The Heart of the Family (15 page)

She really had no idea at all why she had felt such an out-of-character and very odd sense of fellow feeling towards Lena last night, Bella told herself as she stepped out into the sunshine. She was nothing like the younger girl, with her dreadful cheap clothes and her stupidity in believing whatever line Charlie had spun her. She certainly wasn’t going to allow her parents, and especially her father, to bully her the way he had bullied Lena, and to prove it she was going to go down to her father’s office right now and tell him in no uncertain terms that now that Charlie was staying in the army and Daphne was staying with her parents, there was no reason at all for her to move out of her lovely house.

It was a pity that Laura was away, otherwise Bella could have suggested to Laura that she move in with her. She knew that Laura was looking for a new billet and having her staying with her would back up Bella’s own claim on the house.

Edwin’s office was on the opposite side of Wallasey village to his and Bella’s homes, and close to the sea, as befitted a business dealing with the refitting of the internal pipe work of ships. When Bella walked into the smart office her father maintained, a short walk away from the yard where the pipes were made ready for fitting, there was no sign of him. Instead, Pauline Green, her father’s assistant, greeted her, flicking a coolly arrogant look in Bella’s direction.

Bella didn’t know Pauline very well, but something about her manner immediately got Bella’s back up. Like Bella, Pauline was widowed, although she
was older than Bella, closer to thirty-five than twenty-five. She had a son from her marriage, who had been evacuated to live with a cousin of Pauline’s in Shropshire.

Pauline certainly dressed well for a widow who had been left badly off enough to need to go out to work, Bella decided grudgingly. She couldn’t imagine her father paying anyone who worked for him over-generously. The collar of Pauline’s striped blouse was turned up at the back, its deep V front subtly emphasising the shadowy area between her breasts. Her plain royal-blue linen skirt matched the colour of the stripe in her blouse and when she stood up to walk over to a filing cabinet to remove some papers, Bella saw that her legs below the hem of her straight skirt were encased in what looked very much like silk stockings.

Bella’s frown deepened. She certainly couldn’t afford silk stockings, or indeed any kind of stockings for everyday wear.

Pauline’s dark hair was dressed in a smart chignon at the back with soft curls artfully framing her face. Bella’s eyes narrowed. That was the kind of hairstyle that took a great deal of time and patience – or the skill of an expensive hairdresser.

When Pauline turned round to return to her desk, catching Bella studying her, she gave her a mocking smile that left her pale blue eyes every bit as hard and shrewd-looking as they had been when she had been assessing Bella’s own appearance earlier.

It was not often that Bella found herself being outclassed in any way by a member of her own sex, but on this occasion she was forced to admit that Pauline had the upper hand and that the other woman knew it.

Being made to feel small and insecure by another woman was a new experience for Bella and one that had her face burning with anger.

‘Where is my father?’ she demanded sharply, determined to wrest control of the situation away from Pauline and back into her own hands.

‘Excuse me.’ Turning her back on her, Pauline tapped the scarlet painted nails of one hand on the desk whilst she ran a pencil down the list in front of her, writing something into the margin of whatever it was she was studying, before putting down the pencil and turning back to Bella with an exaggerated sigh.

‘I’m sorry about that but I do so hate being interrupted when I’m in the middle of something, don’t you? Now what was it you wanted, Bella?’

Her smile now was patient and indulgent, the kind of smile a confident adult might give a fractious child, Bella recognised with growing anger.

‘I asked you where my father is.’

‘I’m sorry, Edwin left instructions that because of the confidential nature of his current business talks no one was to be told where he is. You can leave a message for him with me, of course. I promise I’ll make sure he gets it. What is it, another advance on your allowance?’

Now Pauline’s smile was warmly encouraging and almost kind, but Bella wasn’t in the least bit deceived.

Just wait until she saw her father: She’d certainly have something to say to him about Pauline rooting through his private papers. There was no other way she could know about Bella’s own financial affairs. Her father was always reluctant to discuss money with his own family, never mind with a mere assistant,
probably because he didn’t like anyone knowing too much about the way he did business. But thanks to her late husband, Alan, and his habit of saying things he should not have said when he had been drunk, Bella knew a very great deal about her father’s business methods. She knew, for instance, that he was able to make a very handsome profit indeed on the work he did for the Navy, thanks to the fact that he had seen off his only two competitors in the area by very dubious means.

Perhaps she ought to remind her father of just how he had become the sole contractor working for the War Office, Bella thought grimly. Then they’d see just how smug Pauline felt like being over Bella’s allowance.

‘I am sorry, Bella. I know the situation must have been urgent for you to come all the way down here instead of waiting for your father to be at home, but I know you’ll understand my position. Confidentiality and loyalty are so important in the kind of relationship I have with your father.’

Something about the smug words and the smile that accompanied them sent a small
frisson
of alarm feathering through Bella’s mind, but before she could question exactly what it was that was causing her that alarm the telephone had started to ring.

‘Please do excuse me.’ As she reached for the receiver, Pauline looked meaningfully towards the door, making it clear that she expected Bella to leave. The sunlight coming in through the window glittered on the facets of the large diamond engagement ring Pauline was wearing, distracting Bella and causing her further displeasure. Pauline’s late husband had certainly provided her with a far better ring than Bella had had.

For a mere assistant in the office of small businessman like her father, Pauline certainly had expensive and very stylish tastes. She had made her feel positively down at heel, Bella admitted, as she set off back to the school.

She would be on her own in the house this coming weekend as Saturday was the day when Jan Polanski, her billetees’ son and brother, was getting married to the Polish girl whose parents had been friends of his parents.

Bella stopped dead in her tracks. What on earth was she doing thinking about Jan Polanski, when she hated him so much? He had humiliated her and mocked her, and his stupid Polish fiancée was welcome to him. She, Bella, certainly never wanted to see him again. Bella resumed walking, faster this time, her head down as she blinked away the tears threatening to obscure her vision.

‘Dad said as how you wanted some help with your garden so he’s sent down Wilhelm here.’

Emily had gone automatically to open the back door when she had heard someone knock and now she was all of a flummox. She certainly hadn’t been expecting to see the red-faced farm boy who was twisting his cap in his hands as he stood on her step, his ears going redder by the minute, whilst the German POW who had been so kind to Tommy on Sunday stood quietly behind him.

‘Oh. That’s very good of your father, but is it all right, I mean with … Wilhelm being … well, I mean, aren’t there certain rules?’ She was floundering, Emily knew, and it certainly wasn’t that she expected to see the POWs handcuffed and dragging chains – that
would be wicked and unthinkable – but she didn’t want either to be responsible for getting anyone into trouble, just because the garden of her rented house was a bit overgrown.

‘Dad’s had a word with him wot’s in charge of the camp, and he says it’s all right seeing as Dad says that he can spare Wilhelm. We’ve got some of them there land girls come now, see.’ The boy blushed ever harder, the knuckles standing out on his hands as he twisted his cap frantically, half falling over his words as he explained proudly, ‘Dad’s set me on to showing them how to do the milking. He reckons that girls are better wi’ the cows than men, so he can easily spare Wilhelm. Oh, and me mam says to tell you that she’s got a spare coop and some good layers if you was wanting half a dozen hens.’

Fresh eggs! Emily’s face lit up. She’d heard that it was possible to eat better in the country if you knew the right people and you were prepared to do a bit of bartering, although Emily did not know what she could possibly offer the farmer’s wife in return for her kindness.

‘You’ll have to feed Wilhelm, Mam said to tell you,’ the boy added, offering Emily a possible explanation. She knew that farmers were given an allowance for feeding the POWs and that sometimes their rations were better than those of the farmer and his family. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to object.

She could hear Tommy clambering down from the stool at the kitchen table where she had been listening to him read from Charles Dickens’s
A Tale of Two Cities
when they had been interrupted. Ever such a good little reader, he was an’ all, only faltering every
now and again over the longest and hardest words. Emily was determined that, come the new school year in September, Tommy would be ready to join the local children at the small village school where the schoolmistress taught all the children in the same large room, no matter what age they were.

She wouldn’t exactly call Tommy a chatterbox but now that he had found his voice he was quite a happy to talk to her a lot when they were on their own. It was just when they were with others that he tended to clam up. Mind, she never asked him about his past. Things were better that way, Emily reckoned. After all, if he wanted to talk to her about it he would do, wouldn’t he?

‘I’d better be getting back.’

The farmer’s son was obviously eager to get back to the land girls.

‘Dad said to tell you that he’s seen to it that the POWs’ transport stops here for Wilhelm after they’ve picked up the others and that they’ll drop him off again in the morning.’

The farmer’s son might look clumsy and awkward, but he could move fast enough when he wanted to, Emily decided as he disappeared at speed, leaving her and Wilhelm facing one another, and Emily feeling a bit uncomfortable.

It was Tommy who broke the ice, wriggling into the open doorway next to her and saying to Wilhelm, ‘You’re the German, aren’t you?’

‘That is correct,’ Wilhelm agreed in that stiff way he had of speaking English. ‘We met one another first outside the church on Sunday, did we not?’

‘Yes,’ Tommy agreed.

‘Tommy, Wilhelm here is going to be getting the
vegetable patch sorted out for us, so why don’t you take him and show him where the tool shed is whilst I put the kettle on? Here’s the key.’ She reached the key from its peg on the wall to one side of the sink.

‘There are some tools in there but I don’t know if they’ll be any use,’ Emily told Wilhelm. ‘I’m city born and bred, you see, and I haven’t had much to do with gardens.’

‘That is not a problem. I grow up in the town but my uncle, he have a farm and I go there in the summer to work.’

‘Well, when you’ve shown Wilhelm where the shed is, Tommy, you can both come back here and have a cup of tea.’

It was only when they had disappeared out of her view, swallowed up by the blossom-covered branches of what her neighbour had told her were apple trees in the small orchard that separated the back garden proper from the vegetable plot, that Emily realised that Wilhelm might have thought she had sent Tommy with him because she was afraid that he might try to escape. Poor chap, it couldn’t be much fun being a POW in a foreign country. He seemed ever such a decent sort as well. She only had to remember how he had stepped in on Sunday with Tommy. Emily knew that there were those who would not approve of her sympathising with a German POW but she didn’t care, she decided with a small uncharacteristic toss of her head. She didn’t want to fall out with anyone, but from now on she was going to make her own decisions about things instead of letting other people tell her what she should think, like Con had always tried to do.

‘Seeing as we’re both off on Saturday I thought we could go out to Whitchurch, perhaps even make a bit of a weekened of it and stay somewhere overnight,’ Seb suggested, as he and Grace walked towards the hospital via Edge Hill Road, having managed to snatch an hour together to meet at Joe Lyons in the centre of town for a cup of tea.

Grace’s hand trembled slightly in Seb’s as he made this suggestion, causing his own to squeeze it protectively.

Katie and Luke had spent a whole bank holiday weekend exploring Cheshire together and had stayed in various boarding houses and pubs, but that had been different. They had not been an acknowledged couple then and they weren’t engaged like she and Seb. For her and Seb, staying somewhere together overnight had a whole different meaning and one that was already setting her heart pounding heavily with longing.

‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she agreed, trying to sound calm.

‘Whitchurch is right out in the country,’ Seb continued as though nothing of any import had occurred and as though they hadn’t just both taken a tentative step towards taking their relationship to a much intimate level. ‘And I thought you’d be glad of an opportunity to see where I’m going to be working before there’s anyone official around. After all, it won’t be long now, only a couple of months or so.’ Seb gripped Grace’s hand tightly. He had just been told that the date for his transfer was likely to be brought forward, and he wanted to prepare Grace for this as gently as he could. He was dreading their coming parting every bit as much as he knew she
was, but it was up to him to be strong for both of them.