A Distant Dream (26 page)

The little boy enjoyed his bath, especially as May let him splash about and played with him. Afterwards she took him downstairs, where her father got down on the floor and let him ride on his back, then May gave him some warm milk, read him several stories and tucked him into bed.

It was a blissfully silent night. Hitler had given London a break this past week, and long may it continue, she thought, though she guessed it wouldn’t. There was a long way to go before this awful war was over. Because Joe was in unfamiliar surroundings, May sat with him until he dozed off, feeling enormously privileged to have this time with him on her own. She hoped Betty was enjoying the film as much as she herself was enjoying looking after her son.

This was more like it, thought Betty, looking around at the crowds of people lining the dance floor at the Hammersmith Palais, a pall of smoke hovering over everything and the smell of Evening in Paris perfume creating a delicious hint of sin. This was where all the fun was. Blow the flicks. She wasn’t going to waste a night out sitting in some cinema and not speaking to a soul. She’d planned this all along but knew that May wouldn’t look after Joe if she’d told her the truth, so a little creativity had been needed.

It was the music and the dancing she wanted; the sheer glamour of it that she’d missed by getting pregnant at such a young age. If this involved a little harmless flirtation along the way, so what; she was entitled to let her hair down once in a while as a change from the boredom of looking after a child all day.

How she had changed, she thought. At one time she wouldn’t have dared to come to a place like this on her own. Now she positively revelled in her freedom. There was enough competition here already without her bringing more along with her.

The women she’d seen so far all seemed to look far more glamorous than she did. As a mother living on army pay, she couldn’t afford much in the way of new clothes or make-up. But she thought she looked quite presentable in a white blouse and dark skirt and a smidgen of lipstick she had left in a tube she’d bought from Woolworth’s ages ago. Her biggest asset was her figure, which she knew was good.

All those gorgeous men in uniform; how smart they looked and how ardently she hoped one of them would ask her to dance when the music started. The band struck up with ‘In the Mood’ and her stomach lurched nervously. Supposing no one came over to her and she was a wallflower? Oh why had she put herself through this?

But then a deep voice said, ‘May I have this dance please?’ and she found herself looking into the smiling face of a soldier with dark brown eyes.

‘Certainly,’ she said with a polite grin and allowed herself to be whisked off for a quickstep, excited by the sheer fun of this new adventure.

‘So how was he?’ asked Betty when she collected Joe the next morning after breakfast.

‘Good as gold, no problems at all,’ replied May. ‘I thoroughly enjoyed having him and he seemed happy enough to be here. How did you enjoy your night off?’

‘Well . . . I missed Joe, of course,’ she said carefully. ‘But it felt good to get out of the house.’

‘What was the film like?’ enquired May.

‘Not bad,’ she replied.

‘Did they have the organ?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘No sing-song, though, I suppose, as there wasn’t a raid,’ assumed May.

Betty shook her head, thanking her lucky stars that May had inadvertently shown her the way through her web of lies. ‘No, no sing-song,’ she said.

‘I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,’ said May warmly. ‘The break will have done you good.’

‘As it was such a success, maybe we can do it again,’ suggested Betty eagerly.

‘Yeah, why not,’ said May, seeing no harm in a night at the pictures for her friend.

‘Next week maybe?’

‘Fine with me,’ said May. She had been finding that the days seemed depressingly long and gave her too much time to be sad now that Doug wasn’t around. Looking after Joe was something to look forward to. ‘I’d love to have him.’

‘Good, that’s settled then,’ said Betty, beaming and putting her son’s outdoor clothes on him. ‘I’ll get off home now and leave you to go to work.’

The air raids continued, though not every night. Sometimes they came, other times they didn’t. There was no reliable way of predicting except perhaps that the bombers favoured clear nights. Whilst it wasn’t possible for everyone to take the raids in their stride, most people did learn to accept them and try to carry on regardless, which continued to be something of a national obsession.

Wednesday half-day closing became the highlight of May’s week, because that was when she had Joe to stay. If there was a raid, they took him into the shelter and he usually slept through the whole thing, sometimes waking when they carried him back into the house. He was too little to realise the seriousness of what was going on around him, and was so used to the noise of the air raids that it was normal to him.

Betty didn’t seem to mind being out during a raid, so the arrangement became regular. May did worry about her, of course, but being afraid was such a part of life now that she lived from day to day, glad to have survived each raid as it came and trying not to worry about the next one.

One thing that did concern most women, though, especially married ones, as the festive season approached, was how on earth they were going to provide a happy Christmas with food being in such short supply.

Ideas and recipes were keenly exchanged at the Pavilion. Someone had made a Christmas pudding with grated apple, chopped prunes and carrot to replace the missing dried fruit, someone else had a way of making icing for the Christmas cake using dried milk among other unusual ingredients, and most people had been putting tinned fruit away since the autumn.

‘It’s the kiddies I feel sorry for,’ said one customer. ‘What isn’t rationed is hard to come by or very expensive.’

‘You’re telling me,’ said a woman in a turban. ‘I queued up for two hours the other day for some Dinky cars for my little boy but they only let me have one car and one lorry after all that waiting.’

‘Well I’m going to the West End looking for toys and sweets and I’m not coming home till I’ve got some of each,’ said another customer. ‘I’ll queue for as long as it takes.’

‘John Lewis have only a fraction of the toys that they used to have,’ mentioned someone. ‘Their toy department is tiny compared to the size it used to be before the war.’

‘I think the government should put sweets on ration,’ declared the woman in the turban.

‘It would certainly be fairer,’ agreed another. ‘And much better than not being able to get any at all because as soon as the shops get them in they sell out.’

There was general agreement about that.

‘One thing is for sure,’ said one woman. ‘The kids might not have as much stuff as usual but they will have something to unwrap on Christmas morning and a full stocking even if we have to make everything ourselves. The war isn’t going to wreck Christmas for the little ones.’

There was an enthusiastic roar of agreement.

Behind the counter, weighing up a customer’s cheese ration, May was cheered by the positive attitude of people in general. She herself had already managed to get a clockwork tank from the range of military toys on sale and was knitting a teddy bear with the wool from one of her old jumpers. Joe was one little boy who would be smiling on Christmas Day.

A few days later, out doing her paper round in the early morning, all thoughts of the preparations for Christmas were pushed to the back of May’s mind by the brutal reality of war. A couple of houses in a row of terraces on her round had been completely demolished during last night’s raid and the rubble was still smoking. It wasn’t yet light but she could see enough to know that it would have been fatal for anyone inside, and hoped desperately that the occupants had been in the shelter.

Her hopes were shattered when one of the men working to make the site safe told her that the building had been hit by a parachute mine and several people had been killed and others injured. She was trembling inside as she went on her way.

This incident, as bombings and any other air-raid event were known, was only a mile or so from her home. This was real, not just a rumour, and these streets were dangerous at night. However much people tried to carry on as normal to defy Hitler, they couldn’t afford to be careless, and for that reason May decided she must have a serious chat with Betty.

Much to May’s surprise, Betty seemed to be in agreement with her suggestion that she forgo her night out on Wednesdays while the raids were so close to home.

‘I think you need to be indoors with Joe at night for the time being,’ she said.

‘Mm,’ nodded Betty casually.

‘As much as I love having him, it just isn’t sensible for you to be coming home late at the moment, not while the streets are so dangerous,’ May continued, still thinking persuasion was necessary. ‘I know that lots of people take a chance and the cinemas and pubs are packed out every night, but when you’ve got a kiddie you have to be more careful. You don’t want him to be an orphan, do you?’

‘Course not,’ Betty assured her.

‘Oh, so you don’t mind, then?’

‘Not at all. We’ll leave it until things quieten down a bit,’ she said. ‘That’s fine by me.’

‘Oh,’ said May, giving her a searching look. ‘I was expecting you to argue.’

‘Why should I? I’ve had a good few nights out,’ she said. ‘That was all I wanted. My son comes first and my place is at home with him of an evening.’

Knowing her friend as well as she did, this unexpected acquiescence didn’t quite ring true with May. She didn’t know what they could possibly be, but she suspected that Betty had her own reasons for agreeing so readily.

The Stubbses and the Baileys decided to team up at the Stubbs house on the afternoon of Christmas Day to pool resources and share the joy of having a little one around. Sheila was on leave from the ATS and full of amusing barrack-room tales, so it was a jolly gathering.

Dot had made some wartime sausage rolls – with only a taster amount of filling – and brought along various other goodies including a tin of peaches and pineapple and some evaporated milk. Naturally she also brought some of their precious tea ration, and a bottle of sherry that Sheila had managed to obtain.

‘I see I’m in the minority again,’ said Dick good-humouredly, referring to the lack of male company, which was a little insensitive considering recent events.

Everyone maintained a diplomatic silence, for fear of hurting May, but she was already painfully aware of the fact that Doug would have been one of the family this Christmas.

‘You’ve got Joe, Mr Stubbs,’ said Sheila quickly to gloss the moment over. ‘He can be your pal for the day.’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Dick, smiling down at the boy. ‘We’ll have to stick together against this lot, young man.’

Joe didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, but he was old enough to sense a good atmosphere and chuckled loudly, whereupon Dick picked him up and threw him in the air.

‘Good grief, son, you’re getting a bit too heavy for me,’ he groaned. ‘You’ll soon be able to lift me up.’

‘He’ll be three in a couple of months, Dad,’ said May. ‘So he’ll be buying you a pint before long.’

‘He’s got a good while to go yet,’ said Dick, lifting him on high again.

Joe reacted enthusiastically, but he did have something else on his mind today: a clockwork tank that had appeared mysteriously by his bed this morning along with other new toys.

‘You made a good choice there, May,’ remarked Dot as the boy ran the toy along the floor. ‘He’s hardly put it down since he clapped eyes on it this morning. The only problem is it needs to be wound up every few minutes and he can’t do it himself.’

‘So we’ll do it for him, won’t we, darlin’?’ said May, turning the key in the side of the toy and watching it scuttle across the lino.

‘After the first three hundred times the novelty begins to wear off,’ said Betty drily.

‘Come on, everyone,’ urged Flo. ‘Take your coats off and we’ll get stuck into the Christmas cake, though Lord knows what it’ll be like with the alternative ingredients I’ve had to use.’

‘I’m sure it’ll taste nice, dear,’ encouraged Dot. ‘Our Christmas pudding wasn’t too bad, even though it had a taste of sawdust about it. We can’t be choosy these days.’

They all piled into the front room, which was only used on special occasions. Today there was a fire glowing in the hearth, paper chains they had had since before the war looped across the ceiling and little bowls of sweets placed around.

Tea was made and Christmas cake devoured with glee. Watching Joe play with the new toys he had brought with him was the main entertainment, but as evening came and he got sleepy, they put him to bed in May’s room and moved on to more adult pastimes. Out came the sherry and beer and they drank a toast to lost loved ones – Geoffrey and Doug – and absent friends – George – then they listened to the wireless, sang carols and songs and played cards whilst making short work of the savoury snacks. Fortunately Hitler’s bombers stayed away and May was proud of the way they had managed to have a happy Christmas despite everything.

When May went into the kitchen to get some drinks for the guests, Betty followed her.

‘I need to speak you,’ she said conspiratorially.

‘Go ahead,’ urged May, unscrewing the top of a beer bottle and filling a glass for her father. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Not here,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It’s a very private matter. Someone might come in. Let’s go for a walk when you’ve finished doing the drinks. We’ll tell the others we want a breath of fresh air.’

‘It must be serious for you to want to go out in the cold,’ remarked May.

‘It is,’ said Betty. ‘Very serious.’

Not in her wildest dreams could May have suspected what Betty had to tell her, and she was both shocked and angry.

‘Pregnant?’ she gasped, her voice rising in astonishment. ‘You’re telling me that you are pregnant?’

‘All right. There’s no need to shout about it,’ warned Betty as their voices echoed in the stillness of the deserted streets. ‘I don’t want the whole town to know.’