Edna squeezed her shoulder.
‘What’s done’s done. We got to think of the baby. This is my grandchild we’re talking about. We’ll look after it together, you and me. I’ve been making things for it already. Lots of things—nighties, matinée jackets, bootees. They’re so sweet. I was going to surprise you with them, but I think it’s better if I show you now. I’ve been enjoying myself so much doing them. Wait—I’ll fetch them.’
Annie sat on the bed. She felt drained. It was all too much. She just waited for the next thing to happen.
Her mother came back into the room carrying a large gingham-lined basket. Out of it she tenderly took an assortment of exquisitely made baby clothes, all in white, the sewn garments pintucked and embroidered, the woollen ones knitted in intricate lacy stitches. She spread them out on the bed, her face more animated than Annie had seen it in years.
‘Do you like them?’ she asked anxiously.
Annie touched the tiny mittens, the soft bonnets. She smoothed the silky ribbon ties.
‘They’re beautiful—’ she whispered.
There was a catch in her throat. Tears were threatening again. Her mother had done this in secret for her—for her and the baby.
‘We’ll be all right, you and me and the little one, you’ll see,’ her mother insisted.
‘Will we? People are already giving me the cold shoulder. Some of your customers are staying away. What’ll they do to the baby? They’ll call it a—’
‘Stop!’ Edna sounded almost fierce. ‘Don’t say those ugly names. It doesn’t matter what anyone says. We’ll love it. We’ll be together, you and me. That’s all that matters. You’ll be here at Marsh Farm with me.’
It did matter, of course. It hurt when she went into town and old friends cut her and disparaging remarks were made within her hearing. It hurt when nurses at the clinic made a point of calling her Miss Cross in a tone of voice that distinguished her from all the married women. It hurt to hear other expectant mothers chatting to each other about their husbands painting cots and mending prams ready for the new arrivals.
The baby gave Walter a wonderful weapon to use against her. But even he wasn’t as bad as she had feared. Gradually, she realised why. Just like her mother, he needed her there at Marsh Edge Farm, even though he would never admit it. The baby might be a disgrace, but it had tied her to them for ever.
In the early hours of the morning, a week into the new year of 1946, Annie was woken by pains in her back. She got up as usual and made tea for her father and herself before they went out to do the morning milking. The pains were reaching round her stomach now and felt similar to monthly ones, except that they came and went. She stopped to hold on to the side of a stall as one gripped her.
‘What are you hanging about for? There’s work to be done,’ Walter growled.
‘I think … it’s the baby …’ Annie gasped.
But already it was fading again. She straightened up.
‘You get this job finished. You got hours yet. Plenty of time to finish the milking and get the cleaning done. No need to be lying on your back because of that little Yank bastard.’
In a way, he was right. It was nearly midnight before the baby was dragged into the world in an excruciating forceps delivery.
‘It’s a boy,’ the midwife declared.
She washed him in an enamel basin, wrapped him in a towel and placed him in Annie’s arms, where she lay, torn and exhausted, in her lumpy bed.
‘Ah—’ Edna sobbed, ‘isn’t he just the little darling?’
Annie gazed into the baby’s cross little face. He had pale blue eyes and on his head was a fluff of gingery hair. There was no mistaking whose son he was.
‘Hello, baby,’ she whispered, amazed that she should have produced this tiny, perfect human being.
She named him Robert Joseph, after his father, since he was never going to have his father’s surname.
‘Don’t you worry, baby,’ she told him. ‘He might not be here, but I’m going to look after you and love you better than any baby with two parents.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
March 1952
‘MUMMEE!’
Bobby flung himself into Annie’s arms and clung to her with frantic strength.
Annie held him and kissed the top of his hot little head.
‘What is it, sweetheart? What’s the matter?’
Though she knew already. She had known the moment she’d seen him tearing down the road towards her, his face flaming and his coat torn. The other children had been ganging up on him again. Pain twisted within her, that her child should be made to suffer so.
‘I had to fight them,’ Bobby burst out, raising his face to look at her. There was an odd mix of defiance and fear in his pale blue eyes. ‘They were calling you nasty names.’
That made it even worse. Annie felt helpless. She wanted desperately to keep him from harm, but did not know how.
‘What did the teachers say?’ she asked.
‘They told me off for fighting. They said I started it, but I didn’t! I didn’t, Mum, honest. They was picking on me, the big boys, so I had to hit them, didn’t I?’
Annie didn’t know what to say. Turning the other cheek had done no good. But then lashing out didn’t seem to be working either.
‘You’re a brave boy, Bobby, and I’m proud of you,’ she told him, avoiding the question. ‘We don’t care about those bullies. We know they’re just stupid.’
‘Yes,’ Bobby said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
Annie racked her brain for something else to suggest. She had tried speaking to Bobby’s class teacher, but had got nowhere.
‘Just a little harmless playground ragging, Miss Cross. Good for them, toughens them up. It doesn’t do to be overprotective, you know.’
Far from being overprotective, Annie felt she was failing to protect him at all.
‘We don’t need them, we’ve got each other,’ she told him.
She swung him up to sit on the seat of her bike. He was too big now to sit in a child seat on the back.
‘Let’s do something nice together,’ she suggested. ‘We’ll go down to the beach before we go home.’
‘All right.’
The dull acceptance on Bobby’s face hurt most of all. She was his mother and should keep him safe, but already Bobby knew that she couldn’t stop the bullying any more than he could. They were both powerless.
Annie put a foot on the pedal and scooted the bike down the last road out of town between rows of prefab houses and on to the unmade one that led out towards the chalets and the sea wall. Bobby hung on to her shoulders, his feet jammed against the frame of the bike. They bounced over stones and shot through puddles, the chill air of early spring making their cheeks and ears pink. Bobby let out a squeal and Annie’s spirits rose with his. For a while, they were free and able to enjoy each other’s company.
Some of the chalets now had permanent tenants, others were let to holiday-makers in the summer and families in the winter—large, unkempt groups with fierce dogs and hordes of children. The last time Annie had come this way, Silver Sands had just been emptied of a family that had kept goats and donkeys in the big garden.
‘I wonder if there’s anyone new in Silver Sands?’ she said to Bobby.
They rounded the last corner.
‘Oh!’ Annie cried out loud.
For there, on a post by the gate, was an estate agent’s notice.
‘For Sale,’ Bobby read out.
‘Well done,’ Annie said. At least they were teaching him something at school, even if he was unhappy there.
‘I used to dream of living here,’ she told Bobby.
The little boy nodded. She had told him this story before.
‘You wanted to run away and be here all by yourself. An’ then you met a nice boy called Tom who painted pictures. He painted him and you on the v’randa.’
‘Yes—’
Annie looked at the neglected chalet and the tramp
led garden. It was hard now to picture how it had been the year Tom and his family had first come here. Silver Sands had suffered from being empty during the first years of the war and from being occupied by a series of tenants since. It was badly in need of someone who would take pride in it—somebody like herself.
‘Let’s go in,’ she said to Bobby.
The boy scrambled down and Annie leant the bike against the wobbly fence. The gate had sunk on its hinges and needed lifting to get it open. Annie heaved it aside and, hand in hand, she and Bobby walked into the garden and up the veranda steps. She peered in at the windows.
‘Poor house needs an awful lot of work doing on it,’ she said.
Her fingers itched to take a hammer and nails, sandpaper and paint to the place. Its current owner had never really taken much care of it. She remembered the last time it had been for sale, and how her father had refused to buy it. He had more money now, of that she was sure, but there was no point in even raising the subject with him. He just would not see why he should branch out into anything outside farming.
‘Do you like it?’ she asked Bobby.
‘Yes,’ he said, but she could tell that he was only saying it to humour her. To him it was just a damp wooden hut surrounded by a rough piece of land stripped of nearly all vegetation by the previous inhabitants’ goats.
Annie sighed. People wanted holidays again. If her father were, by some miracle, to buy Silver Sands and do it up, families would pay good money to stay here. There was even enough space to build another couple of chalets on the garden. But it was no use dreaming. Some other person would buy it and make a business out of it. At least it made a piece of news to put in her letter to Gwen.
‘Come on,’ she said to Bobby. ‘Let’s go and play on the beach.’
Over the next week she would often look across the fields to where the chalet stood under the sea wall and wonder about who might buy it. She hoped that at least it would be someone who would look after it properly, for if it wasn’t repaired soon it was going to start rotting away. Salt air found every weakness in the woodwork. She couldn’t bear it if her last link with Tom were to collapse into a sad heap of timbers.
And then Gwen’s regular fortnightly letter arrived.
Gwen’s life had not turned out quite as she had imagined. Her marriage to Reggie was everything she had hoped it would be, but the children they had assumed they would make had never arrived. Gwen had grown bored with her job now that it was not just a temporary thing until she became a mother, and Reggie was impatient with the restrictions of working for the council. Living in their London suburb was no more exciting than living in Wittlesham, except that it was easier to reach the attractions of central London. For some time they had been talking about moving out and starting a business of their own. The only problem was that they were not sure just what that business should be.
Gwen enthused on to the page:
Your letter has changed everything, It was like turning on a light. My Reggie saw it straight away. Silver Sands, he said, isn’t that a holiday chalet? And I said yes, it was the last one before Marsh Edge Farm, right by the sea wall and a big garden all round it. And he said, how much garden? You see, we’ve been talking lately about running some sort of holiday place, only not a guest house like my aunty’s. Reggie says guest houses have had their day. All that having to leave at ten in the morning and not being let in again till teatime, people won’t stand for it like they used to. Anyway, you remember we went to that caravan at Southsea for our last holiday? Something like that was what we thought. A caravan site. Only we’d have to start small because we’ve got some money saved and we could go to the bank but still we haven’t got a lot. So when you said Silver Sands was for sale, it seemed like the ideal place. What do you think? We could live in the chalet and put caravans in the garden and we could both still go to work during the winter and then in the summer I could run the site. What do you think? Best of all, it would mean I’d be just across the fields from you! Isn’t that marvellous? We’re coming to Wittlesham on Saturday to look at it and find out how much it is.
Hope to see you then.
Lots of love,
Gwen.
Conflicting feelings swirled inside Annie. If Silver Sands had to go to someone, then it was better that it went to her best friend, especially as that best friend had a husband who would get it back into tiptop condition. But she could not help an ugly stirring of jealousy. Gwen had always been the lucky one, having a nice family, going away to join the WAACs, then marrying Reggie and being so happy with him. Now she was going to live in the place Annie had always dreamed of owning. It really wasn’t fair.
‘Fair doesn’t come into it,’ she told herself severely.
She read the letter again. Gwen was right. The best thing was, her friend would be just across the fields. At last she would have someone other than her mother to talk to, to laugh with, to share problems with. It was like coming out of a long dark winter and seeing the spring sunshine again.
Immediately she saw it that way, a new worry arose—Gwen and Reggie might not buy Silver Sands after all. They might think it was too dilapidated, or too expensive, or not big enough for the number of caravans they wanted to put in the garden. By the time Saturday came, she had gone through a cycle of will they, won’t they a dozen times. She longed to rush out and do something to improve the look of the place, but knew that nothing she could achieve in the small amount of free time she had would make any difference. All she could do was to wait and see what Gwen and Reggie decided.
It was a cold, miserable day. Walter had saved a job for Annie and Bobby to do together.
‘That hen house needs a good cleaning,’ he told them over breakfast. ‘Get all the muck out and scrub it down with carbolic. And mind you do it proper. No skimping. I’ll be along to see what you’re up to.’
Annie looked at her hands. They were roughened and callused from heavy work, the nails trimmed right back and black round the rims despite twice daily scrubbing. By the end of the day they were going to be red and sore as well. Then she looked at Bobby. It wasn’t right. He was having a rotten time at school. He shouldn’t be forced to do such a horrible job on a Saturday.
‘I can do it by myself. Bobby can stay and help Mum,’ she said.
Helping his grandmother would consist of a bit a light dusting before embarking on a pastry-making session. She knew how much Bobby enjoyed rolling and shaping the dough.
Walter snorted. ‘Stay in doing women’s work? What d’you want to do—turn him into a Nancy boy? You, boy!’ He rounded on Bobby, who started and gasped. ‘Go and fetch my boots.’
Bobby was out of his chair almost before his grandfather stopped speaking.
‘Yes, Mr Cross,’ he muttered, and scuttled across the room.
‘He’ll only be in the way. I’ll do it much better on my own,’ Annie said.
But it was no use. Walter had decided, and that was that.
‘He’s got to learn,’ he insisted.
So the two of them spent a cramped, smelly day labouring in the hen house. Whenever they emerged into the yard, Annie looked over towards Silver Sands.
‘I wonder if they’re there yet. I wonder what they’re saying.’ She speculated. ‘It’s ages since Gwennie last saw the place. It’s gone downhill a lot since then. It’ll need an awful lot of work to make it look like a nice place to spend a holiday.’
‘What’s a holiday like?’ Bobby asked.
For a moment, Annie was stumped.
‘Well, I don’t know really, because I’ve never had one. But it must be lovely, mustn’t it, to just do what you want all day long, with no one ordering you around?’
‘Just playing?’ Bobby asked.
‘Just playing,’ Annie agreed, thinking of Tom’s cousins with their tents in the garden and their games of cricket and ‘he’ and hide-and-seek. She didn’t want a holiday for herself any more. She was used to the continual grind of labour. But she did long for Bobby to
be allowed a small piece of carefree childhood.
They had just finished afternoon milking when a frenzied barking from the bad-tempered dog warned of visitors. Without even asking Walter’s permission, Annie shot out into the yard. There were Gwen and Reggie, muffled up in their overcoats and scarves, glowing with excitement. She only had to take one look at them to know.
‘You’ve done it!’ she squealed, and threw herself at Gwen.
‘We did, we did—we thought it was just right!’ Gwen cried, hugging her back. ‘Isn’t it thrilling?’
‘It’s wonderful! I’m so pleased!’ Annie said.
She broke away from Gwen to give Reggie a kiss on the cheek.
‘Congratulations, Reggie—I’m sure it’ll be a huge success.’
Reggie squeezed the top of her arm. ‘Thanks, old girl. I hope you’re right, ‘cos we’re going to sink every penny we’ve got into it. But Gwennie’s got her heart set on it, so what more can I do?’
‘You liked it as well. You thought it was a good idea,’ Gwen insisted.
‘What’s all this row?’
Walter’s harsh voice cut across the euphoria. Both girls went quiet, but Reggie extended a polite hand.
‘How do you do, sir? Reggie Smith, and I think you know my wife, Gwen. We’re going to be your new neighbours at Silver Sands.’
Walter ignored the outstretched hand. ‘Flaming idiots,’ he growled. ‘Must be off your heads.’
Coming to Silver Sands was absolutely the right move for Gwen and Reggie.
‘You always used to say this place was magic. I thought it was just you being daft, but you’re right,’ she said to Annie. ‘There is something very special about it.’
It needed a touch of magic the day they moved in. It was raining and the roof leaked in several places, making the damp interior a whole lot damper. But, like a couple of kids in a Wendy house, they ran about putting buckets and bowls under the drips and making a camp in the driest room.
From then on they worked all the hours they could, first making the chalet weatherproof, then doing up the outside so that it looked welcoming. Builders were hired to construct a small toilet block. Next the fences had to be repaired, the garden tidied and a swing and a see-saw installed. And then they were ready for their great enterprise to begin. Five six-berth caravans arrived—not new, but in very good condition. Gwen and Reggie cleaned and polished them until they were the shiniest on the whole east coast. That was at the end of May. On the first Saturday of June, their first customers arrived—a family from London who had seen their advertisement in Dalton’s Weekly. A week after that, Gwen went to the doctor’s. She came home walking on air.
We'll Meet Again Page 23
