by Annie Groves
‘Good job I’ve got you, then.’ Alice hastily stuffed her purse, keys and a clean hanky into the second bag.
Edith rose to her feet. ‘Come on. You don’t usually take so long – do you realise how late it’s getting? Belinda’s lost patience and gone on ahead. We can’t keep the hero waiting.’
The Duke’s Arms was already busy by the time they arrived, pushing their way through the highly polished doors into the noisy bar and into the welcome coolness of the beer garden beyond.
There was Billy, and for once, standing beside him, they could see Stan, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his collar undone, chatting affably to a couple of men with their backs to them. Belinda was already there, her tall frame easily noticeable in the group. ‘Goodness,’ breathed Edith, ‘who’s running the ARP post tonight then?’
Stan spotted them and waved them over. ‘Good evening! Here, we’ve saved you some room at the table.’ He stepped to one side and Billy did likewise, revealing two empty chairs by the wooden table they had claimed. The familiar figure in the third chair rose to greet them, a smile slowly spreading over his face until it reached from ear to ear.
‘Edith. Alice.’
Edith ran forward into the very informal hug of the man who would have been her brother-in-law. ‘Joe! Look at you. Whatever they’re feeding you in the navy must suit you.’
Joe set her free again. ‘That’s not what Ma says. She reckons they’ve been starving me and it’s my bounden duty to eat every hour on the hour for as long as I’m home.’ He looked up at Alice, who had hung back to allow her friend to greet him first. ‘Hello, Alice.’ His eyes brightened at the sight of her, and his face broke into a slow smile.
‘Hello, Joe.’ For a moment she almost didn’t know what to say. She had forgotten the reaction he always provoked in her; something intense which nobody else brought out. Why was it so hard to speak when she’d been writing him long letters for these last months? Their eyes rested on each other for a moment, seeming to drink each other in before she came to her senses and found her tongue. ‘How good to see you. Was your journey all right?’
‘Not too bad. Only two hours late.’ She felt the warmth flood through her as she realised how much she had missed seeing that humorous grin.
‘A luxury, then.’
‘Yep. Even had a seat for some of it. What will you have to drink?’
‘Lemonade, please.’ Alice was far too hot for anything else.
‘Shandy for me,’ said Edith. This was a night out to savour, not to dwell on the past.
‘One lemonade, one shandy. Coming right up. Pa, Bill, anything for you?’
The other men shook their heads and Joe set off towards the noisy bar, leaving Alice and Edith to take their seats.
Edith exhaled loudly. ‘Bit of a scrum, isn’t it?’ She craned her neck to look around. ‘I thought Peggy and Clarrie might be here but I can’t see them.’
‘We can’t see much from here,’ Alice pointed out.
‘You can usually spot Clarrie’s red hair, though. And you can often hear them if they’re anywhere near.’
Stan leant down. ‘Thank you for the cake,’ he said. ‘I know you had something to do with it, Alice.’
‘Oh, not really.’ Alice shrugged, feeling she couldn’t take credit for anything other than suggesting the idea.
‘Well, it helped mark the occasion and we appreciate it.’ Stan’s kindly face was solemn. ‘It does us all good to see Joe home again, and his mother’s thrilled to bits.’
‘I bet she is,’ said Alice, knowing how proud both parents were of their clever son. She couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to have raised a family, only to have one son killed and the other put in equal danger, with no way of knowing when it would end. Yet Stan and Flo were among thousands of others facing the same agony.
She turned at the sound of Joe coming back, bearing their drinks. Behind him she could see still more people arriving. ‘Thank you, Joe,’ she said.
‘Yes, thanks,’ Edith echoed. ‘Who’s that just come in?’ She squinted over at them and answered her own question. ‘Oh, it’s some of Billy’s friends from the docks. I don’t think you know them, Alice.’
Alice shook her head, and Joe frowned and then did the same. ‘Can’t say as I’ve seen them before,’ he said. ‘So, how’s the world of nursing? What have you been up to?’
‘Coping with a measles outbreak for a lot of the time,’ Edith said, and launched into a vivid description of the trials and tribulations of the summer. Alice sat slightly back and enjoyed her friend’s tale, knowing she had written about this to Joe on several occasions, but that Edith could talk about it far more entertainingly in real life. It gave her pleasure to see her friend coming back to something like her old lively self, chatty and outgoing, a side of Edith that had been sadly lacking since Dunkirk. Perhaps she was finally emerging from her shell. Not that she would ever forget Harry; but life had to go on, even if it was fundamentally changed.
‘… and we still don’t know how many of our young patients will be here when school starts again in September, do we, Alice? Oh look, there’s Clarrie after all. And Peggy. Maybe their factory shift went on longer than usual. I might wave at them to come over. You don’t mind, do you, Joe?’
‘Not at all, the more the merrier,’ said Joe, grinning again, clearly taken with the idea of being surrounded by a group of young women. He shifted a little to allow the newcomers to come through and welcome him home. Then, once they’d found free chairs and dragged them over, Joe manoeuvred himself into a seat next to Alice and turned his full attention to her. ‘You’re as busy as you said in your letters, then? You weren’t making it up to make me feel better?’ His eyes crinkled in amusement and focused on her alone.
She pulled a face. ‘It’s been busy all right. We’ve managed so far.’ She glanced quickly around. ‘All we can do is hope we continue to do so if and when it gets worse. We’re as ready as we can be. Two new nurses have just joined us – they’re the reason we could make you a cake – and everyone’s up to date with their training; plus we’re teaching more and more first-aid classes, so we won’t be the only ones who know what to do in an emergency.’ She sighed. ‘Then we just have to wait and see what happens. But anyway, what about you? You’ve been in Scapa Flow, haven’t you?’
‘Of course.’ He gave that grin again. ‘I knew you’d work that out. I honestly can’t say what comes next, though.’
‘Not that you would.’
‘Well, no, not in as many words. But I don’t think anyone really knows. It all depends on whether our boys in the air can continue to hold off the Luftwaffe, doesn’t it. Makes the invasion that bit less likely.’
‘Although Hitler’s bound to deploy another tactic. He won’t be content with bombing airfields, will he?’
Joe shook his head. ‘I don’t want to depress you, but it’s not likely, no.’ They fell silent for a moment, neither wanting to voice the idea that the next step would be air raids on the big cities.
‘How long are you home for?’ Alice changed the subject, realising nobody had said.
Joe shifted a little. ‘Four days. That’s unless I hear otherwise. I thought it might coincide with the arrival of Mattie’s baby, but she’s still got a few weeks to go, hasn’t she?’
Alice smiled, aware that as he’d shifted in his seat their legs had briefly touched. ‘Yes. Poor Mattie in all this heat. She’s due in September.’
‘Not far off now.’
‘Yes, she’ll be glad to be heading down the home straight, all right.’ For a moment Alice imagined they could be anywhere, away from the perpetual pressure of war, chatting about his sister and the anticipation of the baby’s birth. It hadn’t taken long to get back to this easy way they had with each other, and she felt, as she often had, that she could tell him anything. She had missed that as well. She made herself forget about it when he wasn’t here, but how she relished it now he was back.
Joe, for his part, felt him
self relaxing in a way he found impossible when he was away. Even when he was off duty he could never fully let go; there was always a chance he would be needed for something, and the atmosphere had an undercurrent of perpetual uncertainty. Plus, it was often so cold. He’d taken to sleeping wearing his heavy jumper and the thick socks Flo had knitted for him many months ago. Taking in the scene before him: the evening sun; the plants, now a little faded by the heat of the summer; the pints of beer, golden in the shafts of light, he felt he was in a different world.
And next to him sat Alice, her hair golden too in this light, smiling back and gamely insisting all was as well as could be, as if they weren’t all under threat from the Germans escalating their terror from the air. For a brief moment he wondered what had happened to that good-looking doctor they’d all talked about last autumn who, Alice insisted, was just an old colleague from her training hospital. Then he pushed the thought away and told himself it was none of his business; and besides, if the man was a doctor in the active services, he would have his work cut out, as much if not more than any of them.
Irritated at his own idiocy to be thinking of such a thing when Alice was nothing but a friend in the first place, he briefly turned his gaze from her and onto the crowd of people by the back gate. Billy was there, talking nineteen to the dozen to several of the others, the tall nurse with tight black curls laughing at what she’d heard. For a moment he thought one of the young men was staring at him, but he must be imagining it. Joe didn’t know him and the bloke didn’t know Joe. ‘Sorry, what was that last thing you said?’ he asked Alice, caught out when she came to a halt and seemed to be waiting for a response.
‘Good job you’re not on duty now,’ she teased. ‘I only asked if they let you see any films up in the frozen north.’
‘Not many. What’s on around here at the moment?’
‘I think Laugh It Off is back again.’
‘That Tommy Trinder one? I missed it the first time around. Shall we go?’
Alice nodded. ‘We could. It’ll take our minds off everything else that’s going on.’
From the other side of the wooden table, Clarrie perked up. ‘Did somebody say Tommy Trinder?’
Peggy and Edith looked up as well.
‘Yes, I was just saying that musical he was in a few months back is showing again,’ Alice explained. ‘Joe and I were thinking of going.’
‘Oh, when? Shall we all go?’ Clarrie looked delighted. ‘It’ll be just like old times. We could make a night of it. Go for fish and chips as well.’
Alice nodded. ‘We could.’ She couldn’t tell from Joe’s expression if he was pleased it would be a whole crowd of them or not. After all, it wasn’t to have been what anyone would have called a date. And if Edith was thinking of all the times she’d been to the cinema and then on for fish and chips with the younger Banham brother, her face wasn’t giving anything away either.
‘Lovely,’ said Joe. ‘What could be better?’ But he didn’t meet Alice’s eye as he spoke.
‘Billy, who’s that?’ Ron asked, pointing to the group of young people sitting around the wooden table.
‘Oy, mind my pint,’ Kenny said mildly, swinging his glass out of the way.
Billy looked across the beer garden. ‘Him near Edie? He’s the reason we’ve all turned out tonight. That’s Joe Banham, that is. Local boy made good, he’s some hotshot engineer doing telecommunications in the navy now. I forgot you don’t know him, do you? Can’t think why your paths never crossed before.’
‘I don’t think I met him either,’ said Kenny, adjusting his glasses on his nose. He hated wearing them but he’d recently come to accept he couldn’t manage without. ‘Heard you talk about them all, of course, but I’ve never actually come across him in the flesh until this evening.’
‘Just one of those things then,’ said Billy. ‘Why, is there any particular reason you asked, Ron? Introduce you, shall I?’
Ron scratched his head. ‘No, no, he’s there with the girls. Don’t let me get my ugly mug in the way.’ Something was bothering him but he couldn’t put his finger on it. That’s what happened if you drank two pints on an empty stomach, he told himself. ‘I’m going to the bar to get a pickled egg. Anybody else want one?’
Kenny pulled a disgusted face. ‘You can keep it, Ron. I don’t care for them meself.’
‘Me neither. And Ma cooked a lovely fry-up before I came out,’ Billy added.
‘See you in a moment, then.’ Ron carefully placed the remains of his second pint on the makeshift shelf by the gatepost and headed inside.
‘Don’t suppose his ma is up to much cooking at the moment,’ said Kenny. ‘Not well, is she? And his auntie’s only just on the mend. Poor old Ron. We’d better keep an eye on him, see he doesn’t waste away.’
‘Fat chance! Did you see that pie he put away at dinner time?’ Billy didn’t lack sympathy for his colleague, but felt he had enough people to look after at the moment. There was a limit, and Ron was big enough to take care of himself. ‘Come over and meet Joe. You’ll like him, everyone does.’ He led his friend over to the group at the wooden table and made the introductions.
Edith nodded to him in recognition, but then turned back to Peggy, who had claimed the seat next to her.
‘Good to see you out again,’ she said quietly.
Peggy nodded resolutely. ‘I’m not going to lock myself away just because … well, you know.’ She dropped her voice. ‘Because one evening went so wrong. I don’t deserve to feel like I’m in prison, I went through enough at the time. So he’s not going to win.’ She sat back and spoke normally again. ‘Good to see you out, too. That’s a nice dress, that is. Is it new?’
‘I wish it was.’ Edith laughed but enjoyed the compliment nonetheless. Peggy liked clothes – she wouldn’t have praised anything that she didn’t approve of. ‘New buttons though, and a borrowed belt, and Alice’s handbag.’
Peggy nodded approvingly. ‘You’re looking proper smart. That’s more like it.’
‘Why, was I so terrible before?’ Edith teased. ‘You mean you let me go around looking like a drab? Some friend you are.’
‘Silly.’ Peggy tapped her on the arm. ‘No, but you’ve paid attention to putting your outfit together, haven’t you. That’s more like the Edie we know.’ She took a swig of something Edith noticed wasn’t port and lemon.
‘What’s that you’re drinking?’
‘Ginger beer.’ Peggy lifted an eyebrow. ‘Thought I’d keep me wits about me for once. I’ve gone off the other stuff.’
Edith gave a short laugh. ‘And here’s me on the shandy. I won’t have more than one, though. Got to have a clear head tomorrow.’
Peggy nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Still, Edie, do you fancy coming out one night? I mean, proper out, not just down the pub? We could go dancing in the West End.’ Her eyes sparkled.
‘Really?’ Edith took a moment to absorb that her friend was ready to pick herself up. ‘You’d want to do that? I’m not sure, Peggy. It feels a bit too soon for me, to be honest. I don’t think I’d be much fun.’
Peggy’s face fell. ‘Really? Bet you’d love it once you got there. We wouldn’t have to stay for long or nothing.’ She tried to water down the prospects but it wasn’t working.
‘Look, thanks for asking, but I know deep down I’m not ready to go out enjoying myself,’ said Edith seriously. ‘Tonight is all right – it’s for Joe, and I’m here with all of you, and if I want to go back then it’s not very far. But the West End … no, that doesn’t seem right to me. I’m not saying you shouldn’t,’ she added hastily, not wanting to sound judgemental, ‘I think it’s good you’re ready to hit the dance floor again. But go with Clarrie, or her sister, or Belinda even.’ She nodded across to her animated colleague, enjoying herself a few yards away. ‘I couldn’t. Not yet, anyway.’
Peggy tipped her head to one side. ‘All right. I’ll let you off the hook. But I won’t stop asking, you know. One day you might feel like it, and then we’ll
have the best time ever.’ She sipped her ginger beer. ‘This stuff’s not bad once you get used to it. I must drink it more often. Will you at least come to the pictures with everyone when we see Tommy Trinder?’
Edith smiled. ‘I think I can manage that.’
Ron fished into the packet for the tiny blue paper sack of salt and untwisted the top. Two pickled eggs, followed by some Smith’s crisps – that would set him right. He wandered back to the beer garden and located his almost-empty glass, thought about getting himself a half and then decided to wait for his food to go down. Where were Billy and Kenny? It had grown darker, but after a few moments he could see they were over by the big table and, he might have guessed it, surrounded by the girls, including two pretty nurses with the dark hair, one tall and one short. Two of the others were school friends of Billy’s, although he wasn’t sure who the blonde one was. She looked a bit on the serious side compared to the rest of them. She was deep in conversation with the man Billy had said was the reason they were here, the chap who had taken his attention earlier.
Could he have met Joe Banham before? Maybe through someone other than Billy? It wasn’t impossible if they had grown up in neighbouring areas of the East End. That had to be it, because there was something about him that felt familiar. But what? For the life of him Ron could not remember. That was what two pints did to your brain cells. Perhaps if he delayed getting that next drink in, it would come back to him. He made his way over but stood on the edge of the group, smiling and nodding in the right places in the general conversation but not adding anything, waiting to see if his memory would wake up.
The hum of their talk filled the air and for a second he was back at that gathering earlier in the summer when Alfie had been with them, smart in that uniform he’d been so proud of, his open face unmarked, his eyes sparkling with humour and taking in everything around him, his hearing perfect. He’d never be like that again. Ron felt a prickling at the back of his eyes and squeezed them shut, desperate for his sorrow not to show. He’d have to cut back on his pints if he started giving in to his emotions in public. He’d never live down the shame. And didn’t everyone here know someone who’d died or been injured? It wasn’t as if he was the only one mourning the loss or ruin of a young person’s life. All the same, it was his big brother, his hero, Alfie, who could do anything …
