by Jenny Holmes
‘Like a lamb to the slaughter,’ Grace agreed. A glance across the room at Brenda, Elsie and Kathleen in a huddle with five Canadians told her that Les White was safe for now. ‘You know the queer thing about today? I expected to remember every detail but the fact is it’s mostly been one big blur.’
‘Nerves will do that to you.’ As Bill left his pals at the bar and headed in their direction, Joyce stood up. ‘Well, Mrs Mostyn, I’ll love you and leave you,’ she said.
Grace gave a small gasp of astonishment at the sound of her new name then glanced down at the thin band of gold nestling next to her diamond and ruby engagement ring. ‘How long do you suppose it’ll take me to get used to hearing that?’
‘How long is your honeymoon?’
‘Two days. Bill and I have to be back at work on Tuesday.’
‘Then I predict that’s how long it’ll take you to forget you were ever Grace Kershaw.’ Joyce smiled down at her then brushed Bill’s shoulder lightly as she stepped aside for him to sit down. ‘And may Mr and Mrs Mostyn live happily ever after.’
‘You look worn out.’ Hilda Craven, the warden at Fieldhead, had joined Bill’s mother at the tail end of the wedding celebrations to help supervise the girls from the hostel. She sat down beside her and patted her hand. ‘Why not go home and lie down?’
Edith shook her head. ‘Not until Bill and Grace have left for their honeymoon. Grace is upstairs getting changed into her going-away outfit.’
‘Then come outside and sit in the sun with me.’ Hilda’s insistence was kindly meant. Though she and Edith didn’t always see eye to eye on Land Army matters – Edith being strict and sticking to the letter of the law while Hilda liked to fuss and mollycoddle the girls – today the warden’s chief concern was to look after her old acquaintance. So she stood up and led the way. ‘Come along, no arguments.’
Edith followed obediently and soon the two women settled on a bench beside the wide smithy door. ‘I can’t stay away for too long. I have to keep an eye on Poppy and Doreen. They haven’t had time to settle in properly yet.’
‘They’ll be fine,’ Hilda insisted. ‘Doreen for one can take care of herself. And Joyce or one of the other old-timers will look after young Poppy for you. Now, tell me honestly, Edith – how are you feeling about Bill and Grace getting married? This isn’t what you and Vince originally hoped for, is it?’
Hilda’s characteristic bluntness raised a frown on Edith’s carefully powdered features. Twelve months ago – a year that now felt like a lifetime – Edith and Vince’s sights had been set on an alliance with the Fosters, the landowning family whose daughter Shirley had looked like a bright marriage prospect for the up-and-coming Mostyns. Now all that was dissolved into dust. Within weeks of Bill revealing that he and Grace had been secretly engaged for months, Shirley had got herself hitched to an RAF squadron leader. Worse still, Vince’s heart operation in the week before Christmas had only lengthened his life by a few short months. He’d passed away on Easter Monday and now she, Edith, was left alone to see her son married and about to fly the nest. ‘Perhaps I wish they’d waited a little longer,’ she said with a sigh.
‘Young ones don’t go in for long engagements – not these days.’ Hilda didn’t have to spell out that the reason for this was the war and the all too present threat of being killed in action. Imminent danger had brought about many a tumble in the hay followed in short order by a headlong dash to the altar. ‘At least you can rest easy that Bill and Grace’s feelings are genuine – one look at the pair of them together tells you that. And they’ve known each other long enough.’
Ordinarily Edith would have kept up a barrier against Hilda’s frank observations but today she didn’t protest. With her hands folded on her lap and with the loud hum of conversation and the chink of glasses drifting out through the door, she gazed wearily ahead.
‘Grace is a lovely girl – I don’t think Bill could have chosen better.’ Her companion went blithely on. ‘She’s always ready to lend a helping hand, maybe a bit quiet and studious for some, but just right for your Bill, who’s smart as can be and steady with it. If you ask me, it’s a match made in heaven.’
As they talked they noticed Bill drive his car up the street, park it in the yard then hurry into the pub. Soon afterwards Jack, Bob and Maurice emerged from the smithy armed with old tin cans, which they tied to the back bumper along with a ‘Just Married’ placard. There was some good-humoured banter and time for a quick smoke before the sneaky trio disappeared back inside.
‘Are you ready to wave off the happy couple?’ Hilda asked Edith.
‘As I’ll ever be.’ Preparing herself for what could not be avoided, Edith stood up. She had a vivid memory of Vince on his deathbed giving his blessing to the marriage then reminded herself that he was here in spirit, looking down from above. The thought brought her a grain of comfort as Bill and Grace walked arm in arm into a pool of golden, late-evening sunshine.
Bridesmaids and groomsmen accompanied them into the yard followed by dozens of guests ready to clap and cheer them on their way. Brenda, Una, Joyce and Kathleen threw the remainder of the confetti as Bill and Grace got into the car. At the last moment, Bill turned and walked towards his mother to embrace her. He held her slight frame close to his chest and murmured a heartfelt thank-you before he released her.
The pain of letting him go brought tears to Edith’s eyes.
‘You’ll be all right?’ he asked.
She nodded and drew her veil over her eyes.
‘I’ll telephone you as soon as we get to Attercliffe.’
‘No need,’ she said firmly. ‘This is Grace’s day. Look after her.’
She saw him off with the others, heard the rattle of tin cans over cobbles, noticed Grace in her royal-blue going-away dress lean out of the window to wave goodbye to her father and brother.
The car approached the junction and the hubbub subsided. As the wedding guests filtered back inside, Edith gathered herself to walk down the straight, narrow street towards her gleaming, modern but empty house.
‘So, Poppy – what do you make of our Canadian friends?’ Brenda collared the newcomer after they bumped into each other during a visit to the outside ladies’ toilet. Both were tiddly after a long afternoon and evening of celebrating. Brenda’s lilac silk dress was creased and she’d cast aside her Alice band headdress. Poppy, meanwhile, looked cool and fresh in a pale blue dress with a demure neckline and a nipped-in waist.
‘They’re different,’ Poppy admitted. The question had brought a flush to her pale cheeks.
‘Yes, I’ve noticed you admiring them from afar.’
‘I’ve only ever seen men like them when I go to the flicks – Clark Gable, and so on.’
‘But they’re not American, even though they sound similar. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if we do get the Yanks camping out over here now that they’re finally about to get their sleeves rolled up in the Far East.’ Brenda walked Poppy across the yard towards the pub. There was something about the young recruit that made Brenda feel she needed looking after, like a tender plant that should be watered and protected from rough winds. After all, Poppy had just turned eighteen and had taken Una’s place as the baby of the gang when she’d shown up at Fieldhead a week earlier. ‘There’s plenty of room for them at Beckwith Camp, now that the Italian prisoners have moved on up to bonnie Scotland.’
‘I thought the Canadians had moved into Beckwith?’
‘That’s right, but they don’t fill the whole of the POW camp. A lot of those Nissen huts are still standing empty.’ Brenda paused outside the door to offer Poppy a cigarette.
‘No, ta. I don’t.’
So Brenda lit up and leaned on the door jamb, flicking the spent match to the ground. ‘You’re sharing a room at the hostel with Joyce and Doreen. How’s that working out?’
‘Fine, ta. Joyce is teaching us the ropes.’ In her first working days Poppy had learned how to groom Major, the Thomsons’ cart horse, and to muck out hi
s stable, then to collect eggs at Horace Turnbull’s hen farm on Winsill Edge. For an eighteen-year-old canteen worker in one of the big Millwood woollen mills who hadn’t known one end of a pitchfork from the other, this was good going.
‘Yes, you stick with Joyce – she’ll look after you.’ Brenda blew out a narrow cloud of blue smoke. ‘And take a word of advice from another old hand: the safest place to admire a Canadian is from a distance, the way you are now.’
‘Why is that?’ Wondering why Brenda didn’t seem to follow her own advice, Poppy sensed a story behind the words.
‘It just is, that’s all.’ Brenda threw down her half-smoked cigarette and ground it underfoot. She’d gone as far as she wanted to with that topic of conversation. ‘Come on, Pops – let me introduce you to the best man. He’s a much safer bet.’
They went inside into a fug of smoke and bursts of laughter as the evening tipped towards uninhibited enjoyment. The moment Les White spotted Brenda’s return, he launched himself in her direction, almost tripping over a chair leg and regaining his balance by grabbing hold of his brother, Donald, who brushed him down then re-launched him. Les arrived at Brenda’s side, swaying unsteadily.
‘Hello, Bren – I wondered where you’d got to.’
‘We were doing what a girl has to do, weren’t we, Pops?’ She laughed at Les’s evident embarrassment. ‘I mean we were powdering our noses.’
‘So, will you dance with me?’ he blurted out. ‘Come on, Brenda. As soon as Donald has set himself up at the old Joanna, can we have a dance?’
She smiled and nodded as she noticed the piano in the corner of the room being wheeled out and saw Les’s brother open the lid. ‘There you are, Jack!’ She seized the best man’s arm as he squeezed by. ‘Meet Poppy Gledhill. Pops, meet Jack. You two will get along swimmingly, I’m sure.’
And then she was gone to help Les clear away chairs and tables to create a small space for dancing, leaving Poppy lost for words in the face of a surprised Jack Hudson.
‘I’m sorry …’ She gestured towards Brenda. ‘I mean, you don’t have to.’
Jack took in her flushed cheeks and flawless, pale skin. She came up to his shoulder, and was slim and supple as a willow wand, with wavy, fair hair and blue eyes flecked with violet. ‘I certainly don’t have to but I want to,’ he replied as he gallantly offered her his arm. ‘Is that a waltz that Donald’s playing?’
‘No, it’s a foxtrot.’
‘A foxtrot, eh?’ They reached the already crowded dance area and took up the ballroom hold. ‘I’ve got two left feet so I’ll have to rely on you to show me how.’
Poppy smiled up at him and blushed. ‘I’m not very good either.’
‘Then we’ll learn together. Ready? One-two-three, one-two-three.’
‘That’s waltz time,’ she reminded him with a tap on his shoulder. ‘The foxtrot has four beats to the bar – one-two-three-four, off we go.’
The problem for Brenda was that she was drawn to Canadians like a moth to a flame. Or rather, to Jim Aldridge, the squadron leader at the Penny Lane HQ, who had dealt with the whole horrible mess concerning John Mackenzie, his second in command. Mack the Knife, as Brenda now thought of him, had turned out to be as violent and unscrupulous as Bertolt Brecht’s stage villain when he’d attacked her in the changing rooms after the Land Girls’ Christmas show. She still avoided the word ‘rape’, though this is what he’d have gone through with if Kathleen hadn’t come on to the scene and stopped him. With her fellow Land Girl as a witness, and with Joyce, Una and Grace’s support, she’d found the courage to report her attacker and Aldridge had believed her unhesitatingly. Mackenzie had been put under military arrest and sent away, never to be seen or heard of again.
Since the Mack the Knife incident, Brenda’s and Aldridge’s paths had seldom crossed. She saw him occasionally at a church service and once or twice when she’d been sent on an errand and had ridden Old Sloper along Penny Lane to the old isolation hospital, now commandeered by the Canadian Air Force authorities. He always acknowledged her with more kindness and respect than she suspected she deserved, for she carried a victim’s guilt with her wherever she went. After all, she had flirted openly with Mackenzie and perhaps given him the wrong idea. People in Burnside still looked at her quizzically and some judged her harshly, she could tell. They believe I brought it on myself, she thought with a sickening thud of realization. In future, I must watch my p’s and q’s.
But it was like telling a leopard to change its spots – there was no altering Brenda’s outgoing nature and joie de vivre, her tomboyish sense of adventure and love of taking risks.
Some of this went through her mind as she danced the foxtrot with Les, though she tried to bring herself back to the here and now by teasing him about his ballroom-dancing prowess. ‘You must have had lessons,’ she chirped as he led her effortlessly in the military two-step that followed the foxtrot. Donald played with gusto, thumping out the bass notes in a heavy marching rhythm. ‘Have you? Did your dad send you to classes to keep you off the streets?’
Les’s cheeks coloured up. ‘You must be joking. Dad would far rather see me covered in mud, playing in goal for the Burnside eleven.’
‘Dancing is strictly for sissies, eh?’
He swept her across the floor regardless. ‘Something like that. Our Hettie was the one that taught us behind his back. Dancing and piano. She must have reckoned they were good ways to impress the girls.’
Brenda spotted Les’s sister still sitting with their father by the fireplace. There was a strong resemblance between the two, despite Arnold’s white hair being set against the jet-black tresses of his daughter. Both were tall and spare, with deep-set, dark eyes that gave off an intense, often critical stare. Arnold had taken off his jacket and sat in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, while Hettie’s late arrival meant that she wasn’t as festively dressed as the other wedding guests. She wore a tailored two-piece costume in finely woven, plum-coloured linen, teamed with a white blouse and black court shoes to give a prim, bank-clerk effect. ‘You don’t say! You mean there’s a fun-loving side to your dragon of a sister?’
Les tilted his head to one side and had the grace to bark out a laugh. ‘Yes, though it might not look like it from the outside. Anyway, enough about Hettie. How is the Land Army treating you? I hear they work your fingers to the bone?’
‘Oh yes indeedy – we lift hay bales and follow the plough from dawn till dusk.’ Brenda gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘We scythe and we dig. Roland Thomson out at Brigg Farm even has us mending stone walls if he gets half a chance. Not to mention rat-catching up at the Kelletts’ place.’
Shy Les ventured a compliment. ‘You look well on it, though.’ He thought Brenda’s looks were striking – she was someone you would always notice in a crowd, with her dark hair cropped short and her lively, laughing features. But he was wary of her in case her teasing turned into contempt.
‘There’s no call for callisthenics or health and beauty classes when you turn your hand to farm labouring. I gave all that up when I came to live at Fieldhead.’ Brenda enjoyed the sensation of Les’s hand placed firmly in the small of her back and let herself appreciate his features close up. His style was clean cut, his chin shaved so close that his skin almost shone. His eyes were clear grey and his fair hair neatly parted, his only defect being a nose that was slightly too large for his face. On the whole this gave him more character and improved his manliness, she decided.
The music stopped and couples drifted back to rejoin their drinking companions. Brenda spared a thought for Grace and Bill, who must have arrived at their honeymoon destination by now. She mused briefly on how it would be for Grace later on in her first shared bed and hoped that the reality of married life wouldn’t come as too much of a shock.
‘Drink?’ Les said, breaking into her thoughts.
‘Oh, yes ta!’ Though Donald had struck up another tune, she abandoned the dance floor and followed her partner to the bar, feeling Hettie’s intense sta
re burning a hole in her back as she did so. ‘It’s a Dubonnet for me, please. But be careful – the Dragon is watching us,’ she said with a wink.
Les laughed again before ordering the drinks. ‘I’ll tell her if you don’t watch out.’
‘Tell her what?’
‘About the dragon tag.’
‘And will she come breathing fire all over me?’ Brenda took her drink. She liked that laugh and set herself the task of drawing it out of him for a third time. ‘Ought I to take cover while I can?’
‘Oh no, don’t do that.’ He set his pint glass back down on the copper bar top and unexpectedly took her in a dance hold to whirl her back on to the floor. ‘This one’s too good to miss,’ he explained. ‘It’s a Glenn Miller number – “Chattanooga Choo Choo”. It came out last year – do you know it?’
‘Do I know it? I sat through Sun Valley Serenade twice without a break. “Pardon me, boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?”’ As they launched into the dance, Brenda began to sing an uninhibited version of the famous song.
‘“Whoo-whoo!”’ Les raised his arm to twirl her then drew her back to him. They danced on cheek to cheek, disregarding the stares of other couples such as Jack and Poppy and Joyce and Edgar. When the big band number finished, they stayed on the floor and went straight into a slow waltz, after which Donald stood up and declared that it was his turn to dance.
‘Les, you’ll have to sit and tinkle the ivories for a bit. I’ve done my stint.’
No sooner said than the brothers had changed places and Brenda was left high and dry without a partner. She looked around the room and saw that they were short of eligible men. Jack had handed Poppy to an eager Neville then made a beeline for Una, while Doreen had boldly claimed Donald as a partner. Maurice was still propping up the bar with his brother, but the two Baxendales were a bit over the hill for Brenda’s taste. There was nothing else for it – she would have to ask Squadron Leader Aldridge to dance.
Deliberately toning down her usual bravado, she approached him with a flutter in her stomach. She needn’t have worried – Jim Aldridge greeted Brenda with a smile and said he would be honoured.
