The War Widows (17 page)

‘I do extra on Saturday for Levi. I find another job but it not easy,’ Ana added.

‘As long as you’re trying, that’s all we ask,’ Esme said, knowing she could not ask when they were leaving now.

Ivy was sitting with a face like thunder and when Ana left the room she was waiting to pounce.

‘You’ll never get rid of them now! Dancing classes, would you credit it? Where do they get their fancy ideas from? “Lemody Liptrot School of Dance” indeed. I remember when she was plain Lizzie Liptrot, the fishmonger’s daughter, who went on the stage and came back full of airs and graces and a plum in her mouth. I saw her advert in the
Mercury:
Greek dancing, tap dancing and ballet. It’ll give them ideas,’ she argued.

‘I thought you were the one for big ideas.’ Esme couldn’t resist the jibe, seeing Ivy so put out. ‘It’ll keep them out of mischief. I expect it teaches girls to hold themselves proper and understand rhythm.’

‘Little show-offs is what you’ll get,’ snapped Ivy. ‘Prancing about like Shirley Temple, and you don’t hold with all them theatricals.’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps Neville could go and be the next Fred Astaire. Now
he
had a good sense of rhythm. I don’t hold with all that lovey-dovey stuff, but him and Ginger Rogers could fair move across the floor. That’s healthy and wholesome, gets your lungs working and heart pumping,’ she argued. She wasn’t too old to recall the thrill of a bit of romance.

Ivy was looking up with raised eyebrows. ‘I’m going to send our Neville for elocution lessons when he’s older so he can better himself.’

Esme could see that she had sown a seed of interest. There was nothing Ivy would not do to make Neville stand out from the crowd.

It was after tea was cleared away that the two girls hovered behind Esme and followed her into the sitting room
where she liked to listen to the wireless and knit without interruption. It was her time of day for a bit of peace and quiet with a good book on her lap. They closed the door behind them and she wondered what was coming next. They always hunted in pairs, waiting until Ivy and Levi had gone to the pictures so she would be on her own, vulnerable to their pleas with no Ivy to bat off their suggestions. They sat down opposite and smiled. She tried to keep her Eternal account book in mind.

‘Daw Winstanley,’ said Susan, using her most polite term of address. ‘We want to ask your advice.’

Esme sighed with relief, relaxing into the chair. Giving advice was what she was good at. ‘Oh, yes? How can I help?’ she smiled.

‘It is our new friend, Maria. She is having a very bad time. Her husband is very sick in the sanatorium. She has been very kind to us. She has made us dinner many times.’

‘So she should do. She cost you our pram
and
a taxi fare.’

‘But she found us a new pushchair from her sister-in-law,’ Susan was quick to defend her friend.

‘And we had to scrub it with Lysol it was so greasy. It must have been dipped in the fish fryer,’ she replied. Ivy had scoured it for nits and other nasties, and refused to let Neville near it for fear of germs but it was not a bad go-chair. It collapsed and took up less room in the hall, and they could squash the two kids in at a pinch.

‘Every Sunday she cooks pasta for us-spaghetti-and we have ice cream and tinned fruit. How do we
say thank you?’ Ana asked, her eyelashes blinking as she leaned forward hanging on the coming words. ‘It is polite to return gift with gift, yes?’

Esme was trapped if she said no. It would look as if she was condoning bad manners. If she said yes…oh heck, they’d caught her in their net but not without a struggle.

‘You can repay the dinners by taking her out for another meal in a café as a thank you,’ she said, hoping that would satisfy.

‘Yes…but it would be as you say, busman’s vacation?’ said Susan, so sweetly that Esme hardly felt the hook turning as she wriggled.

‘So what are you suggesting?’ she said, knowing their request was better laid flat on the table.

‘Can we cook a meal for Maria here, one Saturday evening after work? She can find someone to finish off her shift and she can catch the bus to visit Marco and come for her tea. It would be a big thank you,’ Susan said hurriedly.

‘You want to use my kitchen and my dining room and cook…foreign stuff for her?’ Esme gasped, knowing they had hooked her good and proper.

‘We cook for everyone, big thank you meal for all of you too,’ Susan added, glancing up as Lily appeared.

‘What a lovely idea,’ Lily smiled, looking hopefully in her direction. ‘A sort of thanksgiving-cum-Christmas meal all rolled into one.’

It was time to give her daughter one of those withering ‘you’re letting the family down’ looks.

‘We like our dinner cooked at lunchtime. Tea time
is tea time and nothing fancy in the evening to talk back to me in the night.’

They must know the strict rotation of meals by now. Roast after church on Sunday, leftovers cold on Monday, rissoles on Tuesday, mince on Wednesday, fish on Thursday when the fish van called. Potato pie on Friday and pasties from town on Saturday. It didn’t do to change routine.

Then she saw the blessed Eternal audit hovering high in the corner of the room. It would be good to score up another credit. Be generous and accommodating for once, she mused.

Let them try entertaining company on rations. It was not as easy as they thought.

‘You’d have to use your own rations. I don’t hold with fancy food but you can have my kitchen if you give plenty of advance notice. I don’t know what Ivy will say. It’s her kitchen too.’

‘But you all come to our meal, Ivy and Lily, all are invited,’ said Ana.

‘Then you’ll need everyone’s meat ration but I don’t want any funny smells wafting down the street,’ Esme said, knowing there would be hell to pay when Ivy got home.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ the widows shouted in unison, and jumped up and down as if they had been given the Crown Jewels. ‘We make special dinner for everyone and we have singing and dancing. You will like Maria.’

‘I’m sure for a Catholic and Eyetie, she’ll do,’ was all Esme could manage. I’ve let the side down again and given into my better nature, she sighed, but she would square it all up on her knees with the Almighty later.

‘You will come, Walt, to the thank you do? The family has to give them support.’ Lily was telling him all about the prospective supper as they sat in the café on her lunch break the next day.

‘So I’m family when it suits you. Pity I wasn’t in on them coming in the first place,’ he said with his mouth full of barm cake.

‘None of us knew they were going to turn up out of the blue. I thought you understood that.’ She patted his hand. Sometimes he could look so peevish.

‘It’s none of my business, Lily, what your family does, but Mam thinks you should never have had them girls in the house.’

‘I’m surprised at her, being a widow and taking that attitude. It’s the middle of winter and freezing cold and nearly Christmas. Have a heart!’

‘I wish you’d give me a bit of your heart. A man’s only flesh and blood, and talking of flesh and blood, come here and give us a kiss.’ Walt lunged forward to
smack a sloppy kiss but it misfired as her cheek turned from him and his lips sucked in only air.

‘None of that now!’ she blushed. ‘Not in public. I’ve got Brownie costumes to sew, buttons to find. Not enough hours in the day as it is.’

‘What’s it this time?’ He peeked at the flimsy material in the brown paper bag. ‘I was hoping this was summat for your wedding dress. When are we going to name the day? What about next July or August, the mill holidays? It’s quiet in the town. It gives us a chance to find a place to rent, just like we promised, and it’ll take your mind off all these foreigners.’ He smiled a toothy grin, turning to his
News Chronicle.

He had a point, Lily thought. It was time they set a date and planned ahead. Mother would just have to get used to the idea of her leaving Waverley House but now was not the time to daydream about dresses and bouquets when there were ten soldiers’ and sailors’ outfits to cobble up for the Guide and Brownie Review dress rehearsal at St Matthew’s church hall next week.

It was her big idea for the Brownies to stage the story of Daisy Darling and the little tin soldier. So far she’d ordered military hats and let the mums loose on tricky jackets. The results had been disastrous.

‘I can count on you for next Saturday night then?’ she said, standing up to pay the bill.

‘I’m not sure, Lil. Eating foreign is not my cup of tea. It’ll play havoc with my digestion. Let’s go to the pictures and have a fish-and-chip supper instead. You know we’ve a Cup tie on Saturday afternoon. Has Levi got the tickets?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’ve promised to help the girls out. It’s their way of being sociable and it’s not polite to refuse.’

Walt shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Suit yerself, but count me out this time, love. Perhaps it’s better if it’s just ladies.’

‘Could you lend us some coupons then to eke out the rations? I’ll pay them back.’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry, no can do. Mam is the guardian of the ration books and she’s saving up for Christmas. We don’t want her to do without treats then, do we?’

‘I suppose not,’ Lily replied bitterly. Elsie Platt loved her son and puddings far too much to deprive them both of any luxuries on the Christmas black market.

Was this a glimpse of what life might be like in the future, him slumped by the fireside, stuffing her baking into his mouth and no conversation, stuck out in their cottage on the moor, miles from any of the excitement going on down town?

Where was that fluttering tummy, pounding heart, the passion of being together? She got more of that watching Pete Walsh dribbling down the centre of Grimbleton Park to Barry Wagstaff when the Grasshoppers played at home. Something wasn’t right but there was too much to do to worry about it now.

Whose big idea was it to give a thanksgiving dinner for Maria and the Winstanleys? sighed Ana. Where would they start? She chewed over the menu like a dog with a bone as she stood sentinel at her new post in the
Market Hall, trying to look busy, straining to understand the customers speaking while Levi slept off his beery lunch in the cubbyhole that served as his office. Here were kept all the more expensive items and spare stock. It was awkward brushing past him to reach up for boxes. He was not to be trusted.

Ever since that first meeting his lecherous intentions towards Su were plain for all to see, but now he gawped at her with interest too. She tried to ignore his suggestive tone. The jokes she didn’t understand but sometimes Enid looked at her with pity when it was time for her to leave. ‘Take no notice, love, it’s the beer talking.’

When Enid was around it was easier to dodge his hands, but once she’d gone it was better just to stay close to the side of the stall. Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings they were busy. That was when workers got their wages and came to buy their supplies.

The beginning of the week was worst. Levi would prowl behind her when she was stocktaking and dusting, far too close for comfort. He had not laid a finger on her yet but she sensed the time was coming and she desperately needed to distract him. She was not used to working alone with a man. In Crete before the war, women in villages were treated with respect and were never left alone in a room, even with their own father or brother, for fear of losing their reputation. An unmarried girl wore a headscarf to cover her beauty from display, and public appearances were kept to festivals and church. In towns it was different, and the war had changed everything. She’d even taken to wearing
trousers while tending wounded soldiers, living in hill camps with partisans who honoured their womenfolk by ignoring them. When they were captured and transported over to the mainland, she was imprisoned in a women’s labour camp, cooped up like cattle, working the land in terrible weather. All hope left her of ever surviving the hardship and starvation, but somehow she had done.

No use looking in a mirror to see the fairness of her youth. Her features had long shrunk to sharp bones on a craggy frame-starvation and the wind had seen to that. Yet Freddie and his soldiers had taken pity on her friends in Athens, picked her out, given her enough food and shelter to restore some bloom. There was never any danger of assault when Freddie was her escort with his Military Police red cap.

Levi was no gentleman, though, and she was not going to stand for any nonsense. There had been too many shameful incidents with guards in the camp. She knew how to defend herself now.

‘Can I go look round stalls? I need to find food for the big dinner,’ she shouted. ‘It is very quiet. No customers to bother you.’ She didn’t wait for an answer as she sped out of sight to the safety of the vegetable stall. There were plenty of stalls but little to buy that interested her, and she was not speaking to Su since last night.

‘What shall we cook?’ she had asked, but Su had shrugged her shoulders. ‘You said you cook for Tommy soldiers in canteen?’ Ana pressed.

‘Ah yes, with Chindhe ladies of the Women’s Auxiliary
Service when we march back into Burma. I follow them. I wash and serve and tidy but no cook. I had to do servant jobs. We all muck in for poor boys who worship us from afar. That is where I met Mister Stan.’

‘I don’t want to know where you met your blessed Mister Stan this and Mister Stan that…’

‘And you go on like a record on a gramophone, Freddie this and Freddie that. He only had you because he thought me dead. I am number one wife whatever Daw Esme say.’

‘We’re nobody’s wife,’ Ana screamed in frustration. ‘But we keep tongues under hat. That is what Kiría Esme say or we’ll be sent home. I no make big dinner all alone.’

‘I am not a good cook. Auntie Betty had a boy to do all that, but I can make
lepet
, nice juicy pickle and pretty flowers for table. I will be your helper.’

That was when Ana realised she’d be on her own. Susan had found a post in a nursery school so she must pay for the extra food and help in the kitchen. The meal must be cheap and simple and not use up too many coupons.