Wartime Brides

by Lizzie Lane

  Geoffrey slumped back in the chair and for a brief moment she thought he was going to demand that he be put on the next train back to school. His response caught her completely by surprise.

  ‘Good. When I go back to school I can tell them that my parents are not getting divorced. I shall be just like everyone else, with a father and a mother, and they won’t treat me like Alistair Broadbent. His parents got divorced before the war even ended. Everyone avoids him. Their parents have told them to.’

  Charlotte was shocked. ‘I hope you are not one of those boys, Geoffrey. I would be very annoyed with you if you treated Alistair like that. It must be very sad for him.’

  Geoffrey shrugged. ‘He’s OK.’

  OK! Charlotte clasped her hands together and studied the china cups resting neatly in their matching saucers. Like their lives, the English language had undergone a subtle change. Would it revert back now the Americans had left? She doubted it. Everything was different now.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she said, at least attempting cheerfulness, ‘it seems we might have a family Christmas after all.’

  After Mrs Grey had cleared away, Janet began reading and Geoffrey started a jigsaw puzzle. Charlotte took the opportunity to go to the study. She must write to Josef and explain what had happened. She knew she must suggest it might be better if he stopped writing to her.

  She sat poised, with pen in hand. The paper sat on the desk, waiting for her words to fall across the page. It wasn’t easy to find the right words to say without giving offence or causing hurt that was as unbearable to her as it would be to him. Of course, she could offer to keep writing on a purely platonic level, friends at a distance. She knew she had to put any other feelings aside if she were to cope with rebuilding her marriage. Like severing a limb, she had to cut Josef out of her life. It might indeed make her feel incapacitated, not quite a whole human being but, for better or worse, those were the terms under which she’d married back in the thirties. Things might be different in the future for Edna and Polly and her daughter’s generation. The young ones might very well take a more casual attitude towards marriage. But she could not. The society she had been born into had made her that way.

  So she wrote the letter and tried to forget how good it had felt when she and Josef were together. After that, she wrote Christmas cards and as she signed inside each snowy scene, each shining Madonna, she held on to the hope that David might indeed be on the road to recovery.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  EDNA WOULD BE staying with Charlotte over Christmas and she was grateful. Although she had heard nothing from her mother, her natural sense of duty took her to her mother’s front door.

  Bad feeling had persisted between them, most of it emanating from Ethel’s side since the wedding when they’d moved into the house in Kent Street without telling her anything about it.

  Christmas was a time of forgiveness, Edna decided, and anyway, she wanted to tell her mother that a loving couple had adopted Sherman and perhaps she’d been right in the first place. Even though she still grieved at her son’s going, she could not forgive herself for leaving the poor child in an orphanage for months at a time while she searched for the courage to tell Colin about him. Things should have been different.

  The front door was open, but the interior glass door with its white china knob was tightly shut. She opened it and called for her mother.

  ‘Out here,’ called her father.

  She could hear her father coughing and clearing his chest in the living room, which opened out onto the kitchen at the back of the house.

  A cold draught seeped from the living room door. Edna smiled sadly, guessing what her father was doing even before she saw him.

  There he was in the middle of the room. The window was open and he was waving his arms around in an effort to get rid of the smell of pipe smoke. Smoking was something confined to the garden shed.

  His face brightened. ‘Thank goodness. I thought it was yer mother.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Gone shopping for a turkey or, if she can’t get that, she’s going to settle for a nice capon.’

  Edna was surprised. There were few of those about except on the black market. ‘That’ll cost money.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said brightly, ‘she’s got plenty of dollars. You can get more with dollars than you can with pound notes, you know.’

  Edna frowned. ‘Dollars? I didn’t know she had any …’

  ‘Oh yes. There were dollars at the top of those boxes, you know.’

  Mention of the boxes also brought the letters to mind. She’d only found out about them on the fateful morning that Colin had found them. They were gone now, nothing but ashes. In the past, her sin and any mention of the parcels had made her blush with shame. But her father had just disclosed that there was something else in the parcels. Dollars! Dollars that officially belonged to her or Sherman, and her mother, the guardian of law-abiding respectability, had kept them in order to buy food on the black market!

  Edna stood as if frozen. Her father, suddenly realising the implications of what he’d just said, stepped forward. ‘They were going to waste, Edna. I’m sure she’d have given them to you if she’d thought it was for the best.’

  Sherman’s dollars. If she had had them, perhaps she could have managed to keep him without a father and without having to work. She was vaguely aware of her father muttering things like ‘it was all for the best’. But there had been an option she knew nothing about and now there were none.

  He was her father and far softer than her mother, but she could no longer bear to look at him. In a matter of seconds she was out on the street, running down over the hill toward the main road. At the rate she ran it was no more than forty minutes before she was standing outside the house in Kent Street. The place was in darkness. She’d never known that before. She wondered where Colin might be. Perhaps he’d gone out with Billy to the Red Lion for a quick pint. Perhaps he was going to have more than one bitter in his present state of mind. And it was all her fault for not standing up to her mother.

  She stood there staring until frost spangled her hair and froze her fingers. The only warmth came from the tear that escaped from the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek.

  It was no good staying. This wasn’t the time to face Colin and, besides, she didn’t have a key.

  Slowly and forlornly, she walked to the end of the street, quickening her steps as she reached the main road where patches of light fell from shop windows and made the pavements glisten.

  She was hardly aware of the van pulling up alongside her until Billy gave a quick blast on the horn. She jumped. She’d been so deep in her thoughts.

  ‘Need a lift?’

  She nodded.

  He didn’t ask where she wanted to go but assumed it was back to Charlotte’s.

  Before getting in she looked back over her shoulder towards Kent Street and imagined Colin sitting alone in the darkness. It was too much to bear.

  On the drive back to Clifton, Billy kept talking, telling her that everything would be all right. Colin would come round. But his constant chatter only served to convince her that the opposite was true. Her life was a mess. Under pressure from her mother she’d given up her child and because of that, her marriage too was over. All she felt was shame.

  When she burst into tears Billy immediately brought the van to a halt and wrapped an arm around her.

  ‘Come on, girl. Tell yer old pal Billy about it.’

  It all poured out. She told him about meeting Sherman’s new parents and signing the adoption papers. She also told him how she blamed herself for not standing up to her mother.

  ‘If I’d been braver in the first place,’ she said plaintively.

  Billy patted her hand. ‘Never you mind. Just leave things to old Billy and things will be fine.’

  It was difficult to sleep that night, but in her dreams a Christmas angel put in an appearance and promised her that everything would work out for the best. It was a fu
nny kind of angel: flowing white robe topped with a brown trilby tipped back on the head. When he said things would get better, he winked – just as Billy had done.

  A few days before Christmas Billy gave Colin a lift to the hospital. Edna had already told him that he’d got very secretive about these visits and how she was worried he might be ill.

  Billy told Polly how it was when he collected her from the pictures that night in a new van that was suspiciously khaki in colour. She didn’t ask where he’d got it. She’d rather not know.

  ‘Is Colin going to see Edna over Christmas?’ she asked.

  Billy shrugged. ‘That depends.’

  Polly looked at him long and hard, then she frowned. There was a twinkle in his eyes. He looked smug. ‘Billy Hills, are you keeping secrets from me?’

  He feigned surprise. ‘You know me, Poll. Straight as a die!’

  ‘Straight as a snapped twig more like! Now come on. Tell me the truth.’

  ‘How much meat’s gonna be on that old cockerel of yours? Enough to invite both Edna and Colin? Only I thought if we could get the two of ’em together, it might just sort things out.’

  Polly smiled and pinched his cheek. ‘My, but you’re a crafty one, Billy Hills. No wonder I love ya!’

  ‘Do you?’

  Such was his joy that he started to turn his head.

  Polly grabbed his chin and twisted it so he was looking straight ahead. ‘Keep your eyes on the road! We don’t want no more accidents!’

  Meg and Carol were both in bed by the time they got back and, in the darkness of the hallway, Polly went out of her way to make Billy Hills think he’d died and gone to heaven. Her lips were hot, her hands were everywhere and she did things he’d never had done to him before. Everything else, including the ritual taking in of the chickens for the night went out of their heads.

  On the following morning she smiled to herself as she made her way to the lavatory which was nestled up against the back garden wall.

  Frost still clung to the pantiled roof of the small brick building that was barely big enough to sit down in. Hope the candle’s still alight, she thought to herself. If it wasn’t, the pipes would be frozen and it would be mid-morning or even late afternoon before they could flush.

  Frost glistened on the top leaves of sprout plants and made them look, temporarily at least, like overblown cabbage roses. Still, the sprouts were almost ready for picking and once that was done she could chop up the remains, boil them, and mix them with potato skins and bran for the chickens.

  Thinking about the chickens suddenly made her stop in her tracks. The cockerel had been strangely silent that morning. Usually when she ventured up the garden path all three would be clucking impatiently, demanding breakfast before anyone else had theirs.

  Christmas! It wasn’t the only word that came into her head when she saw that the wire netting was torn from its rude frame. The coop door lay in two pieces on the ground. If only she and Billy hadn’t got so carried away! In the country foxes took chickens. In the city the thieves were human.

  Billy kissed her passionately when he arrived in his ex-army van to take her to work.

  She pushed him away. ‘You can cut that out! If it weren’t for you, Billy Hills, we’d still have our Christmas dinner having his head chopped off tonight. As it is, we don’t even have Nellie and Martha. Even old boilers would be better than nothing.’

  At first he looked hurt, but his expression brightened as she explained exactly what had happened.

  ‘Is that all? No problem! Trust your old Billy Hills. Christmas dinner coming up.’

  Polly gave him a warning frown and wagged her finger. ‘Don’t you go getting yourself into any trouble, Billy. It’s prison and big fines for them involved in the black market.’

  His cheeky grin was too much to cope with. She gave him a playful smack and in response Billy began to whistle.

  What the devil’s he up to, she wondered. But she didn’t ask. If he was confident he could get them a Christmas dinner then that was all right by her.

  On Christmas Day the sky hung grey and heavy as if threatening untold blizzards to come. Hopefully it won’t be until the New Year, prayed Charlotte.

  She got up early, partly because the turkey needed to go into the oven and partly because David was coming home for Christmas lunch. The whole house was warm with Christmas cheer. The paper chains and the greenery cut from the garden contributed to the look, the feel and the smell of the place.

  Edna was not too far behind her. She came into the kitchen already washed and dressed – because she’s expecting Colin to ask her to come home, thought Charlotte painfully. They’d heard nothing from him.

  ‘The turkey smells nice,’ said Edna without any real enthusiasm in her voice.

  Charlotte agreed.

  ‘It was jolly nice of Billy to get it for me. A little bigger than I needed, but I’m sure Mrs Grey will make use of the leftovers.’

  Charlotte smiled secretively. If everything went according to the plan she’d discussed with Billy, the turkey would not go beyond Christmas lunch.

  ‘I’ll start the sprouts if you like,’ said Edna, stooping to the raffia sack sitting on the floor.

  ‘I’d like that very much, but there’s no hurry.’

  Too sad! She’s too sad, thought Charlotte, and today is going to be a happy day not a sad one.

  ‘First! A sherry!’ said Charlotte, pushing the sprouts from Edna’s hands and marching her through the door into the dining room.

  She took a decanter and two sherry glasses from the cocktail cabinet. Then she had second thoughts, put the small glasses back and got out larger ones.

  Charlotte gave Edna a full glass then raised her own in a toast. ‘To a happy Christmas and a wonderful 1947.’

  Edna sipped.

  ‘In one go,’ Charlotte instructed, indicating she should empty her glass and setting an example by swigging her sherry back first.

  Edna grimaced as she swallowed. They both laughed, and Charlotte wondered how a girl like Edna had managed to get pregnant in the first place. It was unfair to judge, but she seemed such a timid little thing, hardly the type the GIs went after.

  ‘I see Billy brought you a card from Colin,’ Charlotte said in an effort to sound hopeful.

  Edna looked embarrassed. ‘I think Billy stole it. There was someone else’s signature inside.’

  Wordlessly, Charlotte mouthed an astonished ‘Oh’ and briefly wondered where Billy had got hold of the turkey. But she wouldn’t question its origins. The enticing smell that was already wafting around the kitchen was enough encouragement not to.

  ‘Here’s to your health,’ said Charlotte raising her glass.

  Edna frowned. ‘It’s not mine I’m worried about. I think Colin’s keeping something from me.’

  Charlotte said nothing although she badly wanted to. Colin was not ill. Billy had told her exactly why he’d kept Edna out of the picture. Something else was about to change and soon Edna would know exactly what it was.

  Please God it will be enough to give Colin the confidence he lost with his legs, thought Charlotte. And God, let our plan to get them back together work.

  The children now joined them for breakfast. Both brought their stockings, full of chocolate and fruit, which Charlotte had attached to the bottom of their beds the night before. In the past David had done it, but since 1939 she had carried out the task.

  Geoffrey thanked her for the books and the lovely sailing yacht Colin had made. It was a three-foot-long ketch, rigged and with a sweep of pale blue sails.

  Charlotte saw the pain in Edna’s face as Geoffrey slid the boat over the dining room rug in the same way it might sail across a pond in the park.

  Janet thanked her for the nylons, her first pair, and the make-up set that Charlotte had been assembling, piece by piece, over the past year.

  The children had bought her a pen set between them, carefully saved for from their pocket money.

  ‘And this is for y
ou,’ Charlotte said to Edna. ‘There’s precious little in the shops, but I bought this before the war. I’m sure it will look better on you than it ever did on me.’ She handed her a small square present wrapped in pale blue tissue paper.

  The gratitude in Edna’s eyes was tinged with sadness. ‘Thank you very much. And I made those for you,’ she said proudly indicating the pale lemon napkins that sat beside each place setting on the table. ‘You’ve got one each. I embroidered each family member’s initial in the corner.’

  ‘G for Geoffrey!’ shouted Geoffrey while waving it in the air.

  ‘And “J” for Janet,’ added a smiling but less exuberant Janet.

  Edna pointed at the one that was neatly tucked into a napkin ring in the middle of the table. ‘That one’s for David.’

  Their eyes met. Charlotte patted her hand. ‘You shouldn’t have.’ She turned away and said in as business-like a way as possible, ‘Now let’s get on with breakfast.’

  Edna’s eyes fastened on the yellowy morass of powdered egg.

  Charlotte had hardly sat down when Edna was up from her chair. Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘I feel sick!’ Then she was racing for the door. Charlotte stared after her, listening as Edna’s footsteps climbed the stairs and sped along the landing to the bathroom. Meanwhile the navy blue and yellow scarf had fluttered to the floor.

  ‘Doesn’t she like it?’ Geoffrey asked pensively. ‘Is that the problem?’

  Charlotte smiled. ‘No. That’s not the problem.’

  Polly was seething. The vegetables were all done and still no sign of Billy and the promised Christmas dinner.

  Carol was gurgling with glee at a doll Polly had bought second hand and for which Meg had knitted matching pink baby clothes.

  Meg was putting the kettle on to the gas for the umpteenth time.

  ‘We’ll make do otherwise,’ she said.

  ‘What with?’ snapped Polly.

  ‘I’ve got a tin of corned beef,’ said Meg.

  Polly sighed, folded her arms, then marched into the front room and stared out of the window. ‘Just wait till he gets here,’ she grumbled.