Wartime Wife (23 page)

Her father’s paper rustled as he got to his feet; he was certainly taking his time going out the back. His jaw moved from side to side as though he were chewing something. He did that when he was thinking things through.

‘Women in the armed forces? It didn’t happen in our day. Women stayed firmly at the rear.’

Lizzie leaned towards her father, her face shining with enthusiasm. ‘Some Wrens are nurses. Some operate wirelesses or just do office work. They don’t get to fire guns or anything like that.’

‘I should hope not,’ he said, going outside now forgotten. He rustled his paper again before disappearing behind it to look at the pictures and laboriously pick out the words he knew.

Lizzie smiled smugly to herself. If her father was going to object, he would have done so, but he hadn’t.

Her mother’s expression wiped the smile off her face. Mary Anne was cuddling the teapot against her chest, as though it might fly out of her hands if she dared relax her grip. ‘I don’t want you to go, Lizzie.’

She looked at her mother. She was standing looking at her sidelong, her hands clasped at her chest, as slender and alluring as a painting she’d seen by Rossetti of a woman with reddish blonde hair and wearing a green robe.

‘I might not have a choice in the matter. Women are being called up.’

‘Then wait until you are.’ Her mother’s tone was strident and her worried look made her feel uncomfortable. She reached for the butter and jam and made a great show of slapping both onto a thick slice of bread.

‘Why do you have to volunteer? What’s the point of it?’

Lizzie felt herself colouring up. In her mind she recalled the feel of Peter’s fingers unbuttoning her dress, the smell of him, the intense deliciousness of feeling his body, even his breath, falling on hers. She could hardly admit that she was doing it for his sake; it was her way of supporting him, and Patrick for that matter, though only at a distance.

‘I just think I should,’ she said finally.

‘That’s ridiculous – and don’t put so much jam on that bread. Everything with sugar in is going on ration. You’ll have to cut down.’

Lizzie slammed her knife down. ‘Then I’ll do without! What do you care if I starve!’

‘Lizzie!’

The legs of Lizzie’s chair squealed across the lino as she sprang to her feet. She was grown up. She didn’t deserve to be treated like this, but neither was there any cause to behave as she was doing. It was all to do with how she felt inside.

Sucking in her lips, she considered how best to make amends, change the subject, do something useful, or better still, something good.

‘I’ll go and read Stanley a story.’ A reasonable excuse, she thought, to leave the table and not have her plans questioned.

Her mother’s mouth dropped open as though she was about to comment further. Lizzie didn’t wait to hear reasons why she shouldn’t leave home, though she could have dealt with them. It was the hurt in her mother’s eyes that made her feel guilty.

Her father intervened. ‘Stop trying to wrap the girl in cotton
wool like you do that boy. At least someone in this ’ouse has got the guts to fight for their country.’

The cooler air of the passageway between kitchen and front parlour calmed her red cheeks.

‘Oh, Peter,’ she moaned softly to herself, rolling her head against the silky cold of the limewashed wall and closing her eyes.

The sound of the wireless followed her out. Her father had switched it on, waiting for the six o’clock news. At present a dance tune – a foxtrot, by the sound of it – drifted along the passageway, superseded by the news.

‘This is the BBC news … threats of air raids have necessitated …’

Lizzie closed her eyes.

Air raids! Gas masks. Evacuation. Call-up papers … She clapped her hands over her ears, tried to shake the words away, and finally opened the door to what had been the parlour serving as Stanley’s bedroom since he was first took sick.

Her little brother was sitting up on top of the coverlet reading a book. He hadn’t come out for his meal, and had refused everything offered.

Lizzie made faces around the bedroom door until her young brother was in fits of giggles. He giggled even more when she sat beside him on the pale-blue eiderdown and tickled his ribs.

‘No more,’ he cried, ‘No more,’ already bent double and choking with laughter.

She cuddled him gently, bracing herself before feeling the thin arms and spare shoulders beneath his pyjama jacket.

‘I thought you were feeling better,’ she said. ‘You certainly look it.’

He nodded. ‘I am. And tomorrow I’m going out to play. Mum said I could if I went to bed early.’

‘It’s pretty cold out. You’ll have to wrap up well.’

‘I’m glad it’s cold. I hope it snows.’ His hair tickled her hand as he tipped his head back. ‘Do you think it will snow?’ he added, gazing up at her with eyes like crystal pools.

‘It might at Christmas.’

‘That would be nice,’ he said, his smile wide enough to cut his face in half.

Her own spirits were lifted by his look of excited expectation. She couldn’t help being infected by it.

‘If you make a wish for snow at Christmas, it’s bound to come true – at least, so I’ve been told.’

Stanley sucked in his bottom lip, his brow crumpling as he gave it some thought.

‘Do all Christmas wishes come true?’

‘Of course,’ she answered, and promptly wished a few for herself: send Peter home for Christmas, have the war end and Mr Chamberlain announcing on the wireless that it was all a dreadful mistake, and mend the rift between her father and brother. The latter had surprised her. She’d never known them fall out before.

The new, analytical Lizzie perceived that the warm atmosphere she had taken for granted all these years had fractured, hairline cracks appearing where there had been only solid smoothness. The divisions between countries had grown wider, and so had those between people. Perhaps they had always been there; it took a war to bring them into focus.

But for now, Stanley’s wishes were the most important. She sensed he had something else far more important to wish for than snow, or had more than one wish on his mind. She considered the obvious. Perhaps a toy train, a fort with lead soldiers or merely a book, or perhaps he really would wish that there would be no war. God knows enough people wished for that, but the blackout curtains were up and gas masks were
hanging from their shoulders during the day and beside their beds at night. The future was frightening.

Stanley squeezed his eyes shut.

‘I wish—’

Lizzie interrupted. ‘For lots of snow.’

He shook his head.

Lizzie waited, marvelling that he looked so much better. Lizzie prepared herself for happy Christmas wishes.

‘I wish that my dad would stop hurting my mum.’

Lizzie froze. Surely she’d heard wrong. ‘What was that you said?’

He repeated his wish word for word. His pale-blue eyes looked up into hers. It was like looking into a mirror, an image of what she had once looked like, though she’d never had his pale skin, had never been ill, but always a healthy, contented child. The picture in her mind of their happy home, the one she was always glad to come home to, threatened to crumble. She told herself that it couldn’t be true, that despite the fraught atmosphere following her father’s drinking sessions, her parents were happily married and had four wonderful children. That was the way it had always seemed. He’s only a child, she thought, eyeing the startlingly white hair and the luminous eyes.

She cleared her throat while searching for the right words. When they finally came, it proved difficult to keep her voice from shaking.

‘What makes you think he hurts Ma?’

He blinked as he thought some more. She tried telling herself that it wasn’t hatred she saw there. It scared her too much in one so young, but his words scared her more.

‘Because I’ve seen him – loads of times – when he thought I was asleep. I used to creep away, but I don’t any more, and now he knows that I know. He’s seen me watching and he knows I hate him, but I don’t care … I don’t care.’

The morning was busy. People were buying up the things likely to become scarce once the war was truly under way so everyone needed a little more cash to spend and the little washhouse was crammed with goods.

Aggie Hill had brought in a mother of pearl vase. ‘These bloody ration books. The buggers in charge don’t allow for a growing family, do they?’ She spoke loudly, her voice barely restrained by the stout brick walls of the washhouse. ‘Not that mine’s going to be around, poor little sod. As I told you, he’s already joined up. I just want a bit by me to buy what’s going when he does come home,’ she added, her voice taking on a kind of reverence when she spoke of her son.

‘So I hear.’

Mary Anne folded one arm across her belly. Concentrating on the job in hand wasn’t easy this morning. Aggie’s son had been called up. How long before Harry was?

Barely noticing the finer details of the vase – if indeed it had any – Mary Anne shook her head. ‘I haven’t got room for this, Aggie. Normally, I would have, but there’s just too many people bringing in stuff. I can’t take it.’

Aggie pursed her lips, causing the hairs on her chin to point forwards. ‘Well, that’s a bloody nuisance.’

Mary Anne offered a solution. ‘You can take it to Uncle’s.’

Aggie’s black eyebrows, totally at odds to her white hair, beetled like large caterpillars over her large nose. ‘Has the nephew arrived then?’

‘Apparently so,’ said Mary Anne, deciding not to divulge that she’d met him.

‘Jesus bloody Christ, thank God for that.’

Two other people had bits of silver to hock. Others had come in to see if she had anything suitable as going away gifts.

‘My Annie’s joining the navy as a nurse. I wanted a little locket for her.’

‘I need some beer money. My Albert wants to go out on the razzle before he gets drafted – though I reckon it’s only an excuse. I told him he was too old to be called up, but he won’t have it.’

There were many others, all wanting money or items, their sudden needs caused by Adolf Hitler.

The last was Flossie Davies, her sleeping youngster clamped to her hip, his plump cheek resting on her shoulder. Although she hadn’t been the first to arrive, she hung back. It was obvious she wanted to be last. Mary Anne wondered what she had to hock. Her husband drank more than Henry, and that was saying something. There were no mats on the floor in the Davies’ house, only bare lino because anything they owned was continually being sold or hocked to pay the rent or put food on the table.

Flossie handed over the paper carrier she was carrying. ‘Can you give me two pounds for this?’

‘Two pounds!’

Mary Anne balked at the figure asked, but took the bag anyway and peered inside. What she saw surprised her.

‘I didn’t know your Frank played a trumpet.’

Flossie sniffed. ‘Frank ain’t musical. He brought it home
one night. Next morning, I asked him where he got it, but he didn’t remember.’

‘So it’s stolen.’

Flossie shook her own head vehemently, sending the baby’s head jiggling like a rubber ball against her bony shoulder.

‘No! No! I wouldn’t say that. My Frank’s not a thief. He got drunk and this thing got mislaid.’

Mary Anne sighed. ‘You should know better, Flossie. Take it away. I don’t deal in stolen stuff. Besides, what am I going to do with a trumpet round here?’ She offered her back the carrier bag. ‘Best for you to take it down to Uncle’s. You heard me say he’s back.’

The carrier bag swung on its string handles. Flossie’s expression hardened and her pert chin quivered with indignation.

‘I need this money, Mary Anne. My Frank’s joined up, but he swears he won’t go without a penny in his pocket. He reckons on buying a few rounds down at the Admiral Nelson before he goes, and swears he’ll have a good send-off or stay home. And don’t look at me like that, Mary Anne. Be in no doubt, I want the bleeder to go and the sooner the better. I can’t go down Uncle’s. I had a loan. I owes money there, and that new bloke might not be as obliging as his uncle.’

‘Well, that’s a different excuse to those I’ve been hearing. Women all around are bewailing the fact that their men are being called up and you, Flossie, can’t wait for yours to go.’

Flossie was the picture of defiance. ‘Can you blame me?’

Mary Anne eyed her for a few seconds only before shaking her head. ‘No. I don’t blame you. Won’t you be worried about him spending all his army pay before you get any?’

Flossie smiled secretively and pulled her dingy blouse up from her breast so the baby could get at her nipple. ‘Unbeknown to him, I’ve already looked into that. They’ll apportion it so I don’t go destitute. He’ll get a bit of spending and I’ll get the
rest, which no doubt will be more than I’m getting from the drunken sod now. So you see, Mary Anne? I’ll be better off.’

Mary Anne shook her head and smiled. ‘Good for you.’

There were too many run-down women, she thought. Flossie had once been a good-looking girl, but she was thirty now and had a few teeth missing. Her hair, which had once been shiny and shingled, was now like rats’ tails hanging around her face.

Poor cow, thought Mary Anne, her gaze shifting between the bag and Flossie’s face. It wasn’t in her heart to refuse. Look at her, she thought, as she eased a few shillings from her purse. Straggly, greasy hair, no brassiere or vest, and God knows what the rest of her underwear was like. She had to agree that Flossie would quite likely be better off without Frank. It occurred to her that the war might change women’s lives quite a bit if it was already changing the way they behaved, like Flossie being outspoken about what she would gain if Frank wasn’t around.

‘I must be soft in the head. Take this on account,’ she said, thrusting five shillings into Flossie’s hand. ‘Like I said, it wouldn’t be wise to hawk it around here. I’ll take the trumpet down Uncle’s for you. I can’t promise two pounds, but you should get at least fifteen shillings for it.’

‘Ooow, ta ever so much,’ Flossie said, secreting the coins into the safety of her cleavage. What came next was barefaced cheek. ‘As quick as you can, eh? I’m desperate, Mary Anne. Really desperate.’