Dancing in the Moonlight (43 page)

‘You can get shot at from six sides at once,’ John had written in his last letter, which they had received just after Christmas. ‘The Japanese buzz round you like bees and,
like bees, there are so many of them you don’t know which one to swat first; and even when you get one, another ten take their place.’

At the end of January it was reported that the Allies were in retreat across the Johore Strait to the island of Singapore, blowing up the causeway behind them as they went. Then, in the middle
of February, came the news they were dreading: Singapore, the great naval base and a fortress considered to be impregnable, had fallen to the enemy. General Arthur Percival, the leading British
commander, had surrendered his remaining 138,000 men to the Japanese.

It was a week later when the telegram came, very early, at six o’clock on a bitterly cold, snowy morning. Lucy got to the door first in her dressing gown, taking the telegram with
trembling fingers. She read it as Ruby and the others came pounding down the stairs. When she had finished, she couldn’t speak, handing the telegram to Ruby.

‘He’s a prisoner of war?’ said Charley hopefully. It was the best they could hope for.

Lucy shook her head. All her brothers gone, and two of her sisters. There was only her and Ruby left now, of the seven of them. It seemed impossible, but it was true.

The next months were hard, but in a strange way the horror stories they were hearing regarding the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ to what they described as the
‘Jewish problem’ hardened British resolve. Whatever they were going through, it wasn’t so bad as those poor devils – that was the general opinion. Hitler needed to be
stopped before he wiped out an entire race. Belzec, Treblinka, Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, along with many more camps, became household names, and freedom had never been so worth fighting
for.

For Lucy and the family, struggling to come to terms with the loss of Flora and Bess and then John so soon afterwards, daily life was coloured by deep grief and sadness. It was a dark, dark
time.

The cold months passed, spring came and then summer. The seasons continued whatever the madness of man. And then, in June, Jacob was proved right.

Rommel returned to Tobruk, and this time there was no air support from the beleaguered Allies. The Luftwaffe pounded the fortress and, besieged on every side, the garrison surrendered; 35,000
British troops were captured by the Germans.

Lucy heard the news when she was alone, having returned home in the middle of the day feeling unwell. The newscaster called the defeat a national disaster. For Lucy, it was something much worse.
She walked out into the garden and sat down on the small stone wall that separated the concreted area near the house from Daisy’s vegetable patch. Daisy had taken to gardening like a duck to
water and now kept the family supplied in seasonal vegetables as another of her contributions to the war effort.

But Lucy wasn’t thinking about Daisy as she sat in the hot June sunshine, utterly bereft. She cried for more than an hour until she was sick, whether from sitting in the blazing sun with
no hat when she’d already been feeling ill, or from heartbreak, she didn’t know. And cared even less.

She had lost Jacob.
She felt it deep inside, and without him the future had no meaning. Her fight to survive the chain of events that had been set in motion the day her father and Ernie
died so horribly would have been for nothing.

It was her blackest hour.

After a while she dragged herself to her feet and went into the house. She ran a shallow bath, after which she dressed in fresh clothes and took a pill for the grinding headache that had
developed. Then she cleared up the mess in the garden and made a pot of weak tea.

The nausea had passed, but she felt sick to the heart of her. Sick, lonely and frightened. Jacob had loved her as she would never be loved again. He had loved her all his life and he had waited
for her as long. They were connected in a way that bypassed time and circumstances and she would never love anyone else.

She drank two cups of tea, black and scalding hot, and by the time Daisy came in she had composed herself, but it was a fragile composure. Knowing it wouldn’t survive telling her daughter
the news, she said nothing. Nor did she speak of it to Charley when he came home. It was only when Ruby walked in at gone six o’clock that she took her sister into the kitchen, shut the door
so that the two of them were alone and couldn’t be overheard, and said, ‘Tobruk’s fallen, it was on the wireless. Lots of casualties and thirty-five thousand of our soldiers taken
prisoner.’

Ruby’s eyes widened for a moment. ‘Oh, lass, lass.’

‘I’ve got a feeling on me, Ruby.’ When her sister would have taken her in her arms, Lucy gently pushed her away. ‘I’ll never see Jacob again. It’s like I know
he’s already dead. I can’t explain it, except I feel it’s over and that Tom Crawford has won. If I hadn’t been so scared and stupid, if I’d gone to Enid the day after
it happened instead of running away from him, Jacob and I could have had years together. Instead he’s dead, and wherever his brother is, he’s laughing at us—’

‘Enough!’ Ruby’s voice was sharp, and when Lucy stared at her, she said, ‘You don’t know that Jacob is dead. No, you don’t, lass, so don’t look at me
like that. You don’t
know
, all right? And as for the other, if you’d gone to Enid Crawford, she’d never have believed her precious Tom had forced you. It would have been
his word against yours. He wanted to marry you, don’t forget, so he’d have been the one with the halo, and he’d have managed it somehow, by hook or by crook. Jacob wouldn’t
have survived long after leaving hospital, either. I don’t know how Tom would have managed it, but he’d have made sure Jacob was out of the picture for good the next time. You know
that, Lucy. Your life would have been a misery – all our lives would – and Daisy would have grown up with an evil, murdering swine of a father. So no regrets. You did what you had to
do.’

‘Oh, Ruby.’ Lucy’s voice was husky. ‘What would I do without you? You’re so good.’

‘Aye, that’s me. Saint Ruby of Sunderland. Now I’m going to make us a nice cup of tea and I’m putting a tot of something in yours, for the shock. And we’re not
crossing any bridges till we come to them. I know it’s hard, lass, but all we can do is wait to hear.’

Lucy nodded, taking a deep breath and smiling shakily. ‘I’m supposed to be the big sister who talks sense. Not you.’

‘A change is as good as a rest.’ Ruby hugged her. ‘And with everything that’s happened in the last months, you’re bound to think the worst. Wait till you know.
Meself, I think he’s all right. Like Mam used to say, I’ve got a feeling in me water.’

Lucy was always to remember the long, hot July of 1942 for the rest of her life. There was a respite in the air raids and the blue skies overhead seemed harmless. The American
GIs were beginning to arrive, their snazzy uniforms, endless supplies of forgotten luxuries and Yankee chit-chat making them a big hit with young British girls, who were all too willing to be swept
off their feet. British servicemen thought differently, deeply resenting their American cousins’ success with the women, but most of all it was the outrageous difference in pay that made them
spitting mad. An American private received three pounds, eight shillings and ninepence a week, while his British counterpart earned just fourteen shillings. With beer costing one shilling and
thrupence a pint, most British servicemen couldn’t afford to give a girl a good time. The Americans had brought a splash of colour and glamour to a grey and tired Britain, however, and in
Sunderland as well as other towns and cities a buzz was in the air. ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’ could be heard in the dance halls, and nylon stockings replaced gravy and painted-on seams
on some girls’ legs.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves that July, or at least Lucy felt they were, whereas for her each day was endless and the nights were worse. She barely ate and she couldn’t sleep.
It didn’t help that Charley had bought Daisy a second-hand record player for her birthday in February, which had sent her into raptures and which she kept in her bedroom, and every so often
he treated her to a new record for her small collection. The hot weather meant that Daisy’s windows were permanently open and the strains of ‘Kiss Me Goodnight’ or ‘That
Lovely Weekend’ or ‘When They Sound the Last All-Clear’ floating on the air did nothing for Lucy’s emotional wellbeing as she waited for news about Jacob.

She was constantly worried about Matthew, too. The British Fleet in the Mediterranean was ranged against a substantially larger enemy navy and had sustained serious losses since the beginning of
the war in a number of battles. Somehow, and she thanked God for it, Matthew had come through unscathed and at present was in Alexandria. He wrote rarely, but when he did he sounded cheerful, even
happy, which was amazing in the circumstances, although Lucy suspected much of that was for her benefit. Nevertheless, for the moment he was alive and he was free.

On the first day of August, a Saturday, Lucy and Daisy got home late after going to the cinema. The Havelock on the corner of Fawcett Street and High Street West had been showing
Casablanca
and Daisy had desperately wanted to go, after two of her school friends had told her about it. For Lucy it had been something of a penance. She knew she’d been
short-tempered lately, nearly biting Daisy’s head off once or twice, especially when she’d played ‘We’ll Meet Again’ three times on the trot that morning.

They walked home in the mellow summer night, taking their time and chatting and eating the last of their sweet ration as they went.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it, but Matthew, Charley and I don’t look remotely like each other,’ said Daisy, out of the blue. ‘You can see they’re brothers,
just, but neither of them looks like me.’

‘Maybe that’s because you’re their half-sister,’ said Lucy carefully, ‘and you look so much like me, there’s no room for anyone else.’ She dug Daisy in
the ribs and she giggled. ‘Matthew looks like his own mother, by all accounts, although I never met her of course.’

‘And Charley looks like our da.’

‘Yes, he does.’

‘Was he pleased to have a girl, my da?’

‘Very pleased.’

‘I wish he hadn’t died.’ Because of the furore at the time and the resulting publicity, she and Ruby had decided early on that it would be wrong to keep the truth from the
children in case they heard it from someone else, so they had explained to each of them, when they were old enough to understand, that Perce had been attacked in the street and had died from his
injuries. ‘Especially like he did.’

‘So do I.’

‘But if he hadn’t, you wouldn’t be able to marry Jacob when he comes home.’

Lucy looked at her daughter. Stopping, she took Daisy’s hands in hers. ‘Your father was a very special man and will always have a very special place in my heart,’ she said
softly. ‘Do you understand? No one can take that place, because it’s his.’

‘Did you love him as much as you love Jacob?’

Daisy had clearly been thinking about this for a while. ‘I cared for your father in a different way from Jacob, because each person is different, but he was a wonderful man and I know we
would have been happy together all our lives if he had lived. But he didn’t, and I was heartbroken. Then I met Jacob again.’

Daisy nodded, her big eyes gleaming in the moonlight, which thankfully was bright that night. There were still a number of accidents in the blackout on moonless nights. ‘I like Jacob, but
I don’t think it’s right to call him Da. He won’t mind that, will he?’

‘No, he won’t mind.’

‘Perhaps Uncle Jacob. Does that sound right?’

Oh, the irony of it! Lucy wanted to press her hand to the ache in her chest, but she didn’t. Instead she said lightly, ‘I think that’d be fine.’

‘He
will
come back, Mam.’ Daisy’s face was very serious. ‘I know he will. God wouldn’t take my da and then Jacob as well. He wouldn’t do that to
you.’

The childlike faith was a sword-thrust through her heart, and now she was praying for Jacob’s return as much for Daisy as herself. ‘I hope he’ll come home, hinny, but God
doesn’t always stop bad people doing things to good people. If He did, we’d all be nothing more than puppets, wouldn’t we? And life doesn’t work like that.’ She bent
and kissed her daughter’s brow. ‘I love you so much. Let’s go home.’

Ruby met them in the hall when they entered the house. She had clearly been waiting for the sound of the key in the front door. Lucy didn’t ask why, for she had seen the telegram lying on
the hall table. ‘When did it come?’

‘You hadn’t been gone above half an hour. I didn’t know whether to come to the cinema and find you, but I thought . . .’ Ruby’s voice faltered.

‘No, you did the right thing.’

‘Ron’s still here. He’s in the sitting room. He wanted to wait till . . . He wanted to know . . .’ Ruby seemed incapable of finishing a sentence.

‘I’m sorry we’re so late. It’s such a lovely night we walked home.’ She had to pick it up. She had to open it. But she couldn’t. Such an insignificant little
thing, but it held the rest of her life inside it. She looked at Ruby, who was equally transfixed.

In the end it was Daisy who picked the envelope up and handed it to her mother. Lucy took it, trembling, and like the day she had looked through the stained glass in the front door and seen
Jacob sitting on the wall outside, all she could hear was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the dining room.

She opened the envelope and read the few words it contained. Then she looked into the two faces in front of her, which were rent with concern and love. ‘He’s a prisoner of
war,’ she said softly. ‘He’s alive.’

October 1942, when General Montgomery battered down Rommel’s defences with a massive artillery bombardment and a thousand tanks, many of them lent by the Americans, and
defeated the Afrika Korps at El Alamein, marked the turn of the tide of the war. As Churchill claimed, ‘Up to Alamein we survived. After Alamein, we conquered.’