Home Fires and Spitfires

by Daisy Styles

  Lovely Ada threw her arms around Jamie’s neck and kissed him full on the mouth. ‘Won’t it be wonderful to forget about the war just for a short time, to dress up and dance all night long?’

  ‘Any excuse to hold your beautiful body in my arms,’ Jamie murmured. ‘Though it’s been so long since I went dancing, I might well have forgotten how to foxtrot.’

  When the party day finally dawned, Ada, Dora and the rest of the staff were in a lather of excitement.

  ‘How are you going to get Jack over here without giving away the surprise?’ Matron asked Dora, when she clocked in for work early that morning.

  ‘Me and Mr Saddleworth have worked it out,’ Dora explained. ‘I’ll say I’m working, and mi husband will bring our Jack over here later on for his supper; then, when he arrives, we’ll all sing “Happy Birthday”, pop a few beer bottles and let the fun begin,’ she answered with a wide smile.

  ‘And where will you change into your little devil outfit?’ Shirley giggled.

  ‘In’t sluice-room, of course,’ Dora giggled back.

  Matron and Shirley had kindly volunteered to work the late shift on the party night. ‘But that’s not fair, you’ll miss all the fun,’ Ada exclaimed.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ Matron chuckled. ‘We’ll take it in turns to come and check up on you all. Luckily nobody’s due to give birth that night, though we can’t bank on that, of course.’

  ‘Though the sight of Senior Nurse Dale showing her knickers might bring on palpitations among some of the patients,’ Dora joked.

  ‘And you’ll put the wind up some dressed as Old Nick!’ Ada joked back.

  ‘As long as nobody’s waters break, we’ll be fine,’ Matron said calmly.

  Ada was thrilled with the dress that Shirley had painstakingly created.

  ‘It’s gorgeous!’ she cried, and spun around in circles, sending the skirt swirling out around her thighs. ‘The bodice is perfect,’ she enthused. She stopped spinning in order to examine the neat lines of crystals and sequins Shirly had patiently sewn into place.

  ‘It matches your tiara,’ Shirley laughed, as she arranged a sparkling band of crystals on top of Ada’s tumbling golden-auburn curls. ‘And here’s a wand to complete the picture.’

  Smiling Ada waved the wand, which was nothing more than a little star of silver paper stuck on the end of a stick. Enjoying herself, she grinned as she got into her theatrical role.

  ‘Come on, Shirley: in gratitude for your wonderful work, I’ll grant you three wishes!’ she declared.

  Thinking long and hard, earnest Shirley bit her bottom lip. ‘I hope that Jack stays well and comes home safe and sound to Dora at the end of the war.’

  Ada waved her wand. ‘Granted!’

  Shirley continued with a shy smile, ‘I wish you and your young man have a happy future together.’

  Ada frantically waved her wand. ‘Certainly granted!’ Ada laughed. ‘And your third wish?’

  Shirley blushed guiltily. ‘I wish that God will forgive me for missing Mass this morning because I had to finish your dress.’

  Ada twirled her wand before she pronounced. ‘All your wishes will come true.’

  Gazing into her friend’s beautiful, glowing face, Shirley smiled wistfully. ‘I hope so, for all our sakes.’

  It was lucky for Ada that she didn’t see Jamie arrive for the party; if she had, she would have immediately spotted his rather preoccupied expression. Fortunately, the sight of his glittering girlfriend distracted Jamie, who smiled when he laid eyes on her.

  ‘Darling, you look enchanting!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘And you, Dr Reid, are undoubtedly the best-looking man in the room.’

  At her remark Jamie burst out laughing. ‘I’m the only man in the room, apart from Jack,’ he pointed out.

  Ada waved her wand before his eyes. ‘If this room were full of men, you would still outshine them all, my darling!’

  An expression crossed Jamie’s face that caused Ada to stop smiling. ‘What is it, dear?’ she enquired. ‘Is something wrong?’

  Jamie quickly shook his head. ‘Of course not, come on,’ he said, as he grabbed her hand and pulled her into the centre of the dining room, now gaudy with balloons and red, white and blue bunting. ‘Let’s enjoy ourselves.’

  When Jack arrived with his dad, Glenn Miller was blaring out on the gramophone, and several dancers, including Jamie and Ada, were dancing to the strains of ‘In the Mood’. At the sight of Jack standing in the doorway with an astonished look on his face, Jamie briefly paused the music so they could all sing ‘Happy Birthday’, after which they toasted his good health in beer or sherry. When the music started up again, Jack swallowed down his pint before searching the room for somebody to dance with. It didn’t take long before his eyes landed on Gracie. Wearing a loose white silk shift, with her lustrous dark hair curling around her shapely shoulders and her full, luscious lips painted carmine red, she was undoubtedly the best-looking girl in the room. Seeing Jack making a bee-line towards her, Gracie groaned.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she said to her friends. ‘He’s going to ask me to dance.’

  When Jack held out his hand, Gracie hadn’t the heart to refuse, but she knew that within seconds of holding her Jack would be a very disappointed lad. As they moved on to the dancefloor and their bodies bumped against each other’s, Jack realized that he had been so captivated by his partner’s lovely face that he hadn’t registered the rest of her body.

  ‘I’m sorry, I should have thought …’ he muttered, struggling to express himself before clumsily blurting out, ‘Are you all right to dance?’

  Gracie threw back her head and laughed. ‘Are you frightened I might give birth right here on the dancefloor?’ she exclaimed.

  Poor Jack blushed. ‘Well, er …’

  ‘Don’t worry, if I wasn’t dancing with you, I’d be dancing with one of the lasses,’ Gracie grinned. ‘And you’re a lot lighter on your feet than any of them are.’

  Seeing her cheeky smile and laughing eyes, Jack drew Gracie further on to the dancefloor, where he was astonished by her natural rhythm and her wonderful timing.

  ‘Blimey! You can dance,’ he gasped, as he struggled to keep up with her during a lively square tango.

  ‘I’ve always loved it,’ Gracie shouted over the music. ‘Though to be honest I never expected to be dancing the night away here at Mary Vale,’ she giggled.

  When it came to the slow romantic numbers, Jack blushed and suggested that they sat the dance out and had a drink.

  ‘Lemonade shandy for me, please,’ Gracie requested.

  After they’d finished their drinks, Gracie introduced Jack to several of her friends, at which point Dora joined them. ‘Just checking you’re not planning on kidnapping my lad,’ she joked.

  Jack, who had had several pints and was enjoying the attention of several (albeit pregnant) attractive young women, smiled. ‘I wouldn’t mind, Mam.’

  Gracie nudged him in the ribs. ‘Be a gentleman and ask your mam for a dance.’

  Mother and son took to the floor, which gave Jack the chance to ask Dora a few personal questions about Gracie.

  ‘How come a gorgeous young lass is in a place like this?’

  Dora gave him a sardonic look. ‘There’s a lot of gorgeous young lasses in places like this, son.’

  ‘She’s just my kind of girl,’ Jack added with a wistful smile. ‘Lively, bright, young and really bonny. I wish her circumstances were different; otherwise I’d be asking her out on a date.’

  ‘She’s not going to be pregnant forever,’ Dora pointed out. ‘And don’t run away with the idea that Gracie’s just a pretty face – she’s a shipbuilder at the yard in Barrow.’

  Jack’s jaw dropped. ‘She’s not the size of two pennyworth of coppers!’ he protested.

  ‘She might be small but she’s a welder and a whizz with old engines too,’ Dora informed him.

  Over the space of a number of slow foxtrots, Dora told her son about Gracie’s Bedfor
d van and her visits to Kendal Market every Saturday morning.

  ‘She always manages to wheedle a spot of petrol out of Farmer Arkwright – God knows where he squirrels it away,’ she chuckled.

  Jack gave a knowing wink. ‘Best not to ask too many questions, Mam.’

  ‘Any road up, thanks to Arkwright and a few petrol coupons from the convent, young Gracie ferries stuff all over the place. She’s a sight for sore eyes bouncing along the road to Barrow or Grange in that rattling old van.’ She gave a fond smile. ‘I’ll miss the lively little lass when she does leave here.’

  Jack’s ears pricked up. ‘When might she leave?’

  ‘When do you think, you great lummox?’ Dora mocked. ‘After she’s had her baby of course. Gracie’s made no secret of her plan to return to work as soon as her baby’s adoption has been arranged.’

  Jack gazed admiringly at the pretty dark-haired young woman now waltzing round the room with a protesting Shirley, wearing her blue postulant’s smock.

  ‘Come on, Shirley,’ he heard giggling Gracie say. ‘You might be a nun, but it doesn’t stop you from having a dance. Follow me, one, two, three, one, two, three. Keep up, lass!’

  Lighting up a Capstan, Jack watched Gracie painstakingly teach blushing young Shirley.

  ‘Heck!’ he thought. ‘If she’s this lively now, stuck in a Mother and Baby Home in the middle of nowhere, what will she be like when she’s back working at the shipyard?’

  Smiling to himself, he strolled over to the bar to help himself to another beer. ‘I might look up Gracie Price next time I’m home on leave,’ Jack thought. ‘She’s certainly a girl to keep track of.’

  The party ended with a number of romantic waltzes, followed by a rousing chorus of ‘God Save the King’, after which the dancers and residents slowly drifted away. Hand in hand, Ada and Jamie strolled out into the garden, where a chill autumn wind whipped around them.

  ‘You must be freezing in that fairy outfit,’ Jamie said, as he drew Ada down beside him on their favourite bench on the terrace, and Ada nuzzled against his warm chest.

  ‘You can warm me up,’ she murmured, as she pressed herself close to his strong body. ‘Mmm, I love the smell of you, soap and Dettol!’ she giggled.

  When he didn’t respond to her teasing, Ada quickly glanced up at Jamie. ‘Penny for your thoughts?’ she asked softly.

  Jamie let out a long sigh. ‘I didn’t want to spoil the evening, darling,’ he finally admitted.

  The moon, suddenly drifting out from behind a thick veil of scudding clouds, caught the crystal headdress in Ada’s long, thick hair, making it glitter brightly against the velvet-dark night. Pausing to light a cigarette, Jamie inhaled.

  ‘I received a letter this morning: I’ve been called up to join the Medical Corps.’

  Ada stared at him in disbelief. ‘But you can’t,’ she cried. ‘Your leg,’ she blustered.

  ‘It seems the Army are less fussy than they were when I first applied,’ Jamie explained. ‘They need more doctors and suddenly I’m fit enough, which I am,’ he staunchly insisted. ‘I’m ready to do my bit for my country; I always have been.’ He stopped short as he stared into her bewitching blue eyes. ‘It’s you that’s changed things, my sweetest, darling Ada.’

  Though she felt like throwing herself on her knees and begging him not to go, Ada instinctively knew how much Jamie really wanted this. The Army’s initial rejection had embittered and humiliated him; now he would be exonerated. Holding him by both hands, Ada tried her hardest not to cry as she looked him square in the face.

  ‘I know it’s what you always wanted and I’m proud of you …’ Her voice wavered. ‘I’ll just miss you, and worry about you,’ she blurted out like a frightened child.

  Seeing her face crumple, Jamie threw away the stub of his cigarette and pulled Ada close. ‘I love you so much,’ he said for the very first time.

  Ada’s heart lurched. How she had yearned to hear those three precious words fall from Jamie’s lips, but never in these circumstances.

  ‘I love you too, my dearest,’ she whispered back. Clutching each other and fighting back tears, Ada struggled for self-control. ‘Here we are, thinking only of each other, when all across the country lovers and families have been saying their goodbyes for two years,’ she said bravely.

  ‘You’re right, darling,’ he whispered, as he kissed her again. ‘If I’d been called up at the start of the war, as I hoped I would be, I would never have met you. I have my wonky leg to thank for that,’ he said, smiling.

  Tense as she was, Ada couldn’t help but laugh at his words. ‘I love your wonky leg,’ she told him. ‘It’s given us time together, here at Mary Vale and in the Lake District too.’

  ‘Grasmere, Keswick, Catbells and wonderful Watendlath.’ Jamie murmured the names dreamily. ‘I’ll carry those memories in my head forever.’ Suddenly anxious, he whispered, ‘You’ll wait for me, won’t you, my darling?’

  Ada gulped hard as she firmly told herself, ‘You cannot cry now. When Jamie’s gone, you’ll have all the time in the world to cry.’

  Laying her head on his shoulder, Ada made a heartfelt promise. ‘I’ll be here waiting for you, my darling, no matter how long it takes.’

  Ada accompanied Jamie on the train to Lancaster, from where he would go on to London. Because neither wanted to say their goodbyes on home territory, they had agreed on this arrangement as a good compromise; it also gave them just a little bit longer together. Sitting on the train and clutching each other by the hand, the young couple gazed out of the window at the sunny bay, where groups of toddlers, accompanied by mothers and grannies, looked up in wonder to wave at the thundering steam train as it passed by, skirting the coastline. Cuddling up as close as she could to Jamie, Ada inhaled the smells that she always associated with him: antiseptic soap, tweed and tobacco. Giving a long, yearning sigh she whispered, ‘If only I could bottle your smell.’

  Jamie gave her an incredulous look before he burst out laughing. ‘I must smell like an old goat,’ he cried. ‘While you, my love, smell of mountains and sunshine,’ he chuckled. Nuzzling her long hair, he whispered softly, ‘When will we next go walking, my sweetheart?’

  Lifting her face in order to gaze into his hazel eyes flecked with beguiling specks of golden light, Ada replied, ‘The minute you’re home we’ll pack a rucksack and walk over Catbells into the Newlyn Valley.’

  ‘It’s lovely up there in the autumn. When the bracken turns gold and the heather glows purple.’

  Giving him a teasing tap on the cheek, Ada said, ‘Then you had better make sure you’re back home with me soon.’

  When it came to the dreaded moment of farewell, both of them feared saying too much in case their emotions got the better of them.

  ‘Be careful,’ Ada pleaded as she stood on the long platform at Lancaster Station, waiting for the train to leave. ‘Take care of yourself.’

  With the window wound down, Jamie leant out to grip Ada’s hands, which he held to his lips. ‘Write, please write,’ he begged.

  ‘I will, promise,’ she assured him.

  As the train hooted and started to shunt forward, they loosened their hold on each other.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she sobbed, as the tears she had struggled to hold back overflowed from her eyes.

  A cloud of dark smoke belched from the train’s engine, briefly obscuring all from view.

  ‘Ada!’ Jamie called through the smoke. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ Ada called back. ‘I love you so much.’

  As the smoke dispersed and the train pulled away, Ada was able to see Jamie waving to her through the window; then, when the track rounded a sharp bend, the train and Jamie disappeared from view. Standing alone on the platform with tears streaming down her face, Ada was completely overwhelmed by sadness and despair. With every instinct in her body clamouring to follow the train bearing her beloved away, Ada forced herself to retrace her footsteps and, walking like an automaton, she made her way toward
s the train that would take her home. Duty called: she had vital work to do at Mary Vale, where friends and patients awaited her return. If Jamie on his way to the Front could put on a brave face, so could she; though her heart ached, life, unquestionably, went on.

  18. Behind the Lines

  A little of the sparkle in Ada’s big blue eyes vanished the day that Jamie left for war. Though she smiled cheerily as she went about her work, it was clear to all of those who loved her that she was suffering. Dora, who had endured even greater pain, spoke to the staff behind closed doors.

  ‘The girl’s hurting right now – let her be. She’ll come around in her own good time, God willing.’

  Diana found it hard to follow Dora’s advice and leave Ada alone; she instinctively knew what Ada was going through, and so she made a point of tracking her down after she had finished her morning rounds. Walking into the sluice-room, Diana said without any preamble, ‘If you ever need to talk to somebody who knows what it’s like, you know where to find me.’

  Ada laid aside the bucket of sanitizing fluid she was in the process of preparing for the nursery and turned her sad eyes on Diana. ‘How do you bear the waiting?’ she simply asked.

  Diana slumped against the side of the sink and leant against it to ease her heavy tummy. ‘There’s no choice,’ she answered bluntly. ‘At first, you’re under some crazy romantic illusion that it’s not happening, that your beloved will walk through the door and surprise you, or there’ll be a letter in the post for you; but then, as time drags slowly by, you realize that they really have gone. And in my case,’ she said, as she gazed down at her burgeoning tummy, ‘you begin to wonder if you haven’t just dreamt it all.’

  Seeing Ada’s alarmed expression, Diana quickly modified her words, ‘Harry’s situation is quite unlike Jamie’s,’ she assured Ada. ‘Harry has disappeared in mysterious circumstances more than once. The base kept it all hush-hush, which nearly drove me out of my mind; nobody told me anything – least of all Harry.’