Orphans of War (30 page)

When Maddy appeared Plum gasped. She looked so grown up, so filled out, her bust pushing out of the gown and that glamorous, dark hair against the shimmering fabric. When had that skinny crossed-eyed orphan, who’d stood on that station so forlorn, turned into a beautiful young woman?

‘It’s pulling a little on the waist but we can let out an inch, perhaps,’ the vendeuse fussed. ‘If miss will wear a proper corselette…’

‘What has Miss Ffrost been feeding you on?’ laughed Plum.

‘It’s all the snacks at lunchtime. I’ve got such a craving for custard vanilla slices,’ Maddy laughed, blushing. ‘I shall have to starve after Christmas.’

She tried on two more, a gold lamé and a red satin
that looked tarty on her. This had to be the one and it was worth every penny.

Plum recalled buying that turquoise velvet dress in Harrods during the war, for that first terrible Christmas. Now she was going to spoil Christmas again with bad news, or wait until the New Year perhaps. Gerald would have to broach the subject with his mother before he left for good. Pleasance would take it badly and she’d be left to pick up the pieces. There were dark clouds ahead.

‘Your daughter is perfect mannequin size, so tall and straight in the back, with a little adjustments, perfect. She is at home, yes?

‘I’m a student in Leeds. Yorkshire Ladies’ College.’

‘Ah, yes, I know, the finishing school for Young Yorkshire.’

‘No…the sweat shop they call the secretarial college,’ Maddy said. ‘My nails are broken with all that hammering on keys, but it’s fun and I’m so glad I came.’

‘We hope to see you again, young lady. Your height shows off clothes well.’

‘Not at these prices,’ Maddy whispered in Plum’s ears as she darted into the cubicle.

‘Your figure is a little full, but she is perfect for a mannequin. We are always looking for lovely gels of her sort,’ said the vendeuse.

‘I’m afraid Madeleine’s hard at work, she’s more
Horse and Hound
than
Vogue’,
offered Plum, surprised at the woman’s interest. She’d never thought of Maddy as full-figured, but her shape had changed, rounded and thickened, and it suited her.

‘Ah, Madeleine, even a model’s name too, very French and very romantic.’

Perhaps the saleswoman was just buttering them up, pleased with her expensive sale on a wet afternoon, perhaps not? Maddy a mannequin, now there was a laugh!

Gloria was wrapping Maddy’s present up in brown paper dotted with potato prints of Christmas trees and stars. She had amused the Gunn kids for hours on the kitchen table, making reams of new wrapping paper out of old wrapping newspaper just like they’d done at the Old Vic. There were a few days’ leave due to her, but it was not going to be a happy homecoming in Peel Street.

Sid was staying up at Alan’s farm. Now Mrs Gunn had high blood pressure and was on bed rest. The Gunns had wanted Gloria to stay but she did fancy a change, a trip to the panto with young Mikey, a chance to trawl the shops for a bargain. It was pandemonium in the doc’s house–Sarah and Jeremy were so excited–but she was good with kiddies, always had been. She sort of let them run off the leash but sensed just when to haul them back to heel.

Maddy was going around with a face like a wet weekend in Brid, moping up the Victory Tree like a soppy cow. Sometimes Gloria wondered if she was quite right in the head. Every day of the holiday she cantered over the fields on Monty, and when Gloria called for her she was never there.

Something was up at the Brooklyn or college. How
could anyone be miserable when they possessed the most gorgeous frock? It must have cost at least two months of Gloria’s pittance. It made her going-out stuff look so homespun and tatty, with its cheap trimmings and wrinkled fabric. Maddy’s new dress was too posh for Sowerthwaite, though.

No doubt it was dear Dieter who’d put the mockers on her Christmas. She’d seen the letter he’d sent to the house; just a few lines and not so much as a hanky for a present. Anyone could see that romance was going nowhere so perhaps now she’d wake up and get herself about town with her posh mates, Caro, Pinky and Bella, and pick up one of their brothers. I ask you, what sort of handles were those, she smiled. That lot lived in another world. They didn’t worry about coupons for corsets or stockings, or worry about what Mam got up to of a night when she left the garment factory with her dizzy cronies, picking up lads young enough to be her sons.

Marge would never learn but Gloria paused with a sigh. She did have a mam and that was more than poor Maddy had. Oh hell! That was it–Christmas and the telegram, and me getting the wrong end of the stick and her being an orphan, she thought. Poor sod, no wonder she looked washed out and miserable.

The present sparkled in her hand. It came from Leeds market. It was a metal photograph frame, second-hand, with lots of hammered tulips and flowers. It was for Maddy to put in her digs in West Park, but Gloria hoped she wouldn’t waste it on a picture of Dieter Schulte.

Maddy could hear the row going on from the top of the stairs. Uncle Gerald was standing in the hall, wagging his finger at his wife, his voice cutting in its cold reproof.

‘Just stop right there. A divorce in the family is not an option. Why on earth did you say all that to Mother just now?’

‘But it’s the only way…all this secrecy for years. I’m just not pretending any more Gerry. It won’t wash. I’ve had enough. You tell her it’s over,
finito…
I can’t carry on. What’s the point in this charade?’ Aunt Plum was fiddling with the large Christmas decoration, shifting the foliage this way and that, then throwing the shrivelled ivy across the floor in frustration.

‘The point is, while Mummy is still with us I’ll do nothing to disgrace the family name. I will not divorce you. The shame in the newspapers would kill her. You know how she likes to keep up her standing with the county set. We’ll carry on as we always have. You’re free to stay here.’

‘Oh, thank you, very kind of you. I’ll not be put away quietly, then? Though why I should want to stay in this empty barn beats me!’

‘Oh, Prunella, be reasonable! Nothing needs to change. Why go and spoil everything? You knew it would only spoil Christmas all round. Now you’ve gone and upset things.’

‘If you’re so worried, you tell her the full story–how we’ve lived this lie for years. Surely Daisy has some say in things?’

‘Daisy understands that this is how it has to be.’

‘Then she’s a bigger fool than I thought. The stupid woman must be a dimwit!’

Maddy saw Gerald move forward as if to strike his wife.

‘Shut up, shut up, both of you! They can hear you all over the house. Please stop it,’ she cried, running down the stairs.

They both looked up, shocked.

‘Maddy, we’re just arguing. This is a private matter,’ Plum explained.

‘Then say it in private, not in the hall. I don’t want to hear it!’ Maddy cried, storming out, feeling such a rage of fury. How could they spoil Christmas like that, bickering at the table and now shouting at each other?

Christmas was a holy time, a family time, and now they were splitting up. Didn’t they know that the Belfields were all the family she had left and soon there’d be nothing? It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want atmospheres, sullen silences and bickering, not after her own disappointment. It was bad enough recalling that first terrible Christmas here when she lost her family. Now she had lost Dieter for ever, and if Plum went away too…? It was too much.

Maddy stormed across the fields in the frosty air. Shivering in her pullover and slacks, she climbed up the Victory Tree to the hidy-hole to sulk and swear. Burning a hole in her pocket was the one letter in all the world she’d been longing for, one sheet of crumpled thin paper with whole sentences blacked out.
Someone had read it and blocked out precious words and there were so few words left.

The next two lines were blocked out There was no mention of university, no special words to her, just this polite thank you except for one line.

There was not even a return address. The message was clear. Dieter wanted no further correspondence with her. That was what hurt most of all. What on earth was happening over there? Had Dieter forgotten how they had kissed and made promises? Was he in danger for writing to her? Her feelings were so mixed up: anger and pain, disappointment and frustration, and longing to see him again.

Gloria had gone home to Leeds. What was left of
Christmas was ruined so what was there to stay for but rows and recriminations? Better to be alone in West Park than be surrounded by warring Belfields.

Maddy walked home calmer now, pausing to look up at the skeletal branches of the avenue of trees. Spiky and cruel, they raked the sky like claws. It was indeed an avenue of tears on that bleak winter morning, she sighed.

She packed her bags, said her goodbyes briskly and caught the first train back to town without a backward glance.

Miss Ffrost was away and the house was chilly. She turned her key in the door, hoping that one of the students might be there for company but the house was empty. Then it snowed and the small barred electric fire gave no heat. She piled on her clothes over her pyjamas and was glad she’d not abandoned the pony-skin jacket. The tiredness didn’t go away and with it came the shivers and aches, so much so that she could stand it no longer and made an appointment to see the doctor at his surgery off St Chad’s Road.

Plum sent a long letter of apology, saying that Gerald had gone to London. Grandma was resigned to their separation but angry, but there were no plans to change things at the Brooklyn immediately. She was sorry that Maddy had witnessed the bust-up but in a way she’d made Gerry face up to the truth of what this was doing to Plum.

Maddy felt mean to have run out on them as she read the rest of the letter. The weather was bad and the drive was blocked. Pleasance had taken to sulking
in her room but Plum said she was glad it was all out in the open. ‘Secrets are so draining,’ she confessed.

The snow piled up in the drive of Arncliffe Road too, and Miss Ffrost came back a few days later needing a hand with the shovel. Maddy found herself exhausted and couldn’t shift snow like the others. What was wrong with her?

College restarted early in January but Pinky was snowed in and late to arrive, Caro was digging with her married sister in Bramhope and Bella arrived straight from a party in London full of New Year’s resolutions. It was good to have her friends back. They’d all gone to the panto and she’d treated herself to a symphony concert. The music soothed her anxious spirit at first and then came Beethoven’s Fifth making her think of Dieter, stirring all those feelings up again.

Thelma and Ruth were on a recruitment drive for their Saturday Night Fellowship meetings: ‘You’ll meet some good people there. It’s fun and gets you out of yourself.’

When she heard how Maddy’s Christmas had been so sad, Ruth offered advice, ‘Trust in the Lord and he will provide.’

Ruth was right, Maddy thought, as she sat in the doctor’s waiting room, feeling sick with apprehension, but what if she was sickening for something serious? It was one of her own New Year’s resolutions to get herself fighting fit again. If she was anaemic there were pills to perk her up. She couldn’t ever recall a time when she’d felt so low, perhaps only after the
eye operation. Sometimes when she looked in the mirror she thought her eye was turning again. It turned when she was tired and she was tired all the time now.

‘Miss Belfield?’ A voice summoned her into the little sitting room at the back of a large family house. A man with a white beard sat behind a desk and pointed her to the leather upright chair facing him. ‘How can I help?’ He leaned forward, his glasses falling over his nose.

Maddy told him how tired she was and how she felt faint for no reason and was hungry all the time.

‘And when was your last monthly course?’ he asked.

‘You know, I can’t remember. Before Christmas, I think…I’m never very regular…I never have been…’ she replied. What had the curse got to do with anything?

‘I see,’ he answered, and came across to look under her eyelids and in her throat, her ears, took her pulse and blood pressure. ‘Have you lost weight?’

‘No, in fact I’ve filled out. I was always skinny,’ she answered, puzzled by the direction of his questions.

‘You’ve had no periods, you’ve put on weight, do you feel sick?’

‘No, not really just tired.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since I came to Leeds in September,’ she said, struggling to recall when all this began.

‘I’m going to have to examine you.’ The doctor pointed to the screen. ‘Please remove your stockings and suspenders and pants.’