Edie blinked as she gaped up at him. ‘You don’t mean there might be another war? Oh no, Laurence, not again. Surely they won’t let it happen again?’
‘Of course, we all hope not, but—’
‘Then you must leave the army right now.’
Laurence gave a wry laugh. ‘I can’t, Mam, I signed on for nine years and even if I could leave – which I don’t want to and I won’t – I’d soon be called up again. In fact, if it does come to war, all able-bodied men would be called up eventually. Even Frank.’
‘And me?’ Reggie said. ‘I’d like to be a soldier.’
Laurence laughed and ruffled his brother’s floppy brown hair. ‘Well, Shrimp, I hope it won’t last until you’re old enough to go.’
Edie was quiet for a moment before saying softly, ‘So you reckon I ought to give in gracefully and give Frank and Irene my blessing, do you?’
‘I do, Mam. We’ll all be there for them. We’ll help them and – if I know Aunty Lil – they’ll only be living next door. Frank won’t really be leaving home at all,’ Laurence added with a coup d’état worthy of the most seasoned negotiator, ‘not like if he married some girl, who took him right away from here. And besides, Aunty Lil’s all for it. You don’t want to upset her and lose her friendship, now do you?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Edie said swiftly, a sliver of fear coursing through her at just the thought of such a preposterous idea.
‘Oh, I know you’ve got Aunty Jessie down the street,’ Laurence went on, ‘but let’s face it, Mam, you’re closer to Aunty Lil than you are to your own sister.’
Edie gave a huge sigh as she knew herself beaten. Perhaps they were all right; it would be nice to have Irene as her daughter-in-law. So Edie capitulated and made no more objections to the blossoming romance between Frank and Irene, but, for a little while longer, she held out against their marriage. ‘They’re only seventeen. They’re far too young.’
But by 1939, war seemed inevitable and Frank and Irene pestered both families to be allowed to marry before Frank might be conscripted, Edie once more found herself the only one holding out against the idea. This time, even Shirley had accepted the idea especially since the day Irene had asked her to be a bridesmaid. ‘It wouldn’t be a bad thing for Frank to be married, you know,’ Archie argued.
‘You’ve heard about the Military Training Act that’s just been passed, haven’t you, that requires all men aged twenty and twenty-one to take six months’ military training?’ Edie nodded. She’d read about it in the newspapers Archie had shown her. ‘Well, now they’re saying in the papers that if war does come, it’s likely that all men aged eighteen to forty-one will be liable for conscription, though single men would probably be called up before married men.’
‘But it hasn’t come yet,’ Edie retorted, but already she knew she was losing the battle. ‘Frank’s only eighteen, so he’s safe for another two years at least even without getting married.’
‘He’ll be nineteen next month,’ Archie reminded her quietly.
‘But won’t fishing be a reserved occupation?’ was Edie’s last salvo. Archie’s reply had been only a shrug. ‘Yes, it will be – to a point, but they can be called up into the Navy and, besides, fishing’s going to get less and less the longer a war lasts.’
‘But we’ll always need fish,’ Edie tried to argue. ‘Even more so if there’s a war on, though I expect the prices will rocket.’
Archie had remained silent. He didn’t want to tell her that the North Sea would be a dangerous place and that already there was talk of trawlers being commandeered by the Navy to be turned into minesweepers to help the war effort if it became a reality. And fishermen would be volunteering to undertake such work. But fishing would continue, Archie knew, even if the number of vessels putting out to sea to fish were seriously depleted. And that would seriously affect employment in the town; many of the jobs on shore depended on the industry. But it would have to go on; the nation would need to be fed. Archie hoped – as a skipper of some years standing now – that he would be able to hang on to his job but he seriously doubted if young men like Frank would be able to find regular employment. And if they couldn’t, no doubt they would be called up.
In July, the authorities began issuing Public Information Leaflets on what to do if war broke out. The threat was coming closer and closer.
And then, Beth arrived home unexpectedly.
Edie was ironing one Saturday afternoon, swapping her two flat irons in turn as they heated on the range. Archie was dozing in his chair by the fire whilst Shirley sat at the table polishing her mother’s copper kettle, when they all heard the sound of light footsteps tripping down the passageway.
‘If I didn’t know better,’ Edie murmured, ‘I’d think that was our Beth . . .’
She glanced up at the window that looked out over the backyard and saw a slim figure heading to the back door.
‘It is her,’ Shirley said, flinging down her polishing cloth and rushing into the scullery.
‘Eh? What?’ Half asleep, Archie struggled up from his chair whilst Edie stood with one iron suspended in mid-air, staring at the door leading from the living room into the scullery and listening to the excited voices of her two daughters. Archie was already holding his arms out wide. ‘Beth, my lovely, you’ve come home to us.’
‘Looks like I won’t get my ironing finished now,’ Edie murmured, but she was smiling as she put the iron back on the hob and went forward to meet her daughter.
When the first flurry of welcome had settled down and Archie had carried her suitcase up the stairs, Edie bustled about setting out the tea. ‘You must be hungry. You sit down in my chair, Beth, and tell us all about it. Have you left the Forsters? Are you home for good?’
Before she could answer, the back door burst open and Reggie came in, panting heavily and grinning widely. ‘I thought it was you. I was playing footie up the end of the street and I saw you. Have you come home for Frank’s wedding?’
Beth’s eyes widened. ‘Are they getting married soon, then? How lovely.’
‘Only if they elope, ’cos there’s been a lot of argy-bargy in this house about it,’ Reggie went on before anyone else could speak. ‘Mam dun’t want ’em to get wed, but the rest of us do. Laurence is going to be Best Man and I’m going to be an usher.’ The nine-year-old was a gangly boy with scuffed knees and short trousers. He had brown hair, like Frank, and the same dark eyes.
‘And I’m going to be Irene’s bridesmaid,’ Shirley said importantly, but then her smile faded a little. ‘Though I expect she’ll want you instead, now you’re home.’
Beth put her arm round her sister. ‘Not instead, chérie, but maybe as well. That’d be all right, wouldn’t it?’
Shirley nodded and smiled again. She gazed at Beth, drinking in the sight of her – she was taller than her elder sister already. She was still the same Beth, and yet there was a difference about her and not only in the stylish cut of her hair – swept back from her face but falling in shining waves and curls to her shoulder. She was wearing a fitted pink jacket with a pink and grey flared skirt. A pale blue scarf, tied in a bow at her neck and a jaunty pink hat completed what was a very smart and fashionable outfit.
‘Is that what they’re wearing in France just now?’ Edie said, eying the fancy clothes with a mixture of envy and anxiety. ‘It must have cost you a small fortune.’
‘C’est très chic, Maman,’ Beth laughed and added, ‘Madame treated me to this outfit as a thank-you for all my work with the children.’
‘Well, don’t let your Aunty Jessie see it. She’ll have it off your back as soon as look at you.’
‘It wouldn’t fit her. She’s rather more’ – Beth struggled to find the English word – ‘voluptuous than I am.’
Edie sniffed. ‘Maybe so, but if she knows that it’s a Paris fashion, she’ll squeeze herself into it.’
But Jessie, when she saw Beth’s finery a little later in the afternoon, merely clapped her hands. ‘Oh darling
, you look wonderful. So like me, isn’t she, Edie?’
Edie smiled thinly. There was no denying that Beth resembled her aunt in so many ways. She had the same prettiness and the same vivacious personality. She just hoped that Beth would be lucky enough to find a husband as good as Harry but that she, unlike poor Jessie, would be blessed with children.
As they all sat down around the tea table, they pressed Beth to tell them why she had come home. ‘Not that we’re not delighted to see you and hope you’re back for good,’ Archie added, trying hard not to let his favouritism for his elder daughter show in front of the rest of his family.
‘When Frank gets married,’ Reggie said, ‘you could have our attic bedroom all to yourself. I wouldn’t mind sleeping down here in Mam’s front room.’
‘Now, you just hold your horses, young man,’ Edie said firmly. ‘It’s not definite that they’re getting married – at least not yet anyway?’
Beth gazed across the table at her mother, her soft brown eyes suddenly very serious. Her smile had faded from her face. ‘Mam,’ she said softly, ‘there is a war coming, you know. That’s why I’ve come home. Czechoslovakia has been overrun and now Hitler’s got his sights on Poland. If that happens, we’ll go to war and the French are very afraid that yet another war is going to be waged in their homeland.’
There was silence around the table as Beth finished speaking. Slowly, Edie raised her eyes to meet her daughter’s gaze. ‘Then you think – you all think – I should allow them to get married?’
Slowly, Beth nodded. ‘The sooner the better, I’d say, Mam.’
‘All right. You win. You all win.’
‘Don’t look at it like that, Mam,’ Beth pleaded, but it was Archie who chuckled and said, ‘If I know your mam, Beth, once she gets started planning this wedding with your Aunty Lil, she’ll forget she was ever against the idea.’
They all laughed and then Archie prompted Beth, ‘So, with all that’s happening in France, you thought it best to come home. Very sensible, love.’
Beth laughed. ‘I can’t take the credit for that, Dad. It was Mr Forster – Alan – who decided we should all come back here. But you should have seen Madame’s reaction. She was almost hysterical at the thought of leaving her parents to the mercy of the Nazis. So Alan said we’d all come – her parents and her brother, Emile, too.’
‘And have they?’
Beth shook her head. ‘Her parents wouldn’t leave their farm and Emile’ – she paused and Edie was sure she detected a softer tone and a note of anxiety when she spoke the young man’s name – ‘he’s determined to stay and fight for his country if it comes to that – and I think it will.’
‘So, who’s come back, then? Just Mr Forster, his wife and the children?’
Beth nodded. ‘But they’re settling down south, near London, this time. As a fluent French speaker, Alan thinks he can be helpful to the War Office.’
‘Won’t he be called up?’
‘It’s very doubtful he’d pass the medical. Evidently he had rheumatic fever as a child, which has left him with a mild heart condition. It was nothing serious in terms of being life threatening, but it was enough to keep him from ever being called up to active service. But with his background knowledge of France, he thinks he could be very useful here in the event of Britain becoming involved in the war.’
‘What about you, love?’ Archie asked softly, already fearing the answer he guessed he was about to hear. ‘What are you going to do? Are you still needed down south to look after the Forster children?’
‘No, Simone is enrolling them in boarding school, so I intend to offer my services to the authorities wherever I can be of use.’
At this, there was silence around the table.
Four
‘Get kettle on, Lil,’ Edie called as she stepped into her neighbour’s living room the following morning, where Lil was rolling out pastry and Irene was hanging her underclothes on the airer suspended by ropes and pulleys from the ceiling. ‘Our Beth’s home – though how long for, I don’t know – and it looks like we’ve got a wedding to plan.’
Irene turned round and her mouth dropped open, but Lil looked puzzled. ‘What d’you mean? Is Beth getting married?’
Edie chuckled, nodding towards Irene. ‘No, I mean these two rascals. Everyone else seems to think it’s a good idea, so, I’m beaten.’
‘Oh Aunty Edie, please don’t say that,’ Irene said, moving towards their friend and neighbour. ‘We both want you to be pleased for us.’
Edie sighed. ‘I am, love, it was just that I had doubts at first and you’re both so young, but if Frank is old enough to have to go to fight for his country, then I suppose he’s old enough to get married. And we’ll all be on hand to help you both. By the way, where are you going to live? Here with your mam?’
‘It makes sense,’ Lil said. ‘Frank’s away at sea a lot and, if he does get called up, it would be silly for Irene to be paying rent to live on her own, now wouldn’t it?’
‘That’s what we all thought.’
‘Oh Aunty Edie, thank you – thank you.’ Irene hugged her and then stood back, her eyes shining. ‘And you say Beth’s home. Do you think she’d be another bridesmaid alongside Shirley?’
‘I’m sure she’d love it,’ Edie said, beaming.
Arrangements for the wedding moved swiftly and a date was set for Saturday, 9 September.
‘Now,’ Beth said, ‘you’re not going to mind me being a bridesmaid too, are you, Shirley?’
Shirley was the misfit in the Kelsey family. She was an unattractive child with straight mousey hair, not helped by a permanently sulky expression. Although Archie tried valiantly to hide his favouritism of Beth – he never spoiled her any more than he did the others – Edie did not hide the fact that she idolized her three boys. Challenged, she would have hotly denied showing any preference, but Shirley felt it. Beth – pretty, lively and able to make friends easily – felt sorry for her younger sister and always tried to compensate. She and Irene had always included the younger girl in their outings and tried to involve her in their girlie chats and their experiments with make-up and clothes. But when Beth had left home and Irene had started seeing more of Frank, the younger girl had felt lonely. She didn’t make friends easily and had few school chums.
Now, though, Beth was back and both she and Irene were including Shirley in the wedding preparations.
‘Are you staying on at school until next year, chérie?’ Beth asked, as she wielded a pair of curling tongs. Sitting in front of Irene’s dressing table, Shirley meekly submitted to Beth’s valiant efforts to instil some curl into her sister’s short hair.
Shirley grimaced into the mirror. ‘Mam says I ought to. She says if I leave, I’ll only get drafted into some sort of job to do with the war effort.’
‘Maybe you could get a job at Oldroyd’s with me,’ Irene said. ‘Do you want me to ask? I mean, you are old enough to leave school now, aren’t you? Or do you want to take the exams?’
‘It’d be a good idea to stay on,’ Beth advised. ‘If you get any sort of qualification, no one can ever take it away from you, you know. Alan Forster was very keen to know what subjects I’d passed when he interviewed me – and that was only to look after his kids.’
‘Mm. Trouble is, I don’t like school much. I wouldn’t mind leaving now.’
‘I’ll ask Miss Townsend at work if they’ve any vacancies, if you like,’ Irene said.
‘Right,’ Beth said giving Shirley’s hair a triumphant flick. ‘Don’t you think that looks nice, Irene?’
All three girls scrutinized Shirley’s new look in the mirror.
‘It does. Curly hair really suits you,’ Irene said. ‘You’ll have to learn how to do it up in rags at night.’
‘To sleep in, you mean?’
Irene nodded.
‘Won’t it be uncomfortable?’
‘Well, yes, a bit but—’
‘Oh, how we have to suffer for our beauty, chérie,’ Beth said,
dramatically putting the back of her hand against her forehead.
Shirley giggled. ‘What’s this “sherree” you keep calling me?’
‘It’s French for “darling”.’
‘Can you speak a lot of French now?’
‘Oh yes.’ Beth pulled a face. ‘In fact, I’m having a job to think of English words sometimes.’
Irene kept her promise to ask about vacancies in the department store where she worked, but, the next evening, she came round to see Shirley. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a low voice out of range of Edie’s sharp hearing. ‘But they’re not taking on any new staff at the moment because of all the uncertainty over the war.’
‘It’s OK,’ Shirley said. ‘I’ll stay on until next summer. Things might be better by then.’
Irene smiled wanly and nodded. She was very much afraid that, by then, things might be a whole lot worse.
The date for the wedding – 9 September – had been decided and the church booked, but a venue for the reception had still not been decided on.
‘We’ll have it in my front room,’ Edie said.
‘Or mine,’ Lil put in. ‘I’m the bride’s mother. I’m supposed to be whatever-they-call it. The hostess, I suppose.’
‘Now, Lil, we’ve had all this out before; you’re to let me and Archie help you and not be embarrassed about it. We’re one big happy family. Remember?’
‘Mebbe we could hire a hall somewhere,’ Lil said, but Edie could hear the doubt in her tone. Hiring a hall would be expensive. The young couple couldn’t afford it and neither could she.
‘No need, duck,’ Edie was adamant. ‘We’ll squeeze everybody in. There won’t be that many more than we have round the table at Christmas. And we’ll do the catering between us. In fact, if you’re not doing owt now, how about a trip round the shops to see what we can get to put by for the big day?’
Now that she had given in to the idea, Edie embraced it with the fervour of the converted.
The two women set off together and joined a queue outside the butcher’s. ‘I wonder if . . .’ Edie began but she was interrupted by a merry voice from the front of the line.
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