A Soldier's Girl

by Maggie Ford

  ‘Probably at the expense of more important things, I suppose.’

  ‘No.’ Brenda’s back was up, even though she tried to control it. She’d expected this sort of reaction, had steeled herself for it, but it still rankled. ‘No one’s gone short over it. Addie’s well clothed, she’s well fed, and she has everything any other child could ’ave with a war on.’

  Addie, of course, was her first line of defence, knowing she’d be the main target. ‘And I’ve made sure there’s still enough in the bank for when Harry comes home.’

  ‘Must of bin coining it,’ observed Mrs Hutton as if such coining had been kept from them like some wicked secret.

  ‘No. Just been careful,’ replied Brenda. ‘Not throwing it around.’

  Mrs Hutton had always been first to believe that was exactly what she’d done in the past. Even if it was an unfair thought, she couldn’t help thinking it.

  ‘My Bob’s got nothink ter come ’ome to,’ mumbled Daphne despondently, while Enid and Iris, who had kept very quiet, suddenly looked towards their offspring sitting at the little table with two-and-a-half-year-old Robert, busily stuffing himself.

  Mr Hutton leaned forward, protective and kindly. ‘Yer ought to ’ave waited fer ’Arry, Bren. He’d know more about ’ouse-buying an’ all the pitfalls than you would. I just ’ope for your sake, and ’is, you ain’t done nuffink silly. Buying ’ouses ain’t a job for a woman. Yer should of arst me. I might of bin able ter put yer right. What’s it like, this ’ouse?’

  Brenda bit back irritation at being given to understand that women’s brains were pea-sized, that she could not be expected to move without a man to advise her. She’d been a businesswoman these past two years and had made a decent fist of it. Harry, a warehouseman prior to the war, lived in a rented flat. What more could he tell her than she already knew? Neither had his parents ever owned their own home. And here was his father offering to advise her on house-buying, well intentioned or not.

  It was in the midst of this last thought that she remembered with a rush of humility that she too knew nothing of buying houses. The house, and the salon too, had been bequeathed to her. She’d not had any hand in it, so how could she crow, sitting here believing her own lies?

  With that reminder to herself she forced a tolerant smile at her father-in-law.

  ‘It’s Victorian,’ she told him.

  ‘Ah,’ drawled her inquisitor as though that said she’d definitely gone and bought a pig in a poke. He shook his head slowly. ‘Yer should of got expert advice on its condition, gel. If it was structurally sound and fings.’

  Brenda forced another smile, this time not quite so tolerant. ‘I did. It’s in tip-top condition and I’ve bought it with all the furniture and everything in it – lock stock and barrel. The asking price was low fer all that, and I believe that when the war ends, the price of houses will start ter soar. So I’ve done the right thing, buying at the right time.’

  That put paid to his advice. She saw him nod, stumped, if not fully convinced. She also caught a glimpse of his wife’s expression. She looked piqued that her son’s wife should consider herself above the need to consult a man. And not only that, but going behind Harry’s back, said her look.

  Well, we’ll face what Harry has to say about it when he comes home, thought Brenda, and turned to reprimand Addie who had started quarrelling indignantly with one of her cousins, who had apparently grabbed the piece of cake she’d had her eye on.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Everywhere people were already preparing to get back to normal after five and a half years of war.

  Blackout regulations had been relaxed for a couple of months now to what was known as dim-out; some shops and places of entertainment were even displaying subduedly lit signs, and on buses and trains passengers were able to see to read again at night. Doodlebugs and rockets – the last at the end of March scoring a direct hit on Hughes Mansions in Bethnal Green and ironically taking a hundred and thirty-four lives just as the war was about to end – were largely being consigned to memory, only their devastating results remaining to sober any over-joyous mind.

  Where children had played freely on bomb sites low wooden hoardings were going up. Elsewhere clusters of bungalow-like prefabricated homes were being put together for the bombed out. Those who moved into these prefabs, as they were called, had already been creating little gardens around them with flower beds and an ornamental tree or two as though seeing them as permanent.

  Around the middle of April Brenda’s parents had a pleasant surprise – council men arriving to ‘do up’ their upstairs. It was simpler to repair such partially damaged places first. They yanked off burnt door frames and replaced them with new wood, also putting in windows, renewing charred floorboards, refitting ceilings, scraping and repainting walls. If that faint smell of burnt wood did still linger, the Wilsons once again had the use of their upstairs rooms. They celebrated it by hanging new curtains and buying bedroom furniture and by going up and down the newly painted stairs several more times than ever need be in a day. Dad even attempted to carry Mum up them, though four years had made him just that little less agile than before.

  All that remained was to await the capitulation of the enemy. To most it seemed a long wait; as the saying went, the last mile home is always the longest. Hitler remained determined to have his defeat go right up to the wire. Even the war against Japan was proving protracted, yet another determined foe refusing to realise that its days were numbered. In the meantime fine men were still dying.

  Brenda prayed long and agonisingly for Harry’s safety, all the while half-tortured, especially at night with her brain freed from daily concerns, by how easily something might happen to him practically on the last day of hostilities. In the last war men had fallen moments before the Armistice had been signed. Why not Harry? It seemed to her that she and her family and his family, even Bob in a way, had got off too scotfree these five and a half years for their luck to go on.

  She prayed for her brothers too. Let them all come home safe, dear God! And especially my Harry.

  Willing him safe home, it was easy to forget that when he finally did return, she was going to have to face him with all she had achieved in his absence: the salon, the house, the money she had saved. His letters hardly mentioned any of these things and she too, feeling it best not to raise too much dust, wrote little about her success. But once Harry was home . . .

  Well, she’d face that when it came. Meanwhile, she prayed.

  Much of the good news coming out of Germany had been marred by the shock of the good President Roosevelt’s death, and now the newsreels in all the cinemas were inflicting with awful and startling clarity upon totally unsuspecting audiences the atrocities of Nazi concentration camps like Belsen and Buchenwald, showing stunned Allied soldiers entering them.

  Sprung on them as they sat contentedly in a picture palace watching the Pathé Gazette News, Brenda and Daphne sat with their decent senses numbed by what they were seeing. Sickened and stupefied by how humans, even Nazis, could do such things to others, a profound silence descended over the entire audience, broken only by quiet spasmodic weeping. People felt too shocked to utter even gasps of horror. It was as though they too stood there in the camp alongside the liberators as bodies, skin-covered bones, were lifted, light as feathers, to be dropped in mass graves, limp body atop limp body that seemed to move in death as each settled – an abomination to English eyes regardless of all they themselves had gone through – despite the care given to those dead forms. And all the while the still-living shuffled without aim, with vacant stares, eyes unnaturally large and sunk deep into sockets, teeth grinning without mirth from shrunken lips and abnormally enlarged by skeletal cheeks, limbs so stick-like they seemed incapable of supporting each wasted frame.

  Those who had come to see a lively Hollywood song and dance film rose silently as the newsreel faded, and to the last person filed from the cinema. Brenda and Daphne went along with them, their interest
in the rest of the programme lost. Certainly the happy musical which they’d paid to see would now have seemed utterly inappropriate.

  All the way home no word passed between them as automatically they produced their bus fare while people around them, who hadn’t been in the cinema, babbled away.

  Only once did Daphne say anything. ‘We did right ter fight that kind of tyranny,’ she muttered before falling silent again.

  Brenda opened Harry’s letter. ‘Hope to be on my way home any day now,’ it said.

  Clutching the letter to her bosom, she burst into tears. Her prayers had all been answered. Italy, Greece, no longer had need of occupying forces. Mussolini had been shot dead, then strung up by his own people. Berlin lay crushed between the British and Americans in the west and the Russians in the east, Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun, had reportedly committed suicide in a Berlin bunker. The war was virtually over, all bar the shouting.

  Mum had heard from Brian yesterday saying much the same thing as Harry – he hoped to be home very soon. He was looking forward to seeing the girl he’d been corresponding with since one of his leaves from way back. She lived in the very next street and he intended asking her to marry him. Mum had known nothing about this.

  Davy’s letter had a bit more to say. He was writing to a girl he’d met near Paris, hoped that once home he could send for her. They were very much in love, he said, and he too had plans of marrying.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Mum. ‘I don’t think I fancy some gel what’s foreign fer me daughter-in-law. Wouldn’t know what ter say to ’er. What if she don’t speak no English – ’ow am I goin’ ter cope with ’er? I’ve got ter tell ’im I don’t like it. Not when there’s such a lot of nice English gels around. Fancy, all these years and ’im never so much as lookin’ at a bloomin’ gel. Now ’e wants ter marry a foreign one. No, I don’t like that at all.’

  It was May. The eighth of May, a Tuesday. The war was over: officially.

  For days everyone had been expecting it. When it came, excitement had already preceded the official announcement, and the whole of Britain joined in one huge celebration. Victory in Europe, VE Day, got going strongly with bunting and flags hung out of every window, coloured fairy lights draped around front doors, tables and chairs dragged out of homes to line the centre of every side street in readiness for a children’s party. Mums in aprons were spreading tablecloths and sheets end to end, laying out vast varieties of cups, glasses and plates ready to take the mountain of sandwiches and jellies and trifles whose ingredients they’d managed to hoard for this very day.

  With the official announcement given over loudspeakers at three o’clock the cheer shook the whole of London, people leaping fully clothed into the fountains of Trafalgar Square. Whitehall and the Mall became a mass of cavorting humanity, people with arms linked. Girls in bright dresses wearing servicemen’s caps, embraced by every contingent of British and American forces, waved little flags while people singing at the top of their voices belted out British favourites. A massive conga snaked around Queen Victoria’s statue. At the Palace a solid crowd singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ yelled for the King and Queen.

  In the warm May air, every town and village saw children of all ages stuffing themselves to bursting point at the party tables beneath red, white and blue bunting and flags last used for King George VI’s coronation. By evening pianos had been dragged out; adults now took over from the children, and the night sky grew lurid with countless bonfires and was split by exploding fireworks – as if the people hadn’t had enough of fire and explosion. This however was different.

  Across the length and breadth of Britain there was hardly a square inch of any town that didn’t have dancing and not a mile separating any habitation where singing could not be heard. The relief that the war was over and done with and that the Allies were the victors resounded from every corner of the nation. Brenda and Vera, having rushed round to their parents with their children in tow, were just one small item in that grand jollification.

  By evening Dad had drunk too much and was cuddling Mum while she tried her damnedest to extricate herself. ‘Not in front of everyone, yer silly old sod!’

  Hardly anyone heard her and if they did, they took no notice as squibs and bangers were set off to make people jump and in passing remember the louder explosions that had once made them more than jump.

  In the midst of it, Brian came home, sunburnt and jolly. Having been kissed and cuddled by the family under a hurriedly fashioned banner made from an old bedsheet that read WELCOME HOME BRIAN – they’d had a telegram that morning to say he’d been sent home on leave – he went straight round to the other turning to bring back his fiancee, for whom he’d promised to buy an engagement ring as soon as he could afford one.

  ‘Can’t afford a bloomin’ thing on my pay,’ he told them as Cecilia, more often known as Cis and sometimes Ceil, was introduced.

  ‘But we’ll make up fer it when I’m demobbed and get meself a decent job, won’t we, Ceil?’ he added while Ceil, a slightly built blonde of eighteen with upswept hairstyle, gazed at him in dewy-eyed adoration.

  ‘I like that gel,’ Mum said much later, gazing into the street bonfire that was finally being allowed to die down. Neighbours were tiring and beginning to drift off. It had been an exciting day. Tomorrow would see the anti-climax of knowing they were no longer at war; it created a sort of vacuum they were going to have to get used to.

  That night, Brenda and Vera with their children slept together in Brian’s old bedroom. He had gone off to stay at the home of his fiancee’s parents at their invitation, sleeping on their couch. He maybe had ideas of getting a little more cosy with Ceil when all was still.

  ‘Been a good day,’ murmured Brenda, her eyelids beginning to close. She received a sleepy grunt.

  ‘Nice, Brian coming ’ome out of the blue like that,’ she went on.

  ‘Sooner it’d bin Hank,’ came a mumbled response. ‘Wish ’e was ’ere. I ain’t ’eard from ’im fer ages. I reckon ’e must of got fed up with me.’

  ‘You’ll hear from ’im soon,’ Brenda encouraged, but there was no reply. Whether Vera had already drifted off or couldn’t bring herself to express her doubts about ever hearing from him again, Brenda felt it best not to push things. It was true, he’d not written for over a month.

  Two weeks later, Brenda had Vera bounding into the salon like a gazelle, almost knocking the magazine out of the hands of a customer sitting awaiting her turn.

  Totally out of breath, not all from hurrying down the iron stairs, her face was lit with happiness as she waved a telegram in her sister’s face.

  ‘Brenda! It’s from Hank. He’s got leave from France and he’s coming ’ere. Look, see what it says.’

  Not pausing for Brenda to finish trimming her customer’s hair, Vera began reading loud enough for the whole salon to hear:

  ‘“Got seven days leave STOP be there tomorrow STOP you get dolled up STOP I’ll bring the ring STOP”’ She thrust the telegram at Brenda to read for herself. Vera’s voice continued in the same breath. ‘Bren, Hank wants me ter marry ’im!’

  Brenda lowered her comb and scissors to take the telegram being pushed at her. ‘It don’t exactly say to marry you, Vera.’

  ‘Of course it does!’ came the hot retort. ‘What else would ’e bring a ring for? He can’t go inter detail in a telegram, can he? It costs.’

  ‘What about Mum?’ asked Brenda, her customer forgotten. ‘What’s she going to say?’

  ‘It ain’t up ter Mum,’ blurted Vera.

  The neglected customer, rather than feeling ignored, was grinning with pleasure. ‘That’s right, dear, it’s your life.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Vera told her. ‘Mine and Hank’s. I’m so ’appy, Bren – don’t put the mockers on it. I’ve gotta lot ter sort out. He’ll be ’ere termorrer.’

  ‘You best go and explain to Mum,’ advised Brenda. She was pleased for Vera, but at the same time wary. It had come about all too suddenly. Was Vera real
ly thinking straight? Did she know what she could be letting herself in for? Marrying – if that’s what he was asking – someone from across the other side of the Atlantic who no doubt had no intention of settling down in England? Hers could be a different life, maybe one she wasn’t prepared for.

  But Vera was already off, leaving Brenda to return to her still-grinning customer.

  ‘It don’t ’alf sound romantic,’ said the middle-aged customer, who settled back into her chair, adding, ‘Good luck to ’er, eh?’ ready to enjoy a nice long discussion on love and romance while the remainder of her coarse, greying hair was being trimmed.

  *

  Hank was of middle height and rather thickset, but his face with its straight nose, square jaw and bright blue eyes was exactly as Vera had described, remarkably handsome beneath a regulation bristle of sandy hair. His surname was Cameron and for that at least, Annie Wilson was relieved. It could easily have been something quite unpronounceable. He’d told Vera his stock was Scottish, though a good three generations back.

  He stood now, filling her doorway, slightly braced against Vera’s ecstatic onrush into his arms, her heart on her sleeve. Dropping his pack to catch her, he was looking over her shoulder in silent appeal at her parents standing in the passage to receive him.

  ‘I’m sorry to have bust in on yah like this.’

  Annie, having recovered from her initial awkwardness, saw in the smile a self-conscious young man who had probably never been out of his own state of Illinois before joining up, and immediately warmed to him.

  The day before, confronted by an excited Vera, she had said‚ ‘We ain’t never even met ’im, and now ’e’s comin’ ’ere askin’ yer to marry ’im. Where yer goin’ ter live? I know what’s goin’ ter ’appen – he’s goin’ ter take yer back to America wiv ’im and we’ll never see yer again. No, Vera, yer’ve got ter look at this one sensibly. An’ then yer must tell ’im yer can’t leave yer family.’