by Mark Dunn
Tom was about to speak, but Jerry preempted him: “How do you know these five sheltered nuns-in-training won’t end up liking what it is they’ve never tried? There’s always that possibility, you know.”
“And you’re totally off your nut, Castle.” Cain stood up from the table. “You know, fellows, some of these challenges have been silly, and yes, I’ll admit my Shakespeare stunt was pretty punk, but we’ve never done anything before that could end up hurting somebody. This new challenge takes us to a place we have no business going. It’s something I can’t go along with, and I would hope the rest of you will come to your senses and reject it too.”
“Sit down, Pardlow,” said Will with sudden severity.
The two men looked at one another. Something passed between them, unknowable to the other young men at the table. Cain dropped obediently into his seat.
Will continued to look squarely at Cain, as if there were no one else present at the table. “You’re going to play the game, Pardlow. Or I’m going to tell what it is I know. And what it is I know, if it gets known by certain other people, could put you in a bad spot.”
“Why are you doing this, Will?”
“For your own good. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Somebody mind telling us what’s going on here?” asked Jerry. Tom and Pat nodded, all three now caught off guard by this inexplicable turn in the conversation.
Will looked at Jerry and shook his head. “This is between Cain and me. And Cain—I intend to keep my promise, but only if you play. If you don’t play, all bets are off.”
Cain closed his eyes. His voice softened to near whisper. “I still don’t understand, Will. I don’t understand why this is so important to you.”
“If you don’t know why, then you’re worse off than I thought.”
Cain’s eyes popped open. He rose to stand next to his chair. One by one, he looked into the faces of the four young men whom he’d considered his friends. He wasn’t sure how to define his relationship with them now, but he knew in any event he’d have to play the game. The consequences for not playing were simply too serious to be ignored.
“I’ll do it,” he finally said, his words almost inaudible. And then he walked away without taking his tray.
Diners were supposed to dispose of their trays. This was one rule Cain felt he could break without consequence. For someone like Cain Pardlow, rules like this one—rules one could disregard—didn’t come along very often.
After he left, Jerry turned to Holborne and said simply, “Okay. Now tell us.”
And Will replied just as simply, “No. I keep my word.”
And then he left the dining hall as well.
Chapter Nine
London, England, October 1940
“It’s very pretty, Mum.”
“No, love, come look at it in the light. See how it sparkles.”
“I’m surprised he could afford to buy you a ring.”
“Did you not tell me you’ve decided to be a good girl about this?”
Maggie took the last bite of her broiled plaice. It wasn’t her favourite fish, but she indulged her mother by eating it with some demonstration of appreciation. After all, Clara had stood in a forty-minute queue outside the fish shop to buy it. “I am being a good girl. But I’ve still held on to that wee bit of hope that—well, now it just seems inevitable.”
“Nothing is inevitable, Maggie, dear. But this comes close. And you’re going to continue to be a good girl, because you told me that putting off this marriage was just what you and Molly wanted.”
“What I wanted—and still want—is for you not to get married at all. But I’ve agreed to this compromise.”
“Then start being nice. It will be very wearing on me if you intend to continue with this moping and moaning until the end of the war.”
Maggie got up from the table. She picked up her plate and cup to carry into the kitchen.
“No dessert?” asked Clara, over her shoulder. “I made orange whip and gingerbread.”
“I’ll have a slice of gingerbread later,” answered Maggie from the kitchen. A moment later she returned to clear away more of the tea dishes. “I’d rather not be the last to arrive at Jane’s. After being the one largely responsible for Molly and Carrie and me being so late to work on Monday, I am now called—and I don’t think this is an affectionate jest—‘the late and not-so-great Maggie Barton.’”
Mrs. Barton’s harrumph was clearly audible. “Well, you didn’t spend the morning arguing with a lamp post, dear. Molly played her part as well. Never you mind about the dishes tonight, dear. I’ll wash them.” Clara sighed. “But I do wish you’d wait just a few minutes to say something sweet and congratulatory to Dr. Osborne. I’m expecting him at any moment.”
“If I’m still here when he comes I’ll be polite.”
It took two more trips for Maggie to take away the rest of the dishes from tea. Clara sat thinking whilst Maggie ran hot water into the kitchen basin to give things a soak. “I must say, Maggie,” said Clara, raising her voice to be heard through the doorway, “that the begrudging way you’ve been accommodating me is just as unpleasant as if you were still standing squarely against the marriage for all time. You really should be more like Chamberlain and appease me with a fixed smile.”
“Which you would see straight through,” rebutted Maggie, her own words amplified for carriage into the dining room. “The fact is: I’m hanged if I do and hanged if I don’t. What do you fancy, Mum? That my feelings about this marriage should change with the snap of a finger?”
“What I fancy, to be perfectly honest, is a different daughter.”
“I’m sorry, old woman, but it looks like you’re stuck with me. And I’m stuck with you. Even if I marry. Because I don’t intend to be one of those unhappy children that blots her mum out of her life forever.”
“I suppose I should thank you for that.” Clara sighed again. Sometimes her sighs had a way of working themselves into yawns. This one seemed of that variety. “What are you girls getting together for, anyway? I asked Dr. Osborne if Molly—”
“You don’t have to keep calling him ‘Dr. Osborne.’ First, he isn’t a doctor. And second, he’s the man you plan to marry. Will you still be calling him ‘Dr. Osborne’ on your rose-petal-strewn honeymoon bed?”
“I haven’t decided. And don’t be vulgar.” Clara smiled privately. “I must say that part of me has grown rather accustomed to it—calling him that—not that it’s any of your business how the doctor and I choose to refer to one another.”
“You asked him what about Molly? Finish your sentence. I don’t have all night.”
“Then stop pottering with those dishes! I told you I’d wash them.”
“Oh, and then have you telling my future stepfather when he shows up tonight what a terrible daughter I am to do no chores round the house—even though I bring in most of the money we have, thanks to my job at the factory, and even though every time you climb into bed with one of your dizzy spells, it is I who must do all the marketing and cooking and scouring and pushing of the bloody Hoover from one dirty carpet to another until you’re up and about again. But you won’t tell him that, will you? You’ll say I’m lazy and a perfectly beastly excuse for a daughter because that’s what comes easiest to your tongue.”
“I never said anything of the sort to anyone! I appreciate every little thing you do for me.”
“Of course you do,” said Maggie dryly to herself. She stopped chinking plates and saucers. Then she said, “You asked him what?”
“What’s that?”
“You asked Mr. Osborne what? You just said—”
“Stop shouting at me.” Mrs. Barton left the table and stepped into the kitchen. She sat down at the little breakfast table snuggled against the wall. “Now would you listen to us? We sound like a couple of Newham ironmongers’ wives.” Clara took a deep breath to calm herself. “I was going to say that I had asked Michael if Molly was coming along with him tonig
ht and he said no, she was going to Jane’s house with the rest of you. So now I am asking you: what is it that requires the five of you to gather yourselves together tonight when you’ve already seen one another for eleven full hours at the factory? I ask because Michael is bringing a bottle of port, which he’d put by for a special occasion. We’re going to raise a glass to our future happiness. And it would be nice if—”
“There’s an unopened bottle of port in the Osborne flat? Forgive me, Mum, but I’m feeling rather faint…from shock.”
“You stop it! ’Tisn’t funny. And after you said you’ve changed. You haven’t changed one bit. You’re going to make the three of us miserable. Here I was finally allowing myself to start looking forward to things—to the marriage, to the move to Burnham, to things turning round for all of us, but this doesn’t matter to you in the least, does it? Because you’ve set your mind to spoiling everything, and spoiling everything is precisely what you’ll do!”
Maggie dried her hands on the tea towel hanging from the wall. Then she went to her mother and took both of her hands into her own. “Don’t cry, Mummy. I’ll be good. Burnham is quite lovely with the woods so close by, and I’m very happy you and Dr. Osborne will be moving there after the war—moving there as husband and wife. And your health will improve, and Molly and I will come to visit you as often as we can—along with our new husbands and our bouncing little poppets for you to dandle upon your palsied knees.”
“You’re being silly now, but I appreciate the sentiment…if it’s sincere.”
“Quite sincere, Mumsy.”
“Mr. Forrest predicts the war will be over by Christmas. He says Hitler will see that the air raids are having no effect on our morale and he’ll just have to be content with what he has already, and there will be the end to it.”
“Mr. Forrest is dotty, of course, just like his wife.”
“There’s so little to be hopeful about these days; I’m happy to listen to anything Mr. Forrest has to say. Did he not predict there’d be no invasion, and has there been an invasion?”
Maggie shook her head. “There’s been no invasion, Mum. Only nightly bombing raids that are turning London into smoking piles of rubble and turning all our nerves to marmalade. And so many killed, and so many lives left in shambles. You and I—we’ve been lucky, though our time—if this goes on long enough—will certainly come. So many nights, Mum, I don’t sleep at all, waiting for the sirens.”
“If that’s the way it’s supposed to be, then doesn’t it make more sense to stay at home and die in the arms of your dear old mum? Tell me why you must go to Jane’s tonight. Has she engaged you all to carry her worthless brother to the East End docks and chuck him into the Thames with all the rest of the city rubbish?”
Maggie sat down next to her mother. “There’s something We Five must discuss and we can’t very well do it at the factory. As it turns out, we’re going dancing on Saturday night. At the Hammersmith Palais.”
“Goodness.”
“I’ve never been there. None of us has. We’ve never been anywhere, for that matter, that Jane has asked us to go, and we thought it would be a good turn for all of us to be nice to her for a change.”
Clara Barton shook her head with only slightly masked sadness. “That is to your credit, but mind, you’ll arrive as wallflowers and depart as wallflowers. In the time in between, you’ll cling to one another whilst casting longing glances at the dance floor. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to the Hales’ flat and play cards and listen to George Formby on the wireless?”
“The last time we got together to play cards, Mum, we got caught in an air raid and had to spend the rest of the evening sitting in Jane’s wee Anderson shelter behind the shop. It was made ever the more pleasant when it began to drizzle and Jane’s brother Lyle’s fine workmanship afforded us a lovely bathe. I’d much rather go to a public shelter in the company of a hundred other people my age, each one of them gay and festive and decked out in Saturday night finery, thank you.”
“Well then, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Maggie frowned. “I wasn’t going to tell you, Mum, but it so happens that we will most assuredly not be clinging to one another on Saturday. We intend to be dancing. There are five lads very close to us in age who are also coming, and who just happen to be coming for the sole purpose of seeing us.”
Clara’s eyes grew big. “I’m so glad you have told me. Are they are R.A.F. pilots?”
Maggie shook her head.
“Soldiers? Sailors? Submariners?”
“No. None of the above.”
“Then they are young men who work with you at the factory?”
“They don’t work at the factory. They deliver coal. When they aren’t on fire watch for the A.F.S.”
“What’s wrong with these boys that they aren’t serving their country in uniform?”
“They’re conscientious objectors.”
“Good God.”
“I won’t permit it!”
Molly wheeled upon her father. “What is that?”
Michael Osborne had been sitting at his worktable, polishing his dental instruments, but now he was on his feet and glaring at his daughter. “I said I will not permit my daughter to socialise with a bloody conchie, let alone five of them.”
“May I remind you that the days of your permitting or not permitting me to do anything are over? You agreed to my full emancipation quite some time ago.”
“This is different. To preserve your good reputation, I’ll not have you associating with men who won’t fight.”
“All five of these lads are serving their country in their own way. Don’t make me argue this with you. It’s a waste of breath. I probably won’t find a single one of them worth my time anyway, so this whole discussion is pointless.”
“Just promise me this: if you happen to meet a different chap there tonight—one who just happens to be wearing a uniform and who just happens to show some interest in you, you’ll give him more than passing notice. I should like someday to have a son-in-law who is willing to do his duty by his country.”
Molly smiled. “Be careful what you wish for, Daddy dearest. Tommies can’t always be trusted to do their country proud. They come to the canteens and dance halls really quite ravenous. And I’m not just talking about food. And what if I were to fall in love with one of them? And he were to ask me to marry him? What if it turned out that he was an Aussie or a Kiwi? How would you fancy traveling halfway round the world to visit your only child? Or to see your grandchildren? Wouldn’t you rather I fall for a London coalman who’ll—”
Michael Osborne did not give his daughter leave to finish. “Enough!” he roared. At the same time he flung the tempered steel excavator, which he’d been gripping tightly in his hand, down onto the table. It struck the porcelain top with a loud clack. “It’s all tommyrot, if you ask me—this whole business of fathers being forced to give over their daughters to bleeding blokes with only one thing on their minds. Would that you were more like your friend Ruth, who chooses to have nothing to do with the opposite sex.”
“It isn’t fair to compare me to Ruth.”
Osborne sat back down. He massaged his temples as if in doing so he might succeed in getting the veins protruding there to draw themselves back. He took a couple of deep breaths. “I’m curious. How did you get Ruth to agree to come along on this little escapade?”
Molly smiled. It was a sincere smile, though it had the ulterior purpose of calming and quieting her father after his outburst.
“It was really quite easy. The Hammersmith Palais tries to keep its guests well fed. And we all know how much Ruth loves to eat.”
“Take the rest of my Spam,” said Lucille Mobry. “I can’t eat another bite.”
“Only if you’re truly full,” said Ruth, whose fork was already making its way over to Lucille’s plate to spear the last few bites of the battered meat.
“Did you know that when you first showed up on our doorstep like—oh
Bert, who was it that walked for days and nights to his aunt’s house in Dover—was it Oliver Twist or David Copperfield?”
“It was David Copperfield, I think. I’m picturing Freddie Bartholomew and that horsey-looking actress—Edna something.”
“Anyway,” Lucille resumed, “you were just skin and bones. Wasn’t Ruth just skin and bones, Bert?”
“Skin and bones and a stomach that hasn’t stopped borbarigging ever since.” Mr. Mobry winked at Ruth, who returned the wink, along with a smile.
Lucille continued: “Those old beldames you’d run away from had been starving you for certain. We should have had them arrested.”
“Well, everything worked out for the best,” said Ruth, reaching across the table to requisition one of Lucille’s boiled potatoes as well. Lucille assented with a nod. “And look at me now, Auntie: I weigh eight hundred pounds. In truth, I should reduce. There’s a chart that hangs in the cloakroom at the factory; it says how much a woman should weigh at such-and-such a height.”
“And how did you measure up to that ideal woman in the chart?”
Ruth shook her head with resignation. “I cannot say the two of us will ever be mistaken for one another.” Ruth laughed ruefully. “I suppose that’s the only silver lining to this ghastly war; most of what’s being rationed or is absolutely unavailable isn’t good for the figure anyway. I have to get ready. We’re all getting together tonight at Jane’s to make plans for Saturday night.”
Herbert Mobry nodded and smiled. “It’s good you’re going out—good that Londoners as a whole aren’t giving in to these damned raids.”
Lucille’s hand flew to her mouth. “Dear brother, you just said a foul word.”
“Raids?”
“You know exactly the word I’m referring to.”
“First, Sister, my career as a minister is over, so I needn’t watch my tongue as closely as I used to. Second: it was a perfectly appropriate use of the word. The Nazis and their air raids are to be damned.”
