‘Or rich,’ Grant grunted.
‘Oh.’ Albert frowned in concentration. ‘I d-don’t think I’ll bother getting wed,’ he decided, ‘not if you don’t get a holiday.’
Millie and Grant laughed, but Ava made an impatient noise and stalked out with her pile of magazines. Sometimes Ava’s retreat into her magazine world concerned Millie, for she would fill the children’s heads full of gossip and yearnings for things they could not have, bringing them home comics and annuals too. Any new title that came into the shops she snapped up, spending precious housekeeping on a new weekly called Woman or the more expensive Picture Post.
But by then there were other events to worry over. Teresa’s wireless and travellers to the hotel had brought news of the scare of war abroad. The Germans had marched into Austria and claimed it as their own; their own Prime Minister, Chamberlain, had returned from Munich that summer claiming to have secured peace with the Fuhrer. While Ava pored over photographs of British life caught candidly by Picture Post, Grant grumbled with concern over politics abroad and the advance of the fascists on the Continent.
The boys found it exciting that they had to practise gasmask drill at school, and they careered around the house pretending to be aeroplanes. By the spring the government was making preparations for war, drawing up an evacuation programme for women and children and the distribution of air-raid shelters. Millie discussed with Ella the possibility of evacuees coming to the town.
‘We’d certainly have room for city bairns,’ Millie declared. ‘How we’d feed them all is another matter.’
‘I hate all this talk of war,’ Ella said fearfully. ‘I’m glad we’re out of London, they keep talking about bombs being dropped...’
‘Things won’t change that much round here,’ Walter assured her. ‘They’ve told us to carry on working as usual.’
But Grant was less sanguine as he scoured the newspapers daily. ‘Look! They’re introducing conscription for lads of twenty. It’s pandering to the generals and warmongers like Churchill. It’s the thin end of the wedge.’
Ava did not hide her irritation at her husband’s preoccupation with the threat of war. ‘Why don’t you stop talking about it?’ she snapped. ‘You’re frightening everyone with your doom and gloom.’
‘It’s more important than your silly films,’ Grant retaliated. ‘This is reality, Ava. We could be at war again with Germany after only twenty years. It seems like yesterday to some of us!’
‘Well, I’m going to enjoy life while I can,’ Ava huffed, and took herself off to see the handsome Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights.
Dan kept out of these arguments about the war, preferring to take the boys off to play football after he had finished his deliveries. He did not boast about having served in the army during the Great War as Millie would have expected, and would not talk about it to Albert and Robert when they demanded heroic stories.
‘Your Uncle Grant was the hero,’ he would answer. ‘You go and ask him what it was like.’
Millie found such conversations uncomfortable as they reminded her of her dead brother and the family’s humiliation over his execution. She grew alarmed when Dan talked of joining up himself. The hot summer was advancing and the rumours and scares of imminent war were mounting.
‘You’re not serious, are you?’ Millie asked. ‘It’s the younger men they’ll be wanting.’
Dan gave her a reproachful look. ‘I’m not forty yet. I’m as fit as any man ten years younger.’
‘Aye, I know you are,’ Millie agreed quickly, conscious of how sensitive he was about his age or athleticism. He had tried hard to curb his drinking over the past three years and only occasionally had he lapsed and gone ‘on a bender’, as Teresa accused. When this happened, Millie would be summoned by a neighbour or publican to go and retrieve him, and she and Grant would hurry to bring him home while Dan sang drunkenly or cursed them for interfering.
One time after they had frog-marched him to bed, trying to keep him quiet passing Teresa’s room, Dan collapsed on the bed quite maudlin.
‘I’m sorry, Millie, I’m sorry!’ he slurred. ‘I’ve been a disappointment to you.’
Millie sighed and pulled off his well-cobbled shoes, remembering when he had bought them in Newcastle over a decade before. ‘Quiet,’ she hushed him. ‘I knew who I was marrying.’ She thought back and wondered if that was true. She had been so much in love with Dan in those early years, quite besotted, that she had been blind to any shortcomings. She had chosen to ignore his fecklessness with money, his fondness for drink, and had believed that once married to her, Dan would be faithful.
‘No you didn’t,’ he protested, trying to sit up. He focused on her blearily from under his ruffled receding fair hair. He looked old, Millie thought in shock. This was how he would look in ten years’ time. Yet he was still handsome, still recognisably the man she had determined to have all those years ago. And without him she would not have had her precious children, she reminded herself. No matter what they had been through, she would still have done it all over again for them. No other man had ever attracted her like Dan or had such a hold on her heart. Besides, these recent years had been ones of contentment, even happiness with Dan at home. They had been a family again for the first time since their early married days, and she had watched the boys thrive under their father’s attention.
Albert, in particular, had blossomed, and was now a lively, affectionate eight-year-old with an enthusiasm for life that reminded her of how Dan had once been. Since his father had come home, the boy’s stammer had almost disappeared. Jack was more of a loner; quiet, determined and independent even at four and a half, insisting on doing everything for himself, from tying his boot laces to carrying his own garden implements as he followed Grant around. Only nine-year-old Robert was more of a handful than ever, easily distracted from school work and bored with inaction. He had boundless, destructive energy that only Dan seemed able to cope with, channelling it into running or football.
Above all Dan had given them the security and respectability of the Nixon name, which had helped her to be accepted into Ashborough society in a way that she never would have been as Millie Mercer, outcast from Craston and daughter of Joseph Moody’s mistress. And Dan had given her love, and a bit of glamour, and experience of the world beyond a pit town.
‘Go to sleep,’ she told him as she undressed for bed.
But Dan was agitated. ‘I’m not who you think I am, Millie,’ he continued, shaking his head, looking doleful. ‘It’s been on me mind that much recently–’
Millie gave him a wary look, not wanting to hear any more revelations about past affairs. ‘I don’t want any confessions,’ she told him brusquely. ‘What’s in the past can stay there.’
But he carried on as if he had not heard, his glazed blue eyes haunted. ‘I was no war hero,’ he mumbled. ‘I never got to the Front.’
Millie stared at him. ‘But I thought you were wounded out of action?’ she answered. ‘You always said . . .’
‘I know what I said.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘But I never got beyond the field hospital – went down with chicken pox, got it bad. I was sent straight back to England and kept in isolation. Never fired a shot. Then the war was over and I hung around London, couldn’t face going home and telling them what a useless soldier I’d been – not with two older brothers such heroes.’
Millie wanted to laugh at the sorry tale in her relief that it was nothing worse, but she saw how humiliated he felt and quickly reassured him.
‘You can’t blame yourself for catching chicken pox,’ she said, putting her arms about him. ‘You went prepared to fight, and that’s what counts.’
But Dan would not be consoled. ‘No it’s not,’ he moaned, brushing her off. ‘Even your brother did better than that. He fought out there for two years before he cracked up, didn’t he? He probably had that shellshock – they know about these things now. Should never have shot him at all; poor bastard. But me,’ he said harsh
ly, ‘I did nothing, just pretended I did. Me and my big mouth – always boasting about things. And I felt that guilty at the way I never stood up for you when it all came out about your brother being shot. I of all people should have spoken up for you, Millie!’
Millie saw the self-disgust on his face and tried to comfort him. ‘That was all years ago. I was hurt at the time, but you made it up to me by coming to London to find me. Besides, no one can blame a young man for doing a bit of boasting. It doesn’t matter to me.’
Dan gave her a strange look. Was it anger or guilt or relief? Millie wondered.
‘Why do you keep forgiving me, Millie?’ he demanded.
‘Because I love you,’ she answered simply.
Dan groaned and buried his face in her hair. ‘Do you really mean that?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Can you forgive me for the way I’ve let you down?’
‘Aye,’ Millie said quietly, ‘I think I could forgive you anything.’
She felt Dan clutch her tighter as if he would never let go. ‘Oh, Millie man, I don’t deserve you!’ he cried.
She soothed him with soft words and caresses, holding on to him until he fell asleep in her arms. Yet Millie remained awake a long time afterwards, pondering his words and wondering for how long his guilt had been gnawing away inside him. No wonder he was full of talk of joining up for this war, she thought anxiously. Although she considered it of no importance that he had never fought in the Great War, it troubled her that Dan had kept his past a secret. She lay fretting about war and what it would do to their lives, filled with foreboding for the future.
Chapter Twenty-Five
1939
Dan never referred to his late-night confession again and Millie wondered if he remembered having told her. His spirits picked up quickly when he was given a new contract with the Comrades for the coming season and play started towards the end of August. Millie was cheered to see him recover much of his old optimism and joy for life, and he spent all of his spare time training and coaching the younger men, his talk of enlisting forgotten.
There was a bravado about the town that late summer. The pit was working full-time once more and there was an air of prosperity about the shops that Millie had not experienced for years. Yet they were all issued with ration books and preparations had been made to take evacuated children. Millie had volunteered three of their rooms, despite Ava’s protests that they had enough ‘brats’ under the roof.
Grant, who had become withdrawn during the summer, came home one late-August day, beaming. ‘They’ve set me back on! It’s only part-time, but I’m working down the pit again.’ Millie went and gave him a hug of congratulation, seeing from the joy on his face how important this was to him. He was winning back some self-esteem at last. Everyone expected Ava to be pleased that he was at last working again, but she seemed more put out by his lowly position in the joinery shop than when he was out of work.
‘It’s hardly much to get excited about,’ she said dismissively, ‘a part-time job making pit props.’
‘So what are you going to do for the war effort?’ Millie demanded, seeing how dashed Grant was by her scorn.
‘It might never come to that,’ Ava pouted.
‘You can’t live in that dream world of yours forever,’ Grant said quietly, his shoulders hunching in that familiar defensive gesture. Millie watched him retreat outside with Jack to dig in the yard, which he had turned into a vegetable garden in preparation for the extra mouths they might have to feed come an evacuation. At least Grant had Jack’s companionship, Millie consoled herself, and bit back her anger at Ava.
The first Saturday in September, Dan’s team won three-nil at home, with Dan scoring the winning goal. The teams came back to the hotel for tea like in days gone by, an arrangement Millie had suggested and one that her boys were thrilled about. They milled around the players, listening to their banter and eager to be noticed, forgetting their mother’s instructions that they were supposed to be handing round sandwiches.
That night, Teresa told Millie and Dan to go out for the evening while she looked after the boys. They chose to go dancing at the Egyptian Ballroom like old times. Grant was persuaded to accompany Ava; Walter and Ella came too. For a short while Millie imagined that the threat of war was exaggerated and that their lives might continue as they were, unaffected by the world beyond. But there was an expectation about the place, hushed conversations, a sense of desperation in people’s determination to enjoy themselves. And there were men in uniform, young recruits about to leave for the south and strangers whom Millie did not recognise.
‘They’ll be from that camp over Drake’s farm,’ Ava speculated. ‘Go and find out, Grant.’ But her husband refused, and it was Dan who engaged one soldier in conversation and brought him over to their table. The tall, sandy-haired quartermaster was called Bain and came from the Borders.
‘You’ll have to patronise our hotel,’ Dan told him, with a wink at Millie. ‘Best baking in Ashborough. And Grant here plays the border pipes. You tell your mates.’
But the next day, as Millie was standing over the stove cooking the Sunday dinner, feeling hot and listless after the late night, the announcement they had all been dreading came over the wireless. Prime Minister Chamberlain had declared that the country was now at war with Germany. That evening they gathered around the wireless to hear King George broadcast to the nation. Millie felt a great weight bearing down on her spirits at the gravity of his sombre words: ‘We can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God.’ To her dismay, Dan went out and got drunk.
The following week their lives were thrown into upheaval with the arrival at Ashborough station of dozens of evacuated schoolchildren from Tyneside. Millie opened up the hotel dining room as one of the reception centres, and they were busy all day long providing drinks and cups of tea to the chattering, wide-eyed children and a handful of mothers. Billeted on them were Nancy Baker, a shipyard worker’s wife, her two boys and six-month-old baby, as well as two girls, Patience and Charity Armstrong, whose father was in the navy and whose mother was ill with pleurisy and unable to travel.
‘Auntie Rachael wouldn’t have us,’ the solemn Patience announced. ‘She thinks a bomb’s going to drop through her ceiling if she has us in her house.’
Jack looked up suspiciously at the kitchen ceiling after this pronouncement. ‘Will the Jerry know where to find you?’ he asked, quite troubled by the thought.
‘Aye,’ Robert teased, yanking Charity’s long, dark pigtails viciously, ‘the Luftwaffe’ll have their sights trained on this pair! Ack, ack, ack!’
Patience burst into tears, but small Charity swung round and slapped Robert on the mouth, causing his lip to bleed. Ava yelped at the girl and smacked her back for her insolence, but Millie quickly intervened.
‘Stop it all of you,’ she ordered. ‘There’s to be no fighting in this house. Robert, you deserved that for picking on the lass. You’ll go and sweep out the dining room as punishment.’
He scowled back, but grabbed the brush and stormed out, leaving the newcomers gawping. Nancy Baker smiled at Millie and rolled up her sleeves. ‘Here, let me help you with that washing-up,’ she said, adding, ‘Looks like you’re well in charge here.’
At that Ava stalked out of the room, flinging a look of disdain at them all. ‘This is my home, remember. It belonged to my father. Millie will never be anything more than a glorified housekeeper.’
Millie ignored her, no longer bothered by Ava’s insults. She dried her hands. ‘Patience, you come and help me roll out this pastry,’ she told the sniffing girl, putting an arm about her thin shoulders. The girl obliged, and Millie looked around to involve Charity, but the younger girl had already escaped outside to play catch with the boys. At six years old, Charity had something of Edith’s spirit, Millie thought with a pang, though she looked nothing like her. By now Edith would have been twelve and a half and on the verge of leaving childhood behind. Millie had no idea what her daughter would
have looked like, but it never stopped her trying to imagine – not for one single day. She forced herself to turn back to the fearful Patience and gave her a smile of encouragement.
‘You’ll soon settle in,’ she told the girl, ‘and when your mam’s better, she can come and stop here too.’
For the first time, she saw Patience’s anxious face light up with a sweet smile.
***
In all the flurry of activity surrounding the new arrivals, the sorting out of ration books, attending to crying children in the night and worrying over Teresa, who had taken to bed with a heavy cold that she blamed on the evacuees, Millie did not at first notice Dan’s morose behaviour. But it soon became obvious that something was wrong. The football had come to an abrupt end, the season being abandoned with the outbreak of war and contracts cancelled. Apart from early-morning deliveries for Davidson’s, Dan drifted around the hotel like a lost soul, or sat around and smoked with no interest in doing anything.
Millie grew quickly impatient. ‘You could at least make yourself useful around the place – there’s that much to do.’
‘Not for me there isn’t!’ Dan snapped back.
‘What is the matter with you?’ Millie cried. ‘Is this all because the League’s disbanded?’ She sighed. ‘There’ll be charity matches – raising money for the war effort. It’s not the end of the world.’
‘It’s the end of me career, woman!’ he shouted.
Millie gaped at him. ‘But that’s been over for the past three years or more. You haven’t played. . .’ He gave her such a bleak look that she stopped. Suddenly realisation dawned. Dan had never thought of his footballing days as over. All this time, while Millie had thought her husband had come to terms with a routine family life at the hotel, he had secretly being pursuing his dreams, hankering after a return to professional football.
‘The Comrades were just till I got me total fitness back,’ Dan said defensively, ‘but they were better than nothing.’ He spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. ‘Now it’s all finished. No one knows how long the war’ll last, but chances are I’ll be too old to play professional again when it’s over.’ His expression was desolate. ‘It was me life, Millie,’ he admitted. ‘I need the other lads, the crowds; that surge inside that makes you want to run till your lungs burst. Banging that ball in the back of the net – there’s nothing sweeter.’ He looked panic-stricken. ‘What do I do now, Millie?’
THE TYNESIDE SAGAS: Box set of three dramatic and emotional stories: A Handful of Stars, Chasing the Dream and For Love & Glory Page 75