Poppy Day (35 page)

‘It’s over!’

Sis came tearing into the Rumbling Shed, bursting with the news, her face pink through the canary yellow. She threw her arms round Jess, jumping up and down in excitement.

‘Oh Jess, I can’t believe it – it’s finished, over at last! And Perce can come ’ome!’

‘Are you sure?’ But she could already hear the shrieks of excitement from outside.

‘Yes – definite – they signed this morning! ’Ere, come on – everyone’s out!’

They pulled off their caps and overalls. All the other women had come out from the sheds and were hugging, laughing, shouting all at once in a great commotion. Jess saw Peter Stevenson among them, being grasped hold of and kissed by all and sundry, all of which he seemed to be rather enjoying.

‘Go on!’ Sis shouted down her ear. ‘Go and give ’im a kiss – make ’is day!’

‘What d’you mean?’ Jess shouted back.

‘You blind or summat, Jess? Ain’t yer seen the way ’e looks at yer?’

Jess shook her head. ‘No!’ She’d been so wrapped up in her hurt, her misery over Ned, that nothing much else had got through. At the edge of the crowd with Sis she watched him, standing at least a head taller than the women, in his khaki overall, his eyes crinkling with laughter as a group of them milled round him. She saw he was looking round, searching, and after a moment his eyes rested on her for a second, with a questioning, uncertain look. Jess managed to meet his gaze, equally uncertain. Was Sis mistaken, and was she imagining the special tenderness in his eyes when he looked at her?

She saw he was coming over and she felt panic rising in her. But Sis saved her, launching herself at Peter Stevenson, throwing her arms round him and just managing to reach up and kiss his cheek.

‘Ain’t it
bostin
!’ she cried. She couldn’t keep still at all.

Peter laughed, pretending to stagger with her hurling herself at him. ‘Yes, Sis – it’s bostin all right – couldn’t be better. Could it, Jess?’

‘No.’ To her annoyance Jess felt a heavy blush spread across her cheeks and hoped Peter Stevenson would think it was just excitement about the news. ‘It couldn’t, could it?’

‘Why don’t yer come round ours and help us celebrate later on?’ Sis said irrepressibly.

‘Sis!’ Jess reproached her. ‘Mr Stevenson’s got his own family . . .’

‘Well – Davey can come with him, can’t ’e? The more the merrier!’

Peter Stevenson came round that evening to join in the celebrations, which spread out all along the streets, with singing and dancing, drinking and cheering. But the poignancy of the occasion, its combination of joy and grief, was too much for Polly and she broke down during the evening. The truth that Ernie would never come home now peace had broken out hit her even harder.

When they had all been out partying in the cold long enough, Olive suggested everyone go in for ‘a cuppa tea and a nip of the hard stuff’. They crowded into the back room, Ronny and Davey both up long after their bedtime although Grace had given up the battle with sleep some time before and was tucked in upstairs. Olive poured celebratory tots of brandy, they had glasses of ale and later on, boiled up the kettle.

‘It’s nice to ’ave yer with us,’ she said to Peter Stevenson. ‘I ’ope you’ll come and see us, even when the factory’s gone and that – they won’t be needing it no more, will they?’

‘I s’pose not, no. I haven’t had time to think yet, to tell you the truth!’

‘Poor old John,’ Sis said. John had got a job making Lee Enfield Rifles – now there wouldn’t be much call for them.

‘What’ll you do then?’ Jess asked Peter.

‘Look for another job, I s’pose – even start summat up myself in the long run. I’ve always fancied that.’

It was a happy, if poignant evening, so much ending, so much lost, yet such an enormous relief still tinged with disbelief that it was finished. Eventually, when David was beginning to look glazed with sleepiness, Peter stood up.

‘Come on, my lad. High time we were off.’

‘Jess’ll see you out,’ Sis said, wickedly. Jess glowered at her, blushing, but stood up.

Once they had coats on, Peter picked David up and the boy leaned his head thankfully against his father’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Peter carried him carefully out through the front door and turned to say goodbye. Jess stood on the step. A candle was burning in the hall and against the soft light she looked so sweet, so soft and deliciously feminine. He could just see her face, her teeth gleaming as she smiled at him.

‘Goodnight then,’ she said softly. There was a wistfulness in her voice that he was unsure how to interpret.

‘Jess?’ Thank God I’m holding Davey, he thought, otherwise I’d be unable to stop myself taking her in my arms.

‘Umm?’

‘When the factory closes – I mean it’s bound to be soon – I wouldn’t want to – not see you – and the family, of course.’ He paused, then added, ‘But especially you.’

Jess was deeply touched by his care for her, but in her own heart there was still such hurt and confusion. She wasn’t sure exactly what Peter felt for her, let alone what she could feel in return.

‘I—’ she swallowed. ‘No – course not. You must come and see us. I’m glad you came tonight. It’s hard to believe it’s all over.’

‘Yes—’ All evening they had been saying things like this. ‘Maybe tomorrow it’ll sink in.’

‘Well . . .’ Jess pulled the door closed a little. ‘Goodnight then. Give Davey a kiss from me.’

‘Jess, I . . .’ He saw her hesitate at the door. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, Peter.’

His face didn’t register his disappointment. He heard her shut the door gently behind her.

After all, what else could she say? he demanded of himself as he carried his sleeping son home through the streets still full of jubilant, carousing people. There were moments when he thought he saw her eyes respond to his, to his feeling, but so fleetingly that he wasn’t sure.

I’m so flaming old, he thought. Maybe I’m just making a fool of myself. Why should such a lovely girl want a man more than ten years her senior? And when she’s grieving for someone else? I ought to keep away. Leave her alone. But I can’t.

He let out a groan of longing and frustration that got lost in the clamour around him.

God, I love her, he thought. I do – I just can’t help it.

The following weeks were spent adjusting to the idea of peace after the long, dark years of war. The munitions factories closed or reverted back to pre-war production and all the cousins had to look for new jobs. Polly managed to get taken back on at Clark’s Pens, Sis found a job at Wicker Carriage and Basket Manufacturers, and Jess found a firm needing experienced enamellers that was the right side of town, not in the Jewellery Quarter. She knew, guiltily, that if she’d gone back over there to work, she could have seen more of Iris. But fond as she was of her, she had avoided going over there too often. Iris was sympathetic about what had happened, but for Jess, Iris’s house held too many memories of Ned.

As the weeks passed, the boys came home. First one of Mrs Bullivant’s remaining sons, Ed. The other, Lol (short for Laurence), was wounded and in hospital in France, but would be following later.

The family were waiting on tenterhooks for their loved ones to come back. Perce was the first. There was a knock at the door one evening after they’d finished tea.

Polly led him through to the back crying out, ‘Look who’s here!’

Percy looked bigger and broader in the shoulders, blond hair cropped, a man suddenly, instead of a boy. He stood beaming in the doorway, arms outstretched.

‘Perce!’ Sis shrieked. ‘Oh my God, Perce!’ She almost flattened him, hurling herself on him with full bodied ardour and covering his face with kisses which he enthusiastically returned. Everyone else might just as well not have been there. Polly and Jess grinned at each other and even Olive’s face softened at the sight.

‘Sis—’ Perce held her by the shoulders as soon as they both got their breath back, although Sis couldn’t keep still.

‘What?’ She was tearful and giggly all at once.

He had been about to say something else but he stopped. ‘Bloomin’ ’ell! Yer’ve gone all yeller!’

Sis laughed, wiping her sleeve across her eyes. ‘It’s the powder goes in those grenades – it’ll go in the end!’

‘I should ’ope so, yer look like a flaming budgie! Anyroad, Sis – you’re my girl and I want to ask yer, ’ere and now – will yer marry me?’

‘Oooh yes! Yes I will, Perce!’ Her arms snaked round his neck again and she squealed with excitement, then burst into tears all over again.

‘’Ere – steady on,’ Olive said. ‘You’ve only just got through the door!’

‘I know, Mrs Beeston – but it’s been a long, long war and we’ve had time enough to think,’ Perce said seriously. ‘I spent hours sitting in them tanks, sick to me stomach from the stink in there, thinking, when I get out of ’ere, the first thing I’m gunna do . . . I love yer daughter and we’ve lost enough time. I don’t want to waste another second. That’s with your permission, of course.’

‘Oh Auntie!’ Jess said, more animated than she’d looked in ages. ‘Of course you’ll give yer permission – look at them!’

Olive, on her dignity, paused before nodding, though a smile was spreading over her face.

‘I reckon the pair of yer are sensible enough after all this time.’

‘Oh
Mom
!’ Sis cried in delight. ‘Oh Perce! When shall we fix the day for?’

‘’Ow about sitting the poor lad down and offering him a cuppa tea?’ Olive said. ‘After all – ’e’s come a long way to ask yer!’

The next thing, a week later, while Olive was alone with Grace, was the door opening and a lean figure walking in, a greatcoat over one arm.

‘Mom?’

‘Bert?’ For a second she didn’t recognize him. ‘Oh Bert, at last!’ She flung her arms round him, more emotional than he’d ever seen her before. ‘What’s ’appened to yer – you’re all skin and bone!’

‘Oh I’ll be awright, Mom, with some decent ’ome cooking inside of me.’ He was in good spirits. ‘Eh – I’m dying for a decent cuppa tea. You got the kettle on?’

As she heated up some food for him and brewed tea Bert sat at the table looking round, chattering to her, although his face looked grey and drawn with exhaustion.

‘The ’ouse looks smaller, Mom. It’s a queer thing but yer come home after all this time and everything looks the same but different some’ow.’

Olive was watching him, frowning. ‘What’s the matter with yer, Bert? Yer look like a death’s head.’

‘Oh I’ll be awright. It were just one damn thing after another out there. Poxy bloody place the east is – I never want to set foot there again, what with the heat and the flies – and I was sick like you’d never believe. Fever and dysentery and Christ knows what. Blokes dying all round – not just from the fighting, mind – from all the diseases out there. Terrible. Anyroad . . .’ He sat back, breathing in contentedly. ‘Home at last. I wouldn’t go back in the army if yer gave me a fortune to do it, I can tell yer!’