Polly's War (17 page)

‘It’s all my fault,’ Joanna sobbed, when they were alone. ‘All my fault.’

Belinda, feeling she really couldn’t cope with her mother’s hysterics on top of her father’s display of temper, briskly began to sweep up the debris. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother. How can it be your fault? Pops simply won’t come to terms with the fact I can make my own decisions now. As a matter of fact ...’

She might very well have broken the news to her mother at this point, except that Joanna, still kneeling on the carpet, interrupted. ‘No, I mean about Frank. He doesn’t come here to see you. That’s just a ploy, an excuse. He comes here to see
me
. We’re having an affair.’

Within three weeks Belinda and Benny were married. They had a small reception at the Co-op, then moved in to the two rooms over the shop. It wasn’t at all what either of them had planned but there didn’t seem to be any sensible alternative.

Having his daughter elope with a ne’er do well was, to Hubert, an unmitigated disaster, not at all what he’d planned for her. Where was the benefit in such a marriage for him, he asked Myra, watching greedily as she lazily unhooked her skirt. But as she slid beneath him and he pounded out his frustrations into her warm yielding body, he knew that he mustn’t give up too easily. There had to be some way he could turn the situation to his advantage, some way to bring his daughter to heel.

The next day he put this very point to Ron. ‘Who do we know that can put a spoke in his wheel?’

‘What would be the point?’ Ron commented, picking his teeth with the blade of his penknife. ‘They’re wed now, aren’t they? What’s done is done. Anyroad, I gave him a thorough dustup like you said, but it didn’t work.’

‘Everything can be mended, you daft lout. It has to be. I’ll not be made a laughing stock. You’ve heard of divorce I suppose, or an annulment. We must find some way to prove the marriage wasn’t legal, or to make certain that lass o’ mine has learned her lesson and is ready to come home with her tail between her legs.’

He’d already cut off her allowance. Now he would drive her almost to the brink of starvation if necessary to make her see the folly of her ways. Once hunger and desperation set in, she’d come home fast enough, chastened but wiser. Didn’t she appreciate that he wasn’t a man to cross? He’d certainly proved this point to Joanna years ago, about how he wouldn’t stand for his name to be sullied, not at any price. His wife had learned to toe the line if she was to continue to enjoy the comforts in life which she so craved, and so must Belinda.

He let his mind range through the people he knew, the contacts he’d made, like a file flicking through his head. Then he smiled. Of course, John Riley, Secretary of the local branch of the Board of Trade. Riley owed him a favour or two and Hubert had always been good at calling in those. Soldier-boy might find it less easy than he imagined to get himself the necessary licences, once he’d had a quiet word in Riley’s ear, shop or no shop.

Belinda was beginning to discover that nothing had turned out quite as she’d expected either. Without question, life with Benny during that first wonderful week was fun, exciting and wildly unpredictable and there was an undoubted fizz between them. She loved his looks, his physique, the way he clearly adored her and paid her so much attention. But most of all, she loved his ambition, the way he wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of it.

Every morning he’d bring her tea and toast in bed, which was just as well since she felt horrendously nauseous. Even then she could spend a good twenty minutes throwing up. Having babies clearly wasn’t as much fun as she’d been led to believe.

If she were honest, marrying Benny had been not only expedient but an escape, and a crazy form of retribution. The relief of being released from the machinations of her father had felt glorious. To build a new future with a man of whom Councillor Hubert Clarke did not approve seemed like a marvellous way of expressing that freedom.

Yet she was fond of Benny, and anxious that their marriage be a success. She meant to be a good wife and help him rise in the world. But as she huddled shivering beneath the covers in their sparsely furnished bedroom she began, for the first time, to experience doubts. The shop seemed smaller than she remembered and the two rooms over it, where they must live, positively poky. They were also perishing cold despite it being early summer. God knows what would happen when winter came.

On the Monday of their second week together Belinda got up first for once and cooked porridge on the old gas stove. They’d had it brought upstairs into the other room which they used as a living-kitchen. Benny watched, giving instructions, for he was surprisingly good at cooking himself, his hands and lips teasing her so much she could hardly work for laughing. They ate the porridge, which was dreadful, at the small table, the only piece of furniture they possessed save for the cooker, a small sink and one armchair. Afterwards she expected him to start sawing wood or whatever must be done to make furniture but he didn’t even get dressed, being still in his pyjamas. Instead he began pushing her back into bed.

‘Here, what are you doing?‘

‘I need to recover after eating your lumpy porridge. Anyroad, there’s plenty of time.’ They were on honeymoon after all, weren’t they? he reminded her and she protested no further. Besides, bed was the warmest place.

As they rolled about in the tumbled sheets, laughing and giggling, the silk of her blouse ripping slightly in his eagerness to drag it off her, it dawned on Belinda that it would be her task to cook and clear away breakfast every morning, and tidy through when he’d started work.

‘I’ve never done much cooking before,’ she gasped, for he was kissing her now and she could barely think while he busied himself with the buttons on her skirt.

‘You’ll have to learn lots of new skills then, won’t you,’ sliding off her silk French knickers with a practised hand. ‘Though we could always employ a chef if you like.’

Her giggles changed into gasps of excitement as his fingers explored her, even as that tiny voice at the back of her mind reminded her that fun as it may seem now, they couldn’t spend their entire lives eating fish and chips in bed, or making love. She didn’t even know if she could cook anything more complicated than porridge. She’d never had to do it. There’d always been her mother, or the NAAFI to take care of such matters.

The next day she was again up first while Benny lay sprawled on his stomach and the silence of early morning folded around her. Outside the narrow, grimy window she could hear the rattle of milk churns, the sound of cart wheels on cobbles and somewhere in the distance a church clock started to chime. Seven o’clock. She’d wake Benny in a minute, persuade him to find something to do in his workshop, or better still, go down to the council offices and sort out the delay over the issuing of an allocation licence. Without that, apparently, he couldn’t buy any wood.

On slippered feet she padded downstairs to collect the post and seeing a brown envelope lying on the mat, thought it might have come. Excitement bit into her and she’d barely paused long enough to scoop it up, slip it in her dressing gown pocket preparatory to taking it up to him, before the shop door bell jangled, making her jump. She turned the big rusty key and opened it a crack.

Frank stood on the doorstep, a sheepish grin on his face. Without waiting for an invitation, he pushed open the door and walked in. ‘Sorry to barge in but I wondered if you could spare me a minute.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t come round here at all. I don’t think we have anything to say to each other.’ She had no sense of betrayal by Frank. Had she been in love with him, she supposed his and Joanna’s behaviour would have been the ultimate betrayal. Even though this was not the case, she still felt used and certainly saw no reason to be civil to him. ‘I’d really prefer you to go.’

‘I won’t take a moment of your precious time,’ Frank said, closing the door behind him as if he owned the place. ‘There’s trouble.’

She didn’t want to hear. Whether her father suspected his wife of having an affair or if her parent’s marriage would survive Belinda had no idea, nor any intention of investigating. It was really up to them. ‘I’ve told you Frank, I really don’t want to know.’

‘Are you deaf or summat?’ She hadn’t heard Benny come up behind her, but clearly irritated to find his one-time rival stepping uninvited over his own front doorstep, he told Frank to leave this instant if he didn’t want his head battered in.

Frank looked slightly taken aback by this, as well he might though he steadfastly stood his ground. ‘It’s about your mother, Belinda.’

Belinda looked from one to other of these two young men and for all Benny’s undoubted sexual attraction, wondered if she would have been quite so ready to marry him, baby or no baby, had her mother not confessed to an affair with Frank Fenton, or her father hadn’t tried to bully her into submission. Impossible to say. Nor was it a question she cared to examine too closely. Despite her qualms, she invited Frank upstairs for coffee, more to compensate for her husband’s ungraciousness rather than any concern for Joanna. It was her own dash into matrimony which was now beginning to seem like madness, a dangerous impulse made in a crazy fit of pique.

Belinda served tea since she didn’t have any coffee, and listened with what patience she could muster to how her mother was sorry for the upset caused, how she needed her lovely daughter home, how it wasn’t too late to save the situation.

‘On the contrary, I think it is. Much too late.’

‘Aye, and time you flung your hook,’ Benny interrupted, feeling he’d been ignored long enough and noting with pleasure the surprise on Frank Fenton’s face. ‘This is
my
shop, if you haven’t noticed and it isn’t even open yet. So hop it! You’re upsetting my wife and we’ve work to do, right?’

Belinda spun about, excitement lighting her face. ‘You mean that letter I gave you is your licence for the allocation of materials?’

Cornered by this small lie, Benny shuffled his feet in discomfort. ‘When I say work, I mean paperwork, sorting out this bureaucratic muddle for one thing.’

‘Oh!’ Belinda looked disappointed, as if it were his fault in some way that he couldn’t get the dratted licence.

‘It’ll be here any day, I’m sure of it.’ He fingered the envelope in his pocket, wondering how she would react when she learned that it brought further trouble. ‘Besides, I’ve tools to sharpen, a vice to set up, workshop to clean and …’ He ran out of ideas.‘… other jobs that don’t do themselves. So, if you wouldn’t mind?’ He opened the stair door and shouldered Fenton towards it. The gesture had a hint of military aggression in it, which Frank Fenton didn’t miss. Nevertheless, for all Benny’s bullish attitude, he made a valiant attempt to hold his ground.

‘I haven’t finished speaking with Belinda yet.’

‘Oh, I think you have, mate. She don’t look too pleased to see you, from where I’m standing. So be off with you before you feel my boot make contact with your backside. This is
my
property and you’re trespassing.’

Belinda, watching this small skirmish was at first amused and then, belatedly, incensed. She’d spent the last half-hour forcibly putting forward her arguments that what Frank and Joanna did in their private moments was of no concern to her. She’d called him a liar and a cheat, accused him of using her but had assured him, at length, that he hadn’t broken her heart. Throughout her discourse, he’d calmly stood there and smiled, exactly as her father might have done when she was a child in the midst of a tantrum. Infuriating. Now, perversely, she swung to his defence.

‘Hold on a minute. I live here too and pay my whack, so I’ve as much right as you to decide who comes calling.’ In point of fact, Belinda paid more than her whack. She’d paid all of the rent so far, but didn’t think reminding Benny of that fact right now would be entirely tactful.

As if aware of these unspoken words, Benny glowered at her. ‘I’m your husband, so you should ask my permission before you invite another chap into my property.‘

Arms folded, she tossed her head back in disgust and the sunlight glinted on the golden sheen of her hair. It was growing now, forming sleek wings of colour against each cheek. ‘Damn you, Benny Pride. I’ve just told you. It isn’t
your
shop. It’s
ours.
And don’t you try telling me what to do. I’ve had enough of that at home to last a lifetime, thanks very much.’

The dressing gown was embroidered silk, dark brown in colour and clinging to her pale skin like chocolate. Benny would like to have licked it off her there and then. He cleared his throat. ‘The lease is in
my
name, don’t forget.’

‘Look, I didn’t mean ...’ Frank began but Belinda didn’t hear, she was far too occupied prodding a finger into Benny’s broad chest as the argument descended into one of their more passionate and all too familiar rows.

‘I’ve agreed to stand at your counter, brew your tea, look after our home, even deliver whatever you sell or repair, if you want me to. But
I’m
in charge of my own life, and nobody else. Not you, not my parents. I’ll not be bossed about by anyone. Is that clear? To both of you?’ Blue eyes sparked like polished steel, magnificent in her anger, making both men fall silent as they stared at her mesmerised, enthralled by her beauty. She was shaking with fury but her voice rang out clearly, echoing eerily in the half-empty rooms. ‘I’ve been in the army too, in case you’d forgotten. I’ve fought in this bloody war, suffered agonies, lost good friends, grieved. So I feel I’ve earned the right to have some say in how I spend my peace time. Being someone’s daughter, or even your wife, Benny Pride, doesn’t take away that right. OK?’