Chocolate Girls (21 page)

With her blurred eyesight, Janet saw a tall figure approaching the bed, a dressing-gown over his pyjamas. She tried to sit herself up to put her specs on, but the pain that shot across her collarbone and left shoulder made her cry out. Tears came to her eyes.

‘Martin! Oh – ouch!’

‘You don’t learn, do you? How are you?’

‘Groggy. Can you pass me my specs, please?’

Smiling, he leaned over and handed them to her. His right arm was in a sling, there was a bandage round his head, covering one eye, and cuts all over his face. He sat on the bed, looking warily round.

‘I’ll be in trouble for this, but never mind. Once I’m fully qualified I’ll be able to get away with all sorts of things! Anyway, chap along the ward lent me this very nice dressing-gown so I thought I might look respectable enough to come.’ He looked at her seriously. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I think so. They say I’ve broken my collarbone.’ She winced ruefully. ‘It’s given me renewed respect for every other person who’s ever broken their collarbone.’ Martin grinned. ‘But nothing serious I don’t think. What about you?’ She looked properly at him. ‘Oh, Martin, your arm, is it broken? What about your exams?’

He waved the unplastered left arm. ‘Left-handed – remember?’

‘But your eye! Oh Lord, it isn’t – you haven’t . . .?’

‘No, I haven’t lost my eye. I’d be in a worse state than this if I had, I can assure you. But it is scratched a bit, apparently. I must have got some rubbish in there. Otherwise, like you, by the looks of it – cuts and bruises. I feel as if I’ve done a few rounds in the boxing ring.’

‘Yes, me too. Is mine very bad? I haven’t seen myself.’

‘I’ve seen you looking prettier. But they’re not deep.’

Janet explored her face with her fingers. ‘What on earth happened? The last thing I remember is putting that lady in the ambulance. And the next thing was . . .’ She remembered his voice, in the darkness of the ambulance.
Don’t worry, dear one
. . . She found herself blushing. Did he remember? Probably not, she told herself. He must have been confused, in shock.

‘It was a mine, apparently. Remember the factory at the end of the street? It was over in that direction – quite a way away. We were caught up in the blast.’

‘Well, what about all those people from the houses?’

‘A couple of them are in here – the ones by the ambulance with us. Evidently the others weren’t affected like we were. I mean it picked us up and flung us down again – but left most of them untouched.’

‘How extraordinary!’

‘Blast can do very strange things. I think it must have been that high wall at the front of the factory. Jolly good job it was intact. There were a lot killed in the streets behind, of course.’

‘Goodness,’ Janet said thoughtfully. She could hardly take in how close they had been to losing their lives.

There was a silence. Martin crossed one leg over the other and they both smiled, the moment suddenly awkward.

‘Look, I just wanted to clear something up,’ he said, clearly embarrassed. ‘In the ambulance, you said something about my daughter. You seemed to think I had a child. I don’t know if you remember? You were in shock.’

She did remember. She also remembered the feel of her hand in his large, reassuring one.

‘You’ve three children, haven’t you? You said the two boys’d been evacuated.’

‘When did I say that?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘Oh, I don’t know, ages ago.’ She’d never asked him about his marriage, she realized. Somehow she’d never wanted to hear about it.

Martin shook his head, a smile on his lips. ‘I really don’t know how you got hold of that idea. The boys of the family I’m lodging with have been evacuated, it’s true. And the mother’s gone to join them now, with the baby – down in Devon. I mean, here am I, studying hard, living like a monk – unfortunately.’ He grinned, his one eye full of mischief.

It was her turn to look embarrassed. ‘Oh dear. I really have got the wrong end of the stick, haven’t I?’

They laughed, which made her groan with pain. Then there was silence and she looked up to see him studying her face.

‘And what about you?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘No?’

‘No, I’m not married. Not even thinking about it.’

She cursed herself. That had come out wrong. It sounded so offputting!

Martin smiled politely. ‘Well, now we’ve got that sorted out.’

Soon after, he got up. ‘Well, I’d better keep in Sister’s good books. She might let me come again!’ He stood looking down at her and with sudden, professional detachment said, ‘You shouldn’t take too long to mend. Look after yourself.’

Watching his long figure in the checked dressing-gown as he disappeared along the ward she felt she’d made a right mess of things. She found herself aching for him to come back.

‘What’s up?’

Edie went into the back room in Linden Road, David trotting along beside her as usual, to find Janet staring pensively out of the window, a sheet of paper on the table in front of her, her specs in her right hand, dangling from between finger and thumb. It was nearly two months since her accident, and the bone was nearly healed, though she still wore her left arm in a light sling. The window was open and a bird was singing outside. Edie could see Frances bending over the beds in the garden in a flowing, smock-like garment she had made from an old curtain. ‘My grubbing about outfit,’ she called it.

Janet turned, putting her specs back on, and held out her good arm for Davey, who ran towards her with a gurgling laugh.

‘Hello, darling!’ She looked at Edie over his head. ‘Why should anything be up?’

Edie smiled knowingly, head on one side and came to sit opposite her. ‘I think I know you well enough by now.’

The colour rose in Janet’s cheeks. She helped Davey up on to her lap and he reached up to play with the beads round her neck. ‘Don’t pull those too hard, will you, sweetie? I’m just trying to write a note to wish Martin Ferris luck in his exams. You’d think that was pretty straightforward, wouldn’t you? Only I seem to have dried up after “Dear Martin”.’

Edie tutted, leaning her chin on her hands. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t understand the pair of you.’

During the week Janet was in hospital Edie and Frances had both met Martin Ferris. Edie was thrilled when she recognized him as the ambulance man who had brought David into St Matthew’s that night. For her he had a magic about him for that reason alone. Frances was also charmed by him. Edie could see how nice he was, but found him a bit intimidating. He was very well-spoken and had been kind and polite to her, but she had been rather overwhelmed by his height and striking presence.

One thing she had seen immediately, though, was Martin’s special interest in and tenderness towards Janet. To Edie it was obvious that his polite solicitude for her was only the outer shell covering much deeper emotions. After all, why was he there every moment he was allowed to be?

She was touched by the sight of them both when she visited the hospital one evening. Janet was propped on the pillows with her arm strapped up and the cuts on her face beginning to heal, and Martin sat beside her in his navy pyjamas, his face equally scarred, with that dressing on his eye and nursing his own injured arm. They were talking, rather seriously. Then Edie saw Janet’s round face break into a grin over something he’d said. She was obviously in love, Edie could see. Yet here they were, two months later, still tiptoeing around each other. In fact Janet had barely seen Martin because he was ‘swotting’ so hard, and she had insisted on going back to work, even though she could only type with one hand.

‘What’s he going to do when he’s finished?’ Edie asked.

‘Join up. Army medic, I think.’ Janet said bleakly. She winced. Davey had his hands in her curls and was tugging, chuckling away as he did so. ‘Ouch, you little brute! Pick on someone your own size!’

Edie smiled adoringly at his mischievous expression. ‘Are you bullying Auntie Janet, you little rascal? Come on, down you get. We’ll find something else for those busy fingers.’ She lifted him down and emptied a little box of wooden bricks on to the floor for him. Returning to the matter in hand, she demanded, ‘And you’re just going to let him go off, even though you’ve got a flame alight for him fit to burn the house down?’

‘I haven’t!’ Janet laughed. ‘Well – maybe a bit.’

‘A bit?’ Edie looked sceptical.

‘But I really don’t know about him. Sometimes I think he feels something for me. In fact I feel sure of it. Then just when I think we’re getting close he goes into reverse and we’re back to square one again! I’m not really sure if he likes me at all or just regards me with a sort of kind pity, like one of his patients – and I can’t exactly ask him, can I?’

Frances came in through the back with a few strands of parsley.

‘Ask who what?’

‘Nothing,’ Janet said hastily. Edie gave Frances a wink and she responded with an
Oh, I see
lift to her eyebrows. Holding up the parsley, she said, ‘These’ll go nicely with the fish.’

Janet stood up. ‘At the rate things are going, parsley’ll be the only thing left to eat. That and green potatoes.’

‘I’ve just planted lettuces and beans, dear,’ Frances said. ‘Do try to be more optimistic.’

The food shortages were indeed biting hard. There were queues for almost anything not on ration and the meat ration was down to one and tuppence a week. Over the summer, however, food began to arrive via the convoys crossing the Atlantic and they started to see new things in the shops from America: dried egg, canned beans and evaporated milk. For the time being the raids on Birmingham had decreased so that they were all able to get more sleep, but the nightly bulletins from the wireless were grim. In May the Germans sank the battlecruiser
Hood
. In June they invaded Russia. It seemed to be all bad news. For Edie, the news hit home less hard than for many other people. She had no husband in the services to worry about: she was insulated by her happiness in living with the Hattons. And she had centred her whole life on David. My son, as she dared to call him now. Even so, there nudged in the back of her mind the terrible questions: was there someone out there whom he belonged to? A father in the services, aunts, uncles, who now perhaps believed him to be dead? She forced such thoughts aside. She had tried to find out, hadn’t she? And wasn’t he well and happy here with her, his new mother? She knew that if she was really to call him her own she should apply to adopt him, but somehow she could never bring herself to begin the process. She was afraid to take the first steps, did not want to draw the attention of anyone in authority to the fact that he was with her, as if by disturbing their life, its safety might disintegrate. All she wanted was to live quietly with him beside her. She loved him passionately, obsessively – he was her life now. It was unthinkable that anyone should take him away from her.

Ruby was having a more difficult time. After her first flush of excitement when she’d known she was expecting, the reality of how life was going to be when she had a child, on top of everything else, began to hit home. She couldn’t look to her mom to help care for him. Ethel, or ‘Mimi’, was out most of the time, and when she was in she was usually asleep recovering from a show. Unlike most people who were feeling tired and dragged down by the day-to-day struggle of raids and shortages, Ethel was blooming, losing weight, getting herself dolled up.

The worst of it, though, was what had happened the last time Frank came home on leave. He usually had leave from Bomber Command every six weeks. Of course they had nowhere of their own to live, which put a strain on things for a start. Frank would arrive home, all smart with his cropped hair and airforce blue, and they were shuttling between his mom and dad’s house and Ruby’s. Mostly they stayed at Ruby’s, as Ethel was so often out. This last time, he’d arrived soon after Ruby got in from work and was cooking tea. Hearing him tap the door, she ran to greet him.

‘Frank!’ She flung her arms round him enthusiastically and he cuddled her back. ‘When did you get here?’

‘Oh, earlier on. Been round to our mom’s. Here—’ She had been about to go inside but he pulled her out into the little yard at the back. ‘Come on – give us a cuddle. We won’t have a chance in there.’ He nodded towards the back room from where the boys could be heard yelling in high spirits, and pulled the back door shut behind them.

‘I’ll ’ave to be quick, I’ve got the pan on!’ They clasped each other tightly and his lips immediately fastened on hers. In a moment his hand was working its way up her plump thigh, rucking up her skirt.

‘Ooh, impatient aren’t you?’ she giggled.

‘Don’t yer want me then?’ He squeezed her breast.

‘Course I do. But not now. Oi, stop that! The boys might come out ’ere!’

She heard him tut with annoyance as she pulled away and opened the door to go in.

‘Never mind,’ she whispered. ‘Soon be bedtime. And I’ve got a surprise for yer.’

‘What?’ he asked, rather grumpily.

‘You’ll see. Wait ’til later.’

Her brothers looked round, rather awe-inspired by the sight of Frank in his uniform sitting at the table with them. The younger ones’ eyes followed his every move as he took off his jacket with a muscular shrug and hung it over the back of the chair. And he was not very friendly towards them. He seemed edgy and morose and Ruby noticed how dismissive he was of George. To a man in Bomber Command, the blokes in reserved occupations were having a cushy time of it. Ruby felt tense with them all there. If only they had a place of their own and a bit of privacy! But I’ll cheer him up, she thought, when we can get upstairs on our own.