Wartime Brides and Wedding Cakes

by Amy Miller

  John’s mouth was agape, revealing gaps where several of his teeth once were. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and leaned his weight on the big wooden table, shaking his head in shock.

  ‘String her up!’ he said. ‘The little devil! I wouldn’t have pegged Maggie as a wrong’un! Now we know why she’s always laughin’ and smilin’. How dare she? When times are so ’ard too. Folk are eating paraffin cake to get by without luxuries, and she’s got her ’ands in the sugar! Well, I never.’

  ‘She’s young, John,’ said Audrey quietly. ‘Barely out of school. Maybe her young man put her up to it? He was in the bakery shop proposing to her this morning. Perhaps it’s something to do with that. Maybe she’s in trouble and she’s not letting on.’

  ‘She’ll be in trouble when I get my ’ands on ’er!’ he said, widening his eyes. ‘If Charlie knew about this, he’d go straight to the police and report her for thievin’, I tell you. Have you ’ad words with ’er?’

  Audrey shook her head and felt uncharacteristically lost for words.

  ‘If you don’t, I will,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe she could be that daft. What’s she taken then?’

  Audrey explained what she thought Maggie had pinched over recent weeks.

  John thudded down on the baking table with his hands, coughing as he did so, until he was almost doubled over. Gripping the table’s edge, he held his hanky up to his mouth as he continued to cough, the top of his balding head and his face turning boiling red.

  Rushing to the tap, Audrey fetched him a tumbler of water, placing it down in front of him on the table. Resting a hand on his back as he carried on coughing, he seemed unable to catch his breath. Audrey’s eyes darted around the bakery, as she tried to work out how to help him.

  ‘John,’ she said calmly. ‘John, try to take a breath and have a sip of water.’

  But John was shaking his head and couldn’t stop coughing, the hacking motion making his body convulse, his face turning a horrible shade of dark purple, his eyes watery and bulging. He was holding his hand up to his neck, loosening the collar of his shirt. Was he choking?

  ‘It’s all right, John, just try to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,’ Audrey said, her voice quivering. Though she was trying to remain calm, John was in trouble and she didn’t know what to do. Racking her brain, he started to hyperventilate.

  ‘Oh goodness, try to calm down, John,’ she said, kneeling down in front of him, her eyes huge and wet.

  Catching sight of Mary in the doorway, her rabbit still in her arms, Audrey was just about to ask her to get help when John made a wretched gasping sound and keeled over, falling off the chair and landing with a loud thud on the bakehouse stone floor.

  ‘John!’ Audrey shrieked, holding her fingers to his pulse. ‘Mary, quick! Run to Old Reg and ask him to telephone for an ambulance. Tell him it’s John and it’s an emergency.’

  With her rabbit tucked under one arm, Mary fled the bakehouse, rushing to find help.

  Audrey crouched on the floor, stroking John’s forehead, trying her best to make him comfortable but fearing that life was slipping from him in front of her very eyes.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘You’ve hardly eaten a thing,’ said George, gesturing to the fish and chips growing cold on the newspaper wrappings on Maggie’s lap.

  They were sitting on a bench in Bournemouth’s Pleasure Gardens eating supper. Guilt was making her behave strangely and she was grateful to the band that was playing in the bandstand, to give them something to focus on. Since the bombs that fell directly on the Square earlier in the year, destroying Woolworths and nearby shops, the centre of Bournemouth had come back to life and was now ablaze with dahlias, geraniums and musical offerings from the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra. Children holding fishing nets played in the stream with their trousers rolled up, and posters advertised the dances held at the Pavilion. There was something steely about the residents of the town; it would take more than the Luftwaffe to crush their spirit and bring the seaside resort to its knees. Despite the coastal defences, requisitioned hotels, thousands of uniformed men and women stationed there, the bomb damage and lives lost, Bournemouth fought hard to cling to its holiday atmosphere, though Maggie wasn’t sharing in it today.

  ‘Lost your appetite?’ continued George.

  She stared at the fish and chips growing cold. It was true, Maggie had barely touched them and her stomach churned with nerves.

  ‘I don’t want to turn to fat,’ she said, smiling, and putting her hands around her tiny waist, as she forced herself to swallow down a couple more chips and then offered the remainder of her fish to George.

  ‘No chance of that, Maggie,’ he grinned, willingly eating up the fish, making her wonder where he put it all – he was as skinny as a whippet. ‘You’re a natural beauty.’

  Forcing her troubling thoughts of Audrey aside, she told herself to forget what had happened at the bakery and simply focus on George.

  ‘Truth is, I’m excited,’ she said unconvincingly, though she was absolutely genuine. ‘To be your fiancée. I can’t stop thinking about what our wedding will be like. It’s going to be the happiest day of my life.’

  Their toes were touching and she hoped George wasn’t aware of how scuffed and battered her shoes were – she would have to find a new pair somehow. Tucking her feet underneath the bench, and once the fish and chip supper between them was finished, they sidled up close to one another, until the sides of each of their warm bodies were touching. Maggie blushed as she imagined the two of them laying side by side in a bed on their wedding night. As if reading her mind, George confidently draped his arm around her shoulders, flexing his jaw as he smiled with pride. Her head rested against his shoulder and she closed her eyes for a brief moment, wishing she could stay there forever.

  ‘Have you told your family yet?’ he asked. ‘I was thinking I should do the right thing and meet them to ask permission for your hand. I know it’s wartime and everyone’s rushing and grabbing girls to marry while they have the chance, but I would like to do things properly. I know my parents would like to meet you, too. They’re fine people, with hearts of gold, and I know they will love you. I’ve written to my mother about you and she says she’d like to write, so she can get to know you. It made me realise there’s so much about you I don’t know. I don’t even know where you live. You always insist I drop you on the corner, or at the bakery…’

  His words trailed off and Maggie blushed crimson and looked down at her hands. They’d only been on a handful of dates in the few months they’d known one another – and she had deliberately not talked about her family, other than to say she had sisters. Thinking of her sisters, her thoughts went to Isabel and the bruise on her cheek. The thought of her suffering at the hands of that horrible man at the laundry made Maggie all the more determined not to ruin this opportunity.

  ‘Oh, there’s no need for formalities like that,’ she said airily, in her mind going through the awful scenario of introducing George to her grandmother, who would probably be drunk, a fag hanging out the corner of her mouth, cursing at the room as if it were filled with enemies, and probably make up some dreadful story about Maggie.

  ‘But there is,’ said George kindly. ‘I want to do this properly. I’ve fallen in love with you, Maggie, and I want to know everything about you. Thoughts of you will keep me going when I’m posted away, like my own personal photograph album.’

  Maggie sighed to herself. She feared George would run a mile if he knew the truth about where she was from; the hovel she called home did not match the image of her life she had portrayed. Feeling utterly depressed by the prospect and racking her brain for what to do for the best, she was suddenly struck by an idea.

  ‘I’ll take you to meet them now, if you like,’ she said, to George’s astonishment, standing and taking his hand. ‘It’s a bit of a walk, though.’

  * * *

  Walking hand in hand through the centre of Bournemouth,
past military personnel and civilians taking a turn around the Square, and then up towards Wimborne Road, George chatted easily about his family and his brothers, who were all in the services and who were now scattered around the world. Not for the first time, Maggie was touched by how much he cared about them. How he prayed that all of them were safe, for his mother’s sake as much as his own.

  ‘She had three boys in their twenties and my younger brother was just eighteen,’ he explained. ‘She cried and cried when we were called up, but makes up for us not being there by writing every week. My father said he wouldn’t be able to stand the quiet in the house when we left – we were a noisy lot and loved to sing songs around the piano or play cards – but after the Blitz bombing in London, I should think he’s grateful for some quiet.’

  Maggie could listen to George talk for hours. She loved the sound of his family and longed to be part of it. As was usual when they met, she didn’t talk about personal matters, but instead about music and dance halls and their shared dream to see more of the world in peacetime. Before they knew it, they were standing at the entrance of the Wimborne Road Cemetery, near the entrance lodge, where there was a crater from a bombing earlier in the year and a low wall, once the base for decorative iron railings that had since been removed for the war effort.

  ‘That bomb must have shaken the bones of the dead,’ said George. ‘What are we doing here, Maggie?’

  The cemetery was peaceful as they walked in the failing light past the chapel, and towards a corner of the graveyard where plain tombstones stood in irregular rows. Birds or bats swerved and swooped overhead, landing on the outstretched branches of a tree, their little black bodies looking like musical notation.

  Maggie stopped and turned to George, who looked at her with a combination of amusement and confusion in his eyes.

  ‘I thought you wanted to meet my family,’ she said, pulling him by the hand to an undecorated headstone, under which her parents lay. ‘I’m sorry to say that this is them. My parents both died from TB. They went into the sanatorium and never came out. These days, my family is just me and my sisters.’

  As she spoke, she felt a distant tremor of sadness shoot up her spine. Suddenly wondering what she was doing there – and hoping this would put an end to George’s questions – she let out a small, sweet laugh, held her palms up in the air and shrugged.

  ‘Let’s get out of here, shall we?’ she said. ‘I don’t fancy being in here when night falls.’

  ‘So there’s nobody else?’ he said. ‘Apart from your sisters, you’re all alone?’

  She sucked in her breath, wary of the lie she was about to tell, but before she knew it the words were out of her mouth.

  ‘I suppose the people at the bakery – Audrey, Charlie, John and William – have been more of a family to me than anyone,’ she said, not meeting George’s gaze. ‘I’ve had more teas in Audrey’s kitchen than I can count.’

  Her words stuck in her throat as she realised the irony of what she had said about the Barton family, after what she had been doing right under their noses. She blushed and closed her eyes in shame. How foolish she felt.

  George, reading her expression as grief for her dead parents, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her in for a sweet, soft kiss.

  ‘I’ll take care of you, orphan Maggie,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me now.’

  Chapter Nine

  It was late when Audrey and Mary returned from the hospital; clouds had gathered above the setting sun, turning the sky shades of purple and pink normally seen in a flower bed, over a flat, silver sea. Not that Audrey noticed. She was too concerned about poor Uncle John’s ill health and how long he’d been hiding his problems from her.

  ‘Hello?’ she called, letting herself and Mary into the back door of the bakery, but there was no reply. The entire building was empty and quiet; Lily and Joy had gone to Elsie’s house for tea and she didn’t know where William had got to.

  ‘Gosh, Mary,’ said Audrey, ‘there’s an awful lot to do in the bakehouse now that John’s been taken ill! Let’s get a cup of Ovaltine and some toast before your bedtime. Then I shall have to see to the dough. I think John had mixed the ingredients before he was taken ill, bless his heart.’

  They’d left John being cared for by a young nurse called Ida, sweet and fresh as summer rain. Audrey had spoken to her and discovered that she had been overseas in France, helping injured soldiers, but had been returned home for some reason she clearly wasn’t willing to share. Audrey had thought John would be happy to have a young lady take care of him, but he lay there wearing a furious expression, not meeting Audrey or Ida’s eye, through fear, she suspected, of showing how upset and shocked he’d been by his collapse. Some men seemed to think they were invincible, thought Audrey, an image of Charlie popping into her head, making her miss him suddenly and dreadfully, like a punch in the stomach. She hoped to God that Charlie was invincible.

  ‘Why have you brought me in here?’ John had complained, trying to sit up, but breaking into another hacking cough, until he was breathless. ‘There’s nothin’ wrong with me. I just need a nip of port and brandy and a breath of sea air. That will see me right. What you told me about Maggie threw me, that’s all.’

  Ida had told Audrey a different story in private. The doctor suspected John was suffering from ‘baker’s lung’ – an occupational hazard all bakers feared but often ignored until it was too late – and he needed rest and recuperation. When Audrey thought back over recent years, she realised he’d been coughing for a long time. Trouble was, John had nobody to take care of him. His wife, Hazel, was dead – they’d had no children – and John point-blank refused to stay with his sister, Pat. ‘Much as I love ’er,’ he said. ‘I’d rather stick a pitchfork through my eye than stay with ’er. It was bad enough when we were nippers.’

  Audrey heated some water on the range, feeling exhausted. Her mind was working ten to the dozen, trying to think how she could organise the sleeping arrangements so that John could stay with her, at the bakery. If he was under the same roof as Audrey, she could keep an eye on him at least, and make sure he was really getting the rest and nourishment he needed.

  ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do without old Uncle John,’ she said to Mary, trying to sound cheerful. ‘The bread’s not going to bake itself.’

  Though it was one of those warm summer nights when the air smelled of the flowering geraniums and rosemary bushes growing in pots outside, Audrey shivered. For a moment there today, she’d thought the worst, that John was dying, and it had deeply shaken her. For as long as she’d known Charlie, John had been a part of the bakery furniture, like the worn and weathered trough he used to hand-mix the dough. With his warmth, wit and loyalty, he had become rather like a father to Audrey. Since her own beloved father, Don, was dead having died from tubercular meningitis, and her stepfather, Victor, had rejected her, she had grown close to John and enjoyed spoiling him rotten with a warm, freshly baked scone and a spoonful of home-made blackcurrant jam. Seeing him struggling and vulnerable had made her realise how precarious the survival of the bakery was. Without him working the dough, how would she manage to do everything? The thought was too bewildering to contemplate.

  Reading the worry scrawled across Audrey’s face, Mary ran to her side and clutched hold of the skirt of her dress. Audrey rested her hand on the little girl’s shoulders and smiled down at her, struck by the fear in her dark brown eyes. She was so quick to feel afraid, poor dear.

  ‘Is Uncle John going to die?’ said Mary, her little voice high and thin.

  Audrey’s heart went out to Mary, whose bottom lip was trembling. In all the years of trying and hoping, a child of their own was the one gift that she and Charlie had not been blessed with, and she was privately greatly saddened by the fact she’d never be a mother, but beginning to wonder if it had been somehow mapped out in the stars that she and Mary would find one another instead. She loved the little girl dearly, as much, she imagined, as if she was
her own daughter.

  ‘Come and sit here, love,’ she said, sitting on a chair at the kitchen table and lifting Mary onto her lap. ‘He’s just a bit poorly, that’s all. He’s got a bad cough from all the flour. It gets stuck in his lungs, a bit like how snow sits on branches in the winter.’

  ‘But is he going to die?’ said Mary, eyeing Audrey suspiciously.

  Audrey smiled kindly; she had always been honest with Mary, even though that had at times been difficult.

  ‘No,’ said Audrey. ‘He just needs to rest, he’s been working too hard. Speaking of which, I need to get the dough proved and knocked back or we won’t have any bread tomorrow. Then what would we do? The customers would be up in arms! Can you take yourself up to bed, love? Don’t forget to brush your hair.’

  Mary lingered in the room and Audrey looked at her questioningly.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  Mary shook her head. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Though Mary had been speaking again for six months, there was a lot she still couldn’t find the words to say.

  ‘I won’t be able to sleep,’ said Mary. ‘I’m frightened.’

  Audrey kneeled to Mary’s height and held her around her waist. ‘When I can’t sleep,’ she said, ‘I think of a mossy pebble in the bottom of a clear stream, rolling along with the water. In my mind, I listen to the gentle trickle of water and to the birds singing in the trees by the stream. Why don’t you climb into bed, close your eyes and try thinking about that pebble? I’ll wager you’ll fall asleep sooner than you know it. I’ll be up to check on you shortly and to tuck you in. I must get on with the bread, else people will have nothing on their plates tomorrow. Some folk depend on having bread to eat, see? They might only have bread and perhaps a bit of potato or carrot to go with it. Not much else. We can’t let them go hungry, can we?’