by Annie Groves
‘I do mean it,’ Sasha told him. ‘And if you loved me as much as you say you do then you’d do it.’
‘Sasha, it isn’t that easy. Like I’ve tried to explain to you, I can’t just let the other lads down. Look, finish your tea otherwise we’ll be late for the pictures.’
Sasha stood up. ‘I’m not going to the pictures with you, Bobby. In fact, I’m not going to see you again until you come and tell me that you’ve left Bomb Disposal.’ She pulled on her coat as she spoke.
‘Sasha, wait …’ Bobby begged her.
‘I mean it, Bobby,’ she told him, before she turned to slip through the crowded restaurant without looking back.
Bobby caught up with her within a few yards, reaching for her hand and then offering her his handkerchief when he saw that she was crying.
‘Don’t say things like that, Sash, please. You mean the whole world to me, you do.’
‘Oh, Bobby …’ Sasha wept as he took her in his arms. ‘I just want us to be married and for you to be safe, that’s all.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Welcome back, Corp. We’ve missed you.’
The vigorous manner in which Andy pumped his hand as he welcome Luke back to the unit confirmed how pleased he was to have him back, even if he couldn’t resist joking, ‘Pity you missed the fun, though, and we had to rout Jerry without you. Mind you, at least you’ll get to see King George, even if you didn’t see Rommel’s backside.’
Even before he had been declared fit to return to duty, Luke had been itching to get back to his men, and he was delighted to have rejoined them in Tunisia, where it was already being rumoured that they would shortly be on the move, joining the assault on Italy.
‘I owe you one hell of a lot,’ Luke told Andy later on when he’d managed to snatch a few minutes alone with his friend. ‘You saved my life.’
‘Repaying the debt I owed you for saving mine, wasn’t I, mate? We’re even stevens now,’ Andy grinned.
Knowing that the other man used his jokes to cover his deeper feelings, Luke didn’t press the subject. There was, after all, no need. They both understood that in war you did your best to protect your comrades, and that your loyalty to them and theirs to you, the things you shared mattered more than the things that set you apart from them; that the trust you gave them and they gave you had to be all encompassing, and an act of faith rather than a reality that had to be constantly examined for flaws and weaknesses.
Luke frowned. Wasn’t that the kind of trust that should exist between a chap and his girl when they loved one another? Wasn’t it the kind of trust that Katie had tried to tell him they should share, but which he had withheld from her? Why was he thinking about Katie so much? She seemed to have found a way to keep pushing into his thoughts when he didn’t want her to be there. It was over between them, after all, and surely it didn’t matter now that he hadn’t given her the trust he had just identified. But somehow it did matter.
It had happened at last. The CO had sent for Lou and told her that with immediate effect she had been posted to Barton-le-Clay, in the Bedfordshire countryside and, so she had been told, not far from Luton and Bedford itself, to begin her initial training to become an ATA pilot. Lou was beside herself with excitement and delight.
Admin had given her her travel warrant and she been told to pack her kit ready to leave the base at Lyneham first thing in the morning, in RAF transport, to be driven to the nearest railway station, and then north via London to her new posting.
Hilary had been a bit miffed. They’d got fortyeight-hour passes coming up, and Hilary had been trying to persuade Lou to go to London with her, instead of Lou going home as she’d originally planned, but now of course that was out of the question, as Lou’s new posting meant that her leave would probably be cancelled.
‘I thought I’d have had a letter back by now,’ Bella told Bettina anxiously as they stood together under a shared umbrella whilst the heavy April rain fell from Wallasey’s grey skies.
They’d met up in Wallasey by chance, on this wet Saturday afternoon, their unplanned meeting giving Bella the chance to talk to someone who would understand about her anxiety over the absence of any letters for her from Jan.
‘It’s the same for us,’ Bettina assured her. ‘Sometimes Mama and I think that we must have dreamed hearing from the Red Cross that Jan is still alive and a POW.’
‘Oh, don’t say that, please,’ Bella begged her, shuddering. ‘I couldn’t bear it if we were told now that they’d made a mistake.’
‘I’m sure they haven’t,’ Bettina comforted her, changing the subject to ask, ‘How is your mother?’
‘She can’t stop talking about Charlie, my brother. He and his wife are expecting their first child.’ Bella frowned. This new baby would not be Charlie’s first child. He already had a daughter, after all, with Lena, and Bella resented on Lena and her baby’s behalf her mother’s constant enthusing about this other coming child.
‘Mummy was hoping that they would come up to visit her over Easter, and I suspect that Charlie has only told her about the baby to head off her complaints because they didn’t.’ And possibly to ask her mother to help him out financially, Bella suspected, although she didn’t want to say so to Bettina.
‘I’ve always wanted to get married in June, but I never imagined there’d be so little time to organise everything. But, well, with the war and everything, and all this talk about invading Italy, we’ve decided to just jump in and get married as quickly as we can. After all, even though everyone is saying that we’ve turned the corner and that we’re going to win, there’s still a long way to go, and Leonard is bound to be posted soon and see action, so we don’t want to waste a minute.’
Katie smiled, happy for her friend as Gina confided her good news about her engagement to Leonard and their plans to marry.
They were in Hyde Park, sitting on the grass, enjoying the May sunshine, the park busy with Londoners and visitors alike, doing the same.
‘Of course, I want you to be my bridesmaid, Katie. After all, if it wasn’t for you we’d never have met in the first place. Leonard is asking Eddie to be his best man, and Eddie says that he’s looking forward to seeing you again. You know, I rather think that Eddie has a very soft spot for you.’
‘And for all the other girls he knows as well,’ Katie laughed, determined to dispute her friend’s suggestion that Eddie had any partiality for her, and to make sure that Gina didn’t get any matchmaking ideas into her head, as girls very much in love and soon to be married seemed to do.
‘Mummy’s thrilled to bits, needless to say. She adores Leonard, and of course with both our families having friends in common and knowing one another, it makes everything so much easier. I never thought that this would happen to me. I thought there’d never be anyone else I’d want to marry but, well, Leonard and I get on so well together.’
‘You deserve to be happy, Gina,’ Katie reassured her, sensing that that was what she wanted. ‘You both do.’
Katie smiled again. It didn’t do, of course, to reflect that it was two years ago this month that she and Luke had got engaged. That was all behind her now and she was a very different Katie from the one she had been then.
‘I must go,’ she told Gina, glancing at her watch. ‘I’m on duty at Rainbow Corner in half an hour and I’ve promised to show a group of American flyboys “Sherlock Holmes’s London".’
Rainbow Corner provided a variety of London tours for Americans on leave in the city, and even had bicycles that they could hire by the hour if they so wished. Not that Katie was sure they’d be so keen to hire them if they had read in the press, as she had done, that more people had been killed in road accidents since the beginning of the war than had died in combat.
Half an hour later, Katie was just about to cross Piccadilly Circus, her thoughts busy with her duties for the afternoon, when she felt a light touch on her shoulder and heard a warm female voice saying to her as she turned round, ‘Katie, I thought it was you.’
Francine! Jean’s sister, Luke’s aunt, and the fairy godmother who had so generously made it possible for Katie to wear the most lovely clothes she had ever seen. Even now Katie still felt guilty about the fact that Jean had given her the beautiful grey silk frock she had been wearing the Christmas Eve she had first met Luke, and which in reality belonged to Francine.
‘How are you?’ Francine asked her. ‘Do you have time for a cup of tea?’
They were virtually outside Lyons and Katie didn’t want to appear rude, so she nodded her head, but explained, ‘I’m due on duty at Rainbow Corner at half-past. I work there as a volunteer,’
‘And you don’t want to be late. Quite right, you mustn’t be, but that still leaves us time for a quick cuppa and a catch-up.’
‘I still have your dress,’ Katie reminded Francine as the latter took her arm and guided her toward Lyons.
‘My dress?’
‘The grey silk. Jean sent it to me.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. Well, you must consider it yours, Katie. It would be far too young for me now, and besides, I should like you to have it. You look well, and happy. Does that mean that some young American you’ve met at Rainbow Corner has put that sparkle in your eyes?’
Katie laughed. ‘No. They are lovely boys, but so far away from home and sometimes so new to this war that it wouldn’t really be fair to get involved with them.’
‘Those are very wise words, my dear. When one has been hurt by love, one is so much more aware of the hurt it can cause others. You’ll have heard the news about Luke, I expect?’
Katie was glad that they were now sitting down, as her heart lurched into her ribs. What news was it that Francine expected her to have heard? That he had found someone else? Well, she’d warned herself that that was bound to happen, hadn’t she? The news couldn’t be that something bad had happened to Luke; after all, Francine was smiling.
‘Jean and I don’t keep in touch,’ she answered Francine cautiously. ‘We both agreed that we shouldn’t, although I did see her when they came to London for Lou’s medal.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Francine looked conscious-stricken. ‘Then perhaps I shouldn’t say any more?’
‘No, please,’ Katie pressed her, unable to conceal her anxiety. ‘You have to tell me now.’
Francine looked at her for a minute and then nodded her head. ‘Yes, I think I do,’ she agreed. ‘The fact of the matter is that Luke was injured in action–El Alamein—’
Now Katie’s heart was rolling into her chest wall again but this time in slow motion, and with a sickeningly anxious thud.
‘He’s—’ she began, poised anxiously on the edge of her chair.
‘Safe and well now, thank goodness,’ Francine reassured her immediately. ‘Although it’s taken him a long time to recover. Oh, Katie, I’m sorry, you look quite pale. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Francine patted Katie’s hand.
‘I was thinking of Jean,’ Katie rallied determinedly. ‘She must have been so worried.’
‘Well, yes, she was, especially when the telegram arrived. Of course, she’s worrying just as much now that he’s been pronounced fit to return to duty.’ Francine gave a small sigh. ‘Life isn’t very easy for her at the moment. She misses Grace, of course, and Sasha desperately wants to marry her young man, but both Jean and Sam think that she’s too young. I know how sorry she was about you and Luke, Katie, and how much she wanted you as a daughter-in-law.’
‘I wanted that too,’ Katie admitted, before finishing her tea, and taking her leave of Francine, with an apology for having to dash away.
‘No, you must go. I understand perfectly,’ Francine assured her, giving Katie a quick and unexpected hug that reminded her immediately of Jean and made her eyes sting a little with emotion, as she left the café and hurried into Rainbow Corner, darting between the mass of uniformed men as she went to her post.
American accents, American uniforms, American music and food and customs–that was what Rainbow Corner was all about, and it worked. Even Katie, who was familiar with it, often felt when she entered the building that she was stepping into another world. Rather guiltily, though, today instead of thinking about the young men she would be showing round her city, she found it was Luke who was filling her thoughts.
It had been such a shock to learn that he had been injured, and it hurt that she hadn’t known. What was even worse was the realisation that he could have died, might still die, and she wouldn’t know. Feelings of despair and need gripped her, filling her with a foolish longing to see him and touch him just to reassure herself that he was still alive. Why should she feel like this? She didn’t want to. Perhaps once you had loved someone, some of that love stayed imprinted on your heart.
‘There you are, Katie. I was beginning to worry that you were going to be late, and that my chap would be left wondering where I was.’
The voice of the volunteer she was replacing was slightly sharp. Katie forced a smile. It wasn’t her fault, after all, that she was thinking about her ‘chap', not knowing that Katie was also thinking about a man who had meant an awful lot to her.
TWENTY-NINE
The train was pulling into Lime Street. It had been so long since Emily had been to Liverpool that she had somehow expected the city to have changed, but it hadn’t. It still stood proud amongst the rubble of its own destruction, its citizens going about their business.
It was the smell that caught Emily’s attention first when she stepped out of the station into Lime Street proper, the smell of sea air, salt and sharp, brought off the Atlantic by the wind to mingle with the dust of bombed buildings and city life, and that added, uniquely Liverpool, pinch of the cargoes brought into its docks. When Emily had been a child that pinch had been exotic and exciting, a mix of spices and luxury goods, of the food from the foreign restaurants that catered for the seamen, but now it was the smell of engine oil and metal and war.
She felt very nervous. She was tempted to open her bag and read the letter again, even though she knew every word of it by heart.
It had arrived nearly two weeks ago now, on a bright sunny morning, although she had had to admit to herself that she couldn’t really say that it had come ‘out of the blue'. The fact was that she had been expecting it from the minute Con had stood in her kitchen on Christmas Eve, asking her for money. She had known then that that wouldn’t be the end of it and that once he knew he could get money out of her by threatening to go to the authorities about Tommy he would be back for more.
Not that he’d asked outright in the letter for more money. No, he’d simply said that he thought it would be a good idea if she came to Liverpool so that the two of them could have a ‘bit of a talk', ‘and don’t bring the brat with you'. Not that Emily would have dreamed of dragging poor Tommy all the way to Liverpool and back, when she knew how much being in Con’s presence worried and upset the boy.
Instead she’d asked her neighbour and Wilhelm if they would keep an eye on Tommy for her because she’d got to go to Liverpool to attend to some family business.
‘It’s just some council business I’ve got to sort out because of letting the council use my house to billet people in,’ she’d fibbed to Wilhelm and Tommy.
It made Emily feel bad knowing that she had lied, but she knew how Tommy would have worried if he’d known the truth, and Wilhelm too, and there was nothing that either of them could do.
She arranged to meet Con at the theatre; she hadn’t wanted to go to the house. After what had happened to her there when she’d been attacked, she didn’t want to go back, daft though that was, because nothing was likely to happen to her there now.
And anyway, the theatre was also closer to the station than Wavertree.
Because she had known that Con wouldn’t be satisfied with what he’d already had, it came in one way almost as a relief when she had finally received his letter, she’d been worrying about him getting in touch that much, and not sleeping for fear of what he might do.
It d
idn’t take her long to reach the theatre, cutting through St John’s Market, and noting sadly the empty space where Lewis’s had stood before it had been bombed and burned down. Everywhere she looked there was still evidence of the terrible pounding the city had taken during the May blitz of 1940, three years ago now. So many years of war and hardship, there were little ones growing up now who had never known anything else, Emily thought compassionately.
Con was reading Picture Post, with his feet up on his desk in his favourite pose, when Emily opened the door to the cubbyhole he called his office.
‘Emily! What the devil are you doing here?’ he demanded as he swung his feet to the floor and stood up.
‘What do you think I’m doing? You were the one who wrote and said you wanted to see me.’
‘Well, yes, but I wasn’t expecting you to just turn up without a by your leave. What if I hadn’t been here?’
‘But you are,’ Emily pointed out.
‘Look, I’m busy at the moment. I’m expecting a phone call about this act I’ve got booked. Why don’t you go and get yourself a nice cup of tea at Joe Lyons and I’ll meet you there later?’
Emily knew Con in this mood. It meant he was up to something, trying to hide something, or rather someone. During the early years of their marriage Con had forbidden her to visit him ‘at work', claiming that it would give him a benefit that others didn’t have if he had his wife calling round every five minutes. However, the truth had been that he hadn’t wanted her there because of his girls, the young women–chorus girls, singers, actresses and the like–he flirted with and sometimes far more.
Same old Con, Emily thought grimly. Silly fool, did he really think she cared any more what he did or with whom?
Well, never mind that. Turning up here when he hadn’t been expecting her and when he was quite obviously anxious to get rid of her could give her an advantage over him.
