by Ellie Dean
He wriggled his wayward brows. ‘Never mind, Peggy. You’ll always have me and Harvey to look after,’ he teased with a twinkle in his eyes.
Peggy was strangely comforted by his words, for although Ron and Harvey could be ruddy nuisances at times, and tested her patience to its very limits, they were the defining glue that held her together when she most needed it, and she couldn’t imagine Beach View, or life itself, without them. She watched as he whistled to the dog, waved goodbye to the portly stationmaster, Stan, and tramped away, no doubt heading for the hills in search of something for the cooking pot – but if it was rabbit yet again, she’d scream.
Stan tickled baby Daisy’s rosy cheek and earned a beaming, toothy smile. ‘I’ve always liked Doreen,’ he said. ‘It’s a shame she had to leave. I got quite used to seeing her around the place again.’
Peggy nodded, fiercely blinking back her tears. ‘This damned war has a lot to answer for,’ she said. She tucked the pram blankets firmly around a chuckling Daisy, and adjusted her knitted mittens. ‘Doreen and her girls should be here with us, not isolated over there in Wales amongst strangers.’
Stan rocked on his heels, his burgeoning belly putting a great strain on his waistcoat buttons. ‘It’s tough for everyone, Peg,’ he muttered. ‘I’m just thankful that I don’t have the same problem.’
Peggy gave him a sympathetic pat on the arm. Stan had been an institution at the station for as long as she could remember. He’d fought in the first shout alongside Ron, Fred the Fish and Alf the butcher, and had taken over the stationmaster’s little cottage on his father’s retirement. He’d been widowed for many years, and she knew that the sad lack of any children was something he never quite managed to get over; which was probably why he took such a fatherly interest in the waifs and strays who arrived at his station, and made certain they were found decent billets. Ruby had been one such girl who’d come to Beach View through him, and there had been others who’d found his advice and genuine kindness a real help during the tough times.
‘I thought you had a younger sister, Stan. Didn’t she come and stay with you for a little while some years back?’
He heaved a great sigh. ‘Aye, she did for a bit after Barbara passed away, but I’ve not seen hide nor hair of her since.’
‘That is a shame,’ Peggy murmured. She looked fondly at Daisy, who was crowing delightedly at an early butterfly flitting above the wild flowers that grew on the railway embankments. ‘At times like these we all need our family around us.’ She shot him an encouraging smile. ‘But you’ve got Ethel and her Ruby now, so life isn’t too lonely, is it?’
‘Aye, I’m a lucky man.’ His lugubrious expression cleared and he beamed down at her. ‘I’m going to ask Ethel to marry me now she’s free of that toe-rag. Bought the ring and everything. Thought I might pop the question tonight.’
‘Oh, Stan, how lovely. I’m so pleased for you.’
He looked suddenly uncertain. ‘You don’t think it’s too soon, Peg? After all, she only got the telegram a couple of weeks ago.’
Peggy knew all about Ethel’s brute of a husband. Far from lamenting his loss in the battle for Tunisia, Ethel and her daughter, Ruby, felt they’d been given a second chance to make a decent, settled life here. ‘She’s probably wondering why you didn’t pop the question the night she had that celebratory dinner,’ she said, smiling.
Stan nodded thoughtfully. ‘It didn’t feel appropriate, even though I knew she wasn’t mourning him. But she does harbour a sense of guilt that she felt nothing but relief when she got that telegram.’
‘Then she shouldn’t,’ said Peggy stoutly. ‘He was a bully who made her life a misery, and Ruby’s husband was just the same. The pair of them are well out of it, if you ask me – and Ethel should thank her lucky stars that she’s got someone like you to look after her.’
Stan reddened and his eyes became watery. ‘She’s a grand girl. I’m the lucky one.’
Peggy giggled and playfully poked him in the stomach. ‘You’re certainly looking well on it, Stan. But if you put on any more weight, you’re going to have to get her to sew in an extra piece on that waistcoat. Those buttons look as if they’re about to pop off like bullets.’
He smiled shyly and patted his belly. ‘Ethel says she likes a bit of meat on a man.’
Peggy managed to resist pointing out that there was a world of difference between a bit of meat and an entire carcass. ‘I’d better get on, Stan. It’s wash day, and the laundry has piled up something awful.’
She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. ‘I won’t wish you luck with the proposal, because you don’t need it,’ she said softly. ‘I know you’ll both be very happy.’
Daisy waved goodbye, burbling happily, and Peggy pushed the pram out of the station and headed for home. It was a lovely spring morning, with just enough of a breeze to get the washing dry, and the sun was sparkling on the patch of sea that was visible at the bottom of the High Street. Despite the bomb craters, the skeletal remains of blasted buildings and the piles of sandbags outside the entrances to the civic buildings, there was romance in the air and Cliffehaven had a feeling of hope about it.
Stan watched fondly as Peggy headed off down the High Street. He admired her tremendously, for although she was small and slender and looked as if a puff of wind might blow her away, she possessed a core of steel and an uncompromising belief in working hard, and doing the right thing.
He gave a happy sigh and unlocked the Nissen hut which had replaced the booking hall and ladies’ waiting room soon after the firebombs had destroyed them, along with the slum housing that had sprawled along the eastern perimeter of the station. Peggy’s stalwart character reminded him of his late wife, Barbara, who’d always championed the underdog, helped those in need and never had a bad word to say about anybody. He hoped that, like Peggy, Barbara would have approved of his proposal to Ethel. He’d been alone for too long, and although some might say that, at forty-nine, Ethel was a bit young for him, the rather fierce little Cockney woman had brought liveliness, laughter and companionship back into his life, and he was excited at the prospect of making their relationship official.
Stan opened the hatchway that had been cut in the corrugated iron door and propped up the makeshift counter. The nine-eleven would be arriving soon, and people might want to buy tickets – though with the strict travel restrictions, that was highly unlikely. He put the kettle on the primus stove, poured some treacly black Camp Coffee into his favourite china mug, and added a dollop of milk and two teaspoons of sugar. Giving it a good stir, he reached for the lunch tin Ethel had brought to him earlier, and smiled with pleasure at the doorstep mutton sandwich, and the two rock cakes nestled in with a lovely sausage roll.
With the kettle boiled and the coffee cooling nicely on the counter, Stan sat down to enjoy his early elevenses. Ethel was a good cook, and even in these difficult times managed to get hold of butter, sugar and dried fruit. He knew that the butter, eggs and cheese came from the land girls who worked up at the Cliffe estate, in return for Ethel cleaning their billet and doing their mending – but the fruit and sugar? He suspected she’d made friends with someone up at the factory canteen, for she’d recently been coming home with aprons and overalls to mend. There was no doubt about it, he thought as he munched contentedly, his Ethel was a worker – and clever with it.
Brushing the flaky pastry crumbs from his dark uniform, he licked the sausage roll grease from his fingers and gave a soft belch. ‘Beg pardon,’ he muttered to the empty Nissen hut. His thoughts turned back to Ethel and Ruby. He knew there was a party planned for the following week to celebrate Ruby’s engagement to her young Canadian, Mike Taylor, and he was delighted that she’d found such happiness here in Cliffehaven. When Stan had first seen her arrive on the train that dark, cold night a year ago, she’d borne the bruises of a nasty beating and looked half-starved and terrified of her own shadow. Stan’s smile was soft as he remembered feeding her his sandwiches and tea and setting her up for the night in the
Nissen hut. She’d had her ups and downs here at first, but once he and Ron had seen her secure with Peggy, she had never looked back.
‘Who would have thought I’d end up being her stepfather?’ he murmured. He grinned and reached for a rock cake as he went over his plans on how he was going to pop the question tonight. Ruby had arranged to meet Mike at the Anchor and Ethel was cooking him tea, so he’d wait until they’d finished that before going down on one knee. The ring was safe in its box in his jacket pocket; the bouquet of flowers would be made up during his afternoon break – there were some lovely early blooms in his allotment – and he’d taken special care to press his best suit for the occasion.
Perhaps he should nip down later to the Crown and see if Gloria Stevens had a bottle of wine tucked away – she usually had something under the counter for special celebrations, did Gloria. Though it would probably not be wise to mention where it had come from to Ethel – she and Gloria had never really got on since she’d caught the landlady of the Crown giving him the glad eye under the mistletoe at Christmas.
Stan heaved a contented sigh as he finished the rock cake, burped again and brushed crumbs from his chest. It was rather gratifying to have two women vying for his attention at his age. Then again, his friend Ron was also in his mid-sixties, and he was stepping out with the very desirable Rosie Brathwaite who owned the Anchor – which proved that a man was never too old to enjoy the attentions of a good-looking woman.
He felt the need to burp again. Perhaps he would go to the chemist while he was in town: he was out of liver salts, and he didn’t want his indigestion and heartburn spoiling his proposal.
Peggy walked contentedly down the High Street, nodding to friends, but not stopping to chat. It was Monday morning, the washing had piled up, and if she didn’t get on with it there wouldn’t be time to get it dry before the sun lost its warmth. The nights were still damp and cold, but the promise of spring was in the air, which lifted the spirits just as much as the continuing good news from North Africa and Russia. She could almost believe that this war was getting closer to being won.
As she reached the corner of Camden Road she paused, wondering if she should go and see her older sister Doris. Havelock Road was only one street down, and she was rather miffed that Doris hadn’t bothered to come to the station this morning to see Doreen off. Perhaps she was still simmering from Doreen’s rather too truthful dressing-down – or preoccupied with the fact that her husband Ted was insisting upon a divorce, and her son and pregnant daughter-in-law were about to leave for the Midlands. Either way, it was pretty disgraceful not to bother to show up. There was a war on after all, and it could be months before it was safe for Doreen to return home.
Peggy dithered as she stood there. Doris might have ideas above her station and be the rudest person she knew, but there was little doubt that she was unhappy at the moment, and it would be the sisterly thing to just go and see if she was all right. Yet, as she continued down the High Street towards the seafront and Havelock Road, she saw Doris drive past in her car, nose in the air, studiously ignoring her when it was obvious she’d seen her.
‘That does it, Daisy,’ she said. ‘She can stew in her own juice.’
Daisy clapped her hands and blew a raspberry.
Peggy giggled and began to push the pram along the promenade. It was the long way round to get back home to Beach View, and would entail climbing the steep hill at the end, but on such a lovely morning, the walk would set her up for the day.
As the gulls wheeled and mewled overhead, Peggy felt the familiar pang of regret she experienced every time she took this walk, for Cliffehaven seafront looked very different to how she remembered it before the war. And they were fond memories, not only of her childhood, but of Jim’s courtship too.
The mellow days of summer spent on the beach with a picnic; Jim and her canoodling in the shadows of the Victorian shelters, and the evenings spent dancing, or going to one of the shows on the end of the pier, which had always been lit up like a Christmas tree . . . Coloured lights strung along the promenade, the delicious smell of fish and chips and vinegar mingling with the honeyed scent of candyfloss and toffee apples as the town’s brass band entertained the holidaymakers who sat in deckchairs or on the terraces of the big hotels . . . They were sweet, poignant memories that belonged to another time and another world – like faded sepia photographs of a bygone age that had silently slipped away unnoticed. She felt an ache of longing for them – and for Jim – to return.
Peggy drew back from her memories and stoically faced the reality of what war had brought to her beloved home town. The pretty coloured lights had been taken down, the deckchairs stacked away, and the stalls selling ice cream, candyfloss and beach toys had been dismantled and stored in one of the municipal buildings.
The horseshoe bay between the chalk cliffs was now threaded with ugly concrete shipping traps; the shingle beach was mined and bore the evidence of sunken ships and downed aircraft in the great clumps of stinking oil that clung to the flotsam and jetsam that had been washed ashore on the tides. Vast coils of barbed wire closed off the beach, gun emplacements had been erected along the promenade, and the poor old pier had been severed from the shore and was now no more than a blackened skeleton, the remains of a German fighter plane embedded in its ribs.
Peggy kept walking, determined to remain positive and enjoy the early spring day. Hitler’s armies were taking a pounding now, and the Japs were being given a run for their money by the Americans in the Pacific. The brave, indefatigable Allies would win this war. Doreen would bring her children back from Wales, Jim would come home from India, and her children and grandchildren would once again gather round her kitchen table. Life would get back to normal, the hated rationing would come to an end and Cliffehaven would be rebuilt, the beach opened once more to the holidaymakers.
She reached the end of the promenade, glancing only briefly at the spot beneath the chalk cliffs where Cliffehaven’s fishing fleet used to be hauled up the shingle, the nets hung to dry in the tall black sheds which now stood empty. She studiously ignored the great bomb crater that marked the demise of the Grand Hotel, for she had too many memories of happy times there dancing the night away with Jim, and started the long climb up the hill towards home.
Beach View Boarding House didn’t actually have much view of the beach unless one stood on tiptoe by the top window, but that didn’t matter in the slightest as the seafront was only a matter of minutes away. It was one of the many four-storey Victorian villas which lined the easterly side of the hill in neatly arranged terraces, and had been home to Peggy for most of her life. When her parents had retired, she had taken over the business while Jim worked as a projectionist at the Odeon cinema, which sadly was no more since taking an indirect hit during an enemy raid.
The holiday trade had been brisk in those early years, and she and Jim had happily raised their four children in the belief they were set for life. But as the rumours of war became a reality, the visitors had stopped coming. The debts had mounted, and Peggy had been fearful of losing her family home, so she’d applied to the billeting office for evacuees to come and fill the empty rooms. And she’d never looked back, for the girls she’d taken in had become her chicks – helping to fill the aching void left by her older children, who were now scattered and mostly living far from home.
There were four girls living with her at the moment: Fran, who worked as a theatre nurse in the hospital; Sarah, who ran the office for the Women’s Timber Corps up at the Cliffe Estate; Rita, who was a driver and mechanic in the local fire service; and Ivy, who’d recently moved in and was working up at the aeroplane parts factory alongside Ruby.
Dear little Cordelia Finch had been a permanent resident for many years, and although she was rapidly approaching eighty, she had been invigorated by the arrival of the young ones, and revelled in the opportunity to be the grandmother of the house. She and Ron adored one another despite their endless bickering, but it was a bit of a battle t
o make her turn up her hearing aid, and conversations could get very convoluted and quite hilarious at times.
Peggy smiled at Daisy, who was clapping her hands and chortling at the antics of two seagulls squabbling over a paper bag. Peggy had thought her child-bearing years were over when the doctor had told her she was pregnant, so it had all come as a bit of a shock – especially as her eldest daughter Anne had only recently given birth to Peggy’s first grandchild. But Daisy was sixteen months old now, and Peggy was determined to enjoy every minute of her babyhood, for she would be the last.
Peggy was puffing a bit as she trudged up the hill. Daisy was getting rather big and heavy for this old coach-built pram, and the hill never seemed to get any shorter. Perhaps it was time to dig out the pushchair from the clutter in the basement? It had served her well over the years, and once Ron had oiled the wheels, it should be absolutely fine. And yet she would find it very difficult to make the change, for it would mark the end of Daisy’s babyhood, and she wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
Peggy’s thoughts turned to her eldest daughter Anne, who was down in Somerset with her two little girls and much younger brothers, Bob and Charlie. Bob was nearly sixteen now and Charlie was twelve. Peggy feared that if this war went on much longer, the boys wouldn’t want to come home – and if they did, they’d be like strangers, for she hadn’t been able to see them for years. As for Anne, she was constantly worried about her husband Martin, who was now on almost continuous bombing ops over Germany. His luck had held so far, but with so many casualties, that luck was getting very tenuous.
Cissy, on the other hand, was thankfully still in the area and could manage a fleeting visit now and again from Cliffe aerodrome where she was a driver in the WAAF. She would turn twenty-one in May, and it seemed her earlier ambitions to be a star of stage and screen had been set aside for the sophistication of a smart uniform and the company of dashing airmen.
Peggy sighed as she reached the twitten that ran between the backs of the houses. Cissy had taken on the mannerisms and language of the rather upper-class boys and girls up at Cliffe, and to Peggy’s mind was becoming a little too full of herself. Yet she’d definitely sobered up a bit at the horrendous loss of so many of those brave young airmen who’d flown sortie after sortie in their efforts to defeat the enemy. It was a shame that her young American flight lieutenant had been posted some miles away at Biggin Hill, for Cissy had at last found someone to really love.
