Wartime Brides

by Lizzie Lane

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The war is now over and people must count the cost.

  Three women from very different backgrounds meet when they find themselves on Bristol Temple Meads station waiting for the return of their loved ones.

  Edna’s fiancé, Colin, comes home crippled. Charlotte’s doctor husband, who was a loving and gentle father, returns a violent, disturbed man with no love for her and even less for their children. Polly, who is waiting for her GI boyfriend Aaron, is once again disappointed when he doesn’t arrive. Adjusting to men who are very changed and, in Polly’s case, to no man at all, is the core of this enthralling novel. However, during the war years, the women have had to cope. They too have changed and they harbour secrets that would be best kept…

  About the Author

  Lizzie Lane was born and brought up in south Bristol and has worked in law, the probation service, tourism and as a supporting artiste in such dramas as Casualty and Holby City, which are both set in Bristol.

  She is married with one daughter and currently lives with her husband on a 46-foot sailing yacht, dividing her time between Bath and the Med. Sometimes they mix with the jet set and sometimes they just chill out in a bay with a computer, a warm breeze and a gin and tonic!

  To my mother and all those of her generation who rebuilt their lives and told me their stories

  Chapter One

  EDNA STARED. IT was sitting there on the hallstand between a tweed jacket and a beige trench mac. A parcel – a third parcel – had arrived!

  The sender’s address was printed in the top left-hand corner, name, street and town. Finally, it read Mississippi, USA.

  ‘Don’t even think about opening it!’

  Her mother’s voice pierced as sharply as the pearl-ended pin she was presently stabbing into her hat.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Edna lied. She felt a hot flush creeping over her cheeks. ‘I was just thinking.’

  The sharp-featured Ethel Burbage rounded on her daughter and wagged a bony finger threateningly before Edna’s eyes. ‘Well, stop thinking about what’s past, my girl, and think about your future. THAT’s all that matters!’

  She went back to adjusting her hat. ‘What time did you say Colin was arriving?’

  The question had already been asked last night over Spam and mash and this morning over a thick slice of bread fried in beef dripping. Edna swallowed a wave of revulsion at the memory of the grease congealing on her tongue. The war might be over but rationing certainly was not.

  ‘The train pulls in at twelve,’ she repeated for the third time.

  She could see it in her mind’s eye. Full of steam. Full of men. And herself standing on a smoke-filled platform waiting for Colin.

  As she fastened her coat buttons, the clustered stones in her engagement ring blinked up at her. Three years since he’d slipped it on her finger and she had promised to wait for him. Today she must present herself at the station, smile, and pretend to be the same girl who had seen her garrulous, dependable fiancé off on that other train that had taken him to his ship and ultimately to the Far East.

  ‘Better catch the eleven o’clock bus then. I did hear something about an unexploded bomb being found in Victoria Street. Poor old Bristol.’ Her mother’s tone softened for the briefest of moments. ‘The heart’s been torn out of the old place.’

  Edna reached for her woollen gloves. I want time to roll back like the lid on a tin of sardines, she thought and sighed heavily. That was the trouble with time. Nothing had the power to roll back the weeks, the months and the year or so that had changed her life. All she had to remind her of that time was the arrival of these parcels, the third of which her mother loomed over like a guard dog over a fallen villain. Only she was that villain, the one who had done wrong.

  ‘He didn’t say much about his injuries in his letters,’ Edna blurted suddenly.

  Her mother tilted her hat a little more to the left and pushed it there firmly. ‘Then they can’t be very bad, can they? Nerves I expect. Shell shock they used to call it in the Great War. Give him my regards, won’t you.’

  ‘I will.’ Edna sighed meaningfully in the vain hope it would convey to her mother exactly how she felt. ‘But I certainly don’t know what else to say to him.’

  ‘There’s no need to tell him anything.’

  Edna’s frail hope vanished. ‘I suppose not.’

  She made a meal of pulling on her gloves, as if the task required far more concentration than it needed. In her mind she rehearsed what she would say, edited the first words, rehearsed them again, then altered them some more. What if her tongue refused to lie? I had an affair with an American GI and I had a baby. She imagined the look of shock that would greet this announcement.

  ‘There’s no suppose about it,’ her mother snapped, at the same time briskly brushing whatever specks, imaginary or otherwise, had dared to settle on the square-rigged shoulders of her everyday grey coat with the astrakhan collar. ‘Don’t even think about telling Colin. Poor lamb. After all he’s been through.’

  Edna nodded guiltily. As her mother never tired of reminding her, she had let her down. Only the fact that her liaison had happened at a distance saved her reputation. She’d been in the ATS manning the searchlights on the outskirts of Liverpool. Jim had bumped into her – literally – at some time before going on duty in the early hours of the morning when the blackout was at its worst. They’d become friends. She’d told him about Colin. He’d told her about the girl he’d left behind. They’d fallen into silence, the way people do when they suddenly realise they’re attracted to each other. They were feeling the same way, thinking the same things. They were two lonely people, he far from home, she a shy girl thrust into a wartime job that she hated from the depths of her soul. They both longed for the war to be over and, in the meantime, they became more than friends. She’d tried to explain, but her mother had been mortified. During the last months of her pregnancy Edna had stayed with an aunt in North Somerset, just a short ambulance ride to a cottage hospital where she had been parted from her baby. For the sake of appearances it was two weeks or so before she came home.

  Ethel’s no-nonsense heels tapped on red and brown linoleum then softened as they reached the front door. The parcel was gripped tightly beneath her arm.

  ‘I’ll get this to Mrs Grey,’ she said, ‘and she’ll get it to the orphanage. Thankfully she knows when to keep her mouth shut. But mark you, I’m going to write to him when I get back and tell him not to send things here any more. He can send direct to the orphanage or to Mrs Grey if he wants, but not here.’ She held up a warning finger. ‘But on no account are you to write to him. Understand?’

  Edna nodded silently, her eyes averted now from the offending sight of the parcel and all the memories it resurrected.

  Tears had threatened all morning. Only being occupied with buttering bread and laying out the table for Colin’s welcome home party round at his mother’s house had helped
keep them at bay. His family, of course, knew nothing of her fall from grace. Everyone had been told she’d been off doing war work. But now she had to face him and pretend nothing had changed. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  Her mother forced a strained smile. ‘Well, go and get yourself looking nice for Colin. He is home from fighting a war you know.’

  The door slammed and Edna was alone.

  ‘Does daddy know we’re going to meet him at the station?’ asked Janet Hennessey-White, who was nearly fourteen and considered herself almost a woman and reckoned she would be once the freckles that covered her nose had melted away.

  ‘No, darling. He doesn’t.’ Eyes bright, lips twitching with an excited smile that narrowed and broadened dependent on what she was thinking, Janet’s mother, Charlotte, tried to stop her hands from shaking as she tidied her hair and arranged her hat. She couldn’t stop chattering, her voice bubbling with girlish excitement. ‘It was purely by chance that his old CO rang to wish him good luck and then realised he’d got the wrong day. He was going to surprise us, now we’re going to surprise him.’

  ‘What’s a CO?’ asked Janet.

  ‘Commanding Officer, stupid,’ snapped her younger brother Geoffrey who was eleven. He had followed the war with great enthusiasm and now seemed instilled with all the knowledge of any armchair general four times his age. ‘I told my friends that my dad was an officer and that’s why it took him so long to come home. He had responsibilities I said. That’s why he wasn’t around and their daddies were.’ He frowned threateningly. ‘I’ll show them!’

  Janet held her head saucily to one side. ‘But they didn’t believe you because THEY’RE stupid and YOU’RE too stupid to realise they are!’

  Geoffrey’s dark blue eyes sparked with anger.

  ‘Destroy!’ he shouted.

  Janet yelled as the toy dive-bomber swept down the length of his arm. One wing of the wooden toy tangled in his sister’s hair.

  ‘Geoffrey!’ Charlotte threw him a warning look though her voice remained calm. ‘Please behave yourself, darling.’

  ‘Mother! Tell him!’ shrieked Janet.

  Belief that the day could only be perfect flew into fragments. Charlotte took hold of her son by the shoulders and pulled him towards her. Janet aimed a punch but missed.

  ‘Janet! Don’t do that!’ cried Charlotte, hating the fact that she had to shout and aggrieved that her children could still argue on such a special day.

  After untangling the toy plane from her daughter’s hair, she tossed it into a brown moquette armchair – David’s favourite chair as a matter of fact. Soon he’d be there again, smoking his pipe just as he used to. The thought was fleeting but caused a smile to flutter across her lips.

  Geoffrey struggled. Charlotte held him tight. ‘Let me straighten your tie.’

  ‘It won’t straighten,’ he said attempting to step away from her ministrations but being promptly tugged back again.

  ‘Scruffy and crooked suits you,’ said a triumphant Janet.

  ‘It won’t take a moment,’ said Charlotte. ‘And after that you can pull your socks up so that they’re both level.’ She glanced down. ‘But wash your knees first.’

  ‘I have!’

  ‘Not well enough.’

  ‘He’s too weak to turn the taps on,’ crowed Janet.

  Her mother wagged a warning finger. ‘Janet!’

  ‘He hates washing,’ said Janet hunching her shoulders as she swung away. ‘I need the lavatory,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘But you’ve already …’ Charlotte began. Then a knowing smile came to her face as she watched her daughter skip off into the hall and up the stairs to the bathroom. The door slammed overhead. And that’s the bolt going across, thought Charlotte.

  Suddenly she was filled with a mix of trepidation and wonder. Janet was growing up, but not enough for the tube of bright red lipstick Charlotte had found hidden behind the medicine bottles and had thrown away. Probably given to her by some spotty-faced GI, she thought wryly. God, how quickly children were growing up nowadays, thanks to the war. But thank God it was over. Perhaps things would now get back to normal – whatever that was. It was hard to remember what was normal before 1939. The children had been smaller, David had been home, and there was enough of everything if you had the money to pay for it. No rationing! What a luxurious thought!

  ‘Ouch!’ said Geoffrey. ‘You’re strangling me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Charlotte and proceeded to loosen the tie, just as she used to do for David when she had inadvertently slipped into a daydream.

  As she patted the tie flat and straightened Geoffrey’s shirt collar, she glanced at the pre-war photographs sitting on top of the piano. Shots of the family at the seaside, the children on their first bikes, Janet on a pony, the children as babies. Eventually her gaze rested on her wedding photograph. She smiled sadly. So long ago. A different world. Then she looked at the photograph of David in his army captain’s uniform, taken before he departed for ‘somewhere in Europe’. He’d looked so different, so distinguished, yet he’d still been the same man beneath. She didn’t doubt that he still was, but she had heard sad stories since working at the Marriage Advisory Centre. Some men had been drastically changed by war. But not David, she thought. Too strong. Too level-headed.

  ‘Come on Geoffrey,’ she said brightly, as the sound of Janet’s footsteps dragged down from one stair tread to another. ‘Let’s go and meet your father. And remember,’ she said, her voice taking on a more serious tone as Janet re-entered the room, ‘he’s been through a lot, so if he doesn’t seem like his old self at first, don’t worry. He soon will be.’

  ‘Of course he will,’ said a confident Janet, unable to contemplate him being anything other than the daddy she remembered, willing to give her anything it was in his power to give – perhaps even lipstick, she thought hopefully.

  Charlotte noticed her hands were shaking again as she picked up her kid gloves, which were finely made and honeycomb yellow. ‘Most people are bound to be affected by war. We certainly were.’

  ‘He won’t be. He’s an officer,’ said Geoffrey as if that explained everything.

  Polly always took great care to look smart. Her preference for wearing black and white certainly helped, and it went so well with her blonde hair and bright blue eyes.

  Gavin, her Canadian sweetheart, had said it was the first thing he’d noticed about her. He’d also said he liked girls who were slim and had boyish bottoms and feminine bosoms. And he’d also said he loved her and that he would marry her and they would leave for Canada together once the war was over. Another train was due at Temple Meads railway station at noon. This time he just might be on it.

  She took out her powder compact to check whether she needed a touch more lipstick. If Gavin did arrive on the train she wanted to look her best. So much depended on it. Going to Canada meant escaping rationing, bombsites, and the dreary poverty she’d known most of her life. The idea of living in Canada or the USA had filled her mind ever since the friendly invasion of the early war years. They were so different and glamorous, so representative of everything she’d ever adored on the movie screen. She’d adopted the word ‘movies’ since the Yanks had arrived. Discontentment with her own lot had set in and she’d made a vow that she would marry a man in uniform, but not one from her own country. The British Isles had been invaded by big men from a big country and nothing would ever be the same again.

  She closed her eyes and said a swift and selfish prayer. ‘Please God let him be on this train. If he’s not, he’s had his chips!’ She opened her eyes, then had a second thought and closed them again. ‘And don’t expect me to be responsible for my actions. I’ll be downright irresponsible in future if you don’t help me now!’

  Carrying her peep-toe suede shoes under one arm and her clutch bag under the other, she crept on stockinged feet over dull brown linoleum. First open the inner door. The deep blue and ruby-red glass of its upper half threw pools of colour onto the varnished
walls dull as dried out shoe polish. Despite her being careful the door creaked on its hinges.

  Polly stopped and took a deep breath. Even though she’d set her mind on going to the station, she still had a twinge of guilt about leaving without telling Aunty Meg. She glanced down the passage to the door that opened onto what remained of the back of the house. Unlike the rest of the street, Aunty Meg’s house only had two bedrooms. The third bedroom had been blown off by the blast from a bomb in an air raid. ‘No sense of direction,’ Aunty Meg had shouted skywards at the time. She was right, of course. The bombers had been aiming at the goods trains that sat in the shunting yards beyond the brick wall at the end of the back garden. Garden was really too grand a name for something that was little more than a yard. Potatoes and cabbages grew weakly through the stony soil and Christmas poultry clucked impatiently in a makeshift coop.

  She sucked in her breath as her feet met the cold lino. Pausing she bent down and slid her feet into her black suede court shoes. So far, so good. But her luck didn’t last.

  Aunty Meg came in from the scullery just as she reached for the front door. Polly blinked guiltily.

  Meg shook her head and tutted like she might at a small child. ‘I take it you’re meeting the twelve o’clock train.’

  Polly tightened her grip on the door catch. Her eyes met those of her aunt. ‘Don’t tell me not to go,’ she said with a determined jutting of her chin. ‘I have to see if he’s on it, for Carol’s sake as much as for mine. He might be, he just might be. I meant to ask you to look after Carol until I get back, honest I did. You will do that, won’t you?’

  Meg’s jaw stiffened. For the briefest of moments Polly thought her aunt was going to shout at her, tell her she was making herself look cheap and she should have more pride. Perhaps she should. But she couldn’t ignore the desire that gnawed inside her. She had a dream to pursue and nothing would shake her from her path.

  ‘You could have asked before sneaking out,’ snapped Meg. She tucked her hands behind her apron and under her breasts. A formidable stance, but Polly wasn’t fooled. Meg was soft hearted. The round-bodied, caring woman that Polly had lived with since her parents’ death sighed resignedly and lowered her eyes. There was no doubt in her mind that Gavin wasn’t coming back. He’d either got killed or had flown straight back to Canada, but she couldn’t condemn Polly for hoping.