Where the Heart Is

by Annie Groves

  At least she wasn’t drinking any more like she had been when Bella’s father had first left. It had been such a terrible shock for Bella to discover her mother drunk, buying gin from a criminal selling it on the black market.

  Bella was so grateful to her mother’s doctor for the help he had given, sending Vi to a nursing home where she could be probably looked after. But she was not the person she had been, Bella knew, although whether that was because of her drinking or because her husband had left her, or a combination of both, Bella did not know. It wasimpossible to imagine Bella’s auntie Jean or her auntie Francine behaving as her mother had done. They were both so much stronger in their different ways, women to be admired, not pitied. Bella now felt so much closer to her auntie Jean, who had been such a rock and so very kind to her since Bella had taken her courage in both hands and gone to tell her what had happened. She didn’t feel she deserved the love and kindness Auntie Jean had shown her, but she was very grateful for it.

  Her aunt had been coming over from Liverpool to visit her mother at least once a week all through the winter and the bad weather, but Bella had no intention of allowing Auntie Jean to be put upon. It wouldn’t be right.

  Automatically she picked up the clothes her mother had left scattered around the room, putting those that needed washing aside, pulling back the bedclothes and remaking the bed. The furniture–bought new when her parents had first moved to the house, and of which her mother had been so very proud–like the rest of the house had an air of neglect about it.

  The Bella who had lived in this house, spoiled and selfish, wouldn’t have had the first idea about how to keep house or cook, or do anything that the Bella she was now did with such accomplishment and pride, and all the more so because they were lessons hard-learned and self-taught.

  She and Lena had had such fun learning to cook together. Her own kitchen had been filled with the sound of laughter as well as the smell of food, both seasoned with love.

  Her poor mother. Bella couldn’t think of anything worse than being married to a man like her own father, a cold-hearted bully who thought of no one but himself, but her mother continually made it plain that she would rather be married to him than deserted by him.

  Back downstairs Bella filled two hot-water bottles, one for mother’s bed and one for her own.

  It was eleven o’clock before she finally went to bed herself, having seen her mother safely up, and then having gone back downstairs to make a start on cleaning the kitchen. Now physically tired, she should have been ready to sleep but instead, as though it sensed her weakness and that her guard was down, the news of Bomber Command’s continuing raids on enemy targets allowed her thoughts to slide towards Jan, who was a fighter pilot and not a bomber pilot, but whose life was still in danger with every mission he flew, and who she had no right to be thinking of at all. They might have admitted their love for one another and shared a little precious time together, but Bella had told him then that there must be no future meetings, no letters, and even no thinking of one another in their most private thoughts because Jan was married. She had meant what she said.

  Bella knew she had made the right, indeed the only possible, decision but there were times when the temptation to let Jan into her thoughts betrayed her. As she knew all too well, letting him into her thoughts was only a heartbeat away from letting him into her imagination–and her memory–and that once there, in no time at all she would beremembering how it felt to be held in his arms, and to hold him back. How it felt to be kissed by him and to kiss him back. How it felt to be loved by him and to love him back, and then the pain would begin all over again. A double-edged pain–for herself and for the woman Bella believed she was betraying with her thoughts. She loved Jan beyond any shadow of doubt, and loving him surely meant wanting the best for him, and the very best future happiness for Jan would be for him to be happy with his wife. That was what she must pray for and hope for him, no matter what the cost to herself, because any other kind of lesser, more selfish love was not the love Bella believed her wonderful Jan deserved.

  SIX

  ‘I can’t believe we’ve been here over a month already,’ Lou announced as they all lined up outside their hut, ready for morning inspection, blinking in the late March bright morning light.

  ‘A month? It feels more like a year,’ Betty groaned, shivering in the cold wind that seemed to whistle round the base. ‘It’s all right for you, Lou,’ she complained. ‘You’re so good at what we’re supposed to be doing, but I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.’

  ‘Watch out, Corp’s on her way,’ Ellen, always the cautious one, warned them. They all stiffened into a dutiful silence as their corporal started to walk down the line of uniformed young women in her charge, checking the cap angles, hair length, shoe and button shines.

  She was finding that she had a natural aptitude for what they were being taught, Lou admitted as she stood to attention. Perhaps it came from the fact that her father was, as they said, ‘good with his hands’ and worked for Liverpool’s Salvage Corp, although her father had never in Lou’s memory suggested thathis daughters understand what a plane or a vice or a file was, never mind try to use one. The very thought was enough to make Lou grin.

  ‘Something funny, is there, Campion?’

  Oh Lord. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that hadn’t realised that the corp had reached her.

  Somehow managing not to make any retort but instead to stand to attention and look straight ahead, Lou cursed herself inwardly. Their corp–Corporal Carter, to give her her full name–was a real tartar, and had seemed to take a dislike to her after she had made the mistake, during her first week, of mentioning that her brother was also a corporal in the army. She’d only been making conversation but obviously the corporal had thought she was trying to be clever or, even worse, to curry favour, and since then she’d been coming down hard on her, finding fault as often as she could, or so it seemed to Lou.

  If it wasn’t the shine on her shoes that wasn’t bright enough, then it was the curl in her hair, or–on one occasion–the length of her eyelashes, which the corporal had accused her of darkening with either mascara or shoe blacking, both of which were banned whilst the women were on duty.

  The last thing Lou wanted now, with Easter only ten days away, was to provoke the corporal into putting her on a charge, as she had threatened to do the last time she had given her a telling-off. The pettiness of the rules and the discipline irked her at times, Lou admitted, but on the other hand she was enjoying what she was learning, even if she still feltdisappointed about the fact that she was never going to get to learn to fly.

  All the recruits were looking forward to their promised long weekend off over Easter, and Lou had already written to her family telling them that she would be coming home. She’d even got Sasha to promise that the two of them would go out together to the Grafton Dance Hall on Easter Saturday–just the two of them.

  Lou had missed Sasha, but she still felt a bit on edge at the thought of being reunited with her twin.

  She’d have so much to tell her family and, of course, so much that she couldn’t tell them. Halton was a busy base with, if the grapevine was to be relied on, any number of top brass being flown in and then out of it almost daily.

  ‘They’ve got some American military top bass coming down today, so I’ve heard,’ Betty whispered excitedly to Lou a bit later whilst they were queuing for their breakfast. ‘Bomber Harris is going to be here as well.’

  A fully fledged leading aircraftwoman in the queue ahead of them had obviously overheard and turned round to give them each a reproving look. ‘It’s Air Marshal Harris to you, and we don’t make a fuss about Yanks here. This is an RAF base, remember?’

  Lou and Betty exchanged rueful grimaces, whilst Ruby, cheeky as always, pulled a face behind the other Waaf’s back.

  ‘I’m surprised she didn’t start reminding us that walls have ears,’ Betty grumbled, when they were sitting down with their breakfas
ts. ‘Anyway, everyone knows that the American military are here and thatthey’re going to be flying those enormous bombers of theirs out of all those airfields that are being built for them. I’ve got a cousin who’s based in London. She’s been out with one of them already–one of the Yanks, I mean. She says they really know how to treat a girl.’

  ‘A lot of people think it’s fearfully bad form to step out with one of them when our own boys are overseas fighting,’ was all Lou felt able to say, remembering how anti the Americans her own brother, Luke, had been when they had first arrived in Liverpool the previous year.

  ‘I’m really looking forward to Easter. It seems ages since I saw my family–or wore civvies,’ Betty complained. She heaved a heavy sigh. ‘I can’t wait to go to a dance wearing a dress and decent shoes. My ankles were black and blue the other Sunday, from being kicked accidentally by chaps in uniform, after we’d all been to that dance in the mess.’

  ‘Well, at least the RAF boys get to wear a pretty decent uniform,’ Ellen reminded them, coming to sit down with them just in time to catch what had been said. ‘Not like the poor army boys.’

  The table was full now and whilst the other girls embarked on an intense discussion about the merits and demerits of various service uniforms, Lou let her thoughts slip to their Easter weekend break.

  Easter was quite late this year, which meant that her dad would already have been busy in his allotment, and although there wouldn’t be any chocolate eggs because of rationing, Lou suspected that there would be wonderfully fresh eggs from the hensthe allotment keepers had clubbed together to keep. Her mother was a wonderful cook. Naafi food had been an eye-opener for Lou, but she had made herself get used to it; she didn’t want the others thinking she was a softie, after all.

  It would be heaven to sleep in her own bed again in the room she shared with Sasha. Her sister Grace had written to tell her that although she would be on duty at the hospital in Whitchurch, where she was now working, for most of the Easter holiday, she had got Easter Monday off, when she and Seb would be coming over to Liverpool to see everyone.

  There would be no Luke there, of course. He was fighting in the desert with the British Army, and there would be no Katie either, because she and Luke weren’t engaged any more.

  They were all upset about that, but especially her mother, Lou knew. She was never going to let herself get daft about a lad. It only led to problems and misery. She had made enough of a fool of herself over Kieran Mallory to know not to do the same thing ever again. Just look at the way it had changed Sasha. Lou just hoped that her twin would keep to her promise about just the two of them going out together on Easter Saturday, she really did.

  ‘Auntie Jean!’ Bella exclaimed with genuine delight when she stepped into the kitchen to find her aunt sitting there with her mother.

  Although Vi and Jean were identical twins, the way they had lived their lives now showed in their faces so that, in their mid-forties, Jean Campion’sexpression was one of warmth and happiness, whilst Vi Firth’s was one of dissatisfaction and irritation. Vi’s hair might be iron neat in the scalloped rigid permanent wave she favoured, her twinset cashmere and her skirt expensive Scottish tweed–like her twinset, dating from before the war–but it was her auntie Jean, with her slightly untidy soft brown curls, and the kindness that shone from her hazel eyes who looked the prettier and happier of the two, Bella thought. Not that her auntie didn’t look every bit as smart as her twin sister, and a good bit slimmer. Unlike Vi, Jean had kept her neat waist, and if her jumper and skirt weren’t the exclusive models worn by Bella’s mother they were still of good quality. The pretty lilac of the jumper her auntie was wearing with her navy serge suit enhanced her colouring. But it was the quality of her auntie’s lovely smile that really showed the difference between them. Her own mother rarely smiled properly, which was why her mouth turned down, giving her a permanently dissatisfied and cross look, whilst her twin’s mouth turned upwards, drawing attention to her smile and the kindness in her eyes.

  Her mother might once have enjoyed showing off to her twin and boasting about the way she had moved up in the world but it was Auntie Jean who was truly the happier of the two of them and, bless her, she hadn’t said so much as a single unkind word about how her twin might have brought some of her unhappiness on herself, Bella acknowledged as she hugged her aunt affectionately.

  ‘I’m really glad now that I delayed having mylunch so that I could pop home this afternoon to remind Mummy that it’s our WVS night tonight,’ Bella told her aunt, ‘otherwise I’d have missed you. It’s so good of you to come all this way, Auntie Jean.’

  ‘Nonsense. It’s only a matter of coming over on the ferry and then catching the bus,’ Bella’s mother objected immediately.

  ‘I’ll put on the kettle, shall I, Bella love?’ Jean asked, giving her niece a motherly look. It meant ever such a lot to her to have this new relationship with her niece and to feel that Bella was now within the fold, so to speak, and a real part of her own family. Her own mother would have been that pleased. She’d always felt strongly about family sticking together.

  Watching her aunt busy herself, Bella admitted to a small sad stab of loneliness. Living here with her mother wasn’t easy, and she desperately missed her own house and Lena’s company, even though she knew that in coming home she had done the right thing–for Lena as well as for her mother.

  ‘I had a letter from Grace the other day saying that she and Seb are hoping to come up to Liverpool over Easter,’ Bella told her aunt.

  ‘That’s one of the reasons why I’m here,’ Jean said. ‘I was wondering if you and Vi would like to come to us for your tea on Easter Monday. It won’t be anything much, what with the war and everything, but Grace and Seb will be there, and Lou’s got leave as well.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that, Jean,’ Vi beganbefore Bella could say anything. ‘I don’t know what Charlie and Daphne’s plans are yet.’

  ‘We’d love to come, Auntie Jean,’ Bella overrode her mother.

  ‘But what if Charles and Daphne are here?’ Vi asked.

  ‘Well, they’d be very welcome too,’ Jean hurried to assure her sister.

  ‘I thought you said that when you wrote and asked Charlie what they were doing for Easter, he wrote back that Daphne’s parents were having some friends to stay, and that he didn’t even know if he would get leave,’ Bella reminded her mother.

  Personally the last thing Bella wanted was for Charlie to come home. There was the matter of Lena and the baby, for one thing, and there was no way she wanted her young friend upset or embarrassed in any way by Charlie’s presence.

  After they had drunk their tea, and Bella and Jean had finalised the arrangements for Easter Monday, Bella offered to travel back to the ferry terminal with her aunt.

  ‘Oh, Bella, that’s kind of you but there’s really no need,’ Jean protested.

  ‘No need at all,’ Vi agreed. ‘I can’t for the life of me think why Jean would need you to go with her, Bella, especially when she knows that I’m here on my own day in and day out with no one to speak to until you come home from that nursery. I don’t know why you work there, I really don’t. Not when you could have been working for your father, and if you had …’

  Her mother was working herself up to one ofher angry outbursts, during which she’d blame her for Pauline’s presence in her father’s life, Bella recognised, stepping in quickly to deflect it by saying calmly, ‘It was Charlie Daddy wanted to have working for him, Mummy, not me. Now, why don’t you go and start getting ready for the WVS tonight?’

  ‘Oh, the WVS. I don’t think I want to go, Bella. Mrs Forbes Brown cut me at church last Sunday.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mummy. She just didn’t see you, that’s all.’

  ‘Bella, you are such a good daughter to your mother,’ Jean praised her niece later as they walked to the bus stop together, Jean now wearing a neat little navy hat she had trimmed up last year with a scrap of cream petersham ribbo
n.

  Jean thought approvingly that Bella’s businesslike dark green suit and a matching beret had a bit of a look of a uniform about it and certainly suited her niece’s trim figure. A pair of court shoes showed off her dainty ankles, and Jean thought how well that style would suit Grace, who had to wear such ugly shoes for her work.

  ‘There’s really no need for you to come all the way down to the terminal with me, Bella,’ Jean insisted. ‘I know how busy you must be.’

  ‘We are,’ Bella agreed with a smile, ‘but not so busy that I’m prepared to give up the opportunity to spend time with you, Auntie Jean.’

  As Jean said to Sam later, once she had returned home and the two of them were sharing a cup oftea in the warmth of the kitchen before Sam went out to take advantage of the last of the daylight to work on his allotment, ‘You’d never know our Bella for the same girl. She’s changed so much, and for the better. I feel sorry for her too having to put up with Vi, the way she is, always finding fault. I know that Vi’s my own sister, my twin, and heaven knows I feel sorry for her after what she’s been through with Edwin treating her like he has, but she doesn’t make things easy for herself, Sam, or for those around her.’

  ‘Well, you know what I think,’ Sam responded. ‘Your Vi and her Edwin were a perfect match for one another, both of them as selfish as bedamned, but I know you, with that soft heart of yours, never able to resist helping others even when they don’t deserve it.’

  Jean gave her husband a tender smile. They’d had a good marriage, her and Sam, a happy marriage, but she knew how uncomfortable ‘soppy’ talk made him feel so instead of telling him how much she loved him and how glad she was that she had married him, she asked him anxiously, ‘Do you think those Jersey potatoes of yours will be ready for Easter, Sam? Only there’s nothing quite like your Jerseys with Easter Sunday lamb, and any that’s left over will do nicely cold on Easter Monday.’