by Annie Groves
‘But we still have to be vigilant,’ she had warned Katie, ‘because you never know, and we don’t want any spies sending letters that might get our lads killed or help Hitler to drop bombs on us, do we?’
* * *
‘There you are, Katie; I was just beginning to worry about you,’ Jean greeted Katie when she knocked briefly on the back door and then stepped into the kitchen. Jean had told Katie that she must treat the house as her home and that there was no need for her to knock, but Katie still felt that she should.
‘I’m sorry I’m late, only I saw people queuing, and someone said it was oranges so I joined the queue thinking that you might like them for the twins for Christmas. They’d almost gone by the time I was served, but the grocer let me have four.’
‘Oh, Katie, bless you. You are thoughtful. Did you hear that, Sam?’ Jean called out. ‘Katie’s gone and managed to get some oranges for the twins.’
Sam was more reserved than his wife, but he was a kind man and he gave Katie a warm smile.
‘There’s a letter arrived for you, Katie. Looks like your dad’s handwriting.’
Thanking Jean, Katie took the letter from her. It was indeed from her father. A familiar mix of happiness and apprehension tightened her stomach as Katie opened it. So far her father’s letters had contained nothing but complaints about how hard his life was without her, and how surprised he was that she had not thought of this before taking on her war work.
This time, though, her father’s mood was more positive. He had, he wrote, bumped into an old friend – a musician who had done well for himself, who lived in Hampstead and who had invited Katie’s parents to spend Christmas with him and his wife.
So there’s no need for you to bother coming home, Katie – the Durrants haven’t got any children and since your mother and Mae Durrant were on stage together as girls, we’re both looking forward to having a splendid Christmas reminiscing about old times.
‘Katie, are you all right? It’s not bad news, is it?’ Jean’s concerned voice made Katie look up from her letter.
‘No. Not at all. My parents have been invited to spend Christmas with some old friends and so my father has written to tell me not to bother travelling all the way back to London to see them.’
Jean’s maternal heart filled with indignation. That poor girl. Fancy her parents doing that to her. It was obvious to Jean how upset she was. She was only a girl still, for all that she behaved in such a sensible grown-up way.
‘Well, never mind, love,’ Jean told her sympathetically. ‘You’re welcome to spend your Christmas here with us. In fact I don’t mind admitting that I’ll be glad of an extra pair of hands, especially with our Grace going down to spend Christmas with her in-laws-to-be, and me having invited a couple of elderly neighbours who’ll be on their own to have their dinner with us. Mind you, I dare say the twins will plague you to death, especially when they find out that their brother has gone and bought them both some new records. I’m hoping that he’ll be home for his Christmas dinner as well – our Luke.’
As yet Katie hadn’t met the Campions’ son, or their eldest daughter, Grace, and her fiancé, Seb, but she was looking forward to doing so, given how kind Jean herself was.
‘Now come and sit down and have your tea, Katie love, before it gets cold.’
As Jean said to Sam later in the evening when Katie had gone upstairs at the twins’ request to tell them more about the famous dance bands her father had conducted, ‘I felt that sorry for her, Sam. Her face was a picture although she didn’t so much as say a word against her parents. If you ask me that girl hasn’t had an easy time of it at all, for all that the twins keep on about how lucky she is.’
‘Well, she’s lucky enough now, having you to take her under your wing, Jean,’ Sam told his wife lovingly.
‘Oh, go on with you, Sam. She’s no trouble to have around at all, kind and thoughtful as she is. I admit I was a bit worried at first when she started saying how her mother had been on the stage and her father conducted dance bands, knowing what the twins are like, but I reckon it’s doing them good having her here to tell them what it’s really like, and not all glamour and excitement, like they seemed to think.’
‘Well, you’ve got your Fran to thank for them thinking that,’ Sam reminded her.
Jean sighed. ‘All this business of them wanting to sing and dance is just a bit of a phase, I reckon. Once we’re into the new year and they’re both working at Lewis’s they’ll forget all about wanting to be on the stage.’
‘Well, whether they forget it or not they are not going on it. I’ll not have it. I’ve nothing against your Fran, Jean, you know that, but her kind of life isn’t what I want for our girls.’
‘No,’ Jean agreed.
‘Tell us again about the Orpheans, Katie,’ Lou begged.
The three of them were in the twins’ top-floor bedroom, the music from the gramophone for once turned down so that the girls could question Katie about the exciting life she had lived with her parents.
‘There isn’t anything to tell that I haven’t already told you,’ Katie answered her prosaically.
‘Imagine going out every night and dancing. What did you wear, Katie? If it had been us then we would have had the same frocks made, but mine would have been in black and Sasha’s would have been in white – like mirror images, you know, and then when we do our dance we do it like there is a mirror and it’s just one of us. Shall we show you?’
They were on their feet, finding their current favourite dance tune, and buzzing with excitement before Katie could say a word.
They were talented, no one could deny them that, but Katie knew what the reality of making a living was for girls like them, and she had seen the anxiety in Jean’s eyes when she had watched her daughters.
‘You are very good,’ Katie told them when they had finished their routine and had turned, slightly breathless, to face her, ‘but being on the stage isn’t what you think it is. All that glitter is just a few sequins stuck onto cheap cloth that’s darned all over the place, cheap lodgings where you don’t get enough to eat, damp bedding and bedbugs, and cheap …’
‘Values’, Katie had been about to say but they were too young for her to talk to them about that kind of thing, she decided, watching them grimace over the bedbugs and giggle that she was teasing them.
‘We can’t understand how you can leave something so glamorous to come here and sit all day reading letters,’ Lou told her.
‘No, if it was us you’d never get us doing what you’re doing,’ Sasha agreed.
‘That’s because you don’t know what it’s really like, and that means that you are very lucky,’ Katie told them firmly.
‘Well, we still want to be on the stage, don’t we, Sasha?’ Lou asked her twin.
‘Yes, we do,’ Sasha confirmed, ‘and we’re going to be, as well.’
Not if their parents had anything to do with it they weren’t, Katie thought. She didn’t blame Jean and Sam either, but the twins were stubborn and Katie suspected that the more they were told they couldn’t do something, the more they would want to do it.
FOUR
Saturday 21 December
‘Well, I must say, Mum, she does seem a decent sort,’ Grace Campion told her mother generously.
Grace had initially felt rather jealous when her mother had spoken so enthusiastically to her about this girl who was billeted with Grace’s parents, but now having met Katie Grace had to admit that she had liked her.
The three of them had gone for a cup of tea at Lyons Corner House, Jean having decided that it was best that Grace met Katie on neutral ground.
Tactfully Katie had now gone off to do some shopping, leaving mother and daughter to talk on their own.
‘She won’t be going home for Christmas so she’ll be having her Christmas dinner with us. I’m hoping that our Luke will get leave to be home. I’ll miss you, Grace love, but it’s only natural that Seb’s family want to meet you.’
&nb
sp; ‘We’ll be back to see in the New Year with you, Mum. Then I’m on nights again.’
‘You’ll have been busy today, love, with Hitler bombing us again last night. Your dad was out all night helping to put out the fires started down on the docks by the incendiaries. The Dock Board offices and Cunard’s were both hit, and then there was that awful thing down by the railway arches in Bentinck Street. Your dad says they still don’t know how many people who were sheltering under those arches got killed when they collapsed.’
‘Just when we were thinking that Hitler had finished with us,’ Grace agreed.
Jean patted her daughter’s hand. Grace had only just escaped being a casualty of one of Hitler’s bombs herself late in November when she and Seb had been caught in the Durning Technical School bomb blast.
‘I’d better get back, Mum,’ Grace told her mother, ‘otherwise I’ll be late going on duty, and you can imagine how busy we are.’
‘Well, you take care of yourself, remember?’ Jean gave her a fierce hug.
‘And you, Mum. Are you going home now?’
‘Not yet. Whilst I’ve got Katie with me we’re going to nip over to St John’s Market so that I can get me turkey and a few other things.’
Grace laughed. It was a standing joke in the family that Jean complained every year that the poulterer from whom she ordered her turkey always got the size wrong, resulting in Jean worrying about being able to get the bird into her oven.
To get to the market Jean and Katie had to cross Ranelagh Street, where Lewis’s was, and go down the upper part of Charlotte Street, before crossing Elliot Street. St John’s Market ran back from Elliot Street, the whole length of the lower section of Charlotte Street, which divided it into two: the fish market to one side, and the meat, fruit and veg market on the other.
Although it was nothing like the size of Covent Garden, St John’s Meat Market did remind Katie a little of the famous London market, as much, she suspected, for the cheery confidence of those working there as anything else.
With Christmas so close the market was especially busy, with the bustle of porters; horse-drawn deliveries arriving; errand boys ringing their bicycle bells and then pedalling furiously as they raced about, shoppers protesting when they had to dodge them. Stall holders were shouting their wares, whilst small children, bored with the quays, were trying to escape their mothers’ surveillance.
With so many people pressed into the market it was no wonder police officers were patrolling between the stalls, Katie acknowledged. Somewhere like this would be a paradise for thieves and pickpockets.
Jean, raising her voice so that Katie could hear her above the noise as she hurried her through the maze of stalls, pointed out that at the other end of the market were the Royal Court Theatre, then Roe Street and Queen Square.
‘The station hotels and Lime Street itself are only the other side of the fish market,’ Jean added. ‘But you’ll soon find your bearings. Just remember, if you’re walking uphill along Edge Road then you’re heading away from the city centre and the docks; if you’re walking downhill you’re heading for them.’
St John’s Market was especially thronged with people collecting their Christmas orders. Every other stall, or so it seemed to Katie, was filled with poultry. Those that weren’t selling ‘fattened geese and turkeys’ were selling all those things that went with them: strings of sausages, hams and tongues to cook for Boxing Day, special Christmas pâtés and stuffing, whilst in the fruit and vegetable section of the market, which they had come through earlier, Katie had seen stalls selling boxes of dates, even if there were signs up stating, ‘No oranges/lemons/bananas/tangerines or nuts – don’t blame me, there’s a war on.’
‘Sam’s got all the veg sorted out. He’s grown most of it on his allotment and bartered for what he hasn’t grown with some of the other allotment holders.
‘I’ve made a bit of a pudding but it won’t be up to my normal standard … There’s the stall over there,’ Jean told Katie, ‘that one with the poultry painted on the sign board. I don’t know why I come back to him every year because I’m sure he’s a bit of a rogue, even though he says his prices are the best in the market.’
There was a queue at the stall, and whilst they waited for their turn, Jean said to Katie, ‘You’ll be looking forward to going to the Grafton tonight with your friend.’
‘I’m not sure that I am really,’ Katie admitted. ‘It’s kind of her to ask me, but I’m not much of a dancer.’
‘You’ll enjoy it once you’re there,’ Jean assured her firmly, stepping up to the counter for her turn to be served.
‘I appreciate what you’ve bin telling the twins about it not being all that glamorous going on the stage, Katie,’ said Jean, once they had finished their shopping and they were on the way home, carrying the turkey between them.
‘Well, it’s the truth otherwise I wouldn’t say it, but I can understand that they can’t see that. It’s like I said to them, all the audience sees is the sparkle from the sequins, they don’t see all the darning and patching in the cheap fabric that’s underneath.’
They exchanged understanding looks.
Emily hadn’t seen the boy for the last two days. The last time he had had a nasty bruise on his face and he had looked thinner and dirtier than ever. She’d got more than enough to do as it was, without coming down here and hanging around a back alley with a packet of sandwiches and a flask of hot soup.
Hot water was what that boy wanted, and plenty of it, along with a generous lathering of soap. Not that it was up to her to fuss over him. The boy meant nothing to her. He wasn’t her responsibility, after all. But somehow she couldn’t stop worrying about him.
She wasn’t going to admit to herself that she was disappointed because he wasn’t there, and the sandwiches that she put out earlier were, or that she’d woken up in the night thinking about him, wondering where he slept and if he had a proper bed, or even a proper home. That was daft doing that, and no mistake. Why should she care about some dirty boy? She didn’t.
She was only coming down here because it gave her an excuse to keep an eye on Con, and that new piece he’d taken up with.
The boy wasn’t going to come now. The late December afternoon had turned into winter darkness and it was cold, with a thin mean wind whining up the alleyway and making her shiver, despite her padding of fat and her warm coat.
She bent down to pick up the sandwiches. She couldn’t leave them here. They’d have rats coming after them. A thin whisper of sound from the bins against the wall caught her attention. Emily frowned and listened, but she couldn’t hear anything. It must have been the wind. She picked up the sandwiches and turned away. There, she’d heard it again. She turned back, and reached into her bag for the torch she carried for the blackout, switching it on and pointing its beam towards the bins.
It was his legs she saw first, bare to the knee and mottled red and purple with cold, and so thin she could see his bones. She hurried towards the bins, her heart pounding so heavily she felt breathless.
He was curled up between the bins, looking more dead than alive, his face all bruised and his lip cut, with dried blood on it. What had happened to him? Had he been set on by some bigger, heavier boys? He looked as though he was too weak to move. Emily wanted to pick him up, take him home with her and look after him properly, but instead she sat down beside him in the alleyway and unscrewed the Thermos, pouring out some soup.
It was her own home-made nourishing broth, made from a chicken carcass and vegetables. He was so weak that she had to hold the Thermos cup to his mouth so that he could drink, and take it away from him as well when he tried to drink too much too quickly.
‘You’ll be sick if you take it too fast,’ she warned him. ‘And I’d like to know who’s been knocking you around as well, because I’d have a few words to say to them. Now you can have a bit more. Gently, there’s no need to drink it so fast, like you’ve got no manners. No one’s going to take it from you, not whilst I�
�m here, so you take your time and then you can start on these sandwiches, and this time you and me are going to have a bit of a talk, because you can’t go on like this. It will be the death of you, and me too with all the worrying about you I’ve been doing. I’ve got a good mind to take you home with me, where I can keep an eye on you, and see that you get looked after properly.’
The boy hadn’t said a word, but he was listening to her and taking in everything she was saying, Emily knew that.
‘Of course, if you’ve got folk of your own and a home of your own then it’s them that you should be with.’
Silence.
‘And if you’re one of those boys that’s got himself into trouble …’
Now there was a reaction. Not just his hands but his whole body was trembling, and Emily suspected that he would have got up and run from her if he’d been strong enough.
It was well after half-past five, the matinée was long over, and the queues would already be forming at the front of the theatre for the evening’s first house. It wasn’t unknown for the actors and members of the chorus to slip out through the stage door for a bit of fresh air between shows –and sometimes something rather less innocent than a breath of air, as she had good cause to know, since Con wasn’t above slipping out for a bit of a kiss and a cuddle with his latest girl if he thought he could get away with it. The last thing Emily wanted was to get caught sitting here on the ground with the boy. Con would laugh his head off at her and then no doubt tell her that she wasn’t to have anything more to do with the boy, citing as his reason for this veto a concern for her safety she knew perfectly well he did not feel. It would suit Con very well indeed, she suspected, if she were to suffer the kind of accident that would lead to him becoming a widower. Not that he would actively do anything to achieve that status for himself. Con was too lazy for that, and besides, Emily thought, sometimes he wasn’t above using her existence to get rid of a girl once he had grown bored with her. Wives had their uses in some ways.