by Maggie Ford
For a while Jenny stood there, contemplating whether she should go back home now, but she let her feet carry her towards the church itself and into the neatly laid out gardens behind it, still known locally as Barmy Park from the asylum for the insane that had once stood there. Sinking down on a bench with the low sun full on her, she watched people wander past, their thoughts most likely on enjoying a little fresh air before consigning themselves to the communal shelters and Bethnal Green Underground to await the arrival of the night bombers. All these people were passing yet she saw herself as quite alone, not because they ignored her but because she wanted it, so that she could think in peace of Matthew, of herself, of how she stood with him and he with her. Once again she decided to stop thinking about him and get on with her own life.
With that in mind, she got up and resolutely turned her face towards home. A voice hailed her as she passed the church again. Louise Ward ran up to her, slightly out of breath, cheeks flushed, her mousy hair rolled up primly in a style known as a victory roll, unflattering for anyone with the broad jaw line which she had inherited from her mother.
She looked excited. ‘What’re you doing here, Jenny? I thought you were nursing.’
‘I’ve got a day off,’ Jenny supplied but Louise could hardly contain herself.
‘I’m only home for the weekend. Guess what, Jenny, I’ve gone and joined the Wrens.’
‘You’ve what?’ Jenny stopped walking.
But nothing could diminish the enthusiasm shining on Louise’s face. She looked transformed. Gone was the prudish strait-laced mien. This girl glowed, and Jenny recalled the exact look on her brother’s face when he’d come to say goodbye that cold winter day. It was like looking at a bird newly released from a cage and she realised that Louise, for all she would never have admitted it, had been as trapped as he had been once she blossomed into her teens. Without warning she had broken loose from all the old ties that had bound her. Because of the war she was suddenly her own person. ‘I’m eighteen now, eligible to join up. I signed on and they took me. I had a medical and I passed A-one. I want to see the world.’
See the world. Perhaps dangerously so. Jenny eyed her dubiously. ‘Did you tell your parents what you intended to do? What do they think?’
Louise gave a giddy laugh. ‘Mother was shocked rigid. Dad hasn’t said much. I sprang it on them. If I had told them what I was going to do Mother would have stopped me, I know. It took me being evacuated … well, not exactly evacuated but more or less … to give me a taste of what could be had. So I signed on for the WRNS. I’m leaving next week for Portsmouth.’
Walking home with Louise chatting incessantly at her side about her medical, how girls were needed to relieve Royal Navy personnel from office duties, how she had been told that they could be sent anywhere in the world and all the countries she might see, Jenny found it impossible to broach the subject of her brother’s involvement with the anonymous Birmingham girl and if she thought it could be serious. Yet again she told herself to put it out of her mind, that their lives had gone their separate ways. But how nice it would be had it been otherwise.
Chapter 8
The coming of spring found Matthew still crouching in ditches in the wet wilderness of Fforest Fawr in the heart of Wales, trying to keep a crackling field radio dry under a gas cape.
‘One thing’s obvious,’ he muttered to Bob Howlett beside him. ‘She’s no letter writer.’
In four months he had written Susan one letter a week as regularly as clockwork, each one several pages long. In return he had received just five letters from her, each hardly more than two sides of a piece of Woolworth’s notepaper. Her bad spelling, he understood, perhaps made her slow to reply, but if she had any feelings for him, surely she’d write more frequently.
‘She’s lost all interest in me,’ he said miserably. ‘Bound to happen, she there and me here, and Birmingham full of uniforms.’
‘Is that what you think?’ Bob asked, scanning the rain-soaked peaty moorland. ‘That she’s just uniform crazy and nothing else?’
‘No, of course I don’t. But no girl is going to wait for months.’
‘Lots do, in wartime. They’ll wait for years.’
‘Yes, if they’ve been going steady long enough. We hardly met above a couple of times. I wouldn’t blame her.’
Beside them, Taffy Thomas shifted his uncomfortable position on his haunches. A Welshman he was, but from sunny, civilised Aberystwyth on the coast. This part of the country with its sopping heather wasn’t his cup of tea at all.
‘What you need is to get it out of your system, boyo. A bit of diversion. Two sisters I know of. Real beauties, the pair of ’em. Met ’em a week or two ago. One for me, one for you, eh? Make you forget your poor broken heart, that will.’
‘No thanks, Taff,’ Matthew murmured. Taffy looked mildly spurned.
‘There’s a terrible waste. Just have to do the best I can with both of ’em, then, won’t I?’ Grinning, he went back to scanning the horizon and misty forms of men scurrying about on manoeuvres, what could be seen of them through fine rain and the smoke of the thunder flashes going off.
Returning to camp, Taffy was off to the farmhouse where the sisters apparently lived; their father was in the Army, their mother working late in some nearby town. He returned later that evening, a little the worse for wear and very triumphant.
‘Missed a treat, you did,’ he stated, flinging himself on his camp bed in the tent he shared with Matthew and Bob. ‘Damned stupid, you, mooning after a girl that don’t want to know, as far as I can see.’
Having spent the entire day trying to put Susan out of his mind and annoyed that she refused to go, Matthew allowed his curiosity to arouse itself, if only moderately. ‘What’s she like then, this sister?’
Taffy let out an odd sound that passed for a knowing laugh, rather like a lion grunting. ‘Big. Would eat you for breakfast, boyo. Put the blood back in your veins for you though. I could take you next time, if there is a next time. And if you was to get a letter from your girl, then no need to tell her, is there?’
‘Might take you up on that, Taff.’ Defiance held him in a vice. Two weeks waiting for a response to his last letter to her, and still nothing.
‘You’re on then,’ said Taffy, and Matthew’s mood loosened enough for him to give way to a terse chuckle.
‘You’re a lecherous swine, Taff.’ But at this moment Taffy was a tonic to an aching heart.
A few days later he was glad he hadn’t been led into temptation, with fatigues preventing him sneaking out of camp with Taffy to the infamous farmhouse. Handed a letter from Susan, he read what seemed to be the usual dutiful scribble, except for one short badly spelt paragraph:
I hope you don’t think I’m not intrested, Matthew. I don’t know how to put my feelings down on paper because when I read it it sounds so silly so I just tare it up. But I do need to tell you that I reelly do …
The next two words had been crossed out, obliterated so completely that a diviner couldn’t have read them, after which she had continued:
I won’t half be glad to see you again so I can tell you how I reelly feel.
All at once it seemed his luck changed. Before he had a chance to reply, the whole unit was returned to Northwood and with a forty-eight-hour pass to boot. On wings of joy he rushed to the phone box on his arrival, finding a lengthening queue of Army personnel eager to tell families of the chance to be with them for the weekend.
In a fever of impatience he tagged on to the end of it, cursing the time the one already in the phone box was taking. At last, the receiver in his grasp, he gave the exchange the telephone number of the shop where Susan worked, having long ago looked it up after she had told him where she was employed.
‘Hello?’ A high, piercing voice spoke loudly in his ear as he asked for Susan. And then, querulously, ‘Who is this?’
‘Can I speak to Miss Susan Hopkins?’ he repeated.
‘I’m sorry,’ came the voice, qu
ite tersely. ‘Staff aren’t allowed to take private calls.’
‘But this is urgent.’
‘I’m very sorry, sir. This telephone is for customer enquiries only.’ She wasn’t a bit sorry, in fact she sounded highly pleased to refuse his request. ‘Only if the call is from the family of one of our staff with dire news do we allow them to take a call.’
‘Then could you give her a message?’ he intercepted. ‘Could you tell her I’ll see her tonight – on the corner of her road – at six-thirty?’
The voice had become filled with exasperation. ‘Really, sir, I am far too busy to relay messages from every Tom, Dick and Harry arranging dates with members of my staff.’
‘Please – just this once. We’re – we’re …’ He thought quickly. ‘We’re engaged, and …’
He broke off as the phone-box door was yanked open. The voices outside came instantly loud, the speaker even louder.
‘Git a bleedin’ move on, mate. There’re others out ’ere, y’know.’
Matthew shot out a hand and jerked the phone-box door shut again. ‘Please … I’ve been away on a training course.’
‘Engaged, you say?’ There was now lively curiosity in the voice on the other end of the phone, and for an instant he hesitated. What had he said? Then he came to an instant decision. ‘That’s right. And I need to speak to Miss Hopkins. It is very important.’
He waited while the faceless one ruminated on this piece of news.
‘Well,’ it deliberated at length, ‘I really cannot alter our rules, but on this occasion I will pass on your message. What name?’
‘Matthew Ward.’
‘Very well. But I sincerely hope you are not making a fool of me, Mr Ward. And please keep in mind that my staff are not allowed to make use of this telephone for private purposes unless in an emergency.’
‘I’ll remember. And thank you.’
Thoughtfully he replaced the receiver. Engaged, he’d said, in fear of being cut off. Engaged. Well, why not? All that fretting, all that longing, the tone of her last letter – he was sure now that those obliterated words had been ‘love you’. And didn’t he want this relationship to last? And hadn’t he spent these past four months pining, if he really admitted to it? Well then …
The prospect of being engaged sent a thrill of excitement through his veins he hadn’t expected. Lost in thought, he opened the door of the phone box to be almost pushed against the edge of it by a soldier squeezing by to get in, throwing Matthew a baleful glance as he did so.
‘’Bout bloody time too, mate! Got my missus ter phone too, y’know.’
The stress lay on ‘my’. The man assumed he was married. He would be, soon. And again a thrill coursed through his veins.
He hadn’t expected Susan to be there on the stroke of six thirty, but not finding her there on the dot, irrational anxieties began instantly to manifest themselves. Had the manageress not passed on his message? Had he in fact frightened her off with his damned silly proposal? Wouldn’t any girl be? She’d never said she loved him, apart from that crossed-out bit in her latest letter which could have been anything, just a spelling mistake too bad to let by. That bit in her letter about wanting to tell him how she really felt, one could read all sorts of meaning into such a line. In retrospect he had kidded himself. He was a fool.
It occurred to him as he waited in the damp warmth of this still-light mid-April evening that he didn’t really know anything about her. He felt that he knew her, but it wasn’t the same thing.
Staring along her street that teemed with grubby children at play, their shouts echoing from the flat, scabrous walls on either side set with endless doors and windows, not a tree, a plant, a blade of grass to be seen, he realised how unlike was her life to his. He had to be honest with himself. Because he thought himself in love was he seeing all this and her too through rose-tinted glass? Perhaps, as well as love, did he feel some sadness and pity for her too? Without that he would be viewing these slums with utter distaste, eager only to get away.
Where he stood was a pub, its blown-out windows and frames covered by sheets of waterproof-painted cardboard, its walls, door and sign pockmarked from flying shrapnel. Across the road, a little way down, a gash in the previously unbroken row of terraced houses held a pile of rubble, a result of the bomb Susan had told him about. The slanting evening sun picking out the interior walls that had once been private pitilessly exposed the wallpaper, the poor fireplaces, the smallness of the rooms that had once been, and almost touching the rubble, the houses of the next street, hitherto unseen from here, now peeped through like people surprised at being caught in the open.
He glanced at his watch. Six thirty-five. Was that all? A breathless voice called his name, light footsteps from behind him came running, and there she was, almost falling into his arms as he turned, her tone gabbling with panic.
‘Oh, Matthew. I had to stay behind at work. Stock-taking. I got your message but I only just got away and nearly missed the bus. I was so scared you wouldn’t wait. I thought you might think I didn’t care and give up and go away …’
She was reaching up, kissing him, here in the street for everyone passing by to see. ‘Oh, Matthew, did you mean what you said? On the phone? You did mean it, didn’t you?’
He nodded, gently stopping her frantic embrace, aware people were grinning as they went past. ‘It wasn’t a very romantic way to propose …’
‘Oh, it was!’ she broke in, still holding tightly to him. ‘I never dreamed I’d get such a romantic proposal. And to think that bitch didn’t tell me until it was time to close and then said we had to do stock-taking. She let me go a bit earlier, but I hate her.’
‘Doesn’t matter. You’re here.’ She’d never know how relieved he felt. ‘I want to take you out, Susan, to celebrate. I can’t afford much in the way of a posh restaurant, but …’
‘I couldn’t eat. I’m too excited,’ she burst in. ‘I want to go somewhere quiet with you, darling. Just us two, and we can talk all about things. We’ve got to discuss things.’
‘Yes.’ Her closeness was making him feel worked up inside, a sort of churning making it hard to breathe properly. They had to get away from here. ‘Where do you want to go?’
At last she broke away, thought for a moment. ‘It’s still light. It’ll stay light for ages yet. Let’s get some sandwiches and take them up on Beacon Hill. We can watch the sunset and be all romantic – just you and me. It only takes half an hour to get there.’
On the rounded promontory called Beacon Hill, more or less deserted but for one or two people walking dogs, they reclined on Matthew’s greatcoat on the rabbit-nibbled turf to eat a couple of meagrely filled off-ration chicken sandwiches as the sun sank lower.
‘On a clear day you can see ten counties from here,’ Susan said, huddled inside her coat against the rapidly cooling air. The sun had become a red ball in the smoky haze of the city, outlining the rim of their world. She pointed southwest. ‘That’s the Malvern Hills.’
Matthew looked, then laughed. ‘Clouds.’
‘They’re hills, Matthew.’
‘All right, hills,’ he laughed and she turned a petulant face towards him.
‘Don’t make fun of me.’ Her lips were so close that he leaned forward and kissed them, tasting the sweetness that was her lipstick but which he was sure must also be her lips. Forgetting her pique she returned the kiss, nestled against him, lying quiet now and watching the rim of the sun finally sink out of sight, leaving its reflection to tint the clouds orange and pink, that in turn bathed the earth in ruddy glow.
‘Matthew,’ she said quietly, slowly, relaxing against him. ‘You did mean it, about us being engaged? Only it was so casual. It was romantic, being said over the phone, but … well, you know, if you said it again now.’
He tightened his arm around her. ‘Darling, I’m saying it now. Shall we get engaged?’ Yes, this was what he wanted. Couldn’t imagine life now without her. She would be his wife. He felt his insides lea
p with the joy the thought brought. ‘Susan, I want to marry you.’
He heard her deep intake of breath, her reply exhaled in a series of long sighs. ‘Oh … Oh, Matthew. Oh …’ She seemed incapable of saying anything else. It meant yes, he knew. But there were material things to think about too, unwanted material things. ‘I’ll have to tell my mam and dad.’
‘Will they object?’ She was still not twenty-one. She must have their consent. His heart fell a little. But he needn’t have been anxious.
‘No. They’ll be glad to see me go and make a bit more room. I’ve got three brothers and two sisters and we’ve only got three bedrooms. They’ll be thrilled, especially as you’re someone really nice with enough money …’
‘Hold on,’ he curbed her, laughing. ‘I’m not Rockefeller, you know. I’m existing on a corporal’s pay.’
‘But your family’s well off, aren’t they?’
‘They’re nothing to do with me.’ He hoped he hadn’t sounded a bit grim but he didn’t want to think about them at this moment. ‘You’ll be marrying me, not them.’
‘I know. Oh, Matthew, of course I know. Married. I’m going to have to pinch myself to make sure this is me.’ She had turned, lifting her face to his. ‘I shall love you always, Matthew. Always and always.’
And on her cue he kissed her with a pressing need for her bursting inside him like a radiant explosion. Consumed by its heat he let his weight bear her down beneath him and on the warmth of his greatcoat they made love, she in trusting joy of his promise and he in the knowledge that they would be together till all eternity. And it was beautiful.
He wrote home, cramming his letter with Susan’s charms, and defiantly told them that he was engaged.
