The Heart of the Family (24 page)

‘Fran, you ready yet?’ The voice of Tom Gardner, the theatre manager, from outside her dressing-room door brought her back to reality.

‘Just about,’ she told him, reaching for her evening bag and checking that the navy-blue chiffon gown, with its sprinkling of sewn-on crystal beads – made in Egypt from fabric she had bought there when they had been on tour – hung properly, before opening the door and stepping out into the corridor.

‘You’ll certainly wow everyone tonight,’ Tom told her appreciatively, ‘although all the other women are bound to be green with envy, and not just because of your gown,’ he told her gallantly.

Francine gave him a wide smile. She knew that Tom, debonair in his dinner suit, his fair hair slicked back, for all his flattery and man-about-town airs, preferred his own sex to hers, and was in a long-term and very discreet relationship with another man.

‘What’s tonight’s do all about?’ Francine asked him as she placed her hand on the arm he had crooked for her.

‘A welcome party for some American airmen, sponsored by the Eagle Club, even though they’re holding it at the Savoy. Major status, I would guess, rather than generals,’ Tom told her.

Francine knew the name. The Eagle Club for Americans had opened in London in 1940.

‘I suppose they’re over here because of these talks Winston Churchill is having with their president?’ she commented as they stepped out into the street, and miraculously Tom managed to secure them a taxi.

‘Shush, mum’s the word, remember?’ he teased her, quoting one of the popular slogans the Government used to warn the general public to be discreet in case they were overheard by ‘spies’.

It was one of those damp November evenings with fog oozing from narrow streets to make the city look even more run down and war worn than ever, and Francine shivered as she got into the taxi.

It had given her a shock, Francine admitted, to return to England and discover how badly London had been bombed. From all accounts Liverpool had suffered just as much if not more, although she hadn’t as yet had time to go north to see her sister Jean and see for herself.

Dear Jean, who had always been so kind to her,
and who, the minute Francine had let her know she was back in England, had written to tell her that she hoped Francine wouldn’t mind but she had loaned some of the clothes Francine had left behind to Katie, Luke’s fiancé. Francine smiled, remembering the charming letter she had received from Luke’s Katie after she had written back to Jean assuring her that she did not mind in the least, and that Jean and Katie and Grace were to consider the trunk and its contents their own.

The truth was that Francine had changed so much from the young girl who had bought those clothes in America that she no longer wanted to wear them. They belonged to a different life, a life before being reunited with Jack, and a life before loving and losing Marcus.

Marcus … there she went again, letting him into her thoughts when what she ought to be doing was keeping him out of them and out of her heart as well.

The Savoy was busy with couples obviously intent on having a good night out, war or no war, many of the men in uniform whilst the women were wearing smart dresses, carefully preserved, Francine suspected from the style of them, from pre-war wardrobes. Guessing that made her feel a bit guilty about the elegance and style of her own evening gown. In Egypt there was no rationing or restrictions. However, if English women could not buy new gowns they were certainly compensating for that by wearing their best jewellery. Of course, the clientele of the Savoy was, in the main, top drawer, well born and wealthy – the kind of women who would have good jewellery – although
Francine had seen one or two girls clinging to male arms who seemed to suggest that the age-old practice of rich men squiring pretty young actresses was still common currency.

A small smile touched Francine’s lips as she wondered what people looking at her would make of her and where they would place her in the Savoy’s clientele hierarchy. She was a singer, not an actress, and she certainly wasn’t a girl any more, or looking for a ‘sugar daddy’, to borrow a phrase from her Hollywood days. But then neither was she out of the top drawer, or even out of a middle drawer, even if she no longer spoke with her original Liverpool accent.

Only those members of the Savoy’s staff from before the war who were over the age for service still remained at the hotel, their manner courteous and very British. Tom asked where they might find their party and was told that it was being held in the River Room.

‘Mmm, perhaps I was wrong and it is generals,’ Tom grinned as he and Francine made their way there.

A couple of smartly uniformed young American servicemen were on duty outside the doors to the River Room, although it was a tired-looking British civil servant who checked their names off against his list, the light shining equally unkindly on his bald head and his well-worn suit, as he indicated that they were free to go in.

It was a senior official from ENSA who was responsible for their invitation, and luckily he was standing close enough to the doors for Francine and Tom to find him without any difficulty.

‘Good, you’re here. Let me introduce you both to a few people. There are a couple of uniforms I want you to meet,’ he told them. ‘They are part of a contingent of political and military personnel over here on some hush-hush business that can’t be discussed but we’ve been given orders to make sure that they are well entertained. I dare say the hush-hush business has something to do with Winston’s talks with the Americans about what kind of help they’re prepared to give us whilst remaining neutral.’

The fact that the Americans had so far remained neutral was something of a sore point, but Francine knew better than to let her nationalistic feeling show when she and Tom mingled with the other guests and played the roles they were there to play.

A young man in air force uniform had attached himself to them – little more than a boy really, Francine thought ruefully, for all his swagger and pride in his country and in himself.

‘Take care of your young admirer,’ Tom told her during the few minutes they had together for private conversation. ‘His father’s a very, very rich banker and his mother is from one of American’s first families.’

‘So what’s he doing in uniform over here instead of helping his father count their money?’ Francine asked, as she sipped her White Lady cocktail.

‘Apparently he enlisted before his parents could stop him, and he got himself over here to join the Eagles.’

The Eagles were a group of young American airmen who had taken it upon themselves to ignore their country’s neutral status and come over to Britain to form their own fighting unit.

‘The American press have got hold of the news that he’s joined the Eagles and have turned him into a bit of a hero, so his parents can’t put any pressure on the American Ambassador to get him shipped back home. Instead the Ambassador’s got him working at the Embassy as a sort of go-between, liaising between the Embassy and the Eagles in an attempt to keep everyone happy.’

Francine could understand any parent wanting to keep their children safe, especially when, after all, it wasn’t America’s fight.

‘So when are you going to let me take you out for dinner?’

Francine put down her cocktail glass and looked the young American in the eye. He had been pursuing her all evening. His name, she had learned, was Brandon Walter Adams the third, and his burning ambition, apart from taking her out to dinner, was to fly with the famous Eagles. He was very good-looking in that clean-cut Ivy League way of a certain type of upper-class young American, with thick wheat-blond hair, good skin, bright blue eyes and the height and breadth of shoulder of a young man used to playing sport. He was also slightly arrogant and overconfident, and far, far too young for her, Francine decided.

‘Are you sure you’re allowed to stay up that late?’ she mocked him deliberately. She had learned a long time ago that the best way to depress the attentions of a certain type of young man was to make him feel small. However, the scarlet colour that washed his face made her feel so guilty that instinctively she reached out and touched his arm, saying gently, ‘I’m
sorry, that was very rude of me. I am extremely flattered by your invitation but truthfully I am far too old for you to take out to dinner. If you’re feeling lonely why don’t you speak with your Ambassador? I’m sure he knows some suitable young girls you could ask out.’

‘Sure he does,’ Brandon agreed. ‘But the girl I want to take to dinner is you. Come on, you wouldn’t want to see a guy starve, would you, because I promise you I’m not eating until you agree to eat with me.’

The thought of a young man as large and as muscular as this one was not eating was enough to make Francine burst out laughing.

‘Good, so that’s a yes then,’ Brandon told her, seizing on her laughter so swiftly that Francine was caught off guard. Before she could even shake her head in denial he was making arrangements, and somehow or other Francine found herself in the ridiculous situation of having agreed to have dinner with him the following evening, even though that was the last thing she really wanted to do.

Pink cheeked and scrubbed clean, her hair washed and braided; and wearing the pretty floral nightdress and dressing gown set Bella had given her, Lena started to eat the supper Bella had prepared for them.

At least the girl looked less like a tart now, and she had surprisingly good manners, Bella acknowledged, watching Lena eat.

‘Did Charlie tell you anything about me?’ she asked Lena abruptly.

Finishing her mouthful of food, Lena shook her head.

‘I only saw him the twice,’ she admitted. ‘A proper
fool I was an’ all to think that he loved me. I know that now.’

‘You won’t be the only girl to be taken in by someone like Charlie whilst this war’s on,’ Bella assured her. ‘I was married to a man who made a fool of me and who would have gone on doing so if he hadn’t been killed by one of Hitler’s bombs.’

Charlie’s sister was a widow? That must be how she came to have this beautiful house all to herself. Lena couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to have not just a room but a whole house. She’d never been in anywhere as smart, nor filled with such nice things. She had wanted to stay wrapped in the thick fluffy bath towel Bella had given her forever – until Bella had given her the beautiful nightdress and dressing gown she was now wearing, along with a pair of what she had described as ‘old’ slippers, but which to Lena, who had never been able to replace the slippers she had lost when her parents’ house had blitzed, were wonderful.

Now, clean and warm, sitting in this beautiful kitchen, eating a big bowl of soup, which Bella had told her her mother had made, Lena felt almost as though she had somehow or other ended up in heaven. Already everything Bella said and did was beginning to fill her with innocent admiration that bordered on hero worship. How could it not do when Bella had been so kind and generous to her?

Tears filled Lena’s eyes at the thought of that generosity, causing Bella to frown and demand, ‘Now what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Lena told her. ‘It’s just that I’ve never met anyone as kind and good as you are. No one has ever been as kind as this to me before, and I know I don’t
deserve it, what with what I’ve done with your Charlie an’ all.’

Already, although neither to them had noticed it, Lena, a natural and instinctive mimic, was modulating how she spoke so that it was closer to the way Bella spoke and less like that of a girl from the slums.

No one had ever told Bella before that she was either kind or good, but when she looked suspiciously at Lena she realised that the girl not only meant what she said but actually believed it. Poor little thing, Bella thought, protective instincts she hadn’t known she possessed suddenly aroused. She could just imagine how easily she would have fallen for Charlie, and how fatally. Not that Bella for one minute approved of Lena’s current situation, of course. Certainly not. But there were plenty of tales circulating about young married women going off the rails in the absence of their husbands, and babies being born within the sanctity of marriage, but fathered outside it, so to speak. Lena had the misfortune to be too young and too naïve to know how to protect her own interests.

‘I’m ever so grateful to you,’ Lena told Bella fervently. ‘I really am. You’ve got a heart of gold and no mistake.’ Lena had to blow her nose on the clean handkerchief Bella had given her and Bella found that she too was in danger of being overcome by emotion. She wished that those who thought they knew her, like Jan Polanski and his family, for instance, were here to witness Lena’s praise, but of course Jan was married now, and his sister and mother had left Bella’s roof to move in with some other Poles. Bella wished that they would leave Wallasey altogether. That way she wouldn’t need to be reminded
of Jan, but Bettina, his sister, now worked in an official capacity within Wallasey Council as a liaison officer between the council and the Polish refugees billeted in the area.

Lena stifled a yawn.

Bella told her, ‘You might as well go up and get a good night’s sleep. After all, you’ll have to fend for yourself from tomorrow, and I’ve got some paperwork to do anyway.’

Lena’s eyes widened and darkened with open respect at Bella’s reference to her work. What a wonderful person she was to make time for her when she had so much to do.

‘So about this dinner date of ours?’