Polly's War (8 page)

It was all pure fantasy, born of hopes and dreams and the need to impress a beautiful woman. Belinda took it all in with flattering attention.

‘I’m me own man,’ he declared, rather grandly and somewhat inaccurately.

In view of how well they got on, it seemed natural for Benny to ask to see her again. He’d always been a bit shy around girls, the way they giggled behind their hands, and were only keen on spending his hard earned brass. But this one seemed different, this one wasn’t daft and silly like the rest. She wasn’t some tart on the make. She showed style, had class and probably had smart young officers queuing up to take her out. What if he had embroidered his ambitions a bit, and let his dreams run wild? Wasn’t that the only way to get noticed by a smart lass like Belinda Clarke? He certainly wasn’t going to admit he’d only been offered a job of cleaning mucky old carpets. When she agreed to see him again, he couldn’t believe his luck.

‘When? Tomorrow?’

Her eyes were dancing up at him and Benny felt the blood race through his veins. Yet again he was filled with worry. Was she laughing at him, or did those wonderful peepers naturally behave in that lively fashion, out of sheer happiness. Benny did hope so. He felt dazed, dazzled by the perfect loveliness of her face in exciting and startling contrast to the mischievous rebel he glimpsed beneath.

He walked her to Piccadilly bus station, watched her climb aboard the red and white corporation bus, still bemused by his good fortune. Only as it pulled away did he smack the palm of his hand to his forehead and start to run after it, shouting to her as she clung to the rail on the platform that he didn’t know her address, or even her last name. And they’d arranged no time for their next meeting. ‘Meet me in Heaton Park by the band stand,’ he shouted above the roar of the engine. It was the only decent place he could think of, on the spur of the moment.

She was still laughing as the bus swung round the corner, and when he finally stopped to draw breath, Benny became acutely aware he was standing like a great cart horse in the middle of Portland Street, running the grave risk of being ploughed down by a passing tram who’s driver clanged its bell furiously at him.

And he hadn’t the first idea whether she’d heard him or not.

He turned smartly on his heel and started to walk home. So captivated was he by her, so bemused by his own good fortune at meeting this lovely girl, and so concerned over whether she’d turn up for their date that he quite forgot parking an old woman on an old bench more than an hour before. It wasn’t until he marched through his own front door and saw his sister set the frying pan on the stove and start tossing in slices of black pudding, that he remembered. He stopped dead and swore softly under his breath.

‘What’s wrong? You’ve gone white as a sheet.’

‘I’m in dead lumber, Lucy.’ Thank heaven his mam wasn’t home yet. He turned and raced straight out of the house again, Lucy’s voice echoing after him, yelling to ask if he’d taken leave of his senses. He’d just have to hope Big Flo was still sitting tight on that bench.

His hopes, sadly, were in vain. The bench was empty. The half demented old woman had vanished.

Chapter Five

Polly was furious. Having found the untouched midday meal in the Anderson Shelter with not a sign of Big Flo, she was half demented with worry by the time Benny returned alone from the city centre. Couldn’t he do a simple task like minding one old woman? Didn’t she have enough to worry over without being able to trust her own son? And much more on similar lines, punctuating her words with frequent slaps about his shoulders and upper body which bounced off Benny as if they were made by a fly. She was for calling the police without delay, or for dragging the canal basin at the very least. Minnie Hopkins, who came galloping down the street at the first whiff of trouble, advised caution.

‘Give her till tea time. Her stomach’ll fetch her home by then.’ Even so, the entire street turned out to search for the old lady.

All afternoon they hunted high and low, trailing the length of Deansgate, through St Anne’s Square, along Cross Street, Market Street, even checking all the surface air raid shelters around Piccadilly Gardens in case she’d taken a fancy to one. Then back to Deansgate village and Castlefield where they searched beneath every railway arch, trawled around every likely wharf and tramped over practically every dingy stalk of grass down by the canal basin without seeing hide nor hair of her.
 

It was Lucy who found her, quite close to home, sitting in an air raid shelter of course, on a stretch of wasteland. It was growing dark by this time and nobody could begin to guess how she’d got there or when. Big Flo had her gas mask on, which she always carried in her portmanteau sized handbag, and her only response when Lucy gently scolded her for wandering off and not waiting for Benny, was to tell her that Jerry was sending buzz bombs now.

‘Like a bleedin’ homing pigeon said Lily Gantry, in her usual colourful language.

‘At least she’s nearing the end of the war,’ Lucy said with a wry smile, once they had the old woman safely asleep in her own bed, a warm meal inside her and a hot water bottle at her feet. ‘She might reach VJ Day soon, you never know.’ Mother and daughter laughed, though not unkindly for it wasn’t really a laughing matter.

‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Polly mourned. ‘She’s hardly with us these days, is she?’ Feeling a pang of guilt for leaving her mother-in-law to Benny’s mindless care. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she doesn’t ask for much, does she? All she wants is an Anderson shelter, fitted out with a bed and a gas mask and she’s happy as a bug in a rug. It’s my fault, it is so. I shouldn’t’ve left her.’

‘You’re not to blame,’ Charlie insisted. ‘Benny should’ve had more sense than to take her into town. Mind like a feather pillow, that boy has.’

Polly quickly changed the subject, eager to tell Charlie all about the warehouse she’d found, close to Knott Mill Iron Works and having easy access to Castle Quay. ‘I’ve agreed to take the ground floor, which has plenty of space for the big machines I have in mind. We can just about afford the rent, so long as we all pull together and get the business going pretty smartish.’ Polly thought of the savings she’d kept hoarded away in the bank for just such a day as this when the war came to an end. They weren’t made of brass, as Big Flo would say, but they could manage if they all worked hard.

‘What if I can’t pull my weight? What if these dratted aches and pains of mine won’t go, even when I’m working inside?’

Polly couldn’t bear to think about such a prospect. She’d have him back up St. John Street to see that doctor like a shot. Useless though he’d been the last time, claiming it was nothing more than age creeping up on him, as if Charlie were in his eighties instead of only just over fifty. ‘Then you can sit in a comfy chair in a swanky office and do the paperwork, and won’t that be a relief? You know how I hate doing it.’

Charlie was only too aware that paperwork was something Polly never shunned. She’d sat up night after night making her plans: endlessly going over the estimates for machinery, drawing up lists and costings, yet she always made it sound as if she couldn’t manage without him, as if she were weak and helpless, when all the time she was the strongest woman he knew.
 
But then he wouldn’t have her any other way. Charlie looked at her and loved the way her eyes shone with confidence and optimism for this new venture. He loved the way her head tilted and the impish grin that puckered her lips, the way she brushed back her hair with one languorous gesture. As always it made him want to kiss them, and he wasted no time in doing so.

‘I’m the luckiest man alive and not a day over twenty-five, in my head at least,’ he whispered, leading her upstairs to their private domain.

‘And isn’t it about time you realised that?’

When Benny arrived home the following afternoon, he felt greatly in need of sympathy after failing yet again to find a job or shop premises. Worse, he was suffering from deep disappointment over the fact that he’d waited two long cold hours in the park for Belinda, who hadn’t turned up. She can’t have heard him after all, over the roar of the bus engine and, since he didn’t know where she lived, or even what her last name was, this put Benny in a self-pitying frame of mind. Yet no one seemed in the least interested in his troubles. He could almost feel the family shunning him.

Sean had apparently howled all the way home from the nursery because it was closing the following week. Lucy was almost as distraught, worrying over how she could possibly earn a living if she had no one to care for her son. It was all apparently due to the fact that since husbands had come home from the war, wives could now go back to being mothers instead of factory workers, and child care facilities were no longer considered necessary. But where did that leave her, and others like her?

 
The small boy was now in the throes of a huge tantrum, drumming his heels on the floor in a sound fit to wake the dead, while Sarah Jane wept in sympathy. Polly was struggling to instruct a confused Big Flo on how to pull back an old blue and white cardigan, on the grounds that if she could keep the old woman occupied, she might not wander off again. She’d seemed even more vague since the incident.

Benny looked upon the scene in despair. ‘Its bloody pandemonium in here. Can’t a chap find a bit of peace in his own home? Isn’t somebody going to shut that child up?’

‘Will you mind your language please,’ Polly tutted, casting a nervous glance at Big Flo who, in her better days, would have clipped him round the ears for defying her Methodist morals so blatantly. ‘Let the child be. He’ll shut up when he runs out of steam,’ she finished, in a tone even Benny didn’t dare to argue with. He tried a different tack, by complaining that he was hungry but nobody heard, or troubled to answer if they did.

‘I said I’ve had no tea.’ He addressed this directly to his sister. ‘Or any dinner either for that matter.’

‘You’ll have to get it yourself for once.’

Benny looked appalled, as if she’d asked him to build Blackpool tower in their front parlour. ‘Make it myself?’

Polly set down the ball of wool she was winding with a sigh and got wearily to her feet. ‘We thought you would’ve got something while you were out. I’ll make you some dried scrambled egg.’

Lucy protested. ‘Mam, you’ve done enough. You look fair worn out. He can surely get it himself for once. There’s some cold sausage in the larder.’

Benny felt as if he was still being punished for his mistake over Big Flo. ‘Cold sausage? Dried scrambled egg? Don’t I deserve a proper meal?
I’ve
fought in this war, not
you
?
I’m
the one the Germans have been taking pot shots at.’

Lucy pulled a warmed night-dress over Sarah-Jane’s head, thankfully noticing that at least the arrival of Benny, Sean’s idol, had stopped his screaming and he was listening with interest to the growing argument. ‘Don’t exaggerate. You never went overseas, not like my Tom. You had it soft. You worked in the stores for ages, and the most trouble you had was finding the right size of uniform.’

Benny was incensed by his sister’s casual assessment of his war effort. ‘Stores is a responsible job I’ll have you know, and that were only my first job anyroad. I went on to others, training men to fire machine guns for one. I may not have been sent overseas but there were planes going over all the time, firing at the base.’

‘We’ve had a few bombs dropped on Manchester,’ Lucy hotly protested, determined not to let her brother have it all his own way. Hadn’t they all enough to worry over, without him adding to it. Oh, she could see how it was going to be, now he’d come home for good, arguing the whole time, selfishly thinking he could be waited on hand, foot and finger. Well, he had another think coming.

Benny, embittered by the keenness of his disappointment over Belinda, couldn’t allow his sister to belittle his war career. ‘I was wounded once, in me leg, when the roof of our billet caved in. And you can’t even be bothered get me a bite to eat, you bl-’

Big Flo suddenly lifted her great head and fixed him with a glare. ‘Tha’s been told once. Watch thee language, lad, if tha knows what’s good for thee. Tha’s not too old to have thy mouth washed out wi’ carbolic soap.’

They were so stunned at the old woman’s return to the fighting talk they’d once taken for granted, that they all burst out laughing.

‘Listen to your gran. Doesn’t she talk sense?’

Ashamed now, Benny went meekly to the larder and made himself a sandwich with the cold sausage. Polly placed a brimming mug of scalding tea on the kitchen table before him, and another beside Big Flo. ‘There you are, Ma. You deserve it after sorting that lad o’ mine out.’

But Big Flo shook her head. ‘Nay, I couldn’t face one. I’m feeling a bit peculiar. I reckon I’ll go and have a lie down.’ They all tensed, ready to block the back door when she attempted, as was her wont, to go down the yard back to the shelter. Instead she opened the stair’s door and climbed wearily up to bed. They were all so startled that both Lucy and Polly ran to fill the stone hot water bottle, realising she must indeed feel poorly.

‘Don’t fuss, I’ll be wick as a snig tomorrow,’ she tartly informed Polly as the bottle, carefully wrapped in a flannel cloth, was slid in beside her feet.

Polly expressed doubts on her mother-in-law wriggling like any eel the following morning, no matter how much she might protest to the contrary. ‘You’re all clammy and cold. Couldn’t I just leather our Benny for losing you. I’ll fetch you some Fenning’s Fever Cure, in case you’re getting a temperature., and you’ll stay right here, with your feet up tomorrow and no argument.’