ve cleared off, and pray that’s before my old man comes home.’

  ‘Your old man?’

  ‘My husband.’

  She pushed him through the garden gate, past the rows of potatoes, cabbages and carrots.

  ‘I didn’t mean for that with the workmen to happen,’ she said. ‘But there, they were only trying to protect a good, honest Englishwoman, weren’t they?’

  ‘I should think you are capable of protecting yourself. In fact, I know you are.’

  Blushing, Mary Anne recalled their first meeting when he had surprised her hanging out the washing.

  ‘You’re right. I was going to brain you with a garden spade.’

  ‘Brain me?’

  ‘Hit you over the head. You did startle me.’

  ‘I am sorry. I did not mean to. I only wished to tell you I was not happy that you were stealing my trade.’

  ‘So you said,’ she said with a grimace, pushing open the door to the washhouse.

  Biddy had pulled up a stool and was sitting with her back against the copper, which still held heat from an early wash load. She looked up, her face radiant with welcome.

  Biddy’s jaw dropped as she suddenly recognised the pawnbroker, the man who’d been standing in the archway. ‘Hello, young man.’

  Michael nodded a casual greeting but looked wary.

  Noticing his discomfort, Mary Anne hid her grin. Obviously he knew a tart when he saw one and had good reason to concern himself. The fact that she was married had no effect on Biddy’s love life. She took it wherever and whenever it came.

  Lizzie fancied that the glassy eyes of the fox fur eyed her accusingly as she entered.

  ‘This is …’ Mary Anne began.

  ‘Michael. My name is Michael Maurice.’

  Biddy tittered like a young girl. ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m ever so sure.’

  Mary Anne raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Biddy doesn’t get out much and meeting strangers is as good as meeting royalty to her.’ She turned back to Biddy. ‘Michael and I have business to discuss.’ It was all she could say by way of explanation.

  Michael’s smile was like a warm glow melting a frozen pond, the cracks racing off in all directions. They exchanged a look of understanding.

  ‘It was getting ugly out there,’ she said. ‘The workmen,’ she added in response to Biddy’s blank expression. ‘They don’t like foreigners.’

  ‘Ooow. Where are you from?’ asked Biddy, eyeing Michael with renewed interest.

  Michael trotted out the same lie. ‘Holland.’

  ‘I quite like foreigners, especially them from Holland.’ She grinned widely, like a cat about to pounce on a trapped mouse.

  Michael responded by choosing the furthest corner to stand in.

  It amused Mary Anne to see their behaviour. She doubted that Biddy had ever met a foreigner in her life, but made no comment, merely explaining what she intended to do.

  ‘I’ll take Mr Maurice through the house and out the front door as soon as they go to tea.’

  ‘They go about four,’ said Biddy, her pink cheeks bunching like roses. ‘I’ve made it for them meself sometimes.’ She blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘Nothing in it, of course, just being friendly.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary Anne, ‘and the whole street knows how friendly you can be.’

  An alarm clock sitting on the top shelf chos
e that moment to chime four.

  ‘It’s later than I thought. Come on. I’ll let you out the front door,’ said Mary Anne, throwing Biddy a warning look to behave herself.

  ‘You are pushing me around again,’ said Michael, though he obediently allowed himself to be pushed.

  ‘What about my fox fur?’ Biddy wailed.

  Mary Anne gritted her teeth. She’d hoped Biddy would wait until she’d got rid of Michael Maurice. But that was the way Biddy was. Her eyes and face were as round as her body and just as soft. Spaniel brown eyes looked innocently up into Mary Anne’s face, like a child determined not to be overlooked.

  ‘It’s for my Brian,’ she murmured, her bottom lip quivering. She turned to the pawnbroker. ‘He’s joining the navy. He’s doing his bit for his country and he’ll look a right picture in uniform, but I’ve got to give ’im a decent send-off. Poor lamb deserves it.’

  Biddy’s Brian was as far removed from a lamb as you could get, mused Mary Anne. He stood at six foot three in his socks and had shoulders as wide as a barn door.

  Recognising there was no way Biddy was leaving until she had exchanged the fox fur for some money, Mary Anne resigned herself to fixing a price.

  ‘Here,’ she said taking her tin box from its hiding place behind the copper. ‘Here’s fifteen shillings.’

  Biddy’s eyes turned round as saucers as she took the money. ‘Oooow. I never expected so much.’

  ‘Well, there you are. You can never tell,’ said Mary Anne. The truth was that the fox fur wasn’t really worth that much, but Biddy loved her kids even though rumour had it she did a turn on a street corner now and again just to keep her head above water and, as a mother, Mary Anne understood her wanting to do her best by her son.

  A couple of fleas jumped out when she gave the fur a shake. Michael noticed too, but Biddy was already billing and cooing at the money, listing the things she would buy in order to give her son a good send-off.