Chocolate Girls (27 page)

‘She will if she catches you saying “ain’t” like that,’ Edie snapped. ‘Look – get the kettle on and I’ll make ’em a cup of tea. I need time to think.’

When she carried the tea through her father stirred, gave a startled snort and stared at her blearily.

‘Edie? I thought Florrie was ’ere . . .?’

She handed him a cup of tea. ‘Thought I’d call in. Florrie said our mom was poorly.’ They looked across at Nellie, who was moving her head restlessly, eyes still closed. ‘What’s up with her, Dad? Florrie said summat about a growth.’

Dennis Marshall stirred his tea and wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Ar well . . . They did say summat like that . . .’Er’s a bit under the weather like, you know.’

‘
Under the weather?
Dad, she looks terrible!’

‘She ain’t been too well,’ he admitted. ‘But she don’t make a fuss. You know yer mother.’

Tutting furiously, Edie went to her mother. ‘Mom?’ She found herself speaking softly, as if to a child. ‘Here’s a cuppa tea for yer. You going to wake up and have it?’

‘Ooh—’ Nellie’s eyes opened, struggled to focus for a second, then fixed Edie with her cold blue stare. ‘I must’ve dozed off for a minute. What’re you doing ’ere?’

It would be no good asking any direct questions straight away, Edie saw. ‘Just thought I’d pop in. ’Ere, Rodney – your tea.’ Edie drew up a stool and sat between her parents, facing the fire.

‘Not brought that lad with yer then?’ David was always ‘the boy’ or ‘that lad’ now he was older. Nellie would never acknowledge him as Edie’s son.

‘No. We went to the park this morning and he’s having a nap at home.’ There was a silence. ‘It’s his birthday in a couple of days. He’ll be four – hard to believe, isn’t it?’

They talked fitfully about day-to-day things, Florrie’s kids, neighbours. Edie kept watching her mother when she wasn’t looking and twice she saw her whole face twist, contorted with pain. She pressed her hand against her belly as if to ease it and her face turned even paler. It was terrible to see. But it was only after some time Edie felt she could say anything.

‘You’re not looking very well, Mom.’

Her father stared into the fire. Edie was horrified to hear her mother let out a hard, bitter laugh, which ended in a gasp of pain, her hand pushing once more against her belly. ‘Ah well, fancy
you
noticing,’ she said spitefully. ‘It’s taken you long enough to get here.’

Edie swallowed the retort that if she’d ever found a welcome here she would have come more often. ‘What do they say it is?’

Nellie was easing herself forward, trying urgently to get out of her chair. Edie instinctively went to help her, but her mother’s bony hand pushed her away.

‘Oh stop mithering. I need to go out the back . . .’

Walking half bent over, holding on to the wall, she felt her way towards the outside toilet.

‘Dad! Why didn’t you come and tell me?’ Edie demanded.

‘Look, wench, don’t keep on.’ He stood up, leaving his teacup on the hearth, and went out through to the back.

‘Why’s he being like that? She can’t help being bad, can she? What’s going on, Rodney?’

‘
I
dunno, do I?’ Rodney said mulishly. ‘’E don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Oh, for goodness sake – you’re all as bad as each other!’ Edie furiously cleared away the cups. ‘It’s not just going to go away because you pretend nothing’s the matter!’

She waited until her mother came groping her way back to her chair, clearly exhausted. Resting for a moment, leaning on the wall, she snarled, ‘That’s right, take a good look.’

‘Mom . . .’

‘Oh leave me alone . . .’ She sank back into the chair and closed her eyes.

Edie stood hovering over her for a moment, torn between pity and anger. What was the point in ever trying to be a daughter to her? Going through to the back, she found her father sitting by the range, the newspaper in front of his face like a guard.

‘Dad – look, I’ve got to go. But I’ll come in and give her a hand all I can. When she’ll let me, anyhow . . .’

‘Awright,’ he said. ‘Good of yer, wench.’ He didn’t put the paper down.

The next Saturday morning, Edie was preparing a tea party for David’s birthday. He had turned four two days before and Edie had been saving for months to buy him a little tricycle with red mudguards and rubber grips on the handlebars. David squeaked with astonished delight when he first saw it. She kept catching glimpses of him now, well wrapped up in his coat and balaclava, riding the trike up and down the back garden path.

With a saving of her butter rations and powdered egg she had baked a Victoria sponge – of sorts, anyway, and managed a thin layer of jam in the middle. She trickled some glacé icing over the top and piped a pale blue ‘4’ across it. Frances had found enough birthday candles and the cake stood proudly on the kitchen table under a mesh, waiting for the children to arrive in the afternoon.

Edie stood humming to herself, slicing bread as thinly as she could for the sandwiches. Lately she’d been listening to ‘Kitchen Front’ on the wireless and had become preoccupied with feeding her boy the very best food she could.

‘Dr Hill says brown bread is best,’ she’d told Frances. ‘I think I’ll try and give him more of that.’

‘Well, it’ll be better for all of us,’ Frances said. ‘I’ll buy half and half – how about that?’

So she cut some neat brown sandwiches with fish paste and some white ones with jam, and they’d baked a few cheese straws. There weren’t to be very many guests – David and a handful of neighbourhood children and of course, Marleen.

‘Well it all looks lovely,’ Frances said when she saw the little spread. ‘You’ve done a marvellous job. We can have a bite of lunch when Janet gets back from the shops. And are you planning to call in to your mother’s before everything gets started?’

‘If there’s time.’ Edie sighed.

‘You can only do your best,’ Frances tried to reassure her.

‘Oh well – where’s that ever got me?’ Edie retorted, vigorously wiping the crumbs off the side. ‘Sorry, Frances. I know you’re right. Only when I go and try to help she’s so nasty and ungrateful. I mean I know I didn’t go home for a long while, but that was because she never seemed to want me when I did. I suppose I
want
her to need me there. I can’t imagine not wanting to see Davey if he came to see me! Sometimes I think she’s a wicked woman, I really do.’

Frances listened, troubled by the hurt she saw in Edie’s expression, the bitterness in her voice. She’d never met Nellie Marshall and was disturbed by the harsh feelings she brought out in Edie, who was normally so sweet-natured. She wondered again about that scar on Edie’s arm which she was always at such pains to keep hidden.

‘Perhaps she just doesn’t know how to say she likes you going,’ she suggested.

‘Huh,’ Edie wrung the cloth tight over the sink. ‘She doesn’t know how to like
anything
.’

There came a sudden hard knocking at the front door and Frances hurried to answer. ‘Gracious me – sounds as if they’re trying to batter it down.’ Then Edie heard a distraught voice, and sobbing coming along the hall and Ruby’s tear-stained face appeared.

‘Ruby? What’s happened? Where’s Marleen?’

Ruby sank down on a kitchen chair, still in her coat. ‘It’s not Marleen. Perce has got her. Oh Edie, it’s Frank!’

For a split second Edie couldn’t think who Frank was. The only person Ruby talked about these days was Wally, her American. It was Wally this and Wally that all the time.

‘I’ve just heard and I had to tell someone. They say he was shot down and he’s missing – but that means he’s been killed, I know it does!’

‘But Ruby, he wasn’t flying any more.’ Edie put her arms round her old friend’s shoulders. ‘It must be a mistake.’

‘It’s not a mistake.’ Ruby managed to calm herself down enough to explain. ‘I had a letter from his squadron-leader. Frank volunteered to go out on a raid. He’d done it before, the man said – even when he didn’t have to. Some of the other blokes from his old crew were still going out, and he wanted to go with them. They said he was very brave and heroic to do it . . .’ She started crying again. ‘Oh, I know we didn’t have much of a marriage, but he still was my husband. He’s too young to die!’

Ruby put her hands over her face and sobbed while Edie and Frances tried to comfort her. After a sharp weep she recovered remarkably quickly.

‘Imagine if I didn’t have Wally,’ she said, dabbing her face. ‘I don’t know how I’d be able to carry on.’

They managed to persuade her to go home and get Marleen ready to bring to the party. It would give her something else to think about. By three o’clock all the little guests had arrived. Ruby was all dolled up in a beautiful emerald-green dress which shimmered over her broad hips. (‘She didn’t get that with her coupons!’ Janet whispered to Edie, who grinned back.)

‘Eh Rube, where d’you get those nylons from?’ Edie ribbed her.

Ruby hoiked up her skirt and made a cheeky curtsey. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know!’

Marleen, whose birthday had been the week before, was in a frilly little frock made of yellow and white gingham which looked very sweet with her blonde hair. Ruby seemed to have recovered enough to beam proudly at the sight of her daughter waddling about in her tiny shoes.

They had just enough children to manage a few games in the front room: blind man’s buff, musical statues – Frances playing nursery rhymes on the piano – and an attempt at musical chairs which made Marleen roar with fury because she was too young to keep up and they had to abandon the attempt. Edie had done a ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ for them.

‘Not my best drawing ever!’ she laughed, looking at the donkey’s too-long ears and squiffy shape.

The sandwiches, jelly and biscuits were all devoured, the tablecloth emblazoned with crumbs and runaway blobs of jelly. Then Edie carried the cake in with the candles lit. Davey’s expression as she laid it proudly on the table brought tears to her eyes.

‘Is that for
me
?’ he said in rapt wonder.

‘Of course – you’re the birthday boy,’ she said, kissing him.

‘But is it
all
for me?’ The adults laughed.

‘You might like to share it with your friends,’ Janet told him. ‘Or you’re going to be a poorly boy later on!’

They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and cut the cake, and then Ruby started saying she had to go.

‘Thing is, Edie,’ she whispered. ‘I said I’d meet Wally. So I’m sorry to rush off.’

So that was why Ruby had got all dressed up, Edie thought. She was a bit hurt at her leaving Davey’s party before it was really over, but she smiled. ‘Off you go then. Mustn’t keep him waiting.’

Ruby said goodbye to Frances, obviously hoping Frances would offer to keep Marleen for the evening. Frances responded warmly, but made no such offer. Marleen bawled inconsolably at being removed from the party before everyone else and had to be carried out kicking and flailing. Frances shook her head and gave a wry smile as the frenzied howling was muffled abruptly when the front door closed.

‘She really is the end.’

February 1944

‘Why don’t we go into town? Have a mooch round the shops?’

Janet looked up, suddenly realizing Edie was speaking to her. She’d been staring out at the garden, miles away.

‘I know there’s not much to look at – but it’ll take your mind off it,’ Edie said.

Frances looked up encouragingly from her knitting. ‘Good idea, Edie. You could both do with an afternoon out.’

Janet knew her mother was worried about them both. Edie was wearing herself to a wafer trying to help her mother after work. Not that she seemed to appreciate it, from what Janet could gather. She didn’t feel like a trip into town, but Edie was right – she could do with something to distract her from the worry that nagged constantly at her. And it made a change from sitting indoors. She yawned and stretched. ‘All right. Sounds like a nice idea.’ The two of them went to get their coats and get David ready.

All that week, Janet’s spirits had been at rock bottom. She hadn’t heard from Martin in months. It was impossible to know whether this was the fault of the erratic postal service, or his work keeping him too busy, or – the thoughts she tried desperately to banish – that something awful had happened to him or that his love had grown cold. The affectionate words at the end of his last letter back in November had long lost their impact and though she read and re-read the letter until it was tearing along the folds, it almost felt now as if it was from a stranger, not from the man she loved. But she kept telling herself it was the same for so many people, that she had to keep faith and one day she would see him again.

They caught the bus to town, and took Davey into Lewis’s toy department.

‘Oh look!’ Edie cried, spotting a little wooden train that you could pull along the floor. ‘Isn’t that lovely! Oh – I can just about afford that – d’you think I should?’

‘Definitely,’ Janet smiled, watching Edie tenderly. She’s just as excited as he is! she thought. The painful memory came to her of coming into this same store that winter after she had miscarried. She had never felt much regret about it at the time – there had been too much relief at being saved from a hopeless situation. But occasionally, seeing Edie with David, she couldn’t help wondering, with a sense of loss, who that child might have been. Would she have felt the same besotted love that Edie did? Edie had been opening up more and more lately about her home life when she was growing up. Janet was appalled at the few things she had told them. One Christmas night, when she was nine, because of something naughty she’d done, Nellie had locked her out of the house for the night and she’d been forced to sleep in the freezing brewhouse. Janet felt herself tense with rage when she heard things about Nellie. Edie had at last told her why she had that burn mark on her arm. The woman sounded like a lunatic! No wonder Edie clung so passionately to David. With all she’d been through she deserved all the love and help they could give her.