The Heart of the Family (16 page)

Seb’s words were like a shock of cold water. Grace’s longing for the intimacy that spending the night away together could offer them was immediately pushed to one side by her awareness of how much she was dreading Seb leaving Liverpool. She thought about that and felt miserable about it every spare minute she had, and she wished desperately that Seb was not going to be transferred. Grace knew that she wasn’t being entirely fair or making things easy for Seb, and she felt guilty for feeling the way she did, but she just couldn’t help it. She was surprised herself at the way she was reacting but they were in the middle of a war and everyone knew that that did things to your feelings that just wouldn’t happen in peacetime. She didn’t want to bring the date for his move any closer or to make it a proper reality. She’d much rather leave it where it was in some distant nebulous future, where she didn’t have to think about it and could pretend that if she ignored it somehow it might not actually happen.

‘Anyone would think you want to go,’ she accused Seb almost sharply and then bit her lip guiltily. ‘Oh, Seb, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that or be acting so nasty with you. It’s just that I’m going to miss you so much.’

Seb had opened his arms whilst she’d been speaking and now Grace went into them, giving way to her tears as he held her tight.

‘I’m being proper daft and I know that Mum and Dad would give me a real old telling-off. There’s girls who’ve got fiancés in uniform that have been sent abroad, and here’s me making a fuss because you’re going to be twenty miles or so away.’

‘I’m glad that you are making a fuss,’ Seb told her, and meant it.

‘You are?’ Grace was so relieved that she pulled away from him to look up into his face, searching his expression uncertainly. She was so lucky to have met Seb. She only had to see the problems poor Katie was having with Luke to see how difficult life could be when a girl fell in love with a man who wasn’t as easy-going or understanding as her wonderful Seb.

‘Of course I am. It shows that you love me, doesn’t it? Not that I had a moment’s doubt.’ The smile in his eyes darkened to tenderness and concern. He pulled her back into his arms, cradling her there with her head leaning on his chest so that he could rest his chin on the soft thickness of her hair.

‘And you mustn’t doubt me either, Gracie,’ he told her gently. ‘Because you don’t have to, you know, and I wouldn’t want to think that I’d ever said or done anything to give you the impression that you did.’

Was there a quiet warning in those loving words, Grace wondered guiltily. If so, then it was one she deserved, because Seb was right. He had never ever given her any cause to doubt him in any way at all.

‘Look at it this way,’ Seb continued. ‘If you were to be transferred to a hospital in the country – one of those where they send women who are about to give birth, for instance – how would you feel if you knew that your doing your duty was hurting me, especially when you were wishing we didn’t have to be apart yourself?’

‘Oh, Seb!’ Now Grace felt more guilty than ever. ‘We’ve been lucky, I know, working and doing our bit for the war effort so close to one another for so long.’

‘I’m glad
you
think I’m doing my bit,’ Seb told her ruefully. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I really am. My work isn’t like your Luke’s – a serving soldier who everyone can see it pulling his weight.’

‘Seb, of course you are doing your bit,’ Grace defended him immediately. ‘And I don’t want to hear you saying that you aren’t.’

Grace knew a little of Seb’s work, although of course a little was all that he could tell her. Her obvious championing of him and belief in him flooded his heart with a fresh surge of love for her, though.

‘Everything will be all right, you just wait and see,’ he comforted her as they managed to snatch a quick kiss before releasing one another.

Tommy and the German POW had been down in the shed for ever such a long time and Emily was beginning to felt a bit panicky. What if the POW had taken the opportunity to run off and poor Tommy was too scared to come back and tell her? Or what if something worse had happened? The thought of any harm befalling her beloved adopted son had Emily tugging off her apron and hurrying out of the kitchen, leaving the back door open as she almost ran to the shed.

When she got there, the door was open. Tommy and the German were inside, Tommy leaning on the old bench, propping up his face with his hands as he watched the POW sharpening a scythe.

Once what she could see had laid Emily’s maternal anxiety to rest, she couldn’t help noticing how the long careful stroke of the sharpening block against the scythe tightened the POW’s shirt across his muscular back. He had a strong back and muscular
arms, arms that could hold a woman safe against the dangers of life. A painful feeling of anger and contempt burned inside Emily. She was forty years old, plain and overweight, and she had no right to be noticing things like that about any man. Hadn’t she learned anything from her marriage and the way that Con, her husband, had treated her? The only reason he had married her in the first place had been for her father’s money, as he had made cruelly plain very early on in their marriage. But her feeling of angry contempt for herself didn’t just come from what she knew Con thought about her, it came from herself as well. She had her Tommy to think of now, filling the empty ache in her heart she had never allowed herself to admit to until she had found him. What would he think, innocent trusting little lad that he was, if she were to humiliate him and show him up by making a laughing stock of herself? And she
would
make a laughing stock of herself if anyone ever guessed what she had just thought.

‘This is how you must do this, in one way only and away from you. You do not want to cut yourself with the sharpness you will make with the stone.’ The German’s words were slow and precise, as though he had to search carefully for them, reminding Emily that English was not his first language. It was only then that she realised that the inappropriate thoughts that had angered her so much had been for a man who was an enemy. Somehow it was hard to think of someone as an enemy, who was displaying so much patience and care as he instructed Tommy in what he was doing, Emily admitted.

Tommy. She looked at her adopted son. He was
nodding his head as he listened to Wilhelm. Neither of them had seen her yet, but then Wilhelm looked up and carefully put the scythe and the stone to one side as he got to his feet.

‘Wilhelm says that the tools are rusty and that he can’t use them until he’s cleaned them up and sharpened them,’ Tommy explained quickly to Emily.

‘This will take time,’ Wilhelm joined in. ‘If you do not care for that I could ask the farmer if he will lend what I need.’

Emily shook her head, subduing her guilt at the thought of extending the amount of time Wilhelm would have to spend with them. Tools were precious and not easily replaced now that there was a war on, she reminded herself, and so it made sense to allow Wilhelm the extra time to get the tools in the shed back into working order.

These were the darkest days of the war so far and for her home city in particular, and yet at that moment Emily’s heart lifted at the prospect of her new life in the country. Some might call her courageous for moving away from the place that had always been her home, others might call her foolish for taking in a stray child, but what Emily thought was quite simply that she had been blessed as though by her own personal miracle, and that for Tommy’s sake she would have found the courage to do far more than move to Whitchurch.

Lena was familiar with the streets around the Royal Court Theatre and what had been the centre of the city before the Luftwaffe had blasted the heart out of it.

Now the big Lewis’s store, which had dominated Ranelagh Street, was an empty shell, with the store’s business being carried out from a much smaller warehouse nearby, and the shops that only a month ago had been filled with goods on sale were now able to offer only ‘bomb-damaged stock’. The warm May sunshine had brought out the city’s shoppers, determined at least to look as though they were carrying on as normal. Women with shopping baskets over their arms, and dressed in brightly coloured summer frocks, who obviously still had homes that were intact, were tripping lightly along streets only just cleared of rubble, their heads held high. Lena looked enviously at them, conscious now of her own grubby and untidy appearance. It had been proper mean of her auntie to give away her clothes, but then why had she expected any different? At least she’d got her precious Post Office savings book, and once she got her replacement papers and a new ration book
from the rest centre, along with a proper billet, she’d be able to set about smartening herself up a bit. She’d buy a couple of lengths of fabric off one of those market stalls that had a notice saying the fabric was end pieces or second-hand, although she’d heard that it was no such thing and some of the prices stall holders were asking were twice what anyone in their right mind would normally pay for top-quality stuff.

Still, she had to have something to wear. She could run herself up a couple of frocks and maybe a nice skirt. Lena was good with her needle, a skill her mother had always said darkly she must have come by ‘from your dad’s lot, ’cos you’ll never catch me mekin’ me own clothes, like I’ve just come out of the poorhouse.’

One thing she had to say for her mother was that she had always dressed well, but then she’d got most of her clothes from her employers, snatching them up when those rich women had thrown them out. Some proper lovely stuff, her mam had had, but it had all disappeared when the house had been bombed. By the time Lena had got there with her auntie, everything that was worth having had been picked over and taken.

She paused on the corner of one of the streets watching people going into a Lyons Corner House, tempted to follow them. She was thirsty and hungry too, but she was reluctant to go in looking like she did now. She frowned slightly. The cessation of the blitz and the warmth of the sun had brought the women around her out of their coats and winter skirts and jumpers and into their summer clothes. She couldn’t help noticing that the summer frocks worn by the other girls she could see didn’t fit
anything like as tightly as hers, and their lipstick was a soft pink, not a bright red. Charlie’s sister had been like that, dressed in something soft and sort of draped on her body like instead of clinging to it, and it had been obvious to Lena that she was smart and a definite cut above her cousin Doris and her friends. It was Doris’s lead Lena had followed in choosing her own clothes, and in fact most of her clothes were rejects from Doris’s wardrobe, things she had grown tired of and which had been passed on to Lena. She’d had to alter them a fair bit to make them fit her as snugly as they had fitted Doris, of course, but now, watching the young women going into Lyons, Lena found herself wishing that she had one of those soft-fitting pretty frocks that made them look so ladylike. Would Charlie have thought better of her if she’d been dressed like that and not treated her like he had? Was that how this other girl that he was marrying dressed?

There was a lump in Lena’s throat. Determinedly she swallowed past it, and made herself a promise that she would spend some of her first wages from her new job on a second-hand frock like those she had seen girls wearing today.

‘If I could have a word, please, Bella?’

‘Yes of course, Mr Benson,’ Bella agreed in her most businesslike voice, as she pushed the laundry list she had been checking to one side and stood up. Gerald Benson, the senior civil servant and government official who had overall responsibility was implementing the Government’s scheme to provide crèche facilities for working mothers with young children, so that they could aid the war effort, didn’t
normally pay a visit without his secretary telephoning in advance, and although she wasn’t going to let him see it, Bella could feel surge of anxiety invading her stomach. Although her own father was a local councillor, he was nowhere near as important as Gerald Benson, who had been sent from London to take charge of the scheme and others related to it.

Bella’s anxiety increased when, instead of saying whatever it was he wanted to say to her immediately, Gerald Benson ushered her towards the small room that had been the headmaster’s private office when the school had had a headmaster and not just one very harassed teacher.

When he held open the door for her to precede him into the office, instead of immediately taking a seat as she would normally have done, Bella hesitated, waiting for him to invite her to sit down. She had no idea what it was he wanted to say to her but she did know that she wanted to keep her job. It still amazed her, whenever she had time to think about being amazed, how much she loved her work and how determined she was to do everything she had to do to keep her job, even if that meant conforming to rules about working hours, and discipline that normally would have had her tossing her head in the air and flatly refusing to countenance.

‘How are you finding your work here, Bella?’

‘I like it very much,’ Bella answered him cautiously.

Laura had warned her that she was only being taken on on a probationary basis, and that the situation would have to be reviewed. Had Laura been complaining about her behind her back? She certainly had no cause to do so, Bella thought angrily. After
all, she was the one who was forever having to stand in for Laura when she had time off, and she’d covered up for her a couple of times as well when she’d found a mistake that Laura had made.

There was a file on the desk, Bella realised now, and Mr Benson was opening it and studying it.

‘You were originally taken on as an assistant to Miss Wright, so I understand,’ Mr Benson asked Bella.

‘Yes.’

‘Miss Wright tells me that although you were her assistant, there were occasions on which you took sole responsibility for certain duties that were more properly hers.’

Bella’s heart knocked against her ribs. Now what should she do? Was she going to be in trouble for stepping into Laura’s shoes? She had only done so because at the time it had seemed the sensible thing to do and the best way to get things done. Since Laura had started seeing an army captain stationed close to her parents’ home she had taken so much time off that Bella had felt obliged to act on her own initiative. Not that she had minded for one single minute. In fact, she had loved the responsibility and being in charge. There was nothing she enjoyed more than making lists and then ticking off things as they got done.

‘We had so many extra little ones coming in because of the blitz that sometimes I’ve had to take matters into my own hands and make decisions,’ she answered him as calmly as she could.

To her relief a faint smile warned the sternness of his face.

‘I received a telephone call from Laura this morning. It appears that due to personal circumstances she no
longer feels able to continue in her position here as manageress of the crèche.’

Laura was leaving?

‘That being the case, Bella, I am empowered to offer you the vacancy that now arises.’

Mr Benson was offering her Laura’s job? Bella felt positively giddy with excitement and delight. Of course, she wasn’t going to let Mr Benson see that. It wouldn’t do at all for the newly promoted crèche manageress to act in a manner that was not completely professional. She had a position to maintain now, after all.

Bella folded her hands firmly in her lap, and sat up a little bit straighter, as she said as calmly as she could, ‘Thank you, Mr Benson. I accept.’

Bella could hardly believe it, even now, an hour after Mr Benson had gone. She had been promoted. She was now manageress. Just wait until she got home and told those refugee Poles. Abruptly her delight faded when she remembered that Maria and Bettina wouldn’t be there. Well, that didn’t matter. She could go and tell her mother instead. But somehow that wasn’t the same. She could just imagine the fuss that Maria would have made if it had been one of her own offspring who had won such an important promotion. She’d have set to, cooking a celebratory meal, praising her children and hugging them, and behaving altogether in a thoroughly foreign and overdramatic manner, Bella told herself scornfully, determinedly refusing to acknowledge the sharp stab of aloneness she had just felt.

Justine, who was the owner of the Coiffeuse de Paris salon, or to give her her real name, Judith Walker,
nodded her own expertly coiffured blonde head with its shoulder-length and waved hair, the front of which was caught up in a large roll just like the really big film stars had, as she listened to her client complaining about the drop in standards amongst the modern chorus girls.

‘Couldn’t kick in time if they had a trombone up their arses, that lot couldn’t,’ Awesome Audrey, the Glaswegian songbird, announced in a decidedly unsongbirdlike voice as she sniffed and then picked at her nose with her finger, whilst Justine worked swiftly on her thin grey hair.

Aud was eighty if she was a day, Judith was sure of it. She’d been doing a show at the Royal for as long as Judith’s ma could remember, never mind Judith herself. The smell of slightly stale sweat, Judith’s special made-to-a-secret-recipe shampoo (a bit of soap boiled down and added to a jug of water, which was then perfumed with whatever scent Judith could get her hands on) which Judith never ever let anywhere near her own immaculate locks, and the heat from the fancy American beauty salon hair dryers that one of Judith’s admirers had been persuaded to bring back from New York, and which regularly needed the attentions of Judith’s handy father, filled the private room of the ‘salon’ where Judith attended to her most privileged and famous clients without hoi polloi being able to see them.

Poor Aud, she’d be bald in a bit, Judith reckoned, lifting one hand from the pin curls she was carefully making to glance in the mirror behind Audrey and smile admiringly at her own reflection. Just as well that Aud wore a wig when she was on stage. Mind you … Judith looked at the yellowing false head of
hair on the wig stand resting on the ‘vanity unit’, another American innovation she had ‘imported’ – or nagged her dad into copying from a picture she had seen in an American magazine.

‘Pity you let that ruddy cat of yours pee on your wig, Aud. I don’t reckon I’m going to be able to get the stain out, you know.’

‘Well, you’ll have to try harder then, won’t you?’ Audrey sniffed. ‘’Cos it’s the only one I’ve got. I was wearing that when I was touring in American and Fred Astaire asked me to dance. Have I ever told you about that?’

Only every time you come in, Judith thought grimly.

‘Mad for me, he was. Wanted me to be his full-time partner, and I don’t just mean on the dance floor neither.’

In your dreams. Justine thought as she tugged hard enough on the thin grey hair to cause Audrey to object and forget to boast any more about her imaginary affair with Fred Astaire.

Lena was so nervous that she’d stood apprehensively on the pavement outside the salon for several minutes before she was able to pluck up the courage to go in.

The salon looked ever so smart and Lena’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw the three fancy dryers along one wall, each with a client underneath it.

All three young women were made up to the nines, the looks they gave Lena laced with varying degrees of hostility and female assessment.

‘I’ve come to see the salon owner,’ Lena told the girl behind the reception desk in a whisper.

‘If it’s about a job, she’s not taking anyone on,’ the girl told her without lifting her gaze from the copy of
Picture Post
she was reading.

‘A friend of hers, Simone, said to tell her specially that she had sent me and she’s written me a note for her,’ Lena persisted. There was a smell of singing hair in the air, and when one of the young women under the dryers yelped and screeched out, ‘Get this ruddy thing off of me! It’s burning me to death!’ Lena automatically leaped into action, removing the dryer and reassuring the client in her best professional manner.

‘Gawd, if this has frizzed me hair, I’ll have Justine’s guts for garters. I’ve bin understudying the lead role for months and now tonight she’s gone orf sick and it’s me big chance.’

Lena felt dreadfully sorry for her. A quick look at the rag-rolled hair suggested to Lena that it had indeed been singed, but it wasn’t her place to pass on this bad news, thank goodness.

Justine, alerted to the impending crisis both by the smell of burning hair and the squawk from her client, emerged from the ‘private room’ in a jangle of ‘gold’ bracelets, pink lipstick, blonde hair and lilac ‘robe’, to direct a ‘just you wait until later’ look at the now wary-looking receptionist, who had been told to keep an eye on the ruddy dryers, before sweeping towards the shrilly accusatory understudy.

‘I don’t know, Jacetta, anyone would think you’d never smelled perm lotion before,’ she announced briskly. ‘And you were the one who insisted that you wanted them front waves reperming. I said to you, I know, that I thought you was taking a bit of a risk with your hair being so fine an’ all.