When the Lights Go on Again

by Annie Groves

  ‘I’m sorry I had to let everyone down with the flowers today,’ Emily felt obliged to apologise as she poured the vicar a cup of tea and offered him a slice of her upside-down apple cake, made with her own apples and a couple of rich duck eggs from the farm.

  The vicar looked at her. Putting down his cup he told her quietly, ‘Mrs Wilson has told me that she is concerned about you.’

  Flustered, Emily went pink. She appreciated her neighbour’s concern but it embarrassed her to think that Ivy had been sharing that concern with the vicar.

  ‘Mrs Davies has also spoken to me about you.’

  ‘Ina Davies?’ Emily questioned him anxiously.

  The vicar nodded. ‘She has expressed to me her…concern that you should be welcoming a POW into your home.’

  ‘I’m sorry if you think I’ve done the wrong thing, Vicar, but—’

  ‘As Christians it is our duty to treat our fellow men with true Christian charity, which is exactly what you have done,’ the Vicar surprised Emily by telling her firmly, ‘and I have told Mrs Davies as much. In fact, I have spoken to all the ladies who are kind enough to arrange the church flowers, on the subjects of charity and Christianity, and the ways in which we can follow our Lord’s example. The POWs work hard in our fields, helping to provide our food, often knowing that their own families in their own country may be going without food. We have a duty to show them Christian kindness, and a duty to show that same Christian kindness to one another. You may know that Mrs Davies’s son was captured by the Germans at Dunkirk?’

  ‘Yes,’ Emily agreed.

  ‘Naturally we all feel for her. However…I understand from Mrs Wilson that you have received a rather unpleasant anonymous letter.’ Without waiting for Emily to reply, he continued, ‘There was a similar incident some years ago. A pretty young teacher, who had caught the eye of Mrs Davies’s son, received some rather unpleasant letters.’

  Emily’s startled gaze flew to the vicar’s face.

  ‘The young man came to me himself in a considerable state of embarrassment, to explain to me that his mother had had plans for him to marry a girl of her own choice.’

  Emily swallowed. ‘You mean that Ina Davies had written the letters to the teacher?’

  ‘Well, nothing was ever proved, and as it happened the young woman left soon afterwards to be married to a man she had known before coming to Whitchurch, so the matter died a natural death. However, it has to be said that Mrs Davies is a woman of strong emotions, and a rather difficult temperament. It is, I suspect, due to the forgiving nature of the other ladies in the parish that we do not have more problems. I have spoken very firmly to Mrs Davies this morning after your neighbour told me about your letter, and in view of the comments that Mrs Davies has already made to me herself about your POW. I don’t think there will be any more letters, but if there are, please do come and tell me. We all have to make allowances for one another and to understand that those amongst us who are not as able or as willing as they might be to live as God would wish them to live, need our help to enable them to do so, but that does not mean that they should be allowed to behave as badly as Mrs Davies has behaved.’

  ‘You are sure that it…that she…I mean, I would hate to think of her being blamed when…’

  The vicar was smiling at her and shaking his head at the same time. ‘Your neighbour is right when she says that you have a very tender heart. There is no doubt. Mrs Davies admitted to me of her own volition that she had written to you – and more than once. I think you might have found that the letters will have ceased to appear, if only because it seems that your dog has taken to looking menacingly at her whenever it sees her in the street, no doubt recognising her scent, and she is concerned that it might bite her.’

  The vicar was standing up, but Emily didn’t want to let him go now without making a confession of her own.

  ‘It’s true what she – Ina Davies – says about me and Wilhelm,’ she told him determinedly. ‘Maybe it’s wrong, him being German and everything, but all I know is that I’ve never met a kinder, more decent man, and God willing, when the war is over him and me will be able to get married.’ There she’d said it. ‘If you’d rather I didn’t come to church any more on account of that…’

  ‘There’s good and bad in every nation. I agree with you that Wilhelm is a good kind man. It is men like him, on both sides of this war, who will be needed to rebuild what has been lost when all this is over. Both of you will always be welcome in my church.’

  There were tears in Emily’s eyes and she couldn’t speak for the emotion that filled her.

  It was only after the vicar had gone that she was fully able to take in what he had told her, and to marvel at the way things had worked out. Who would ever have thought of it being Ina who had sent her those letters? Emily certainly couldn’t have done so herself. Ina was always so keen on going on about other people’s morals that it had never occurred to Emily to question hers. Well, at least she could sleep easily at night now instead of lying awake worrying. My, but she’d love to see Ina’s face the next time Tommy walked Beauty past her. Tommy was right – the dog was clever.

  There was still time for her to walk into town. She could call at the butcher’s and see if he’d got a couple of bones for Beauty, Emily decided, smiling to herself.

  THIRTEEN

  ‘I’ve sorted out a hotel room in London for us this weekend,’ June told Lou. ‘One of the other ATA girls recommended it. She says it’s where some of them stay, and that it’s clean and respectable. It won’t be the Ritz, of course,’ June wrinkled her nose, ‘but then beggars can’t be choosers. She told me that they normally use their contacts to get into the best clubs and shows. Oh, and we’ve got an invite to a private party on the Saturday night – at a club where one of the top brass Americans from ATA is a member. Apparently she hosts a party there once a month and any pilots who happen to be in London are welcome. It should be good fun.’

  They had both just climbed out of the taxi Anson, having spent the day collecting and delivering Spitfires from various MUs to the fighter stations, until the grey November afternoon had brought a halt to their work.

  ‘We’ll have to make the most of our weekend, especially as both of us are working over Christmas,’ June continued.

  Lou still felt a bit guilty about that. She’d hated writing to her mother to tell her that she wouldn’t be home for Christmas but it was only fair that those of them who were single should allow the married and engaged amongst their number to have Christmas off whilst they stood in for them. Planes didn’t stop needing to be delivered just because it was Christmas. What was making Lou feel even more guilty was that deep down inside she actually felt a little bit relieved to have an excuse not to go home, given the situation between her and Sasha. She had really tried her best to make things up with her twin, but Sasha just wasn’t interested. Lou wondered if that was because Sasha hadn’t believed her when she had tried to assure her that she no longer resented the fact that Sasha was in love with Bobby, and feared that Lou might try to come between them. How silly and selfish she had been wanting to keep Sasha to herself, but it was too late to regret that. The damage had been done and now Sasha refused to believe her or trust her.

  Lou had done everything she could. She made a point of always asking after Bobby in her letters to Sasha, but Sasha’s letters back to her were so obviously duty letters and not written from the heart at all that Lou was beginning to feel that she would never be able to establish an adult version of the close relationship they had once shared. It seemed such a long time ago now since they had been girls and so close that nothing and no one could come between them; a different life altogether, which, of course, it had been.

  ‘I’d better make tracks. It won’t set a good example to the other chaps if their major comes back late from leave.’

  Francine gave Marcus a rueful look. ‘It’s my fault that you’re running late,’ she admitted.

  They’d gone out for di
nner last night, the final night of Marcus’s forty-eight-hour leave, and then this morning, despite the fact that they’d made love well into the small hours, Francine had turned to Marcus again, whispering to him that she wanted him, which was why they were now running late and she was still wearing the very pretty, and totally unsuitable for wearing to make breakfast, pale peach lace-trimmed négligé she’d purchased in Egypt and worn the very first night she and Marcus had spent together.

  ‘You call wanting me to make love to you a fault?’ Marcus teased her as he drank the tea she’d just poured for him. The grey November light coming in through the window seemed to drain everything of colour rather than highlighting it, and Francine could see the new lines the war had carved alongside Marcus’s mouth. Although he hadn’t said – couldn’t say – so directly, Francine was no fool and she had a pretty good idea why her husband was looking so tired and tight-lipped. The steady massing of troops and equipment on the South Coast, the arduous training programmes that were being put in place, the air of expectation that hung around the War Office and Whitehall, all pointed to one thing – the Allies’ invasion of Northern France.

  First, though, the Allies had to drive the Germans out of Italy and that was proving hard to do, despite the Italians having surrendered.

  The name Monte Cassino, with the fierce fighting there as the Allies tried to push their way forward, was on everyone’s lips, especially those who had men fighting in Italy. The fighting was ferocious and the losses, so Marcus had hinted, heavy on both sides.

  Francine knew that her sister Jean’s son was fighting in Italy. Sons…children…was it mean and selfish of her to envy her niece Grace her coming baby? Of course Francine was pleased for Grace and Seb, of course she was, but at the same time she couldn’t help feeling desperately envious of Grace. More than anything else apart from Marcus’s safety, Francine longed for a child, their child, not a child to replace the son she had lost without ever really knowing him, when death had snatched him away from her.

  ‘I’m still not sure I’ve done the right thing agreeing to spend Christmas in Whitchurch,’ she told Marcus, thinking of how miserable she was going to be over the holiday without him.

  ‘Of course you have. I’ll feel much happier knowing that you’re with your family than here alone in London.’ Getting up from his chair in the once smart but now slightly war-weary Art Decostyle kitchen of their service flat attached to the Dorchester Hotel, Marcus went over to Francine and took her in his arms.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, and there’s nothing I’d like more than for us to have created a child – our child…’

  ‘I keep thinking that the reason that nothing has happened is because…because I’m being punished because of Jack…because I didn’t look after him properly, and because he died, all alone and thinking that none of us cared about him. I should never have let Vi send him away.’

  Marcus held her close. ‘You did your best for him, and you loved him – none of us can do more than that,’ he reassured her. ‘And as for either of us being punished – if that was the case we would never have been allowed to be together.’

  Marcus’s comforting words helped Fran to control her own emotions. The last thing she wanted was to send him back to his men with her face blotched by tears, and her mood full of misery.

  What was the advice that was so often given to young wives and sweethearts when the time came to say goodbye: ‘Be gay and smile. Let his last and lasting memory of you be of a girl who is proud of him for doing his bit and who he can rely on to hold the fort at home whilst he is away. Save your tears for after he has gone.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she told Marcus determinedly, ‘and I’m being very silly.’

  ‘What do you mean you aren’t coming to Whitchurch for Christmas?’ Jean’s normally gentle voice rose in a mixture of disbelief and irritation as she looked across the kitchen at Sasha.

  ‘Bobby’s mum has invited us both to stay with them. Bobby hasn’t spent a Christmas with them for ages, and Bobby’s mother wants to introduce me to all the family, with me and Bobby being engaged, and going to be married. You said yourself only the other night, Mum, that it would be a crush down at Grace’s, and that you were worried about how Grace is going to manage everything, with her going to have a baby.’

  Jean felt nonplussed and outmanoeuvred. It was true that she had said that she was worried about Grace being able to manage but that had been because she had still been hoping then to persuade Grace to change her mind and come home to Liverpool.

  Now, though, with Francine having accepted Grace’s invitation and having written to Jean to say how much she was looking forward to ‘spending Christmas in the country’, Jean had had to give in.

  ‘It’s not as though Lou is going to be there, with her not being able to get leave, nor Luke either, and it’s only fair that Bobby should get to see his family once in a while,’ Sasha emphasised.

  Her daughter had a point, Jean was forced to admit, but she still didn’t like the thought of Sasha not spending Christmas with the family. The speed with which things had changed, things she had somehow assumed would always be the same, like them all spending Christmas here in Liverpool, had taken her by surprise and she didn’t like it. Suddenly and unexpectedly Jean thought of Vi, her own twin sister, wondering if this was how she had felt when Edwin had left her – alone; afraid; angry with herself and with her family.

  Perhaps she would take the ferry over to Wallasey and go to see Vi. They weren’t close and hadn’t been for years, but somehow Jean felt the need to see her.

  Unaware of the direction of her mother’s thoughts, Sasha added determinedly, ‘And besides, if we don’t see them this Christmas, me and Bobby could end up married before his family have met me properly, seeing as we’ve decided that we don’t want to wait any longer.’

  Jean looked at Sasha. Her daughter was growing up, not a girl any longer but a young woman, eager to be in charge of her own life. She did understand how Sasha felt, Jean acknowledged. She hadn’t forgotten how it felt to be young and in love. But still…

  ‘You know what your dad said about you not getting married until the war’s over, Sasha.’

  ‘Oh, the war, I’m sick of hearing about it and of having my life ruled by it,’ Sasha protested in frustration. ‘It could go on for years yet, and why should me and Bobby have to wait? What difference is the end of the war going to make to us? It’s not as though Bobby is going to be sent overseas or anything. I’m tired of being treated like a child. No one said that Grace couldn’t get married, and no one’s going to stop me and Bobby neither!’

  Jean listened to her daughter’s outburst with a mixture of sympathy and maternal concern, along with some anxious irritation. Sasha knew perfectly well that Grace had been older than her when she and Seb had got engaged, and that they had had to wait until Grace had finished her nurse’s training and passed her exams before they got married. In the past Jean would have told Sasha this in no-nonsense terms, but Sasha had changed. She had become far too easy to rub up the wrong way, which then led to angry outbursts and upset, which did no good to anyone. Sam wouldn’t be at all pleased if he came in to a house filled with the unpleasant silence of a ‘bad mood’. It wouldn’t do any good telling Sasha that, though, Jean recognised. In fact, it was more likely to fan the flames of her rebellion. Sasha had always been the quieter, more cautious twin, but she had changed. Right now Jean suspected that Sasha had worked herself up into such a state that it wouldn’t take very much to push her into rowing not just with her but with her dad as well, and that certainly wouldn’t do her any good.

  So instead of pointing out the flaws in her argument Jean said instead, ‘I do understand how you and Bobby feel, love, but there’s a lot more to being married than having a wedding. Things like having somewhere to live, for a start.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, we’ll find somewhere,’ Sasha protested, adding bitterly, ‘Anyone would think that you don’t want me to be happy, a
nd that you and Dad want to keep me and Bobby apart.’

  ‘That’s silly talk, Sasha,’ Jean felt bound to point out. ‘Of course, me and your dad want you to be happy.’

  ‘Then let me and Bobby get married,’ Sasha challenged her.

  ‘You know how your dad feels. He’s said that you’ve got to wait, and you know your dad when he’s made his mind up about something.’

  Jean could see that Sasha wanted to continue pleading her cause, but she knew that her daughter knew perfectly well that her father was not one to budge once he had made his mind up about something. He could be stubborn, could Sam, when he chose to be and Jean was beginning to think that Sasha took after him.

  FOURTEEN

  London! Lou hadn’t had time to see much of the city when she had come here to be presented with her George Medal by the King, and there certainly hadn’t been any partying of the kind anticipated by June, who had talked excitedly about the fun they were going to have almost non-stop since they had first got on the train, packed with other servicemen and women.

  Since they didn’t know their way around and it was already going dark in that grey depressing way it did in November, they agreed that it would be best to take a taxi to their hotel, although they had to wait for over half an hour to reach the head of the queue.

  When June gave the cabbie the address of the hotel he nodded and then asked them, ‘With that ATA outfit, are you?’ looking at their uniform. ‘Only I took a fare of your lot to the same address less than half an hour ago. American, they were, though.’

  ‘Yes, we are with ATA,’ June confirmed, the two of them holding tight to the seat as the driver swung the cab round a sharp corner and then had to swerve to avoid a group of uniformed GIs.

  ‘Ruddy Yanks,’ the cabbie grumbled. ‘City’s full of them. Get more leave than our lads do, and they’ve more money to spend. If you two girls want a bit of advice you’ll be careful how you go, especially round Piccadilly. Got a bit of a bad reputation, it has now.’