Wartime Sweethearts (26 page)

The British embassy in Montevideo confirms
…

More details followed. The merchant ship on which Charlie had been serving had been attacked and sunk by the German pocket battleship, the
Graf Spee
. In turn the aggressor had been attacked by three cruisers of the Royal Navy and forced to take refuge in Montevideo, Uruguay. Under international law, the captain had been left with no option but to release all prisoners. Charlie had been one of those prisoners and was on his way home. Christmas was already looking brighter.

Such was their relief, their joy and their laughter, that the other letter remained unopened on the table.

‘He’s coming home,’ cried Frances, who, hearing the commotion, had joined them at the table.

Mary shook her head while dabbing at her wet eyes. ‘For Christmas! I can’t believe it.’

Stan Sweet buried his head in his hands. ‘Thank God. Thank God.’

He kept saying it, face hidden and shaking his head. Yesterday he’d gone round to the churchyard and told Sarah he was going to Christmas mass. Today his prayers had been answered. He would go to midnight mass. He would keep his promise. He suggested in the meantime that they go to the Three Horseshoes that night. ‘We can sneak our Frances in. Jack Holt wouldn’t object I’m sure.’

‘What’s the other?’ asked Ruby, jerking her chin at the unopened envelope.

Stan Sweet’s expression was still pink, but the haunted look had gone from his eyes. He looked and sounded jubilant as he picked up the other envelope and read the address.

Raising his eyes his pushed it across the table to Mary. ‘It’s addressed to you.’

Mary half suspected she was being called up until she saw that the address on the envelope was hand-written.

Ruby winked at her. ‘So you have got an admirer you’ve never told us about.’

‘No I haven’t.’ She shrugged. ‘I wasn’t expecting a letter. I haven’t a clue who it’s from.’ Then she saw the postmark. Scampton! He’d written. Michael had actually written her a letter at a time when she’d thought their friendship had ended.

‘Of course you won’t have a clue,’ her father exclaimed jovially while giving her shoulder a good shake. ‘Not until you open it. Then you’ll know.’

Feeling both her father’s and her sister’s eyes studying her, Mary took a clean butter knife to slit the envelope along the top. The paper inside was blue and of good quality.

Aware of her sister’s and father’s eyes studying her, she unfolded the letter and read it.

Dear Mary
,

I’m sorry we parted on bad terms. It wasn’t what I’d intended. I am visiting my aunt at Christmas and would love to see you. Perhaps I might invite you and your family to dinner at Stratham House? Knowing that you may already have made arrangements for Christmas Day, perhaps we can expect your company the day after, on Boxing Day?

I do hope you can make it. I only have a few days to spare. Things are beginning to hot up. Who knows where we might be next year, next month, next week
.

I shall come knocking at your door, and if you don’t open it I shall know you are still angry with me, but I sincerely hope not
.

Best wishes
,

Michael Dangerfield
.

PS. I meant what I said. I know my own mind and make it up quickly. Just to make sure you haven’t forgotten what I was asking you, will you marry me? Let me know when you decide
.

She looked down at the letter as she refolded it and was totally unable to stop a pink flush coming to her cheeks.

She felt Ruby’s eyes studying her. ‘So who is it from?’

Mary sucked in her lips. ‘It’s from Michael Dangerfield. The man from the baking competition. He’s asked me to marry him.’

It was a few days before Christmas and the air in the bakery was warm and dry in direct contrast to the deepening cold outside the stout stone walls.

Ruby was standing at the kitchen table trying hard to concentrate on what she was doing. Her hands seemed to be working without her mind being aware of their actions. Cream butter, add sugar, sieve flour … she didn’t need to concentrate. Instead of thinking of the cake she was making, she thought instead of Mary and the proposal of marriage she’d received from Michael Dangerfield. She was doing her best not to be jealous but it just wasn’t working.

‘I thought he was joking,’ Mary said on admitting that he’d asked her on the day of the baking competition.

Ruby fought to control her expression, not wanting her sister to know how surprised she was or, more importantly, how jealous. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Do?’ Mary shrugged. ‘Nothing. I mean, he’s …’ She was going to say very nice, but the fact that he’d won a competition when he’d known the judge still grated upon her. ‘He has some explaining to do before I even think about being friendly towards him.’

‘So how about this invitation?’

‘It’s just an invitation. His aunt’s very nice.’

‘Very nice,’ Ruby repeated in a sarcastic tone. ‘Dad said we should go. I don’t mind going. A day off our feet.’

Mary sighed. ‘Wish Charlie was home in time though.’

They were all hoping that Charlie would be home in time for Christmas, though they were still a little unsure of exactly where he was.

‘I’m going to carry on drying the beans. And the carrots. And the sprouts.’

The vegetables were piled on the other end of the kitchen table to Ruby’s cake-making ingredients.

‘Well, we’re not going to run out of vegetables any time soon,’ Ruby exclaimed.

They both agreed that their father was doing a sterling job in the garden.

Drying vegetables was hardly the most exciting job in the world, yet Mary was glad to be doing something simple while she thought about Michael. At certain times she found herself panicking that she’d forgotten something important about his features and immediately searched her memory, not wanting to forget a single thing about him.

Concentrate, she said to herself. Get on with what matters; keep yourself busy. After drying a few bowlfuls, she could no longer ignore her restlessness.

‘I’m going for a walk. I need some fresh air.’

Ruby carried on unconcerned, singing along to the wireless, the ingredients for the Christmas cake laid out in front of her. It was a bit late to make a proper fruit cake base and the ingredients had not been easy to get hold of. In fact, most of them had sold out quickly. Fresh supplies were slow coming in, even on market days at Kingswood where the shops were bigger and most things were available – or had been before the war. The reason was that people were rushing to stock up before rationing was introduced.

In the absence of sultanas, candied peel and glacé cherries, she’d made the decision to improvise. Instead of a fruit cake she planned making a plain sponge with jam in the middle. Nobody would know the difference once it was covered in local fresh cream rather than royal icing. She even had a small tin soldier – rescued from Charlie’s old toy box – and a tiny ballerina to use for decorations.

People were beginning to hoard sugar, which wasn’t really surprising. As Charlie had told them before he’d left, although sugar beet was grown at home, sugar made from raw sugar cane was brought in from the West Indies, which entailed a long voyage across the Atlantic.

‘We’re going to be crossing the Atlantic in convoys, ships carrying just about everything coming together on the eastern shore of the United States. Mark my words, the enemy will target every food ship coming over. It won’t be easy. Not at all.’

The sugar at the bottom of the blue paper bag made a rustling noise as she shook it. On peering in she saw there was only a handful left, just enough for tea and perhaps a few fancy cakes to sell in the shop.

Ruby sighed. Selling anything besides bread was getting harder to do, but she refused to give in. Merchant seamen had suffered terrible privations in order to deliver the food the country urgently needed. She felt it only right to put on a brave face and make the best of everything for this Christmas despite the war. All it takes is a little bit of ingenuity, she thought to herself. Like the cake. Anyway, most people preferred sponge to fruit cake – except for her father. But there, he’ll have to adapt just like everyone else.

Frances, who was really looking forward to Christmas, especially now there was the chance of Charlie coming home, came into the kitchen and asked if she could scrape the leftovers from the bowl. Ruby said that she could.

‘Can I watch?’

‘Of course you can.’

As she chattered on about her time in the forest, Ada Perkins and her friends at school, Frances tilted her head to one side so she could better read the writing on the sugar bag.

‘Tate and Lyle,’ she said thoughtfully. The name rang a bell. She’d heard it before – no – she’d read it before! Her face suddenly lit up. ‘That’s the same words as on the sack I saw that man give Mr Stead. “Tate and Lyle”. That’s what it said. It cost him ten shillings.’

Ruby looked at her and frowned. ‘What sack? What man?’

‘I told you,’ Frances exclaimed with exasperated intensity. ‘The man who came to see Gareth Stead!’

Ruby pursed her lips. Gareth rarely crept into her thoughts nowadays, and when he did, she cringed with embarrassment.

She studied her cousin’s fresh young face. Frances was very imaginative and could be a cheeky little beggar, but on the whole she was no different or worse than any other child in the village. She was also very observant and honest.

For her part, Frances enjoyed receiving Ruby’s attention. Mary’s and Charlie’s attention she’d always had. Ruby had always been a little more distant.

‘This man. What did he look like?’

Frances smacked her lips, her gaze fixed on the eggs being dropped into the cake mixture, the measure of sherry being poured from the bottle, the gradual adding of the self-raising flour. Frances noticed the fancy cakes cooling on a tray.

‘Well?’

‘Can I have a cake?’

‘Just one.’

Frances shrugged. ‘I’ve just told you! A man in a cap gave him the sack and Mr Stead gave him ten bob. I heard him say it. Ten bob.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Dirty. Dirty dark clothes. He wore a cap on his head and a scarf up around his face. Like this …’

Frances proceeded to wind the sleeves of her cardigan around her lower face in the manner of a muffler. She followed that by placing an empty Victoria sandwich tin on her head.

‘Don’t do that.’ Ruby snatched the tin and placed it back on the table. ‘Was he short or tall? Fat or thin?’

Frances shrugged. ‘Ordinary.’

Ruby took it that she meant average. ‘And you never saw the colour of his hair or anything else?’

Frances shook her head and crossed her eyes; she’d found crossing her eyes was the best thing to do when you were concentrating on sticking your tongue into the creamy centre of a fancy cake. Bit by bit she licked the lot out.

My cousin is inventive, Ruby thought to herself and couldn’t help smiling, though her smile was replaced by a deepening frown.

‘So he wasn’t from the village.’

Frances shrugged. ‘I ain’t never seen him before.’

‘Haven’t. You haven’t ever seen him before or you have never seen him before,’ Ruby returned, emphasising the correct words. Their father had always encouraged them to speak properly, even though he slid easily into the local accent himself, dropping aitches and adding ‘l’s and ‘r’s all over the place, especially after a drink or two.

‘That’s right. I have not!’

Ruby’s thoughts were jumping like a box of frogs. It came as no surprise that the man had been a stranger. She guessed Gareth was getting some supplies on the black market. Perhaps he had acquired a contact at Bristol or Avonmouth docks, a docker willing to make a bit extra on top of his wages no matter the consequences. She guessed that his contact had stolen a sack of sugar and Gareth had bought it. Give it a few months of rationing and he’d have everybody queuing at his door for sugar – at a vastly inflated price, no doubt.

Ruby gritted her teeth. ‘Did you hear anything else they said?’

Frances shook her head. The scrapings of the bowl were not available yet and there wasn’t much chance of getting a second fancy cake. Once she’d swallowed what she’d had in her mouth, she went on to explain about where the sugar had come from.

‘The man said it hadn’t fallen off the back of a lorry like it usually did, but had fallen off a ship, which is really quite stupid and must be a lie, because if something falls off a ship it must land up in the water. That was silly, don’t you think?’

Ruby agreed that it was and even managed to smile at her cousin’s joke.

‘He said his name was Bob Green. The other man. That’s what he said his name was.’

‘Bob Green,’ Ruby repeated thoughtfully.

Judging by the description of his clothes, he certainly sounded like one of the rough men who used bill hooks to grab hold of grain sacks or half sides of frozen beef from the hold of a ship.

Frances gobbled down the scrapings of the mixing bowl just before a sudden hammering on the back door heralded the arrival of her village friends. She rushed to open the door.

‘Coming out?’ asked Billy ‘Snotty’ Stephens, his name obviously earned by the way he wiped his nose on his coat sleeve.

Beefy Martin, Gloria Swaine and Connie Jerome, plus a few other kids, were crowded around the door, their eyes bright, their faces dirty, some smeared with jam.

Frances beamed. ‘Where you going?’

‘The orchard.’

‘There’s no apples there.’

‘Of course not. It’s winter.’

‘We can climb. Just climb,’ suggested Beefy.

Frances shrugged nonchalantly. ‘All right.’ She looked at Ruby who smiled and told her to go ahead.

Once she was gone and Ruby was alone, she stood silently thinking about Gareth and getting her own back on him. A plan was slowly forming in her mind.

Under normal circumstances she would shop her ex-employer to the police as a racketeer, but that would be letting him off too easily. She still had an axe to grind with him, a rejoinder for the way he’d treated both her and her young cousin.