A Winter Love Song

by Rita Bradshaw

  Bonnie smiled, as she was meant to, but in truth she was finding her changed circumstances stressful. Her time singing with Art and the band was over, she knew that, and because of the war the whole pattern of broadcasting was changing. For security and other reasons, direct transmissions from clubs and hotels had ceased and everything was different. Fortunately the records she had made with Art and the band had got her name known to some extent, and she had done the occasional radio variety show in the last months and other work. Enoch had told her there had been several enquiries from the variety circuits about whether she would be interested in doing solo spots, something he was keen for her to do. When Art and the band had joined up, it had seemed the obvious thing for Enoch to become her permanent agent, and she knew Art’s mind was more at rest knowing Enoch was on board. She had already made two records as a solo artiste which had been quite well received, and this had boosted her confidence to some extent. Nevertheless, when Enoch had told her a few days ago that he had got her a spot at a prestigious Birmingham theatre on her return from honeymoon, she had felt panicked. With Art and the band behind her the weight of the performance hadn’t been all on her; now it would be and it was more than a little sobering to think she might fall flat on her face, metaphorically speaking. But she had begun singing as a solo artiste, she reminded herself now, and she could do so again. This was a new period in her life and she had to embrace it whether she liked it or not, as people all over Britain were having to do. The entertainment business was doing its best to keep people’s spirits up and she could do her bit for the war effort by taking folk out of themselves for a while; it was as simple as that.

  More at peace, she glanced at the gold band resting on the third finger of her left hand next to Art’s sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring. He had chosen sapphires to match her eyes, he’d told her when he had presented her with the ring, and the diamond because she was a diamond among women, unique and incomparable. He said such beautiful things, things that were all at odds with the tough, hard-bitten front he presented to the rest of the world.

  A soft, warm twilight was falling by the time the taxi they had caught from the station deposited them at their hotel. At reception they gave in their ration books so that the coupons for their food could be taken out during their stay, and a smart bellboy who didn’t look much older than Thomas showed them up to the bridal suite. Once they had unpacked, they went downstairs for dinner and Bonnie was glad it had been something of a rush. She was feeling shy, and a little apprehensive of what lay in store that night. It was silly, she told herself, and she knew it was silly, but memories of how much it had hurt when Franco had had his way with her kept intruding. But Art wouldn’t hurt her, and even if there was any pain it would be worth it to belong to him, body, soul and spirit. He had been so patient waiting for their wedding night before making love to her, and it had been his decision rather than hers.

  ‘You’re going to be my wife and the mother of my children,’ he had told her tenderly when she had broached the matter two months before on his brief return home for a forty-eight-hour leave. ‘You’re different to the others and I’m doing this right. I can’t explain it but it’s the foundation of the marriage I want us to have together. You know I’ve had women in the past, Bonnie, and I can’t change that, but with you . . . it has to be perfect.’

  She hadn’t argued with him because he had told her what had happened between his parents, and although he hadn’t gone into details she had sensed how much his mother’s desertion of him and his father had hurt him, but the word ‘perfect’ had scared her. He’d had many women, beautiful, wordly, experienced women who knew how to please a man in bed, whereas she . . . She was just an ordinary little northern lass under the skin. But she did love him, and perhaps her love would guide her? She was so frightened of disappointing him that she hadn’t slept properly for the last week or so.

  She forced down the food without really tasting it and drank two glasses of the wine Art had ordered with the meal, hoping it would give her Dutch courage. If Art noticed her brittle laugh and the fact that she dropped her knife and fork twice, he didn’t comment on it. He lingered over their coffee which Bonnie found excruciating. It wasn’t exactly romantic, she thought, but she just wanted to get on with it now, for better or worse.

  They held hands on their way back to the room, and once inside he drew her into his arms and began to kiss her, slowly and leisurely but in a way that caused an ache deep in the core of her long before he began to undress her. She didn’t know what she had expected, but it wasn’t the unhurried, sweet, wildly erotic and tender exploring of every inch of her once they were both naked, an exploration that had her moaning for him long before he actually took her. And when he did, when the world splintered and shattered and was nothing but sheer endless hot ripples of pleasure, his cry of exultation was echoed in her.

  It took them a while to come back to earth, and even then Art held her and stroked her and whispered endless endearments as she nestled against him, expelling with his love the dark ghosts of the past and all the heartache and regrets and pain that went with them.

  She was still wrapped in his arms as she drifted off to sleep, her head resting on the hairy pillow of his chest where the steady slow beat of his heart was like the most exquisite lullaby. Four days, she thought, before the heavy blanket of sleep finally overcame her. It wasn’t enough. Four lifetimes wouldn’t be enough. Oh, God, keep him safe in this war. Keep us both safe. Give us time, God. Give us time.

  PART FIVE

  Bombs, Backbone and Burma

  1943

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Blimey, gal, that one was a mite too close for comfort.’

  Enoch was clearly rattled, and as Bonnie nodded, she had to admit the explosion somewhere in the area outside the theatre had been particularly loud. Enoch had wanted her to leave the theatre once the raid had started, and take refuge underground in the Tube station a short distance away. Most of the audience had gone there or to other places of relative safety, but for once Bonnie had refused to budge from her dressing room. She simply couldn’t face hours of being packed sardine-like in a shelter tonight. It wasn’t bravery, but a combination of weariness and fatalism.

  She had only arrived back in London a couple of days ago after touring the provinces for three months, and these tours were always exhausting. As normal now she had topped the bill, and she and the other performers would do the show in the late afternoon and evening, after going to service camps, munitions factories, works canteens and hospitals in the district earlier in the day.

  She would rise at six o’clock most mornings and rarely fell into bed in her digs before midnight, but the fan letters that now came in their hundreds left her in no doubt that she was fulfilling her wish to contribute to the war effort. And even now she was home again, almost every hour of every day was accounted for. Besides variety appearances, she would be recording, doing radio shows and charity performances, and still fitting in visits to hospitals, airfields and army camps when she could. But she welcomed the non-stop busyness. It meant she had less time to worry about Art. Whenever she visited hospitals to entertain the wounded, be they air force, navy or army, it was as though she was singing to Art.

  He had been in the Dieppe raid the year before, although thankfully she hadn’t been aware of that until it was over and he’d had some leave. It had been the biggest Allied assault on Hitler’s Fortress Europe of the war, involving several thousand British, Canadian, American and Free French troops. Casualties on both sides had been heavy, and Art had told her about the furious air battles that had taken place as the Germans had tried to break up the Allied aerial umbrella over the land and sea forces.

  ‘I don’t know if Churchill intended a full-scale invasion,’ Art had told her the first night he was home, as they’d sat in the little courtyard garden in late-September sunshine. ‘But if he did, it failed. We lost so many men, Bonnie.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course, the powers
on high are claiming it was a planned reconnaissance intended to gain vital experience in mounting an amphibious attack against coastal positions with large numbers of troops and heavy equipment, and if that’s true, I’m glad I didn’t have to make such a decision. To my mind it smacks of what the old Zulu chiefs used to do. They would sacrifice the lives of their young braves to work out where the enemy fire power was and how to mount an attack that would succeed.’

  Bonnie had put her hand over his but had said nothing. What could she say? Two members of the band had been killed in Dieppe, and a third – jaunty little Anthony who was a terrific piano player – had been taken prisoner by the Germans.

  They had made the most of that leave, sensing that there wouldn’t be another for a long time, and they’d been right. Art had been sent to Sicily and hadn’t been home since.

  Now, as another explosion made the windows vibrate, Bonnie saw Enoch flinch. She reached across and offered her Thermos flask. ‘Have some coffee. It’ll calm you.’ Enoch shook his head as he accepted the Thermos. ‘You’re one on your own, I’ll give you that. Don’t you have any nerves like the rest of us?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ And she did; sometimes she was petrified, especially when she witnessed the aftermath of what a bomb could do to human flesh, but she had driven her car all through the Blitz because it was hopeless to rely on buses to get to a performance on time, and after that she had become almost resigned to the idea that if a bomb had your name on it, it would get you somehow. There she’d been, driving her faithful workhorse around with a metal plate over her headlights with a small slit in it so that other drivers could see the car in the distance, more than once with shrapnel pinging on the metalwork and her little tin helmet on her head in case a shard pierced the roof of the car, and she had got through unscathed. Whereas poor Betty and her family had all been killed when their Anderson shelter received a direct hit. Selina and Cyril had been at his mother’s earlier that evening, and but for the fact that they’d gone home early because Selina was feeling unwell, they would have lost their lives too. Both of her friends at the same time, it didn’t bear thinking about. She still found it hard to accept that Betty was gone – big, warm, funny Betty who’d had a heart as generous as her frame.

  Enoch took a little hip flask out of his jacket and tipped a measure of brandy into the cup, offering it to Bonnie who shook her head. ‘I like to keep my wits about me when I’m driving.’ Owing to the fact that she was an entertainer and had to get to theatres or hospitals or other venues she got extra petrol rations. Enoch, along with most people she knew, had given up using his car, and so she drove them both everywhere. She also received extra coupons for her stage costumes because she worked in the West End frequently, and as yet she had not been reduced to drawing lines up the backs of her legs with an eyebrow pencil but could still afford stockings. Even with the coupons there was always a shortage of fabric for her costumes, though, as silk was almost impossible to source, and but for Hilda and her little sewing machine – as good as any Bond Street dressmaker – she would have struggled more than she did. Apart from altering old dresses and transforming them by adding or removing bits, Hilda could take a piece of material that was pretty ordinary and make it into something any couturier would be proud of.

  Enoch downed his coffee and looked at her morosely. ‘Damn Nazis,’ he muttered irritably. ‘But I tell you, gal, you’ve got more backbone than me – more than most folk, truth be told,’ he said in a tone that made it less of a compliment and more of a criticism.

  Bonnie had to smile. Poor Enoch, he’d never got used to the bombs and she supposed she had, to some extent. Sometimes during a show when the alert sounded most of the audience still remained in their seats, depending on where the venue was, and at those times she would just carry on singing. On her most recent tour when she had been singing her signature number, ‘A Song at Sunrise’, and a particularly loud blast had brought dust and debris falling from the ceiling of the old theatre, some wit in the audience had called out, ‘And tempest at twilight, eh, girl?’ and everyone had laughed, her included. Everyone but Enoch that was, who’d turned a whiter shade of pale at the piano.

  Once the air raid was over, Bonnie drove Enoch home to where Gladys was anxiously waiting. As they’d surmised, the raid had been a bad one. The streets were chaotic, full of firemen, hosepipes, burning buildings and rubble. The wardens and police were directing people here, there and everywhere, and the air was chokingly thick with black smoke and dust. It was a common sight but gut-wrenching nevertheless, especially when they passed a woman sitting in the gutter cradling a young child in her arms, an air-raid warden crouching beside her.

  Enoch swore softly, shaking his head but saying nothing, and they drove the rest of the way in a heavy silence.

  Once she had dropped off Enoch, Bonnie negotiated her way home which took longer than normal due to this recent raid blocking several roads and causing mayhem. Home was now Art’s beautiful little cottage in Kingston upon Thames. She had finally bitten the bullet and on her marriage left her precious little nest in the eaves of Fairview. It had seemed the logical next step and meant Annie wasn’t on her own, now Art was away fighting, besides which Bonnie felt closer to Art there. The small courtyard garden was a constant delight and refuge when she managed to steal the odd hour or two out of her ridiculously busy schedule.

  Hilda had totally understood when Bonnie had said she was moving out. Furthermore, Hilda and Art’s housekeeper had got on like a house on fire when they’d met at the wedding, and when Bonnie was away from home Hilda often joined Annie for their evening meal or Annie went to eat with her new friend. The pair were close in age and were like two fussy mother hens with Bonnie, which she rather enjoyed. Nelly and Thomas had come to stay for a few days once or twice when Bonnie hadn’t been off round the country touring, and these occasions always eased the ache in Bonnie’s heart that was family-shaped. Knowing how Nelly had loved her father, how she still loved him even though he had been gone for so long, brought him closer to Bonnie in a strange sort of way. It wasn’t that they talked about him much, although they reminisced about the old times now and again, it was more that her memories of him sprang to life when she was with Nelly and she could picture him with more clarity in her mind’s eye. He had been a special man, a wonderful man, and while she and Nelly were alive he wasn’t lost and forgotten in the endless corridors of time.

  Once she had parked the car outside the house in Kingston upon Thames she sat for a moment after turning off the ignition. She felt immensely sad tonight; whether it was seeing that mother holding her child amid all the devastation, or that she was missing Art, or she was just exhausted and had used up all her reserves over the last weeks, she didn’t know. The terrible things they were hearing about daily, the scarred and shattered city she was living in, the destruction she saw all over the country on her tours felt too much tonight somehow. She felt tiny and alone, a little piece of flotsam and jetsam in a world where bad seemed to be winning and good was being ground into dust. And she knew tomorrow she would take up the reins again, that she would put on her Bonnie May face and sing the simple, hope-filled, emotional and nostalgic songs that seemed to bring comfort to so many people if her fan letters and popularity could be believed, but right at this moment she was just Bonnie Lindsay, a little girl crying for her da and wishing she could go back in time to the golden days she hadn’t really appreciated when she’d been living them.

  The front door to the cottage opened and she looked up, quickly clearing her expression and expecting to see Annie in the doorway. But it wasn’t Annie’s wrinkled little face looking at her. It was Art. Big, rugged, handsome Art, leaning heavily on a stick but with a smile as wide as the Cheshire cat’s on his face. Bonnie was out of the car like a homing pigeon, leaving the door wide open as she flew into his arms.

  The world had righted itself again.

  After they’d made love in their big double bed, they talked until dawn. It ap
peared Art had been wounded when the Allies had captured Messina in Sicily and had been shipped home to recover. A kind officer had given him leave for twenty-four hours, but then he had to report to a military hospital-cum-convalescence home in Surrey to get fully fit before he rejoined his unit.

  It was as pink was entering the night sky that Bonnie broached something she’d been thinking about for a while. It had become more and more apparent since the war began that the boys fighting in the services felt a connection with the sentimental songs she liked to sing. Vera Lynn was hugely popular, and although Bonnie knew she couldn’t compete with the ‘Forces Sweetheart’, her songs were of the same ilk as the tender, sweet songs Vera sang so touchingly. The men wanted to hear words that spoke of home, loved ones and a brighter future when they were far away, and Bonnie knew her strength had always been in the fact that once she began to sing such songs, she believed every word. And because she believed, her listeners believed too.

  Art nodded as she spoke. ‘Couldn’t agree more,’ he drawled in his easy way. ‘I wouldn’t have wished this war on us, but your voice and delivery and the type of ballads you sing are perfect for the days we live in. The razzle-dazzle numbers of the twenties wouldn’t have been for you. Not that you couldn’t have sung them,’ he added hastily, as though it had been a criticism, ‘but they wouldn’t have been right.’

  ‘I get loads of letters from servicemen,’ Bonnie went on carefully, knowing that when she got to the crux of what she was trying to say Art wouldn’t like it at all, ‘and they emphasize how important the radio link is to wherever they are, but it’s not like actually going there, is it? Singing in person, I mean.’

  She felt Art stiffen. ‘You’re working yourself to death with the constant visits to hospitals and airfields and army camps and the rest of it, besides recording and doing variety shows. Annie’s been worried about you for months, between you and me. If anyone is doing their bit for the war effort, you are, Bonnie.’