When the Lights Go on Again (5 page)

‘Except good manners,’ June pointed out trenchantly.

‘Absolutely,’ Hilary agreed. ‘You really put her nose out of joint tonight, Campion. It was about time someone showed her what it means to be British and I am so glad that it was one of us. I felt dreadfully sorry for that nice RAF flight lieutenant she was trying to lead on, though.’

Lou had to bite on her tongue not to retort that Kieran Mallory was far from nice and would certainly not need any leading on.

The first thing Lou noticed after she had stepped out of Liverpool’s Lime Street Station, packed with travellers, most of them in uniform, was how grey and grimy Liverpool looked after the pretty English countryside she had been living in. Quickly she pushed away her disloyal judgement on the city. Liverpool was her home, it was the place where she had grown, and most of all it held the people she loved.

She was wearing her uniform, more for her parents’ benefit than her own. Her father was a traditionalist and a bit old-fashioned, and Lou suspected that he wouldn’t understand or indeed approve of the way things worked in ATA. Not that she minded wearing her smart tailored navy-blue skirt with its matching jacket worn over a lighter blue blouse. Unlike the well-to-do pilots, who all had their uniforms tailored for them at a store in London called Austin Reed, Lou had been perfectly happy with the neat fit of her regulationsized clothes. Rammed down onto her curls was the peaked forage cap that none of the girls really
ever wore, her golden wings stitched proudly to her jacket denoting that she was now a Third Class ATA pilot.

After the sleepy green peacefulness of the narrow country lanes around their base, connecting small rural villages and towns, the busyness of Liverpool’s streets, teeming with traffic and people, came as something of a shock. Her strongest memories of her home city were those of the dreadful days of Hitler’s blitz at the start of May 1941 and the terrible time after that when her sister had nearly lost her life in the bomb-damaged streets. Then the city had been silent, mourning its dead, and filled with grief, its people weighed down with the enormity of the task that lay in front of them.

Now all that had gone and in its place was a sense of expectation and energy, brought about, Lou suspected, by the country’s growing hope that Hitler was going to be defeated.

The city centre was busy and bustling with men and women in every kind of uniform: British Army, Royal Navy, and the RAF; American infantry and airmen, Poles, Canadians New Zealanders and Aussies.

As she passed the street that led to the Royal Court Theatre, Lou felt her heart give a flurry of angry thuds. It was there that she and Sasha had first met Kieran Mallory, the nephew of its manager, Con Bryant. They had gone there naïvely hoping to be taken on as dancers. Instead of sending them on their way, Kieran and his uncle Con had deliberately encouraged them to believe
that they had a stage future ahead of them. And by playing each of them off against the other, pretending to each behind the other’s back that he liked her the best, Kieran had cleverly come between them, fostering a mistrust and jealousy that had ultimately almost led to a terrible tragedy.

That was all in the past now, Lou reminded herself. Sasha was happily engaged to the young bomb disposal sapper who had saved her life, and Lou herself had achieved her ambition of becoming a pilot.

But the division between them was still there.

Not because of Kieran Mallory, Lou assured herself. He meant nothing to either of them now and she certainly wasn’t going to give him an importance in her life that he didn’t deserve.

Her nose, accustomed now to the smell of aviation fuel, hot engines, and Naafi food, set against a countryside background, was now beginning to recognise the smells of home: sea salt-sprayed air mixed with smoke and dust; the smell of vinegar, fish and chips wafting out of a chippy as she made her way up through the city streets toward Edge Hill; the scent of steam and coal from the trains in the Edge Hill freight yard, those smells gradually fading as she walked further up Edge Hill Road, leaving the city centre behind her, so that by the time she was turning into Ash Grove, Lou could have sworn she could smell the newly turned earth from the row of neat allotments that ran behind the houses and down to the railway embankment, one of which belonged to her own father. Her heart lifted, and just as though she
were still a little girl, she suddenly wanted to run the last few yards, just as she and Sasha had done as children, racing one another to see who could reach the back door first, and somehow always getting there together, falling into the kitchen in gales of giggles. It had always been Sasha, though, who had still looked neat and tidy, whilst Lou had always been the one with a ribbon missing from one of her plaits and her ankle socks falling down.

In those days, when they had got home from school they had measured the days from the way the kitchen smelled. Mondays, the smell would be of lye soap and laundry, because Monday was wash day, just as on Fridays the smell would be of fish. They were not a Catholic family but their mother had still followed the traditional habit of serving fish on Fridays. Thursday’s smell had always been Lou’s favourite because Thursday was baking day, and they would return home from school to find the kitchen wonderfully scented with the aroma of cakes or scones, or whatever it was their mother had been baking.

Those had been such happy days. She had never dreamed then of what might lie ahead of them, never imagined that there would ever be a time when she and Sasha would not do everything together. Then such a thing had been unthinkable. Then…

The back door was half open. A pang of unexpected happiness, tinged with uncertainty, made Lou hesitate, suddenly conscious, now that she was here, how very much she wanted to make things right with her twin and for them to be close again.

She pushed open the door.

‘Lou!’

Jean stared in delight at her daughter, taking in her air of calm confidence and the smartness of her appearance.

‘Mum.’ Lou’s voice thickened with emotion as she was enveloped in her mother’s loving embrace.

‘You’ve grown,’ Jean told her. ‘A least an inch.’

‘It’s this cap,’ Lou laughed. ‘It makes me look taller. Oh, Mum, it’s lovely to be home. I do miss you all, especially Sash.’

The once bright yellow paint on the kitchen walls might look a little faded and war-weary now, but the love that filled the small room hadn’t changed, and nor had her mother.

‘Tell me all about everyone,’ Lou begged her mother. ‘I get letters, but it isn’t the same as seeing people. How’s Grace liking Whitchurch? And what about Auntie Fran? And Sasha, Mum, how is she?’

Jean sighed and shook her head slightly.

‘I’m worried about her,’ she admitted. Normally she would not have dreamed of discussing one of the twins with the other, but Lou had such an air of quiet competence about her now that unexpectedly Jean discovered that it was actually a relief to be able to voice her concerns about Sasha to someone who knew and understood her so well.

‘There’s nothing wrong between her and Bobby, is there?’ Lou asked anxiously.

‘I don’t think so, Lou. I just don’t know what’s wrong with her, except that nothing seems to please her these days.’

Outside the back door Sasha stiffened, anger
and resentment filling her. So that’s what she got for using some of her precious time off to come home early to welcome her twin – overhearing Lou and their mother talking about her behind her back.

Sasha pushed open the door and marched into the kitchen, her unexpected appearance forcing an uncomfortable silence on the room.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ she told her mother and sister. ‘I’ll go up to my room so that you can go on talking about me behind my back.’

‘Oh, Sasha, love, don’t be like that,’ Jean pleaded.

She was upsetting her mother, Sasha could see, and immediately her anger turned to guilt and misery. She knew that her mother was anxious about her, but how could she tell her about the shameful secret that was eating into her? How could she tell her what a coward she was, especially now with Lou standing there in her smart uniform. Lou, her twin, whose letters home were full of the exciting and dangerous things she was doing.

Wanting to change the subject and lighten the mood in the kitchen, Lou announced, ‘I wish so much you’d been with me last night, Sash. A group of us went to this dance and there was this dreadful show-off American girl pilot who was trying to prove that us British girls couldn’t jitterbug, so I had to show her that she was wrong. I did pretty well but it would have been so much better if you’d been there.’

Was that a hint of a smile relaxing Sasha’s frown?

‘Oh, and I’ve got to tell you this. You’ll never guess who was there,’ Lou continued. ‘Kieran Mallory, and—’

Immediately Sasha’s smile disappeared. ‘Kieran Mallory? Why have you got to tell me about him? Do you think I actually need reminding about what he did, or how keen you were to get in his good books? I thought we’d agreed that we’d never talk about him again.’

Lou didn’t know what to say.

‘It was thanks to you and him that I nearly got myself killed,’ Sasha threw at her, red flags of emotion burning in her cheeks. ‘I would have been killed an’ all if it hadn’t been for my Bobby, saving me like he did by taking my place in that bomb shaft.’

Guilt filled Lou. ‘Sash, you know how dreadful I feel about that.’ Remorsefully she reached out her hand to her twin, but Sasha stepped back from her.

‘It’s easy enough for you to say that, but it doesn’t seem to have stopped you taking up with Kieran again.’

‘I haven’t taken up with him,’ Lou protested. ‘I only mentioned him because I wanted to tell you that he was with this dreadful American girl!’

‘And that’s why you wanted to outdance her, isn’t it? So that you could show off to him.’

‘No,’ Lou protested. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’

‘Then why are you so keen to tell me that you’ve met up with him again? If you’re trying to make me jealous of you, Lou, you needn’t bother. My Bobby is worth a hundred of Kieran Mallory.
You’re welcome to him. Don’t bother making me any tea, Mum. I’m meeting Bobby at tea time and we’ll have something at Joe Lyons.’

Lou was too astonished and, yes, hurt as well, by Sasha’s unexpected and unjustified attack on her to say anything to defend herself. She’d only mentioned the incident because she’d wanted to take Sasha back to a time when they’d been close to one another. It had never occurred to her that Sasha would place the interpretation on her little story that she had.

Without waiting for any response Sasha pulled open the door into the hall and walked out.

Jean and Lou looked at one another in silence as they heard her feet going up the stairs.

‘It isn’t like Sasha thinks, Mum. I wasn’t telling her about Kieran for any reason. Sasha’s right, though,’ Lou continued soberly. ‘What happened to her was my fault. If we hadn’t quarrelled and she’d decided to go home without me, she’d never have gone across that bombed-out building and fallen into that bomb crater. I should have gone back with her the moment she said she didn’t want to go any further, instead of waiting like I did, thinking she’d change her mind and come running after me and Kieran.’

Lou looked so guilty and upset that Jean’s heart ached for her.

‘It was an accident, with no one to blame, Lou love, and thankfully in the end neither of you came to any harm. I can’t tell you how many years it aged me and your dad when we saw the two of you in that bomb crater, you holding on to Sasha for dear life and her half under that bomb.’

Jean exhaled and then said firmly, ‘I’m going to put the kettle on and make us all a nice cup of tea.’

She turned away from Lou to fill the kettle. ‘And as for this Kieran Mallory…’ she continued, her back to Lou as she turned on the gas and then struck a match to light the burners.

‘He doesn’t mean anything to me now, Mum,’ Lou assured her. ‘Me and Sasha were well and truly taken in by him and that uncle of his who managed the Royal Court Theatre.’

Jean was glad that she had her back to her daughter. Somehow, perhaps because at the time she had been so dreadfully anxious for Sasha and then so relieved when she was finally safe, she’d never made the connection between Kieran Mallory and Con Bryant, although Jean recognised that it must have been there for her to make. Now that she had, though, a fresh apprehension filled her. Con might be dead and buried – Jean had seen the announcement of his death in the local paper – but that did not alter the fact that he had been the cause of such dreadful misery and potential shame to the family when he seduced Francine, and left her pregnant, something which Lou and Sasha knew nothing about. And now here was his nephew, coming between her daughters, a nephew who sounded very much as though he was made in the same mould as his uncle; the kind of man no mother wanted going anywhere near her daughters.

Lou had said that he didn’t mean anything to her, and Sasha was safely engaged to Bobby so
there was no real reason for her to worry, Jean tried to comfort herself.

Irritably Charlie Firth gunned the engine of the Racing Green MG and dropped it down a gear so that he could overtake the lumbering army lorries travelling in convoy ahead of him. He hadn’t been in the best of moods when he’d left his base in the South of England for the long drive home to Liverpool, and the slow crawl along roads filled with military traffic hadn’t done anything to improve that mood. Spending, or rather wasting, what could well be his last bit of decent leave before his battalion was posted overseas and into action on a visit to his mother was the last thing Charlie would have chosen to do – not when London and all it had to offer in terms of a good night out with a pretty and willing girl was so conveniently close to the base. Unfortunately, though, he’d had no choice. Thanks to his ruddy wife and her equally ruddy parents, and their insistence on Charlie doing the gentlemanly thing and giving his wife a divorce.

Charlie swore viciously as he took a sharp corner at speed and almost knocked a pair of cyclists off their bikes. He could just imagine how his mother was going to react to the news that Daphne wanted a divorce. Not that Charlie really cared how his mother felt; it was the effect the news of his divorce was likely to have on her willingness to ‘help him out’ with those useful ‘loans’ he kept tapping her up for that worried him. His mother was a snob. She had boasted
to anyone who would listen that he, Charlie, was marrying a girl with a double-barrelled surname and she wasn’t going to like what Charlie had to tell her. And he did have to tell her because if he didn’t there was no guarantee that if he didn’t get his side of the story in first, his in-laws, the Wrighton-Budes, just might give her theirs.