by Joanna Toye
‘John’s desperate to learn cricket. And I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss.’
Was she asking what he thought she was asking?
Some time ago, in a bid to keep up staff morale, Mr Marlow had asked for ideas and Peter had been quick to suggest sports teams. The girls played a few games of netball and rounders when they could muster some opposition, but it was the football and cricket teams that had really taken off. Peter was the cricket captain.
‘Well … erm … If you’d like me to give him a few lessons …’
‘Would you?’ she said at once. ‘He’d be thrilled.’
‘I’d be delighted!’
‘Thank you!’ Her smile lit up the poky office like a searchlight. ‘Well – are you busy on Sundays? In the afternoon? We could go to the park – there’s still a couple of patches of grass. I could bring a picnic?’
He could hardly believe it.
‘I’d like that very much.’
‘Good! That’s settled, then.’
He gave her a smile and Eileen looked modestly down at the band on her wedding finger. She’d leave it there for the moment. But in time, perhaps quite soon, she’d take it off and publicly admit the truth about John’s father. And the freedom that would give her, to be herself, and maybe to start again, was absolutely exhilarating.
Chapter 9
Lily lay back and wriggled her toes. Beryl had let her have a go with her ‘Monte Carlo Pink’ nail varnish as a try-out for the wedding. ‘Black Market Pink,’ Jim had sniffed, but Lily had pointed out that he hadn’t been above snaffling under-the-counter chocolates from the White Lion, so they were quits. And he’d had to agree her toenails did look pretty.
The weather had continued fine, and the younger salesgirls had taken to coming up to sunbathe on the store’s flat roof. With stockings a rarity, naturally tanned legs beat gravy browning every time. They had to compete for space with the firewatchers’ hut and the Fowl Club’s hen coops, but Lily had found a spot near an air vent where she could stretch out in the sun. She sighed happily.
The locker check the other day hadn’t thrown up anything suspicious in the ladies’ staff cloakroom, or the gents’, Jim had told her, and presumably the search of the management lockers had been for form’s sake only, so the only possible cloud in the sky had sailed away.
She glanced over to where Jim was talking to one of the Fowl Club stalwarts about some new kind of feeder they were trying to invent. As well as the hens in the Collins’s backyard, the store’s Fowl Club had been Jim’s idea. Coming from the countryside, he’d known where to get hold of the Buff Orpingtons and Light Sussex hens which he said were good layers, and how to construct a hen run. And a lot of the staff had seen the logic of swapping their weekly egg coupon for a ration of feed grain and the promise of at least two eggs a week each for taking a turn mucking out and feeding. There were thirty-six hens on the roof now, and over fifty members of the Fowl Club.
‘Want a read of this?’
One of the girls whose dinner hour was over was holding out the Chronicle’s midday edition. Lily sat up to take it.
‘Yes, please! Thanks.’
Before she could open it, Jim flopped down beside her and snatched it away, leafing rapidly through.
‘Oy!’
Jim had always mocked Hinton’s local paper, and it was a pretty dismal effort. A typical lead story was Horse Puts Hoof Through Slatted Bridge – painful for the horse and worrying for its owner, perhaps, but not really sensational enough to make you part with a penny for the paper. But lately, always hoping to see that Barry Bigley had been arrested and charged, Jim tried never to miss it.
‘I don’t believe it!’
‘What?’ Lily tried to look over his shoulder. ‘Is it Bigley? They’ve caught him at last?’
Jim passed her the newspaper.
‘He’s caught all right – on camera!’
Lily looked at the paper, the photograph, and the caption.
Well-known local businessman Mr Barry Bigley shares a joke with Detective Chief Inspector Norman Gregson at the Hinton Golf Club Ball. The final sum raised for the Mayor’s Spitfire Fund has yet to be ascertained, but it is believed that Mr Bigley made a sizeable personal donation, which modesty prevents him from revealing.
‘“Modesty prevents him …?” “Shares a joke?” I think the joke’s on us,’ said Jim bitterly.
Lily lowered the paper, her face dark.
‘You don’t think … you do, don’t you? The Spitfire Fund isn’t the only donation Barry Bigley’s been making.’
‘I’d started to wonder,’ Jim admitted, ‘as there’s been nothing in the paper. Robert said Bigley had all sorts of contacts. What’s the betting he’s got someone like DCI Gregson – and others in the police, maybe – taking nice backhanders.’
‘You mean the desk sergeant you spoke to never passed the message on?’
‘Who knows? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. But if he did, Bigley’s chum Gregson isn’t going to do anything about it, is he?’
‘So Bigley’s going to get away with it? And he’ll go on getting away with it? Oh, Jim!’ Lily huffed in frustration. ‘But if Bigley’s still doing his black marketeering, why isn’t he still leaning on Robert Marlow? Robert hasn’t been on to you again, bleating for help, has he?’
‘I imagine Bigley’s police contacts warned him off, told him to cool things round here for a while. Bigley’s a chancer. He won’t mind, he’ll see it as a challenge. He’ll just start up some other racket a bit further afield.’
‘And there’s nothing else we can do?’
‘I’m as fed up as you are,’ said Jim wearily, ‘but let’s face it, I didn’t want to get involved in the first place and you gave me hell when you found out I had. So – no. There’s no more we can do.’ Before she could start to argue, he went on, ‘And I have heard from Robert, actually. This was waiting for me when I got to the department this morning.’
His jacket was hanging nearby. Reaching for it, he passed her an envelope, addressed in handwriting she didn’t recognise. Curious, Lily opened it and took out a thick, formal card with raised copperplate printing.
Sir Douglas and Lady Brimble
request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of their daughter
Evelyn Mary
to
Mr Robert Cedric Marlow
at St George’s Church, Edgbaston, Birmingham,
on Saturday, 10th July 1943
at 12 noon
and afterwards at
The Grand Hotel, Birmingham
There was an address to which you were supposed to RSVP, whatever that meant, but Lily didn’t bother about any of that, because across the top was written in flourishing turquoise ink:
Mr J. Goodridge and Partner
She looked at Jim dumbfounded.
‘No! You – we – are invited?’
‘Well, I am his cousin,’ said Jim importantly. ‘And heaven knows Robert owes me a favour.’
‘But …’ Lily weighed the card in her hand, a world away from the flimsy, slightly yellowed card Gladys had shown her, and which her friend was so proud of. ‘We’re not going to go, are we? I mean, look at the date!’
‘I know.’ Jim frowned. ‘Same day as Gladys and Bill’s wedding. It’s a tough one, isn’t it?’
Lily gaped.
‘Jim, you’re not serious? You’re not going to make me go! I can’t let Gladys down – I’m her bridesmaid! I can’t—’
Jim burst out laughing.
‘Of course I’m not serious! Do you think I want to go to a posh wedding in Birmingham with all those stuffed shirts? I’d probably have to hire a frock coat and everything!’
‘And a top hat!’ cried Lily, laughing now she knew she was off the hook. ‘Now I’m tempted!’
‘Well, I’m not!’ Jim took the invitation card from her and tucked it away. He unfolded his long legs and pulled her to her feet. ‘It’s nearly half past, we’d better get back.’
Lily stooped to pick up the paper; she’d pass it on to someone else. Jim held the low door to the stairs open for her and she ducked under the lintel. At the top of the narrow stairs, he gave her a quick kiss.
‘I’ll decline, then, pleading a previous engagement,’ he said. ‘And we won’t lose out entirely. We can see how the other half lives when we go to the Brimbles’ place for the fete.’
Dora had come back from her Red Cross Committee meeting only the other day with the news that Sir Douglas and Lady Brimble had generously offered their garden for the big summer fund-raiser.
‘As long as Bigley isn’t there,’ countered Lily. ‘Because if there’s a shooting gallery, you might find me chasing him with a rifle!’
It wasn’t good news about Barry Bigley, but the BBC’s evening bulletin brought some more which pretty much wiped him and his criminal pursuits from Lily’s mind.
The wireless had been on all evening – Victor Silvester and his orchestra – her mum’s favourite – followed by a variety show. Lily had only been half-listening, lying on the rug flicking through Dora’s Woman’s Weekly, but she sat up with her arms round her knees when the recorded chimes of Big Ben signalled the start of the news.
The newsreader began in his usual measured tones:
‘Tunis has fallen. The Allies, including the British First and Eighth Armies, entered the city earlier today, and the German commander, General Erwin Rommel, and the Italian commander, General Giovanni Messe, have surrendered, resulting in some 275,000 prisoners of war.’
He paused before adding with an emotion which even he, the ultimate professional, could not conceal:
‘The long struggle for North Africa is over, and it has ended in victory for the Allies.’
Like any news that you’ve been waiting for, when it came it was a total shock. Dora lost her place in the stitches she was counting; Jim, who was checking Beryl’s cash books for her, stopped his totting up.
‘I knew we’d do it!’ cried Lily, jumping up and hugging Jim, then her mum. ‘It’s all down to Reg, it must be!’
Dora hugged her daughter back and held her tight, glad that Lily’s shoulder hid the tears that were smarting her eyes.
Reg’s letters had become even less frequent as the Eighth Army had pressed on, and when they arrived, were weeks out of date. All the last one had talked about was dust and flies and longing for a cold beer, though Reg had added that there’d been a concert party in a lull – in the advance, presumably. A Laurel and Hardy routine he’d done with one of his mates had apparently gone down a (sand)storm.
Dora was grateful for anything, but it wasn’t the sort of letter she craved. She wanted to know what her boy was feeling, and how he really was. Had he received those thick socks she’d knitted? (The desert nights were cold, he’d told them.) Did he have enough to eat and drink? (He’d looked thinner, she thought, in the last snap he’d sent.) Did he think of them when he was lying under his truck with his hands over his head as the star shells burst above, and wonder if he’d ever see them again? Or was he too busy simply praying that he wouldn’t be the one who copped it this time?
Dora eased Lily off, then stood up and switched off the wireless. Had Reg been in the thick of the fighting? What would come next? The best they could hope for was that somehow he might get a proper letter to them, perhaps with someone invalided home. He’d managed that once before, when he’d gone missing after El Alamein, and it had been such a relief to hear the full story. He’d had a lucky escape that time, but as long as he was out there the worry never went away.
Chapter 10
Mothers had to put their ongoing worries to one side, however, because next day, the whole country was over the moon about the news. As Lily and Jim walked to work, the newsboys were all shouting about it and shopkeepers were hanging tattered bunting. In its usual dignified way, Marlow’s put a large portrait photograph of General Montgomery on an easel at the main entrance, with a laurel wreath hung over one corner – and Beryl got in on the act too. She arranged a blue garter, a pearl belt and a red carnation in her window – she didn’t miss a trick. But the Allies’ victory was especially sweet for her.
Les had been out in North Africa too, till he’d been invalided home with a tropical fever which meant he was medically unfit for the Army. It had taken time to build up his strength, but these days he was fully restored to the cheery, cheeky Les that Beryl had first flirted with, a fact which was proved when Beryl turned up at Lily’s that evening with a wedding dress that needed altering.
Before her marriage, Dora had been a machinist at Hinton’s corset factory – now making parachute webbing and camouflage nets – and Beryl had quickly snapped her up as her alterations hand. Dresses had to be taken up and down, in and out, according to the various brides’ requirements, so she was kept pretty busy. Beryl paid her for the work, of course, so it was a useful boost to the housekeeping.
‘This war’ll be over by Christmas, you mark my words!’ Beryl crowed as she helped to feed the underskirt through Dora’s trusty Singer. ‘Les is running a book on it! Has he had sixpence off you yet, Lily?’
‘A book?’ Lily was horrified. Betting was illegal, even at this level: Mr Marlow would have had a blue fit. ‘And he’s going round the store with it?’
Beryl was having none of it.
‘It’s only a bit of fun! Blimey, I bet us taking Tunis steamed up Hitler’s specs good and proper! I wouldn’t like to be in Rommel’s jackboots now!’
Dora bent silently over her machine. ‘Over by Christmas’ was what they’d said about the First War, and look how that had gone on.
Lily watched the needle rise and fall. She could tell what her mother was thinking, and she hadn’t missed her mum’s blinking away tears at last night’s news, either. She knew that winning a battle didn’t mean winning the war.
‘Almost as important,’ she said, to change the subject, ‘or more, if you’re Gladys … you know she’s got her invitation cards?’
‘Came to tell me specially, didn’t she?’ was Beryl’s reply. ‘And informed me exactly how many days I’ve got left to find you both your dresses! By the way,’ she went on, ‘you’ve heard she’s changed her mind about the flowers again?’
‘What is it now?’
Anything would be an improvement on the apricot roses Gladys had been talking about. They’d have landed Lily in a dress the same colour, and the prospect of a day looking like an anaemic goldfish.
‘Sweet peas,’ said Beryl grimly.
‘That’s all right!’ Lily was cheered. ‘You’ve got a nice pale blue dress that’d fit me, haven’t you? I’d rather not have sugar pink, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘You won’t have to,’ said Beryl tartly. ‘She fancies you in mauve.’
Lily buried her face in her hands as Dora, with a faint smile, adjusted the slack thread take-up on the machine.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Beryl. ‘It’ll be something else next week.’
When Beryl left to get Bobby to bed, Lily took over as machinist’s assistant. As she watched her mother concentrate, she thought how much she loved her and with a pang, how little she ever thought about her, really thought about her, that is.
‘Mum …’ she began.
Dora didn’t look up.
‘Hm?’
‘Don’t mind me asking, but … this work you do for Beryl. Wedding dresses and that. Doesn’t it make you sad?’
Dora lifted her foot from the treadle and looked at her daughter, puzzled.
‘Sad? It’s the happiest day of your life! Should be.’
‘That’s what I mean. Doesn’t it make you think back? And, well, miss Dad?’
Dora sat back in her chair.
‘Only I never ask …’ Lily blundered on. ‘And since I’ve been with
Jim, I’ve begun to realise … well, what a difference it makes. If you ever met anyone, I wouldn’t mind, you know, I’d be pleased. You deserve it – to be happy.’
Dora reached out and squeezed her daughter’s hand.
‘Oh, Lily, you are sweet. But I am happy, love, as long as you children are all safe and well. Yes, life’d be easier if your dad was still here, but I’m used to things how they are. And I’ve had my chance, haven’t I?’
‘But you deserve another!’ Lily was surprised about how strongly she felt. ‘You’re still young, Mum, why not? Why shouldn’t you have a life of your own?’
‘I do have a life,’ smiled Dora. ‘I get out, don’t I? The WVS and the Red Cross, and my Knitting Circle and to-ing and fro-ing into town with Beryl’s alterations?’
‘I know you do, but …’ Lily tailed off. She could hardly say that she meant her mother to have a love life. ‘It’s all women, isn’t it?’ she finished lamely.
‘Oh I see,’ laughed Dora. ‘And there’s men queuing up to meet a widow with three children, are there? I don’t know where – I’m not exactly tripping over them!’
‘Well, you never know.’
‘I think I do! Now make us a cup of tea, there’s a love. I’ve got to get on with this while there’s still some daylight.’
That was typical of her mum, Lily thought, as Dora bent to her sewing again. Always putting duty and the family first. But now they were all grown up, she really should think of herself a bit more.
Left alone, Dora did start to think. She had met a man, actually, back in the autumn, and she had tripped over him, or rather she’d tripped on a broken paving stone. He’d saved her from falling. He’d been a major in the Canadian Army, stationed nearby until his regiment had been transferred down south.
Lily and Jim had no idea when Dora sat down with the paper of an evening that, as well as any news from North Africa, she was scouring it for mention of the 1st Canadian Infantry and what they were doing, not that she’d ever discovered. Hugh – Hugh Anderson was his name – could be anywhere by now. He’d had a dog, Buddy, a golden cocker spaniel that had stayed behind in Hinton. She wondered how he was doing now.
