by Joanna Toye
Lily said nothing. She’d been through this herself when Reg had gone missing and Beryl had been through it with Les: it was torture. And she couldn’t get out of her head what Bill had said to her on the day of the wedding. Even if he was safe, what must he have gone through down in the bowels of the ship with his radio equipment, the battle raging all around, the ship rocking, guns and torpedoes being fired?
She had so wanted Sid to herself, but she knew what she had to say.
‘Gladys, listen, you must get a grip on yourself. It’s not good for the baby.’
Gladys howled even louder. Lily took a deep breath.
‘Come home with me – Sid’ll be there. He’s at the Admiralty, he might know more. How about that?’
‘Oh Lily, could I?’ Gladys raised a white, teary face from Lily’s shoulder. ‘I never thought … oh, thank you! Yes, he might!’
‘Let’s get our things,’ said Lily. ‘Jim’ll be waiting.’
On the way home, with Jim trying to buoy Gladys up, Lily hoped she’d done the right thing. Sid had booked his leave especially so he’d be there for their half-day, though with what had happened, it could be a case of ‘all leave cancelled’. But if he wasn’t home, Lily consoled herself, her mum would be there. She’d have something sensible and reassuring to say, even if it was only that everything would look better after a cup of tea, which, in fact, was so often true.
But when they got back, Sid was there, having a smoke in the yard. As soon as they came through the gate, her brother pinched out his cigarette, put it behind his ear and held his arms out wide. Lily rushed into them. He picked her up and whirled her round and she felt immediately light-headed and lighter-hearted.
‘Diamond Lil! How’s my best girl?’ he asked, finally putting her down.
‘Better for seeing you! But look who else is here,’ she added meaningfully.
‘Gladys!’ Sid gave her a hug as well and went to shake Jim’s hand, but before he could, Gladys had burst out: ‘Oh Sid! Do you know any more than has been on the wireless? I’m so worried about Bill!’
Sid put his arm round her again, sounding more sober.
‘Let’s go inside, eh?’ he said.
They all sat round. The inevitable pot of tea had been made; Dora poured and Jim handed out the cups. Gladys put hers straight down again untasted and twisted her hands in her lap.
‘You can imagine, there’s been a bit of a flap on,’ Sid began. ‘I’m lucky to be here at all. If I had booked leave over Christmas, I wouldn’t have got it, it was all hands on deck. But you don’t want to hear about me.’ He leant forward and took Gladys’s hands. ‘He’s all right, Gladys,’ he said, speaking clearly and slowly. ‘There were no casualties on the Jamaica, bar a few bumps and grazes, lads being knocked off their feet by the recoil and a fellow who burned his arm on a boilerplate, but that could have happened any time.’
Gladys was staring blankly.
‘Did you hear that, Gladys? He’s OK!’ Lily repeated. ‘Bill’s safe!’
Gladys crumpled again, her hands to her face. Dora jumped up and put her arms round her.
‘There, love, you cry it out, eh? It’s all right, it’s all right.’
Gladys rocked back and forth, giving out little gasps.
Sid got up. From the pocket of his greatcoat he produced a half-bottle of rum – he’d got quite a taste for it in the Navy. He unscrewed the top and poured a capful into Gladys’s tea.
‘There,’ he said. ‘A nip of the hard stuff for you, Glad.’ He held her cup to her lips. ‘Buck you up a bit.’
Gladys swallowed and spluttered but took another sip. Then she waved the cup away and pulled her hanky out of her sleeve, blowing her nose loudly.
‘I’m sorry,’ she gulped. ‘Making such an exhibition of myself.’
‘Don’t be daft, you were bound to be worried,’ soothed Lily. ‘But you can relax now.’
‘More than relax,’ grinned Sid. ‘There’ll be a medal in this for Bill, and no mistake. Might even be booted up the ranks – it was the wireless and radar boys that managed to work out where the Scharnhorst was, and what direction the attack was going to come from.’
‘My Bill … a medal!’
Gladys looked like crying again, so Jim leapt in, urging her to drink her tea while it was hot.
Gladys gulped it down, then hiccupped and apologised.
‘My fault,’ admitted Sid. ‘It’s the rum.’
‘Must be!’ Laughing now, Gladys covered her mouth as she hiccupped again. ‘I hope it won’t hurt the baby – oh!’
‘Baby? You’re expecting?’ That was Dora.
Gladys nodded, a huge smile on her face.
‘In June. Lily’s known. I was going to tell the rest of you when I saw you over Christmas – but not like this!’
After the excited congratulations and chatter that followed, Sid raised his voice.
‘Oy, you lot, I hadn’t finished! Want some more good news?’
Everyone swivelled their heads back towards him.
‘The good ship Jamaica’s sailing back to Scotland. Should be at Scapa Flow by New Year’s Eve, then in dry dock for a good few weeks to have any battle damage seen to. Bill’s bound to get leave. I’m sure you’ve put it in a letter, Glad, but Lord knows if he’ll have had it. But now you can tell him about the baby in person, how’s that?’
Lily grabbed Gladys’s hands.
‘Gladys! You’ll see him! You can tell him everything!’
About his mother too, she thought – the baby’s grandma.
When at least some of the excitement had died down, Gladys and Dora got straight to practicalities – much of what Gladys would need could be borrowed from Beryl. Jim went out to lock up the hens, and Sid and Lily took the cups out to wash them.
How many hours of her life had she spent in that scullery with her hands in Scrubb’s Cloudy Ammonia, (‘Use sparingly as supplies are restricted!’) Lily wondered. But at the same time, how many good things had happened there: stolen moments between herself and Jim, reunions with Sid and Reg … How many secrets and confessions and declarations had those damp, distempered walls heard? And now at last her chance to find out a bit more from Sid about his secret boyfriend. But Sid knew her too well.
‘His name’s Jerome,’ he said, taking the cups and saucers from the tray and placing them by the sink for Lily to wash. ‘He’s twenty-four, tall, dark, handsome of course …’
‘Sid! Jerome?’
‘Well, that’s what you were going to ask, isn’t it?’ Having made his contribution to the washing up, Sid lounged against the draining board. ‘Oh, and he’s American.’
Lily blinked.
‘American!’
‘Well don’t say it like he’s from Mars! Yes, American, serving in their Air Force.’
‘Not another pilot?’ Her heart flipped. Sid couldn’t go through what had happened with Anthony all over again and she wasn’t sure she could either.
‘Don’t worry,’ Sid grinned. ‘Well, not so much. He’s ground crew. Maintenance.’
‘That’s something.’
Air Force bases were a natural target, but ground crew had to be safer than anyone up in the skies.
‘He’s based out East Anglia way, but we met in London,’ Sid went on. ‘The Trocadero in Piccadilly’s got a … well, a special bar for blokes like us. Talk about eyes meeting across a crowded room, Lil. I knew he was the one.’
‘Oh Sid!’
It still made Lily feel slightly uncomfortable to hear her brother talk this way, but she told herself it was just as if he’d been talking about meeting a girl. It was as natural as that to Sid.
‘Anyway, it’s been over six months now,’ Sid continued. ‘We seem to get along. So … well, looks like it might be for keeps.’
‘As long as he’s here.’
‘No, Lil. Beyond that. We’ve talked about it. In time, if I can get the documentation and everything, I want to move over to the States to be with him.’
&nbs
p; Lily gasped.
‘You’d leave England for him?’
‘In a heartbeat,’ Sid answered simply, as Lily stared, still reeling. Then he grinned. ‘I didn’t tell you the best, did I? He’s from the West Coast, Hollywood. He’s in films.’
‘An actor?’ squealed Lily. Sid had always been a keen film fan. ‘Would I know him? Is he famous?’
‘Not yet,’ laughed Sid. ‘But he might be, one day, when he’s picking up the Oscar for Best Lighting Director. He’s a lowly sparks at the moment – electrician’s mate – like I’m a lowly clerk, but – well, you’ve got to believe you can make it, haven’t you? You’ve got to believe in something.’
The cups were washed and draining now. Sid handed her the threadbare towel to dry her hands. No wonder Hollywood was more appealing than Hinton!
‘And you?’ he asked as she hung it up carefully to dry. ‘You and Jim made any progress? I’ll take that as a “no”,’ he added when she rolled her eyes.
‘I don’t know, Sid. He seems to think we can jog along like this for ever. There’s no one else I’m interested in, and I’m sure there isn’t for him, either, so I don’t understand what’s holding him back. I’m not saying I’m desperate to get married tomorrow, far from it, but—’
‘You’d still like to be asked?’
Sid grinned sympathetically but Lily sighed.
‘I’d just like to know where I stand! I’m thinking of joining up next year, volunteering the minute I can!’
‘Blimey, Lil, that’s a bit extreme!’ Sid tucked a lock of hair that had escaped its comb in her outburst gently behind her ear. ‘Not that you wouldn’t be an asset, I’m sure. Look, Sis, I hate to see you like this. Do you want me to have a chat, man-to-man?’
‘No!’ hissed Lily as the back door opened and Jim came in, three eggs in his hand.
‘Mother’s meeting?’ he asked, putting them in a dish. ‘I’d better walk Gladys home before tea, if she’s not too wobbly after that rum you plied her with, Sid.’
Lily was feeling pretty wobbly herself, what with the announcement of Sid’s future plans and the sorry lack of them for herself and Jim, but she nodded and smiled. This was the Jim she knew and loved, kind, thoughtful, gentlemanly. A bit too gentlemanly, sometimes. But she kissed him anyway.
‘Don’t be long,’ she said.
Chapter 36
It was eight o’clock. On the wireless, Joe Loss and his orchestra were playing. Humming along, Dora was re-reading the Christmas cards and the letter that had come with the one signed, for the first time, ‘with love from Reg and Gwenda’. Sid was trying to inveigle Lily and Jim into a game called Crown and Anchor.
‘Been played in the Navy since Nelson was a lad,’ he grinned. ‘Three dice and six symbols on a bit of paper, the four playing card suits plus the crown and the anchor – you can chalk ’em on the deck if you haven’t got any paper. But it’s a betting game, see, so if one of your officer class comes by, you grab the dice, screw up the paper or scrub out the symbols and you’re all present and correct. Shall we get set up?’
He was taking the dice out of a little pouch as he spoke, but Jim got to his feet and pulled Lily to hers.
‘Not just now, thanks,’ he said, and to Lily: ‘Let’s get some fresh air.’
‘Going out?’ Sid looked up hopefully. ‘Pub?’
‘No, only out the back.’
‘Well, put your coats on! You’ll freeze!’
That was Dora, of course.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Jim. ‘I’ll keep her warm.’
He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and handed it to Lily. As they stepped out into the yard, he helped her to put it on. It was far too big: the sleeves hung down half over her hands but it was heavy, and warm from being by the fire, and she pulled it round her.
‘Lots of stars,’ she said, looking up.
There were a few thin ribbons of cloud, too, on the horizon, and a half-moon which seemed to pulse with light.
‘Going to make a wish?’ asked Jim.
‘Do I only get one? That might be difficult.’
What would she wish for most of all? An end to the war? Or an end to the uncertainty between her and Jim? One was patriotic, the other was personal. What a choice.
Jim smiled down at her.
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Feel in the pocket. Right-hand side. There’s something in there for you.’
‘Another present?’
‘Sort of.’
Lily’s heart did a skip-and-jump, leap-and-tumble. After all her fretting, was this it? A ring? But when she touched the outside of the pocket she could tell at once that whatever it was, it wasn’t a ring box – quite the wrong shape and feel. She put her hand inside and pulled out, slightly squashed, a cracker. Of all things …
‘The last cracker?’
Sid had brought them to pull at tea time, posh ones from Fortnum and Mason’s, a shop he said would make Marlow’s look like Woolworth’s. There’d been six in the box, but typical Sid, he’d palled up with a father and son on the train and couldn’t resist pulling one of them with the lad. The little tin racing car that had fallen out had kept both of them amused for the rest of the journey.
‘I asked Sid if I could have it,’ Jim said now. ‘Well, shall we pull it?’
‘I suppose we’d better.’
They each took an end and pulled – Jim not trying terribly hard, she felt. Sure enough, the cracker broke with a feeble snap and Lily had the bigger half.
‘What have you got?’ Jim asked.
Lily took out the paper crown and the motto, then tipped the shiny paper tube into her hand. It was a ring! A narrow silvery band with a glittery stone.
‘It’s not real,’ said Jim quickly.
Lily was turning it this way and that in the moonlight.
‘I can see that!’
‘But—’
Jim took it from her and held it up between them.
‘I can’t say it’s an engagement ring, Lily,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I’d dare choose you one, anyway, when you always have such decided ideas! But it’s … it’s a promise ring, Lily, a statement of intent. Will you put it on?’
Smiling and shaking her head at the absurdity of it, Lily held out her left hand and Jim slid the ring onto her finger.
‘I’m sorry it’s not more,’ he said. ‘I’m still saving up for the real thing. But will it do for now?’ When she didn’t reply, he added ‘Look, you know I love you. I want us to be together forever. But you needn’t think I’m trying to tie you down. I don’t know what’s ahead next year—’
‘None of us does.’
‘Well … there are some things you can work out.’
‘Can you? How?’
He let go of her hands and reached up to take off his glasses. He tucked them in the jacket’s breast pocket and Lily felt a little shiver go through her as his hand rested there. She was the only person who ever saw him without his glasses, and he looked so different without them – open, vulnerable, exposed. But his eyes could lock straight onto hers with nothing between them.
‘We walk home together every night, don’t we?’ he said. ‘Most nights anyway. I’ve seen how you look at the posters. The ATS ones that say “They can’t get on without us”. And the new one, the black and red – “Nazi surrender draws nearer every time a woman joins the ATS”. That’s a powerful message.’
Lily said nothing. She hadn’t thought it was that obvious.
‘I do realise,’ he went on, ‘that next year you’ll be old enough to join up – or volunteer beforehand. If you wanted to do that, I wouldn’t try to hold you back.’
‘I wouldn’t let you!’ she shot back.
‘No.’ His mouth twisted into a smile. ‘I didn’t think you would.’
‘I have been thinking about it,’ Lily admitted. ‘But even before – even before just now, Jim, I’d be so torn about leaving Marlow’s – leaving here, leaving everyone, leaving you. And’ – this was a new
thought, since the news about the Scharnhorst – ‘it’s a decision I might not have to take. The war could be over next year. It’s all going our way.’
‘At the moment.’
Lily nodded. You could never be sure. Beryl had thought the war would be over by Christmas. But plenty of people had expected it to be over by Christmas 1939.
‘Oh Jim,’ she said, taking his hands. ‘Why didn’t you say any of this earlier?’
All the months of uncertainty …
‘I don’t know,’ he said simply. ‘I should have. But I thought you knew.’
‘I did know!’ cried Lily. ‘But it didn’t stop me wondering!’
‘Why didn’t you say something, then?’ he challenged.
‘I was waiting.’ Lily suppressed a smile. ‘I had a plan. Never mind the ATS, next year’s a leap year. Had you worked that out too?’
The alarm on Jim’s face showed her he hadn’t.
‘Hah, that’s got you worried!’ But she was laughing. ‘What a pair we are!’
Jim smiled too.
‘I know. Maybe we deserve each other.’
‘I’m afraid I think we do.’
He drew her towards him and kissed her. Lily gave herself up to the moment – a moment which went on longer than most moments do – until there was a stagey cough from the back door. Sid! They pulled apart.
‘Sorry to interrupt the show.’ Sid’s voice was amused. ‘But Mum’s convinced you’ll catch your deaths of cold.’
‘We won’t! Come here, Sid!’ cried Lily. ‘And look at my ring!’
‘What?’ A speeding bullet couldn’t have crossed the yard more quickly. ‘You two haven’t gone and—’
‘No, we haven’t,’ Lily smiled. ‘But Jim says it’s a statement of intent.’
Sid took her hand and burst out laughing as he inspected the tawdry offering.
‘Blimey, Jim, you know how to treat a girl!’ he mocked. ‘So that’s why you wanted the last cracker!’
‘It said on the box,’ explained Jim, ‘that the novelties included a ring. As no one had got it earlier and I thought it was about time I made my intentions clear …’
‘You’ve got style, I’ll give you that,’ grinned Sid. ‘Or do I mean nerve? Knowing my sister, I’m surprised she didn’t land one on you.’