by Amy Miller
‘I don’t know,’ said Lily. ‘I was thinking about Jacques and Henry and the war and whether I could volunteer to help, and about the future—’ But before she could continue, there was a loud thud and shouting from upstairs, the banging of a slammed door, then a clattering of footsteps on the stairs.
Audrey stood immobile, listening, when Elsie flew into the kitchen and grabbed her bag from the kitchen chair. Upstairs, William banged on the ceiling with his crutches. Audrey frowned and shook her head in confusion.
‘Goodness, Elsie,’ said Audrey, feeling as if her head was spinning. ‘What’s wrong? I’m making meat roll. I thought you were staying for din—’
‘Your pig-headed brother!’ Elsie snapped, before storming out. ‘That’s what’s wrong!’
Chapter Three
Elsie’s worst fears had come true. After all these months of trying to keep her courtship with William going, despite his black moods, he’d called their engagement off. Grabbing her beaten-up Raleigh bicycle from where it was leaning against the bakery wall, she cycled the short journey home in utter despair. Too shocked to cry, and only thinking of how much she truly loved William since the very first day they met, she couldn’t believe it was all over. There were girls she knew who had lost their loved ones in action and, in some dark and twisted way, she envied them the telegrams reporting their deaths. Yes, the man she loved was alive but would now never be hers. She would have to live for the rest of her days with the knowledge that he was living and breathing without her, and that he didn’t want her.
Furiously dumping her bike where the front gate used to be, before the neighbourhood’s metal was salvaged to put towards building Spitfires, she rushed into the house without saying ‘hello’ to her mother, kicked off her shoes and dashed upstairs into her bedroom, where she found her eleven-year-old twin sisters, June and Joyce, making a den. The bedsheet was stretched out from the chest of drawers to the bedpost, as a makeshift roof, and the girls had on their gas masks and were imitating the sound of the air-raid siren and bombs going off. When Elsie lifted up the pillowcase that was the entrance to their den and glared at them, they both screamed ‘Invasion!’ and fell into fits of giggles.
‘Oh, quieten down and get out of here, will you?’ Elsie snapped, pulling down the roof of their den. ‘Go on! Go and help Mother with the potatoes.’
Unused to their older sister’s sharp tongue, the girls fell silent, yanked off their gas masks, discarded them in the corner and scurried off downstairs.
Elsie sat heavily on her bed, angrily looking around the bedroom, wanting to punch and kick the walls. She couldn’t take it out on the house, though. It had been fixed up and repaired since it was bombed last year, with help from the Assistance Board, but much of their furniture and belongings had been damaged or destroyed or burned in the blaze, and so the house felt as if it were a shadow of their former home, held together by safety pins and string. Leaning her head against the wall, she wrapped her arms around her middle and squeezed her eyes shut, images of William rolling across her eyelids, forcing herself not to scream.
‘Elsie,’ said her mother’s voice from the doorway, ‘I heard you rush upstairs. What’s upset you? Well, apart from the news that Russia’s losing, which is enough to give anyone a migraine.’
Elsie opened her eyes to her mother’s face peering into the room, her huge brown eyes watery and eternally kind, with the twins either side of her, also brown-eyed, all of them wearing a worried expression. It took all of her energy, but Elsie made herself smile. Since her dear father Alberto had been taken to a POW camp on the Isle of Man the previous year because he was an Italian national, Elsie had become the family member that everyone depended on. There were things she’d heard about the Isle of Man, from her cousins, that she had never told her mother – the substandard boarding house accommodation behind barbed wire where ‘aliens’ had to sleep, sometimes two to a bed; the poor-quality food and the lack of communication from the outside world. Though their father was permitted to write letters home twice a week, Elsie wasn’t convinced he was receiving their replies at all. She protected her mother, Violet, from all of this because she didn’t want to make her suffering worse.
‘My engagement to William is off,’ said Elsie, matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t want to talk about it or think about him ever again!’
Her mother and sisters gasped, entering the room and sitting on her bed all at once, Violet clutching Elsie’s hands. June held out a precious humbug and offered it to her sister. Elsie shook her head and stroked June’s hair in thanks. Her throat was thickening with the need to cry and she swallowed hard.
‘But why?’ said Violet. ‘Did he explain why, for goodness’ sake?’
Elsie shrugged, gave a quick shake of her head, raised her chin and stared defiantly out of the window. She felt her mother’s shock transforming into anger.
‘That foolish young man doesn’t know what he’s doing!’ she said. ‘How could he break my daughter’s heart? I wish Alberto were here to talk some sense into him. Sometimes I wonder if William had all the sense knocked out of him when his truck was hit that day! I was so looking forward to you and him getting married. It’s what I want for you, Elsie dear, to have a happy marriage like your father and I. Oh, how I miss my dear Alberto!’
At the mention of Alberto, Elsie watched her mother’s eyes mist over.
‘My heart will mend,’ said Elsie reassuringly, taking a deep breath and trying to be brave. ‘I will use the time I have spent with William to work more. We need the money, don’t we, what with Papa away? Apparently they’re taking girls on as bus drivers now, as well as conductresses, so I will register for the training and become a driver.’
‘You don’t always have to be brave and take everything on your shoulders,’ said Violet gently, tucking Elsie’s hair behind her ears. ‘Come here, my lovely girl.’
Elsie’s body was rigid with determination and she resisted the comfort at first, but as her mother gently pulled her into her bosom and her sisters threw their arms around her waist, her resolve weakened and she couldn’t hold in her sadness and crushing disappointment for a moment longer. As she wept in the failing light, she felt she might drown in her own tears if it wasn’t for her little family holding her up, keeping her afloat like a lifeboat.
‘It’s this blasted war,’ said Violet softly. ‘It’s turning all our lives upside down. Hitler has a lot to answer for. How I wish it were all over.’
Chapter Four
‘Room service,’ said Audrey, knocking three times on William’s door, holding a tray containing a steaming bowl of OXO and a doorstop slice of bread and margarine, since he hadn’t come down for dinner. She knew she probably shouldn’t be indulging him like this, but he was her brother and she had to take care of him. Their estranged mother, Daphne, certainly hadn’t stepped up to the job. Though she’d written to tell her about William’s return – and the injuries he’d suffered – Audrey hadn’t heard a squeak since she had visited before Christmas.
‘Yes?’ William said. ‘Come in.’
Pushing open the door, Audrey tried hard not to let disappointment show on her face when she realised that William was still in his pyjamas, and that he had not even washed or been outside that day at all, since his fire-watching duties the previous night. The skin of the left side of his face, the undamaged side, was almost grey from the lack of sunlight and the light in his blue eyes well and truly extinguished. His hair, normally swept back and held in place with pomade, had flopped down over his forehead and his shoulders were drooping. He looked a sorry state. The air in the bedroom was thick and sour with sleep and, after putting the tray down on the desk, Audrey threw open the window, taking in a gulp of fresh sea air and appreciating the view of the sun setting over the sea, like a giant knob of butter melting into the horizon. Though she’d lived at the bakery for seven years, she knew she could never grow tired of that view and wondered why it seemed to have no effect on William’s spirits.
‘Dinner for you, Lord William,’ she said, trying to be light-hearted. ‘Soup and bread. Had to put your actual dinner in the pigs’ swill bin! We can’t let food go to waste, you know, it’s a criminal offence these days. You’ll get thrown into jail for not being hungry!’
She had hoped for a small smile at least, but there was something different about William’s demeanour. He seemed less defeated than usual, but angrier, as if he was just keeping a lid on a very dark mood. Audrey frowned, wondering what he and Elsie had argued about, hoping it wasn’t too serious.
‘Don’t be like that,’ he said, leaving the food where it was, untouched. ‘I told you I’m not hungry. I meant what I said.’
Audrey sighed and twisted her wedding ring around her finger, registering that rationing and all the rushing around she did had meant she must have lost weight, since it was very slightly looser than normal. As a small boy, William had been so happy-go-lucky. With his mouth harp stuffed into the pocket of his shorts, even then, he’d play a tune to whoever would listen. Growing up in London, he was the mischievous one, scaling lamp posts or playing Knock Down Ginger and always dodging a hiding because of his handsome looks and winning smile. She longed to see a glimmer of that version of her brother again, but how should she find him?
‘You can’t go on like this, William,’ she blurted out, half angry, half sad. ‘I know you’re suffering, but Elsie is suffering too… I thought, when you started to play your harp earlier, your spirits might be lifting, but—’
William glared at her with something like resentment, even dislike, in his eyes, and feeling stung, Audrey immediately stopped talking.
‘I’ve called the engagement off,’ he said, rearranging some papers on the writing desk. ‘It’s over between us.’
Audrey’s hand flew to her throat as she tried to absorb his words. Her heart broke for Elsie – she had become like a sister. They’d shared so much together in the last year and Elsie was one of the family. William couldn’t just cast her aside. Audrey couldn’t hide her fury.
‘You absolute clot,’ she cried. ‘Why would you do anything so senseless?’
William was leaning on the back of his desk chair, but he grabbed his crutches and hobbled over to the drawer in the small bedside table by his bed. He yanked it open, making everything on it wobble, and pulled out a letter, from which fell a photograph.
Audrey bent down to pick up the photograph, her heart sinking when she saw the image of Elsie with Jimmy, the pilot officer who had invited her to a Christmas party for evacuees last December. Jimmy had draped his arm over her shoulder, and Elsie was smiling, radiantly. Mary stood between the two of them, holding a Christmas parcel. Audrey knew what William was thinking, but this was just one fleeting moment in time. One moment during months and months of him being away. Her eyes flicked up from the photograph to William, who was staring at her, accusingly.
‘Did you know about this?’ he said, his voice wavering. ‘Did you know they were courting, while I was away?’
Audrey shook her head in despair. ‘Elsie hasn’t been courting anyone but you,’ she said quietly. ‘Where did you get this letter?’
‘I found it in her things,’ he said, not meeting Audrey’s eye. ‘I saw the photograph and the words “thanks for the memory” on the back, whatever that means! What does that say about her feelings for me? I—’
Audrey held up a hand and interrupted: ‘It says nothing about her feelings for you—’
But William spoke over her: ‘And I was perfectly right in thinking that I shouldn’t have come home,’ he said. ‘I knew Elsie would want to move on with another man, and now she feels trapped with me covered in ugly scars and hobbling around without my foot! What use am I to her? Perhaps I should write to this Jimmy myself on her behalf? Perhaps then she’ll have a chance of happiness and be rid of me once and for all? At any rate, it’s clear that it’s not me she wants.’
Audrey’s eyes darkened. Wanting to grab her brother by the shoulders and give him a good shaking, she felt dismayed. She would not listen to him talk himself into this knotted, muddled-up way of thinking.
‘Don’t say such daft things!’ she cried. ‘Elsie loves you. She’s been as loyal as any girl could be. She went to a party with this chap out of goodness. Bournemouth was heaving with military personnel looking for a companion last Christmas, most of them away from their homes and families. He met her on the bus route she worked, I believe, and he invited her along to a party for the child evacuees, that’s all. It doesn’t mean a thing. She took Mary to that party and came home early because Mary sprained her ankle when she was dancing. I remember it was the same night that Lily went into labour. I can’t speak for that pilot, but I know Elsie thought nothing more about it. I’m surprised at you, William, jumping to such conclusions about a girl like Elsie.’
‘But look at her eyes,’ he said, staring down at the photograph, his own eyes firing. ‘They’re full of life and laughter. When she looks at me now, all I can see is pity. She feels sorry for me, doesn’t she? Who wants their sweetheart to pity them? What can I give her?’
‘Everything,’ Audrey said. ‘Love is everything.’
William sat down on the bed and hung his head.
Impatient with his self-pity, Audrey went to leave, but before doing so, turned back to face him. He had laid down on the bed, his head on the pillow, weary with the world.
‘On your wedding day last year, when you didn’t turn up to the church without even offering an explanation, Elsie’s heart was truly broken,’ she said steadily. ‘She thought perhaps you didn’t love her, but she remained loyal to the hope that you would return. Hope was all she had. For the last six months, since you’ve been home, you’ve barely shown her any love or affection, despite her visiting you here almost every day after her shifts on the buses. Blaming her and treating her with suspicion says nothing about the way she’s behaved, but a great deal about the man you seem to have become. I know what our father would have said to you.’
‘What?’ said William, his eyes blazing. Audrey had stepped over the line – there was an unwritten code between them never to use their dead father’s name in an argument like this, but he had pushed her too far.
‘Stop shilly-shallying around,’ she said. ‘And, for goodness’ sake, act like a man.’
Leaving the room and closing the door behind her, Audrey stood in the hallway for a moment and held her hand on her heart. It was thudding like a bass drum in her chest.
* * *
‘You’re the only sane person around here,’ said Audrey to Uncle John late that evening when he was shifting a twenty-stone bag of flour from one side of the bakehouse to another, as if it was as light as a feather. She raised her eyebrows at John’s strength; four decades of bending over a trough, hand-mixing the dough and lifting flour sacks had made the man as strong as the carthorses that ploughed the fields.
‘If that’s the case, things must be bad,’ he laughed, facing her and winking, before he collected up the pale dough that had spilled over the trough, like lava from a volcano, pushing it back in and knocking it to prove up again. In another few hours, he would weigh off the dough, mould it up, and prove it again, ready to bake and fill the shop and neighbourhood with the irresistibly comforting smell of fresh bread. He moved with ease and was such a natural, he could probably bake in his sleep. ‘Perfect,’ he said, smiling at her, standing with his hands on his waist.
She smiled back, suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude. Uncle John had stepped up when Charlie left, to take on the baking, and he had not let her down. In his white overalls, which he kept spotlessly clean, he had the highest standards. He kept all the utensils clean, diligently whitewashed the walls, always mixed and prepared the dough by hand and on time, and took the baked loaves and rolls out of the oven at the same time every day, like clockwork, ready for delivery and the customers. He took the baking life in his stride – the yeast going bananas in the July heat; a telegram from the Ministry of Food exp
laining that calcium was to be added to flour to combat the epidemic of rickets the Land Girls were suffering. He even cooked the neighbours’ roasts in the bakery oven on a Sunday morning, just as Charlie had done, to help save the neighbourhood’s already rationed fuel. Charlie had learned most of all he knew from John and Audrey held him in high regard.
‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you’ve done for the bakery,’ she said. ‘Since Charlie left, I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’
Feeling a little embarrassed, for she knew John didn’t like fuss, she looked down at her fingers, which were stained red from sorting redcurrants, strawberries and gooseberries, ready for jam making and bottling.
John gave a gentle laugh and shook his head to indicate that her thanks were unnecessary. ‘There’s a lot of tradespeople on the lookout for customers these days,’ he said. ‘I promised Charlie I wouldn’t let the Barton standards drop and I won’t. Besides, I’m happy as a pig in mud here. There’s nowhere I’d rather be, apart from maybe fishing for roach in the River Stour.’ He grinned at her, before continuing: ‘I’m too old to join up, but I can do my bit here.’
‘You’re a trooper, John,’ said Audrey. ‘Thank you.’
With his index and middle finger, he made the ‘V for Victory’ sign that Winston Churchill had been photographed making in the paper and now everyone was chalking or painting on walls, or tapping out in Morse code – three dots and a dash.
‘The V sign is the symbol… of the unconquerable will… of the occupied territories… and oh, my old brain is goin’,’ said John, imitating Churchill’s voice and repeating part of a speech he’d recently made on the wireless. ‘Summat like that anyhow.’
Audrey laughed and John doffed his cap, which fell to the floor. He bent over to pick it up and when he stood back up straight, she noticed his breathing was wheezy. She frowned while he stopped to catch his breath, but then he started coughing. He spluttered and coughed for a good minute, with Audrey patting his back, before he returned to normal, his face bright red and clammy.