Home for Christmas

by Annie Groves

  Being with George felt comfortable and right. There might not be that giddy excitement and longing she remembered from her crush on Callum, often followed by crashing disappointment when the smile she’d been hoping for didn’t materialise, but that had just been a young girl’s silliness, and the feelings of a girl who hadn’t had the wit to recognise what kind of person she was giving her heart to. With George there was nothing hidden. Where she had looked up to Callum as someone older, and had been slightly in awe of him, with George she sometimes felt almost maternal and protective.

  ‘When will you have to leave?’ she asked him.

  ‘Soon, apparently,’ he told her. ‘I only found out about the whole thing this morning. It’s all come as a bit of a shock.’

  ‘It’s a compliment to you, George, and a sign of how well you’re thought of as a doctor,’ Sally assured him. ‘Now, we’d better get back.’

  ‘I’ll write to you with my address as soon as I know where my billet is going to be,’ George told her as they headed off, Sally’s arm tucked through his, their shoulders hunched against the cold. ‘And I’ll come up to see you as soon as I get some time off.’ He stopped walking and turned to her. ‘I’m going to miss you, Sally.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ she told him promptly, hearing the emotion in his voice and wanting to cheer him up. ‘You’ll be far, far too busy learning how to do wonderful things for our poor injured boys.’

  She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.

  ‘Pssst . . .’

  Dulcie came to an abrupt and irritated halt as a lanky, grubby-looking boy of around thirteen or so slipped out of the doorway of a boarded-up building on Oxford Street and stood in front of her.

  ‘Want to buy some shampoo?’ the boy asked her. ‘Only I reckon with a barnet like yours you will do, and I know just the place where you can get some.’ He rubbed the side of his nose meaningfully.

  Dulcie glowered at him, and told him sharply, ‘Take yourself off, you thieving little tyke. Do I look like I would want to buy stuff that’s been looted, ’cos that’s what you’re flogging, isn’t it?’

  Instead of looking abashed, the boy grinned. ‘Knew you’d be keen, soon as I saw that yeller hair of yours. Looks just like a film star’s.’

  Dulcie put her hands on her hips and raised her eyes heavenward at this piece of soft-soaping.

  Every dark alley in the city seemed to have its own black marketeer lurking in its shadows, most of them willing to sell the roof over their own heads, or rather the roof that had once been over someone else’s head, if they thought they could find someone daft enough to buy it, Dulcie thought grimly. She, of course, was fully up to their tricks.

  ‘Do I look like I’m daft enough to fall for your flannelling?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s kosher,’ the boy insisted with an injured expression, spitting on his palm and then smacking it with his other palm. ‘As God’s me witness.’

  Shampoo. They were down to washing their hair with ordinary soap now at number 13 – even if shampoo wasn’t on ration yet, because it was in such short supply – and then trying to put the shine back on it with a bit of vinegar in the rinsing water.

  ‘So where is it then, this shampoo?’ she asked.

  ‘Leather Lane Market, Saturday dinner,’ the boy told her promptly. ‘I’ll be standing lookout there, just in case, so I’ll keep an eye out for you.’ He gave her a wink and a cheeky grin before disappearing like smoke back into the shadows before Dulcie could question him any further.

  Shampoo. Well, it couldn’t do any harm to go and have a look, Dulcie told herself, especially since Drew was promising to take those good-looking American pilots to the Palais. She’d have to get to the market early, mind. There was no knowing how many girls that scruffy-looking boy had stopped, and if there was some real shampoo to be had, Dulcie certainly didn’t want to end up standing at the back of the queue. Lucky that it was her half-day on Saturday. Not that that old trout Mrs Grange had been pleased about that. She’d tried to get the manager to say that Dulcie had to do some fire-watching practices, but Dulcie had soon put an end to that.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘You all right, Ag?’ Ted asked. ‘Only you’ve hardly had a word to say for yourself all dinner.’

  Agnes forced herself to smile. ‘I was just thinking about poor Mrs Long. She’s finding it hard, being on her own. Remember I told you about her husband being so poorly and then dying?’

  They were sitting at ‘their’ table, in the window of the café close to the underground station, alternately buffeted by the raw damp cold air that swept inside every time the door was opened, and the equally damp but warm steamy atmosphere that came from the combination of tea and coffee urns, washing up, and hot food on the other side of the counter.

  Ted nodded vigorously before saying, ‘If you aren’t going to finish that piece of pie, pass it over here, will you?’

  Silently Agnes handed him her plate. ‘There isn’t much meat in it.’

  ‘Well, there won’t be, will there?’ Ted pronounced practically. ‘Seeing as there isn’t much meat to be had. Still, it’s nice and cosy in here.’ He rubbed his hands together, before tucking into what was left of Agnes’s meat and potato pie.

  He always saw the bright side of things, her Ted, Agnes reflected. That was what had drawn her to him. That, and the smile he always had on his face.

  ‘I don’t know how Mrs Long’s going to go on now she’s on her own. Proper worried about her Mrs Robbins is.’ Agnes had a kind heart and sympathised strongly with her recently widowed neighbour.

  ‘Something’s bound to turn up,’ Ted told her cheerfully. ‘It always does.’

  ‘Your mum doesn’t come down to the underground to shelter any more.’ Agnes couldn’t look at him as she broached the subject that had been causing her so much anxiety as she lay awake at night, worrying that Ted’s mother didn’t like her.

  ‘She’s got this bee in her bonnet about it not being the sort of place she wants the girls to be, on account of some of them others that go down there.’ Ted gave Agnes a rueful look. ‘I’ve told her she’s worrying about nothing, seeing as I’ve got them sorted out with that room of their own, but you women, once you’ve got an idea fixed in your heads, there’s no arguing with you.’

  If that was why Ted’s mum was avoiding the underground, and not because she didn’t approve of her, then she’d been worrying about nothing, Agnes realised, feeling light-headed with relief. How daft she’d been not to say something to Ted before.

  ‘Oh, Ted,’ she beamed, reaching across the table to put her hand on his.

  ‘You’d better save that until you and me are sitting on the back row of the pictures on Saturday night,’ Ted teased her, ‘otherwise there’s no saying what I might do with you, looking at me like that.’

  This time Agnes’s ‘Oh, Ted’ was a sigh of blissful delight, accompanied by a vivid blush.

  ‘I’ve got to say, I’d rather Mum came down the shelter. It’s safer for her and the girls there, no two ways about it, but she won’t have it,’ Ted continued. ‘She’s got this daft idea that the Guinness Trust wouldn’t approve of her going down the underground. She says that it’s only a certain sort goes down the underground for shelter. I’ve told her she’s worrying over nothing but she won’t listen. She’s worrying herself sick that we might be turfed out of the flat. She keeps on saying that the Trust only let you have one of their flats if they think you’re respectable enough. And how we’ve got to make sure we stay respectable on account of that. Puts a lot of importance on being respectable, does Mum. Always going on about it she is.’ Ted paused and then said gruffly, ‘I reckon it’s on account of her and her mum being taken into the workhouse when she was a little ’un. He pa died, you see, and they was left destitute. Me mum, her ma, and her little brother all got taken in but her brother, well, he took ill and he never came out. He died there.’

  ‘Oh, Ted,’ Agnes whispered compassionately, tears welling in her
eyes. ‘How awful for your mother.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re not ever to let on to her that I told you,’ he warned.

  ‘Never,’ Agnes promised him fervently.

  Agnes smiled when Ted squeezed her hand, but although Ted’s revelations about his mother’s sad childhood had gone a long way to explaining why respectability was so important to her, they hadn’t allayed Agnes’s fears that his mother didn’t approve of her own background. Far from it. Ted thinking the best of everyone, he didn’t mind at all about her not just being an orphan but being abandoned as a baby outside the orphanage, with nothing to say who she was or where she’d come from. But Agnes suspected that his mother would not share Ted’s opinion.

  Knowing, though, that Ted didn’t like her brooding, she told him as cheerfully as she could, ‘Mrs Robbins was saying again that you’d be welcome to join us for your Sunday lunch.’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind of her, Ag,’ Ted replied. ‘and I’d like to say yes, but you know how it is. Mum expects me to go to church with her and the girls on Sundays. I reckon she needs me to help keep the two of them in order.’

  Agnes nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’ Her lips felt stiff and the back of her throat ached. ‘I dare say I could come to church with you and your family one Sunday, Ted. If you would like me to?’ she offered. She’d had to gather every bit of courage she had to be brave enough to make such a forward suggestion. And it was a forward suggestion, even though she and Ted were going to get engaged come Christmas, and even though she knew Dulcie would laugh at her for thinking that.

  ‘I’d like that, Ag,’ Ted agreed, ‘but like I’ve told you before, there’s not enough room in the flat to swing a cat, never mind set up a proper table and that, like Mrs Robbins has. I reckon that Mum wouldn’t like me inviting you round to have our lunch with us on account of that.’

  Agnes couldn’t look at him, not even when Ted gave her hand a special squeeze.

  ‘Fancy some apple dumpling and custard?’ Ted asked her.

  Somehow Agnes managed to produce an enthusiastic smile. She knew that apple dumpling was one of Ted’s favourite puddings, and that even if the anxiety now invading her tummy meant that she couldn’t finish hers, Ted would finish it for her.

  ‘I’m thinking about going to Liverpool,’ Sally confided to Olive when she came off home from her shift. ‘Mum was buried in November. I’m owed some extra time off and I think it would be right to go up now.’

  Olive nodded her head, understanding what Sally meant without her having to explain.

  ‘Not that I’ll be able to get any flowers or anything, for the grave, but I just thought . . .’

  ‘Will you see your dad whilst you’re up there?’ Olive asked.

  ‘No. There’s no point. And . . . anyway I just couldn’t. Not after what’s happened. No. I’ll just go to Mum’s grave, give it a bit of a tidy and that. I’m the only one she’s got to do that now. I should have gone last year but . . .’

  When she couldn’t continue, Olive asked her gently, ‘When do you plan to go?’

  ‘Next week. I’ve got some time off owed to me. George leaves for . . . for a new post soon. He’s got a transfer for six months. He’ll too busy starting that to be able to take any time off himself, so I thought . . .’

  ‘I think it’s an excellent idea,’ Olive assured her. ‘And it sounds as if George is doing well.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sally had her hands folded neatly together in her lap but Olive could see that they were trembling slightly so she put one of her own over them.

  ‘I can guess how much you must miss your mother, Sally. I visit my Jim’s grave every year on the anniversary of his death, and on our wedding anniversary. Tilly comes with me on his anniversary but on ours I go on my own. It’s my chance to talk to him privately, you see, to tell him what’s happening, and about Tilly. Some people would probably think I was being silly, but I find it very comforting.’

  Sally knew what Olive was trying to tell her.

  ‘I miss the chats that me and Mum used to have so much. Morag used to say—’ Sally broke off and looked upwards blinking fiercely. ‘That’s what makes it all so horrid and hard to bear. Me, Mum and Morag all got on so well together. It was like Morag was my sister. I felt really proud that Mum liked her so much and that Morag got on with her. When Mum was ill, and afterwards, when she’d gone, I thought I was very lucky having Morag to turn to. I thought she felt the same, you see, but she didn’t.’

  ‘I know how things must seen to you, Sally, but sometimes our emotions . . . well, losing your mother and then what followed must have been dreadfully hard for you, but maybe whilst your mother was alive Morag was all the things you thought her, a good friend to you and to your mother.’

  ‘No.’ Sally kept her voice low but Olive could hear the anguish in it. ‘No. I can’t accept that. She was a traitor to our friendship and to the kindness that Mum showed her.’

  She turned to Olive, her distress plain in her expression. ‘I don’t want to go back to Liverpool, but I keep thinking of Mum’s grave, uncared for and . . .’

  ‘Would it help if I came with you?’ Olive asked.

  Sally’s eyes widened. She’d known already how good Olive was but her offer now made Sally think all over again how fortunate she was to be lodging at number 13.

  ‘It’s kind of you,’ she told Olive, ‘but no. I’ll be all right now.’

  ‘Well, if you change your mind the offer is still there,’ Olive assured her.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Come on, you two. Hurry up, otherwise all the bargains will be gone,’ Dulcie called over her shoulder to Tilly and Agnes as she made her way determinedly through the Saturday crowds of Leather Lane Market.

  With Christmas not so very far away there was an extra air of energy and determination about the shoppers. Not that Tilly minded the crowds. In fact, she loved the air of pre-Christmas excitement and bustle, pausing by one stall filled with holly decorations, the bright green leaves and red berries so shiny that they looked as though they had been polished.

  ‘Fresh ’olly from His Lordship’s estate. Picked it meself, I did,’ the stall holder hollered when his sharp gaze noticed Tilly’s interest.

  ‘Nicked it, more like,’ Dulcie told the other two. She grabbed hold of Tilly’s arm. ‘Come on, we’ve got better things to do with our time than stand staring at a bit of holly.’

  ‘It always makes me think of Christmas, and it looks so pretty,’ Tilly defended herself good-naturedly, allowing Dulcie to draw her away, and then pulling back as something on one of the other stalls caught her eye. ‘Hang on . . .’

  ‘What is it this time?’ Dulcie demanded impatiently, but Tilly wasn’t listening. Instead she was reaching for the open box of pretty handkerchiefs, each with one corner adorned with delicate lace. They would make an ideal gift for her mother, who, Tilly knew, would love something so elegant and dainty. But just as she reached to pick up the box, someone else put a possessive hand on top of her own – a buxom florid-faced woman with small, mean-looking blue eyes and an expression on her face that said she was not going to give up her prize, even if Tilly had got to it first.

  ‘Them’s mine, if you don’t mind,’ she informed Tilly with a mixture of determination and sarcasm.

  ‘Actually, I think I picked them up first,’ Tilly retaliated, unwilling to be brow-beaten and bullied out of the hankies.

  The excitement of a bit of an argument was already drawing a crowd of shoppers to gather round Tilly and the older woman, much to the stall holder’s delight, as he started shouting up his other wares to the growing audience, most of whom were paying more attention to Tilly and her adversary than to his stall.

  It was Agnes, flushed of face but stalwart in her defence of her friend, who piped up, ‘You picked them up first, Tilly,’ her comment drawing nods of agreement from those women who had been close enough to see what had happened.

  For a minute Tilly thought that she was going to be the victor, but t
hen the other woman called over her shoulder, ‘’Ere, our ’Enry, come and give me a hand,’ and to Tilly’s horror the crowd fell back at the sight of the large overweight youth pushing his way through.

  ‘You’d better let her have them, Tilly,’ Dulcie advised in a warning whisper. ‘I don’t like the look of him.’

  Tilly didn’t either. He had a mean look about him, his head swaying slightly from side to side, his small blue eyes just like those of the woman, whom Tilly guessed must be his mother. Something about him struck an unexpected chord within Tilly, reminding her of a long ago visit to Smithfield Market with her late grandfather. There had been a bullock being led to the slaughter house, and it had had the same kind of angry hostile look in its eyes. Half cross with herself for being a coward, Tilly relinquished the box, taking some comfort from the murmurs of sympathy for her from the crowd.

  ‘Thanks for sticking up for me, Agnes,’ she said as they started to walk away.

  ‘What about thanking me for saving you from getting yourself into real trouble?’ Dulcie demanded, all three of them stopping in mid-stride as a young lad came running up to them, dark curls escaping from under his cap, a moth-eaten scarf knotted round his neck over the too-tight tweed jacket he was wearing.

  ‘Me brother said he had another box of them hankies and that you can have them for eightpence if you want them?’ he announced, waving a thin pale blue square box in front of Tilly’s nose. ‘’E said you’d done him a favour getting all them people round his stall.’

  Tilly looked back towards the stall, which was now besieged by shoppers, smiling ruefully as the good-looking young man behind it doffed his cap and gave her a wink.

  ‘Don’t you go giving him any money until we’ve seen what’s inside. It could be an empty box, for all we know,’ Dulcie warned, taking charge.

  Happily, though, once the lid was removed they could all see the pretty lace-edged handkerchiefs inside it.