by Amy Miller
Panicking, Lily squeezed shut her eyes and held Joy closer to her chest. Flickering images, like the end of a film reel at the pictures, flashed across the insides of her eyelids. Henry in the office at the Ministry of Information, holding her around the waist and staring adoringly into her eyes. Henry telling her he was engaged, his expression unreadable. Henry drunk, shouting at her, telling her that her unborn baby was a ‘dirty little secret’. Henry’s well-spoken wife, Helen, immaculately turned out, looking down her nose at Lily in that way that said: you will never have what I have.
Hearing footsteps approaching, she pulled opened the store cupboard door and wedged herself and Joy inside, crouching by the bags and boxes of dried fruits and nuts, cinnamon, spices, sugar, butter, cocoa powder and chocolate. The fragrance was intoxicating. Her heart thumped as the footsteps came nearer and the door was flung open.
‘Whatever are you doing in here?’ Audrey asked, her expression thunderous, then immediately softening into an amused smile. ‘Come out, will you? He’s gone, but would you believe he thinks he can just walk in and demand to see you? It beggars belief! I told him he was most unwelcome at this bakery after how he treated you last time he called, but he insists he wants to bury the hatchet and to apologise for his actions. He asked me to give you this.’
Audrey passed Lily a handwritten note. She accepted it and held it in her fingertips as if it might explode.
‘He says he’s changed,’ Audrey said quietly, peering into the store cupboard and frowning. ‘I’m all for forgiveness and second chances, but I have to warn you, Lily, some leopards never change their spots.’
* * *
‘What can I get you, Mrs Cook?’ Audrey asked, back in the shop, serving customers. ‘Your normal order of half a dozen rolls, is it?’
The door was wedged open to let in the breeze, and Mrs Cook flapped a copy of the Echo in front of her face. The grim headlines caught Audrey’s eye and made her heart sink: SOUTH COAST IS NAZI TARGET: CHILDREN AMONG THOSE KILLED. Behind the counter and out of the customers’ sight, Audrey sighed and stepped out of her wooden clogs for a moment, cooling her hot feet on the floor tiles.
‘Yes, please, Audrey love,’ replied Mrs Cook. ‘And a dozen egg custards would be nice.’
Audrey, putting the headline out of her mind, let out a laugh. ‘You’ll be lucky!’ she said. ‘Now wouldn’t that be lovely, egg custards back on the menu? I for one can’t wait until this war is over and I can go back to making some of my favourites. No iced buns, no meringues, no egg custards – what’s the world coming to, eh?’
‘Hitler has a lot to answer for,’ said Mrs Cook. ‘If he turns up on my doorstep, expecting me to surrender, I’ll tell him what for, that’s for sure.’
‘You say that,’ said Flo, another customer in the queue, ‘but look at the poor folk in the Channel Islands. Those that didn’t evacuate before invasion didn’t have a choice! The German army marched in and took their cars, their food and their documents, paraded down the high street, threatened to arrest or shoot anyone who tried to escape to England and that’s it! What can you do?’
‘This,’ Mrs Cook said, lifting up her handbag and swinging it violently through the air.
The women laughed darkly as they contemplated the awful prospect of invasion.
Audrey loved her customers – despite the shocking headlines and the bad news from the eastern battlefront, their humour and resilience never failed to impress her. Listening to their gossip, she continued to serve the fourteen-strong queue and thought about Henry Bateman. Though she was pretending to be calm about it, his arrival at the bakery had shaken her up no end. Last time he’d been near, Charlie had threatened him never to return or else he’d throw him in the bakery oven, but Charlie wasn’t there to wave his fist this time, was he? Besides, Henry had insisted he must see Lily to make amends, and what could Audrey do about it?
‘Any word from Charlie?’ Mrs Cook asked, interrupting Audrey’s thoughts. ‘I can taste the difference in the bread, you know. It’s still good, but there’s a lightness to Charlie’s bread and the crust is perfect. I miss him.’
Audrey smiled and rested her hands on the counter. She’d heard this numerous times from customers; some disgruntled that their baker had gone to the front line, others full of admiration. Thinking of her husband and suddenly missing him terribly, she twirled her wedding ring around her finger.
‘He occasionally writes, but he doesn’t tell me an awful lot. He’s a man of few words, as you know. In his last letter, he asked me to send him a Dorset apple cake in the next comfort package,’ said Audrey, smiling. ‘By the sound of it he’s missing his home-cooked food. I sent him the cake, of course, wrapped in brown paper and packed in a tin. Heaven knows if it’ll reach him.’
‘That’s his way of saying he’s missing you, Audrey love,’ Mrs Cook said gently. ‘My son Richard says that when he’s in battle, he thinks about me sitting in the garden, sunning my face and enjoying the chrysanthemums. I wanted to write back and ask him when he thinks I have time to sun my face, what with turning the garden into a vegetable patch and running around after eight grandchildren, shopping, queuing, juggling the rations with an empty larder, and dashing to the air-raid shelter every other night, but if that thought helps him get through, then so be it. And how’s that brother of yours?’
Audrey opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment Maggie’s sweetheart, Pilot Officer George Meadows, came into the shop, causing a stir in the queue. His hair was cropped close to his head, framing a smooth tanned face and grey eyes that crinkled around the edges when he smiled. He was straight off the silver screen.
‘Morning, beautiful,’ George greeted Maggie, offering her a paper bag filled with aniseed balls. Sweets hadn’t been rationed yet, but there had been rumours that it wasn’t long before they – and chocolate – would be.
With her mouth in an ‘ooh’ shape, and with delicate fingers, Maggie took a sweet and popped it in her mouth.
‘Here he is,’ she said, beaming, ‘my knight in shining armour.’
The ladies in the queue were transfixed.
‘He’s lost his white ’orse by the look of it,’ muttered Flo, rolling her eyes.
‘No, he ain’t,’ said Maggie, dashing out from behind the counter. ‘Horse and carriage are waiting outside, aren’t they, George?’
George laughed heartily as she draped her arms around his neck and quickly kissed him on the cheek, coquettishly kicking up her right leg behind her. He took off his hat and pretended to faint, which caused a murmur of laughter and tutting in the queue.
‘Well I never!’ said Elizabeth, another regular customer. ‘I only wanted bread, not a night at the pictures.’
Maggie delved in her pocket and held out some smelling salts under George’s nose, which he pretended had revived him. The ladies in the shop were enjoying the show, but, aware of Audrey staring at her, Maggie quickly resumed her position behind the counter and got back to serving, while George leaned on the edge of it, chin resting in his hand, admiring the woman he was obviously smitten by.
Maggie leaned over and asked him: ‘Now, what can I get you, sir? A rock cake, carrot cake or a jam tart?’
‘I can think of many things I’d like to try,’ said George flirtatiously.
The queue gasped. Hands were flapped in front of faces and eyes rolled.
‘Gracious, it’s hot in here!’ said Mrs Cook.
‘You should make an honest woman out of our Maggie,’ called out Flo. ‘We could do with something to celebrate, couldn’t we, ladies?’
Other customers in the queue murmured their agreement and George raised his eyebrows before taking a bow.
‘It just so happens,’ he said, ‘that I have a certain question to ask a certain girl. I’m to be posted overseas soon. So, Maggie Rose, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’
The women gasped as Maggie’s hand flew to her chest, where she pointed, as if to say, Me?
George nodded, l
aughing once more.
‘Yes!’ Maggie squealed. ‘Yes, I will!’
Running out from behind the counter again, this time followed by the saucer-shaped eyes of the customers, Maggie jumped up at George and he spun her around. With her head nestled in his neck, both of them fell about laughing, before they stopped spinning and locked lips, causing a spontaneous round of applause from the waiting women.
‘Bless us and spare us,’ muttered Mrs Cook.
She and Audrey exchanged a good-humoured glance while Maggie jumped up and down on the spot, like an excited child. Uncle John, who had come into the shop from the bakehouse to see what all the fuss was about, broke out into a hacking cough, quickly disappearing again.
‘I expect you two lovebirds will be needing a cake?’ Audrey asked, walking out from behind the counter to hug Maggie. She was such a slight thing and so young, but clearly so happy.
‘Oh yes, please,’ said Maggie, clasping her hands together. ‘Three tiers high, iced with pale pink icing, and those beautiful roses you make from royal icing resting on the top, please.’
Audrey laughed, as they both knew iced cakes had been banned, but she wished she could fulfil Maggie’s wishes. She’d do anything to protect her joy. In fact, she wished she could bottle it. In wartime, happiness was a precious commodity. One had to snatch it, however fleeting, hold on to it and refuse to let it go.
Chapter Seven
‘This will be the last time I do this,’ whispered Maggie to herself, at the end of the working day when she crept into the store cupboard, while Audrey was bagging up the ‘stales’ in the shop to sell off for a penny. Straining to reach the top shelf, her dress brushing against the back of her knees, she knocked her knee against a wooden crate and snagged her stockings.
‘Blast,’ she said, staring at the run. ‘Not another pair ruined!’
Ever since George’s proposal that morning, her mood had been sky-high, but now, with a shiny future dangling precariously in front of her like a new penny on a string, it was more important than ever that she didn’t trip up. This was her chance to get away from her sour-faced grandmother and live a better life with the man she loved, wasn’t it? No more shabby clothes, no more rinsing out her sisters’ one pair of stockings every night in cold water so they could wear them again the next day, no more burning the furniture for fuel in winter, or suffering their grandmother wasting the girls’ earnings and cursing her luck. She’d have to see to it that her sisters were looked after too, particularly Isabel, who wouldn’t cope alone. Hopefully George wouldn’t mind if they came to stay, wherever they chose to live. He came from Hampstead in London, so when the war was over, she’d no doubt live with him there, where she imagined them taking dinner at the Savoy, or going to the Lyceum Ballroom in her finest glad rags. Oh, it would be so very exciting!
‘I love you, George Meadows,’ she sighed.
Carefully, with light, nimble fingers that trembled just a little, she cut a hole in the bottom of a packet of sugar with a sharp knife, and held her empty gas-mask case underneath it, watching the pure white grains silently flow into it. When the bag was half empty and the box almost full, she adjusted its position on the shelf to stem the flow. Heart thumping in her chest, she quickly sealed the case shut: done.
It’s not that bad, she reasoned with herself, as she swept up a few spilt grains with her hands.
Spotting a half-empty tub of beautiful red glacé cherries on the shelf above her, she quickly lifted the lid, took one and popped it in her mouth, letting the gorgeous sugary sweetness burst onto her tongue. She closed her eyes and chewed, pushing away the guilt that was pressing against her brow. Besides, as she understood it, whatever stock Audrey reported to the Ministry of Food as sold one month was allocated again for the next month, so it wasn’t as if the bakery was losing out, was it? What the spivs and drones were doing in London made her activity seem harmless. She’d heard from a friend of a friend in the city that when a high-explosive bomb had hit the Café de Paris ballroom in March, rescuers found that looters had got to the site before them and were pulling jewellery off the revellers’ bodies. Now, that was wrong. That was downright shameful. Borrowing a bit of sugar and some dried fruit to sell or swap for real or ‘buckshee’ clothing vouchers was all she was doing. The war made you have to do things you wouldn’t normally do, didn’t it? You had to be crafty. If she waited until peacetime again to get what she wanted, she might be waiting a lifetime. Besides, she’d do pretty much anything to keep George Meadows, and was more determined than ever to collect enough coupons to keep up appearances during their courtship and be a proper bride on their wedding day. So far, she’d managed to keep him away from her home and there was no way she could let him meet Gwendolen, her grandmother.
When she’d mentioned George to her, she’d asked: ‘What on earth does he see in you?’ – no less than Maggie had expected. If there was one person who had taught her you had to look out for yourself in life, it was her grandmother, but she’d done that without even meaning to.
‘Maggie?’ said Audrey quietly, suddenly standing behind her in the store cupboard, where the door had silently swung open. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
‘Oh, I…’ said Maggie, turning on her heel, stunned, the gas-mask case slipping from her fingers. Hitting the hard, tiled floor, the box flew open and the sugar spilled out. Flushing bright red, her eyes wide with terror and fury at being discovered, Maggie left the mess on the floor and shoved past Audrey. Without collecting her things, she ran through the shop and out into Fisherman’s Road, where people were scurrying home past the sandbags heaped along the shopfronts, the windows criss-crossed with bombproof tape. She looked left and right and saw, in the far distance, George Meadows walking towards the bakery. He’d arranged to meet her after work, to take her for a fish and chip supper.
Head down and walking in the opposite direction, she caught sight of her reflection in the butcher’s window – make-up running down her cheeks like railway tracks. He couldn’t see her like this! But if she wasn’t at the bakery when he arrived, Audrey might tell him what had happened, and then what? George was an honest, respectable man. If he got wind of Maggie’s lies, the engagement would be off. Blast, she thought. Damn and blast.
‘Maggie!’ she heard Audrey call from behind her. Without answering, Maggie changed direction again and made off up the street towards George, hot tears pricking her eyes. Using her thumbs to clean the make-up from under her eyes, she pinched her cheeks for a makeshift blush, whipped off her apron to reveal a pretty frock she’d traded with a neighbour for a few ounces of sugar, and plastered a smile on her face, before running headlong towards the future, into George’s outstretched arms.
‘Maggie Rose,’ he said, holding her tight, ‘where is your gas mask and why are you in such a rush?’
* * *
Audrey stood with her hands on her hips in the bakery doorway, watching the figures of Maggie and George melt into the distance. ‘Well, blow me down,’ she said, biting her lip and looking up at the postcard-perfect, blue sky. ‘I would never have expected that to happen. Not in a million years.’
It was the most beautiful evening, she thought, following a swift’s flight over the tops of the houses and watching a group of schoolboys having a raucous piggyback fight in the street, but you couldn’t trust the sky. It seemed innocent enough, but as Audrey knew only too well, at any moment a formation of planes could appear on the horizon, as they had done all through the Battle of Britain, carrying and dropping bombs to blow apart people’s lives.
Trust, thought Audrey, picturing Maggie’s horrified face when she’d been discovered in the store cupboard. She had thought she could trust Maggie – and now look what had happened. She’d caught her red-handed, stealing sugar from right under her nose.
Shaking her head in dismay, Audrey changed the shop sign to CLOSED, feeling upset rather than angry. Hadn’t she always treated Maggie well? Hadn’t she packed her off home at the e
nd of the week with her wages and a fresh loaf? Didn’t she involve her in all the bakery’s comings and goings – at knitting parties and clothes mending evenings, or simply for a slice of pie and a cup of hot tea, treating her like one of the family? Hadn’t she offered to bake her a wedding cake that very morning?
Wishing that Charlie was there to talk to, she went into the kitchen and put the nettle soup on the range to heat up. While it bubbled in the pot, she looked out of the window into the courtyard garden, where Mary was sucking the sweet nectar from a white nettle flower, while William was on his knees, weeding the small patch of garden they’d turned over to growing vegetables. John, she knew, would be in the Carpenter’s Arms, enjoying an ale and discussing military operations, before returning to the bakery later. Audrey wished William would go with him – it would do him good.
Averting her eyes from the stump that used to be William’s right foot, she ran her gaze over his wooden crutches, which were leaning against the bakery wall next to the delivery bicycle. At least he was out of his bedroom – that was something to be grateful for. But she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Elsie since the other evening when she’d run out of the bakery after the argument with William. And now Maggie had run off too. Everyone was running away, it seemed. She was going to have to do something about that, wasn’t she? It was up to her to keep her ramshackle family together and safe through this war, and she wasn’t about to give up. Thinking about all the people she loved, her throat thickened with sudden emotion.
‘Gracious me, this won’t do at all,’ she tutted, cross with herself, stirring the nettle soup, then pulling herself together and throwing open the window to call to William and Mary: ‘Soup’s ready.’
* * *
‘What do you think I should do?’ she asked John, after dinner, when William had gone to talk to the ARP warden about his fire-watching rota, and Mary was back outside, petting her rabbit. She’d had no intention of talking about Maggie’s pilfering to anyone, but found the words rushing from her lips before her brain caught up.