by Betty Burton
‘Oh bliss, two packets of hairgrips,’ said Georgia, having secured as well cigarettes, a cream spongecake, a Max Factor lipstick and pair of silk stockings. ‘If we went home without doing anything else, I should say I’d had a day to remember.’
Marie had found a velvet snood with flowers for Paula and some plimsolls, with white soles instead of the ugly wartime black or orange, for Bonnie.
Ursula bought three Chandler books with pre-war bindings and made the girls giggle at her delight. ‘Look at the margins, oh, and the white paper, look, isn’t that lovely? I can hardly bear reading the economy editions.’ Hugging the Chandlers, she felt happy anticipating Niall’s face when he saw the books and happy to see her girls who worked so hard and so well together giggling like schoolgirls. Over cups of Oxo which was all the coffee-shop proprietor could offer that morning, Ursula announced, ‘I’ve got a surprise, ladies. A friend of mine has booked lunch for us. And tickets for the matinée should be waiting there for us to collect.’
‘Where?’ they wanted to know.
‘Wait and see.’
‘Lyons’ Corner House, I bet. You can still get real sausages with meat at Lyons’.’
‘Wait and see.’
Before lunch they went to look at Buckingham Palace, all dull and sandbagged, and at Westminster Abbey, mostly because they felt that that was part of going to London, travelling by underground, momentarily subdued at the sight of the provisions that had been made for Londoners to sleep there during the blitz.
They had expected to eat at a British restaurant such as the one in which they worked, and had only wished for Lyons’ Corner House. But it was to the Café Royal that Ursula led them. There, Niall O’Neill had not only arranged things, but had settled the bill in advance.
‘Oh my God,’ said Pammy for them all. ‘It’s like stepping into heaven.’
There is no saying what any of the usual clientele thought of the troupe of happy women with shopping bags who, having lost their initial awe of finding themselves amidst such splendour, chattered and laughed their way through a three-course meal and four bottles of wine between them.
‘This is chicken,’ hissed Pammy, ‘all of it, real chicken, not even out of a tin.’
‘See what it says on the menu?’ Cynth said. ‘Customers may be served only three courses.’
‘And not on coupons either,’ Dolly said. ‘Sam’s always on about how you don’t need coupons if you can afford to live in posh hotels, but I never believed him. Fancy being able to live like this every day.’
They ate canned fruit salad with ice-cream – a pudding so exotic and rare in wartime that they had forgotten its taste – and cheese and biscuits.
‘Look at all this cheese, it’s a week’s ration. I feel that guilty eating it all. I feel I ought to be taking it home,’ said Marie.
‘Don’t let your guilt spoil your enjoyment. You’ve all earned it,’ said Ursula.
They wondered how it was that places like this could get hold of proper coffee when whole families were lucky to get a bottle of Camp a month, but savoured every last dreg and sugar lump, urging one another to ‘go on, have it whilst you’ve got the chance.’
Ursula, Eve and Georgia were the only ones who had ever been to a London theatre. The girls thought it wonderful and gorgeous; Ursula, keeping her thoughts to herself, saw it grim and gaunt and seedy compared to pre-war. But then the music started up and the curtains swung back on the opening of The Dancing Years and for a couple of hours there was light and respite from the grim times.
With the money left in the kitty, they voted to go to a tea dance. A group of laughing, unescorted women, out for a bit of fun, was exactly what the surplus of uniformed men hanging around the dance-hall needed. Even Dolly danced.
‘I haven’t done that for donkey’s years.’ She looked ten years younger and quite radiant when a sergeant in the REMEs twice asked her to dance. The third time she saw a khaki figure bending over her shoulder, she thought that it must be him.
‘Harry! Oh look, Ursula, it’s my Harry!’ She leapt up and hugged him.
‘Mum. What are you doing here? I was up on the balcony having a drink and I couldn’t believe my eyes. My Ma, with a soldier, and swinging round the floor like a twenty-year-old.’ Dolly hastily explained how they both came to meet in such an unlikely place. Marie came back to the table, kissed him and was quite proud to be seen doing it. But not as proud as Dolly. ‘Everybody, this is Harry, my youngest son. Ursula has heard all about you… too much I expect. You know Pammy, don’t you, and Cynth you went to school with.’
‘And I know Mrs Kennedy.’ He smiled directly into Georgia’s eyes – as he had all the other women’s. To Eve, ‘I know who you are all right, Markham’s own deb.’
Harry was charming to all of them. The arduous training programmes he had undergone had broadened and weathered him. He wore three stripes and had the dark red beret of the Paratroop regiment rolled up and buttoned down on his shoulder. Because of his good bone structure, his looks had not been spoiled by the cropped service style – he was an extremely handsome soldier. ‘There can’t be a town in the kingdom that can boast such a bunch of pretty women.’ His eyes took in all the women, then flicked from Georgia to Eve and back to Georgia again. ‘Save a dance for me, Mrs Kennedy – after my Ma’s had one with me.’
As soon as they were on the dance floor, holding Georgia close, he said, ‘Can I call and see you next time I’m on leave?’
‘Well, you don’t let the grass grow.’
‘With a girl like you? It’s far too chancy to waste time. I was watching you from up there. You’ve changed.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘I’ve seen you about since you were a kid. You’re different from the rest… I’m a great woman watcher.’
Georgia pulled a face. ‘Not only “watcher” from the girls’ gossip.’
‘Markham’s premier industry, gossip. I’d love to take you out. Please, please. Only to go to the pictures if you like.’ Urgently.
Georgia felt arousal and excitement growing. She suspected that he was, like Nick, that rare combination: an intelligent and physically attractive man who did not need to boost his self-esteem by behaving like a pouter pigeon. She could tell that he was weighing her up at the same time as his eyes looked uncompromisingly into hers.
‘We have to grab every moment that’s given to us these days. Please say you will. Come dancing with me. You’re a wonderful dancer.’
And with the thrill of recklessness that was clearly signalled to him, she said, ‘All right, why not?’
Later, after an interval when he danced with Marie, with his sensuality pouring over her, he whispered to Eve as they quickstepped, ‘I wish I could tell you what is racing through my mind.’
Relaxed in the company of the women she worked with, and having enjoyed herself for the first time in months, Eve said archly, ‘Very well, soldier, I grant your wish.’
‘You might be shocked.’
‘Shocked? When I work with them?’ Affectionately she indicated the five kitchen girls grouped round some American soldiers, and added, ‘And you know who my father is; I’m not easily shocked.’
Harry raised his eyebrows, surprised that the icy-looking maiden was so pert. Lord, he would have to play this one carefully. The redheaded princess who looked so hot for a man that he felt sure that he would have no problem there, and the blonde ice-maiden who he had always assumed was toffee-nosed and wouldn’t be much fun and turned out to be a bundle of surprises. And both on his home patch.
‘I’m pondering whether you’re like your clever father as well as your beautiful mother?’
‘You would need to know me better to answer that. I rather think that I’m like myself.’
‘A man in your life?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
He twirled her away and she followed expertly. He gather
ed her back again and pressed her close in the exotic light flickering from the rotating mirrored ball.
‘You’re a flirt, miss.’
She laughed, showing her teeth. ‘I granted you the wish to say what you were thinking, was that it?’
‘No. I was thinking that I should like to go to bed with you. Are you shocked?’ But he knew that she was not. Neither was she a virgin, she was too sure of herself for that. Perhaps she was a chip off the old block.
‘I would guess that most of the men in this room might say the same,’ she said. ‘Men are always ready for bed, and I’ve been told that I have a bedable look about me.’
‘Must have been a discerning man to describe an ice-maiden as bedable.’
As Georgia had, so did Eve respond with uncharacteristic flirtatiousness. Placing a warm palm on his cheek said, ‘Feel. Warm-blooded.’
Moving his own warm hand round from the small of her back to her left breast. ‘But not cold-hearted. I have a spot of leave coming up.’
‘Have you now?’
‘Can I meet you?’
‘In Markham? Oh, the gossip, the gossip.’
‘I have a short course to do on the station at Nether Wallop. Do you ever go to Salisbury?’
‘I do go to Salisbury sometimes.’
‘And what about the regular man in your life?’
For a moment her face straightened and he thought that he had made a wrong move, but he needed to make it clear that he was offering nothing more serious than a jolly roll in the hay.
‘He has been gone a long time.’ Direct as he, she made her position clear. ‘I’ll be waiting for him when he gets back. But I wasn’t designed for a nunnery.’
Good God, thought Harry Partridge. What is happening to the girls of Markham, is the shortage of men so bad that ice-maidens are melting in their own heat?
There was something in what he said. The kitchen girls were playing enchantresses to Yankee soldiers as blatantly as Eve and Georgia flirted with Harry Partridge. There had been bravado in choosing London for their one day of luxury in the midst of daily meagre life in Markham. That, coupled with the romance of the Dancing Years show and being surrounded by so much rubble and charred timber, created a sense of being on the edge of danger which they found stimulating and which made them feel reckless.
As they were leaving, Georgia remembered her bags with the precious stockings and cake, and hurried back to retrieve them from the balcony table where she had left them.
The band was playing ‘La Compasita’, which was the music Hugh had played over and over when he was teaching her to dance, and momentarily she was drawn back to six years ago. She picked up her bags and for a moment idly gazed down on the scene below as her mind drifted back to the first months of her marriage, when life had been full of everything a girl expected of marriage, before ennui, before disillusionment, before she found herself wanting more from life and from men than Hugh could give her. A life where Georgia Kennedy amounted to something.
In the bedimmed, smoky light, the revolving mirrored ball sprinkled glitter on the couples moving in and out of the stylized love-making poses of the Tango.
Her eye was drawn to a couple skimming across the floor making a path through other dancers by the authority of their skill. Because of his stature and the way he danced, the man reminded Georgia very much of Hugh. The girl, dancing well but without the stiff and dedicated seriousness that Hugh used to demand, had long raven hair that she flicked like a true Latin as she and her partner turned. Arms stretched, they danced close. The ballroom was crammed with dancing couples, yet it was these two who held her attention.
The music reached a climax and the dance was over. The floor began to clear. Georgia’s couple, before they walked off, kissed briefly but quite passionately, each holding the other fast about the neck, then pulling apart but holding one another’s gaze as the lights went up. Georgia had a pang of envy that she had no man to be so totally absorbed in her. Talking close, intimate, smiling and oblivious to what was going on around them, arms about one another, they walked directly to a table below where Georgia stood.
Now she saw them clearly as, cupping his ears in her hands, the girl drew him until he was only a fraction away from her face, then briefly ran her tongue along his lips. It was as intimate a gesture as Georgia had ever seen in public. The woman was about her own age and wore WRNS officer uniform. The man was Hugh.
Downstairs, she found the group waiting for her whilst watching the dancing. Only Dolly, searching to get a last glimpse of Harry before she left, had seen what Georgia had seen; only Dolly had seen Georgia watching the dancers and the act of intimacy. Dolly recognized Hugh Kennedy.
‘Come on, girls,’ she said as Georgia appeared, ‘quick march, or we shall miss our train.’
1942
By the time she was thirteen years of age, Little-Lena had trained almost everyone to call her Leonora. She had grown leggy and as full-bosomed as she had often dreamed of becoming. However, by the time her mother had taken her to the corset department and got her fitted out, the days of lace and shapely Maidenforms, Kestos and Gossards were long gone. They had been replaced by functional Utility brassieres.
‘Mrs Kennedy?’ By now Georgia Kennedy was used to the girl’s polite but eager preliminary. ‘I hope you don’t mind… but where do you get your pretty bras?’
‘Utility. I trim them myself.’
Almost overnight, Leonora became an expert embroideress.
‘I don’t know what you want to waste your time doing that,’ her mother grumbled, ‘nobody’s going to see it. You’d be better off doing a bit of make-do and mend.’
It was no use trying to explain, Mam didn’t understand. Leonora didn’t want embroidered bras and pants for anybody but herself. She hated the whole idea of making-do and mending. Mam’s knickers were darned and her petticoats made from old nightdresses and she always hung them on the clothes-line as though she was proud of them.
To Leonora, her mother seemed obsessed by getting round shortages, she was always trying out recipes and writing tips on backs of envelopes.
There was a bit-bag in the hall cupboard into which the gleanings of any kind of ‘turn out’ went – serviettes to make handkerchiefs, lace from the edges of afternoon table-cloths for dress trimmings, odd pieces of cord, buttons, buckles and felted knitting to be unravelled laboriously stitch by stitch and remade with the same care. Behind the larder door was the essential bag-of-bags, the care of which was in Roy’s hands; it was he who salvaged grease-proof butter and margarine wrappings for re-use to line cake-tins, who straightened and ironed brown paper and food bags which one seldom got direct from a grocer or baker. It was Roy too who was prodded into ‘helping the war effort’ by collecting kitchen waste from several neighbours for the national pig-swill collection, and old newspapers for recycling.
Mary Wiltshire’s favourite admonition was, ‘I don’t want to hear you grumbling. If your Dad has given up his liberty, the least you can do is put a cheerful face on it and not grumble. You wouldn’t hear him grumble.’ But it wasn’t true that Dad had given up his liberty: the Germans had taken it from him, and Leonora was pretty sure, knowing Dad, that he would do a lot of grumbling about that.
These days Mam seemed to get crosser and crosser. She had kept on and on falling out with Grandma Gertie until she had gone back to London. Mam told people, ‘She would go back. But there, Dick’s mother always found Markham a bit quiet. She’s a born Cockney, misses London, and it does seem pretty safe these days.’ Leonora knew why Grandma Gertie went back to live in Sleepy Valley, and wished that she might have gone with her.
There had been a big row just after they had heard about Dad. Leonora had felt sorry for both of them. She imagined that they must feel as bad as she did herself about Dad when they first got the news that he was in a prison camp; you wanted to lash out, take it out on somebody, but there wasn’t anybody you could blame. Leonora had taken it out on Roy, who went stupid and b
abyish, and Mam and Grandma had taken it out on each other. Roy had been really awful, always picking fights, bunking off school and wetting the bed.
Whilst it was all going on, Leonora spent as much time as she could at Mrs Kennedy’s. Mrs Kennedy was always ready to talk to Leonora. Even that had been wrong too. ‘I don’t know what the attraction is next door. I suppose your own home isn’t good enough for you these days? Georgia Kennedy spoils you.’ But to Mrs Kennedy’s face she was all honey, getting Mrs Kennedy to show her how to bleach the front of her hair and how to make a fat page-boy bob.
* * *
Overnight, it seemed, everything in Markham began to change.
All through the Battle of Britain, the inhabitants of Markham had lived in the eye of the storm, surrounded by violence and destruction. Thousands of bomb-heavy German aircraft flew overhead with an arsenal of high-explosives and incendiary bombs for neighbouring cities. For two years, Markhambrian families huddled in their shelters at night, and in daytime children’s lessons were constantly disrupted by rushing to air-raid shelters or to the abbey, or by running to and from home.
But, throughout those long months, only one house was destroyed. Yet how could they relax? For at the back of the mind there was the nagging knowledge that Markham was only minutes flying-time from plum targets, anti-aircraft guns, Naval bases, docklands, aircraft factories, marshalling yards and Spitfire runways. And only seconds from the bomb-doors of any bomb-laden German aircraft caught in the searchlights above them.
Eventually the Battle of Britain was over. Whilst many terribly injured towns and cities lay licking their wounds, Markham, its fabric unharmed, had grown downtrodden and sick and weary. Much of the young blood of the town had left, many would not come back. Paula’s brother-in-law was dead, so were two of Pammy’s brothers. The men in Trix’s family had always been merchantmen: now her Dad, an uncle and two cousins had gone down. The husband of one of the WVS women had been taken from his rear-gunner seat on which had remained parts of his vital organs.
