by Irene Carr
She smiled at Ursula Whittle, who had been nervous and uncertain in enforcing discipline as Sophie’s teacher, but had grown in confidence over the years, and a warm friendship had grown between herself and Chrissie. Ursula was still a little severe, still on her guard, but she was smiling now, the sun glinting on her spectacles, as she talked to another of her former pupils, Helen Ballantyne, formerly Diaz. Helen’s black hair had grown lustrous and long again. Chrissie heard her daughter-in-law say, ‘So I will be able to go to medical school after I have had my baby,’ and enjoyed a glow of happiness and pride.
It was good to see Helen’s happiness. Soon after her return from Spain she had received a letter from the officer commanding the regiment in which her father and brother had fought. He said that they had both been killed in action at a time and place near where Helen had been nursing. She had wept bitterly and turned to Chrissie for solace, who held the girl to her breast.
The war in Spain was over, but now . . . Tom was in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He was an inch or two shorter than Jack, but more like him, with his dark hair, than the sandy Matt. Now Tom called from halfway down the table, ‘I hear the Railway Hotel will be open again about August, Mother.’
‘That’s right.’ Chrissie knew where he had got his information. Sarah Tennant sat by his side. While seemingly little changed, still slight and shy, she had matured. She was more assured, though she was young for the responsibility she carried now – and there would be more before long. She worked closely with Chrissie. It was the culmination of a decision Chrissie had taken two years before, when she had promoted the girl out of the kitchen to be a chambermaid, to train Sarah as an assistant manager, a job she would have when the Railway Hotel, being rebuilt with the loan from Randolph Tourville, reopened. Chrissie, Sarah and Dinsdale Arkley would run the two hotels between them. Sarah was too young, just past her eighteenth birthday, to be a manager, though she would be ready when it came to her in time. Chrissie looked at Sarah and Tom and could foresee another wedding there. But as to her own daughter?
Sophie saw her mother’s gaze fixed on her and smiled. Peter Robinson, home between voyages, sat at Sophie’s side. The double-breasted suit he had saved for fitted his muscular body snugly. His hands resting on the white cloth were rough and calloused, the knuckles scarred. He was still uneasy in this company and would be for a long time to come, but while he was only uneasy, Sophie was screwing up her courage. She was slender in a linen tweed suit with a short jacket, and laughing to hide her nervousness. The talk was going on around them and leaving them in a little backwater of their own. She said, ‘I told Mother six months ago that I was finished with you, that I wasn’t going to spend my life waiting to see if you would live to come home, but here we are.’
Peter shook his head. ‘You were right for the wrong reasons. There’s more sailors die in retirement ashore than ever drown at sea. But you said you only wanted to be friends and that’s all we are. There’s no call for you to worry about being tied to me.’
Sophie had known it would not be easy. She kept her smile in place and went on, ‘Is that still what you want?’
Peter said grimly, ‘It’s what I can afford. I’ve seen chaps that married lasses with money. I’m not going to trot around after you like a bloody poodle.’
Sophie winced inside. Peter was a seaman, paying his way and owing to nobody, but far from wealthy, while she was now a name in the entertainment world, vocalist with the Leslie Taylor Band, broadcasting, recording, even appearing in a film. She knew that if she wanted Peter there was only one way. She said, ‘That won’t happen to you because I’m not going to marry.’ Sophie turned her head to face him and thought, Now for it! ‘I still want my own life. No rings, no wedding. Just you – and me.’ She knew she was pink cheeked and thought, A fine scarlet woman you are!
He stared at her, shocked. ‘We couldn’t do that! What would folks say?’
‘I don’t care what they say. Do you?’
‘Aye. And I’d flatten any man that called you a bad name!’ Peter glared at her.
‘I don’t want that.’ Sophie felt she was winning and laid a soothing hand on his sleeve but grinned at him wickedly. ‘So I’ll have to be careful.’ She decided she had gone almost far enough now. She challenged huskily, ‘Can you tell me you don’t love me? Honestly?’
Peter’s glare faded and after a time he said, ‘I can’t do that. But it won’t make any diff—’ She stopped him then with her finger on his lips.
That night Peter’s half-brother Billy Hackett was away at an Easter Cubs camp and Peter sat in his flat above the garage behind the Ballantyne Hotel, over his books at the table in the sitting-room. He was studying for his ‘ticket’, his certificate as ‘mate’, but that would lie in the distant future because first he had to be rated able seaman. He found this a good time to study, after the pubs had shut and the streets outside were silent. He did not hear the tap of heels that broke that silence but looked up when a key was inserted in the lock on the front door at the foot of the stairs. Frowning, he shoved back his chair and was at the head of the stairs when Sophie climbed them.
He stared at her, surprised. ‘I didn’t know you had a key.’
‘Nobody else knows,’ she answered softly. ‘I told you I would be careful.’
Chrissie, with Jack sleeping by her side, lay wakeful, and looked back over the day with only partial contentment. All her family around her . . . She remembered the promise she had made nearly twenty years ago, that she would hold them together. She had done it and that was cause for congratulation, but she felt that the worst test was yet to come.
Gallagher stumbled out into the night from a Liverpool pub, McNally lurching drunkenly at his side. Gallagher was cursing under his breath, harping on the subject that always upset him when the drink hit him, mouthing obscenities.
‘That little cow. She cost us our jobs. I’ll never get a foreman’s billet again.’ He staggered and fell against a sagging wooden fence, shoved himself upright and vented his rage and lust for vengeance on the insensate timber. He kicked the fence down, smashed it under his stamping feet, all the time seeing it as Sophie Ballantyne.
26
September 1942
‘We only know that she was brought in by an ambulance that found her lying in the road.’ The nursing sister lifted her hands helplessly. ‘We presume she had been run down by a car in the black-out. It’s not uncommon.’
Chrissie and Sophie knew it was not. They had lived through three years of war and black-outs now. Chrissie asked, ‘Can we see her?’
The sister guessed that they had come a long way. Both had North Country accents, though the older woman’s was more marked. And she looked tired – from travelling? Her smart two-piece suit was wrinkled. They were both attractive and the younger woman – girl, really – the sister summed up as ‘like a film star’: blonde, slender, blue eyed.
‘Of course.’ The sister got up from her chair. ‘This way.’ She led Chrissie and her daughter down the long ward between the lines of beds. The hospital was in South London, and its outside walls bore the signs of bombing and the marks of shell fragments from anti-aircraft barrages, holes and long scars in the red brickwork. The sister stopped by one bed and stooped over the patient there for a moment. Then she straightened and indicated two straight-backed chairs: ‘Would you like to sit with her for a while? I’m afraid there’s no sign of a recovery,’ she said, and after a moment’s hesitation, added, low voiced, ‘I think she might go at any time.’
‘Thank you.’ Chrissie sank down on to one of the chairs. ‘We’ll stay.’ Sophie took the other, with a smile for the sister who turned away and went back to her work. Chrissie stared at her mother and whispered, ‘My God! She’s skin and bone!’
Martha Tate’s arms, lying on the sheet, were skeletal, her head like a skull with sunken cheeks and eye sockets. She seemed quite still. It was only when they watched her carefully that they saw the faintest of breaths flutter
ing her bloodless lips. They had nowhere to go so they sat and waited.
When Martha Tate was admitted to the hospital the staff had found only one address in her bag and that was of Solly Rosenberg. They had sent a telegram to him and he had telephoned Chrissie. Sophie had chanced to be at home and accompanied her mother on the journey south through the night. They had spent twelve hours sitting in railway carriages, dimly lit and with their windows blacked, crowded with servicemen, their rifles and kitbags. Then they had gone straight to the hospital.
Chrissie felt bedraggled and guessed that her bolero suit looked as if she had slept in it – which she had. It was made from a pre-war edge-to-edge coat she had cut down and converted. Her new raincoat was one of the wartime ‘utility’ models, cut to economise on cloth. It had used fourteen of her sixty-six clothing coupons for the year. She had used it as a blanket in the train and now it hung over the back of an empty chair.
They waited all through that long day, taking turns to go out to a nearby café in the afternoon for a cup of tea and a sandwich of bread thinly spread with margarine and jam. They waited into the evening, and as the day died, so Martha Tate breathed her last. She never woke.
Chrissie found she was weeping as she stood and watched the screens being closed around the bed. Sophie put her arm around her mother but Chrissie wiped the tears away angrily. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying. She handed me over to strangers, never gave me love or a word of kindness or anything else. She only came to me when she wanted something.’
It had been Chrissie’s adoptive mother, Mary Carter, who had given her affection and guidance. And it was Mary’s example that Chrissie followed when bringing up her own children.
Chrissie went with Sophie and collected the few belongings of Martha Tate. As they waited by the desk a tired-looking, middle-aged man entered the ward. He carried a shabby raincoat over one arm and held a trilby hat in the other hand. He paused to ask the sister. ‘What’s the news on Vesta Nightingale?’
Chrissie glanced at him, startled at his use of her mother’s stage name. The sister shot him a warning look and said, ‘This is Mrs Tate’s daughter and granddaughter.’
‘Oh?’ He looked from Sophie to Chrissie, then back to Sophie, his brow wrinkling, puzzled.
The sister said, ‘Mrs Tate died not long ago.’
‘I see. Well, that settles that.’ He still looked at Sophie but Chrissie asked him, ‘What did you want with my mother?’
Now he turned to her. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Gurney. If you could spare me a minute or two outside?’ He waited until Chrissie had signed for the surprisingly large parcel of Martha’s belongings, then led them out to a corner in the corridor where they had a little privacy. There Gurney explained, awkwardly, ‘Sorry if I looked surprised in there when the sister said who you were. Fact is, you’re not what I would have expected.’ He went on disjointedly as the thoughts popped into his head: ‘See, down at the station we all knew Vesta – Mrs Tate – mind, she usually called herself Vesta Nightingale. Sang in the pubs and clubs around here. She was a –’ he hesitated, then finished diplomatically – ‘a character. Mind you, she was a heroine when the worst of the blitz was on. Singing her heart out in the shelters when the rest of us were shi—were scared we weren’t going to get out again.’ He grimaced. ‘There were a lot killed and we thought we were next. The floor lifting under your feet and bits o’ the roof falling down on your head but she sang through it all. Should ha’ had a medal.’ He was looking past them, his eyes unfocused, remembering. Then he grinned wrily and admitted, ‘O’ course, she was probably pie eyed.’ Then he recalled who he was talking to and apologised. ‘Sorry. But she did take a drink, now and again.’
Chrissie said wearily, ‘I know all about her drinking and a lot of other things, Sergeant. You can be frank with me. What did you want with her?’
Gurney cleared his throat. ‘Well, if you want it straight, we knew she wasn’t being paid anything for singing. To tell the truth, she was probably good in her day, but that was years ago. All the time I’ve known her, that’s three or four years now, she’s been singing for her booze and that’s all. So she used to make a few bob for the rent – ’ he hesitated again, then finished awkwardly, ‘In other ways.’ Chrissie remembered the men she had seen with her mother and Sophie recalled those Martha Tate had brought back to the rooms she shared with Sophie in Newcastle. Gurney looked away, embarrassed, and hurried on. ‘But lately we reckon she’s been involved with the black market. Nothing big, but acting as somebody’s go-between. Of course, we’ll not be pursuing that line of enquiry any further now.’
At Chrissie’s request he showed them where Martha Tate had lived, in one rented, damp basement room. Chrissie found there were four weeks’ rent owing and she paid that to the landlady, who lived upstairs. There was nothing in the room that she wanted, little in fact but a bed and a chair, some old playbills from bygone variety theatres showing Vesta Nightingale near the top of the bill, and a handful of bills of another kind – unpaid. There were a few old clothes and a small box of jewellery, all imitation. Chrissie wrote cheques to settle the bills and told the landlady that anyone who wanted the clothes and jewellery could have them.
She and Sophie found a room in a small hotel and there they opened the brown paper parcel brought from the hospital. It held the clothes Martha Tate was wearing when she was picked up by the ambulance, and a brown paper carrier bag. This seemed to hold clothing, but when Chrissie pulled out the much darned cardigan stuffed on top and the folded skirt below she found the bottom of the bag lined with packets of tea.
Sophie said drily, ‘Well, it could be her ration for months.’
However, they both knew Gurney had been right and Martha had been selling tea on the black market. Chrissie remembered his talk of Martha drinking and finding the rent by making money ‘in other ways’. Her mother had died as she had lived.
Chrissie organised the funeral and stood dry eyed with Sophie as her mother’s body was interred. Then she and her daughter went home.
‘Tack! Tack! Tack! Tack! Tack!’ Chrissie looked up from her desk, at first refusing to believe what she had heard.
Sophie had accompanied Chrissie home but only stayed for one night. She had left to make a tour of army camps and airfields before going back to work for the Leslie Taylor Band in London. Chrissie went back to running the rebuilt Railway Hotel. The Ballantyne had been requisitioned by the government in January 1940, soon after the outbreak of war, and was now a hostel for workers directed into the town. Dinsdale Arkley managed the hostel and Chrissie the Railway Hotel. Sarah – Ballantyne since her marriage to Tom in 1940 – worked for and with both of them. The two women had become very close.
It was on a morning in early October that Chrissie sat in her office in the Railway Hotel, working through the correspondence that had arrived that morning, and listened in disbelief. Then the dry rattle came again: ‘Tack! Tack! Tack! Tack! Tack!’
Chrissie had never heard one before but knew it was a machine-gun. She swung out of her chair and around the desk and ran. She shouted to the girl in reception, ‘Air Raid! Sound the alarm!’ then dashed on along the corridor leading to the rear of the building. The jangle of the fire alarm filled the corridor as she reached the door at the end of it and passed through into the yard. Then she heard the belated banshee wailing of the air-raid warning sirens.
Billy Hackett was in the yard. Thirteen years old now and home from school for a half-term holiday, he was looking after the two toddlers as they played. Chrissie snatched up Jean, Tom and Sarah’s one-year-old, and grabbed the arm of three-year-old Robert, Matt and Helen’s son. She tugged him along, his short legs barely touching the ground so that he skipped, making for the brick-built surface air-raid shelter that took up a quarter of the yard.
She heard a whistling, and knew what caused it, had heard it too often. She shouted, ‘In the shelter, Billy!’ and herded him before her, seeing his frightened face turned to her, to push him
in at the door of the shelter. The whistle became a scream as they stumbled in the cold, concrete darkness of the shelter. Then the floor of solid concrete shuddered under them, the blast blew open the door behind them and snatched at their clothing. The boom! of the explosion deafened them and dust boiled in at the open door.
Chrissie realised young Robert was clinging to her leg and she released his arm then used that free hand to search for the shelf and the torch standing on it. She found it and flicked the switch. The beam was feeble and she made a mental note to get another battery for it, though that would be difficult since they were in short supply. Nevertheless, the light cut through the swirling dust cloud and showed Billy comforting little Robert, though he was scared himself but trying to hide it. Jean, the baby, in the crook of Chrissie’s arm, had her face scrunched up, eyes shut and mouth wide open. It was a second or two before Chrissie realised she had been deafened by the bomb and could not hear the child wailing.
There were three benches, one along each wall of the shelter except that pierced by the door. They served as bunks or seats. Chrissie sank down on one, feeling her legs give loosely under her. Billy sat beside her, holding Robert on his knee. All of them were covered in the dust that still hung in the air. Chrissie and Billy tried to soothe the young children and waited tensely for another bomb. It did not come. The dust settled and their hearing returned, their breathing slowed to normal. Then the door was pushed open again and Sarah cried frantically, ‘Mother! Are you there?’ Then as she saw the little group huddled together in the light of the torch: ‘Oh, thank God!’
She said she had been working on the top floor of the hotel, had been halfway down the stairs when the bomb exploded, and had feared for them. Chrissie surrendered Jean and Sarah clutched her baby. So they waited together until the sirens sounded the all-clear.
