The Heart of the Family (38 page)

Downstairs Gavin paced the small kitchen with all the anxiety and sense of helplessness of any man who knows that the girl he loves is suffering and that he can’t do anything for her.

Gavin had, of course, known for some time that he had fallen for Lena but he was a sensible, responsible young man whose mother had made sacrifices to bring her children up decently and who had certain expectations of them. His mum had been that thrilled when she’d thought he might marry a teacher, and that disappointed when she’d realised that he wouldn’t. Someone like Lena, not wed and with another man’s baby, wasn’t the kind of wife she’d want for him, even though she’d been kind enough to Lena when she’d met her. And then there was his own pride. What right-thinking man wanted a wife who’d gone and behaved like Lena had with someone else? He’d be letting himself in for a life of misery with other men getting to know and going on about it, and some of them even thinking that they could try their luck with Lena because of her past. He didn’t think he’d be able to stomach anything like that. Gavin was ambitious, and he’d got plans. First he wanted to get his Master’s certificate, then command of his own pilot boat – that meant long hours of studying and long hours of working, and that meant that he’d need a sensible down-to-earth sort of wife who could hold her own and hold a home together whilst he was working, not a girl who needed looking after and protecting.

He could hear groans and gasps from upstairs that tore at his own insides.

The register was signed and the pianist struck up the soaring triumphant chords of Mendelssohns’s ‘Wedding March’. Seb, beaming with a proud husbandly air, escorted Grace back down the aisle and past the traditional nativity scene set up at the back of the church close to the font, to where, outside, eight of his fellow RAF chums had formed a military arch for the newly married couple to walk under, whilst everyone else pelted them with confetti made from minced-up privet leaves soaked in white distemper. A sharp beam of sunshine broke up the leaden grey of the late December sky. Suddenly, Grace thought back to the dreadful bombing blitz of the previous December and then turned to look at Seb, who squeezed her hand tightly as though he too was sharing that painful memory.

Brandon was looking so pale that Fran would rather have got him back to their hotel than gone on to the wedding breakfast, but she knew he would balk at any attempt by her to mollycoddle him in public, and so instead she simply moved protectively close to him, her face shadowed with the anxiety that her commitment to him had brought her.

Watching Sasha looking all coy as Bobby reached for her hand made Lou scowl and scuff the side of her shoe on the ground. Well, she wouldn’t have to put up with their soppiness for much longer, thank goodness.

A few flakes of snow drifted down from the heavy grey sky, making Katie shiver. It was almost a year to the day since she had first met Luke. She looked down at her engagement ring and wished with all her heart that he could have been here, and not just for her own sake. She knew just how much Jean
would be missing her son on such a special occasion. How different her Christmas was going to be this year from last year. Then she had been shyly looking forward to spending Christmas with the Campions, not knowing that Christmas was going to bring her the gift of Luke’s love. This year she would be spending it with her parents in Hampstead.

Bella looked up at the grey sky. Was Jan up there somewhere on an op, or was he off duty and with his wife, planning Christmas with her and their families, whilst knowing that she herself must be without him?

She must not think such thoughts. They were forbidden and far too painful, and besides she had promised herself that she would not do so. It was just seeing Grace looking so in love and so loved in return that had brought such thoughts to the fore. She would be better as soon as the wedding was over and she was back at home. She just hoped that Gavin hadn’t let Lena overtire herself.

Gavin was in midpace when he heard it – a silence followed by a long-drawn-out sound of pain and then suddenly a sharply mewling cry that had him taking the stairs two at a time, only to be barred from the bedroom by his flushed and delighted-looking landlady, who thrust a towel-wrapped bundle into his arms, telling him, ‘Just keep hold of her for a minute whilst we get Lena sorted out, will you, Gavin?’ before closing the bedroom door firmly in his face.

A girl. Gingerly Gavin eased back the blanket and then stared in mute awe at the tiny baby with her damp dark curls, her long eyelashes, and her delicate rosebud mouth. She was just like Lena, Gavin thought
dizzily, sitting down on the top stair, the better to hold her protectively.

When she yawned and then opened her eyes and looked up at him, he felt as though his heart were being wrenched out of his body on a surge of fiercely protective paternal love for her. Tears filled his eyes as he held her. She was so beautiful, so precious, and he was never ever going to let anyone hurt her in any kind of way.

Lena smiled gratefully at the two women who had helped bring her baby safely into the world, as they sponged her down and tidied her up. Thankfully, because the baby had been a month early, there’d not been any tearing, despite her hurry to be born, and as the midwife had said, Lena was the right shape for motherhood, with good child-bearing hips.

‘Right, I think what we all need now is a good strong cup of tea,’ the midwife announced once Lena had been helped back into the newly made-up bed. ‘I think I’ve got a spare laundry basket at home for the baby for now, if you haven’t got one, Vera,’ she told Gavin’s landlady.

Lena laughed, thinking of the lovely cradle waiting in the nursery at Bella’s, and then asked a bit anxiously, ‘Where is she, my baby?’

‘I gave her to Gavin to look after whilst we sorted you out,’ she was told. ‘I’ll go and get her.’

When Mrs Stone opened the door, Lena could see Gavin sitting on the top stair, cradling the towel-wrapped bundle as carefully as though she were the most precious thing in the world.

After one look at Gavin and another at Lena’s face, Gavin’s landlady touched the midwife on the
arm and said meaningfully, ‘I could do with a hand getting them sheets and that downstairs, and I’ve got a nice bit of shortbread, if you fancy a piece.’

The midwife frowned and then nodded as she too recognised the emotions she could see on both young faces.

It wasn’t the done thing at all to let a man into the room so soon after a birth, not even when he was a husband, so some said, but she’d had enough experience over the years to know that there were some rules that were made to be broken – on certain occasions.

As she followed Mrs Stone across the landing she tapped Gavin on the shoulder and told him, ‘You’d better take that little ’un to her mum, seein’ as you can’t provide what she’s going to start yelling for any minute.’

Very carefully Gavin got up and walked towards the bedroom, hesitating at the doorway, until Lena held out her arms, and then stepping inside.

The room smelled of cold sea air, as the midwife had opened the windows after the birth, and then closed them again to keep Lena warm, and old polished furniture.

There were dark shadows like bruises beneath Lena’s eyes, and those curls round her forehead that had escaped from the neat plait done by the midwife, were damp still with the sweat of her labour.

‘She looks just like you,’ Gavin told Lena, carefully handing over the baby.

Lena smiled at him and then at her daughter, her eyes filling with gentle tears when the baby reached out as Gavin tucked the towel round her to grasp his finger with her tiny baby hand.

‘Lena, I’ve bin thinking …’ Gavin’s head was bowed and his voice gruff.

Lena looked up from gazing in adoring awe at her daughter’s perfect features to look instead at Gavin’s down-bent head.

‘We get on well together, you and me, and what with the baby coming and her not having a dad of her own, and you and me getting on like we do, well, I was thinking that perhaps you and me should think about getting married so as she can have a proper mum and dad to look after her – that’s if you’d like us to get married.’

Lena could feel her love for him flowing gently and calmly through her like a placid river unperturbed by any tumultuous demands of the tide, strong and sure in itself and content to be as it was. That was what real love was, she decided suddenly, feeling very grown up.

‘I’d like that a lot,’ she told him. ‘I really would, Gavin, but I don’t know what your mum will have to say, me being a bad lot like I was, and doing what I shouldn’t have.’

‘Don’t worry about Mum. She’ll come round once she sees I’ve made up my mind. I love you, Lena, I really do, and I promise I’ll be a good dad to our little ’un.’

‘Oh, Gavin, I don’t deserve to be so lucky and to have you to love me. It’s like a dream come true. There’s me knowing how much I love you all these weeks and thinking you could never love me back ’cos of me having a baby, like I have done, and now here you are saying that you love me and that you want to be a proper dad to Baby, just like she was your own.’

Their kiss was tremulous and uncertain, and brought to an end by the rattle of teacups outside the bedroom door, but neither of them could bear to release the other’s hand, and the looks they were exchanging fair brought a lump to her throat, Mrs Stone told the midwife when she went back downstairs.

‘We’ll get married as soon as we can get the banns called,’ Gavin told Lena, ‘and when it comes to putting down the little ’un’s name on the birth certificate, it’s my name I want to see you putting there, Lena, seeing as I’m going to be her dad.’

Grateful tears filled Lena’s eyes. She was so lucky. First there had been Bella’s kindness and generosity, and now this, the gift of Gavin’s love – not just for her but for her baby as well.

‘What are you crying for?’ Gavin asked her anxiously, fearing some complication from the birth.

‘Because I’m so happy,’ Lena told him. ‘And because I love you and you love me, and because I’m just the luckiest person in the whole of Liverpool.’

I would like to thanks the following for their invaluable help:

Teresa Chris, my agent.

Susan Opie, my editor at HarperCollins.

Yvonne Holland, whose expertise enables me ‘not to have nightmares’ about getting things wrong.

Everyone at HarperCollins who contributed to the publication of this book.

My friends in the RNA, who always have been so generous with their time and help on matters ‘writerly’.

Tony, who as always has done wonders researching the facts I needed.

Annie Groves lives in the North-West of England and has done so all of her life. She is the author of
Ellie Pride, Connie’s Courage
and
Hettie of Hope Street,
a series of novels for which she drew upon her own family’s history, picked up from listening to her grandmother’s stories when she was a child. Her most recent novels are
Goodnight Sweetheart, Some Sunny Day, The Grafton Girls, As Time Goes By, Across the Mersey
and
Daughters of Liverpool,
which are based on recollections from members of her family who come from the city of Liverpool. Her website, www.anniegroves.co.uk, has further details.

Annie Groves also writes under the name Penny Jordan, and is an internationally bestselling author of over 170 novels with sales of over 84,000,000 copies.