‘Did you ever find your girl, Charlie?’ she asked him suddenly, as they were preparing for the evening’s session in an out-of-town nightclub.
‘What girl is that?’
‘Come on, you can’t fool me. I know how frantically you tried to find the girl you were dancing with the night the Palais burned down.’
‘Oh, that girl,’ Charlie said casually, and then shrugged. ‘Well, I knew she survived because I saw her photo in the newspaper account of the fire.’
‘Didn’t it give her address?’
‘No, just her name, and that she and her friend were factory girls. Anyway, we only had a couple of dances. I was hardly going to scour the whole of London’s factories to find a girl called Gracie Brown, was I?’
‘Of course not.’ Joyce managed to keep a straight face. ‘Even though you haven’t forgotten a single thing that was in the paper about her, have you? What was her friend’s name, by the way?’
‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ he said without interest, and then laughed at her I-told-you-so expression. ‘Oh, all right, perhaps I did take a shine to her, but I’m damned sure she’ll have forgotten me long ago.’
He hadn’t forgotten her though. He could still picture the vibrant colour of her hair, with those endearingly unruly curls framing her face, and her dancing blue eyes. She had a classy look, different from most factory girls, but that was the snob in him, which he quickly squashed. Such things were no longer as important as they had been before the war to end all wars.
He felt himself stir at the memory of holding her in his arms as they danced, and breathing in the scent of her skin. To Charlie, she had the looks of an angel, and was so light on her feet and so in tune with the rhythm of the music as their bodies swayed together that it was as though this was meant to be.
He knew he was a romantic fool, but he’d fallen for her from the word go, and he’d tried hard to track down Gracie Brown, but short of putting an ad in the newspaper or putting a private detective on her trail, he didn’t know what else to do. Why would she even remember him? The band had been due to go on the road for some lucrative engagements around the country, and he couldn’t let them down by leaving them or acting like a lovesick Romeo, so the chance was gone.
* * *
Once Gracie had bumped into the landlord, she couldn’t seem to avoid him. Her mother had always paid the rent, since then she would be sure the money wasn’t frittered away down the boozer. But Percy Hill now seemed to make a point of calling when Gracie was at home, just as if he watched her comings and goings, she thought uneasily. She thought it was just her imagination, until the next-door neighbour commented otherwise.
Mrs Jennings popped in regularly, often bringing her a dish of potato soup to be warmed up, or a bit of jelly to whet Queenie’s appetite. She was as round as she was tall, but she had a good heart, was known to speak her mind, and she had always had a soft spot for Gracie.
‘You mind that old devil Percy Hill, Gracie love,’ she said, out of the blue. ‘He’ll take advantage of you if he can, so don’t go giving him the chance.’
Gracie began to smile. ‘You’re having me on, Mrs Jennings. Why would he give me a second glance? He’s fifty if he’s a day.’
The woman snorted. ‘As if that makes any difference to the likes of him. I’m damned sure he’d like to get his hands on a pretty young thing like you. I seen his great gloating face coming out of your house when he collected the rent the other day. Like a pig in shit, if you’ll pardon the expression.’
‘Language, Lizzie,’ Queenie murmured from her bed by the window.
‘I reckon your Gracie’s heard worse than that since she’s been living in London, Queenie, and I ain’t apologizing for it. Don’t let that old lecher come near you if you can help it, Gracie. Stuff the rent book under his nose and let him scribble his name on it at the front door when you’ve handed him the money, then he’ll have no excuse to come inside.’
She looked so comical with her arms folded above the great expanse of her belly inside the flowered overall that Gracie had a job not to laugh out loud.
‘I’ll remember,’ she said in a stifled voice. ‘You keep Mum company now while I make us all a cup of tea.’
She fled to the scullery, wishing that Dolly was here to share this moment with her. Dolly would have had something to say to Lizzie Jennings about the likelihood of anyone else with a bit of sense in their heads, having anything to do with Percy pigging Hill!
Dolly had been born in London, and thought everybody who lived anywhere outside it had hayseeds growing out of their mouths. And there was none so quaint as the determined, volatile figure of Lizzie Jennings—or the rotund Percy Hill, though there were other words Gracie could have applied to him.
Without warning, she felt a small shiver, while still certain that Mrs Jennings was being melodramatic as usual. She shouldn’t alarm her mother by making her listen to such tales though, she thought with sudden annoyance. The last thing her mum needed was the worry that after she went to meet her Maker her daughter was going to be accosted by their landlord.
By the time the kettle had screamed out that it was boiling and she had taken three cups of tea to the front room she could see her mum was getting tired. Lizzie Jennings was a good friend, even if her busy mouth never seemed to stop working. But thankfully, after she had surely scalded that mouth with the hot tea, she got up to leave.
‘You have a nice little kip, Queenie, and I’ll pop in again tomorrow.’ She looked at Gracie. ‘God bless, dear.’
Gracie smiled at her mum. ‘Since when did she get so pious? It doesn’t quite match her tongue-pie.’
‘She means well,’ Queenie said. ‘But you get back to your sewing now she’s gone, Gracie, and I’ll doze off to the sound of the machine.’
She made it sound like music. Funny, because it was just the way Gracie always thought of it. Clickety-clackety, clickety-clackety …
The sewing didn’t pay a fortune, but it helped, and was more interesting than the monotony of making shirts at Lawson’s factory. She went to the people’s homes to collect the work and took it back when it was neatly finished and ironed. It was a different kind of independence now from London, but it felt surprisingly good to be her own boss, instead of being at Lawson’s beck and call.
If only her mother showed any signs of getting better, or even stabilizing, Gracie knew she could be fairly content. But there were no signs of that, just as she knew there couldn’t be, nor of her father showing any more understanding than he ever had. She knew he cared for her mother in his own way; he simply didn’t have the capacity to show it.
As she worked on altering the flannel skirt for her newest client, her thoughts roamed. Her parents had once been young sweethearts, and there must have been love between them once, the passionate love that produced a child: herself. Making babies wasn’t something you cared to think about your parents doing, but they had to have done it, or she wouldn’t have existed.
It was so sad to think that such passions died. It surely wasn’t what you planned on that day when you first became man and wife …
Without realizing it, her fingers had slowed down from guiding the grey flannel material through the sewing-machine, and her foot had stopped pressing the treadle. She was somewhere in dreamland where she was the person in the long white dress, floating eagerly towards the young man at the altar, waiting to put the ring on her finger and make her his wife.
She could almost sense the throb of her heartbeats at the moment when he would turn around and smile at her with love … such love …
‘Oh, Charlie,’ she said, with a small sigh of longing, then blew her nose as her eyes became salty with tears.
‘Did you call, Gracie?’ Her mother’s voice came weakly through the wall.
‘No, I was just blowing my nose, Mum,’ she called back, kicking herself for disturbing her mother—and for what? For a fantasy that would never come true.
She got back to her task, th
inking it somewhat symbolic that she was stitching a dull grey flannel skirt that was more in keeping with her lot, than dreams of a filmy white wedding gown.
* * *
As if to emphasize that her roots lay here and not in the bright lights of London, she had a letter from Davey Watkins shortly afterwards.
Here I am, Gracie, turning up like a bad penny, just like I said I would, he wrote. I was thinking of you on my ship a few weeks ago. Being in the Navy’s nothing like being a rich passenger on one of them big ocean liners you seemed so partial to. We struck a force-nine gale going round the Bay of Biscay, and the ruddy ship seemed to rise up in the water with every wave and then crash down again so hard we thought it was going to break in two.
Gracie’s stomach heaved at the very thought, and she went on hastily to the rest of the letter.
It’s all calm again now, and we’re off the coast of France. With any luck we’ll be going ashore for a few hours. I don’t expect to meet any French mamselles half as pretty as the ones back home though. You know the one I really mean, don’t you? My old mum’s not much good at letter-writing, but I bet you are. You were always good at everything at school. If you feel like writing back, the address is at the top of the letter. And before you think I’ve gone soppy in my old age, this is all for now so I’ll sign off.
Yours respectfully,
Davey.
Gracie felt a stab of alarm. It might read casually enough to some people, telling her of his experiences at sea, but she knew it was more than just a friendly letter, and it wasn’t what she wanted. It seemed as if he considered her his girl back home, and she wasn’t.
She was just an old schoolfriend, and she didn’t intend to be anything more than that. It was obvious from the first part of his letter that he sometimes worked in very hazardous conditions, but that didn’t mean he could play on her sympathies to pretend an affection she didn’t feel.
Perhaps he had never meant it like that, and it was just an innocent letter from someone far from home. And pigs might fly. She was tempted to write straight back and put him right. Or she could just ignore it for a few weeks, and perhaps by then he would have got the unwritten message.
She dithered so long that a couple of weeks later there was another letter. This time he pleaded with her to write to him, saying it was boring being in the company of his mates all the time, and as most of them got letters from their wives and sweethearts, it would be nice to hear from her if she could spare the time.
‘Damn you, Davey Watkins,’ she muttered out loud, screwing up the letter furiously. ‘You’re not putting me on the spot like this!’
She didn’t want her mother to know how she felt. Queenie was oblivious to her feelings, anyway, as she sank further and further into a slough. Queenie was glad her daughter had a nice local boy to write to, and no longer wasted her thoughts on a saxophone player she would never see again.
I’m not saying Davey isn’t a nice enough young man, she wrote to Dolly, but I only saw him again for that week when he was on leave, and I’ll have to see how I feel when he comes home again.
She paused, reading her own words. Was she mad? Even to Dolly, she was implying more than she really felt. It was Charlie she wanted, even if she had only met him for one evening, and danced with him so briefly. But it had been long enough for her to fall in love with him—if it was love that she felt when her heart thumped like wildfire every time she remembered his name. It was like the song said—‘when you met your one and only …’
Still, maybe it didn’t hurt to let Dolly think she wasn’t having too terrible a time down here. Dolly was still living the high life in London with coalman Jim, and Gracie had too much pride to let her know she was pining over something she could never have. Dolly would have advised her to forget all about Charlie-boy and find somebody new. Which was where Davey Watkins came in …
‘I expect I’ll feel differently when Davey comes home from France,’ she went on writing defiantly. ‘You can’t snub a boy who’s doing his bit for King and country, can you? Mum likes him, which must count for something. I’d like to make her last days content by knowing I’ll be all right. You know what I mean without spelling it out’
God, that sounded so bloody noble, and she wasn’t at all! She finished the letter quickly before she started to tell Dolly how quickly her mother was failing. Dolly wouldn’t want to know about illness. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t care, but she had never been able to cope with such details. Gracie signed off, saying she might telephone her sometime just to hear her voice, as long as Ma Warburton didn’t think it a frivolous waste of money!
The minute she had put the letter into the postbox, she wondered why she’d never thought of telephoning Dolly before, just to hear her chipper voice. The boarding-house phone was supposed to be for emergencies only, but Gracie had always been the landlady’s favourite, and she could put it on a bit when she asked to speak to Dolly. There were times when you had to be a bit devious. Not yet, though. Not until Dolly had got her letter and was pre-warned.
She walked back home more jauntily. It really felt like summer at last and it was turning into a lovely day. Maybe her mum would feel like taking a turn to the park around the corner. She hardly went out of doors now, but the sun would do her good, and the doctor had advised her to stay active for as long as she could. She rarely got up before midday, but it was nearly that already.
The minute Gracie went inside the house she heard the sound of high-pitched wailing, and found two strangers in the parlour with her mother. They were large, unkempt-looking men, looking decidedly uneasy and alarmed at the sight of the trembling woman in the nightgown, who was clinging on to the edge of the table for dear life.
‘What’s happened?’ Gracie gasped. ‘Mum, what are you doing out of bed, and who are these people?’
Her heart leapt with fear, but her mother started gasping out a reply.
‘They work down the docks with your dad, Gracie. You know he didn’t come home last night, but that’s nothing unusual.’
She had to pause for the racking pain in her chest, holding her hand to her heart, and Gracie made her sit down before she tried to say any more.
‘I’m sorry, miss,’ one of the men went on agitatedly, ‘but she had to be told, see, and we was sent to do it. They found Mick this morning.’
‘Found him? What do you mean, they found him? Where was he, then? Dead drunk behind a boozer, I suppose,’ Gracie snapped, angry and upset that her mother should have been so frightened, and disgusted with her father that they should be hearing such news.
‘No, miss. Just dead,’ the other man said brutally, at which Queenie began wailing again.
‘For Christ’s sake, Bert, couldn’t you have made it a bit easier for the little maid to hear?’ his mate snarled.
‘I’m not a child!’ Gracie heard herself shouting, her heart hammering in her chest fit to burst. ‘What do you mean—he’s dead? How? Are you sure?’
It was a daft question, and she didn’t want it to be true. Her head was bursting with a mixture of emotions. She hated him, but she didn’t want him dead. She wanted him home and whole, the way he’d been when she was a small girl and he’d bounced her on his knee, before the drink had turned him into the monster he was now. She heard the sobbing in her own throat and smothered it with an effort. Her mother was ashen-faced, and she put her arms around her to comfort her.
The one called Bert tried to defend himself.
‘Well, it’s sometimes best to come right out with it, in my opinion. It’s Mick Brown all right.’ He cleared his throat uncomfortably. ‘There was a drunken brawl at one of the pubs last night, and Mick was in the middle of it. He must have staggered about and fallen in the docks. The current smashed him about during the night. I’m sorry, Missus, but it took a while for him to be identified properly. The constables say somebody in the family will have to do it too. They’ve taken him to one of the unloading sheds to clean him up a bit.’
He s
tumbled on, making things graphic, making things worse. Gracie listened in horror, trying not to imagine her father’s body being buffeted about against the concrete wall of the docks for hours on end … and then she realized that she would have to be the one to identify him. It would be more than her mother could take. Right now, she seemed to have shrunk down in her chair, saying nothing, just keening softly in that terrible, heart-rending way.
‘We was just sent to tell you what’s happened, miss. The constables will be coming to see you soon, I daresay,’ the other man went on. ‘And she don’t look too good neither,’ he added, with an uneasy look at Queenie.
‘Thank you,’ Gracie mumbled, though it seemed bizarre to thank people for coming to tell her her father was dead. You did it, though. You went through the motions of being polite, because it was what you had been brought up to do.
She tried to think what to do next.
‘Would you ask my next door neighbour to come in, please? I’ll get her to sit with my mother while I fetch the doctor.’
They were clearly relieved to get out of there, their duty done. Gracie wondered if they had drawn lots to see who had to do the dirty work, and if they had chosen the short straw.
A few minutes later, while she still held her mother in her arms, Mrs Jennings came rushing into the house, her face shocked.
‘Oh, my poor Queenie! You go and do what you have to do, Gracie love, and I’ll take charge here. The poor lamb needs to be in bed, and I’ll make her some hot sweet tea.’ In an aside, she added: ‘You’d better fetch the doctor quick. It looks like there’s more need to attend to the living here than the dead.’
Gracie rushed out of the house, tears streaming down her face. She didn’t need telling that the news had devastated her mother. Whatever kind of a rat he had been to her in the last few years, he was still her husband, the breadwinner, and she had always been a loyal wife. She would mourn him to the end of her days—however long that might be.
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