by Lizzie Lane
‘And I s’pose it’s her that brings you home in the early hours of the morning.’
‘Billy brings me home.’
‘In that van? Don’t make me laugh. I know the difference. I’ve heard that car before. What are you up to, Polly?’
Polly pulled in her stomach. She hated lying to Meg who’d been good to her, but what she did with her life was her business. She decided to lie.
‘Charlotte sometimes gives me a lift if I attend one of her charity functions. She asks me to help out now and again. She is a friend as well as my boss’s wife.’
Meg’s expression remained unaltered. Polly put on her brightest smile. ‘Here, drink your tea,’ she said handing her the cup.
That night she shared Meg’s bed and pretended to be asleep until her aunt was snoring gently beside her. Then she opened her eyes and smiled smugly into the darkness. Sooner or later she wouldn’t have to put up with these cramped conditions, this low class way of living, not if she played her cards right.
The ground floor rooms of the house in Kent Street had pine panelling to waist height, all painted in the hideous brown varnish so beloved of the Victorians because it didn’t show the dirt.
Cooking was done on a cast-iron range, which sat in the fireplace like a fat black spider. This room was to serve as both kitchen and living room. The shop was at the front and the bedroom was sandwiched between the two. Up above were two more rooms, both with bare board floors and devoid of furniture. The lavatory was at the end of the garden and a tin bath hung on the outside back wall.
It was less than Edna was used to but she loved it all the same. ‘I’ll make it look like a palace,’ she had promised Colin. And she’d done her best to do that. Net curtains hung at sparkling windows. The furniture was old, the chair stuffed with horsehair and covered in leather, the table of well-scrubbed pine and scarred from the blows of many a carving knife or meat cleaver.
Colin removed all his tools to the new house, swearing his parents to secrecy and to ignorance once the truth was disclosed to Edna’s mother.
The shop in which he could now both make and display his toys was warm and welcoming. At one side was a stack of empty shelves. ‘They’ll all be packed with stuff by Christmas,’ he stated with confidence. And Edna believed him.
Despite the fact that Sherman was still on her mind, she was enjoying setting up her own home, being able to do what she wanted without her mother lurking and looking, asking questions with her eyes that Edna did not want to answer.
But all the same she knew her need to see Sherman again would not go away. No matter if, for some reason, she were never to see him until he was fully grown, the need would still be there.
On their wedding night she had cried. As they’d made love to suit Colin’s physical shortcomings, she had wanted to roll back the years, to obliterate the fact that Adolf Hitler had ever lived. Things might have been so different. But her tears were not just about their lovemaking. It was also about bravery, guilt and the need to be loved. Would she have chanced telling Colin about Sherman if he hadn’t had his legs blown off? Perhaps so; somehow a man uninjured by war seemed more capable of coping. But then, if there’d been no Hitler and no war there would have been no Sherman and, despite everything, she was glad he was alive. If only she could find the courage to tell Colin all about it. But she couldn’t.
‘Last item on the agenda, but by no means least, a vote of thanks for the continuing supply of clothes for our children.’
The speaker, Mr Nathaniel Partridge, lately of the Provincial Bank, now retired and Chairman of the Trustees of the Muller Orphanage, looked directly at Charlotte who was sitting to his left. ‘Mrs Hennessey-White, do keep up the good work.’
The assembled trustees, matrons wearing fox furs and large hats, retired professional men, bankers, clergymen and military, clapped politely. Charlotte returned their fixed smiles and murmured the expected ‘thank you’.
‘Hear, hear,’ said one of the elderly trustees whose hat, despite it being late May, was trimmed with fur rather than flowers. ‘If I may speak, Mr Chairman …’
Mr Partridge nodded. ‘Indeed, Lady Garribond.’
Full of her own self-importance, Lady Garribond got to her feet. ‘I do hope Mrs Hennessey-White can continue to organise the making of baby clothes until such time as they are no longer needed. Until such time, in fact, that the flood of unwanted babies becomes no more than a trickle.’
A Major Rawlings interjected. ‘Indeed, let us hope we can get most of these babies adopted – by suitable people of course.’
Assent ran around the room.
Job done, Charlotte shuffled her papers and prepared to leave, intending to see Josef before she did so. He was employed as groundsman now, tending lawns, trimming trees and doing general maintenance work that included looking after the swings, slide and roundabout in the children’s play area. She was feeling well satisfied with what she was doing and grateful for the trustees’ vote of thanks. Not such a bad lot, she thought – until Lady Garribond spoke again.
‘Those that can be adopted will be. We have to bear in mind that a lot of our charges are half-caste. The fathers ran out on their white victims and left them literally holding the baby.’
A few tittered at Lady Garribond’s tasteless joke.
Charlotte turned to stone. She could not believe her ears. She’d always known that a number of the trustees were less than charitable when it came to the morals of everyone except their own class. But Lady Garribond’s statement was simply outrageous. Slamming her briefcase down hard on the shiny oval table at which they were sitting, she sprang to her feet. All eyes turned to her.
‘Lady Garribond! Your ignorance of the situation is unforgivable! Few of those women were victims. If anyone left them and their innocent babies high and dry it was the Allied High Command. Now it is up to us to pick up the pieces without prejudice towards either class or colour!’
‘Well!’ Lady Garribond’s hand flew to her chest as though she were having a heart attack. Charlotte half expected her to call for the smelling salts. But she didn’t.
‘An apology! I want an apology!’ she shouted in a shrill voice.
Pearl drops set in marcasite danced angrily in her ears as she threw a warning glare at the chairman. He winced visibly but stood his ground. Hard to do, Charlotte thought, with a woman whose face was as dour as Queen Mary’s on a very dismal day.
‘Mrs Hennessey-White?’ The chairman looked up at her questioningly and, although his expression was suitably austere, she detected an amused twinkle in his eyes.
Charlotte shook her head. ‘No. I cannot apologise. Might I suggest, Lady Garribond, that you make some enquiries before we next meet? You might very well find yourself apologising to me!’
After a curt goodbye Charlotte made her way to the matron’s office. Matron was as wide as she was high and politely got to her feet when Charlotte entered.
Matron glanced at her watch. ‘Meeting over already?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, annoyed with herself for losing her temper as much as for Lady Garribond’s remark. ‘I’d like to see the children. Would that be possible?’
‘Of course it would.’ Matron, her face flushed permanently red and her bosom thrust forward like a song thrush, smiled and nodded, almost as if she had an inkling of what had been said. It was a well-known fact that she did not always see eye to eye with some of the board members.
Charlotte asked her what things they were short of. Matron informed her.
‘Nappies, of course. I don’t expect them all to be of best quality terry towelling but it would certainly be nice if they were. And blankets. Clothes, of course. The little darlings will keep growing.’
They both chuckled warmly.
Charlotte liked Matron. She did her job well and efficiently, her emotions seemingly under control. But she guessed she had a soft centre. A moment of weakness and her life and home could become crowded with other people’s children.
Charlotte nodded. ‘I spent all yesterday afternoon collecting from my sewing ladies.’
‘One of them made a personal delivery a while back.’
‘Really?’
‘I didn’t catch her Christian name. But her surname was Burbage.’
Charlotte frowned. ‘Burbage? I do know a Burbage. Are you absolutely sure about that?’
Matron crooked her finger and beckoned Charlotte over to a cot and a sleeping child, his skin coffee gold against the crisp whiteness of the pillow.
‘She was particularly interested in this little chap.’
Charlotte gazed down too and smiled. ‘I don’t blame her. He’s beautiful.’
Matron clasped her hands beneath her ample bosom, breathed a large sigh and shook her head. ‘She picked him up, cuddled him to her body and was hard pressed to let him go.’
Charlotte’s eyes met hers. Even before she dropped the bombshell Charlotte could see it coming.
‘You think she knew the child?’
Silently Matron removed the name ‘Sherman’ to reveal the surname of the child’s mother. Charlotte felt a huge lump rise to her throat. She remembered a Saturday morning on Redcliffe Hill when Edna had told her that she thought she might be marrying Colin for the wrong reasons. Her heart went out to her. If the secret got out her marriage would be over. She’d be ostracised by those who thought ill of a girl who’d ‘got into trouble’ and, worse, with a black American. For the rest of her life she would always wonder where her child was and whether she had married Colin out of affection or pity – pity for him and for herself.
After making the excuse that she needed to get some air before unpacking the car, Charlotte strolled through the grounds making her way to where a plane tree spread its waving branches. Just before she got there she heard children laughing to her left beyond a thick privet hedge. She turned off in that direction and came across the play area. She remembered it as being pretty basic; metal swings, slide and roundabout all painted in a dull green.
Children were playing on the apparatus provided. There were two new additions from the last time, she noticed. Four children were playing in a sandpit made from a series of old logs formed into an oblong perhaps eight feet wide by four feet deep. There was also a wooden climbing frame, made from a cut-down tree, gnarled branches meeting at the top like the bare bones of a wigwam.
In among the children was Josef, directing some not to push, rubbing the grazed knee of another, and listening to the sob story of one little girl who appeared to have lost her shoe.
She stood transfixed. He loves this job, she thought to herself. So ironic, the German submariner who had participated in the sinking of goodness knows how many ships. Yet he couldn’t have been happy doing that. After seeing him with these children she was sure of it.
Suddenly he looked in her direction. She smiled at him expecting him to come dashing to meet her. Instead he dealt with the five-year-old Cinderella, finding and refitting her shoe. Even after he’d done that the child continued to hold on to his hand, her brown eyes looking up at him adoringly.
Slowly both he and his follower walked towards her.
‘You seem to have settled in,’ she said. At the same time she took an apple from her pocket and handed it to the child.
A lock of hair hung damply over his brow. He pushed it away, his blue eyes brightening as he smiled. ‘I think I have found my vocation,’ he said with a light laugh. ‘Children’s entertainer – like Mickey Mouse.’
The child, more enamoured of the apple now, ran off. They both watched her run, her brown legs kicking out behind her.
‘So many victims of war,’ Josef said softly.
Like my children, thought Charlotte. Exiled to boarding school because their father went to war as an ordinary Dr Jekyll and came back as a version of Mr Hyde. Their absence still grieved her although Janet’s letters seemed happier than they had been.
‘Have you thought any more about going home or staying here?’ Charlotte asked hopefully.
Josef looked away, supposedly staring at some far-off trees.
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
Even before he turned back to her she knew what he was going to say. And she didn’t want him to go! It didn’t matter that children surrounded them or that prying eyes might be peering out of the orphanage windows. The urge to throw her arms around him and beg him to stay was overwhelming.
Then he asked a question. ‘Are you going to leave David?’
It startled her. She looked down at the ground. ‘I can’t. Call it old-fashioned, call it a sense of duty. I can’t do it.’ David was less amenable, less patient than he had been. But it’s the war she told herself, unless there was something I never saw, something so deeply buried it took a world war to bring it to the surface.
Josef reached for her and squeezed her arm. ‘I admire you, Charlotte. You are right. A marriage should be for ever.’
She laughed. ‘At least you think so. I’m afraid there are a lot of people who think otherwise nowadays. The divorce rate has gone through the roof. And if you ask people why, they just say, “It’s the war you know”.’ Her own words caused her pain. Wasn’t that where she lay the blame for her own marriage?
The silence hung between them. She wanted to prick it as if it were a balloon, say something to lighten the depression that suddenly hung like a weight around her shoulders. Although she wanted him to stay and knew beyond doubt he wanted that too, she also knew what he was asking her. He wanted her commitment and somehow, no matter how violent David was or had become, she couldn’t bring herself to leave him. If she did, her whole life would change. A divorced woman. And the children … she knew only too well from her work with the marriage counselling service how the children of divorced or separated parents were treated.
Her thoughts depressed her. She was thankful when Josef broke the silence.
‘Mr Partridge had a talk with me. He congratulated me on the sandpit and the climbing frame I built. We spoke about Germany and the rebuilding programme. He asked if I’d thought about being an engineer.’
‘Had you?’
Josef shook his head and smirked. ‘I raised bread, not buildings. And I was involved with an organisation that assisted the families of submariners. I explained that to him. He seemed impressed and promised to see if he could find something where I could work with people.’
‘There’s a lot of rebuilding happening here,’ said Charlotte with unconcealed enthusiasm. ‘A lot of buildings in Bristol were destroyed. Some of them dated back to the beginning of the fifteenth century.’
‘Buildings are easily rebuilt,’ said Josef plainly, then he took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. ‘It’s going to rain. I’d better get the children inside.’
Like a shepherd tending his flock or some latter-day Pied Piper, he led the children inside where the nurses and voluntary helpers took charge.
Once he’d attended to that, he ran through the rain with her and helped unload the clothes and bedding from the boot of her car. As they both grappled with the bags and bundles, their arms and thighs brushed together momentarily. The smell of the wet rain permeating his clothes and running down his skin invaded her senses. Something crazy had happened to her since that night on the common. Something more was happening now. It was like stepping onto a moving staircase and finding it impossible to stop. She wanted to keep his company.
She took the first step in one almighty leap. ‘How about going to the pictures tonight?’
For a moment there was a questioning look in his eyes. Was he going to say no? Suddenly she felt a fool.
‘That would be nice,’ he said.
They saw Blithe Spirit and linked hands. Despite the antics of Margaret Rutherford who was playing the medium, Madame Arcati, Charlotte found it hard to concentrate. Relaxing was something she did little of. She was always involved in organisations, doing thi
ngs for other people. I do so little for me, she thought suddenly, and wanted things to be different for once.
The feel of his arm pressing against hers was oddly sensual. It made her think of what it would be like to kiss him here in the darkness, to have him wrap his arms around her and nuzzle her neck like he had that night on the common. Instead he watched the film. She watched too, wishing Madame Arcati would vanish in a puff of smoke along with the audience and everyone else in the building. Tonight she wanted more than the closeness she’d encountered on the common.
It was raining quite heavily when they got outside. The windscreen wipers squealed as they swept the raindrops from the screen. Streetlights made the road glisten, an effect strangely missed during the blackout years despite the rain. She’d never regarded any of it as exciting before. Perhaps it was the hypnotic swish of the wipers, perhaps the darkness or even the lights. Whatever it was, she did not want to let this night pass without making it truly memorable.
A tremor of excitement passed through her as she thought about things, the thoughts seeming to hang on each sweep of the wipers.
Can you really do this?
Remember you’re married.
Remember he’s an enemy prisoner.
Remember he’s going home.
You may never see him again.
All is fair in love and war. But it wasn’t. David had come back a changed man. Josef was leaving her to go home. Some piece of him must stay, even if only as a memory.
She knew what she wanted to do, but how to proposition a man? She’d never done it before. As if in answer to a prayer the engine spluttered suddenly.
‘Oh no!’
‘Do we have a problem?’ asked a concerned Josef.
‘Petrol! I thought I had enough. In fact I did have enough to get to the orphanage and back. But not twice in one day.’
‘Can we get some?’ asked Josef.
Charlotte shook her head, aware that her throat was dry and her hands were shaking. Lying wasn’t a habit of hers. ‘Not at this time of night, I’m afraid. No garage is open much beyond six o’clock and, besides, I haven’t got my ration card with me.’