Chocolate Girls (10 page)

Edie heard a long, agonized whimper like a dog in distress coming from somewhere and only after a few seconds did she realize it was coming from deep within herself.

They came home from burying the little white coffin on a perfect spring afternoon. The lilac was in blossom and yellow laburnum swung like bells. The warmth and fertility around her only increased Edie’s despair. She knew she was burying all hope of a living memory of Jack and of being able to share that with their child. She was burying her love, her future. She staggered out of the cemetery supported by Ruby, her mom and dad walking behind.

‘I’m sorry for yer, wench,’ Dennis had said gruffly, in the cemetery. He stood very straight, barrel-chested, not knowing what else to say, but Edie at least felt he had meant it.

‘You coming in for a cup of tea?’ Nellie said as they walked slowly back along the Bristol Road. ‘I’ve made us a few sandwiches like, a nice tin of ham.’

Edie said nothing. She couldn’t think about anything, least of all sandwiches and tins of ham opened for show.

‘Thanks, Mrs Marshall,’ Ruby said politely.

Nellie Marshall signalled to Ruby to move out of the way, and came up beside Edie and took her arm. She was dressed immaculately in black, face well made-up.

‘It’s a bad do losing a child.’ She spoke abruptly. ‘But in your case, with the war on and Jack gone, it’s a blessing in disguise, you must admit.’

Edie stopped and violently pulled her arm free of her mother’s.

‘How can you say that? That’s a terrible, wicked thing to say! It’s not a blessing and I’ll never say it was!’ she shouted, hysterical with grief and fury. ‘It might be to you, but then you never wanted any of us anyway, did you? Too much mess and trouble in your respectable little life, aren’t we? But I wanted my babby, and I’d’ve loved him, not like you.’ She took off fast down the road. ‘You can keep yer perfect house and your sodding sandwiches!’

Ruby glanced at Nellie Marshall and chased after Edie, muttering, ‘Hard-faced old cow,’ under her breath. Edie’s mom really was the limit at times.

‘Edie, eh Ginger!’ She caught up with her. ‘Where’re yer going?’

‘
Home
,’ Edie sobbed. ‘To my place and Jack’s. It’s the only proper home I’ve ever had.’

‘Here we are dear, sit down – you must be exhausted.’

As Janet settled herself wearily at the table, Frances Hatton laid a plate of chops, potatoes and greens, well lubricated with gravy, in front of her and poured from the pretty china teapot.

‘Thanks,’ Janet said, pushing a stray lock of her uncontrollable hair out of her eyes. ‘This looks nice. I could do with it, I can tell you.’

It was eight-thirty at night and her day’s work, which began at eight in the morning, had only just ended. Industries up and down the country were urgently gearing up for what the war might bring next, and twelve hours a day, seven days a week, had become commonplace working shifts. The Whitsun Bank Holiday had been cancelled. Since the retreat at Dunkirk the atmosphere had been tremendously tense. Who knew where the front line was to be in this war? Now the German planes which were attempting to break down the island defences were slugging it out over the Channel and Kent day after day in what was being called the Battle of Britain. There was talk of almost nothing else.

‘What’s happened?’ Janet wanted to know. ‘Have you listened in already?’

‘Yes, we can hear it again later. They’re evacuating the Channel Islands – thousands of them coming off.’ Frances stirred sugar into her tea. ‘And the fighting’s still going on like mad. The news was full of tallies of planes shot down, as usual. I’m so glad Robert’s not involved.’

The idea of her rather stodgy brother as a fighter pilot seemed quite absurd to Janet. Fortunately he was safe in a reserved occupation in the bank. She tucked into her meal with relish. Frances forgot the war for a moment and smiled at the sight of her. Janet had always had a good appetite. She looked so much better now, the colour back in her cheeks again.

‘I had a letter from Auntie Maud today,’ Frances remembered, getting up to fetch it. ‘She wanted to let us know they’re all right, so far anyway.’ Janet raised an anxious smile. She liked Auntie Maud, with her flamboyant clothes and scatty ways. But she lived with her two daughters outside Maidstone, right under the fighting.

‘It must be awful down there,’ Janet said.

‘She writes – well, here’s a bit I can decipher: “They’re trying anything to prevent German planes landing. You see all manner of things scattered over the fields, so that the countryside is beginning to look rather like an endless church bazaar, if you can imagine anything so depressing. The other day I saw a farm cart, a very nasty looking double bed, an old kitchen range and a pile of rotting railway sleepers all in one field! Everyone’s nerves are in shreds – first bombs on Canterbury, now this. We’ve seen some snatches of it and it’s terrible to think about the pilots up there . . .” ’

‘I do hope they’ll be all right,’ Janet said. ‘They could come up here to us if it gets any worse.’

‘I’ve already offered,’ Frances said. ‘But I don’t imagine she’ll come. Not while the house is standing – her pride and joy, you know.’

‘Everything seems to be higgledy-piggledy these days, doesn’t it?’ Janet said, cutting up her chops. ‘Beds in fields, men marching about in the park, no street signs . . . It all feels rather barmy.’

Frances folded up the letter when she’d finished and sipped her tea, asking Janet about her day. Cadbury’s were pushing forward production of a whole range of things: tools and jigs for other firms, milling machines and parts for guns and aeroplanes and the shop floors and offices hummed with activity. Industry was on red alert to produce for the war effort.

‘I do feel,’ Frances said, ‘that I’m being rather a useless item sitting here. Maud’s letter brought it home to me. Of course I could volunteer for something, but Janet, I wondered—’ She hesitated. ‘A number of the other Friends have taken in refugees and I do feel put to shame. With all these people coming from Jersey and Guernsey they’ll need billets, and I wondered whether we might think of taking someone.’

Janet smiled encouragingly. ‘Of course. Why ever not? I know you mentioned it before and my – problems – got in the way. We’ve so much more space than some people.’

Frances beamed back. ‘You wouldn’t mind? Only it might mean quite a bit of inconvenience for us.’

‘No, of course I wouldn’t mind.’ As she said it a weight seemed to fall from her. It was such a relief to do something right and good. ‘Some of these people must have had a beastly time of it. It’s the least we can do.’

‘Well, I’m proud of you, my love.’ She poured Janet another cup of tea and cut her a slice of cherry madeira.

‘Cake’s a bit dry, of course,’ she apologized.

‘No, it’s lovely.’ Shyly, she looked up. ‘Mummy, look, you’ve been so marvellous. About everything.’

They had talked, of course, over the months since the miscarriage. Janet had explained about Alec, how she felt. She’d said how sorry she was about it, about the untruths she’d told in order to see him. She knew how much grief it had caused her mother, yet she barely uttered a word of reproach. Janet had been astonished at her calmness.

‘Well, you’ve learned the hard way,’ Frances looked at her over the edge of her teacup. ‘At least, I hope you’ve learned.’

‘Some mothers would have put me on the streets.’

‘I daresay,’ Frances said dryly. ‘Though I’ve never fathomed what good that does anyone.’ She put her cup down.

‘But what would you have done if I hadn’t lost the baby?’

Frances’s liquid brown eyes studied her face for a moment. ‘Darling, it would have been difficult. There would have been tongues wagging furiously, but we’d have managed. You’re my daughter, that’s the most important thing, and I do think it’s terrible to treat the arrival of a new being as if it’s the end of the world. And you know . . .’ A smile played at the corners of her mouth.

Janet was taken aback. ‘What?’

‘No, I really shouldn’t say it.’

‘Oh, you can’t not tell me now!’

‘Well, oh dear, this is terrible, but when you were so out of sorts and behaving rather secretively . . .’

So she had noticed something, Janet thought.

‘I mean it’d been some time since you’d had a young man in your life – at least, that’s what I thought. And you were always at the tennis club, and spending all that time with Joyce. Well, I did begin to wonder if you were perhaps more
that
way inclined. I mean you’d never shown signs of it before but then sometimes it comes out later. I’m a broad thinker in my way and I was trying to accommodate myself to the idea.’

Janet stared into her mother’s face with its confiding expression for a full ten seconds in blank astonishment before bursting into peals of laughter. She pushed her chair back and laughed until tears poured down her cheeks. All this time, creeping about with Alec, their secret meetings and urgent, self-indulgent passion, and her mother thought she was mooning over Joyce! Seeing her, Frances began to laugh as well and it was some minutes before either of them could speak.

‘Oh Mummy!’ Janet spluttered at last. ‘You are extraordinary, you really are!’

‘Well, I know
now
that I got it all wrong,’ Frances said.

They looked at each other, and began laughing all over again.

Edie was working on the line, amid the stench of the respirators, when the unearthly wail of the air-raid siren tore through the hot afternoon. One of the the girls who’d gone to the pictures the night before was giving them a blow-by-blow account of the story. Edie loved to hear romantic stories and her deft hands could do the job before her automatically now. She had slipped into a fantasy world where everything turned out right, and the siren made her jump violently.

‘Oh my God!’ she cried, clutching at her chest. ‘Not again! I feel as if my heart’s going to give out every time I hear it!’

The factory bull had been silenced by the war, but in August the first bombs had fallen on Birmingham and the siren was going off in the daytime. They all had to troop out.

Shrugging off their overalls, the workers left everything on the benches and moved down the stairs, streaming like ants through the factory. Edie, like everyone else, strained her ears to try to make out the sound of planes approaching through the blue summer sky. Soon, they were all crushing into the gloomy basement.

‘Ey-up, Ginger,’ said a girl called Connie, plonking herself down beside Edie. ‘At least we get to ’ave bit of a sit down. I’ve even remembered me knitting today.’ She unwrapped her needles with a few curling rows of white wool on them.

‘That’s a good idea,’ Edie commented. ‘Help keep your mind off it. What’re you knitting?’

‘It’s for me sister – ’er babby’s due next month. I’m doing a matinée coat.’

‘Ah.’ Edie felt grief twisting inside her. ‘That’s nice.’

Ruby was in another part of the basement. She loathed the closed-in feel of the stuffy, dimly-lit basement, and had to fight against the panic that rose in her at the thought of being entombed in there by the building above. She tried to keep her mind diverted from listening for the sound of planes overhead, or worrying about what might happen.

Think about Saturday, she told herself. Just a few more days and Frank’ll be here and we’ll be married! He’d managed to get himself twenty-four hours’ leave to come to Birmingham. Soon she’d be his wife. It was true that she’d carry on living at home for the moment, that nothing much would change, but she was so happy now she knew she could marry and keep her job. She sat thinking about seeing Frank, about the little cream dress she’d found in the rag market, which looked almost new.

It had been a long wait and she understood Frank’s frustration over it. At times she’d almost given in and thought to hell with it, let him have his way, he wanted her so much. But all the warnings her mom had given her about ‘letting them have their way’ and ‘being left holding the baby’ rang in her head. In the end it was Ethel who persuaded her to get married.

‘You mustn’t let me stand in your way, Ruby. Your Frank’s a fighting man and he needs you.’ And George’s girl Dorrie came round often and helped out.

Over the months Frank had been home on leave a few times. After initial training as a wireless operator at Compton Bassett in Wiltshire he’d been posted over on the east coast, to Bomber Command. He was ranked as Sergeant now he’d completed his training. He told her about the other lads, their pranks and exploits, the entertainments on the base and talk in the bar during their hours off. She heard about Beaky (‘he’s got a great big conk on ’im’), Wally Wodgers (‘’cos he can’t say his r’s pwoperly’) and Sam Corcoran, an air gunner who was his best pal on the base. Ruby would laugh, watching his face light up, though at times she felt wistful and a bit left out. But when he kissed her and held her close it all felt right. They’d go to the pictures and sit at the back. As soon as the lights went down Frank was all over her, hands exploring inside her dress.

He’d been home in May and they went out to the Lickey Hills. The tram was full to bursting with families having a spring day out to see the bluebells in flower on the wooded hilltops. When they were disgorged at Rednal the children scattered away from the road, which was lined with an assortment of tearooms, to dive amid the bracken and bluebells and gather bunches almost too big for their hands to hold.