An Army of Smiles

by An Army of Smiles (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  When months passed and he still had no news of Ethel, Albert began to worry. It was impossible to find out where she was stationed. With the war continuing almost world wide, she could be anywhere or she could be dead. With all the talk of spies, and notices being painted on walls all over Britain demanding a ‘Second Front Now’, the veil of secrecy had become even thicker and impossible to break.

  He remembered then that he’d been given the addresses of Kate’s and Rosie’s families and, finding the addresses neatly written in his diary, he wrote to them both asking if they could tell him her present address. It was obvious – he hoped – that the loss of contact between them was because he was writing to the wrong place or had misremembered the numbers and letters that made up the forces’ postal information. A mistake in the number could mean that the letter ended up in lost letters and was eventually destroyed. The addresses were deliberately obscure to prevent the enemy from learning the distribution of the fighting men and women.

  He received a reply within days from Rosie’s Nan, who told him she couldn’t help. She sent him a cake as an apology, but said she had promised Ethel not to disclose any information about her to anyone. He then wrote again, including an unsealed letter to Ethel, asking Mrs Dreen to readdress the letter to her. The letter was brief, asking only whether she was well and asking her for her address if she wanted to hear from him.

  The ship containing the mail bag in which the letter was carried was sunk just outside the docks. But when Rosie heard from her Nan, she was told about the letter from Albert and with Rosie’s Nan having an address where she could reach him, Ethel wrote to him at once. She was still feeling dreadfully homesick and not hearing from either Albert or Baba was making it worse.

  The Baileys, aware that Ethel would not know about her father’s stroke, wondered whether they should write to her via her friend. Once again it was Rosie’s Nan who passed on the information. Because of moving around, weeks passed before they were in contact again and Ethel learned about her father’s serious stroke. It was almost the end of 1943 when she received the news and was told they were again being posted.

  Her first thought was to apply for leave but as they were down for transfer there was no chance of being allowed home. Besides, she knew that once she went home she and Kate and Rosie would be separated and might never get the same posting again. Her need to see her mother was strong, but the close friendship between the girls and the responsibility they all felt for their involvement in the Service To Those Who Serve, was stronger.

  ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ she joked as she explained her feelings to the others. ‘Remember miserable Walter Phillips? That was his mantra.’

  ‘What’s a mantra?’ asked Kate.

  ‘A thing Spanish women wear on their heads.’

  ‘No, silly,’ Kate laughed. ‘That’s a mantilla.’

  ‘No it isn’t. That’s what they put in ice-cream.’

  Laughing at their nonsense, then sobering, Ethel asked, ‘I wonder where the war has taken the old misery?’

  ‘I don’t care as long as he keeps away from us,’ Kate said. ‘It’s my Vincent I want to see.’

  ‘You do? Why didn’t you tell us?’ Rosie teased.

  ‘Vincent. I’ve just remembered, my father’s motorbike was a Vincent.’ For some reason this was funny too.

  Remembering the motorbike and its powerful engine that seemed to reflect the strength of her father, Ethel thought about home. She had been away a very long time, so much had happened, and she was overwhelmed with homesickness. It surprised her and she tried to hide what she considered her weakness from her friends.

  It wasn’t her family she missed, she tried to convince herself, it was just a place to call home, now she no longer had The Dell to return to. Once she had left the service and set herself up in a place of her own, she would soon build a life for herself. It would be filled only with people she loved. Rosie and Kate for a start. And Rosie’s Nan, and Mr and Mrs Banner. They were the nucleus from which she would start again. She tried not to think about Baba and Albert.

  The Allies had landed in Sicily earlier in the year and once a base had been achieved and the communications ship had landed its cargo of radios and telephones and all the essentials for allowing contact between the commanders of the battle fronts, the Naafi was there providing hot food and drinks for the thousands of men piling on to the beaches, establishing a base and spreading out to drive out the enemy.

  It was to Italy that Ethel, Kate and Rosie were told they were to go. But it was not to be.

  Chapter Ten

  The three friends had been expecting to be told of their transfer to Italy but before this happened a message reached Kate, telling her that her parents’ shop had been bombed and both were in hospital. Kate was given compassionate leave and, when the authorities were told that Kate had no one else to assist her, and that a grocery shop was involved, Rosie was given permission to go with her.

  Afraid of being separated for the rest of the war, Ethel also applied to go but she was refused. In the present circumstances, with the push in Italy, and transport so badly needed for troops, stores and equipment, one friend was a generous gesture, they were told severely, and giving leave for two was not possible.

  The next day, Ethel showed them a letter from Mrs Bailey, telling her about her father’s illness and the difficulties suffered by her mother as she tried to deal with him and the market garden. Like the distribution of food, the growing of it was a priority and her leave was granted too.

  Ethel sometimes wanted to see her parents very much, at others she couldn’t bear the thought of walking into her house and facing them. At that moment she had no desire to revive the miseries of the past. Facing her father was a particularly joyless thought. And why should she feel the need to dash to act the dutiful daughter to help her mother? She wasn’t sure she even wanted to go back to England. It was the disappointment of being separated from Kate and Rosie rather than concern for her mother that made her apply.

  In her heart she still blamed her mother for the death of her sister. Mam must have known what was going on and she should have intervened. How could she be expected to stay in the same house? As for the market garden, she doubted whether her father’s illness would make much difference. He was hardly ever there, from what she understood from the brief note from Mrs Bailey.

  ‘You should go and see your mother,’ Rosie coaxed. ‘It doesn’t seem fair to blame her for your father’s foul temper.’

  ‘It’s Glenys’s death I blame her for. Mam made us all suffer because she wasn’t brave enough to leave. If she wanted to be a martyr and stay with him, she could have done so. But she should have sent us away.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have been easy.’

  ‘She should have seen how unhappy Glenys was. She should have taken us away, somewhere Dad couldn’t find us. If she had we would still be together, me, Sid and Glenys,’ she told Kate and Rosie.

  ‘She stuck to her marriage vows,’ Kate reminded her, thinking that nothing would make her want to leave Vincent.

  ‘Then she shouldn’t have!’

  ‘You ought to see her,’ Rosie advised. ‘Think of me with a mother who left me and has never once tried to find me. I’d at least listen to her if we ever met.’

  ‘More fool you!’ Ethel retorted, anger and doubts making her less reasonable. ‘Best to depend on no one, that way you’re safe from disappointments.’

  ‘Family is family,’ Kate said inanely, still dreaming of Vincent.

  ‘Family,’ Ethel argued loudly, ‘is a pain in the arse.’

  Rosie covered her face and giggled.

  To their regret, the three girls were unable to travel together but decided to meet in London. They docked separately in places on the east coast and for a while regretted their departure from the delightful climate of North Africa.

  ‘At least it will be more peaceful than the front line,’ Kate said, ‘and I�
�ll be seeing Vincent again.’

  ‘Vincent? Who’s Vincent?’ Rosie frowned. ‘You’ve never mentioned him.’

  They were wrong about London being more peaceful than the front line. Daylight and night-time raids sent people wearily to underground shelters, the dark, cold evenings were fraught with danger from bombs and collapsing buildings and the likelihood of being knocked down by traffic that at times was invisible even inches away due to the blackout and the London winter fog.

  If the weather was bleak, the dance halls made up for it. They were still oases of colour and laughter and music and pleasure, with the Americans bringing their jive and jitterbugging to the height of popularity, driving out inhibitions and hesitation from the most wary and unworldly of individuals.

  Kate had to go home to begin sorting out the repairs to the shop and the restocking with rationed goods, and it was Ethel who went with her. Rosie went first to visit her Nan.

  Seeing the shop boarded up was a shock for Kate, and visiting her parents in hospital recovering from broken bones and head injuries, was worse. Leaving a willing Ethel in charge of cleaning up the shop and arranging for the necessary repairs, Kate spent the first few days dashing between visiting time at the hospital, talking to the doctors about her parents’ recovery prospects and sorting out the technicalities at the local Ministry of Food offices. She discovered that the customers who normally bought their rations from the shop had been transferred temporarily to another close by.

  ‘As soon as the shop is secure and clean we’ll have you up and running again,’ the young woman told Kate cheerfully.

  ‘I think it will be a few weeks before my parents can cope,’ Kate said. ‘They were badly hurt and are still very shocked.’ She was wrong. When she had been home just five days her parents left the hospital, and with assistance from kindly neighbours they had the shop reopened and fully stocked in a week.

  ‘So glad to have you home, dear,’ Mrs Banner smiled. ‘We’ll be glad of your help for a while. Then you can probably find work locally, do your bit here, near your father and me.’

  ‘Sorry, Mam, but I can’t stay. I was given leave, I haven’t resigned. I’m needed back out there.’

  ‘Surely not,’ her father said. ‘You’ve been lucky so far but now you can come home honourably, having done your bit. You don’t have to put your mother and me through all the worries of you being so far from home any longer.’

  For a moment their soft loving voices took her back to the rather spoilt child she had once been. It would be so easy to sink back into that life, to be treated like someone special, lose herself in the cushioning comfort of their protection. Then she looked at Ethel, who winked and mimed sympathy in a teasing manner, and she laughed.

  ‘Mam, Dad, don’t you know there’s a war on?’

  Before she and Ethel left, Kate told her mother about Vincent. Ethel felt a twinge of envy at the glow on Kate’s face as she described him and told her parents about their plans for after the war.

  ‘Don’t tell us you’ll be going to America!’ Mrs Banner gasped. ‘I couldn’t bear it, I want you home.’

  ‘If Vincent wants to live in America I’ll go, Mummy. You’ll be able to visit and we’ll come home to see you. We’ll have to bring your grandchildren to meet you, won’t we?’ she added, blushing slightly.

  Again Ethel wondered how Kate would cope if Vincent failed to return from one of his bombing missions. She was so much in love and the war wasn’t over yet. She felt fear for her friend in her vulnerability. Please let us stay together, she prayed silently, her fingers tightly crossed. If the worst happens, Kate will need Rosie and me.

  Kate left her parents once an assistant had been found to help in the shop, a young woman who promised to stay until they had fully recovered. With only a moment’s regret for the security and ease she was leaving behind, counting the days before she saw Vincent again, she set off for the station with Ethel. They were carrying a few extras in the way of food, gleaned during the abandoning of old stock and the replenishment with new. They agreed not to unpack their treats until they met up again with the ever-hungry Rosie.

  ‘She’d never forgive us if we started without her,’ Kate smiled. ‘For someone so small, she takes an awful lot of filling!’

  * * *

  Rosie’s homecoming had been filled with surprises. To her relief her darling Nan seemed to be coping well, but several of her neighbours were calling daily to check on her. This was puzzling, this extra caring, until Nan admitted that she’d had a suspected heart attack.

  ‘Nan! Why didn’t you tell me?’ Rosie gasped.

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you, there’s enough for you to think of out there facing bombs and guns and fighting off randy soldiers,’ Nan grinned wickedly.

  ‘Don’t you see, I’ll worry more if I think there are things happening that you don’t tell me about?’

  ‘They aren’t even sure it was a heart attack,’ she told her granddaughter cheerfully. ‘A bit of pleurisy and a nasty bout of indigestion from these awful fatless sponges they make us eat, if you ask me.’

  Rosie checked with the doctor and was reassured. ‘It might have been a slight heart attack,’ she was told, ‘but we can’t be certain. She appears to be well at the moment and as long as she doesn’t try to do too much she should be fine.’

  They settled down to enjoy a few days catching up on the weeks since they had last met, until one evening there was a knock at the door. Nan looked at the clock and frowned. ‘Almost ten o’clock, who can it be?’

  ‘The warden!’ Rosie gasped in mock alarm. ‘He saw the light of my torch when I went to get the wood in to dry for tomorrow’s fire.’ Rosie opened the door and asked the person standing there what she wanted. It was impossible to see her. Apart from guessing she was a woman from the silhouette, nothing more could be gleaned from the barely visible caller in the almost complete darkness.

  ‘I want to see Mrs Dreen and Rosemary too, if she’s home.’ Rosie hesitated, but as no further explanation was forthcoming, she invited the woman in. She asked her to wait in the hall while the blackout curtains were positioned, then, without inviting the woman any further into the house, called her grandmother.

  ‘Who is it, love?’

  ‘It’s me, mother-in-law. Brenda Dreen.’

  The woman followed Rosie into the living room, seeming not to hear Nan ask, ‘What are you doing here?’

  She just stared at Rosie, a strange expression on her face like someone who had just been presented with a specially longed-for gift. ‘And you must be my daughter.’

  She smiled and offered her hand and instinctively, bemused with shock, Rosie took it, then pulled her hand away as though she had burned it.

  ‘Rosemary, I’m your mother. I can’t tell you how I’ve longed for this day. May I sit down? Stay and talk to you?’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ Nan said, so politely the woman might have been asking for something completely innocuous, like permission to take off her coat. ‘I want you to leave my house, now this minute, and if you want to communicate with us you’ll have to write.’

  ‘I’ve already tried that, as you know, mother-in-law. At first all my letters were returned, marked “not known at this address”,’ the woman said, just as softly and politely as Nan. She was looking at Nan but talking to Rosie. ‘Since then I have written to you every month but haven’t received a single acknowledgement. Now I’m here and I want a few words with my daughter.’

  ‘I said you must leave,’ Nan said, still speaking calmly.

  ‘Please go,’ Rosie said, in support of Nan, but her heart was racing. She knew her cheeks were bright pink and she was filled with an almost irresistibly strong desire to drag this person who was her mother back into the living room. She had a hundred questions tormenting her, questions that had lain dormant since Nan had stopped answering her when she was a child. They bubbled to the surface in those few seconds insisting to be heard.

  The woman who was her mother
turned to leave but before she did, she opened her handbag and took out a small envelope with its stamp placed ready for posting stuck in the corner.

  ‘If you want to write to me, Rosemary dear, this is where you’ll find me.’

  In the darkness of the hallway, Rosie peered at the envelope. She was still Mrs Dreen, so she hadn’t married the man who had taken her mother away from her, the man who had wanted her mother but hadn’t wanted her. There was comfort in that. Then as Nan ushered her mother to the door, Rosie said harshly, ‘And I’m called Rosie. Not Rosemary. Didn’t you even know that?’

  The door closing seemed to touch her body with actual pain. The click of the latch startled her, shocking with its finality.

  ‘Put it on the back of the fire,’ Nan said, gesturing towards the envelope in Rosie’s hands, as the door closed behind her dead son’s wife.

  ‘Was she speaking the truth, Nan? Did you send her letters back?’

  ‘Sorry, love. I should have told you she’s been trying to get in touch. I just didn’t want her coming here and upsetting you. We’ve been happy together, haven’t we? Without the likes of her coming and stirring up trouble.’

  ‘Yes, Nan. I couldn’t have been happier,’ Rosie said automatically, as she had so often told Nan before, only this time, she didn’t quite mean it.

  She didn’t sleep that night. Whenever she began to drift off, pictures filled her mind of the imaginary mother she did not remember, fanciful scenes with a beautiful lady looking at her with love in her eyes, standing watching her play with her dolls, or reading to her from one of her favourite books, or running towards her with arms outstretched. Or, best of all, standing behind a table filled with party fare, a cake with candles and a pile of gaily wrapped parcels to celebrate her birthday. Her friends were sitting around the table, faces glowing and telling her how lucky she was to have such a kind and beautiful mother. Dreams such as these had once filled her nights but it was a long time since she had seen them so vividly.