War Baby (3 page)

‘Good for him,' exclaimed one of the women. ‘Give them as much as they're giving us.'

‘There's no sense in waiting. Who knows what tomorrow may bring,' said the woman in charge. She introduced herself as Doris. The two women with her were named Ivy and Edith.

‘Grab a bit of happiness while you can, love, that's what I say,' declared Edith, a woman with a triple chin, the lowest of which totally obliterated her neckline.

‘Have you heard whether there has been much damage in the city?' asked Mary, keen to change the subject.

There followed a jerking of heads and the expelling of sad sighs. ‘Enough. After the docks again, as if there weren't enough damage back in November when they destroyed all around Castle Street and Wine Street. It was sad to see the Old Dutch House go and St Peter's Hospice and the church. We've known them all our lives.'

‘Gone for ever,' said Ivy mournfully then sighed. ‘That's where I met my ole man, Harold, up Castle Street.'

Edith pursed her lips after leaving a lipstick imprint on the side of her cup. ‘We all met our sweethearts around Castle Street, well, either there or up Park Street. No money for doing much else. You just paraded up and down and when you saw somebody you fancied, that was how you met your intended.'

There rose another collective sigh before Doris suggested they all had another cuppa.

‘I have to go,' Mary said, declining a second cup. ‘I've got other things scheduled. Must keep going, mustn't we.'

She hadn't wanted to say that everyone at home in the village had seen the sky on fire. She hadn't wanted them to feel perhaps that she was better off than them living outside the areas that had been bombed. Everyone had it bad, each in their own way.

Fingers firmly gripping the steering wheel, she headed away from the city and back to Oldland Common. Ahead of her she saw a row of tramcars, all at a standstill, people pouring out of them looking pretty disgruntled.

Why had the trams stopped?

She opened the window a little, just enough for some air to come in and disperse the condensation on the windscreen. Through the small gap she heard troubled voices calling Adolf Hitler and his bombers all manner of names.

‘Fancy blowing up the tramlines! How we gonna get to work?'

Mary settled back behind the wheel. Suddenly she felt very tired. How many more privations would people have to endure? She was lucky to have use of the car. Even at this time of day there were not many on the roads as few could afford cars or get hold of petrol. She was lucky in being in receipt of a generous petrol allowance, plus that allocated to the bakery business. The old bakery van was used only sparingly; adding what was left over from that with that for the car, there was some left over for private use.

Travelling, whether on trains, buses or trams, was disrupted each time there was a raid. London was fast becoming isolated, or at least the journey to the capital was being lengthened thanks to the more frequent raids. People were being urged not to travel unless necessary. Movement of armed personnel was first priority.

Her thoughts naturally turned to Michael Dangerfield, her fiancé. He would be travelling from Scampton in Lincolnshire for their wedding at St Anne's Church. She ought to be worried about him getting to the church on time, but oddly enough she didn't feel like that at all. In fact she was half hoping he couldn't get there, that he would call it off.

Her sister Ruby sometimes accused her of thinking too deeply. That's what she was doing now, trying to recall every detail of Mike's face and failing. Why was that? Was it perhaps that he didn't mean as much to her as he should?

She sucked in her bottom lip, tasting the sweet slickness of her bright red lipstick. She'd also dabbed a little on her cheeks, just enough to give her some colour.

She leaned forward so she could see better through the misted-up windscreen. Concentrating on the road helped put her misgivings from her mind. She found herself wishing the shops were lit up like they used to be, that there were no white lines along the edge of the pavement, that so many people didn't have to walk or cycle to work thanks to the destruction of the tramlines.

A crowd suddenly gathered in the middle of the road, all looking upwards and pointing. For one brief moment she thought it was another air raid, but then saw they were all laughing. Adults and children alike were skipping and jumping up and down with joy.

The tail of a barrage balloon, a big fat balloon designed to keep dive bombers at bay, slid over the side of a house, its fat bulk seemingly trapped on the roof.

She stopped and watched as people in navy-blue uniforms and tin hats sporting the letters ARP ran up and down the road in front of the shops, shouting and trying to reach for the damaged ropes that should have been tethered to the ground.

‘Michael!'

Michael?

Steel curlers poked out from beneath a woollen turban and a cigarette hung from the lips of the woman shouting for her boy.

Michael! He was nothing like her Michael of course; just a tousle-haired lad with a dirty face and hair that looked as though it had never been introduced to a comb or a hairbrush.

Mike, her Mike, was a dream. She'd seen the way other girls looked at him. But it was she who was going to marry him. Everything was arranged. Rations had been scrupulously saved. The cake was made, the lack of traditional dried fruit more than made up for with fruits they'd dried themselves, plus over-generous amounts of brandy donated by Mike's aunt Bettina Hicks from her late husband's collection.

The wedding dress had been more of a problem, fabric being in such short supply. Mrs Hicks had found two yards of lace. ‘You could trim up something a little plain. I'm sure it would work. And perhaps just a little teaser of a hat with a small veil at the front … what do you think? Oh, and I do have some lovely blue material that might do for the bridesmaids' dresses. I presume you'll be wearing your mother's dress?'

Mary had assured her that the lace was beautiful and of course it would change something quite plain into something quite wonderful. As regards her mother's wedding dress …

She bit her lip anew as she recalled her father's response when she'd asked to wear her mother's wedding dress, though it would have to be altered of course.

‘He said he didn't think it would be appropriate,' she had told Mrs Hicks.

Actually his response had been quite sharp. ‘It's Sarah's dress!'

Mary had bitten back the obvious response that her mother was dead and had no need of it. That if she'd still been alive she would have wanted her daughter to wear it. Stan Sweet had changed since they'd lost Charlie. It was hard accepting that he wouldn't be coming back.

‘The softness has gone from him,' Bettina Hicks had confided.

‘Will it come back?' Mary had asked.

Bettina had shaken her head sorrowfully. ‘Who can say? I do hope this wedding brings him out of himself. We can but hope.'

Mary hoped she was right.

 

 

ROW AFTER ROW
of golden-crusted bread occupied the bakery shelves and the air was warmed by its yeasty presence.

Ruby Sweet breathed in the delicious aroma.

‘There's nothing like the smell of freshly baked bread,' she said out loud, her hands on her slim hips. She liked bread and, though you wouldn't know it from her slender frame, ate a lot of it.

She turned as her father came from out back and through the shop. Having finished baking for the day, he was wearing his outdoor coat and his hat.

‘No sign of Mary?'

‘No.' Ruby shook her head, eyeing him from behind a curtain of dark gold hair.

He sighed. ‘She shouldn't have gone. I hear the tramlines got blown up. Anything could have happened.'

‘We would know if it had. Dad, there's something I want to—'

‘I told her not to go. We all saw the sky last night.'

‘Dad, about the wedding—'

‘What about it?'

Ruby thought he should show more enthusiasm, but that was the way he was at present. Still in mourning. God knows when he'd finally snap out of it.

‘Mary would love to wear white.'

‘So?'

Ruby took a deep breath and jumped in with what she had to say. ‘Mum's dress wouldn't need that much alteration …'

‘No! It's Sarah's dress. Nobody else's. Not yours. Not Mary's!'

‘Dad, Mum's been gone for over twenty years, and I think she would have—'

‘You don't know.' He waved his finger in front of her face. ‘That's just it. You do not know! Now let that be an end to it.'

There was so much more she wanted to say, but it was useless arguing with him when he was in this kind of mood.

Clamping her lips tightly together, she went to the wooden drawer that served as a cash register and bent her head over the order book. Thanks to her ‘peek-a-boo' hairstyle, adopted to hide the mole on her face, a lock of hair fell forward, preventing him from seeing her expression: anger mixed with concern.

She was angry that he was so intractable when it came to Mary wearing their mother's dress; she was concerned because her father had changed since he'd lost his only son. ‘Going for a walk?' she asked in an absent-minded fashion. Inside she continued to bristle.

He pulled the brim of his hat down over his face. ‘Won't be long,' he said gruffly.

A draught of chill air came in as he dragged the door open. The drop in temperature persisted even after the door had closed behind him.

While supposedly counting the loose change in the till, Ruby contemplated where her father might be going. Before Charlie's death it would have been one of two places: either Stratham House to visit Bettina Hicks, who was also aunt to Michael, Mary's fiancé, or to his wife's grave.

Sarah Sweet had died in the flu epidemic immediately following the end of the Great War. Her passing had left their father with a small boy and twin baby girls to raise on his own. He'd done handsomely, and rose to the occasion again when his brother died and his sister-in-law shot off, leaving him to bring up Frances, their daughter, his niece.

Since Charlie's death, his last resting place known only unto God, Stan Sweet had stopped visiting Bettina Hicks for a cup of tea or a tot of something stronger. Bettina's view, which she had confided to Mary, was that he felt guilty at still being alive and his only son dead. ‘As though having happy moments were a sin,' she'd said, a look of profound sadness in her eyes.

Slamming the cash drawer shut, Ruby came out from behind the counter. She watched as her father made his way towards West Street, the top of his hat bobbing along before he disappeared around the corner. Her guess was that he was heading for St Anne's churchyard and her mother's grave.

‘She can't be that good company,' Ruby muttered to herself.

Before she could get too melancholy, she marched through the door behind the counter and brought through the other items they had for sale that day: cheese straws, rock cakes and scones. She'd used the last of the dried fruit they'd preserved last year to make the scones and rock cakes. The cheese for the straws had been grated from the end rind of a piece of Cheddar cheese given them by one of the local farmers' wives.

The tray containing all this wasn't so much heavy as bulky. As she carried it through to the shop, the headscarf she'd wound loosely around her hair, like an Alice band, slipped off and her hair fell forward, obscuring her vision.

Muttering under her breath, Ruby placed the tray on the counter and picked up the scarf. It was blue and matched her eyes.

Rather than leave the shop and use the mirror over the fireplace, she used her reflection in the shop door to put her scarf straight again. Her hair fell in her usual peek-a-boo hairstyle. It seemed a shame to alter it, but it made sense to tie it back whilst serving in the shop.

As she began to rewind the scarf around her head she caught sight of the mole that blighted one side of her face. Once the scarf was retied, she pulled a section of hair from beneath it, looping it over the mole that she preferred to keep hidden.

Although her reflection in the shop door was faint, she could still see that mole. A thought occurred to her. Perhaps it's the reason why Mary is engaged to a handsome flier and I don't even have a sweetheart. If I were to get married, I'd present Dad with a grandchild right away, she thought to herself. That would perk him up.

But she wasn't getting married. She'd vowed not to fall for anyone ever again after Gareth Stead, the landlord of the Apple Tree pub, had made a fool of her. He'd been sentenced to prison shortly after he was caught dealing on the black market. Mrs Darwin-Kemp, who lived in the biggest house in the village with her retired colonel husband, had been the presiding magistrate at his trial and he'd gone down for two years.

‘Day-dreaming again, Ruby?' She shook her head. ‘Talking to oneself is the first sign of madness.' She shrugged. ‘Oh well. In this crazy world, who's going to notice?'

She placed the tray of cheese straws and cakes on the counter just as the jangling of the brass bell above the shop door announced a customer.

Miriam Powell came in, her pale countenance made paler on account of her black knitted hat and a worn black coat with a threadbare collar speckled with dandruff. It reeked of mothballs.

Ruby plastered on a smile to hide the pity she felt for Miriam, unfortunate enough to live and work with a mother who spouted religion from her thin lips. She'd always been scruffy, but never more so than she was now.

‘Hello, Miriam. What can I get for you?'

‘My usual, please. And mother said can she have some cheese straws to sell in the shop. The children like them if they've used up their sweet ration.'

‘She lets them come into the shop?' Ruby couldn't avoid sounding surprised. Miriam's mother was a right old dragon and not particularly fond of children. It had always amazed Ruby that she'd actually had a child of her own, though Miriam had been a one-off.