Wartime Sweethearts

by Lizzie Lane

  ‘So how about this invitation?’

  ‘It’s just an invitation. His aunt’s very nice.’

  ‘Very nice,’ Ruby repeated in a sarcastic tone. ‘Dad said we should go. I don’t mind going. A day off our feet.’

  Mary sighed. ‘Wish Charlie was home in time though.’

  They were all hoping that Charlie would be home in time for Christmas, though they were still a little unsure of exactly where he was.

  ‘I’m going to carry on drying the beans. And the carrots. And the sprouts.’

  The vegetables were piled on the other end of the kitchen table to Ruby’s cake-making ingredients.

  ‘Well, we’re not going to run out of vegetables any time soon,’ Ruby exclaimed.

  They both agreed that their father was doing a sterling job in the garden.

  Drying vegetables was hardly the most exciting job in the world, yet Mary was glad to be doing something simple while she thought about Michael. At certain times she found herself panicking that she’d forgotten something important about his features and immediately searched her memory, not wanting to forget a single thing about him.

  Concentrate, she said to herself. Get on with what matters; keep yourself busy. After drying a few bowlfuls, she could no longer ignore her restlessness.

  ‘I’m going for a walk. I need some fresh air.’

  Ruby carried on unconcerned, singing along to the wireless, the ingredients for the Christmas cake laid out in front of her. It was a bit late to make a proper fruit cake base and the ingredients had not been easy to get hold of. In fact, most of them had sold out quickly. Fresh supplies were slow coming in, even on market days at Kingswood where the shops were bigger and most things were available – or had been before the war. The reason was that people were rushing to stock up before rationing was introduced.

  In the absence of sultanas, candied peel and glacé cherries, she’d made the decision to improvise. Instead of a fruit cake she planned making a plain sponge with jam in the middle. Nobody would know the difference once it was covered in local fresh cream rather than royal icing. She even had a small tin soldier – rescued from Charlie’s old toy box – and a tiny ballerina to use for decorations.

  People were beginning to hoard sugar, which wasn’t really surprising. As Charlie had told them before he’d left, although sugar beet was grown at home, sugar made from raw sugar cane was brought in from the West Indies, which entailed a long voyage across the Atlantic.

  ‘We’re going to be crossing the Atlantic in convoys, ships carrying just about everything coming together on the eastern shore of the United States. Mark my words, the enemy will target every food ship coming over. It won’t be easy. Not at all.’

  The sugar at the bottom of the blue paper bag made a rustling noise as she shook it. On peering in she saw there was only a handful left, just enough for tea and perhaps a few fancy cakes to sell in the shop.

  Ruby sighed. Selling anything besides bread was getting harder to do, but she refused to give in. Merchant seamen had suffered terrible privations in order to deliver the food the country urgently needed. She felt it only right to put on a brave face and make the best of everything for this Christmas despite the war. All it takes is a little bit of ingenuity, she thought to herself. Like the cake. Anyway, most people preferred sponge to fruit cake – except for her father. But there, he’ll have to adapt just like everyone else.

  Frances, who was really looking forward to Christmas, especially now there was the chance of Charlie coming home, came into the kitchen and asked if she could scrape the leftovers from the bowl. Ruby said that she could.

  ‘Can I watch?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  As she chattered on about her time in the forest, Ada Perkins and her friends at school, Frances tilted her head to one side so she could better read the writing on the sugar bag.

  ‘Tate and Lyle,’ she said thoughtfully. The name rang a bell. She’d heard it before – no – she’d read it before! Her face suddenly lit up. ‘That’s the same words as on the sack I saw that man give Mr Stead. “Tate and Lyle”. That’s what it said. It cost him ten shillings.’

  Ruby looked at her and frowned. ‘What sack? What man?’

  ‘I told you,’ Frances exclaimed with exasperated intensity. ‘The man who came to see Gareth Stead!’

  Ruby pursed her lips. Gareth rarely crept into her thoughts nowadays, and when he did, she cringed with embarrassment.

  She studied her cousin’s fresh young face. Frances was very imaginative and could be a cheeky little beggar, but on the whole she was no different or worse than any other child in the village. She was also very observant and honest.

  For her part, Frances enjoyed receiving Ruby’s attention. Mary’s and Charlie’s attention she’d always had. Ruby had always been a little more distant.

  ‘This man. What did he look like?’

  Frances smacked her lips, her gaze fixed on the eggs being dropped into the cake mixture, the measure of sherry being poured from the bottle, the gradual adding of the self-raising flour. Frances noticed the fancy cakes cooling on a tray.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Can I have a cake?’

  ‘Just one.’

  Frances shrugged. ‘I’ve just told you! A man in a cap gave him the sack and Mr Stead gave him ten bob. I heard him say it. Ten bob.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Dirty. Dirty dark clothes. He wore a cap on his head and a scarf up around his face. Like this …’

  Frances proceeded to wind the sleeves of her cardigan around her lower face in the manner of a muffler. She followed that by placing an empty Victoria sandwich tin on her head.

  ‘Don’t do that.’ Ruby snatched the tin and placed it back on the table. ‘Was he short or tall? Fat or thin?’

  Frances shrugged. ‘Ordinary.’

  Ruby took it that she meant average. ‘And you never saw the colour of his hair or anything else?’

  Frances shook her head and crossed her eyes; she’d found crossing her eyes was the best thing to do when you were concentrating on sticking your tongue into the creamy centre of a fancy cake. Bit by bit she licked the lot out.

  My cousin is inventive, Ruby thought to herself and couldn’t help smiling, though her smile was replaced by a deepening frown.

  ‘So he wasn’t from the village.’

  Frances shrugged. ‘I ain’t never seen him before.’

  ‘Haven’t. You haven’t ever seen him before or you have never seen him before,’ Ruby returned, emphasising the correct words. Their father had always encouraged them to speak properly, even though he slid easily into the local accent himself, dropping aitches and adding ‘l’s and ‘r’s all over the place, especially after a drink or two.

  ‘That’s right. I have not!’

  Ruby’s thoughts were jumping like a box of frogs. It came as no surprise that the man had been a stranger. She guessed Gareth was getting some supplies on the black market. Perhaps he had acquired a contact at Bristol or Avonmouth docks, a docker willing to make a bit extra on top of his wages no matter the consequences. She guessed that his contact had stolen a sack of sugar and Gareth had bought it. Give it a few months of rationing and he’d have everybody queuing at his door for sugar – at a vastly inflated price, no doubt.

  Ruby gritted her teeth. ‘Did you hear anything else they said?’

  Frances shook her head. The scrapings of the bowl were not available yet and there wasn’t much chance of getting a second fancy cake. Once she’d swallowed what she’d had in her mouth, she went on to explain about where the sugar had come from.

  ‘The man said it hadn’t fallen off the back of a lorry like it usually did, but had fallen off a ship, which is really quite stupid and must be a lie, because if something falls off a ship it must land up in the water. That was silly, don’t you think?’

  Ruby agreed that it was and even managed to smile at her cousin’s joke.

  ‘He said his name was B
ob Green. The other man. That’s what he said his name was.’

  ‘Bob Green,’ Ruby repeated thoughtfully.

  Judging by the description of his clothes, he certainly sounded like one of the rough men who used bill hooks to grab hold of grain sacks or half sides of frozen beef from the hold of a ship.

  Frances gobbled down the scrapings of the mixing bowl just before a sudden hammering on the back door heralded the arrival of her village friends. She rushed to open the door.

  ‘Coming out?’ asked Billy ‘Snotty’ Stephens, his name obviously earned by the way he wiped his nose on his coat sleeve.

  Beefy Martin, Gloria Swaine and Connie Jerome, plus a few other kids, were crowded around the door, their eyes bright, their faces dirty, some smeared with jam.

  Frances beamed. ‘Where you going?’

  ‘The orchard.’

  ‘There’s no apples there.’

  ‘Of course not. It’s winter.’

  ‘We can climb. Just climb,’ suggested Beefy.

  Frances shrugged nonchalantly. ‘All right.’ She looked at Ruby who smiled and told her to go ahead.

  Once she was gone and Ruby was alone, she stood silently thinking about Gareth and getting her own back on him. A plan was slowly forming in her mind.

  Under normal circumstances she would shop her ex-employer to the police as a racketeer, but that would be letting him off too easily. She still had an axe to grind with him, a rejoinder for the way he’d treated both her and her young cousin.

  Sugar would soon be scarce and there was no guarantee the contraband would be circulated to those who really needed it. Besides, she felt that her family had a stake in that sugar. Her brother had been serving on a merchant ship that had been attacked and sunk by an enemy warship. If the battleship hadn’t in turn been attacked and forced into a neutral port, Charlie would have been interned in a prisoner of war camp until the end of hostilities. It just wasn’t fair that people like Gareth should make money based on the misfortune and gallant services of others.

  To Ruby’s mind that meant she had a right to some of that sugar, if not all of it. Her family might not approve, certainly not her father and she doubted Mary would either. It didn’t matter because she wouldn’t tell them. She’d made up her mind.

  There was no sign of Mary back from her walk and the only sound was of her father painting Charlie’s room prior to his coming home. He’d found a pot of distemper from two years back. Ruby went up to tell him where she was going.

  ‘I thought I might see if Mrs Martin’s hens are laying yet. She’s got a new batch. She might even have a boiler going spare.’

  ‘Roast chicken?’ her father asked hopefully.

  ‘No, Dad. It’s an old boiler. Stew most likely.’

  Once outside, the chill wind making her face tingle, she headed towards the Apple Tree pub. Gareth Stead was about to get a very big shock.

  After eating lunch with her father, Mary went upstairs to change the beds. Once in her own room she couldn’t resist reading once more the letter she’d received from Michael Dangerfield. Perhaps she had been mistaken and read it wrong. Perhaps he was only joking when he asked her to marry him.

  The words she’d read sometimes came to her mind in the middle of the night. On the one hand she regarded his proposal with disbelief, but on the other hand she wanted it to be true.

  Just after returning the letter to its hiding place, she heard the squeal of the rusty hinges on the side gate. A spider scurried for cover when she lifted the curtain back, just enough so she could see who it was. Her assumption was that Ruby had changed her mind about fetching eggs, or perhaps seen Mrs Martin or one of her brood and been told the new hens were not laying.

  A figure wearing a knitted black hat and a faded black coat slid through the gate, cautiously looking from side to side like a hen seeking corn.

  Mary recognised Miriam Powell. She was about to tap on the window with her fist but due to Miriam’s furtive manner thought better of it. She was creeping along towards the outside lavatory, a solitary brick place now used to store gardening equipment thanks to the new one built closer to the house. Judging by the furtive ducking around of her head, she was loath to be discovered.

  There was a flash of white as Miriam took something from her pocket and ducked behind the small brick building, popping out again just as quickly.

  As a child Ruby and Mary had posted each other notes, slipping them into the gaps where the mortar had fallen out between the bricks. Unseen in the upstairs window, Mary smiled to herself. It was very likely that she’d left Charlie a note, just as they’d left notes for each other as children. She must have heard the news that Charlie was safe and that he would be home visiting soon.

  Poor Miriam. She was a nice person and might even look quite attractive if her mother didn’t insist on her wearing clothes suitable for a matron twice her age. Perhaps then Charlie might consider her as more than a friend, though she doubted it. The fact was that Charlie could have his pick. He’d always been popular with the girls.

  Mary chewed at her bottom lip, her eyes narrowed as she tried to guess what Miriam might have written.

  Overcome by curiosity, she waited until the coast was clear and the garden empty then ran down the stairs and out through the back door.

  The frosty air took her breath away and she immediately regretted not having grabbed a coat on her way out. Wrapping her arms around her shivering body, she hurried to where she’d seen Miriam taking the white note from her pocket. Peering round the side of the old outhouse, she saw the tip of a piece of paper poking out between the bricks.

  The paper was jammed quite securely although the mortar was long gone. She paused before prising it out. If Miriam had wanted Charlie to find it, why hadn’t she left more of it sticking out? Why was it folded so neatly and forced so tightly into the gap?

  Using her finger and thumb like a set of tweezers, she gripped it tightly and pulled it out. Rather than taking it indoors to read, she decided to read it there and then.

  Judging by its jagged edge, the piece of paper had been torn from a writing pad and folded into four. On unfolding it and reading what was written she was surprised to see not a love letter but a prayer, though not one she recognised.

  Sweet Mother, hear my prayer. Grant Charlie Sweet safe passage home, and when he gets here show me the way. Show me where my path lies and show him too. Sweet Mother hear me.

  Mary frowned and read it again. Miriam and her mother attended Baptist chapel, Methodist and St Anne’s Church of England. They did not attend a Catholic church, but then, there was no Catholic church in the area. Yet the prayer appeared to be to the Virgin Mary.

  Charlie Sweet was on his way home; they all knew that. It was just a matter of time.

  A sudden thought came to her that there had been previous prayers to the Virgin Mary.

  Holding the note in one hand, she prised between the brickwork with her fingers, her nails filling with dirt. Her fingertips touched another piece of paper. Carefully, so that it wouldn’t tear, she pulled it out, unfolded it and read another prayer.

  Sweet Mother, I pray for the life of Charlie Sweet. Spare him the cold clutches of death. If you do this I promise I will worship you forever.

  Goodness! Was it possible that Miriam Powell was about to become Catholic? What would her mother say about that? Mrs Powell had as much say in her daughter’s religion as she did in her clothes. Her word was law.

  Mary refolded the two slips of paper. Whether there were more of them secreted in between the brickwork, she didn’t know and wasn’t about to seek them out. It was Miriam’s business and nobody else’s; she forced them back into their hiding place.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As she opened the pub door, Ruby was greeted by the familiar smell of stale beer and tobacco. No matter how scrupulously the place was scrubbed, the smell remained; years of nicotine and sour yeast had yellowed the roughly plastered walls, the low ceiling, the floor and the stained p
ine furniture.

  There were no pictures hanging from the walls except for a brand-new war poster entreating everyone to dig for victory. The only other object was a dartboard hanging from a nail on the wall. The darts were kept behind the bar.

  On the floor beneath the dartboard, a set of chipped skittles stood upright with a battered ball inside a wooden triangle specially made to keep them in place.

  Ruby glanced up to where she’d hung a few old horse brasses on to the beams. They’d been brightly polished when she’d nailed them in place. Already victims to nicotine, they were lacklustre and totally neglected by Gareth and his cleaning lady.

  Shame, she thought. The Apple Tree could look really nice in the right hands. It certainly had character, but to her mind it needed a woman to make it look its best. Not that she was volunteering for that job any longer; her romantic notions about Gareth Stead had long gone.

  A log fire glowed red among mountains of white ash in the centre of the large inglenook; nobody bothered to rake it out because it was never allowed to burn low until spring. The ash merely piled up. The oak Bessemer above the fireplace was pock-marked with holes, made, so legend had it, by Cromwell’s Roundheads thrusting a red hot poker into the wood, one for every cavalier they’d done to death in the battle fought for the seaport of Bristol. The city’s castle had been destroyed in the battle.

  The only other customers that bleak lunchtime were two old gentlemen sitting either side of the fireplace, their faces almost as red as the glowing embers, their hair ash white.

  She recognised them as regulars, a travelling salesman who dealt in farm machinery and a knife grinder. The latter’s grinding wheel was carried in a wooden box at the front of his bicycle. He ground knives by means of a drive belt connected to his bicycle pedals which turned the stone when he pedalled, the back wheel of the bike disconnected during the procedure.