Wartime with the Cornish Girls

by Betty Walker

‘These soldiers are like bleedin’ camels,’ Alice moaned, sloshing another ladleful into a glass, a small amount of sticky liquid pooling on the tablecloth beneath. ‘I can’t ladle this stuff as fast as they’re drinking it!’

  Eva laughed at her expression. ‘Just keep breathing. I’m sure your aunt will be finished helping Hazel on the door soon enough. Then she’ll be here to help you.’

  ‘Oh Gawd!’

  The band was playing a jaunty tune now. Eva looked about the packed hall, smiling. A small dance area had been cleared in front of the raised platform and a few couples were already whirling about.

  Her feet began to tap. The band was playing. People were dancing. Everyone seemed flushed and happy. For a few golden moments, the restrictions and fear of the war had been forgotten.

  This was precisely why she had wanted to hold a dance.

  Close beside her, Rex was also surveying the room. His gaze moved over the dancing couples, then turned to light on her face. ‘Well done,’ he said softly.

  ‘It does seem like a success.’

  ‘Hard work though. All this for a dance?’

  ‘I like dancing.’

  His eyes flickered, as though registering her wistful tone. Then he unfastened Eva’s pinny and dropped it behind the refreshments table, much to her surprise.

  ‘Come on,’ Rex said peremptorily, holding out a hand.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Could I tempt you to a dance, Miss Ryder?’

  Eva bit her lip. It was indeed a temptation. She had not intended to dance this early on in the evening’s proceedings. There were still so many things to be done in the kitchen. Food in the oven. And she had left Lily alone there, without instructions.

  ‘But the mock sausage rolls—’

  ‘Hang them!’

  ‘Oh!’ She was taken aback by his stern, no-nonsense tone, but rather liked it. Better a backbone than none, she always thought. Automatically, her hand found his, and she let him lead her to the dance floor. ‘I suppose one dance won’t hurt.’

  She was still suspicious of Rex. But the dance hall tune had wormed its way into her ear, and she wanted to dance too much to care. Besides, there wasn’t much he could do to her in front of all these people. And goodness, she thought a few minutes later, breathless and smiling, this man could dance!

  The professor was surprisingly light-footed, she discovered. When his muscular arm wasn’t about her waist, it was spinning her round or turning her back towards him with consummate ease. And he avoided the other couples without difficulty, making the dance a delight rather than a series of embarrassing collisions, as was often the case with some partners.

  And every time he smiled, meeting her eyes, she smiled at him in return. She didn’t mean to. Didn’t want to, in fact. There was still too much she didn’t know about this man.

  But whenever their hands met, or their bodies brushed in the dance, she kept thinking of the kiss they’d shared on the clifftop, its warm, dangerous excitement, and how it had fizzed inside her for hours afterwards. The way she had secretly wished it could go on forever.

  Surely she couldn’t be falling in love with him?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  To a cheer of recognition, the band swung into ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’, and Hazel’s feet could not help tapping to its fast, infectious beat.

  ‘That’s the last of them, Miss,’ the jovial sergeant said as he squeezed through the hall door and began to close it. ‘Happen you wouldn’t have got many more folk inside, anyway.’

  Hazel, looking up from the table where she’d been taking money, could well believe it. The shilling she’d been charging on the door would go towards church funds, as Eva had promised the Reverend Clewson. Nonetheless, her small takings tin was bulging with shiny coins, and the hall was thick with people.

  ‘Look at ’em all dancing now.’ The sergeant winked at her. ‘You and the other ladies must be right proud of yourselves.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hazel said, forcing a smile for his sake.

  She was proud of what they had achieved, of course. Deeply proud. Their evening of dancing had turned out to be a huge success. But how to explain why she was not glowing with happiness?

  Her husband was dead, and her young son had enlisted, and might soon join his father in a foreign grave. She had not seen Charlie since he had charged out of the house, his face dark with turmoil and confusion. Poor boy, he must be devastated, having defied her by joining up and then losing his father before he could even reach the continent.

  ‘Hang on!’ a familiar voice called, and the sergeant looked round in surprise as somebody shoved the hall door open again.

  It was George Cotterill, standing breathless on the threshold in a tweed jacket and muddy boots.

  His eyes met hers.

  Hazel sucked in her breath, her heart thumping in guilt and confusion.

  The last thing she could think about right now was romance, and so she’d told him when she went up to Eastern House after receiving that awful telegram. Bertie might not have been the world’s best spouse, but he had died for his country and she owed him a decent period of mourning.

  To her relief, George had understood and kept his distance. But she knew his feelings towards her hadn’t changed. And nor had hers towards him.

  All the same, it wasn’t proper.

  ‘Room for a couple more?’ George asked a little roughly, and stepped into the hall, dragging somebody behind him by the collar.

  Hazel stood up jerkily, nearly knocking her takings tin flying. ‘Charlie!’ she gasped, staring wide-eyed at her errant son. ‘I can’t believe it!’ George had promised to keep an eye out for the boy. But she hadn’t imagined he would have time to search for him, not with all his other duties at the listening post. ‘Oh, George … You found him for me.’

  George gave a sharp nod, and pushed Charlie forwards. ‘Go to your mother, boy. Remember what we agreed. You owe her an apology.’

  Her son looked back at her, sullen and red-eyed, and then muttered, ‘Sorry, Mum,’ before hanging his head.

  She hugged him tightly, and to her surprise Charlie didn’t pull away. It was such a relief to feel him in her arms, she could have wept, but somehow controlled the urge. She knew how her son hated it when she cried.

  ‘Charlie, dearest! You gave me such a turn, running away like that. I thought my heart would burst. Please don’t ever do that to me again, all right?’ The boy said nothing, but she could feel him shaking. She peered suspiciously at George over his head, guessing he must have read Charlie the riot act on the way to the hall. But at least he had found her son. ‘Where was he?’

  ‘On his way to Penzance with a friend.’

  ‘What friend?’ She took Charlie by the shoulders, though he was taller than her these days, and shook him slightly. He pulled away, still sullen. ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Clive Derricks. He’s joined up too like Louis did,’ Charlie admitted reluctantly, not meeting her eyes. ‘We were walking into Penzance to find lodgings until our call-up date.’

  She knew Clive, a thin, pale, freckly boy of eighteen. Old enough to enlist legally, but still wet behind the ears, like her own son. His parents must be frantic too, she thought with a sudden rush of sympathy. ‘You young idiots, going to war at your age … Why, you’re not even old enough to shave!’

  ‘Don’t fret yourself,’ George told her, and now Charlie turned to glare at him with real dislike. ‘I had a word with the enlisting sergeant. Told him how Charlie had doctored his identity papers to join up too young. He scratched Charlie from the list.’

  Amazed, Hazel stared at her boss, speechless with gratitude. ‘You’re not making that up? Charlie’s not enlisted anymore?’

  ‘He’s a free man,’ George agreed, and ruffled the lad’s head, though Charlie shot him a violent look, as though he wanted to take a pop at him. ‘Now let’s hope the war’s over before he gets old enough to put his name down for real.’

  She did not know what to say. Her he
art felt twice its normal size as she took in what he’d said. Charlie was no longer going to war? It seemed too good to be true.

  But one glance at her son’s face told her the truth.

  ‘This is for the best,’ she told him, on the brink of tears, her voice indistinct, and she gave him another compulsive hug. ‘You’ve just lost your dad. Last thing he’d have wanted is for you to be rushing off to foreign parts without even giving him a proper send-off.’ She paused, scouring his pale face. He was watching some of the girls carrying platters of food to the refreshments table, a sudden yearning in his face. ‘When did you last eat?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Charlie gave a careless shrug, as though not interested in such boring stuff as food, but she was not fooled.

  There were tears in his eyes. And he looked secretly relieved rather than angry. Perhaps the reality of enlisting had finally hit home after he learned of his dad’s passing. Before that news, it had probably seemed more like an adventure. Now, he understood the true cost of war a little better.

  Hazel looked about for her helper on the door, but Violet had disappeared. Then she recalled that, a few minutes ago, she’d muttered something like ‘Be back in a jiffy,’ and slipped away into the crowd.

  ‘Go and ask Miss Ryder if you can have a sandwich or two in return for washing up,’ she told the boy, giving him a little shove towards the kitchen. ‘And mind you watch your manners, you hear?’

  ‘Washing up?’ Charlie looked horrified.

  ‘Do what your mother says, boy,’ George said, not unkindly, and her son gave him a sharp look, but then made a face and sloped off in search of food.

  Definitely not as angry and disappointed as he would like them to think, she decided with a profound sense of relief, watching him weave in and out of the noisy crowd. She only wished it had not taken his father’s death to make her son see sense.

  Hazel fastened the metal lid carefully on her tin of takings. ‘There,’ she said, and put the tin into the drawer under the table, locked it and pocketed the key. ‘I doubt there’s room for anyone else, anyway.’

  ‘I have to hand it to you, Hazel, you’ve worked a minor miracle here.’ George was taking in the busy hall, his eyebrows raised almost to his fringe. She enjoyed the way he used her Christian name for once, though he didn’t seem to have done so deliberately. ‘I had no idea so many would come.’ He had to raise his voice as the band swung into a loud, fast number that had even Hazel’s feet tapping. People crowded onto the tiny area set aside for dancing, and the noise level rose steeply. ‘Good grief, looks like everyone’s dancing too! I hope the floor doesn’t collapse.’

  Two ladies she recognised from the local Women’s Institute came out of the cloakroom beside them, heading for the dance floor too, and they moved aside automatically.

  Suddenly she was standing right beside George.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For bringing Charlie back to me, I mean.’

  ‘Honestly, there’s no need.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d have done if he’d managed to go to war.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s just a boy!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If I’d lost him too, I’d probably have run mad.’

  ‘I know.’ George ran a hand through his hair, looking everywhere but at her. ‘That’s why I did it, love. I couldn’t bear to see you suffering.’

  Love.

  Had he really just called her love?

  Such a tiny word, and yet it changed everything.

  It made her feel cared for.

  Loved.

  As though they were lovers.

  He had called her ‘love’ once before, she thought wildly. One summer, when she was about fourteen, a bunch of kids from Porthcurno had travelled on the bus into Penzance, to the picture house there, and she’d gone with them. It had been a grand adventure, and she had curled her hair specially the night before, copying what her mother did. But on the way back from the pictures, it had started to rain and her hair-do had started to wilt. She’d not been wearing a coat, so George had taken off his jacket and held it over her head, saying, ‘There, love.’ Nobody else had heard at the time, and she had not known what to think. Except that he must be sweet on her, which was what her friends had said later, giggling, when she told them about it. But he had not asked her out.

  Then she remembered the telegram. Bertie’s full name and rank typed there, in stark letters. Her wordless shock. The way Charlie had fled the house, distraught.

  And the child she was carrying.

  Suddenly, Hazel couldn’t seem to breathe. Her face was flushed, her chest heaving. ‘I’m sorry, I …’ Her head was swimming. ‘It’s so hot in here. I feel … dizzy!’

  She slipped past him and out of the hall, desperate for fresh air.

  George followed her. ‘Hazel?’ He sounded concerned. ‘What is it? Are you unwell? Please wait.’

  To her relief, it was cooler outside. The sun was setting over towards the west, casting a golden syrupy glow over everything. She could hear music echoing across the valley through the big open windows of the hall.

  She stopped and took a deep breath, looking out over the familiar Cornish landscape. ‘That’s better. I just need a minute.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Hazel wrapped her arms about herself, shivering despite the warmth of the evening. She kept thinking about her wedding. It had been a perfect summer’s day like this one. They had married because of Charlie. But that had been their secret, hers and Bertie’s, and not something she cared to share with George, however she felt about him. And now I’m carrying Bertie’s child again, she reminded herself.

  ‘Hazel—’

  ‘Please, don’t.’ She spun around, shaking her head at the look on his face. ‘I know you have feelings for me. But I’m a widow, George. And he’s only been gone five minutes.’

  ‘I’m willing to wait.’

  ‘I have Charlie to think of. You may be waiting a long time.’ Hazel raised her chin defiantly, pushing away the temptation to tell him about the baby. ‘I know what you think, but … Bertie wasn’t a bad man.’

  ‘Only a bad husband?’

  Hazel met his eyes, and saw the understanding in them. She bit down hard on her lip, and wrenched her gaze away. She couldn’t stay there another minute or she would betray how much she loved him. But she couldn’t go back inside either. She was crying, a salt tear rolling down her cheek and into the corner of her mouth, and she couldn’t risk Charlie seeing her like this.

  Hurriedly, she walked away a few steps, turning instinctively towards the ocean, and heard George follow her again.

  She stared out across the milky ocean. The Atlantic was so huge; her problems had always seemed tiny in comparison with its vastness. Some days early in her marriage, when Bertie had raised his hand to her in anger, she had run from the house in tears and stumbled cross-country to the cliffs, to stare down at the sea, losing her pain in the churning crash of the tide against rocks.

  George wasn’t Bertie though, and she was no longer that frightened young woman who had not known where to turn, faced with her husband’s brutality.

  He also didn’t know that she was pregnant with Bertie’s child. But once he did, she doubted he would be quite so keen to rekindle the love they had felt as teenagers. This was all hopeless and she knew it.

  A car was coming their way, somewhere in the distance. She tensed, listening to the engine. Not wanting anyone to see her out here with George, she turned swiftly off the road and slipped through a gate into a wooded area.

  To her surprise, George came after her into the trees, always a few steps behind her.

  The car passed on the road, slowing to a halt as it approached the hall. More people wanting to dance and have a good time before night fell and lights-out began, she guessed. She wasn’t there to take their entrance shilling. But perhaps Violet would have found her way back to the front desk by now.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, George?’ she asked we
arily, turning to face him. ‘Why are you still following me?’

  ‘I’m making sure you don’t get yourself in trouble.’

  ‘I’m already in trouble,’ she admitted, unable to conceal her despair any longer, and saw his gaze flash down to where her hand was splayed across the slight swell of her belly. Not that anything was showing yet. But she was constantly aware of that tiny life inside, Bertie’s child, who would be born now without a father, without ever having known the man who had given him or her life.

  George sucked in a breath, staring. ‘You’re pregnant?’

  She gave a little moan. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. Please don’t turn me off from the job.’ She entreated him with her eyes. ‘I need the money.’

  ‘Of course not. But I had no idea. My God …’ His face was pale, his voice hoarse. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to have his baby. What else can I do?’

  ‘Hazel.’ He took a quick step towards her, and she backed away under the low-hanging branches, shaking her head in instinctive denial.

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  He made a noise under his breath and ran a hand through his hair again, his look frustrated. ‘I shouldn’t, I know,’ George said flatly, ‘but I can’t help it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t what?’

  ‘Want to kiss you again,’ he told her. He came towards her again, and this time Hazel found she couldn’t walk away.

  This was wrong, she kept thinking. Yet somehow nothing had ever made as much sense to her as the thought of George Cotterill kissing her. The last time had been amazing, despite the guilt she’d felt that Charlie had seen them together and nearly come to blows with George. But she couldn’t pretend she had not been thinking about it ever since, and secretly wondering if he would ever repeat that tender, loving kiss.

  Bertie had never kissed her like that.

  She had been holding her breath, Hazel realised, and abruptly exhaled. ‘I’m not sorry,’ she blurted out. ‘I’m not sorry he’s dead.’

  He stopped, his face inches from hers, and their eyes met.

  Her heart was thudding wildly. The relief of that admission was overwhelming. Bertie had been her husband and she ought to mourn him. And she had tried. Neighbours had been dropping by the cottage and expressing their sympathies ever since that telegram arrived, and she had told them what they expected to hear. That she was devastated and bereft and all those other painful emotions a young war widow ought to feel.