The Postmistress

by Maggie Sullivan

  ‘How can you say that? Look where fighting for your country got you.’ Her voice was twisted in a sob. ‘And where did fighting get my poor Stan?’ Vicky stopped, angry that she couldn’t disguise her voice breaking. ‘And I didn’t notice the King or your country stepping in to do much once you were wounded.’

  ‘I was unfortunate. But Henry’s got a chance to be the hero I never was,’ Arthur said, a broad smile on his face now.

  Henry blushed but didn’t respond.

  ‘And you and me will manage, lass, you wait and see.’ Arthur patted Vicky’s leg under the table.

  Vicky screwed up her eyes tight but to her chagrin scalding tears still managed to make serious tracks down her cheeks.

  ‘So once again it’s me that’s left with all the responsibility, me that will have no choice, no life.’ She thought she had whispered the words so that only she could hear them but Arthur’s response was swift and cruel when he gave a scornful laugh.

  ‘You’ve not shown any interest in having a life for the past however many years, so why suddenly the concern now? You don’t even respond when someone does take an interest in you.’

  Vicky looked puzzled but her father didn’t elaborate. Instead, he went on, ‘And once upon a time you were prepared to throw your life away completely for a fella – and you would have too, if the war hadn’t stopped him in his tracks.’ Vicky could feel the colour rising from her neck to her cheeks and up to the top of her head as she glared at her father.

  ‘All I can say is, I’m glad you’re not thinking of doing that now, sis,’ Henry suddenly said and he reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘We’ll be needing the likes of you to keep the home fires burning and all that. Isn’t that what they used to sing about in the Great War, Dad?’

  ‘They did indeed,’ Arthur said and he began to hum the first line of the well-known song. ‘Besides, you should be thankful your life’s turned out so well, given the kind of start you had. There’s lots of girls would give their eye teeth to have what you’ve got right now: a good job, a home, a family.’

  Vicky could only stare at him, her thoughts momentarily bound up with all that she had lost, though she switched her gaze as Henry stood up and pushed his chair back.

  ‘Well, I’m off to tell my mates.’ He grinned. ‘See if I can shame them into joining me. I’ve got a feeling I might be the first, but I know I certainly won’t be the last.’

  Arthur slowly got up from the table. He went over to Henry and patted him on the shoulder. ‘I’m proud of you, son,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’re doing the right thing.’ Then he turned to glower for a moment at Vicky. Unexpectedly, she shuddered. It was the kind of look that had frightened her when she was a little girl, when her father had just come back from the war, just after her mother had died. And it frightened her now to think that in her father’s eyes she would probably always be second best. As if to underline the sentiment, Arthur turned his attention back to Henry and beamed at his son one more time.

  ‘You don’t worry about us, lad,’ he said. ‘You go and do what you’ve got to do.’ And he patted him one more time on the back, ‘We’ll manage, same as we always have.’ And with that he slowly made his way up the stairs.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ The little girl squealed with joy as she ran across the hall and into her father’s arms. Roger Buckley put down his doctor’s Gladstone bag that suddenly felt heavy and he opened his arms wide to accommodate the sturdy six-year-old.

  ‘Julie, my love. What a wonderful welcome, as ever,’ he said. He kissed the top of her head and stroked her gleaming black hair that hung straight to her shoulders. It was smooth and sleek just like her mother’s had been. Such moments always brought a tear to his eyes.

  ‘Don’t touch my hair, you’ll mess it up,’ Julie said, patting it down with her hands.

  Roger didn’t mind that his daughter was unusually vain for her age about her hair. He found it strangely comforting. He loved to see her comparing it with the well-thumbed photos of Anna that, at Julie’s insistence, adorned her bedroom. If she deemed it to be so much as an inch longer than the hair in the photographs, she insisted that her granny cut it.

  At that moment Freda Buckley appeared and, as she opened the door from the family’s living quarters that led into the hall, Roger was greeted by the appetising smell that suggested his mother’s indulgence of his favourite – cottage pie.

  ‘Roger, darling.’ She greeted him warmly. ‘You’re later than usual. I nearly sent your father on a trek to the surgery to make sure you hadn’t got lost coming from there to here.’ She grinned but Roger only shrugged, too tired even to laugh at the well-worn family joke, the clinic where he worked most afternoons being attached to the other side of the house.

  ‘You know how it is,’ he said. ‘There’s always someone likes to arrive just as I’m about to close up for the night. It’s as if they can’t bear to let me go home.’ Then he smiled. ‘Though I must admit it has been busier than usual today. I think people are gearing themselves up to the fact that there really will be a war and they want to get any niggles sorted out while things are still running relatively normally. I suppose it won’t do them any harm to be in as good a condition as possible if we’re going to be hit by rationing and food shortages.’

  ‘You might be right. But you should be more assertive.’ Freda playfully wagged her finger at him. ‘Meanwhile, your dinner awaits. Julie’s already had her tea but your father and I haven’t eaten yet; we thought we’d wait for you, though we had almost given up on you.’

  ‘But I want you to read me a story first!’ Julie tugged at his arm. ‘I’ve been waiting soooo long.’ She sighed in such a grown-up way that it made Roger smile.

  ‘All right, I’ll read you a story.’ He bent down and kissed her forehead. ‘Though only one. No nagging for another one.’

  ‘I promise.’ Julie momentarily put her thumb in her mouth and quickly turned away before she could be admonished.

  ‘But while I take off my things why don’t you tell me all about your day at school,’ Roger said.

  Julie let go of his hand and ran through the short corridor that led into the kitchen while he hung up his coat on the hall stand and took off his jacket. She skipped back into the hall waving a piece of sugar paper that had been carefully folded so that it looked as if it had wings, and he could see it had been decorated with patches of pastel-coloured tissue paper that had been stuck all over it.

  ‘Miss Pegg said it was really good and she pinned it up on the achievements board for the afternoon.’ She made the word ‘achievements’ sound more like a sneeze and the doctor laughed. ‘And I got a star on my work chart,’ Julie said, refusing to be put off.

  ‘That’s very clever of you,’ her grandmother intervened. ‘And now I think you should go up to bed and Daddy will come and read to you shortly.’

  ‘Oh, can’t I stay up a little bit longer?’ Julie begged.

  ‘You heard what Grandma said,’ Roger said. ‘I’m very tired and I need to have something to eat, but I’ll put you to bed first with one story, as I said. And if you’re really good and go to sleep then, like you promised, then we can go fishing in the park, maybe even this weekend so long as it doesn’t rain.

  ‘Ooh, goodee!’ Julie clapped her hands with delight as she started up the stairs.

  ‘But haven’t you forgotten something?’

  ‘Oops!’ Julie said and she ran quickly back into the kitchen where Roger heard the sound of a sloppy kiss.

  ‘Night-night, Grandad,’ she called and within seconds she was back in the hall where the sound of the kiss was repeated. ‘Night-night, Grandma,’ she said. ‘Come on, Daddy.’ She pulled on his hand. ‘Come and read Mr Galliano’s Circus to me.’ She put on an imitation of an adult voice, ‘The sooner we start, the sooner you can eat. Isn’t that what you always say?’

  Roger couldn’t help laughing at that. ‘It is indeed.’ He ruffled her hair. ‘Now come on,
my precocious little child, or Grandma will be chasing after the both of us.’

  He didn’t even get to the end of the chapter before he heard Julie breathing deeply and he crept downstairs so as not to disturb her. His father poured two fingers of whisky into a crystal glass and pushed it towards him almost the moment he appeared, and his mother began serving up the appetising dish of well-seasoned meat topped with creamy potatoes as if she had been standing, ladle poised, waiting for him to appear. But on cue, as they were ready to begin eating, they were assailed by a loud wail from upstairs followed by, ‘Where’s my water? I want a glass of water.’

  Roger half rose but his mother patted his arm. ‘You stay and eat; I’ll see to her.’ And Roger didn’t protest.

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment, Cyril,’ she said to her husband as she poured a tumbler full of water ready to take upstairs.

  ‘Long day?’ his father said when Freda had left the room. Roger nodded. ‘I remember them well,’ Cyril said smiling. ‘And I can tell you, long hours are not something I miss.’

  Roger took a sip from his whisky glass then sat back. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘That sounds ominous.’

  ‘Oh dear? What’s that supposed to mean?’ Cyril said.

  ‘It means I was hoping you were going to say something else. Does a tiny part of you really not sometimes hanker to come out of retirement and go back to work for a little while? Just to keep your hand in?’

  The older man exploded into a blustering laugh. ‘Good heavens, no! Why should I want to do that?’ He picked up his whisky glass but he put it down again before it reached his lips and he gave Roger a quizzical look. ‘You’re serious? Come on, spit it out, old chap.’

  ‘Unfortunate choice of phrase, Dad.’ Roger gave a humourless laugh.

  ‘Are you really saying what I think you’re saying?’ Cyril said, his brow creasing with a frown.

  ‘Yes, I think I am,’ Roger admitted. ‘You must have seen the recruitment posters? They’re all over the place.’

  ‘And you’re thinking … what, exactly?’

  ‘I’m thinking that, as a medic, I could make a damned useful contribution.’

  Cyril frowned, looking worried for a moment, but then he sat back with a look of genuine relief. ‘But they won’t want you, Roger. You’re too old.’ He hesitated. ‘Aren’t you? You won’t have to go into the forces, surely?’

  ‘Not immediately, no. But once this thing gets going, how long do you think it will be before they widen the parameters?’

  ‘What? Do you mean extend the age groups?’

  ‘That and the fact that they’ll want trained doctors, not just medics or nurses.’

  ‘You really think it’s going to happen?’

  ‘Without a shadow of a doubt, I’m afraid. If you listen to the news it sounds inevitable.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The older man nodded. ‘You’re probably right. So you’d rather pre-empt a compulsory call-up and volunteer?’

  ‘I thought that if I did it might give me the edge, a little leverage, a bit more choice about where I end up.’

  ‘Who knows what’s going to happen? Who knows?’ Cyril looked pensive but didn’t ask any more questions and nothing further was said about it when Freda came back to join them.

  They finished their meal without further conversation, the only sounds in the room being the genteel tapping of the highly polished silver-plated cutlery on the fine china plates. Then Roger helped his mother pile the dirty dishes into the sink in the kitchen and left her to deal with them while he poured another splash of whisky for himself and Cyril. He sat at an angle next to his father so they both faced the hand-embroidered fireguard that hid the empty fireplace and he pulled a small table into place between them. He refused the offer of a cigar but leaned across the table to grasp hold of the table lighter to light one for Cyril.

  Dr Buckley senior puffed on the cheroot and turned his gaze on his son. ‘So, what have you in mind then? When are you planning on going?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’ve nothing specific in mind at the moment,’ Roger said, ‘because there are certain things I’ll need to do. But first I wanted to check out your thinking on the subject, to find out where you might stand in all of this.’

  ‘Well, I’m essentially anti-war – as far as one can be – as you know, but I’m also cognisant of the fact that one does have a moral duty when push comes to shove.’

  ‘So, I suppose what I’m really asking is … would you be willing to?’ Roger stopped and fiddled for a few moments with the lighter, flicking the blue flame on and off several times.

  ‘Willing to what?’

  ‘To come out of retirement and keep things afloat here if I did sign up? In other words, would you be willing to hold the fort and keep the practice going?’

  Cyril cleared his throat. ‘I would have to ask your mother before I could commit to anything definite, for it would affect her too, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Roger agreed.

  ‘It would mean her looking after Julie full time, for a start.’

  ‘Yes, I’d already come to the same conclusion, but I can’t see her objecting to that, can you?’

  ‘No, but she’s the kind of woman who does like to be asked about things that affect her. You can’t just take her goodwill for granted.’

  ‘No, I understand that,’ Roger said, quietly sighing with relief in the knowledge that this particular battle was already as good as won. ‘But I know she loves Julie and that the feelings are mutual, so that would make things easier all round.’

  ‘And what about you?’ his father asked. ‘I know you’ve never tried to replace Anna, and I don’t usually pry into your private life but isn’t there some …’ He hesitated. ‘Some sweetheart, some ladylove or potential amour whose feelings would need to be considered before you took such a step? In my experience, the womenfolk do like to be consulted.’

  Roger felt his face flame and for a moment, without thinking, almost blurted out his guilty secret. But then he realised that that was all it was still, a secret, and unless he chose to give it away, that was how it would remain. No one knew of the woman he admired, the woman he wished he could get closer to, the woman he really didn’t want to leave behind. At this moment there were no such complications for only he knew. No one else. Not even Pretty Polly herself.

  Chapter 3

  Violet Pegg found the airletter at the bottom of the capacious bag she took to school each morning when she was clearing it out at home at the end of the day. She always had to make sure no one had dropped their rubbish into it as some of the cheekier little ones were prone to do. The almost transparent blue paper was badly crumpled and she tried to smooth it out on the kitchen table. She wasn’t sure why she had bought it. She and her Canadian penfriend, Danny, didn’t exchange letters as often as they used to, not like when they had first started writing while they were both still at school. Then they had sent a reply almost immediately they received new post. In fact, she’d only just sent off a letter to him that morning so who knew when she’d be writing to him again? She sighed. And what would happen if the war came, as everyone was predicting? Would she still be able to send letters abroad?

  ‘Looks like you should be taking an iron to that,’ her mother Eileen said, coming into the living room and loading a large knitting bag onto the table. ‘What is it anyway?’

  Violet explained. ‘Knowing me, I’d scorch it if I tried to put the iron anywhere near it, so it would be no use anyway,’ she said and giggled.

  ‘Well, you can’t afford to throw it away. It’s the price of a good stamp that is,’ Eileen said. ‘And talking of throwing away, I need you to get round to Mrs Barker’s and fetch me the rest of that knitting wool she’s set aside for me, before she gets rid of it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t do that!’

  ‘Oh yes she would if she thought I hadn’t fetched it fast enough. Like as not she’d sell it to someone else.’

  ‘She never would? Not once she’s put i
t aside with your name on it?’ Violet insisted.

  ‘According to her that’s all she does, puts it aside and it’s not mine by right until I’ve paid for it.’

  ‘Hmm. That’s not very neighbourly, is it?’

  ‘I’m learning that neighbourly doesn’t count for much in her book. Believe me, she’s done it to me before. Sold off my wool without any warning. Said I was too slow in claiming it. She can be a right misery, that Sylvia Barker, I can tell you – and her daughter can be even worse.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘I’m sorry if I’m speaking out of turn because she’s your best friend,’ she went on after a moment, her voice firm, ‘but I’m saying it as it is. I’m not surprised they don’t work well together in the shop.’

  ‘Maybe Mrs Barker’s got things to be miserable about.’ Violet always tried to see the best in everybody. ‘I’ve been hearing all sorts about her husband and if only half of it’s true it’s enough to make anyone feel downright miserable.’

  Eileen looked at her sharply. ‘Have you been listening to gossip again? Where did you pick that up from?’

  ‘The usual place.’

  ‘Oh, Violet.’ Eileen looked disappointed. ‘You do know you can’t believe everything you hear, don’t you? Particularly not if you hear it in the Post Office. That’s the last place.’ She shook her head. ‘People do love a good gossip.’

  ‘I know, Mam, and I promise I won’t spread it any further than this room. But whether you want to believe it or not, when you hear such things coming from several different quarters, you can’t help wondering whether there might be some fire to go with all that smoke.’

  Chapter 4

  Rosie Barker didn’t get home from work until late that evening, the third time in a week she’d been expected to do overtime without warning. She threw her bag down and slumped into the armchair, though only briefly, for she sat stiffly upright as soon as she heard her mother’s footsteps. She had no intention of admitting that she might have made a mistake leaving the family business as abruptly as she had, even though at the time it had seemed like a smart move. When the local mill had closed down and reopened as a government-funded munitions factory, it had offered better-paid jobs to local women than they could get elsewhere. It had seemed like the perfect opportunity for Rosie to get away from Sylvia’s small-time haberdashery shop, which she loathed. She was keen to take on what she called ‘real work’ and was soon boasting to her mother about the new job she was about to begin, for rumours had quickly spread that the factory would be manufacturing some ammunition as well as small but significantly important armoury parts. These would then be taken away to be assembled elsewhere into actual, formidable-looking weapons. On the face of it the work had seemed ideal. It sounded as though it would not be too heavy and should be reasonably manageable, and Rosie was happy to think that, without having to exert herself too much, she would be making a significant contribution to the country’s needs should the threatened war actually materialise.