Wartime Sweethearts

by Lizzie Lane

  Mary knocked quietly before entering the bedroom she shared with her sister and cousin. The room had two dormer windows, floral wallpaper and gingham-checked curtains. The dressing table, wardrobe and chest of drawers had once belonged to their grandparents. There was something safe and solid about the rich mahogany, the solid lines, the heavy brass handles on the drawers and the wardrobe doors.

  Frances was lying face down on the single bed positioned in the alcove at one end of the room which ran the full length of the house. It wasn’t much in the way of privacy but served its purpose and each of them had plenty of space.

  Her cousin’s shoulders were shaking following a period of sobbing.

  ‘Frances?’ Mary sat down on the edge of the bed, then reached out and gently stroked the dark hair, so similar to her own and the rest of the family.

  Frances’s hair was usually fastened in two thick braids. Right now it was undone, two white ribbons thrown on to the floor, and each braid half undone.

  ‘Is it the war?’ Mary asked softly.

  Frances nodded into her pillow.

  Mary smiled. ‘You mustn’t be frightened. Nothing bad will happen to you, and besides, our country hasn’t fired a shot yet. They might still come to some agreement.’

  In her heart Mary thought it unlikely. The German regime had swallowed up half of Europe. Unless they backtracked pretty quickly, the war would most definitely occur.

  ‘I can’t … help … it,’ Frances snivelled into her pillow. ‘What if we get bombed? What if you all die? You’re the only family I’ve got left!’

  Mary smiled ruefully. ‘I don’t think that’s likely to happen. After all, Oldland Common is only a village and we’re on the outskirts of Bristol.’

  It occurred to Mary that they weren’t far from the aircraft factories at Filton so might be in more danger than first imagined. Best not to say it, she decided. Frances was frightened enough.

  ‘Will soldiers march in?’

  ‘I take it you mean German soldiers.’

  Frances nodded.

  ‘They’ll have to be very good swimmers. They have to cross the English Channel before they come marching in. Invading England isn’t that easy. It never has been, in fact it’s been nearly a thousand years since the last time it happened.’

  Frances turned her big brown eyes on her. ‘Really?’

  Grateful she’d paid attention in the history lesson about William the Conqueror in the year 1066, Mary said that it was indeed the case.

  ‘I don’t … want … to lose my family … I’m frightened.’

  Mary raised her from the bed and wrapped her arms around her, the girl’s head resting on her shoulder.

  ‘You mustn’t think that way. No matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you.’

  She closed her eyes as she said it. Poor little Frances. She’d never realised before that the cheeky grin and effervescent vitality hid such a sensitive little soul. She felt for her.

  Uncle Sefton had died of injuries sustained during the Great War when Frances was only four years old. Apparently a piece of shrapnel had altered position, sawed through a blood vessel and caused internal bleeding. The bleeding had not been noticed until it was too late.

  Her mother, Mildred, unable to face the responsibilities of raising a child on her own and with nothing but a war widow’s pension, had taken off. Nothing had been heard of her since.

  Stan had taken the child in, caring for her as he did his own. At times a little wild, they had all accepted Frances more as a baby sister than a cousin. The girl needed a mother figure, and if it had to be Mary, then so be it.

  Mary stroked her cousin’s hair away from her hot forehead.

  ‘Anyway, there’s still time. It may never happen. A pilot in the RAF told me that,’ she said, hoping to reassure the girl.

  ‘Did he?’

  Mary thought about her ripped dress and the black dog. She also thought about Michael Dangerfield.

  On reflection, there had been a lot to like about Michael Dangerfield. She now very much regretted running off like that, almost as though she’d expected the bakery to be surrounded by an invading army when she got home; he must have thought her a total fool.

  The whole of today’s episode now seemed a wasted opportunity. They could have been friends if she hadn’t reacted so sharply to the criticism reported to her by Ruby.

  Up until this moment, she’d shown little interest in men even though they’d shown interest in her. The local curate had tipped his cap at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to see beyond the stiff white collar to the man beneath. And heaven forbid, but marriage to a clergyman did not appeal.

  Mr Michael Dangerfield did appeal.

  Closing her eyes helped her memorise the laughter lines around his deep blue eyes, the way his hair curled behind his ears, the shape of his jaw and the sound of his voice.

  She sighed as she opened her eyes. The moment had passed. He was gone, off to fly aeroplanes, though he had said he’d be back to stay with his aunt when he next had leave. She hoped it wouldn’t be too long, but in the meantime it did occur to her to get his address from Mrs Hicks and write to him. It might seem a bit forward, but these were drastic times. Seize the day! Whoever had said that must also have lived through a time of war. Yes, it seemed a good idea.

  It was Monday evening and Ruby was scraping potato peelings into the scraps bin. The contents were destined for the half dozen or so pigs her father kept in partnership with Joe Long, a long-time friend who had no job as such but survived by his wits. He also had a shotgun with which he helped keep down the local rabbit population. Many a poor family survived on the generosity of Joe Long and his rabbits.

  On straightening she regarded the two flower beds either side of the garden path. Another path divided the flower beds from the rest of the garden where kidney beans trailed from thick foliage like long green fingers and rows of other vegetables had been recently planted by her father in straight lines, a bit like soldiers going into battle. The beans were nearly over but other vegetables were beginning to flourish.

  Dad is planning ahead, thought Ruby, and instinctively knew he was right to do so. The planting of leeks and cabbages was as important as guns, ships and soldiers in uniform.

  Some people were saying that city folk would fare better than country folk. Others said that living in the country was a blessing. As least they had room to grow things. Everyone in the village grew their own vegetables already; if one gardener had too many of one crop, he or she would willingly swap it for something else: cabbage for cauliflower, kidney beans for carrots.

  In the case of her father’s friend Joe Long, he would willingly swap a couple of wood pigeons, rabbit or hare for a bucket of potatoes. He’d even been known to pay for his beer in the Apple Tree or the Three Horseshoes with a dead pheasant. Nobody asked where it had come from: game was plentiful and even private land was fair shooting territory to a man like Joe.

  Ruby frowned at the memory of seeing Joe Long doing a deal with Gareth. Gareth had only been willing to let Joe have two pints in exchange for a rabbit. Her father had called Gareth a mean sod when he’d heard about it. Ruby had turned deaf to the comment, taking Gareth’s side. She’d always refused to hear anything bad about him, but that was when she’d considered herself in love with him. But now?

  Being foolish was bad enough, but there was also the hurt to cope with. She’d wanted things to be very different.

  The sound of the fork screeching against the enamel saucepan made her grit her teeth as she scraped the last of the vegetable peelings into the bin.

  ‘Ruby?’

  Her father emerged from the kitchen, pausing to strike a match on the stout stone of which the house was built. The smell of pipe smoke, puffed from a brown briar she’d bought him for his last birthday, mingled with the crisp smells of evening and the sweetness of autumn fruit.

  Ruby poured water from the butt into the bin, slopping it round before throwing it on to the g
arden, all the while aware of her father eyeing her thoughtfully.

  Another lecture, she thought petulantly. He’d already lectured her on the foolishness of getting involved with older men. Now she was about to get another, a few words of wisdom that she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.

  ‘You know,’ he said after a few puffs on his pipe. ‘I always thought you or your sister might have been married by now. Thought I might also have had a nipper – grandson or granddaughter – by now. How about you and Gareth Stead? Any hope is there?’

  Ruby blushed. This was not at all what she’d expected! Her dad had changed his tune considerably!

  ‘Dad! Me and Gareth are finished with and there’s nobody else in view. Anyway, there’s plenty of time. I’m only twenty.’

  He lowered his eyes as he bit on the end of his pipe. ‘Your mother was only seventeen when we were wed. Had to, of course, your brother being on the way.’

  ‘I’m not exactly an old maid!’ Ruby blurted, once she’d got over the shock of her father being so open with her, though on reflection she’d always known there was only six months between her parents’ marriage and her brother’s birth.

  He shook his head. ‘No. No. Of course you’re not.’

  Ruby put the bin down and wiped her hands down her apron. Talking about marriage and babies after what Gareth Stead had put her through was unsettling. The conversation was crying out to be changed, and it looked as if it was she who must do it.

  She took out a cigarette from the packet of Woodbines in her pocket and lit up. The smoke curled upwards.

  ‘Dad, you’re not angry about me taking Mary’s place at the baking competition are you? You know, entering it in my name and going up to claim the prize?’

  When he looked at her, he lifted both dark eyebrows. He had the same colour eyes as she and Mary, the same enquiring set to his chin, and the same dark hair, though now a little thin on top. ‘Did I say I was?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I know what you were about; if either of you are going to leave home, you’re the one. Though I’ll worry about you, my girl in Bristol or London – baking or not. Frightening places, big cities. Still,’ he said with a heave of his shoulders, ‘might not happen now, not with a war being declared. There’s more important things to do than enter competitions. Baking bread is going to be important and so’s making the most of what we’ve got.’

  Hit with a sudden pang of disappointment, Ruby realised he was right. ‘I might still go away. Women are likely to get called up too. You said so yourself.’

  Stan Sweet knocked the pipe against the wall of the house dislodging the tobacco even though there was plenty left for smoking.

  Ruby was the child who caused him the most concern. She had such a strident way about her that for the moment there was no pleasure in smoking. The taste of fear was in his mouth and nothing could smother it, not even his favourite pipe tobacco.

  ‘I would prefer you not to join up. You know that don’t you.’

  ‘But I might have to,’ she said with a defiant lifting of her chin.

  ‘Not if you were married. How about you and Stead making it up? Is there any chance?’

  Ruby couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He’d been dead set against her relationship with Gareth Stead and had disapproved of her working behind the bar.

  ‘Dad! I’m not going to throw myself at him.’

  ‘You mean he hasn’t asked you. Still, in time …’

  Suddenly she recognised what this was all about. He needed hope, he didn’t want her to go away as Charlie surely would. And in her father’s eyes it was better her married to a man like Gareth Stead and close to home than far away, perhaps near to where a battle was raging.

  But she couldn’t lie. Now, more than ever, she wanted to get away.

  ‘It wasn’t marriage he wanted,’ she said quietly, turned and went back into the kitchen.

  She left him there tapping the stem of his pipe against his palm, his eyes seeking the last rays of the setting sun, streaming salmon pink through the old plum trees at the bottom of the garden.

  Suddenly he felt very lonely and wished with all his heart that Sarah was still alive, but then, life, he’d decided long ago, was often unfair. All you could do was live it and accept the consequences. It didn’t stop him from missing his wife every day.

  His shoulders bathed in the dying warmth of the sun, he wandered the garden paths, eyeing the fruits of his labour without really seeing them. Concern for his children made him forgo his coat hanging on the back of the kitchen door. The evening wasn’t that cold anyway, a lovely September, despite the declaration of war casting its shadow.

  His footsteps took him out of the garden and along the High Street where he turned into Court Road and headed down into the valley. At the bottom of Court Road he crossed the bridge spanning the brook and walked up the steep incline on the other side of the narrow road to St Anne’s church. Once within its grounds he made his way to Sarah’s grave.

  At the sound of fluttering wings, he glanced up to see a bat drop from the church tower, circling silently before returning to its roost. Something scurried through the long grass. Life existed even among the gravestones.

  The air was cool, a slight breeze sending the first fallen leaves rustling through the cornstalks in the field next door and making them rattle like a peel of rusty bells.

  Stan Sweet headed for the quiet spot shaded by a silver birch where his wife was buried. Even though she’d died twenty years before, he still came here to speak to her. In the early years he’d told her about the twins taking their first steps, Mary walking before Ruby. Not that Ruby had been outdone for long, struggling on to her feet, determined not to be left behind.

  He’d also told her about Charlie’s first day at school, how hard the lad had found it to leave his favourite toy at home. The funny thing was that following that first day of being a ‘big boy’, he’d never looked at that old teddy bear again.

  ‘Our Mary is more forward than our Ruby, but all the same, they’re like two peas in a pod,’ he’d said to her. He’d also promised to do all in his power to keep them safe. Now there was going to be a war. What could he tell her now?

  He frowned heavily before bending down on one knee. As he considered what to say, he tugged at a thread of bindweed attempting to climb her headstone. The moment could not be put off forever; he had to tell her the dreadful news.

  ‘There’s going to be another war, Sarah.’

  A nightingale chose that moment to sing sweetly from the branches of a nearby tree.

  Stan tilted his head, almost as though the bird was Sarah and was talking to him.

  ‘I know,’ he said to her imagined response. ‘They told us it was the war to end all wars but it weren’t, me girl. It weren’t. I fear for them, Sarah. I fear for all of them and still hope it comes to nothing, but this German chancellor has taken over half of Europe. I can’t see it being avoided. God knows when it will end. Funny thing is I’ve heard some folk say it’ll be over by Christmas. Now where have we heard that before?’

  He gave a little laugh. In his head he heard her voice expressing her fears and what could be done for the best.

  The nightingale stopped singing, replaced by the harsher note of a nightjar.

  ‘Ahh!’ he said, which meant yes in the local idiom. ‘Our boy favours the navy, not the Royal Navy mind, but the merchant navy seeing as Bristol is so close. He reckons he might get home more often if he joins a ship registered in Bristol. I only hope he’s right. And being a boy, I can’t stop him from doing that. Anyways, the government will insist he signs up for one of the services no doubt. He’s keen to do his bit – just as we all were in the last lot. It’s the girls I’m concerned about. I’ve heard talk that they’re likely to get called up too.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I’m not having that, Sarah. They might take my son off to war, but they’re not having my daughters as well. I won’t have it. Over my dead body.’

  C
HAPTER EIGHT

  Just as everyone had expected, the next round of the baking competition was cancelled.

  ‘… it is felt best to cancel this, at least in the short term …’ it said in the letter that Ruby received.

  ‘I hear the picture houses and theatres are closing too. Shame. I did like going to the pictures,’ Mary said wistfully.

  Ruby was very put out. ‘Why? I don’t understand. Why?’

  ‘In case a bomb drops on one of them and the audience is killed.’

  ‘I don’t need an audience,’ grumbled Ruby. ‘Just the bloody prize.’

  ‘No need to swear,’ said Mary in a chastising tone her father reckoned she’d inherited from her mother. ‘And anyway, just bear in mind who really baked that bread.’

  Ruby fell silent. Being reminded that her sister had actually baked the bread also reminded her that she’d lied about what had happened to the loaf and been found out. The twins might have had an almighty row if it hadn’t been for the outbreak of war. So far it had brought her luck and might yet work to her advantage. She might get called up to work in a munitions factory or even to join the army, the navy or the air force. The prospect excited her.

  Now, though, Ruby was lumbered with the laundry which mainly consisted of bed linen and big white aprons they wore in the bakery.

  Today it was Mary’s turn to serve in the shop out front while her father and brother tended to the last batch of bread, though it wasn’t only bread in the hot oven this morning. Mrs Martin, a farmer’s wife, had brought in a huge leg of pork the night before. No normal oven could have taken such a large haunch of meat, and Stan didn’t mind helping her out, especially at the mention of a bit of pork for himself.

  ‘Old Spot had to go,’ Mrs Martin explained. ‘He was gettin’ on and I’ve got a growing family to feed.’

  In her late fifties, Mrs Martin’s arms were almost as meaty as the pork she’d presented. Busy on the farm, she didn’t get much chance to talk to other people, so when she was out she chatted nineteen to the dozen, never giving anyone else a chance to interrupt. She told them all about her son Ronnie being excused the call up because they needed him on the farm. ‘We left it up to him. He’s a big strong lad and no doubt would have served his country well, but somebody has to feed the troops don’t they?’