War Orphans (23 page)

She was lounging against an upright piano, singing along with whatever was being played. For a moment his hopes seemed dashed. The pianist had a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth and judging by the glint in his eyes he was obviously enjoying Elspeth's attention.

She too seemed to be enjoying herself, returning the pianist's saucy looks with some of her own. Until she saw Arnold, then
suddenly all signs of brashness left her features, replaced by something almost demure in its composition.

He gestured that he was getting a drink for himself and did she want one.

Elspeth raised her glass and nodded, her eyes bright with expectation. She mouthed the words, port and lemon. A bit expensive, but he didn't care.

As he made his way to the bar, she came to join him. She was at his side just as the drinks arrived. They clinked glasses. She smiled up into his face. ‘Hello stranger. Where have you been hiding?' Her lips were glossy, her eyes bright with welcome.

Happy to see her, he smiled broadly. ‘Funny you should say that. I do feel as though I've been hiding, but there comes a time when you have to get out and about, don't you think?'

‘Absolutely,' she said, clinking her glass with his one more time. ‘You weren't hiding from me, were you? I won't bite you know.'

He shook his head and blushed. ‘Of course not.'

She snuggled up close, her face upturned so their eyes could more easily meet. ‘Though I might bite you, but only if you were willing,' she said softly, a twinkle in her eyes.

The moment she'd seen him, the evening she'd planned for herself and the pianist were jettisoned. Arnold had a car, a house and a bit of cash. He'd told her so himself about the car and the house.

‘Though it's difficult to get petrol,' he explained.

The cash she'd added on herself. It peeved her that he hadn't been around for a while, but that was the way of things nowadays. Men were shifting in and out all the time. She knew he was a head teacher, and had an invalid wife. That was enough to keep him in one place.

Now he was here she had every intention of not letting him stray from her sight.

The night went well. Arnold drank three pints and a whisky. Elspeth downed more than him, thanks to a couple of drinks
she'd been bought before he arrived, but was careful not to let it show.

When they left the pub Arnold insisted on seeing her home.

The offer pleased her. ‘Well, aren't you the knight in shining armour!'

Drink had made him more confident. ‘I don't have a suit of shining armour, but I do have a torch.'

He flashed the meagre beam onto the pavement.

Elspeth clutched her handbag tight to her side. She had her own torch among the rest of the detritus she carried around but she wasn't going to let him know that. She hugged his arm close and for a brief moment he caught her smile in the light from his torch.

‘Good job I've got you then,' she said with a smile.

Elspeth breathed a sigh of satisfaction, enjoying the warmth of his arm linked with hers. It was a shame he'd dropped out of sight for a while, but he was back now and this time she wouldn't let him go.

So much for the privations of war
, she thought to herself as they reached the bottom of The Vale. The great thing about the blackout was that on really dark nights like tonight, nobody could see anyone and that included her neighbours enclosed behind their blackout curtains. It was getting harder to remember how lights had twinkled in streets and from house and shop windows. But, she reminded herself, there were advantages.

‘I missed you,' she whispered when they were halfway up The Vale. ‘You can't imagine what it's like not having a man around, and not just any man. Somebody who makes me safe and warm.'

‘I'm flattered.'

‘How's your wife?' she asked him tentatively.

Arnold considered his answer. He had no desire to be a defendant in a divorce petition – God knows there were plenty of them going on nowadays. But Miranda was his wife in name only. He felt it gave him a right to stray from the straight and
narrow, and anyway, she was sleeping a drugged sleep. She would never know. And I'm a normal man with normal desires, he thought to himself, but he couldn't find it in himself to lie.

‘She's very ill and can be very difficult at times.'

Elspeth felt her breath catch in her throat. ‘I see.'

‘I wouldn't want you to think I make a habit of doing this kind of thing. I've never been unfaithful to my wife. I'd always hoped she'd get well again. Alas it hasn't happened and isn't likely to. And in the meantime . . .' His sigh was heavy enough to sink a ship.

Elspeth licked her lips and chose her words carefully. ‘Life's too short to be lonely,' she said, her voice as husky as a screen siren she particularly admired. She gave his arm an affectionate hug, tugging it close to her breast.

Feeling relaxed in her company, Arnold opened up. ‘I wish she was her old self but I've been wishing it for so long and now I've got to the stage where I accept that she's never going to be the woman I married ever again. The woman I loved left her body a long time ago. She's just a shell of her former self.'

Elspeth stopped and forced the torch up between them so it lit up both their faces. ‘I understand, Arnold. I understand completely. If you ever need a shoulder to cry on, I'll be waiting.'

As they approached her house she advised him to turn the torch off.

‘My neighbours are particularly nosy,' she said quietly. ‘And we don't want them to see us, now do we? We do have our reputations to think about.'

‘Of course.'

She stroked his face with her gloved hand, tracing a line from the corner of his eye to his jawline.

‘Thank you for walking me home. I would ask you to come inside for a cuppa, but I think we both know it would be more than that. I will understand if you say no.'

‘I think it has to be no,' he said, his courage having failed him at the final hurdle. ‘Perhaps another time.'

‘Next Wednesday? In the Redcatch?'

He found himself saying yes. As he walked away he felt both elated and guilty. He had taken the first serious step off the straight and narrow and wasn't at all sure he would ever regain that particular path.

At night it was Joanna's habit to lean out of the front bedroom window and gaze at the stars. Tonight there were no stars and the streets sweeping down over the hill, and on the hills on the other side of the main road, were like black blocks cut out of the earth.

Her eyesight was good and she'd spotted the faint light of a torch picking out the footsteps of two people walking up The Vale.

A few doors down from the house, they stopped and the torch shone upwards lighting the faces of the two people. On recognising her stepmother's features she pulled the window closed, but stopped when she saw the features of the man in her stepmother's company.

She pulled the window shut swiftly then left the front bedroom to return to her own at the back of the house. Already in her nightdress, she hid herself beneath the bedclothes where she shivered, afraid of what she had seen.

She'd got used to her stepmother going out with other men and kept out of her way if she dared bring one of them home. For the most part they were rough and common, but she knew the man Elspeth was with tonight, and he was far from being common.

Mr Thomas was the headmaster of Victoria Park boys' school. She instinctively knew it was a secret she must keep to herself.

Seb Hadley knew every inch of the railway embankment next to the allotments.

He knew where the rabbit holes were and the best spot for catching a pigeon.

Trapping wildlife provided food for the growing puppy. Seb wondered why more people didn't do it, but put it down to laziness or ignorance. Having grown up in the country, Seb had learned how to fish, trap and hunt in order to put meat on the table.

‘Tonight's supper,' he said to Harry, after skinning both the rabbit and the pigeon and putting both in a pot of boiling water.

Leaving the meat bubbling in a pan on top of a Primus stove, he left the allotment with Harry on a lead and headed for the park. As the children were at school it was fairly empty.

‘We're going on a big walk today,' he'd said to the little dog on their way there.

No matter whether Harry understood or not, he was keen to be let off his lead to gambol and chase around the park, but Seb had other ideas.

His intention was to walk along Coronation Road. On one side of the road was the embankment falling down towards the river. On the other was a terrace of four-storey houses and offices above workshops, where coopers bent metal bands over oak barrels, and others weighed scrap metal on a scale or rags gathered in sacks and gone beyond natural repair.

Seb admired the coopers making the barrels. He spotted the sign advertising the garage owner's name and the tasks he was prepared to carry out. D.L. Brown sold, bought, mended and checked every motorcar anyone could ever think of, or had done before the war. In peacetime rich folk had taken their cars to be mended here. It had a huge workshop at the rear plus a storage facility where chauffeurs parked the limousines used by their employers.

Seb knew from local gossip that the workshop had been turned over to making munitions and other engineering items. Some of the people who worked there were coming out for a bit of fresh air, their tea mugs clutched in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

He heard a woman laugh and jerked up his head. She wore a turban but enough hair poked out for him to see her hair was bleached white blonde – like that Jean Harlow woman.

She saw him looking. Instead of wishing him good day her tone was downright belligerent. ‘Had yer eyeful or want your penny back?' she shouted.

Seb turned quickly away. The woman looked like trouble.

Elspeth Ryan, for it was indeed she taking a break, tossed her head defiantly and went back to her tea and her fag. Today her temper was up. This morning she'd received a telegram to say her husband was on his way home.

By the time Seb and Harry got back to the allotment, it was gone four o'clock and the shed was full of the smell of cooked rabbit and pigeon.

Joanna was there waiting for them and had turned the little methylated stove off and taken some of the meat out to cool.

Her face was bright with excitement.

‘My dad's coming home,' she said, as Harry jumped all over her, yapping excitedly and licking her face.

‘Well, that's nice to know,' said Seb. ‘Seems to me you might have need of these then.' He handed her a brown paper carrier
bag containing a few early carrots and some sprouts. ‘I expect your dad will enjoy them. Fresh from the garden they are.'

Feeling fit to burst, Joanna smiled and nodded, so full of happiness she couldn't speak. She'd told everyone in school that her dad had written saying he was on his way.

‘We'll get another telegram soon with the exact date,' she'd told her friend Susan whose father was also away fighting.

After school, running from the school gates on her way to see Harry, she saw Paul coming out of the boys' school and told him too.

‘Wish my dad was away fighting,' said Paul. Just for once he refrained from wiping his runny nose on the sleeve of his coat. Paul's father was too old to fight. He was also too lazy, and even when he wasn't in prison he was often out of work and the subject of criticism in the street.

It was Paul's mother who went out to work, initially as a cleaner but with the war on she also worked at the munitions factory, the same one where Elspeth, Joanna's stepmother, worked.

‘Wait till you tell him about Lottie,' said Paul. ‘Bet he'll be angry.'

Joanna's face clouded. Paul mentioning Lottie brought all the hurt back. The surprising thing was that she'd hardly thought of her cat since Harry had arrived on the scene. It made her feel guilty. She'd also kept Harry's existence from her friends. Sometimes she had been tempted to confide in Paul or Susan, but had held back just in case word got out and Harry went the same way as her cat.

‘Do you think he'll bring his gun?' asked Paul enthusiastically.

‘I don't know.'

‘If he does and you tell him about what happened to Lottie he might shoot the person who did it.'

Joanna found herself brightening at the prospect. As far as she was concerned her stepmother was the guilty party and deserved to be shot.

‘He might get you another cat,' Paul continued.

Joanna shook her head. ‘I don't want another cat. Not now.'

She was just about to tell him about Harry when she spotted the headmaster of the boys' school coming their way.

‘I've got to go,' she said, breaking into a run as she turned away. ‘I'll see you tomorrow.'

She'd been right. It was definitely Mr Thomas she'd seen with her stepmother and her face coloured up with embarrassment.

Paul's suggestion that her father might shoot her stepmother stayed with her as she'd ran to the shed. Her spirits soared at the thought of it, thrilling at the prospect of telling him about Harry and showing him the puppy who had brought such joy into her life. She would also tell him about Lottie, of course, and how her stepmother had disposed of her, as though she were an old handbag, not a living, breathing creature who was loved, and capable of loving in return.

Yes. Everything would be different once her father got home and found out what had been going on.

‘Did you have a good day in school?'

Seb's question interrupted her flow of thought. ‘Yes. I told everyone about my dad coming home.'

‘Even your teacher?'

Joanna nodded, the sparkle in her eyes gladdening Seb's heart.

He chuckled. ‘No doubt I shall hear all about it tonight I shouldn't wonder. Do you know why that is, Joanna?'