Polly's War (28 page)

He’d walked back into her life as cool as you please and seemed to think he could pick up exactly where they’d left off. When she’d needed him he hadn’t been there for her, hadn’t even written. Now that she was in love with someone else, he’d come home. How unfair life could be.

Later that day, scrubbing the stone-flagged kitchen floor in the house she didn’t want to live in, with a man she could no longer look upon as a husband, Lucy could see Michael’s face in the swirls of soapy water. She couldn’t get her need for him out of her mind, out of her aching body even as she knew that she must never seek him out again. Never! Heaven knows what would happen if one of them didn’t learn to exercise some control over their emotions. She must accept that whatever had been growing between them, was over.

Tiring of the endless chores, she flung the scrubbing brush back into the bucket, sending water spraying everywhere and wasn’t quite sure whether it was tears or dirty mopping water that she wiped from her face.

Chapter Eighteen

The manufacturing of new carpets was progressing well for Polly. The wool arrived in soft, unwashed hanks from the West coast of Scotland. The washing was done in a long trough with the wool being fed around huge drums on the same principle as a mangle. As she watched the process with some degree of pride, Polly was hoping and praying that her daughter’s marriage would survive and Lucy would be happy. Many didn’t in these difficult times. She and Charlie had had it easy in a way, with no war to separate them and always having the family around but it had torn apart her family all the same. Soon, for the first time in their married lives there would be just the two of them. Not that she minded. Charlie might get more rest.

She walked from the washing room into the dyeing area, and became quickly embroiled in a long discussion on the varying shades of green. Customers liked a strong pattern in their carpets but not necessarily strong colours.

‘This bright green didn’t sell so well Polly,’ Josh, her chief dyer told her. ‘Better to soften it to more of a leaf shade don’t you think?’

‘And a pinky beige to go with it?’

Polly personally traced out the patterns on to squared paper, each square representing one tuft in the carpet, usually at a rate of seven to eleven tufts per inch depending on the quality of the carpet. Drawing the designs was one of her favourite tasks. Sales were buoyant and she longed to buy more looms, to expand, but was nervous of doing this too quickly and overextending herself. She’d always thought there was little point in building the business too big if her children weren’t interested. Now that Benny had agreed to come in with her, the situation had changed dramatically. It would be a relief to have more help, even though she still held some reservations about Hubert Clarke and his scheme. By the time she’d finished the day’s work it was past eight and she had energy to do no more than grab a meal and fall into bed.

‘All this hard work,’ she groaned, rubbing her aching back, ‘and for what?’

‘For us, sweetheart,’ Charlie murmured sleepily into her ear. ‘For our lovely family and to keep us in our old age.’

‘And will we take the risk, as Benny wants us to?’

‘Would it make you happy?’

‘I think it would, Charlie.’

‘Then do it. If you’re happy, so am I,’ and cuddling up like a pair of old spoons, they fell asleep in perfect contentment.

So Polly took the risk. She took out a small mortgage on her house, rented large shop premises at the Castlefield end of Deansgate and took delivery of a consignment of furniture from Hubert Clarke. Pride Carpets now moved in a new direction, into buying and selling, though she continued with, and even hoped to expand, the manufacturing of new carpet. Credit trading would not have been her first choice but if it made Benny happy, wasn’t that something?

Benny felt like a real man again. From the very first morning he stayed late without complaint and put all his energies into the job. On his first pay day, he gave Belinda a bit of money to spend on a new frock, if she could find one to fit, just to cheer her up but she said it would be a waste and hoarded it away for when the baby was born. At least she was eating properly again. She queued at the butchers for a bit of steak and kidney, which she made into a steamed pudding. They ate like kings and she bloomed as a result. It was worth all the effort to see her happy again.

All family differences seemed to be resolved with what might tentatively be called a reconciliation between Belinda and her parents. Benny felt content to be working with his mother, as it was on equal terms. And this was only the beginning. As the business grew, moving ever onward and upward, nothing and no one would stand in his way. Since his father-in-law was a self-made man with an innate shrewdness and business acumen, Benny had every confidence in his judgement.

Being so close to her time, Belinda didn’t care to spend too much time on her own, so took to spending the afternoons with Lucy. She was able to do little beyond brew tea and chat while her friend trimmed and pasted the wallpaper, and climbed ladders to hang it, nevertheless she was happy and content. There was much giggling at Lucy’s mistakes, not least when Sean and Sarah Jane got themselves covered in paste as they helped to mix it.
 

Sometimes the two girls would wrap the children up well and take them sledging on the waste ground, or for a walk along by the Manchester Ship Canal to watch the barges go by. Lucy would talk of her hopes for Tom to heal and be like the Tom she remembered. But she never quite found the courage to mention her secret love. Belinda would say how content she was now that everything had come right for Benny at last, and how happy she was, despite missing her ATS friends.

‘However, I’m sick of this huge bump, and I cry with frustration sometimes over the most simplest task.’ She giggled. ‘Like starching Benny’s shirt collars. I made too much starch the other day and without thinking, I tipped the remains all down the yard thinking it would mix with the snow and slush, but it made such a terrible slimy mess you took your life in your hands just crossing the yard to the lavatory.’ The two girls dissolved into helpless laughter, young and happy, oblivious for a short time to all their problems.
 

Tom did not get the job at Fenton’s Chemicals because he never went for the interview. There was a problem standing in his way and, determined to find employment so that Lucy wouldn’t get any fancy ideas in her head about going back to work herself, he meant to solve it.

He called upon his brother-in-law and found Benny, surprisingly enough, in the new shop sticking price labels on a set of chairs. It was already open for business and several customers were browsing among the carefully designed furniture displays. Tom leaned against the door-jamb and chuckled. ‘I thought your job was to run the show from a fancy office and let some chit of a girl write out price labels.

Benny grinned. ‘I don’t mind doing my bit. It’s all profit in the till at the end of the day. Anyroad, we’re a bit short staffed.’

‘Sounds like I could be the answer to your prayers then, if you can sort out a little problem for me.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you had any problems, now you’re back in dear old Blighty.’

‘I had to make Lucy give up her job. She was seeing too much of that Michael Hopkins.’ Tom was relieved to see Benny nodding wisely, as if he understood. ‘But we have to live, which means work. But before I can get a job, I need papers. An identity card. Right?’

Benny frowned. ‘Not if you have your AB64. Your army book will do just as well.’

‘But I don’t have one of those either. I lost it some place.’

‘So go to ...’

‘Look, it’s not as easy as all that. Can we talk, in private?’

Benny led Tom into his office, which was cramped and not very tidy but he could at least close the door, take a bottle of Scotch from a cupboard and pour them both a nip without anyone seeing. He offered Tom a cigarette and propped himself against the desk to listen. Within seconds of Tom launching into his tale, Benny’s mouth was hanging open and he’d forgotten all about the cigarette which burned to ash between his fingers. He disposed of it and lit another.

‘Are you saying that you weren’t a POW at all?’ Benny was riveted with shock.

Tom shrugged. ‘I was wounded at Salerno, as were many others in that quagmire of mud and misery, very nearly captured but I managed to get away. You see ...’

‘You
deserted
!’ Despite himself, Benny was appalled. Admittedly he’d had a safe war, more uncomfortable than dangerous. Even so, he’d done his bit and he didn’t care for deserters, not one bit. Nobody did. Couldn’t stomach them at any price, as a matter of fact. Yet this was his brother-in-law, married to his sister. Even so ... ‘Don’t say any more. I don’t want to know.’

‘
I
didn’t say I was a deserter.
You
did. I said I lost my papers.’

‘You’ll never get away with it. Someone will shop you.’

‘Why should they? So far as the neighbours are concerned I was a POW, escaped, lost, and now home. End of story. There’s plenty of other chaps coming home daily with similar tales to tell. I thought, since you were once in the same boat, seeking official documentation that is, you’d understand my situation and be prepared to help.’

‘Not me.’ Benny felt relieved he could honestly wriggle out of this obligation. ‘I never managed to sort out a licence. I’m having nothing more to do with either joinering nor bureaucracy. I’d be no help.’

‘Yes you would, by giving me a job - here. We’re family, after all, and you want your Lucy to be happy, don’t you? You wouldn’t want her to run out on our marriage.’ Benny scowled, for this was all too true. The last thing he wanted was for her to run off with Michael Hopkins, a known conchie. ‘Wouldn’t you just love to get one over on them bureaucrats for once, eh, by ignoring all the niceties of paperwork?’

Benny’s cigarette had again burned away to ash and he stubbed it out in his glass, sighing deeply and not bothering to light another. This all sounded very complicated and a bit worrying. ‘I don’t know Tom. I would help, if I could, you know that. But I’m not on my own here. There’s Mam to consider, and she always likes things above board.’

‘What about Hubert Clarke? Is he quite so particular?’

Benny shrugged. ‘Couldn’t say. You’d have to ask him.’

‘Mebbe I will. But not a word to your Lucy about this conversation, right? It’s just between you and me. Man to man. One squaddie to another.’ And since Benny thought it in his family’s best interests for Lucy to stay with her husband, rather than go off with Michael Hopkins, he reluctantly agreed. What Lucy didn’t know surely couldn’t hurt her. Who was he to judge? Salerno had been a mess. Everybody said so.

Tom wasted no time in going to see Hubert Clarke who, after considering the young man with interest and some curiosity agreed to look into the problem for him. It took little more than a week to produce the paperwork he needed.

‘I’m grateful.’

‘I might need you to show me how much, one day,’ Hubert said. In his experience it never hurt to have folk owe him the odd favour.

Polly took little persuading to put her son-in-law on the pay roll, in the firm belief that she was doing her own daughter a good turn. Lucy, on the other hand, was less delighted. She felt as if her nose had been pushed very slightly out of joint, since everyone in the family was now in the business, except herself.

The job Tom was given, however, wasn’t nearly so congenial as he’d hoped, comprising chiefly of filling and emptying dye vats, and the money was poor. He grumbled about it constantly; the pay, the hours, the people he worked with.

‘It’s a start,’ Lucy would say. ‘Plenty of time to better yourself later, as you get fitter.’ Sometimes, watching him work on their little house, she would be pleased and surprised at just how fit he seemed to be, for an ex-POW. He was making good progress and perhaps a part of her hoped that as soon as he was entirely fit and well and himself again, everything would either come right between them, or better still she could leave him to get on with his own life without any sense of guilt. Despite her best efforts to make this marriage work, Lucy still ached for Michael with every fibre of her being.

She tried suggesting that they’d make more progress if she too went back to work but he wouldn’t hear of it. He didn’t approve of her going anywhere for that matter, not even to the pictures. She felt like a prisoner now. Lucy constantly chaffed against the restrictions he imposed upon her. Even if she slipped out to the shops, or for a walk with Belinda and the children, she had to leave a note, to say where she was and what time she would be back. She understood why he didn’t trust her but it didn’t make for an easy life. She could only hope the tension between them would ease as his mental health improved.

And, like it or not, she was forced to spend hours searching Campfield market for bargain cuts, cheap titbits of offal or pork scratchings. Anything to add a bit of flavour to a dull meal. Lucy would queue for hours if she heard there’d been a delivery of sausages. She’d smile sweetly at Mr Shaw the grocer in his long white apron in the hope that he had a bit of bacon, or better still a pat of butter tucked under the counter somewhere. Sometimes she’d believe fortune was about to smile on her and then a man would come in and he’d always be served be first, whether he marched boldly to the front or attempted to hang back. It didn’t seem to matter whether he’d fought at the front or done nothing more taxing than dish up stew for the pilots, he was considered to be a war hero and would be treated as such. Sometimes, when she’d queued for hours and there was nothing left, it seemed grossly unfair, though not for a moment did she complain of any of this to Tom.