by Pam Weaver
‘He still writes then?’
Barbara looked a bit uncomfortable. ‘They rush from place to place,’ she said, ‘and it’s hard for the mail to get through. I write to him every week and I’m sure he’ll drop me a line when he gets time.’
The waitress came back to clear away their empty plates. ‘Pudding?’
Both girls shook their heads but opted for a cup of tea. ‘Fancy coming to the pictures with me?’ Frankie asked.
‘I’ll have to ask mum,’ Barbara said dully. ‘She needs a bit of help with our Derek. He can be a bit of a handful at times. Now tell me a bit more about this American doctor.’
Thirty
The train was late. They’d set out in the early morning hoping to reach Suffolk by lunch time. The change from Victoria to Euston went well but the Cambridge train was delayed by a troop train. Alan became irritable and agitated. He was already chain smoking and Frankie had a dread that he would suddenly decide he would prefer to go back home. Their destination was a small market town about fourteen miles from Cambridge called Haverhill. They finally arrived just after two and, if she was honest, Frankie was relieved that the journey was over. Alan kept saying he needed a drink but the time of day meant all the pubs would be shut. They had an address and the locals were friendly enough but they struggled with the strong Suffolk accent when they asked for directions.
The house was a Victorian terrace and a middle-aged woman opened the door when they knocked. ‘Oh come in, come in, my dears,’ she cried. ‘Carrie is waiting for you.’
They stepped straight into the sitting room of the cool cottage. The door was open and they saw an attractive young woman sitting at the kitchen table beyond. She had a pale face with neat brown hair rolled at the sides in the fashionable style being adopted all over the country. She was dressed in a plain white blouse with a pretty brooch at the neck and a floral skirt. She rose to greet them. She and Alan lingered over their introductory hand shake, then they all sat. The older woman, Mrs Dale – Carrie’s mother – busied herself with the tea pot. While they made the usual chit-chat about the journey and where they’d come from Carrie pulled a tea towel from a plate of sandwiches in the middle of the table and invited them to help themselves. Frankie was very grateful. She was starving.
They drank tea and ate sandwiches until they were interrupted by the sound of a child crying. Carrie excused herself and left the room. While she was gone, Alan leaned towards her mother. ‘I’ve no wish to offend you, Mrs Dale,’ he began, ‘but Ginger was a very special mate of mine and we made a pact, see? We promised each other if one of us copped it, the other one would look out for his family.’
‘That’s very nice of you, son,’ she said, ‘but there’s no need.’
‘All the same,’ Alan insisted, ‘I promised.’
The door opened and Carrie walked in carrying a little boy. He was a sturdy little fellow with bright ginger curls and a mass of ginger freckles on his cheeks. He rubbed his eyes sleepily. ‘This is Billy,’ she said. ‘Say hello, Billy.’
Alan grinned. ‘Well, I can see he’s Ginger’s all right.’
The little boy struggled to get down, and with one cautious eye on Alan, he reached for his toy box. Frankie was surprised to see her cousin kneel beside the lad and the two of them spent some time lining up his toy cars.
Eventually Carrie said, ‘Can you tell me something about how Ginger died?’
For a second, Frankie froze. How was Alan going to cope with that? She decided he might do better if he spoke to Carrie alone. Alan nodded but before he began, Frankie interrupted. ‘Mrs Dale, I couldn’t help noticing your lovely garden …’
Mrs Dale looked from her daughter to Alan and back again. ‘Shall we take Billy out for a breath of fresh air?’ she suggested.
The garden wasn’t that big but Billy couldn’t wait to get in his pedal car. Frankie and Mrs Dale sat together on an old wooden seat. ‘I’m so glad you came, my dear,’ she said. ‘It’s been very hard for Carrie losing Ginger.’ She jumped up when Billy got one wheel stuck at the edge of the path. ‘She’d known him all of her life,’ Mrs Dale went on as she sat back down. ‘They grew up together; sat next to each other at school. There hadn’t been a day they weren’t with each other until this blessed war came along. She was broken-hearted when we got the telegram.’
‘Alan felt the same,’ Frankie confided. ‘He had a breakdown and was in hospital for some time. I was only a kid when my mother died and I went to live with my aunt, his mother. He’s been like a brother to me and it hurt so much when he seemed to lose his way.’
‘I wasn’t sure when he mentioned helping out,’ said Mrs Dale. ‘We don’t want charity, you know.’
‘I know,’ said Frankie, ‘but I think it would help Alan as much as you.’ Mrs Dale looked as if she was considering the matter. ‘You could always save it for Billy,’ Frankie suggested. ‘Keep it as a little nest egg for later on.’
Mrs. Dale smiled. ‘All right. Then that’s what we’ll do.’
When they went back into the kitchen Alan and Carrie were holding hands over the table. It was obvious they’d both been crying but Frankie and Mrs Dale said nothing.
On the trains back to London and on to Worthing, Alan was very quiet but Frankie could see the visit had had a profound effect on him. He only smoked three cigarettes all the way.
*
When she got back to the farm there was a letter from Doreen on the mantelpiece. ‘By the time you read this I shall be on board ship,’ she wrote. ‘I can’t tell you where but I shall be plotting like mad. It’s wonderful to be a fully-fledged Wren, although I did get teased a lot. I can’t tell you the number of times I was sent to find the keys for Davy Jones’ locker or some red oil for the port lights, but I shan’t be fooled again. When I get some leave we must get together again.’
Frankie smiled to herself. Good old Doreen.
‘Ooh, before I forget, Barbara came round,’ said Aunt Bet. ‘She’ll meet you outside the Odeon at five-thirty tomorrow night.’
*
The last night of her leave had come around all too quickly so it was nice to be spending time with an old friend. She met Barbara outside the cinema and they saw The Magnificent Ambersons, a lavish tale of an American family spanning three generations. It was still early when they came out of the cinema so they went into a fish and chip shop nearby. Sitting on a bench overlooking the barbed-wired beach, they enjoyed their cod and chips out of newspaper and chatted about nothing in particular, although Frankie’s mind drifted back to the film now and then. She wondered what Romare would have made of it.
‘Frankie, I want to tell you something,’ Barbara said as she came back to the bench having chucked the newspaper into a bin. ‘But I have to know that you won’t breathe a word to a living soul.’
‘Of course.’
Barbara took a deep breath. ‘Derek isn’t my brother, he’s my baby.’
Frankie gripped her friend’s hand, which was resting in her lap. ‘I know.’
Barbara’s eyes grew wide. ‘But how? Who told you?’
‘Nobody,’ said Frankie.
‘Then how?’ Barbara repeated. ‘We’ve been so careful.’
‘That time I came to see you,’ said Frankie, ‘when your mum said you’d gone to your auntie’s, I saw the bedroom curtains moving. I guessed you were there.’
Barbara seemed anxious. ‘You didn’t tell anyone, did you?’
Frankie shook her head. ‘No.’
Barbara looked down. ‘Mum said she wanted me to have another chance. She said if I told anyone Derek was mine she’d have the baby adopted.’
‘So she pretended she was the one who was pregnant and that you’d gone away,’ said Frankie.
Barbara nodded. ‘I spent six months hiding in my bedroom.’
‘But it was a pretty wonderful thing to do,’ Frankie remarked.
‘Was it?’ Barbara said darkly.
Frankie looked at her in surprise.
‘O
h Frankie,’ Barbara blurted out. ‘I feel like she’s stolen him from me. I’m not allowed to touch him or play with him in case I give the game away. She won’t let me out at night because she says I can’t be trusted. I’m only here now because she knows I’m with you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Frankie gasped. ‘I had no idea.’
‘I can’t tell anyone because she lied to the authorities as well. Derek’s birth certificate says she’s his mother. If I tell, she’ll go to prison.’
Frankie didn’t know what to say. ‘But you couldn’t support him on your own even if you could put it right.’
‘But he’s my baby!’ Barbara cried desperately. She began to sob. Frankie put her arm around her friend’s shoulders and drew her close. Why was Barbara telling her all this? Did Derek’s birth somehow impact her own family? She thought back to that time when Barbara was going out with Alan before he joined up, and her blood ran cold.
‘Tell me,’ she began hesitantly, ‘is the baby Alan’s?’
‘Of course not,’ Barbara sniffed into her handkerchief. ‘Alan and I were finished long before I fell pregnant.’ She took a gulp of air. ‘Derek is Conrad’s baby.’
Frankie felt a wave of relief. ‘And how does he feel about it? Have you told him?’
‘I’ve written loads of times but like I said, he’s all over the place and you know what the post is like these days.’
Or maybe he doesn’t want to know, Frankie thought to herself. ‘Well, you can’t do much about it until Conrad comes home,’ she said, fully aware that she was offering little comfort.
Barbara sat up and dried her eyes. ‘I just had to tell someone or I’d burst.’
‘Your secret is safe with me,’ said Frankie.
Thirty-One
Winterbourne Whitechurch, Blandford, Dorset, Christmas 1943
The war dragged on right through 1943. There were moments when peace seemed just around the corner but it never came. Frankie, like so many others, heard of friends dying, or being maimed for life and others being taken prisoner. Arlene, the girl who had made them all laugh when she told them she’d confused a man’s penis with his pencil, was killed when her battery took a direct hit and Peggy, the girl who had been so terrified of getting pregnant, left the service because she had to get married!
Frankie kept up her letter writing to Alan but he didn’t reply often. However, she could tell by the tone of his letters that he was feeling a lot more settled. He hadn’t been in trouble at all since they’d taken that trip to Suffolk. Ronald was enjoying his new life as well. He wrote of concerts and long discussions far into the night. He said nothing about his job and she didn’t press him for information. She knew that when he’d gone to Bletchley Park, Ronald had signed the Official Secrets Act and was therefore bound by law not to discuss his work. Barbara wrote every now and then and Frankie tried to be as sympathetic as possible without actually saying anything. She didn’t put it past Mrs Vickers to read her daughter’s letters. Other than that, there was little Frankie could do. Mrs Vickers kept her daughter and grandson as far away from each other as possible and, to add insult to injury, when Barbara’s father, who had escaped from a POW camp, arrived home, he was delighted to have a son at last. Conrad still hadn’t been in touch and Frankie was of the opinion he never would be. The man was a complete rotter but the sad thing was, Barbara was the only one who couldn’t see it.
The letters Frankie looked forward to most were the ones from Romare. They had corresponded regularly since their last meeting and she enjoyed his long, chatty missives. They’d managed a few dates as well. Nothing exciting, but it was so good just to be with him. They went to the pictures in Dover whenever he came down on the train, or to a show in London – a grateful patient paid for the seats – and a couple of times they’d managed a drive around Hastings and Eastbourne when a friend loaned him his car for the day. It always had to be last minute, but that made it all the more fun.
It didn’t take long for Frankie to realise that she was falling in love and she was reasonably sure that Romare felt the same. She counted the days, sometimes the hours, before they would be together again and she made no secret of the fact that she wanted to be with him more. When they were apart, he was never far from her thoughts.
On leave, footloose and fancy-free, Doreen turned up to visit Frankie. The girls in Frankie’s billet made room for her but they had to sneak her in past the landlady. Frankie was now based in the Blandford Forum area. As the troops massed all along the south coast ready for what was called ‘the big push’, she had been moved from Kent, to Poole in Dorset, and now on to Blandford. Her duties as dispatch rider took her as far west as Weymouth and she often escorted huge convoys of lorries from Southampton to places she’d never even heard of.
Doreen and Frankie had a lot of catching up to do and chatted far into the night.
‘There’s a dance at the village hall in Winterbourne Whitechurch tomorrow night,’ Frankie told her. ‘Fancy it?’
‘Rather,’ said Doreen.
It was wonderful to be able to dress up again. So many of her outings were in uniform but on this occasion Frankie got the glad rags out. They set out with a few other girls in an old jeep. The journey was only about five miles but it was freezing. They had their big coats on but the jeep was open to the elements. Still, nobody really cared. The hall was a new one, only finished in 1937, so it was light and airy. When they walked in, the place was heaving with American GIs. There was a small wooden stage at one end of the hall where the locals had made up a seven-piece band. They were brilliant and played all the modern tunes.
Despite the ambience of the place, the atmosphere in the hall was a little tense. It seemed that the white Americans objected to being in the same hall as the black GIs. They were refusing to mix with them and judging by the rude remarks they were making, they held their fellow countrymen in complete contempt. That didn’t bode well with the organisers, probably because of the British sense of fair play and love of the under-dog. Added to that, the black soldiers were more popular with the local girls because they were much better dancers, especially when it came to the jitter-bug. Frankie admired the dance but ducked out of it, making the need to guard her non-alcoholic punch her excuse. On the other hand, Doreen was having a high old time. As Frankie watched her being flung in the air showing a mixture of suspenders and stocking top (oh, where did she get hold of them?) and the occasional glimpse of knicker, she wondered what the leaders of Doreen’s mother’s church would think of her now.
‘Dance?’
Frankie looked up to see the three chevrons of a US staff sergeant on the sleeve of the man in front of her. She accepted his hand and he led her to the dance floor while the band played a more sedate fox trot.
Her partner was a big man with a shaved head on a thick weight lifter’s neck. He had small eyes and large jowls. He was not very good-looking; in fact the only striking thing about him was a ring which he wore on his right hand; a snake with red ruby eyes eating its own tail. He said his name was Lyman Spinks and he came from New Orleans. Hardly letting her get a word in edgeways, he boasted that since being called up, he had risen quickly through the ranks because he was so good at his job. He told her he was in the military police and men feared him. When she managed to speak, she asked him how he liked England. He laughed and criticised the quaint things he’d come across. He hated warm beer, the outside toilets, the old-fashioned bathrooms and the lack of refrigerators. ‘You Britishers,’ he declared, ‘are so backward compared to the United States of America.’
By the time they’d had been together for the required three dances, Frankie had decided she didn’t much like Lyman Spinks. But as they cleared the floor, he followed her and asked her if she wanted a beer.
‘I don’t think you’ll get one in here,’ Frankie said pleasantly. ‘They don’t have a license but there’s a pub just down the street.’
‘What were you drinking then?’
‘The ladies have made
a fruit punch. It’s very nice.’
He left her at the table and went off mumbling about stupid Victorian attitudes. Frankie suppressed a smile. A dark hand and pink palm appeared in front of her and a familiar voice said, ‘May I have this dance, Ma’am?’
Her heart skipped a beat as she looked up into his handsome ebony face with its coal black eyes. ‘Romare!’ she gasped. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
He laughed. ‘It’s a bit of a surprise for me too,’ he said, ‘but when I read in your letter that you were being posted here, I thought I’d surprise you. Dance?’
Lyman was nowhere to be seen. Besides, she didn’t want to dance with him again, so she accepted and placed her hand in his. Romare was gentle and polite, complimenting her on her dress.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been posted to a stately home nearby,’ he said. ‘It’s called Kingston Lacy and it’s being set up as an American hospital.’
‘And don’t you look smart in your uniform,’ she teased. The pair of them laughed with ease.
It was wonderful to have him hold her so close. She could feel his breath on the top of her head and his arm around her waist felt so strong and dependable. When the dance came to an end, he escorted her back to the table where a very angry-looking Lyman Spinks was waiting. As they approached he rose to his feet.
‘What you doing here, boy?’ he demanded. ‘Who said you could dance with my girl?’
Frankie was horrified by the vitriol in his voice. ‘Excuse me,’ she said huffily, ‘but one dance doesn’t make me anybody’s girl.’
‘I went to get you a drink,’ Lyman protested.
‘And for that I’m grateful,’ she said, sitting down, ‘but that doesn’t mean you own me.’
Doreen, hot and sweaty, threw herself into the seat next to Frankie. ‘Phew, that was amazing,’ she cried and, picking up the glass of punch Lyman had brought back for Frankie, she added, ‘Is this for me? Oh thanks. I’m as dry as a biscuit.’ And with that she downed it in one go.