As Time Goes By (9 page)

No, she wouldn’t look at him, she wouldn’t look at anyone, she told herself firmly as the band struck up the first notes of ‘You Are my Sunshine’.

‘Oooh, I love this number,’ May said enthusiastically as the ATS girls joined in the approving clapping that greeted the opening bars of the Waltonettes’ song. ‘Lovely voices, they have, and
I’m not the only one that thinks so.’ May nudged Lynsey in the ribs as she pointed out, ‘There’s that sergeant you was fancying, Lynsey, clapping like mad. He can’t take his eyes off them girls neither, especially that brunette.’

Sam could see Lynsey scowling in the direction of the singers. Sergeant Everton certainly was responding enthusiastically to them. As Sam watched, the pretty brunette singer looked towards him, her lips curving into an open smile whilst he in turn smiled back at her, giving her a cheeky wink.

‘She can smile at him all she likes, but it will be me that has the last dance with him,’ Lynsey told them all determinedly.

‘The last dance, mebbe,’ May agreed, ‘but I wouldn’t bet odds on you getting to be the one he walks home, Lynsey.’

Sally had seen Johnny Everton smiling at her several bars into ‘You Are my Sunshine’, and now, with their spot finished, she did something she would never normally have done. Instead of heading backstage she went towards Johnny, who immediately left the table where he had been sitting with a group of other men in uniform and hurried over to her, taking hold of her in an enthusiastic hug. Her decision to go over to Johnny certainly didn’t have anything to do with the new doctor sitting there watching her like she was the lowest of the low, Sally reassured herself, as Johnny kissed her firmly on the cheek.

‘I’d heard you were back,’ she told him warmly.

‘Yup, turning up like a bad penny, that’s me.’

Sally laughed. ‘Go on wi’ you. I dare say there’s girls queuing up to welcome you home!’

To her surprise Johnny’s smile vanished, to be replaced by an unexpected bleakness that was out of character for the Johnny she remembered.

‘I heard about your Ronnie being taken prisoner when Singapore fell,’ he told her, changing the subject.

‘Yes,’ Sally acknowledged. ‘That’s what the War Office have said, only there haven’t been any letters or anything from him yet.’ She tried to keep her voice light but she knew she hadn’t succeeded when Johnny gripped her hand comfortingly.

‘It’s early days yet. And like they say, no news is good news. Them two little nippers of yours must be growing.’

‘They are that,’ Sally agreed. ‘A real handful, they are at times, and I don’t know what I’d do without Molly and Doris lending a helping hand. Been a true friend to me, Molly has, even though it was me and her June that palled up first. Expecting a kiddie of their own now, she and Frank, as well as having June’s little ’un.’

‘Yes, I’d heard.’

‘A natural mother, Molly is. Her and Frank are really happy.’

‘Frank’s a good chap. I saw him earlier today at the barracks.’ His voice was suddenly terse.

Sally’s smile faltered slightly as she wondered what she had said to cause him to withdraw into
himself so determinedly. ‘So you’re with the bomb disposal lot then now?’ she ploughed on.

‘’S right,’ Johnny agreed.

‘You’re very brave, Johnny, to take on such dangerous work.’

He gave a dismissive shrug.

‘Look, I’ve got to go now,’ Sally told him. ‘We’ll be on again in a few minutes. I’m having a bit of a party for my two boys, next Saturday afternoon. Tommy was three at the beginning of the month and Harry will be two the week after next,’ she told him impulsively. ‘It’ll only be a few sandwiches and a cup of tea, but there’ll be a lot there that you know and you’d be welcome to come along and have a beer with the men, if you feel like it.’ She couldn’t stay to say any more; she was in enough trouble with Patti as it was without risking appearing unprofessional, fraternising with the paying public.

Johnny had changed, she thought as she hurried backstage. The cheeky, almost too self-confident boy she remembered had been replaced by a man who, like all of them, had experience of the reality of a war behind him. The Johnny she remembered would certainly never have wanted to risk his life working in bomb disposal.

‘Well, I wouldn’t get too hung up on him if I were you, Lynsey,’ said Hazel. ‘You can see from his uniform that he’s with that UXB lot, and I’ve heard that they reckon their life expectancy can be measured in weeks and months, not years. There was that case in the paper only a little while back of
a whole crew being lost when the bomb they were working on went off.’

Sam got to her feet.

‘Where are you going?’ Lynsey asked her. ‘It’ll be the last dance in a minute.’

‘Ladies’ room,’ Sam told her briefly. It must be that last port and lemon that was making her stomach cramp so uncomfortably. It certainly wasn’t anything to do with Hazel’s comments about the danger of unexploded bombs.

As she came out of the powder room Sam heard the band leader announcing the last dance. Lynsey no doubt would already have secured her chosen partner, and he, Sam expected, would be only too delighted to share with her the intimacy afforded by the now dimmed lights and the slow sensual beat of the music.

‘Oh!’ Engrossed in her thoughts, she gave a small gasp as she cannoned into someone in the dimness. Immediately strong male fingers curled round her wrist, and equally immediately her heart beat out its own Morse code message of recognition to her brain. ‘You …’ she stammered weakly as she found herself confronting the very man who had just been in her thoughts. ‘I thought you’d be dancing with Lynsey.’

What a complete idiot she was making of herself, gabbling away in a breathless voice she hardly recognised as her own, whilst he just stood there in front of her saying nothing.

‘Because you turned me down?’ he demanded grimly.

His anger underlined what Hazel had already told her, adding to her guilt. She took a deep breath, feeling like she had done as a child, faced with a spoonful of cod liver oil. ‘That was rude of me. I’m sorry.’

He was still holding on to her wrist and she could feel a sensation like a hot wire jerking down her arm as he shrugged his shoulders.

‘Wanted to put me in my place, did you?’ he challenged her.

‘No!’ ‘No, I would never do anything like that.’

‘But you turned me down.’

‘I … there was a reason,’ Sam defended herself with as much dignity as she could summon.

‘I see.’

Why did he keep on looking at her like he was, making it impossible for her to look away?

‘That reason wouldn’t be a certain sergeant by the name of Frank Brookes, would it?’

‘No!’ Sam was too horrified for pretence.

‘No? Then what was it?’

He didn’t believe her, Sam could see that.

‘If you must know, it was because … because I … I’m not a very good dancer.’ It had been very hard for her to make such an admission to him and when he started to laugh she could feel her whole body burning with humiliation and anger.

‘Come on. Don’t give me that. I’ve seen those pins of yours, don’t forget. With legs like those you couldn’t possibly not dance.’

Sam was too stunned to conceal her feelings. He was
praising
her legs? Those same legs that
Russell had always teased her were so long and skinny they were like pieces of string with knots where her knees were.

‘It’s true. I mean, I can’t,’ she insisted. ‘Russell says I must have been born with two left feet.’

‘Russell?’

‘My brother. He’s in the RAF.’

He gave her a curt nod.

‘I’d better get back to the others.’ Sam made to pull her wrist free but he refused to let her go. ‘Why …? What …?’ she began, but he wasn’t listening. Instead he had turned towards the dance floor.

‘Come on, anyone can dance,’ he told her. ‘It’s easy.’

And then before she could stop him he was striding onto the dance floor, virtually dragging her along in his wake.

With the lights dimmed and the floor so full of couples swaying together in time to the music there wasn’t going to be any room for them and he would have to let her go, but somehow or other, as though by magic, a space appeared for them. At least with the lights dimmed no one else was going to witness her making a fool of herself, or at least no one other than her unwanted partner, Sam told herself, as he swung her round so that they were facing one another, and then took hold of her.

This was going to be a world away from dancing with her brother, Sam sensed, stiffening in open panic as he closed the distance between them. She
could feel the warmth of his breath against her hair, and she could feel too the firmness of his hand spread against the small of her back.

‘Relax, you’re dancing, not facing a firing squad.’

How could the sensation of a man’s warm breath against her ear have such an extraordinary effect on her? Blindly Sam tried to take a step forward as she struggled to deal with the unfamiliar sensation flooding through her body, and then froze in fresh shock as she felt the hardness of the male thigh not just keeping her where she was but pushing her own leg back.

‘No,
I
lead, you follow.’

Her body had now become obediently fluid, moving in time to the music, the unfamiliarity of the sensation forcing her to cling dizzily to him as he moved them across the floor. Somehow he was making it all seem so easy. And so unnerving. It was the most extraordinary sensation, scary and yet exhilarating. There was one thing for sure, Sam admitted to herself, dancing with her brother had never felt like this. The last notes of the song finally died away and the lights came on. Couples moved reluctantly apart. Sam was acutely conscious of the fact that inwardly she was trembling from head to foot.

‘I must get back to the others.’ She couldn’t bring herself to look at him properly. All she wanted to do was to get away from him and yet when he didn’t offer to walk her back to the table she felt unwarrantedly bereft.

‘Well, you’re a sly one and no mistake,’ Lynsey accused Sam huffily as soon as she got back to the table, ‘dancing with that sergeant, and after I said that I’d got me eye on him, and the last dance as well! I thought you were a decent sort, not the kind wot goes round pinching other girls’ chaps.’

‘I’m not. I mean it wasn’t like that. I didn’t really want to dance with him, he—’

‘Oh, no, of course you didn’t. I could see that for meself from the way you was cuddled up to him and holding him tight,’ Lynsey retaliated sarcastically.

‘No, really, you don’t understand.’

‘No, it’s you that doesn’t understand,’ Lynsey told her sharply, the original warmth with which she had welcomed Sam to the dormitory giving way to angry hostility. ‘We have a rule amongst us girls that we don’t go trying to pinch a chap another girl’s got her eye on.’

‘Lay off, Lynsey,’ Hazel warned. ‘It’s not Sam’s fault if he asked her to dance.’

‘Well, if you ask me it’s that brunette singer he’s really interested in ’cos he was ever so cosy and friendly with her earlier on,’ May intervened.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Hazel informed them sturdily, ‘I always think it’s best to steer clear of that kind of chap.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Lynsey snapped.

‘I’ve seen his type in action before, Lynsey. He’s got that air of danger about him that some men have, and he’s too good-looking for his own good.
Men like that have girls hanging round them in droves, and they’re best avoided unless you want to be one of a string of girls he’s seeing. You might think you can twist him round your little finger, like them other chaps you’ve had going mad for you, but you won’t, you know.’

‘That’s all you know,’ Lynsey retorted smartly. ‘You wait – come Christmas I’ll have him eating out of my hand, and giving me a diamond ring, you see if I don’t. And as for you,’ she rounded on Sam, ‘don’t think I’m going to forget what you’ve done because I’m not.’

‘I hope you know what you’re doing, inviting Johnny Everton here,’ Pearl Lawson, Sally’s neighbour from lower down Chestnut Close, announced, giving a meaningful nod in the direction of the living room where Johnny was standing talking with the other men.

Sally looked up distractedly from the spoonfuls of jelly she was carefully counting into dishes. Her stomach was already so tied in knots of worry and dread over what lay ahead of her this evening that she could barely think about anything else.

‘In fact I’m surprised that you have, seeing as how you’re so pally with the Brookeses.’

Sally suppressed a small sigh. There was no real harm in Pearl but she did have a habit of gossiping about people behind their backs. It was perhaps no wonder that one of her closest friends and sometimes one of the biggest critics in the Close was Daisy Cartwright, who was also very fond of a good gossip.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked tiredly.

Patti had made the most fearful fuss when she had told her that she couldn’t sing tonight, and Sally knew it would be a long time – if ever – before she was forgiven. But Sally had stood her ground and reminded her that she was only a stand-in, even if she was now singing virtually every Saturday night. She had been working all night at the factory and had only managed a couple of hours’ sleep whilst Doris had the boys for her before she had to start getting everything ready for the party. And then tonight she was going to have to go out and sing at this party being given by ‘the Boss’…

‘Oh, come on, Sally, you can’t have forgotten that Johnny and Molly were engaged?’ Pearl reminded her.

‘That was before the war. They were just kids then,’ Sally pointed out.

‘Well, my hubby was saying that if he was Frank Brookes—’

Sally had had enough. ‘Oh, don’t talk so daft, Pearl. Frank and Johnny are old friends, and everyone knows how happy Frank and Molly are.’

To Sally’s relief, before Pearl could say any more, one of the other women demanded loudly, ‘Here, Daisy, what the ’ell have you put in these fish paste sandwiches you’ve brung, only they don’t half stink?’

‘It’s a special fish paste wot everyone eats in America,’ Daisy answered, bridling slightly. ‘Cost my hubby a fortune, it did. He had to trade two tins of fruit salad for just one jar of it and there were twenty jars in this box he brought home.’

‘Well, I can’t say as I’d fancy eating it.’

‘It ain’t for you, is it? It’s for the kiddies,’ Daisy told her, taking the plate from her and marching into the other room to put the sandwiches down on the table.

Through the open door Sally could see Molly, her arm round her late sister’s daughter, Lillibet, the two of them watching the other children. Tommy was doing his usual big brother thing, only this time he seemed to be protecting Harry or, perhaps more realistically, the toy train Harry was clutching, from one of the other children. What was it about boys, Sally wondered ruefully. Whilst the girls were all looking pretty, neat and clean, the boys all seemed to have one sock half falling down, grubby hands and knees, and shirt flaps sticking out of jumpers. But then that
was
boys for you. And if she was honest she wouldn’t change a single thing about her two, especially not the loving sticky kisses they gave her. Tommy was a softie really, running back to give her an extra cuddle when he thought no one could see him. If only Ronnie could have been here to see his sons. Her two weren’t the only children in the Close whose dads were posted away from home, but what with Frank at the barracks, and Daisy’s husband working down at the docks, Sally did sometimes feel as though she and her sons were the odd ones out.

‘That’s our Harry’s train.’ Tommy was standing his ground against the other boy, a young nephew whom Daisy had brought with her, even though
he was a good three inches taller and more heavily built.

‘Well, I want to play with it so give it here.’

Harry might not be contributing to the conversation but his tight hold on the train made it plain to Sally that he knew perfectly well what was going on. The other boy made a lunge for the train, but Tommy stepped in front of his younger brother.

‘You’re best letting him keep it,’ he told him in such an exact copy of her own words and tone that Sally had to cover her mouth so as not to laugh. ‘’Cos if you don’t he’ll only start yelling, and then our mam will come and give you what for.’

‘And then he’ll really know he’s in trouble,’ Johnny murmured appreciatively at Sally’s side.

She hadn’t seen him coming over to join her but she could tell from his expression that he was as amused as she was herself.

‘He’s a corker, Sal,’ Johnny told her, ‘and as bright as a button.’

‘Too bright sometimes,’ Sally answered, but her pride shone in her eyes along with her love. ‘I’d better go and sort this out,’ she added, putting the dish down and excusing herself when it became obvious that the older boy wasn’t going to give way.

‘Why don’t you let George play with your train for a while, Harry?’ Sally coaxed, gently prising her younger son’s chubby baby fingers away from the train. ‘You and Tommy and Lillibet can play “Ring a Ring o’ Roses” instead.’

‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’ was currently Harry’s favourite game, especially the ‘all fall down’ bit – something he excelled in since he was closer to the floor than the others.

Having reassured herself that the children were playing together happily, Sally went back for the sandwiches. The men, including Molly’s Frank and Johnny Everton, were standing together, laughing at a joke Johnny had just finished telling. The war had changed him as it had done all of them, hammering out the man he now was from the boy he had been. Frank was a good kind man, but he didn’t have Johnny’s raw sexuality, nor his charm, Sally acknowledged, her attention distracted then as Harry let out an outraged roar as one of the other children made a grab for the train.

‘Time for those sandwiches, I think,’ Doris Brookes advised Sally.

‘Pity you couldn’t get any more of that Velveeta cream cheese, Sally. They all like that.’

‘I was lucky to get what I did. Mind you, it doesn’t help having to have this new national loaf. The kiddies don’t like the fact that it isn’t white, for starters.’

‘Huh, I’ve heard as how they’re putting sawdust in it to make it go further.’

‘Go on wi’ you. Lord Woolton would never do that.’

‘Well, they’re saying it’s all going to be different after the war, wi’ new houses being built for everyone, and all the men in work.’

‘See, Daisy, I told you them fish paste sandwiches
smelled rotten,’ Betty Ryder complained as her daughter made a face and refused to eat her sandwich.

‘Give over, there’s nothing wrong wi’ ’em. Look at the way Sally’s Tommy is tucking into them,’ Daisy defended her fish paste.

‘Well, he must have a cast-iron stomach, that’s all I can say.’

‘Come on, Sally, you haven’t had anything to eat yourself yet,’ Doris pointed out, tactfully bringing the fish paste conversation to a close before it became too heated.

‘I had a few bits whilst I was in the kitchen earlier,’ she fibbed. With what she had ahead of her this evening she felt so sick with a nervous stomach that she couldn’t have eaten anything.

‘Nice to see Johnny Everton here,’ Doris added, nodding in the direction of the men. ‘I remember when he and my Frank first joined up together. Of course, your Ronnie was already in the army then.’

‘It’s only three years since war broke out. We’ve had Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, then Liverpool being bombed, and Singapore falling, and now it just feels like we’ve been at war for ever,’ Sally told her grimly. ‘These little ’uns have never known anything else – only going without and bombs and rationing. Tommy can’t remember his dad and Harry’s never even seen him and now, well, to be honest, Doris, I wonder sometimes if my Ronnie ever will come home to us.’ Tears suddenly filled Sally’s eyes.

‘Oh, Sally love …’ Doris tried to comfort her.

‘It’s all right.’ Sally fished out her handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose determinedly. ‘I’m just having one of them days. I’d better go and take some of these sandwiches over to the men before they all go.’

‘Well, there’s plenty of Daisy’s fish paste ones left,’ Doris laughed.

‘Give ’em here,’ Sally told her. ‘I’ll go and see if the men will eat them.’

‘No, ta, Sally love.’ Albert Dearden, Molly’s father, shook his head when Sally offered the sandwiches. ‘You keep them for the kiddies.’

‘The trouble is that the kiddies don’t want them,’ Sally told Johnny ruefully, ‘and there’s that many left that Daisy is going to take offence.’

‘Go on then, I’ll have one,’ Johnny offered, giving her a wink as he added, ‘You’ve got to be ready to take a risk, working with the lot I’ve landed with.’

‘Aye, I heard that a couple of your lads went and got themselves blown to bits over on Peel Street the other week.’

Johnny nodded. ‘Had a type seventeen fuse in it, that one did. That means that by rights the bomb should go off within seventy-two hours of being dropped. When they don’t, well, that means that they can be set off by the slightest movement and they can go off any time they like. Some of them have this extra ante-handling fuse as well, but not the seventeen. That’s what happened on Peel Street.’

Sally gave a small shudder. ‘I think you’re very brave to volunteer for Bomb Disposal, Johnny.’

‘Who said anything about volunteering?’ he joked. ‘When they said put up your hands all those who want to be in a unit where the officers get killed first, no one said anything about it being for bomb disposal. Of course, when they found out I was single that was me finished. They had me badges on and me on a train to Liverpool before I knew what was happening to me.’

‘There’s certainly plenty of work for your lot in the city,’ Frank said soberly. ‘Hardly a week goes by without someone reporting finding a new unexploded bomb.’

‘Aye, what they didn’t drop on the city the Luftwaffe dropped on Cheshire on their way home. Mmm, I see what you mean about these sandwiches,’ he told Sally, adding when he saw her expression, ‘Here give me them, Sally. I’ll get rid of them for you.’ He gave her another wink.

‘What are you going to do with them?’ she asked him uneasily.

‘Well, I reckon just one sniff of these will have them two-thousand-pound so-and-sos lifting off for Frankfurt as fast as they can.’

Sally shook her head in mock disapproval whilst Frank and the other men laughed.

‘I’ll say one thing for Johnny,’ she told Molly later on when everyone had gone and they were washing up in the kitchen, ‘he knows how to keep everyone’s spirits up.’

The sound of raised voices from the children in the living room had them breaking off from their conversation to exchange wry looks.

‘I’ll go,’ Molly offered. ‘It’s time I was on me way anyway. I don’t envy you having to go out singing tonight. You’d have thought the Grafton would have let you have a night off for once.’

Sally ducked her head, as she felt the guilty tide of red creeping up under her skin. She hated having to be deceitful, especially with such good and close friend as the Brookeses, but what else could she do?

‘Chin up, Mouse. We’re off duty for the rest of the day now, or at least we will be in another five minutes,’ Sam tried to comfort the other girl, as the bus bringing them back from their work at the barracks came to a halt outside the school.

It was still light enough for Sam to sneak a quick assessing look at Mouse as they got off the bus together. As she had guessed from her now-familiar tense silence, Mouse looked pale and anxious. She had developed a small tick that rather cruelly made her look as though she was trying to wink.

‘It’s because she keeps getting picked on,’ Sam had tried to explain to Sergeant Brookes only that afternoon. ‘If it isn’t Captain Elland having a go at her, then it’s our own warrant officer.’

‘From what I’ve seen of her, the poor lass isn’t really Forces material,’ the sergeant had said.

‘She didn’t want to join up. She had this auntie
who threatened to throw her out of her own home if she didn’t. She lost her parents in a bombing raid, you see, and this auntie was her mother’s stepsister, and I reckon she was jealous of Mouse’s mother. I feel so sorry for her.’

‘You’ve got a kind heart,’ Sergeant Brookes had told her with that slow warm smile of his that made her feel all squishy inside. Just thinking about that feeling now brought an unwanted mental image of Sergeant Everton. She knew all too well what he would think of that squishy feeling. Well, he didn’t need to go warning her off. She knew now that Frank was married and of course that meant that he was out of bounds to her, even if he had been interested in her in that way – which he wasn’t.

She had meant to march into their billet right behind Mouse, knowing how terrified she was that Toadie might be waiting in the hallway to pounce on them, but now, thanks to Johnny Everton, she was two girls behind Mouse.

The hallway smelled of vegetable soup and damp wool. Sam wrinkled her nose against it. She could see that Mouse was well past Toadie’s lair and had almost reached the security of the stairs. Poor kid indeed. Maybe tonight she’d eat her supper instead of staring sickly at it. Sam had perfected the trick of swapping their plates, so that by the time Toadie’s carrionlike gaze was searching Mouse’s plate it was respectably clean, as though she had eaten her food. Toadie did not, of course, make any comment on the fact that Sam still had food
on her plate, but then it was poor Mouse she enjoyed picking on. ‘It’s as though she can smell out Mouse’s fear and knows exactly when to pounce,’ Sam had told Hazel. ‘Mouse is so scared she isn’t sleeping or eating.’

‘Halt!’

All the girls in the hallway stiffened to attention as the warrant officer marched into the hallway.

‘You aren’t off duty yet. Call yourselves ATS, shambling in as though you’d never been taught on a parade ground? Well, you’ll be on one tomorrow morning. Six sharp.’

No one moved, every gaze fixed firmly on the distance. No one made a sound except for Mouse, who suddenly gave a semi-hysterical bubble of high-pitched laughter.