As he walked to the pub, he thought of the pre-fabs and remembered how neat and clean they’d been. Thass the sort of place for me to live, he thought. Not in this dump. He glowered at the street, hating it. More than half the rotten houses were empty and the terrace next to the bomb-site was just a shell, no tiles on the roof, no glass in the windows, just those horrible black walls, still standing and covered in dust. At one point he could see right through to the terrace in the next street. All right for Phossie but I’m a darn sight too good for it. I shall find somewhere else, first thing. Squaring his shoulders he strode into the pub and ordered himself a beer and a whisky chaser.
‘Victor!’ a voice boomed. ‘Is Phossie with you?’
It was the Skibbereen. He’d recognised the smell of his cigar even before he turned and saw those broad shoulders and the bulge of that great bull-neck. The Skibbereen, sitting at the corner table with two of the gang, the tall scraggy bloke called Tiffany on his right and Mog, looking dour as ever on his left.
‘He’s scarpa’d,’ Vic said, taking the fourth seat at their table. ‘Gone north. Too many redcaps.’
‘Pity,’ the Skibbereen said, wiping his mouth with the back of one plump hand. ‘I had a job for him.’
In his present self-satisfied mood, Vic offered his services at once. ‘Give it to me then,’ he said. ‘I’m as good as Phossie any day of the week. Better in fact.’
The Skibbereen noted his boldness but wasn’t impressed. ‘I need someone dependable,’ he said. ‘That’s my middle name,’ Vic said.
The Skibbereen raised his eyebrows. ‘You could’ve fooled me.’
‘I know when to be dependable,’ Vic explained. ‘Which you can’t say for everyone.’
‘True,’ the Skibbereen admitted. And considered. ‘If I cut you in,’ he said at last, ‘I shall expect commitment.’
‘You’d get it. Total.’
‘Day an’ night. You won’t get home much.’
‘That’ud suit me down to the ground,’ Vic assured him. ‘There’s nothing to keep me here. So what’s the score?’
‘Hatton Garden,’ the Skibbereen said. ‘Diamond rings. They got an assignment coming in from Paris in a day or two. Could be big.’
Vic was very impressed but he bent his head to his beer and tried not to show it. He’d handled this too well to want to risk losing face. ‘Paris, eh?’
‘They’re running the boat trains again, mate,’ Tiffany explained, scratching the stubble on his chin. ‘Started last Saturday.’
‘I need a team of three,’ the Skibbereen said, ‘to keep an eye on the place. Visit the pubs. Chat up the locals. Tiff’s in charge. He knows the form. We need all the information we can get – when it’s coming in, what it’s like, who’s gonna be there to receive it.’
It was the chance of a lifetime. A different league. A step into the big time. Diamond rings. It would make a difference to everything. Now that he’d cut Spitfire down to size, he could start over again with her, and what better way to do it than to give her a diamond ring. A great big solitaire, like you see at the pictures. He could imagine her face as he put it on her finger. That would put him in her good books and knock that stupid soldier right out the equation. Oh that couldn’t be better. She’ll be a bit upset with me hollerin’, he thought. This will put it right.
It would have upset him to know that Barbara was writing to that stupid soldier at that very minute and that she’d forgotten all about his hollering and all about him as soon as she jumped aboard the tram. The clippie had turned out to be little Mrs Phipps which was a pleasant surprise and the passengers had all been on good form now that the sun was shining and the war was nearly over. One of them had missed her stop because she was so busy reminiscing about the fruit she’d enjoyed before the war and looking forward to eating it again.
‘Bananas now. I like a nice banana. I’ll bet you can’t remember them, can you, dear. ’Course they have them dreadful dried things fer the kiddies but I can’t abide ’em. Look like doggie do’s, if you ask me. Puts me right off.’
‘You’ll ’ave your young man home soon,’ another woman said to Mrs Phipps as she came darting down the stairs. ‘Then I suppose we shall have to do without you.’
‘You won’t get rid of me as easy as all that,’ Mrs Phipps said. ‘Nor you, eh Barbara? She’s got a young man coming home an’ all, ain’tcher, duck? Any more fares pliz!’
By the time she ran across the road to Sis’s flat, Barbara was singing. The placard outside the newsagent’s said, ‘Rhine crossing latest’ and the sun was making the shop windows dazzle and gleam all along the street. ‘You’ll ’ave your young man home soon.’ Oh yes. Yes please. And we can live in a pre-fab and walk on the common every evening and make love every night.
Sis met her at the top of the stairs.
‘You’re happy,’ she said.
It was true. It was true. She was almost too happy to explain why. ‘I’ve just put our names down for a house. Me an’ Steve’s.’
‘Good for you,’ Sis approved. ‘I’m just off to get some fish an’ chips. D’you want some?’
‘Yes please,’ Barbara said. ‘I’d come with you onny I must write and tell Steve. Oh Aunt Sis, you should have seen it.’
Sis laughed at her. ‘Tell me when I get back. An’ look sharp with the letter. We’ve got half an hour and then the others’ll be here.’
‘I’ll be ready,’ Barbara promised and she took the stairs two at a time, steep though they were, and rushed to the dresser to find pen and paper.
She was still writing when Sis returned with their meal. She couldn’t stop. There was such a lot she wanted to tell him that the words tumbled onto the paper, detail after detail, while they were fresh in her mind. She put the plate of fish and chips at her elbow and wrote and ate at the same time, laughing when Sis warned her she’d get indigestion. She’d only just signed off with a row of kisses when Mr Craxton arrived to say that the others were waiting downstairs and hoped they were ready. Then naturally once she’d posted her precious letter, she spent the entire journey to Bellington South telling them all about her discovery.
‘What a difference good housing is going to make,’ Mr Craxton said, smiling at her.
‘What a difference these pre-fabricated houses will make,’ Christine agreed, patting her bun to make sure it was still neatly pinned. ‘If they really can erect them in four days it will be the answer to the housing problem. I wouldn’t mind one myself.’
The bus was pulling up. ‘We’re here,’ Sis warned. ‘Now we’d better be serious. This is Bellington South don’t forget, not New Cross.’
It was hard for Barbara to be serious that afternoon, particularly as she couldn’t see the point of it. If this was a safe Tory seat, the way everyone said, and they were going to lose it, no matter what any of them did, why not lark about and have fun?
But they were all rearranging their faces. Christine was trying so hard she looked quite solemn, Sis was wearing her stern expression, the two men from the Union were pulling at their ties and Mr Craxton looked as if he was going to make a speech and was memorising his notes. As she followed them from the bus Barbara wondered what it was about this place that was making them so ill at ease.
It didn’t take her long to find out. The main street was the most affluent she’d ever seen, wide and tree lined and full of classy shops, and the side streets were enough to make anyone feel out of place. No old-fashioned terraces here and no soot-blackened walls, but big houses in semi-detached pairs, looking new and prosperous, as though they’d just been built, their roof-tiles clean of lichen and their paint hardly faded at all. Each one had two wide bow windows, one above the other with very white nets and, here and there, the occasional aspidistra in a fat pot, and they all had big front gardens, as spruce as parks, each with a square of green lawn and carefully attended shrubs, holly and lilac and spotted laurel and forsythia in full bloom, yellow as butter.
I can see what Sis means, Barbara t
hought, taking it all in. You’d need a really good income to live in a place like this. That’s as far above New Cross as New Cross is above the North End. And she wondered why people as wealthy as this would have anything to do with the Labour Party and felt quite apprehensive as they stood on the doorstep waiting to be allowed in.
Carpets on the floor, so thick that she couldn’t hear a footfall, velvet curtains at the window, plump sofas covered in chintz, bone china on the table, very pretty and horribly delicate, and the lady of the house, who was called Pauline, wearing a twin-set and pearls. But she welcomed them kindly, saying how good it was of them ‘to come all this way to make our acquaintance’. And she’d made a carrot cake for the occasion.
‘We’re a very small group, as you see,’ she said as she signalled to them to sit in her sumptuous armchairs. ‘Eight in all, but Mr and Mrs Coome Merton couldn’t join us. Pressure of business.’ And she began to make the introductions.
Barbara tried to be sensible and pay attention – saying hello to Sophie Something-or-other, a librarian, a teacher called Brian, a very old man who wore spats and said he was a chemist – but it was too hard and after a while her mind simply swam back to the pre-fabs and she was off in a dream again. She drank tea, ate a very small slice of the carrot cake, answered questions and made conversation as well as she could, and finally followed her hostess out into the road for the ‘short walk to our community hall’ where Mr Craxton was to be formally accepted as the Labour candidate for the constituency.
The dream lasted all through the meeting. She woke from it twice, to applaud Mr Craxton and to say goodbye, but for the rest of the time she was striding across the common, arm in arm with her darling, kissing under the lime trees in the Walks, far away in the hop fields, making love in their tile-hung cottage, back together again, living and loving in their nice new prefab.
She was still in her own world when she put her key in the lock at Childeric Road and drifted up the stairs to the flat.
There was no sign of her father-in-law. He must have gone to work. But Mrs Wilkins was sitting in the armchair by the fire, sewing a patch onto one of his work shirts. Her work-basket stood open on the table and the arm of the chair was stuck with pins.
‘Oh,’ she said coldly, ‘there you are!’
Barbara was still so happy she missed the warning signs. ‘Thass been a lovely day,’ she said. ‘You’ll never guess what I did this morning.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, young lady,’ Heather said, biting off her thread, and now there was no mistaking the disapproval in her voice. ‘I know exactly what you did.’
Barbara decided not to be daunted. She’d obviously done something to annoy – not staying in to help with the washing probably – but it was trivial compared to her news. ‘I put my name down for a house.’
Eyes narrowed. ‘Your name?’
‘No. All right. Our name then. Thass where I was this morning. Wait till I tell you about it.’
‘I know where you were,’ Heather told her sternly. ‘And who you were with which is more to the point. Our name indeed! A fine thing! I always said you were a flighty piece, and I’ve been proved right. Our name!’
Barbara couldn’t understand why she was under attack. Proved right? she thought. Our name? What’s she on about? Proved right about what?
Her puzzled expression exasperated Heather. ‘Don’t start putting on an act,’ she warned. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. He’s told me all about it.’
The fury of her words made Barbara feel panicky. ‘What am I supposed to have done?’ she said, her heart racing.
‘You know perfectly well.’
‘No. I don’t. I don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘Gadding about with your fancy man for a start. Off dancing all hours with every Tom, Dick an’ Harry and the car hidden round the corner where I can’t see it. That’s nice, isn’t it. Very nice!’
Understanding dropped the pieces into an ugly picture. ‘Oh I see,’ Barbara said. ‘Thass Victor Castlemain’s doin’. He been here telling tales. Well let me tell you thass all squit what he say. You don’t want to tek no notice of him.’
‘So you didn’t go dancing with him. Is that what you’re saying?’
The question made her feel cornered. ‘Well yes,’ she had to admit, ‘we went dancin’. There’s no harm in that.’
‘No harm?’ Heather roared. ‘No harm? An’ my Steve out there being shot at. He could be lying dead this moment, all on his own out there. Lying dead, and you say there’s no harm.’
‘Don’t say that!’ Barbara cried, anguished by the awfulness of the image she was conjuring. ‘You hain’t to say it. I won’t have it!’
‘You won’t have it! You? How dare you speak to me like that! You got no right to open your mouth in this house. Carrying on with your fancy men. You’re just a little tart. That’s all you are! A little tart. A trollop!’
To be called names at the end of such a day was such a shock it made Barbara shake. She fought back at once and with all the force she could muster. ‘Oh I see whass goin’ on,’ she cried. ‘This is because I married your son. Thass what ’tis. Thass got nothin’ to do with dancing. You never wanted me for a daughter-in-law in the first place. Did you? Never. Well let me tell you, there’s nothin’ you can do about it. He’s married me an’ thass that. If you don’t like it you can lump it.’ And because she was very near tears, and she certainly wasn’t going to give this woman the satisfaction of seeing her weep, she ran from the room.
Left on her own, Heather picked up the shirt and finished off the last hem, pulling the cotton through the cloth in sharp rasping tugs. She was taut with anger and her stitches were all over the place. Lump it! she thought. How bloody rude! I’ll make you swallow those words my girl. Lump it indeed. We’ll see about that. I shall tell my Steve. You needn’t think you can shout at me like that an’ get away with it.
The flat was very quiet. As far as she could tell, her adversary seemed to be locked away in her bedroom for the night, so she got up and found pen and ink and writing paper. I should have done this months ago, she thought, as she arranged the paper on the table. I should have put paid to it then. We wouldn’t have had all this trouble, if I’d written sooner. And she began while her anger was still high.
Dear Steven,
I am sorry to have to write to you like this. I would not do it only I think you ought to know. It is not fair to be doing this to you behind your back, that is what I think anyway. I have kept quiet about it for months for fear of upsetting you. What would you say if I did not tell you? Of course there might not be any truth in it, you will have to make up your own mind. Your father says not to tell you but I do not think that is fair to you. The thing is what you ought to know is your Barbara has been messing around with another man. He says you met him in King’s Lynn. His name is Victor Castlemain. I have spoken to her about it.
I hope this finds you in good health as it leaves me,
Your loving mother,
H. Wilkins.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Steve’s two letters were delivered to him just as the brigade was preparing to cross the Rhine. There was so much to do he knew he would never find time to read them both so he stuffed his mother’s letter unopened into his breast pocket next to his fags and skimmed through Barbara’s quickly where he stood. Her enthusiasm rose from the page like sunshine. ‘A home of our own! Think of it!’ But there was too much going on – Jeeps darting about on either side of him, sergeant majors roaring, trucks being inched into line, the tankies chafing to be off – and he couldn’t concentrate on anything except the job in hand. Good though her news was, it would have to wait until he was over the river.
The crossing was a massive undertaking, almost as complicated as the landing had been, and it was organised with the same attention to detail and the same air cover, for the Rhine at this point was more than a quarter of a mile wide and still a hazard. The mere sight of it was enough
to show them what an obstacle it had been. It reduced all the other rivers they’d encountered to mere streams, from the Seine to the Maas. But now that the initial assault was successfully over, the Allied armies had it well under control.
The meadows leading down to the water’s edge had been marked out into assembly areas, with the usual white tape, and there were redcaps everywhere directing the traffic, which was endless and complicated, for it wasn’t just troops and armoured vehicles and tanks and guns that were being shipped across, but supplies and support groups too, trucks carrying blood-banks, long lines of Red Cross ambulances, lorries piled with ammunition, crates full of food. There were Jeeps jauntily bouncing down the slope beside the convoys, even a bulldozer sent to scour out another exit route on the further side, but only one hastily constructed pontoon bridge to take it all across.
Downstream the engineers were constructing a second bridge, working with difficulty against a strong-running current. It was a bright spring day and the river looked totally peaceful, sky-blue and olive-green and spangled with sunlight. Above it, a cloudless sky was criss-crossed by the white contrails of the Spitfires and Typhoons that were taking it in turns to patrol, just in case the Luftwaffe should dare to put in an appearance.
Not that anyone in the brigade seriously thought they would. Not now. Not in the face of such fire power. No matter how many doubts they’d secretly entertained during the ten-month slog to this crossing, now that they’d arrived they were sure of their victory. The slogans they’d painted on the sides of their vehicles were evidence of that, cocky and cheerful and full of confidence. ‘And you’d never have thought it would happen!’ ‘Rhine Ferry – No Charge, No Sandwiches and No Risk!’ ‘Montgomery Express, London to Berlin’.
Their good spirits were infectious. Even Dusty was cheerful. ‘Here we go!’ he said, as a redcap waved their TCV towards the pontoon. ‘Next stop Berlin!’
The crossing went smoothly and so did the drive inland, for the assault troops had obviously established a wide front all along the river bank. They passed several riverside farms but most of them had been shattered by artillery fire and those that were still intact had prominent white flags draped from their remaining windows. It was plain that the civilians in the area had been thoroughly cowed and when the column turned off into a belt of woodland, they could see the reason why. As well as the river crossing, there had been a massive airborne landing here too. The fields were still full of gliders, lying where they’d landed, some tipped over on their wings, some crumpled like paper, as if they’d been flung out of the sky. There were containers littered in every direction and the trees were hung with discarded parachutes. They dangled from the branches, green, yellow and white like exotic fruits, bright bold evidence of the terror and excitement of their fall. And in the middle of the litter, half a dozen farmworkers were standing together, cowed and quiet, watching the tanks and guns as they roared through.
Avalanche of Daisies Page 33
