A Family Recipe

by Veronica Henry

  ‘I’m not being silly.’

  ‘You know what I’m on about? I’m on about you being up the duff.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  Jilly bent over the sink and washed her face and rinsed out her mouth.

  ‘But you can’t be pregnant. I mean, you’ve never—’

  Jilly stood up.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  She could see all the fillings in Ivy’s teeth as her mouth dropped open.

  ‘What? When?’ She was outraged. She put her hands on her hips.

  ‘The night of the blitz. That first night Bath was bombed. I went to meet someone.’

  This wasn’t the story she’d wanted to tell Ivy about her first time. This version of the story had such a terrible ending. She’d always imagined regaling her friend with a very different tale, and them laughing about it.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I met him at that dance we went to. The night before.’

  ‘But you buggered off. Like you always do. Left me dancing with that bloke with the huge Adam’s apple and the wandering hands.’ Ivy shuddered as she remembered. ‘He was a good dancer but he wanted more than he was getting.’ She frowned. ‘You went home. I remember looking for you when I’d got rid of him.’

  ‘No. I didn’t.’ Jilly sat down at the table, feeling as if she couldn’t hold herself up any longer. ‘I was going to go home. But I met this boy outside. We got talking. We just … clicked. Straight away. We made each other laugh. And he was so handsome.’

  ‘Who was he? What was his name? Why didn’t I see him?’

  ‘He was at the dance with his friend. They were going off to train as fighter pilots. It was their last weekend of freedom. He wasn’t really bothered about the dance. He wanted to go home too, like me. But we went for a walk together.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘We only talked the first night.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, we kissed a bit. And Ivy – it was …’ Jilly couldn’t find the right word. She shook her head as she searched. ‘It was heaven,’ she managed finally, but the word was inadequate.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ Ivy put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide with astonishment.

  ‘Then we arranged to meet up the next night. That’s why I wasn’t at home when the raid started. I was meeting him in Hedgemead Park. In the bandstand.’

  ‘The bandstand?’

  Jilly nodded.

  ‘And you did it? You actually did it? In the bandstand?’

  Jilly felt slightly hysterical, both at the memory and the consequences.

  ‘I know it was madness, but he was leaving the next day and it was our only chance. We might never have seen each other again. We … had to.’

  ‘And you’ve kept that quiet from me all this time?’

  The initial flush of excitement at the memory died away as Jilly remembered what came afterwards. She looked down, crestfallen. She didn’t want to remember the planes, the bombs, her running away.

  ‘I want to forget it. I want to pretend it never happened.’

  Ivy looked at her stomach. ‘Well, you’re not going to be able to do that now.’ She reached forward and prodded Jilly’s chest.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Are they sore? Do they feel bigger than usual?’

  Jilly looked down at her bosoms. ‘Well, now you come to mention it. Yes.’

  Ivy sat back in her seat and folded her arms. ‘After everything you’ve heard me say. Did you never listen? Didn’t you use anything?’

  ‘We didn’t think.’

  ‘Jilly – you’re a doctor’s daughter!’

  ‘I know.’ Jilly was pink with embarrassment.

  Ivy looked totally shocked.

  ‘If that was going to happen to anyone I’d have thought it would be me. What are you going to do?’

  Jilly put her hand on her stomach. ‘I’ve got no idea.’

  Gradually the reality was sinking in. She and Harry had been swept away, and had taken a huge risk. Ivy pressed her lips together. Eventually she spoke and her voice was curt. Jilly wasn’t sure if it was because she was cross to have had the secret kept from her or because she disapproved.

  ‘Well, I know a woman. We’d have to get the bus to Bristol. And you won’t be good for much for a couple of days. It won’t be nice. And it will cost money.’

  Jilly looked horrified. ‘No. I can’t do that.’

  ‘But you can’t have it. You’re on your own. No mum and dad. No fella.’

  ‘That is absolutely definitely not the answer. No. This is a baby. It’s not the baby’s fault.’

  ‘It’s not a ruddy baby. Not yet. You can’t think like that.’

  ‘It is to me.’ Jilly pulled her cardigan tightly round herself as if to protect the child inside her.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Ivy. ‘It takes a lot to shock me, but I am. I’m shocked.’ She looked at Jilly in wonder, as if she was a peculiar museum exhibit.

  ‘Sometimes I think it was a dream. Sometimes I wish it was a dream, because then everything that happened afterwards wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘There’s not much I can do. Just … wait, I suppose.’ Jilly was determined not to panic, although her mouth felt rather dry.

  ‘You have to tell him.’ Ivy looked very decisive. ‘Whoever this bloke is. Harry. It’s his duty to look after it. And you. You have to tell him.’

  ‘How? I just ran off when the bombs started and I haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘Harry. Harry Swann.’

  ‘Harry and Jilly. It’s a match made in heaven,’ mused Ivy. ‘And he was going off to fly?’

  ‘Yes. He’d joined the RAF. He was going to Devon. Paignton.’

  ‘Well, there you go. That’s all we need. You can write to him.’

  ‘Do you really think I should?’

  ‘Yes. I do. It takes two, Jilly.’

  ‘I know …’ For a moment, Jilly went a bit dreamy, remembering.

  Ivy leaned forward.

  ‘Was it worth it?’ she asked with a wicked smile.

  ‘Is that how it’s supposed to feel?’ asked Jilly. ‘As if someone’s let off fireworks inside you?’

  Ivy threw back her head and laughed.

  ‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘He did do his job properly then. Yes, my darling girl. That’s what it’s supposed to feel like. That’s what all the fuss is about. But they don’t all make you feel like that. They have to be special. Or very attentive. Some of them make you feel like a lump of dead meat. But some of them …’ Her eyes went misty. ‘Some of them make you feel like nothing on earth. Those are the ones you shouldn’t let go.’

  ‘But I did.’ Jilly remembered sliding out of his grasp.

  ‘We’ll find him.’ Ivy sat up straight. ‘Come on. Get a piece of notepaper and let’s compose a letter.’

  Jilly thought about it. The idea of seeing Harry again made her feel … well, something, at least. She wasn’t sure what, but it was better than the dead emptiness she had been carrying around with her. For some reason, she wasn’t alarmed by the thought of having a baby. There was no one to judge her, after all. No one to chastise her. Although she didn’t think her parents would have chastised her if they’d found out. They might have been upset that she had scuppered her plans for the future, but they would have supported her.

  She sighed. There might be no one to judge her, but there was no one to look after her either. Maybe that could change.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather write it on my own,’ she said to Ivy. She needed to get her thoughts straight. This was the most private and most delicate letter she had ever had to write. She didn’t want Ivy, well-meaning though she was, breathing down her neck and telling her what to put.

  She crept into the drawing room and sat down at her mother’s writing desk. They rarely sat in here, any of them. They all preferred the warmth and cosiness of the kitchen. Th
ere was nothing wrong with the drawing room, but it did feel stiff and formal in comparison, with its brocade sofas and heavy oil paintings. It was quiet, though, and that was all that mattered at the moment. She pulled open a drawer and found a sheet of blue notepaper, then unscrewed the lid of her fountain pen.

  She began to write:

  Dear Harry

  I hope this finds you well and you are enjoying learning to fly. It must be awfully exciting. I hope the exams aren’t too hard.

  He’d mentioned being worried that he wouldn’t keep up with the studying, even though he had done well at school.

  She chewed the end of her pen. What on earth should she say next?

  I expect you’re surprised to hear from me. We never got a chance to say goodbye properly. The Germans took good care of that. You must know everything that happened in Bath that night, and the night after. Very sadly, I got home to find both my parents had been killed. It has been very hard but there are people who have suffered worse than I have.

  At that point she had to break off for a moment from writing as there was every danger her tears might fall onto the page and smudge the ink. She waited for a few seconds to compose herself, then carried on.

  But that night was not just about death and bad news. And that is why I am writing: I am expecting a baby. It was probably as much of a shock to me as it will be to you. I am not asking for anything from you – I have been left quite well off and have a large house, so the baby will always be safe and well looked after and will want for nothing. But I think we felt something, that night we met. Something that went quite deep – at least it did for me – so I felt you should know.

  I will look after the baby, whatever happens. But if you would like to be involved, please do write to me. My address is at the top.

  Keep safe in the sky, Harry, and I hope perhaps to hear from you. What a funny world it is – how one moment can change everything. But I am grateful for my moment with you.

  Yours truly,

  Jilly (Wilson)

  She didn’t put a kiss. It seemed too frivolous for such a serious letter.

  She read it back and thought she had hit just the right tone. She folded the notepaper in half, found a matching envelope in a pigeonhole and slid the letter inside.

  She held it in her hand, allowing all the fantasies that she had been suppressing about Harry to be set free. Before now, she had closed her mind whenever he popped into her head, not allowing him to have any significance; never giving herself any hope. Now, she gave her imagination free rein. She imagined a joyful letter winging its way back and landing on the doormat. Harry getting leave and jumping on a train to come and see her or, better still, arriving in a sports car. He would run up the garden path and knock on the front door, and when she answered he would fold her in his arms and she would have that glorious swirling feeling inside once more.

  She pictured coming home from the hospital with a dear little baby in her arms, wrapped in the white silk shawl with the fringing that she knew was in one of the drawers in the chest on the landing outside her parents’ bedroom. She and Harry leaning over a cot, holding hands, watching their baby sleep. Its hair would be a deep chestnut – not ginger.

  She knew even as she fantasised that she was being foolish. That life was never the same as it was in your dreams. That Harry probably had another girlfriend by now – or worse, had already had one that he hadn’t mentioned. That her letter was the last thing he wanted arriving at his barracks. That he would feel he had no choice but to do his duty but would be sulky and resentful and ignore the baby – and her. That the baby would be ugly and red-faced with ginger hair and wouldn’t stop crying …

  She shook herself out of her daydream. She couldn’t control what was going to happen. The only way she could influence the future was by posting the letter, to the flying school at Paignton. She licked the gum along the flap of the envelope and stuck it down, before Ivy came in and demanded to read it. She turned it over and wrote his name on the front then found a stamp in her mother’s little wooden box. She put it in the corner as straight as she could.

  Before she could change her mind she took the letter and went outside, walking down the road to the postbox at the top of Lansdown Hill. Mr Archer came out of his house as she walked past.

  ‘How are you doing, Jilly, love?’ He tried to come across as solicitous, but Jilly knew he was just being nosy.

  ‘Very well, thank you, Mr Archer.’

  She walked on and she smothered a tiny smile as she thought of what she could have said: ‘If you must know, I’m expecting a baby. It was conceived in the bandstand at Hedgemead Park.’

  She laughed out loud at the thought of the expression on Mr Archer’s face as she pushed the letter into the postbox.

  The next few days oozed by as slowly as treacle. Jilly found the mornings sheer purgatory and couldn’t face so much as a cup of tea until midday, so she tended to stay in bed listening to Kitchen Front on the wireless. Ivy was more excited than she was and rushed out to intercept the postman before she left for work every morning. She was very attentive, and hovered over Jilly, as anxious as if it was her own baby Jilly was incubating. Jilly found her attention quite claustrophobic. She wanted to be left alone. There was a lot of thinking to be done as she lay in her bed: about her parents, about the baby. She was putting the past behind her and thinking about what was to come. It was hard to make plans and have dreams when there was a war on, but maybe one day that would end and they could all come out from underneath the dark cloud and the sun would shine once more.

  Two weeks went by before she finally saw a letter on the doormat. It had arrived in the second post: a blue envelope like the one she had sent to Harry.

  Her mouth was dry. This was the letter that would decide her future. She was about to find out whether she was going to face her future alone or with the father of her baby.

  Whether she was going to see him again.

  She knelt down to pick it up – it was still early days but she found it difficult to bend over already as it made her dizzy. She turned it over and saw her own writing on the front, a line through the address she had written so carefully, and three words written in thick red pen: RETURN TO SENDER.

  She could see the envelope had been opened and taped up again. The contents must have been read, then the letter put back inside. The message was loud and clear.

  He didn’t want her. He wasn’t interested.

  She felt her heart float downwards, dropping like a stone into her boots. Her disappointment was crushing, and it was only now she realised how much she had believed that the power of that night would work its magic.

  You silly girl, she thought. There’s no such thing as fairy tales.

  She went into the kitchen, opened the door of the Aga and dropped the letter into the fire. She knew the chances of her fantasy becoming reality had been slim. But she had hoped he would remember the fiery brightness of what had happened between them, the intensity, the wonder …

  Her hope went up the flue as the pages of her letter burned.

  She was still sitting at the kitchen table when Ivy came home from work. She smelled of cheap perfume and hairspray and it made Jilly want to be sick.

  ‘What are you doing sitting here all alone in the gloom?’

  Jilly shut her eyes and held her breath, not wanting to make an outburst. She replied in a monotone.

  ‘Return to Sender.’

  Ivy understood immediately.

  ‘Bastard,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, the utter bleeding bastard. Oh, my lovely girl.’

  Jilly shrugged. ‘You can’t blame him. He’s out there learning how to fly; he’s going to go and fight for his country, high up there in the sky. He’s got enough of a job on his hands. He doesn’t need another responsibility. And I suppose he thinks he has a high chance of dying …’

  ‘He’s a chicken.’

  ‘No. I understand. He doesn’t want a life sentence in return for five minutes of …’ />
  Of what? Fun? Pleasure? Ecstasy?

  She wasn’t going to think about it. She couldn’t find the right word. For her, it had been momentous. But maybe it had meant nothing to him. Maybe it was like that for him every time and not something to get excited about. Maybe it was just like eating a piece of chocolate – delicious but unimportant. Something sweet that was readily available if you knew where to look for it.

  She sighed.

  ‘I don’t know what to do now. Maybe your woman in Bristol is the only answer.’

  Ivy looked appalled, her eyes widening in horror at Jilly’s suggestion.

  ‘No.’ She was vehement. ‘If it was anyone else in the world, I’d have you on the number eighteen bus tomorrow afternoon. But it doesn’t seem right. I’ve been thinking about it. You’re just not that sort of person. Are you?’

  Jilly shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure now. I suppose I had got my hopes up. Had visions of a happy family. It might be the easiest thing.’

  ‘No. You’d definitely regret it.’ Ivy was definite. ‘This baby’s meant to be here. I think it’s been sent to you. To make up for what you’ve lost.’

  Despite herself, Jilly began to laugh. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course it hasn’t. It was a mistake—’

  ‘No! Think about it. That baby is part of your mum and dad. A reminder of them. And it’s not as if you’re some useless baggage like Helena. You’re fantastic with her children. You’re a natural. You’ll take the baby in your stride. You won’t bat an eyelid. And there’s always people around who’ll help you. Me for a start.’

  Jilly smoothed her hand over her jumper. She looked around the kitchen, trying to picture her own baby sitting in a high chair, dozing in a pram outside the back door, taking its first steps across the quarry tiles. It was a little bit daunting, of course, as any new idea is, but it wasn’t impossible to imagine.

  She certainly couldn’t imagine the alternative. A bus ride to Bristol, a stranger, a dark room, pain, blood, guilt, tears.

  ‘I’ll always give you a hand,’ said Ivy. ‘Auntie Ivy.’ She grinned and gave a wicked chuckle. ‘I’ll teach them all the tricks they need to know to get on in life.’

  Jilly nodded. ‘You’re right. I know you’re right. I’m just disappointed.’