Polly's War (10 page)

It was as the cars turned into Liverpool Road that he saw her. For a moment he thought his eyes were deceiving him, that he’d conjured her out of a battered and overworked imagination. He couldn’t think what she might be doing here, at Castlefield, but he would have recognised her anywhere, even in a large floppy red beret that hid half her lovely face from his view. She was standing at the corner of Fenton Chemicals, talking to a young man. Wearing a light grey costume that seemed to mould itself to her slender figure, Benny thought she looked even more beautiful than he remembered.

‘Stop the car.’ He was shouting at the driver and Lucy was slapping his arm, telling him to be quiet and show more respect. But the car did indeed stop and within seconds he was beside her, grinning from ear to ear.

She looked startled, as well she might, to have him appear out of nowhere.
 
There was a slight puckering between her straight brows as she gazed at him with those mesmerisingly wide blue eyes. Perhaps, he worried, she didn’t even remember him. Benny was about to remind her who he was when the brow cleared and she laughed.

‘Of course, you’re the chap who got me served in the Rating Office.’

Benny beamed. ‘You remember me.’

‘How could I forget?’

She introduced him to her companion, Frank Fenton no less, the son of the owner. He was thin, not very tall, with light brown hair and eyes, pale pockmarked skin and a faintly sulky expression on his boyish face. A nondescript in Benny’s opinion and he took pleasure in paying the fellow scant attention. ‘I’m glad I caught you. I must’ve missed you the other day.’

Benny couldn’t take his eyes off her, saying the first thing that came into his head, foolishly asking how she came to be here in Liverpool Road, as if it mattered so long as he’d found her again. She told him that her father had business interests in the area and they were soon chatting twenty to the dozen until Lucy shouted to him to hurry up. He turned and yelled back, to tell her he’d be along later and she slammed the funeral car’s door in a most inappropriate fashion. Benny hastily explained how he couldn’t hang around for long as he was at this very moment on his way back from his grandmother’s funeral, earning himself a softening of those dazzling blue eyes as a result.

‘I’m so sorry. Don’t let us hold you up,’ Belinda murmured, in that wonderful humming voice she had.

‘You could come and have a bite with us, if you wanted. There’s plenty.’ He’d no idea whether there was or not, but he was anxious to hang on to her, wishing Fenton would take the hint and vamoose. Instead, the man simply stood there, foursquare, as if he owned the flippin' road as well as the factory.

‘Oh, we wouldn’t dream of intruding, would we Frank?’

The young man shook his head. ‘Indeed not. Our commiserations to your family,’ taking hold of Belinda’s arm as if he had a right to it. Benny longed to shove him away and take hold of her himself, but she wasn’t the sort of girl to appreciate a tug of war between two warring suitors.

Panic struck. Benny knew he must do something to delay her, to make sure they met again. Then he was pulling out his pocket book, asking her to write her name and address in it, and she was laughing up at him, in just the way he remembered.

‘And my telephone number too, I suppose?’

She had a telephone? Hadn’t he known she had class. ‘Of course,’ he casually agreed and watched with satisfaction a frown mar Frank Fenton’s brow as she carefully noted the details down, closed the book and handed it back to him.

‘Good to see you again,’ she said quite lightly but, he was sure, with absolute sincerity.

‘Happen you’ll be seeing me sooner than you think.’ He saluted, and then remembering he wasn’t in uniform, held out his hands by way of apology, making her giggle. How he loved her chuckling laughter.
 

Benny strode away at such a cracking pace it took him a moment or two to realise he was going in quite the wrong direction, so was forced to double back and march past them both again, making her hoot with laughter all the more, Frank Fenton smirk, and his own neck and cheeks to fire up. Still, he was beyond caring, he was so pleased with his good fortune. Benny would never have thought such a bit of luck could come out of such a sad day. If it wasn’t disrespectful to say so, happen his grandmother had fixed it for him, from the other side, to show that she at least had forgiven him. Benny rather hoped so.

At seven o’clock that evening he was kicking his heels outside a certain house in Cherry Crescent, plucking up the courage to make his presence known. Feeling surprisingly nervous, yet determined not to show it, he finally pressed his thumb on the bell. A portly, red-faced man came to the door, looking down his bulbous nose at Benny as if he were a beetle that had crawled out from under a stone.

‘I’ve called to see Miss Belinda Clarke. Would she be in?’ Benny politely enquired, somewhat overdoing the carefully practised phrases.

‘Indeed she wouldn’t,’ came the brusque reply. Not to the likes of you anyway, he might have added were he not interrupted at that moment by Belinda herself.

‘Yes I am, Father. Don’t be silly. Oh, hello, Benny. Wait there, I’ll get my coat.’

And as Benny stood grinning with pleasure, Councillor Hubert Clarke fidgeted on his own front doorstep as if he itched to give the young soldier a piece of his mind for the impudence of calling without an appointment. ‘I thought you were stopping in tonight,’ he tried, as his daughter brushed past him. ‘Frank will be round, don’t forget.’

‘No, he won’t,’ she said, tucking her arm into Benny’s. ‘I told him not to bother. Don’t wait up, I might be late,’ and the pair strolled off, Belinda smiling, Benny looking as if he’d swallowed a whole dish of cream. Hubert Clarke looked as if he’d been given a lemon to suck.

Benny took Belinda to the Gaumont, which was the most expensive cinema he could afford, to see
Meet Me in St Louis
. He curbed his natural impatience by contenting himself with holding her hand and she didn’t seem to object. They came out dancing and singing the
Trolley Song
all along the tramlines, just as if Belinda were Judy Garland and to Benny’s mind she was every bit as fabulous as any film star. She must have enjoyed herself too for she agreed to see him the next afternoon. Benny took her for tea at Lewis’s because he thought that was what classy young women liked to do. Two weeks and several dates later he was beginning to worry that at this rate he’d spend all his demob money in no time, so risked making a suggestion.

‘I’d take you home to meet Mam and Charlie and our Lucy, only you’d happen think us a bit - well - a bit humble like. Clean and honest but ordinary folk, us.’ He’d chosen his words with care, so that she felt obliged to agree. And she did.

‘Don’t be silly. I’m ordinary too. I’d love to meet them,’ she said, with genuine warmth in her voice, exactly as he’d hoped.

Beaming, Benny tucked her arm in his. ‘That’s settled then. Lucy’ll be back from her cleaning job by now, and she’ll make us a cuppa.’

‘I wouldn’t want to get in her way though, if she’s busy.’

‘You won’t be. She likes a bit of company does our Lucy.’ He was anxious for the two girls to meet for, if they got on, Belinda might take to calling while he was away. He hadn’t much cared for the red-faced old geezer who’d opened the door that first evening, though the house had been a real eye-opener, much bigger and grander than he’d expected, and with a garden front and back, no doubt. But if Belinda didn’t think much of her father, then she’d happen take to coming round to his house regular like, and he’d be more sure of her. He was almost certain she and Lucy would hit it off.

In the event he was proved right. Lucy and Belinda liked each other on sight, the two girls were soon laughing and talking as if they’d known each other for years. The children climbed all over Belinda’s knee, vying for her attention, and when it was time for her to go, Lucy went with them to the door.

‘You must call any time. I’d be glad of your company.’

‘Me too.’ They smiled at each other. ‘You could come to the pictures with us some time,’ Belinda added.

Lucy glanced at her brother’s face, noted the quick frown and chuckled. ’I wouldn’t want to play gooseberry.’ Belinda laughed, making it clear she was perfectly capable of choosing for herself, sometimes she would go with Benny, sometimes with Lucy or all together. And so it was agreed.

The two girls became firm friends. Belinda would call regularly and, if Polly was working, Doris-next-door would baby-sit for Lucy and off they would go, shop window gazing along Deansgate or, if they were a bit flush, a trip to the pictures. On these occasions they were two young lasses again, not a wife worrying about a missing husband, or somebody’s daughter trying to hang on to a battered independence. They cheered when Dane Clark won the war, stamped their feet when the cavalry chased the Indians, and wept unashamedly when Ingrid Bergman lost her man.

On other occasions, like today, Benny was with them, and the three of them would walk arm in arm, laughing and joking, their young voices soaring out, singing songs from the movies, making up fantasies of how it felt to live in a vast Hollywood mansion. Afterwards they’d treat themselves to a fish supper, or walk along Liverpool Road eating a meat and potato pie, hot and succulent, giggling as the gravy dribbled from their chins. There was nothing better on a cool autumn evening.

‘Wait till I get my own business going,’ Benny announced, swaggering a little in front of Belinda. ‘Then I’ll buy myself a car and drive you somewhere smarter than the Gaumont. Mebbe all the way to the seaside for a day.’

‘What about Mam?’ Lucy queried, bringing him back to reality. ‘I thought you were helping her with the carpets?’

Benny flushed, for he had done a bit of work for his mam, since so far he’d been unable to find premises or a job to suit him. ‘I can do better than that, Luce, see if I can’t. I mean to set up on me own, you know I do.’

Smiling fondly at him Belinda said, ‘I remember you telling me how good you are with your hands, that you’d like to try joinering and make your own furniture to sell.’

‘Aye, happen so,’ Benny agreed, with not too much conviction in his tone. He could feel himself becoming more and more embroiled in this lie, surely only a white one since he had done quite well in woodwork at school, yet seemed unable to do anything to extricate himself from it. ‘There’s going to be a great call for good furniture. That’s certainly true.’

Lucy snorted her disbelief but, smiling to herself, left him to his harmless fantasies.

Belinda chipped in, ‘I think you’re ever so brave but wise too, to start up on your own, now peace is here. The best way to make money is to work for yourself, or so Pops tells me, and judging from his success I have to believe him. Of course, you’d need premises,’ and so flattered was he by her interest in contrast to his sister’s negative attitude, that Benny couldn’t resist expanding on his theme.

‘Oh, I’m keeping an eye open for summat suitable, though they’re hard to come by these days, shop premises. Once I find a place I’ll set it all up with a bench and tools and everything. Then customers will flock to my door for whatever I produce.’

‘I could help you look.’

‘Really? Well, why not?’ He felt almost breathless with hope. She
liked
him. She really did. Happen he was in with a chance after all.

Lucy had heard enough of his foolish bragging and sought for a way to change the conversation. They were walking past the Co-op which was still open and doing a brisk trade, for all it was late, the shop’s bright lights spilling out on to the wet pavements. They could see Lily Gantry barging her way to the front of the queue. Lucy shook her head in despair. ‘What a woman! D’you remember what she said at Big Flo’s funeral?’ and related the words that had caused her such hurt at the time.

‘The old witch,’ Belinda said, and put her arm around her friend’s waist, giving her a comforting squeeze. ‘Take no notice. She’s only jealous of your lovely youth.’

‘Aye,’ Benny said. ‘Who’d fancy her, an old goat with whiskers on her chin.’

Belinda gave a merry chuckling laugh. ‘Who is this Michael Hopkins? What’s he like?’

‘A rather private, reliable sort of man. He’s my employer, and a good friend,’ Lucy explained, telling how he helped her keep her job when his aunt would have sacked her. ‘He’s rather nice actually, a sort of Trevor Howard type.’

‘And our Luce is panting for him,’ Benny said with a snort.

‘Ooh, I never am.’

‘You make his dinner every day for nowt. That sounds pretty keen to me.’

’I’d no choice in the matter. His dragon of an aunt, Minnie Hopkins, insisted I did it if I wanted my job back.’

‘Why don’t you invite him to come to the flicks with us?’ Belinda suggested.

‘Then you can canoodle on the back row,’ Benny teased, thinking this a good idea as it would leave him more free to do the same with Belinda. Having his sister tag along too often hadn’t been the plan at all. Lucy’s response however, was to knock him over the head with her rolled up umbrella.

Belinda laughed as the pair of them tussled together in a play fight. ‘Mind you don’t drop your pie, Lucy.’

‘Quite right. Let’s keep our priorities in order. Eat first and I’ll batter his brains in later.’

Over the next weeks as the days shortened, Belinda continued to see almost as much of Lucy as she did of Benny and seemed content to have it that way. Not that they weren’t pretty inseparable as a couple and, in a way, Lucy envied them that contentment. Yet within the family, disagreement rumbled on. Benny seemed determined to be independent, refusing any sort of commitment beyond a bit of temporary employment now and then with his mother. Polly was clearly upset by his continued stubbornness and went about tight-lipped. Knowing her mother as she did, Lucy could see the situation exploding in Benny’s face if he didn’t make a move to find himself a proper job soon. Much as she adored him, Polly’s patience with her one and only son would surely only stretch so far.