But it was still her birthday and, as she went into the back kitchen and set about preparing the dinner for Granfer, Mam and the rest, she hummed cheerfully and planned the tea-party she intended to make for herself. Sandwiches and some of the scones she now made with expertise. She made a mixture of margarine and butter and a little of the top of the milk to spread on them, a method used by many housewives to make the butter ration go further. And she took out the seven-pound stone jar filled with some of Uncle Sam’s favourite blackberry jam. She wondered if he would be home before this years’ making had been eaten.
At twelve o’clock she had a visitor. “Gilly? You there, love?” Shirley called and she came into the room holding a ribbon decked parcel out to Gilly. “Happy birthday, I’ve brought you a present. Say if you don’t like it, mind, and we’ll get it changed. Now you’re seventeen, older than I was when our Paul was born, you don’t have to put up with anything you don’t like. Seventeen, there’s lovely.” She kissed Gilly and pressed the parcel into her hands.
When Gilly saw the pretty suspender-belt and the silk stockings she gasped in delight. “Auntie Shirley you are marvellous! You can’t imagine how I’ve hated wearing those wool stockings and them held up with elastic so tight they cut my legs or so loose they let the stockings droop like Maisie Boxmoor’s washing!” She hugged the smiling Shirley and said, “Thank you. How did you know they were exactly what I wanted?”
“I might be the mother of a boy who’s the same age as you, love, but I can still remember what it’s like to be on the verge of being a woman,” she laughed.
“Now, what did you have from your Mam and the others?”
“A maroon beret, a winter scarf and some sweets,” she said, trying not to show her dismay.
“Well there’s nice,” Shirley wrinkled her nose only slightly to show she shared Gilly’s unmentioned disappointment.
“I’m going to make a cake and give myself a bit of a party,” Gilly said and Shirley shook her head firmly.
“No you’re not. You’ll wait ’til tomorrow and then you and I are going out to tea at the Chocolate Tree Café. Call for me at three and we’ll go on the train.”
The Chocolate Tree Café was a sweet-shop-cum-café on the sea front and it was rather expensive, just the place for a special celebration. Gilly ran to tell Granfer as soon as Shirley left and then hurriedly finished making dinner and setting out the tea-time fare for the rest of the family. She decided that tomorrow’s tea would be simple as she was going out. She’d need to spend a little while getting ready so she would look her best. She frowned a little, hand to her chin, a forefinger tapping her lips thoughtfully as she decided: bread and margarine sliced ready, a pot of meat paste and the jar of jam would have to do, with a bit of cake if there was some left in the shop. If they didn’t like it they’d have to shift for themselves. She’d make up for it by making something nice for supper. Fish-cakes perhaps, they were always being told to eat more potatoes these days.
* * *
Since the hair-styling paid for by Shirley had freed it from plaits, her hair curled softly about her ears, shining with health. She had brushed it until her arm ached and knew it looked good. The new coat worn with a scarf that was useless at keeping out the wind but which flowed about her shoulders like a celebratory flag, added to her confidence. The new silk stocking felt loose and insubstantial against her legs, luxurious and somehow wickedly extravagant.
Mam had tutted her disapproval and had warned of a chill. Bessie had smiled away the disapproval and told her she looked just beautiful. She was a young woman going out to the Chocolate Tree for tea with a friend. She might even see Paul. The thought gave an extra lilt to her step.
The December day was clear, but with the brightness that can sometimes warn of showers to come. She went towards the neat house down near the railings where she had often stood as a child to watch the activity on the docks and the railway sidings. The view was now blocked by boardings and the docks were hidden from passers-by for fear of spies. She wondered where Uncle Sam’s ship was docked and if it would bring him home in time for Christmas. It was unlikely, she knew that, but to pretend helped her to cope with his absence. Since her father had died when she was two, her Uncle Sam had been a substitute father. His burly figure was always there when she needed someone to talk to, he’d always had time to stop and admire a new toy or sympathise over the loss of an old one. She closed her eyes briefly as she walked along the pavement and uttered a prayer for his safe-keeping.
“What game are you playing, Gilly, walking about with your eyes shut?” Paul crossed the road and pulled up his bicycle beside her.
“I was – I wasn’t playing a game,” she said quickly, deciding to be truthful. “I was thinking about the ships down behind these boardings and saying a prayer for my Uncle Sam.”
Paul dismounted from his bicycle, turned, and walked beside her.
“Happy birthday, Gilly. Going over the beach with Mam, aren’t you? She’s been getting ready all morning and is as excited as if it were her birthday.”
“That’s what’s so nice about your Mam, she treats everything as special and makes even an ordinary birthday an excuse for fun.”
“It’s my seventeenth birthday soon. I hope the war is over by the next one or I’ll be leaving school and going into the forces.”
She stared at him in horror. That he was nearly seventeen often crossed her mind but the realisation that he would probably be called up to face the horrors of war had escaped her.
“Surely it will be over by then? Granfer says it’ll be finished by Christmas,” she said as if Granfer’s belief settled the matter.
“Christmas day is three weeks from today. I think he might be right about Christmas, but not this one. No, I think I’ll be learning to fly a plane before long.”
His words saddened her. The excitement of the afternoon out was spoilt and Paul sensed her gloom.
“Don’t think about it, Gilly, I try not to. Today is a special day, a seventeenth birthday, enjoy it.” He was about to add a reminder for her to think of his mother and not spoil her treat, but looking at Gilly’s face he knew the words were unnecessary. She had widened her shapely mouth in a smile as she nodded.
“Next year can’t spoil today, can it, Paul?” And the thought of next year can’t take away this moment, she thought with a lift of her heart, me wearing a smart new coat, silk stockings and walking down the road with you.
Shirley was almost ready, smelling sweetly of perfume and her face showing a genuine welcome as Paul ushered her in.
“Just two minutes, love, while I get my shoes and we’re off,” she said and disappeared upstairs.
Gilly sat and, to her delight, Paul sat on the edge of the table near her. He was silent for a while, smiling at her and warming her with his attention.
“You look different, Gilly,” he said finally. Behind the door to the hallway, Shirley was about to touch the door handle and, hearing the start of a conversation that she thought ought to be allowed to finish, she slipped back up a few stairs and waited.
“I feel different,” Gilly replied. “I suppose I’ve left behind the schoolgirl image at last. Your Mam has been very kind to me. She understands better than my Mam what I feel.”
“She’s great. Like a glamorous friend rather than a mother. Marrying young and having me while she was no more than a girl, I suppose.” Looking at her with a serious expression he added quietly, “I wish it was me going to the café with you instead of Mam.”
Gilly blushed and was too full of joy to reply.
Making a noisy effort to turn the door knob, Shirley entered, dressed in a fitted black coat with a fox fur around her neck. Her suede shoes were high-heeled and dainty, her matching suede handbag ridiculously small. Gilly thought she looked lovely.
“Oh, while I remember, Paul love.” Opening the small bag Shirley took out an envelope. “Your dad and I had booked tickets for the theatre for next week. Now he can’t go. Can you
use them, Paul? It’s a variety show.” Leaving them alone again she ran out with the excuse of finding a handkerchief and when she returned once again, they were examining the tickets and smiling happily.
“As it’s Gilly’s birthday, I thought she ought to come with me, Mam. Is that all right?”
“Lovely!” Her face glowed with pleasure that her ruse had succeeded. “Now come on then, Gilly, or we’ll never get there before dark.”
The Chocolate Tree Café was not the usual beach café favoured by trippers and not even in the same area as the fish and chip shops, and those selling seaside rock, ice-cream, funny hats, kites, buckets and spades and fancy gifts; but it had a view of the smaller bay a short distance from the popular sandy beach and fair ground.
There was a footpath near it which led down a rocky path to a narrow beach which in turn was connected to the main beach by another winding rocky path. But although it was near the centre of the town’s beach entertainments, the small bay was less popular and rarely full. On this late December afternoon it was deserted.
The light was fading fast but they took off their shoes and stockings and walked bare-foot on the sand, enjoying the chill and pretending not to shiver with the shock as their feet found the occasional icy pool. On one side of the beach they were stopped by barbed wire defences. Behind the rocky promontory were the docks. New concrete buildings had sprung up, dark holes threatening in the deep walls, hidden eyes and hidden watchers. Khaki camouflage net was draped around the square blocks disguising their shape. Soldiers were visible as silhouettes, their rifles a part of their outline as they stood against the fading light of the sky, the scuffling of their boots occasionally heard. To Gilly it was a sobering reminder of the war that would soon grab Paul into its machinery and take him away.
The brightness left the sky with suddenness and as they looked out to sea, they felt the approaching rain as a sudden chill. The clouds speeding inland darkened the day and, like children, they ran back to the shelter of some rocks and tried, amid laughter, to pull their stockings over damp legs.
“It’s useless,” Shirley laughed. “We’ll put them on in the train if we’re lucky enough to have a carriage to ourselves.” Putting their stockings in a pocket, they slipped on their shoes and walked to the café.
Because of worsening weather and lighting-up-time was imminent, the boards around the doorway and across the café windows were already in place and for a moment they thought the place was closed. But when they walked around the double barrier, a wooden passageway with two bends in it, lights shone and revealed tables set with pretty table-cloths, a bowl of late dahlias on each one.
While they waited for the set tea they had ordered to arrive, they whispered comments about the other customers, guessing their ages and what they did, giggling like children and all the time Gilly thought of the other treat to come, going into Cardiff to the theatre with Paul.
While they ate the bread and thin jam, the scones and the fancy cakes, and drank the very weak tea, Gilly almost unthinkingly totalled the cost and compared it with what Shirley paid.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully as they put on their coats to leave, “I think I could make a nice living using one side of our shop as a café. People like to sit a while between the shopping and chat to friends.”
“What a lovely idea. Why don’t you talk to your Mam and your Auntie Bessie, see if they’ll let you try?”
Gilly was startled. She hadn’t really considered it as a reality, only an idea that had fluttered through her mind between thoughts of Paul and the happy afternoon she was having with his mother.
“You mean, really do it?”
“Why not? You have the basics already, the shop space and the bake-house supplies. Some pretty china, a few small tables and chairs is all you’ll need and I bet you’ll find some of those by asking around. And I bet you can make better scones than we had here,” she whispered daringly, with the proprietor standing close, waiting to open the door for them.
“You’ll have to get permission and an allowance of the rationed foodstuff, but I’ll ask my Derek to make enquiries if you like. He knows everyone and would soon find out how to set about it,” Shirley promised as they headed into the unbroken blackness of the night for the railway station.
There were four stations on the journey and between the first and the second, they managed to replace their stockings and tidy their hair. Shirley touched up her lipstick and offered it to Gilly.
“No, I daren’t. Mam would kill me,” she said regretfully.
“Put a little on when you go to Cardiff, she’ll never know,” Shirley said with a smile. “Take this one, it’s a soft pink and will suit you perfectly.”
Gilly’s face was sparkling with excitement when she reached home. Gerry was in the shop, sitting beside her mother and pretending not to see his Aunt Megan. Auntie Bessie was talking to Megan Moxon and wrapping up some stale bread for her chickens. When she had gone, ignored by her nephew, Gerry complained;
“Why do you give her all that bread? You know what she does with it do you?”
“Eats it through the week, I suppose. It isn’t fresh, but it will do for a few days. Better than seeing her hungry.”
“Eat it? She never eats bread. She warms it in the oven and sells it as her own, home baking! The money buys a couple of bottles of Amber Ale at fivepence half-penny a time, to keep her going ’til the pubs open.”
The argument about whether or not they should continue to give the old woman free bread went on until Gilly pleaded for them to listen to her.
“Mam, I want to open this half of the shop as a café.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, girl,” was her mother’s immediate response.
“Wait a minute, Fanny,” Bessie said. “Let’s hear her out.”
“Tell us where you’ve been first, and why you’re so late,” Fanny demanded.
“I’ve been to tea with Auntie Shirley, you know where I’ve been. And by the way, I’m going out next Friday, too.” She waited until she had their full attention then her nerve went and she lowered her head and instead of making an announcement, said half apologetically, “Auntie Shirley has given me and Paul tickets to a show in Cardiff. I can go, can’t I?”
“Of course she can go, can’t she?” Bessie promptly replied, watching her sister’s face for the disapproval to become a verbal “No”. “Only be careful, mind, there’s the risk of air-raids and you’ll have to get out and find a shelter if the warning goes, promise that.”
“Paul will look after me,” Gilly said, confidence returning.
* * *
“You’ve given them tickets for a show? Our Paul and that Jenkins girl?” Derek frowned his disapproval as Shirley told him about her plan to get them out together.
“Well, she’s nice and I think our Paul likes her but was too shy to do anything about it. I helped, that’s all.”
“But why? There’s plenty of girls for Paul to chose from better suited to him than Gilly, nice as she might be. I don’t want him marrying her. I don’t want my money to benefit a Jenkins.”
“What if she’s his choice, Derek, would you rather lose him?”
“No, of course not. I love Paul. I’d never have persuaded your parents to accept me if it hadn’t been for Paul. But—”
“Let’s not look too far ahead, shall we? Let them have a night out and see what happens, perhaps it will be a beginning and an end to it?”
“Well, I don’t suppose it’ll do any harm for him to try out his skills on her, preparing for more important women.”
“Derek! I’d hate to think he would use Gilly and then discard her. That’s no way to treat any woman!”
“I was only joking,” he assured her.
* * *
Fanny was against the idea of Gilly opening a café, she could see that. And after long discussions she began to wonder if her mother was right, and the idea a foolish one. Then she remembered the sureness of Aunt Shirley’s reaction and shook a
way her doubts. She knew Granfer would understand and support her, but she didn’t discuss it with him. Best to think about it for a while first. Give Mam a chance to cool down for one thing!
The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to do it, and succeed at it. It would be hers alone, nothing to do with the family business, and only she would decide how it would be run. It was an exciting thought.
* * *
Lucy and her mother were having difficulties affording food. Having decided to concentrate on their hand-work to make their living, both women had worked for two weeks without a break. The savings Polly had managed to put by had dwindled alarmingly as they spent more and more on cotton and thread. After two weeks they were living mostly on bread and potatoes and the occasional treat of a tomato or an apple when these could be found.
There had been no visit from Teifion since Lucy had seen him with his parents. For a while she had hoped that there was an acceptable explanation, he had been ill, or tied up with extra work, but as days passed she had given up hope. So there was a resurgence of excitement when Arthur, the man who lived in a room above, brought in a note from Teifion that had been pushed through the letter box. The note asked her to meet him at their usual café and bring with her some samples of her work as he might have found a new outlet.
It had been Lucy’s intention to spend another week filling their cases before she set out to sell their beautiful accessories. But the note asking her to meet him changed all that. With the need to buy at least a new pair of stockings and spend one shilling and sixpence having her hair trimmed before meeting him at Luigi’s café the following evening, she changed her plans. Leaving her mother still working in their small, dreadfully cluttered room, she took the heavily loaded suitcase and began her calls.
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