The Bluebird Girls: The Forces' Sweethearts 1
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‘Are you all right?’ Ivy’s whisper cut into her thoughts.
‘I think so. Thank you,’ Bea said, turning towards her. ‘For everything.’ Ivy would know exactly what she meant.
‘Sssh!’ came an angry female voice from behind them. It was followed by the rustling of sweet papers. The smell of lemon sherbet was added to the stifling warmth of the cinema.
Bea met Ivy’s eye and simultaneously they grinned.
Why, Bea wondered, did she crave attention? Why did she always end up making a fool of herself? Or hurting others?
She thought back to last Christmas. It had taken her mother days to get Granddad settled again. Her drunken prank had spoiled the day for everyone. She’d involved Rainey in that as well, hadn’t she? Poor Rainey, who’d never touched a drop of sherry in her life before then. It hadn’t been a nice thing for Bea to do, had it?
Bea knew she was lucky to be living with people who loved her. Many of the girls she worked with were alone. Homes bombed out, families gone. She had a family, but it wasn’t complete. She didn’t have a dad, did she?
You don’t miss what you’ve never had . That was a lie. She did miss having a father, in lots of different little ways. Ella Budgeon’s came to pick up his daughter from the back entrance of Woolies every night. She’d run to him and they’d walk home together.
She remembered sports day at school. Her mum had worked full time at Sunbeam Laundry then. A neighbour had come in to sit with Granddad. There had been no one to see how fast Bea ran to win a race or jump the hurdles. She’d watched fathers give their children hugs, a hand on the shoulder, a pat on the arm. And she pretended it didn’t matter that her own mother and brother, nine years older than her, never came to the school. She knew they needed to work to bring in money but she was still hurt by their absence. The awful thing she had let happen to her in the yard at the Fox had made her understand how selfish she was. She could have refused the drinks her friends offered. She hadn’t, though, because she liked their attention too much.
Her mother loved her, and she’d shown that love by never once mentioning that Bea might have been at fault for going into the backyard of the Fox, drunk, with a sailor she had only just met. Her brother Eddie cared for her, and the two friends on either side of her were giving her another chance at friendship.
Eddie had held her and told her it would be all right. But Bea would never forget the helpless look in his eyes when he realized he couldn’t confront the sailor. Bea had made her own brother feel less than a man.
If she had stayed at home wallowing in her own selfishness this afternoon, Ivy and Rainey might have left her alone. If they had, she doubted she would ever have returned to the choir. She would have destroyed the opportunity she’d been given to sing in the pantomime and the festival, and Rainey and Ivy would have suffered. She didn’t want to be responsible for that. Mrs Wilkes could probably find a duet for Rainey and Ivy but the three of them were good together, weren’t they?
Bea knew what she had to do. She must manage without the confidence the drink gave her. It wasn’t as if she liked the taste. The effect was what she needed. Too much, and she couldn’t control herself. But the power to stop deserted her.
In that moment, with Judy Garland singing her heart out, Bea saw she had two choices. Give up drinking and find another way to gain confidence, perhaps through music and singing, or go on feeling sorry for herself, taking a drink to bolster her courage that led to another drink and yet another until she became so dead inside that she didn’t care what happened to her.
In that split second Bea knew she must never touch drink again.
Chapter Twenty-two
Almost as soon as he had arrived, after transfer from Dover, Blackie had been asking the doctor at Gosport’s Haslar Hospital when he could leave. The nurses had been jolly, and one or two had caught his eye for a quick kiss and cuddle in the laundry room as he’d become mobile again, but he wanted to be at home in Southsea. He needed to find the corporal’s wife and tell her of her husband’s bravery.
The girl who haunted his sleep, though, was the one in the photograph.
Never in his wildest dreams had he thought, after the months he’d spent while they dug shrapnel out of his leg, that today he’d be trudging the streets of Southsea. He called his limp, which showed itself when he was tired, his Dunkirk legacy. It meant he was no longer required to fight against Hitler. But he was alive, wasn’t he?
Bomb sites, rubble and gaps in the streets told him how badly Portsmouth and Southsea had already fared. There were queues outside boarded-up shops but still people managed to smile.
The address on the corporal’s letters in his pocket was burning a hole in his suit.
He was staying with Madame Walker and Herbert, who had damned near killed the fatted calf when he’d knocked on the door of their new studio up the road from the old one, which had been demolished by a bomb. ‘Thank God no one was in there when the walls of my rehearsal rooms came down,’ gushed Madame, who, in spite of rationing or because of it, had kept her figure.
Blackie had asked Herbert how the business was faring. ‘The government closed the theatres and music halls, then opened them again after they discovered that the poor servicemen on leave had nowhere to go for relaxation. The Coliseum in Portsmouth is packed every night,’ Herbert had answered.
Blackie shared one or two of his exploits with Herbert, but mostly he couldn’t bear to be reminded of all that had happened. It would always be with him but it was better locked up inside his head.
Malc had died in the ambulance at Dover. Blackie had held Malc’s hand until the coldness of death had become apparent, then doctors had taken him away.
Now Blackie stood outside number thirty-three Victoria Road, staring at the stained mattress in the front garden. He raised his hand to the knocker and waited.
After a while he heard footsteps and the door opened.
Fluffy peroxided hair stood to attention around the woman’s head, showing dark roots. A candlewick dressing-gown was stretched across ample curves. A cabbage-like smell swept out from the terraced house.
‘I’m looking for Janice.’
Her voice was cigarette-raspy. ‘You’ve found her, love. What can I do for you?’
Her dressing-gown gaped, but she didn’t seem bothered. Blackie produced the letters. Officially it wasn’t his job to return the communications to the sender: he should have handed them to the authorities. It might be a comfort for her to know Alfie had kept them safe.
But that wasn’t the real reason he had sought her out. Blackie carried the photograph of the girl close to his heart and her likeness had eaten into his soul. How else was he to find her?
She put out a hand with chipped red nail polish and touched the envelopes. ‘That’s my writing,’ she said.
A milk cart trundled along the street. He could see she was watching without really seeing it. He introduced himself. ‘Come on in,’ she said. She stood against the wall so he could pass along the dark passage towards the kitchen. He heard the door close behind him and the soft pad of her bare feet on the lino.
It was obvious she had been in bed when he’d knocked on the door. The fire was grey ashes in the grate. Several beer bottles stood on the table amid dirty glasses and a couple of overflowing ashtrays. A pencil stub lay on last night’s Evening News . The small room was cluttered with heavy furniture. The ceiling, once white, was tobacco brown, and a damp patch along one wall spread downwards to the sideboard. She went to the window, pulling back the curtains, letting in some light.
She turned. ‘Alfie’s dead, isn’t he?’ She flopped into an old armchair. He nodded, sat at the table and put down her letters. Alfie and this woman had been romantically involved but she wasn’t his wife. She hadn’t been officially informed of Alfie’s death.
She’d taken a packet of Woodbines from her pocket and slipped out a cigarette. She waved the packet at him and he shook his head. A match fizzed as she lit up.
He realized he was waiting for her to cry. She was stone-faced. She picked up a letter and turned it over in the hand that wasn’t holding a cigarette. ‘Has his missus seen these?’
Blackie shook his head.
She took another long drag on the cigarette. Blackie could hear noises coming from upstairs. He took out the photograph of the pretty girl and put it on the table. Somehow it didn’t belong in this scruffy place and he hoped the woman wouldn’t touch it, contaminate it. ‘I believe this is his daughter?’ he said.
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Well, she’s not my bloody kid. And not a kid no more.’
‘Where can I find his wife?’
‘How long’s a piece of string? The bitch upped and left him before he went off to fight.’ She shook her head. ‘Dunno where she and the girl went.’
His heart dropped like a stone falling from a great height.
Her eyes were like two black currants surrounded by smudged mascara peering at him. ‘I can write down where she was, last I knew.’
She leaned across and picked up the stub of pencil. As she moved he caught the smell of her warm flesh, mixed with sweat and stale lily-of-the-valley perfume.
She tore the top off the newspaper and scribbled something, then passed the scrap of paper to him. Footsteps sounded loud on the stairs. ‘Maybe a neighbour knows something. If you find her, don’t tell her about the letters.’
As his fingers closed around the piece of paper, a bloke, face unshaven, eyes heavy with sleep, stepped into the kitchen, bringing with him the smell of stale beer and fags.
‘What the ’ell’s goin’ on ’ere?’ He wore blue-striped pyjama bottoms but no top, and his flabby stomach hung over the string at his waist.
‘Nothing for you to worry about, Mike.’ Blackie could tell that, for all the man’s bluster, she had the upper hand. ‘Go and put the kettle on. This bloke’s just going.’
She walked down the passage with him. ‘Did Alfie die easy?’
‘Very easy,’ Blackie said.
Chapter Twenty-three
‘I said no talking!’
Mrs Wilkes gave a sigh, then stared at the choir facing her in the music room. ‘You’ve made a magnificent effort in obtaining the uniform we discussed.’ Her eyes roved along the two lines of women wearing knee-length black skirts and white blouses. ‘As you know I’d have preferred black and yellow, but due to the shortages caused by the war I thought you might come up with all different yellows instead of the buttercup of St John’s school colours. I must say, the black and white looks very smart. Well done, all of you. Where’s Emily?’
A hand rose from behind Janet, a large, tall lady in the front row.
‘Pish! We can’t see you, dear. Change places with Janet.’
Janet’s face went dark. ‘I always stand in the front row.’
‘We can still see you and hear your lovely voice from the second,’ said Mrs Wilkes, diplomatically. There was shuffling as the two women changed places. Janet’s mouth set in a thin, disgruntled line. She was obviously unhappy about changing places. Mrs Wilkes shook her head. ‘It’s no good, I need to place altos to the left and sopranos to the right. We need maximum voice power, if we’re to please the judges, and I want you to look good. Two rows, smaller girls at the front, taller at the back.’ She hoped her tone said she meant business. There was a great deal of talking and moving about, but eventually two rows appeared of more or less equal numbers and heights.
‘Well done,’ she said, and licked her top lip. Bea, Ivy and Rainey were at the end of the second row. They were her best singers, and certainly the three most glamorous, but she couldn’t very well make an example of them and put them at the front. That would cause uproar and she wanted harmony, not just in the singing but within the choir as well.
Obviously friends didn’t like being separated. They got used to the sound of their neighbour’s voice, but moving them around now to make the most of how they presented themselves would appeal to the judges and public. And even though ‘my three girls’, as she liked to think of them, were in the second row, they would also be singing in front of the judges as a trio.
She stepped back and smiled. ‘That’s better. Now we look like professionals. The positions you occupy will be your regular places for all performances. We’ll run through the songs we’re singing as a choir. Then you can return to your seats and get out your diaries. I have a couple of dates for you.’
A short while later, when the women had details of two appearances requested in different wards of The War Memorial Hospital in Gosport, Mrs Wilkes sat down at the piano and began to play. Every so often she looked at her choir as they sang. After a while she shouted, ‘No! No! No! It looks and sounds terrible. I’d hoped you’d all have learned the words by now.’
Papers were rattling in some of the women’s hands. ‘I don’t want to see anyone hiding their faces with the music. These are well-known songs. Words away!’
There were mutterings among the women but when she started playing again she was pleased to see that as they sang the choir was concentrating hard, their voices pure and clear. She smiled to herself and ceased playing once more.
‘Now I want you all to look as though you’re enjoying it. Put a smile on your faces, girls, please. At present you all look as if you’re constipated.’ After the giggles had died down she began to play again, and when she ended, she said, ‘I think you’ll do!’ She looked down at Toto asleep under the piano. ‘They’re shaping up well, Toto. Very well indeed.’ She smiled at her choir. ‘Go home,’ she said, ‘and relax.’
As the choir filed out, chattering and laughing, Mrs Wilkes caught Rainey, Bea and Ivy before they disappeared with Jo and Maud.
She planted herself in front of Bea and said, ‘Glad you’re well again, Bea. We missed you.’ She could see the blush rising from Bea’s collar. Mrs Wilkes knew what had happened but she wasn’t going to mention the gossip she’d heard. She’d also kept an eye on Bea tonight and noted she was quieter than usual, but the other two girls had been protective of her. She’d been worried Bea might leave the choir. That would have been a tragedy. Her voice was remarkable, and the three girls had charisma. ‘You were in good form tonight. I’m very pleased with you,’ she said. ‘You practise together at home, don’t you?’
Heads nodded. ‘“Bluebird” is a lovely song, Mrs Wilkes,’ Ivy said.
‘My neighbours bang on the wall about Bea’s gramophone but no one bangs when they’re practising in her bedroom,’ said Maud.
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Mrs Wilkes. ‘It’s a special song for three special girls.’
When the classroom was empty and Mrs Wilkes was gathering her music together, putting it into the bag to transfer it to the bicycle basket with Toto, she realized she’d forgotten to tell them all that the tickets for the panto at the David Bogue Hall were selling well. She hoped to contribute a tidy sum to the Lord Mayor’s Fund for Needy Gosport Children, the charity the choir had chosen.
So many little ones had become reliant on it because they had been orphaned by the bombing. She couldn’t replace their parents but the contributions her choir received would hopefully put a smile on the kiddies’ faces on Christmas Day.
But that was only one of her hopes for her choir. By gaining a certificate in the Fareham Music Festival she would prove to herself she could teach a group of women with untrained voices that anyone from any background could sing for the joy of it while bringing pleasure to others. Mrs Wilkes had never fulfilled her own potential as a concert pianist, but it made her happy to use her skills in teaching others to love music.
Those women weren’t professional singers: they were wives, mothers and daughters. Some had lost husbands; some had lost sons; some had lost brothers. Some had been bombed out of the
ir homes. But for one night a week they came to sing their hearts out and try to push the dreadful war from their minds. Three raids so far had made them all run for the school’s shelter, yet when the all-clear sounded they elected to continue singing to give them the courage they needed to return home, if those homes still stood.
How many times had she stressed, ‘Commitment means more than a beautiful voice’? Her choir had shown her they were committed. Each woman turned up regularly. Each listened without argument. And look how they’d presented themselves in their uniforms! She was aware that several little groups had got together, those who could sew and had machines, to help alter the black skirts that had come from second-hand stalls and rummage sales so that each could appear tonight in their St John’s Choir uniforms. She was so proud of them.
Would the esteemed judges at the festival feel the same?
There would be stiff competition. Many choirs competed from all over the country. Many left disappointed. It was amazing that, with the war, the festival hadn’t been cancelled. Who knew how long it would continue?
Toto gave a little bark, startling her out of her thoughts.
‘Yes, Toto, I agree. There’s no other choir quite like mine.’ Toto could always be relied on to agree with her.
Chapter Twenty-four
Blackie watched Herbert put another log on the fire, sit back in the armchair and sigh. Then he smoothed his sparse hair and said, ‘It poses a problem if you can’t find the girl. She and her mother can’t have vanished into thin air . . . unless, of course, they’ve been killed in the bombing.’
‘The house they lived in is still standing but the neighbours were hardly a help. One old dear said she’d got up in the middle of the night to make tea and heard a car start up. A couple of days later the husband came back and all hell was let loose. He was throwing stuff around, drunk out of his mind, and yelling that the bitches had left him. She kept out of his way, she said.’