Wartime Sweethearts

by Lizzie Lane

  He was also commiserating with himself that Ruby had not come crawling to ask him for her job back. He’d fully expected her to, but she hadn’t. The cow!

  Still, not entirely her fault. The bloody war again! That stupid brother of hers had gone to war so she and her sister were left with the job of keeping the bakery afloat, them and that sanctimonious father of theirs. He was getting to hate the Sweet family, though he had to smile at the thought of old man Sweet coming along to ask him if he would consider marrying Ruby so she wouldn’t go off and do something stupid like joining up. He’d actually told him he would think about it, figuring that way the old man might persuade Ruby to fill in with a little bar work now and again. It occurred to him that Ruby didn’t know her father had come pleading for him to take her off his hands. Silly old bugger. Why keep a horse if you only needed a ride? Not a bloody lifelong partner. Never again. Once was enough, and anyway, with the men off to war, the women of the village would be starved of male company. He’d have the pick of the crop! He wouldn’t be joining up, that’s for sure. Catching rheumatic fever as a child had put paid to that. A dicky heart, so he’d been told. Unfit for duty.

  He kept a grip on the post at the side of the stile; his knees buckled when he tried to stand upright. His head was throbbing, his eyes stinging. He wished he hadn’t had so much to drink then he could see her better. It sounded like Ruby, though it was too dark to see her. Still, who needed to see the goose to stuff it? A grope in the dark was as good as anything. He’d know that body anywhere. It was just a case of getting close enough to feel her.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said enticingly, standing sideways so she could pass through the narrow gap. His head reeled every time he moved, but by leaning his back against the bushes and holding on to the post, he managed to stay upright.

  Frances considered going back the way she’d come, but what if he came after her? There was a whole lane of darkness behind her whereas home wasn’t that far in front.

  She gulped and decided to go forward. Despite her cocky manner, the landlord of the Apple Tree frightened her. But she had to get home.

  Tightly gripping the handlebars of the bike she gave it a big enough push to get it going despite the puncture. The entrance to the lane was only just wide enough for her and the bike to get through. Gareth Stead’s thick-set body silhouetted against the light behind him narrowed it further.

  As she came level she felt the heat of his body, the brush of his rough tweed coat against her hip. She smelt the tang of his breath and his sweat, heard the quickening of his breathing.

  ‘Gotcha!’

  She screamed as he grabbed her with one hand before his other hand pressed over her mouth. She hung on to the bike.

  His palm was fleshy against her mouth. She bit him.

  ‘Ouch! You bitch … I’ll teach you …’

  Her skirt was hitched up to her waist. She should have dropped the bike, but sensed it was an encumbrance to what he wanted to do. She clung to it, like a shield.

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘Ruby! Ruby my love …’ The moon suddenly shone clear. Stead looked at her with bleary eyes. ‘You!’

  Frances kicked him.

  ‘You bitch! I’ll teach you …’

  Gareth Stead didn’t get the chance to teach her anything. Ruby came across the pair and gasped in horror at the sight before springing into action.

  ‘Let my cousin go or you’ll get this rolling pin around the back of your head!’

  ‘Ooow!’ Gareth warbled contempt as he attempted to focus on the figure wielding the rolling pin. ‘Ruby, me darling. I’ve been waiting … I thought—’

  ‘Frances? Come here.’

  Frances did as she was told.

  ‘Darling, I didn’t realise it was the kid. I thought—’

  ‘Don’t you darling me!’

  Ruby posed quite a picture, standing there with her arm raised, though shaking with anger so much that even the rolling pin was trembling.

  ‘Ruby, I meant no harm—’

  ‘Keep away from my family, Gareth Stead. Do you hear me? Keep away from my family or it’ll be the worse for you.’

  The moonlight lit up the sickly grin on his face. ‘Certainly, but can you guarantee your family staying away from me? I mean, your father came and asked me if I would marry you. Did you know that?’

  Despite the cold night air, Ruby felt her face getting hot.

  He couldn’t have goaded her better. Feeling only anger for the man she’d once cared for, she charged up to him and almost spat a warning into his face.

  ‘Keep your filthy mouth shut, Gareth, or it’ll be the worse for you.’

  He laughed in her face. ‘Hah! I could tell everyone—’

  ‘I don’t think so! Not if I spread a few rumours of my own. Do you know what happens to men who try it on with children in a village like this, Mr Stead? Do you? Well, let me tell you this, my father would chop off your most treasured assets if he ever heard of this, so I’m giving you a choice. Keep away from my family and keep your mouth shut about what my father asked you, and neither he nor the other men in the village will ever hear of this. Approach any of them ever again and he gets to be told. My father killed men in the last war, some of whom he thinks may not have needed killing but he did it because he had to. He’s not easily riled to anger, but he would be for you, Gareth. He certainly would be for you!’

  Ruby was silent and still trembling when she walked back to the bakery, angrily pushing the bicycle with the punctured tyre.

  Frances knew when to keep quiet; she should have been home earlier. She shouldn’t have been a bad girl and taken the short cut down Pool Lane. This was all her fault and she felt bad about it.

  Far from feeling heroic, Ruby was considering what Gareth had told her about her father asking him to reconsider marrying her. However, her main concern was the possibility of her father finding out about Gareth’s attack on Frances tonight. It struck her that Frances had been telling the truth from the start. Why hadn’t she seen it? Surely love wasn’t that blind? If it was then she resolved never to fall for another man again.

  The main priority was to keep this incident from her father. If he should ever find out he would kill Stead. She knew he would.

  One hundred yards from the bakery, Ruby, still pushing the bicycle, a tired Frances at her side, came to a stop. ‘Frances. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘You believe me now?’

  Although the darkness hid her features, Ruby heard the anguish in her cousin’s voice. ‘I believe you, but you must promise me this will remain a secret between us. You must not tell your uncle Stan. For Charlie’s sake, you must not tell my father what that horrible man did to you. He’s so worried about Charlie, about all of us, and anyway, I think my warning will be enough to keep Gareth away from us. Do you promise?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frances. ‘But can I ask something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you really have hit him with that rolling pin?’

  Ruby laughed. ‘I might very well have done, then instead of your uncle being in trouble it would have been me!’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Stan Sweet had been going to send Frances up to bed without supper for being late, but reconsidered on learning she’d been out on an errand for the bakery and the bike had had a puncture.

  ‘I’ll mend it in the morning. Good job you’re not off until late morning. You look all in, you do. Now eat your supper and get yourself off to bed.’

  Ruby shot Frances a warning look, reminding her of what they’d agreed as her cousin scoffed her supper in record time.

  ‘Goodnight, Frances.’

  Frances went to bed leaving Ruby relieved her father had not noticed anything unusual – or she thought so until he said, ‘Hit anybody with that rolling pin, did you?’

  ‘Rolling pin?’

  ‘I saw you take it from the drawer.’

  ‘Well. You never know, what with the blackout and everything …�
� she said as she folded up the tablecloth, turning her back on him as she placed it in a drawer.

  ‘Ahh!’ he said. ‘The blackout.’

  She waited until her father had gone outside to the privy at the bottom of the garden before speaking with Mary.

  Mary, who was scrubbing down the table they used for mixing bread dough, listened in amazement as Ruby ran through the details.

  ‘Did you hit him with the rolling pin?’ To Ruby’s ears it sounded as though Mary was hoping that she had.

  Ruby shook her head. ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Mary and went on scrubbing the table.

  ‘I still can’t believe Dad asked Gareth to marry me. I’m mortified.’

  Mary stopped scrubbing.

  ‘Have you mentioned it to him? I mean, are you going to tell Dad that you know?’

  Ruby shrugged and looked undecided. ‘Should I?’

  Mary gripped the scrubbing brush with both hands as she considered the likely outcome if her sister did mention it. ‘I don’t think so. We know why he did it. He was only doing what he thought was for the best. This war frightens him. He’s afraid of losing us all.’

  Ruby nodded and pulled a strained expression. ‘I know. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been such a fool with that man and if I’d believed Frances in the first place …’

  ‘You’re right, though – Dad must never find out. He’ll kill him. You know how he gets if anybody dares upset this family. He sacrificed his own life for us. He’d lose his temper and get in serious trouble.’

  ‘Gareth is drinking too much. More than he used to.’

  ‘I had heard.’

  ‘I still can’t help feeling responsible.’

  ‘You think he’s upset that you don’t work there any more?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  Mary looked down at the scrubbing brush as she thought things through. The problem was convoluted, affecting more than one person and in different ways. To start with there was Ruby and her hurt feelings. There was also Frances and her allegations. Although sworn to silence, she was a child. There were no guarantees that she wouldn’t tell her uncle. Thank goodness she was being evacuated. Most important of all was preventing the pub landlord’s behaviour towards the Sweet women from reaching the ears of her father. He was a calm man nowadays, but he hadn’t always been that way. She’d heard the stories he told and recalled the ones related by her Uncle Sefton to Charlie.

  ‘You can’t say anything, Ruby. The thing is that Dad is under a lot of strain what with Charlie going to sea.’

  Ruby nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. It still upsets me though. I feel so … cheap.’

  ‘He’d be mortified if he knew how you felt, but you can’t tell him.’

  ‘I know.’ Ruby poked a finger in a mound of dough. It sprang back immediately. And it won’t happen again, she thought to herself. ‘I’ve made up my mind about men. They’re not worth bothering with.’

  ‘Some are,’ said Mary, her eyes downcast as she poured the water from the bowl into the sink. She was thinking of Michael Dangerfield. Why couldn’t she get him out of her thoughts?

  ‘You sound as though you have someone in mind, yet I’ve never known you—’

  Ruby stopped in mid-sentence. There was something secretive with the way Mary kept her eyes averted, as though cleaning out the washing-up bowl and putting the scrubbing brush away beneath the sink were things that needed total concentration.

  ‘Who is he?’

  Mary looked at her open mouthed. ‘Who is who?’

  ‘You’re blushing.’

  ‘No I’m not. I was just thinking there’s going to be a lot to do around here what with our Charlie gone to war.’

  ‘I agree. There is. We have to keep this place going, plus dealing with these officials from the Ministry of Food. And the paperwork! Strikes me those officials know more about paperwork than they do about baking!’

  She said it laughingly, though she knew it was far from a laughable situation. They’d already had officials visit the bakery to tell them that flour and sugar would be in short supply, fats and eggs would most definitely be on ration but that bread would not be, it being the staple element of most diets.

  To the ears of the Sweet family it sounded as though the only things that wouldn’t be on ration were vegetables and anything they could purloin from the countryside hereabouts. Thank goodness for Dad’s pigs. Thank goodness for Joe Long and his shotgun. The gun was mainly used to shoot rabbits, but recently one of their pigs had gone missing. Should the thief attempt to take one of their pigs, Joe Long and Stan Sweet were ready to deal with them in their own way.

  They’d also been notified about the introduction of a wartime loaf made from wholegrain flour rather than refined should the latter get scarce. Stan Sweet had been horrified. People preferred white bread.

  ‘Only the very poor used to eat brown bread,’ he’d remonstrated before going into a history of how only the rich ate white bread and the hard battles that had been fought so poor folk got white bread too.

  The twins worked silently for a while, their hair held back from their faces by turbans made of twisted scarves wound tightly around their heads. Ruby had tugged the knot that should be at the front of her scarf to the side, letting the ends trail down so her mole was hidden.

  Mary noticed but said nothing. She’d tried many times to convince Ruby that her mole did not detract from her beauty in any way. Ruby, being Ruby, had her own views and refused to be swayed.

  The following day was the one when Frances was leaving to stay with Miriam Powell’s mother in the Forest of Dean. The original plan had been for Stan to drive to the ferry at Aust, disembarking on the other side of the Severn at Bulwark. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to get any petrol, certainly not enough to cover that particular journey. The priority had to be given to collecting flour and delivering bread.

  It was therefore arranged for Mrs Powell’s mother, Ada Perkins, to visit her daughter from the Thursday to the Saturday of the next week, mid-way through October. It had been suggested that she arrive in time for the weekend, but Mrs Powell had insisted otherwise.

  ‘Too much church,’ Stan Sweet had said with a grin.

  When she arrived the next week, old Mrs Perkins, Miriam’s grandmother, would have none of it. ‘And I wants one of these new cremations and me ashes scattered in the forest when I’m stone cold,’ she’d declared for all to hear. ‘No coffin for me. The wood rots and the worms gets to eat you. Worms are only good for softening the earth. I don’t want them softening me!’

  Mrs Perkins was tall. Piercing green eyes twinkled above high cheekbones in a wrinkled brown face that was splattered with dark brown freckles. Her hair was pure white and tied back in a bun with pink ribbon and her nose was curved like a bird’s beak.

  Neither the twins nor Frances had ever seen anyone dressed quite so flamboyantly: her hat was purple, her jacket a dark rust colour and her skirt green. She carried a cloth bag which hung on a multi-coloured string over her shoulder and she strode along purposefully, like a man about to chop down a tree. She also wore hob-nailed boots, just like the sort worn by road menders or miners. Apparently her father had been a miner, working the open shafts and shallow tunnels in the Forest of Dean.

  Stan Sweet and his family watched as Ada Perkins, her daughter and granddaughter approached. The twins were full of curiosity; Frances had adopted a careless manner while unpicking the stitching of her skirt. As a consequence the stitching slowly unravelled and the hem drooped unevenly.

  Ada Perkins approached like a drum major leading an army platoon. Her daughter and granddaughter trotted along behind her like two black crows. As usual they were dressed in black; in fact, they rarely wore any other colour and certainly weren’t used to striding out at such a lick as the woman from the forest.

  She came to such an abrupt stop in front of Frances that her daughter and granddaughter were caught unawares and bumped into the back of her.
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br />   Ada threw a reproachful look over her shoulder. ‘Look where you’re going, will you! So this is her then?’ she said without giving the women with her time to respond. Closing one green eye, she looked Frances up and down, noticing the pulled stitching and lopsided hem of her skirt.

  Without raising her eyes, Frances rubbed the front of one shoe against the back of her leg, a nervous reaction on meeting someone new. On doing so, she knocked over the brown case in which the twins had helped her pack everything she’d need. She’d prided herself on not crying even when the twins had hugged her and told her how much they’d miss her.

  Uncle Stan assured her that he would miss her too. ‘Be a brave girl,’ he said. She’d grimaced at the roughness of his whiskers when he kissed her cheek.

  ‘But you are going on quite an adventure,’ Mary had assured her. She could feel the child’s apprehension and couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

  Hair brushed, her face shining as though it had been polished rather than washed in a tablet of Ruby’s favourite soap, Frances stood defiantly, determined not to be cooperative.

  ‘Right. Best be going,’ said Ada after having shaken everybody’s hand. ‘Come along or we’ll miss the train.’

  The Sweets and the Powells accompanied her to the railway station which was situated on the other side of the humpbacked bridge. The line went up to the Midlands calling in at Gloucester on the way where they would change on to another train running down towards the Wye Valley and the Welsh hills.

  ‘Be brave,’ said Mary, bending down so she was level with Frances’s pale face. She adjusted Frances’s knitted scarf so it fitted more cosily around her neck.

  Ruby gave her what remained of the scented soap she’d allowed her to use that morning. ‘Be brave,’ said Ruby.

  ‘I won’t forget,’ Frances whispered into her ear as they hugged and kissed for the last time.