by Joan Moules
They bought another hot chocolate and spun it out, then they walked very slowly towards the bus-stop. Johnny wanted to take Annie right home, but she insisted that he simply waited with her until the bus came each time.
‘Where is the sense in you coming all that way and then having to come back again, probably walk back too if we were very late? The bus stops almost outside our place anyway, so I have hardly any distance to travel.’
‘I always time it, Annie,’ he said. ‘Those eerie doodlebugs are still coming over. And the V2s. It’s not over yet.’
‘It’s like your mum says, Johnny, “If it’s got your name on you’ll cop it, and if it hasn’t you’ll be one of the miraculous escapes we read about”.’
The bus hove in to sight, lumbering along from the gloom of the night. ‘I love you, Annie,’ he said as he gave her a quick kiss before she boarded.
Annie didn’t tell her parents about Ron because she had never told them about Johnny. She thought her mother was much too naïve to believe that she had stopped seeing him when she was told to. But if she believed it then it served her purpose for the myth to continue. Annie suspected that her mother, while wanting to do her duty as a parent, would rather have had no children. They had never been close because they had never been together. From the age of seven Annie had been away at school, even sometimes during the holidays if her parents had been in America visiting her mother’s sister.
That argument didn’t always hold good with her because she knew girls at boarding-school who were close to their parents. It depends on the reason they send you, she thought. Our children, Johnny’s and mine, will not be sent away to school until they are old enough to cope with the separation. A good education yes, but a home too. Like Johnny’s home, but wealthier. Or was she being a snob again?
Four and a half weeks later, in early March, news of Ron’s safety arrived. The family joy was tempered with sorrow that he was minus a leg.
‘But that’s nothing,’ Mrs Bookman was quick to point out, ‘in return for his life.’
Doris, Jim’s wife who had come round that evening to hear about it said, ‘I hope he thinks so.’
‘They’ll fit him with a wooden one eventually, and there won’t be much he’ll miss out on, Doris. Look at Douglas Bader – both his legs gone yet he leads the same sort of life as if he still had them.’
‘Maybe he’s the exception.’
‘Aw, don’t be a Jeremiah, Doris. Ron’s alive and that’s all that matters. To him as well as us. I’m sure of it.’
Annie was quiet. She could understand Doris’s point of view, but she knew also that if it was Johnny they would cope. And Ron hadn’t left a regular girlfriend behind as far as she knew, so any girl who took him on would know the score right from the beginning.
Ron was flown home later in the month and Annie went with Johnny and his parents to the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot to see him.
‘Lost me tag in the bloody battle, and I’m not swearing. That’s what it was,’ he told them. ‘That’s why they said I was missing. They didn’t know who I was ’til I was patched up a bit an’ in a fit state to talk to ’em. Lost me bloody leg, not me memory or me marbles, I said to the doc and he laughed. He was a blooming hero, that man. Worked night and day ’e did.’
Ron was cheerful and looking forward to coming home.
‘Back in Blighty, that’s all we’ve wanted these last years, most of us. And there’s many worse off than me,’ he told them. ‘I felt bitter at first, but when you look around these places you see things different like. See, about the only thing I’m not going to be able to manage is a bike, and that won’t worry me too much. I’d rather have a car anyway when I’ve got the ready. They said I would be able to drive a specially adapted car and I’d get help.’
‘Hope they keep their word this time,’ Charlie muttered in the background, ‘I remember the last war and the promises.’
Annie and Ron had not met before and as they were leaving Ron said, ‘Can I kiss your girlfriend, Johnny? You beat me to it young’un – now if I’d seen her first ’ They all laughed as Annie leaned over the bed and kissed him.
It was a relieved family who boarded the train to take them back to London that day.
‘He’s got the right spirit,’ Maggie Bookman said quietly. ‘It mightn’t be as easy as he says now, but he’ll get by. Some of those poor blighters in there made yer heart bleed. At least our Ron’s still got one good leg and both his ’ands and ’arms.’
Charlie took her hand in his. ‘You’re a happy woman now you’ve seen him, aren’t you, duck?’
‘’Course I am. And don’t tell me you weren’t worried by how he’d be too, Charlie Bookman,’cos I wouldn’t believe you.’
Johnny nudged Annie and they grinned at each other as the train steamed its way back to the capital.
The war in Europe was drawing to a close, the allies advancing steadily. Jim wrote home to say that even the Germans were hanging out welcome flags.
‘You know, Annie,’ Johnny said to her one evening, ‘there’s a bit of me that’s disappointed. I know that’s an awful thing to say, but I’d have liked to do my bit, and now that it’s all going to be over by the summer I shan’t get a chance.’
‘Johnny Bookman, it’s more than awful, it’s a wicked, wicked thing to say or even think. Your mum was right the other week when she said it’s the men who cause the wars. Look at you, spoiling for a fight, wanting to have a go. Surely you don’t want to risk getting your legs shot off too?’
Johnny had seldom seen her so passionately angry. ‘You don’t understand, Annie. I suppose women look at these things differently. I’d hate leaving you and I reckon I’d be scared when it came to actual fighting, but I’d be there, a part of it.’
‘Rubbish. War’s not like a fisticuffs in the school playground, Johnny.’
‘Anyway it won’t happen, so that’s that. It will all be over before my time comes, but I still feel a bit cheated.’
‘Well, your mum and I feel relieved.’
Things were working reasonably well at the Evesham home.
Annie insisted on paying her mother a small amount each week now that she was living back with them. She left fairly early in the morning to get to work in Clerkenwell and always made sure to say whether she would be in for dinner in the evening or not. Her father asked her about her work and she told him the truth: that she was really a general dogsbody in the office at present.
‘Even with promotion I’m only second from the lowliest one there, but I don’t mind that, I’m learning a lot about the book trade, and after the war, when there’s more paper about, we shall take off, I’m sure. Might even write a book myself one day, you never know.’
Her mother maintained a hurt silence about it all and Annie never volunteered extra information in case it rebounded on her. She knew how disappointed her mother was that she had rejected plans for finishing-school and what she called ‘a good marriage.’
When they decided the time was right now for them to make that visit to America, which they had been planning for so long, it was her mother who said, ‘Could you go and live with Rosanna for six months while we’re away, Anita? I think that is the best plan. You’re there more often than at home anyway,’ she added.
‘Sure. When are you wanting to go?’
‘End of the month. We shall return in October, so you can have Christmas at home.’
‘I’ll pop in from time to time and check on the place,’ Annie said. ‘You go and enjoy yourselves.’
‘There will be no need to check.’ Mrs Evesham looked at her daughter. ‘We shall let the house while we’re gone. That has been taken care of.’
Annie, who had had visions of living at home and saving the money she would have paid in rent was stunned.
‘Letting it? Why? I mean I could just have wanted to stay on, you know.’
‘I thought you couldn’t wait to move in with Rosanna, and this arrangement suits us, Anita.
Mr and Mrs Peckham need a base for six months. They come highly recommended. Even so, I shall put some of the expensive breakables away, but the rest of the furniture and fittings will stay as they are. We would like to meet Rosanna and her parents before we go, naturally.’
‘Oh. Yes, of course. I’ll arrange something,’ Annie said, wondering how she was going to get out of this one.
‘You tell one lie, Johnny,’ she said to him that evening, ‘and it rebounds a hundred times. What do I say now? I don’t want to get in any deeper.’
‘You’ll have to live somewhere, Annie. Have you any relatives or friends in London? Wish our house was bigger. I know you didn’t want to come to us, and now with Ron coming home it wouldn’t be possible, but it would be good if you were living near.’
‘That’s an idea, Johnny. If I could find a place close to you and your family….’
‘I’ll keep my ear to the ground,’ said Johnny. ‘Sure to be something, but what you tell your parents I really don’t know.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to tell them another lie. Say that Rosanna is leaving. Oh heck.’
When Mrs Bookman learned of the dilemma, without the deceit of the invented Rosanna, of course, simply that Annie needed lodgings for six months while her parents were away, she said calmly, ‘Don’t rush it. You can stay here while you’re looking, dear. Ron won’t be home for some time yet and if Johnny doesn’t mind sleeping downstairs on the bedchair, you can have his room.’
Annie demurred. Nothing would make her say that her parents, if they came to see, would not entertain her living in the cosy little house that she had come to love. If only I were a few years older I could go my own way, she thought, but at present the law could probably make me conform.
She began a search for suitable accommodation immediately, looking, as Johnny had suggested, in his area. After all she was travelling a good distance to work now, which defeated her original argument anyway.
CHAPTER 14
Annie was at home the evening her father had a heart attack. It was a rare occasion, for normally she saw Johnny every night, either at his house or in town. But that evening she was working late and Johnny was going to the hospital to see his brother. ‘I won’t come round afterwards,’ she said, ‘I’ll have a night indoors, wash my hair and everything, it will save doing it on Sunday morning.’
She had come out of the bathroom, the towel round her head Carmen Miranda fashion, when she heard this odd sort of strangled cry. Almost like a cat caught in something, but they had no pets. She stood at the top of the stairs and listened. There it was again. Puzzled she went downstairs to investigate, and found her father rolling in pain on the floor.
‘Dad. Oh no.’ She ran to him and he gasped, ‘Doctor. Fetch….’
She ran into the hall and phoned 999, then rushed back to him. ‘It’s all right, there’s an ambulance on the way. Is it easier?’
He actually tried to smile at her, but his face twisted into a grimace and although the sweat was running in rivulets down his cheeks he felt icy-cold.
Mrs Evesham was at a meeting, and she came in as the ambulance arrived. Only one of them was allowed to go with him, so Annie reluctantly stayed behind.
‘Ring me from the hospital,’ she pleaded with her mother, ‘as soon as he’s in bed, and tell me how he manages the journey, how he is.’
She went in and closed the heavy front door. It was nearly an hour later when Mrs Evesham telephoned. ‘Your father has had a heart attack, Anita. I’m staying here the night.’
‘Will he – is he – going to be all right?’ There was silence for a few moments, then Mrs Evesham’s voice again, thick with tears. ‘We don’t know, but if he can get through the night there’s a chance.’ And for the first time in her life Annie heard her mother crying.
The phone went dead while she was trying to think of something comforting to say. Afterwards she longed for Johnny, but because the Bookmans hadn’t a telephone she couldn’t contact him without being out of the house for hours, and she was afraid to do that, just in case.…
She phoned the hospital early the following morning and was told that her father had had a comfortable night. That was all. Just before she left the house the telephone rang and this time it was her mother, who said she was coming home for a few hours.
‘I’m just off to work, Mummy, but I’ll be home this evening. You – you can reach me at the office if – if you want me,’ she added tremulously. ‘I’ll leave the number on the pad.’
It was an hour before her normal time, but she wanted to break her journey and see Johnny before going to work.
‘I’ll meet you and come to the hospital with you this evening,’ he said when she told him the news.
If Mrs Evesham was surprised to see him, indeed if she even recognized him as the boy with her daughter at Buckingham Palace two years before, she gave no sign. Seemingly completely composed again now, she outlined the hospital instructions to her daughter.
Johnny went to the hospital with them but only immediate family were allowed in. He was in the waiting-room downstairs when Annie returned. ‘I think he’s going to be all right, Johnny. He is very ill, they said, but he looks better. It really frightened me how he looked the night it happened.’
‘Well, we can spend the evening here and you can pop in and see him again.’
‘No, Sister said no excitement and only one person there. Mummy is staying for a while then she’ll go on home. I said we were going out but that I wouldn’t be late in.’
‘And she didn’t try to stop you?’
‘No. I think she’s still in shock, Johnny. You know it’s – it’s really shaken her up.’ They left the hospital hand in hand.
The American visit plans had to be cancelled, and also the renting of the house.
‘Of course there is no need for you to go to Rosanna’s now, Anita,’ Mrs Evesham said later in the week.
‘No, of course not, Mummy.’ Johnny had not been back to the house with Annie, and she told him her mother hadn’t mentioned him at all.
‘Well, we’ll see what happens,’ he said, ‘but it would be good if she accepted that we’re courting, because whatever her attitude, it won’t make any difference to us, Annie. You’re for me, there’ll never be another.’
When Annie missed a period she put it down to shock over her father’s heart attack. A few days later she realized that her breasts felt exceptionally tender. Did that happen when you were pregnant? She didn’t know, but the missed period now began to bother her. Surely she couldn’t be pregnant? It must be the shock of her father’s illness. It had affected her more deeply than she would have expected a few months ago.
When Johnny said one evening, ‘Hey, dreamer, where are you? I’ve spoken to you three times without a flicker of response,’ she flared back at him.
‘All right, all right, keep your hair on. It wasn’t important really, but it’s nice to get an answer sometimes.’ He reached out and smoothed her hair. ‘I love you, Annie.’ Annie burst into tears.
She sobbed on his shoulder for some time, yet she couldn’t tell him what was wrong. Not until she was sure. And somewhere inside her she knew it couldn’t be true – it hadn’t happened before, and at first she had been afraid it might, so why now? No, it was coincidence. Worry and shock did halt periods she knew, she had read it somewhere and that must be what was happening. By next month she would be back on an even keel with everything.
‘Sorry, Johnny.’ She lifted her head. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped her eyes.
‘That’s OK. I didn’t mean to make you cry, darling. You’re still pretty worried about your old man, aren’t you? But he is going on all right, you know. The hospital would tell your mother otherwise.’
Ron was told he would be discharged within a couple of weeks, and the last letter they had received from Jim was optimistic and full of plans for when the war was over.
‘You know, Annie,’ Johnny said one evening over a sn
ack meal before they went to the pictures, ‘I’ve been thinking about your idea of a shop instead of a barrow. I don’t want to be poor all me life. And Ron’ll have to have something to give him a start – Dad’s business won’t support us all. Mum’s earning good wages now in the factory, but she’ll be out of a job when the war’s over, and when you and I get married we’ll need to be on our own anyway. So what do you think about me trying to get a job in a shop as a start, and looking around for a place to rent?’
‘Sounds fine, Johnny. What sort of place? I mean, what would we sell?’
‘Fruit and veg, I suppose. It’s the only thing I know how to sell. I was helping me dad with that when I was a nipper. Buying too, from the market. See, I wouldn’t know how much with anything else than coster stuff.’
‘It sounds OK to me, Johnny. I’ll help too, later, after we’re married, but until we are I can keep on with my job. It’s not a bad wage now. Unless of course I have to go when the men come back from the war. I don’t know how I stand with my firm.’
She was still worried as to whether she was pregnant, and wished she really did have a friend called Rosanna in whom she could confide. In books and articles she had read the mother-to-be always suffered from morning sickness, and Annie clung to the hope that it was a false alarm triggered by the trauma of her father’s illness, because she definitely hadn’t been or even felt the slightest bit sick in the mornings or any other time.
Her next period was almost due, and she banked all her hopes now on that.
CHAPTER 15
Johnny felt buoyant. Victory in Europe was imminent, and within a short while surely victory in Japan too. Ron was home and managing well on his crutches. He was looking forward to having the wooden leg fitted. ‘Be as good as new then,’ he boasted. He had turned the coster-barrow idea down quickly.
‘I want to get into industry,’ he said. ‘Cars, that’ll be the thing of the future. In ten years’ time everyone who wants one will have a car and I aim to be in on this potential money maker.’ He and his dad had several friendly arguments about it and Ron was adamant. ‘It’s going to be different from what it was like after the last war,’ he said. ‘We’re all better educated, and after six years fighting we know what we want for our country. A Labour government for a start, a government for the working people.’