When the Lights Go on Again (8 page)

‘That’s nearly a full week’s ration of butter you’ve just spread on your toast,’ Bella pointed out crossly to her brother, as she poured herself a cup of tea. Her mother’s kitchen was nothing like as pretty as her own, or as homely and comfortable as her aunt Jean’s, even though Vi had had the kitchen newly fitted out with the very latest gas oven, and a smart metal unit painted cream and green, as well as a brand-new table and four chairs, when the family had moved into the house just a couple of years before the start of the war.

‘Well, you can get some more easily enough from that nursery of yours, without anyone being the wiser, since you run it, can’t you?’ Charlie demanded, without lifting his gaze from the paper he was reading.

‘You may think it acceptable to steal from others, Charlie, but I certainly don’t,’ Bella told him pointedly.

Charlie heaved an irritable sigh. ‘Oh, for God’s sake stop moralising, Bella, just because you’ve become a Goody Two-Shoes. I remember how you
persuaded Alan to marry you, even if you’d rather forget.’

Bella wasn’t going to deny that she had tricked her first husband into marrying her. She had been a different person then, a stupid shallow selfish person who had learned the hard way that what she had done was wrong. Alan was dead now and she had been given the chance to make a new life for herself with the man she loved.

‘What I did was wrong, but I’ve paid for my wrongdoing. Unlike you, Charlie.’

Charlie threw down the paper. ‘If you’re referring to that brat you keep insisting is mine, I’ve a good mind to go round and see—’

‘Don’t you dare go anywhere near Lena. She’s happy now, with Gavin, and she doesn’t need you upsetting her,’ Bella interrupted him, realising too late when she saw the look in his eyes that she had said too much and by doing so had created exactly the situation she had wanted to avoid, sparking Charlie’s interest in Lena, instead of protecting her.

‘Who says I’d be upsetting her? She might be glad to see me. She certainly was the last time I saw her.’

Charlie goaded Bella with a leering smile that made Bella fear even more for Lena. Lena had loved Charlie so much. He had broken her heart, and even now she was still so young.

She was worrying over nothing, Bella told herself. Lena had no interest whatsoever in Charlie. She wasn’t in love with him and she didn’t secretly yearn for him. She had told Bella that herself when
she had told her how much she loved Gavin. But even so, Bella felt anxious on Lena’s behalf.

‘Do you see much of the old man?’ Charlie asked, judging it wise to change the subject.

‘Nothing at all,’ Bella answered. ‘Nor do I want to. He’s treated Mummy dreadfully. And if you’re thinking of taking your sob story about Daphne to him, Charlie, in the hope that he’ll be as easily taken in and as generous as Mummy has been, I really would advise you not to. Pauline will soon see through you and she certainly won’t let Daddy give you any money.’

Bella was too shrewd by half, Charlie acknowledged.

‘She never had that kid she was supposed to be expecting, did she?’ he asked.

‘No. I think she must have been pretending to be pregnant as a way of making sure that Daddy left Mummy, but once she realised that Mummy wasn’t going to divorce him and that the best she could hope for was to be his mistress, a pregnancy was probably the last thing she wanted.’

‘Hmm, well, I still might as well go and visit the old man, seeing as I’m up here,’ Charlie told Bella, ignoring the look she was giving him. ‘He’s still living out at Neston, I take it?’

‘As far as I know, yes,’ Bella confirmed. She didn’t think for one minute that their father would be as generous towards Charlie as their mother had been, but at least while he drove out to the Wirral she wouldn’t need to worry about him deliberately trying to cause trouble and upset Lena.

‘Thanks for agreeing to come with me to this official do at the American Embassy tonight, Katie, especially at such short notice,’ Gina told Katie gratefully as they sat in the café in Peter Jones in Sloane Square, drinking tea.

Katie smiled at her friend. They had originally met at work and had got on well from the moment Gina had introduced herself. Although she came from a well-to-do county family, there was no edge to Gina.

Gina told Katie ruefully, ‘I dare say I only got the invitation myself because they’re a bit short of females and my name happened to be on one of those dreadful lists of “respectable and acceptable” young women the American top brass seem to insist on.’

They smiled at one another in mutual amusement, two stylish young women anyone observing them would think acceptable anywhere. The camel-coloured coat Gina had on toned perfectly with the fallen leaves outside, her brown beret toning with her hair and matching her well-polished dark brown shoes. She was taller than Katie and her good complexion was her best feature.

Katie was wearing a cherry-red hat trimmed with some feathers from one of her mother’s old stage outfits, with her own grey winter coat, the little hat tilted at a slight angle like the hats on the models in Peter Jones.

‘I wouldn’t go, but one feels it’s one’s duty to represent our own Armed Forces and remind the Americans how proud we are of them. Of course, I wouldn’t be going if Leonard wasn’t at sea,’ Gina continued.

Katie eyed Gina affectionately. Leonard, Gina’s husband, was a captain in the Royal Navy, and they hadn’t been married very long.

‘I was only thinking this morning of the way things work out.’ Gina shook her head. ‘If you and I hadn’t gone to Bath when we did, then we would never have met Leonard and Eddie.’

‘You and Leonard were obviously meant to be,’ Katie responded gently. She knew from what Gina had told her when they had first become friends, just after Katie had transferred to the Holborn Office of the Postal Censorship Department, that Gina had expected to marry another young man before she had met Leonard. That young man had been killed in action and it had taken courage on Gina’s part to risk loving another man in uniform.

‘What about you and Eddie?’ Gina challenged her. ‘After all, one day he will inherit his father’s title.’

Katie laughed and shook her head. Eddie was Leonard’s younger cousin, Leonard’s mother and Eddie’s father being sister and brother. Like Leonard, Eddie was also in the navy. Terrific fun and an equally terrific flirt, Eddie made Katie laugh and she liked him as a friend, but that was all.

‘Eddie and I are just friends. I’m glad that you’ve asked me to go with you,’ Katie responded to Gina’s initial comment. ‘I know this sounds selfish of me but it will be a pleasant change to go out and be a guest instead of being the one running around after others.’

‘You, selfish?’ Gina scoffed. ‘You are the least selfish person I know, Katie. You’re working far
too hard, you know, all day at the Censorship Office and then nearly every single evening at Rainbow Corner. I thought you were only going to be there three nights a week?’

‘I was, but they’ve got so busy with all the Americans being brought over that they’re desperately short of volunteers.’

‘Do you think it’s true, Katie, what everyone’s saying about the Forces getting ready to invade France?’ Gina asked.

‘Well, we shall have to if they’re going to defeat Hitler,’ Katie answered.

‘I know,’ Gina acknowledged, ‘but after what happened to the poor men in August last year when the invasion of Dieppe failed and so many men were killed and wounded…’

The two girls exchanged sad looks. The young men who had gone so bravely to their deaths had all been Canadian volunteers from overseas, who had wanted to do their bit for the country with which so many of them had family ties.

‘I’ll come to you for six o’clock, shall I? Then we can walk round to the American Embassy from your billet?’

Katie agreed.

‘I’m hoping to visit Leonard’s parents next weekend,’ Gina told her as they both stood up. ‘I promised Leonard that I’d try to go and see them and the children as often as I can whilst he’s away.’

Leonard had two children from his first marriage to a Frenchwoman, a son and a daughter of four and three. Odile, their mother, had been killed in a
car accident with her lover, and the two children lived in the country with Leonard’s parents.

‘The children are so sweet,’ Gina confessed. ‘Little Adam asked me ever so seriously the last time I saw them if he and Amy could call me Mummy. Poor little things. Leonard told me that Odile didn’t have much time for them. I’ve never thought of myself as maternal, but now…I’m really beginning to miss them when I’m in London.’

‘I think that they are very lucky to have you as their stepmother, Gina.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Gina protested, but Katie could see that she was pleased.

‘And Tommy’s housemaster at the Grammar School has said as how he thinks that Tommy is a very bright boy and that I should be thinking about him perhaps going on up to Oxford if he works hard. He says that Tommy’s got a really good ear for languages.’ Emily couldn’t help boasting a little as she worked alongside the other women on that week’s rota for doing the church flowers, at Whitchurch’s historic Queen Anne church, St Alkmund’s.

‘He’s a lovely lad and no mistake, Emily,’ her friend and neighbour Ivy Wilson agreed loyally. ‘Looks ever so smart too in his uniform.’

The Grammar School divided its pupils into four houses, each house represented by its own uniform colour. Emily had been lucky enough to have been told by the dressmaker, who altered her own clothes, that she had another customer whose son had just finished school and who no longer needed his uniform. Acting as a go-between, the dressmaker
had negotiated a price for the uniform that was acceptable to both parties, and so Tommy had been able to start Grammar School in a proper uniform.

‘Don’t worry about the blazer being a bit big for him,’ the dressmaker had reassured Emily ‘He’ll grow into it soon enough. Grow like weeds, young ones do.’

‘Well I never, Emily, that was ever such a good idea of yours to add a bit of greenery to the flowers to make them go a bit further. A real asset to the flower rota, you are, and no mistake,’ Ivy continued warmly.

Listening happily to her neighbour’s praise, Emily congratulated herself, not for the first time, that moving here to Whitchurch was definitely the best thing she had ever done.

The church, with its square tower, had been rebuilt from sandstone in the early 1700s, and blended perfectly into its surroundings, the graveyard with its time-worn gravestones testament to the many generations of local families who had worshipped there. Its main claim to fame was that beneath its porch the heart of Sir John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, made famous by Shakespeare, was buried.

The vicar and his wife were a kind, well-thought-of couple, and the female members of the congregation were enthusiastic about doing their bit for the war. In general Emily had found them a friendly group, who had welcomed her warmly amongst them. Apart from Ina Davies, who was eyeing her disparagingly now as she sniffed,
‘Personally I wouldn’t have said that all them leaves are right for church flowers. Not that my opinion matters, of course, but to my mind there’s something a bit common about them.’

Emily and Ivy exchanged looks. For some reason Ina Davies had taken against Emily right from the start when she had first moved to Whitchurch, often making critical and sometimes hurtful comments about Emily in Emily’s own hearing. According to her neighbour, Ina wasn’t well liked in the community but people put up with her out of their good nature.

‘Give over, Ina,’ Ivy protested. ‘They set off them dahlias a treat.’

‘And as for that son of yours being good at languages,’ Ina continued, ignoring Ivy’s comment, ‘I should think he would be, given the amount of time that German POW spends at your house. I don’t think I’d want any lad of mine spending so much time with someone like that, a Nazi! ‘Oo knows what he might be telling him.’

‘Wilhelm is not a Nazi. He was forced to join up and fight,’ Emily protested.

‘That’s easy enough for him to say now. Stands to reason he’s going to want to protect himself by pretending he was forced to support Hitler. Mind you, I’ve got to say that it seems to me that there’s something funny going on when someone who reckons to be British starts defending a German. My Harry says he’s never seen the like of it,’ Ina continued. ‘A German POW coming and going like he does, making himself at home, brazen as anything and acting like he isn’t a POW at all…’ She pursed
her lips in disapproval. ‘My Harry says he’s surprised that someone hasn’t said something to the authorities and got something done about it.’

The atmosphere in the church had changed, the other women looking meaningfully at one another and, Emily thought, questioningly at her, the happy mood in which they had all been working together changing to one of discomfort.

It was a relief to Emily when the flowers were finished and she was free to leave.

‘Don’t worry about what Ina had to say,’ Ivy tried to comfort her as they walked home together. ‘She’s always had a nasty side to her and been a bit of a troublemaker. I reckon she’s jealous that you’ve got Wilhelm looking after your garden for you, and doing a good job on it too, whilst she’s got to rely on her Harry who wouldn’t know one end of a carrot from another. Course it doesn’t help that their Christopher was taken prisoner at Dunkirk. She reckons the POWs we’ve got here have it easy compared with her Christopher, but that’s not your fault and she’s got no right picking on you like she did. Not that anyone will pay any attention to her, not knowing what she’s like.’

Emily was grateful for her neighbour’s kindness, but Ina’s comments had left her feeling upset and uncomfortable.

Things hadn’t gone as well in Neston as he had hoped, Charlie admitted as he drove through Wallasey, heading for his mother’s. His father had flatly refused to give him any money, demanding to know how Charlie expected him to be able to afford to give him money when he was having to support two households. And that despite the fact there had been two cars parked on the drive of the fancy house his father was renting, and Pauline had been tricked out in what looked like three strands of real pearls and a ruddy great solitaire diamond ‘engagement’ ring. Charlie had tried flattering her, hoping that by buttering her up a bit she’d weigh in on his behalf with his father, but he hadn’t reckoned on how hard-faced she was, Charlie admitted, scowling as he remembered how his father’s mistress had waited until his father wasn’t there before telling him that any spare cash his father had would be going into her bank account and not Charlie’s.

Hard as nails, that’s what she was, and now he’d wasted almost the whole of Saturday and his
precious petrol driving out to Neston to no purpose. He couldn’t wait to get back to his base and then into London for some decent fun.

Charlie started to turn into the road where his sister’s house was, intending to take a short cut down it to his mother’s. A young woman wearing a swing-back brown coat, a neat-fitting hat perched on her dark hair, was walking along the pavement, her child in a pushchair. Charlie recognised Lena immediately, with a feeling like a violent punch in the chest.

God, but she was pretty. Pretty, willing, married to another man, and Bella had warned him off her. Any combination of two of those facts would have been enough to have Charlie itching to break the rules and have some fun. Throw in his bad temper and his boredom, and seeing Lena was exactly the antidote he needed to cheer himself up.

Lena was aware of the car on the road behind her slowing down. Automatically she turned round, assuming it must be one of their neighbours, the colour coming and going in her face as Charlie brought the low-slung MG alongside her, slowing it down to match her walking pace as he leaned towards her and gave her his best smile, stopping the car and telling her cockily, ‘Hello there, gorgeous. Remember me?’

She should have ignored him, Lena knew that. He was nothing to her after the way he’d treated her. She had a good husband now in Gavin, and in another few months she and Gavin would be
giving Janette a little baby brother or sister – a baby that would have a father who had wanted it right from the word go. Not like Charlie.

Her legs had turned to jelly and she was glad to have Janette’s pushchair to hold on to. She’d forgotten how confident Charlie was, and how good-looking. She waited for her heart to react to him with the excitement it had done when she had first known him but instead of thudding with excitement it was thumping with dismay and anxiety. She wished he wasn’t here, she wished he hadn’t seen them; she wished he hadn’t stopped and most of all she wished that Gavin was with them, Lena acknowledged.

It was a funny feeling knowing at last, after all the times she’d secretly worried about how she might feel if she ever saw him again, that she was truly safe, and that she felt nothing at all other than deep gratitude for the fact that Gavin loved her and she was safely and happily married to him. In fact, it was a marvel to her now that she had ever found Charlie attractive at all, despite his good looks. Good looks were nothing when compared to a kind and loving heart.

‘Pleased to see me, are you?’ Charlie grinned at Lena. ‘I’m here all weekend; I could come round and we could have a bit of fun together, just you and me.’

‘We’re both married now,’ Lena pointed out firmly.

‘So what? Come on, Lena, you remember how good it was with you and me, don’t you?’ Charlie coaxed, moving close to her, putting his hand on
her arm and looking down at her breasts, feeling his body harden in anticipatory eagerness.

High up in the old oak tree at the bottom of the garden, sawing off one of the branches, Gavin had a clear view of the bottom of the street and what was happening there. He’d been on the point of climbing down when Charlie had first stopped his car, but now, with Charlie holding Lena’s arm and his wife showing no signs of moving away, Gavin felt too heartsick to do anything. Lena had really fallen for Charlie – Gavin knew that – and although she’d told him that she hated Bella’s brother now for the way he’d treated her, in his own heart Gavin had secretly worried that Lena didn’t love him as much as she had done Janette’s father. Now it looked as though he’d got proof that he had been right.

‘I’ve got to get home. My Gavin will be waiting for his tea,’ Lena told Charlie, pulling away from him. ‘And little Janette will be wanting to see her daddy as well,’ she added pointedly.

Charlie frowned. ‘Her daddy? The kid’s mine, not his,’ he told Lena, her refusal to play along with him making him belligerent. Charlie hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the child he had fathered, apart from being relieved that his parents had flatly denied that it could be his, and yet now hearing Lena refer to someone else as its father, a dog-in-the-manger possessiveness took hold of him.

‘Gavin is Janette’s father,’ Lena contradicted him. ‘He’s the one who’s provided for her and he’s the one she loves.’

Before Charlie could stop her she had wheeled the pushchair past him and was walking away from him as fast as she could.

Ruddy women, Charlie cursed her under his breath. Well, there were plenty more where she’d come from. And as for the kid, why should he care about someone else being her father? He didn’t want to be saddled with her or any other kid. The man who’d married Lena was a proper fool. You’d never catch him taking on another man’s kid.

Getting back into his MG, Charlie slammed the door and roared off at speed. He’d had enough of Wallasey, and he couldn’t wait to leave the place and the people in it behind him, he decided as he drove past Lena.

‘See anyone whilst you were out?’ Gavin asked Lena as casually as he could. Lena had called him into the kitchen for the cup of tea she’d made for him.

Lena hesitated. She desperately wanted to tell Gavin what had happened but she knew him and she knew how protective of her he was. If she told him there was no saying that he might not go straight round to Bella’s mother’s and call Charlie to account for the way he had behaved towards her. Lena didn’t care what her Gavin might do to Charlie, but she did care about Bella, and she knew it would cause trouble between Bella and her mother if Gavin went rampaging round there, demanding that Charlie gave an account of himself. Mrs Firth doted on Charlie. He could do no wrong in her eyes, as Lena herself had good reason to know.

No, it was best that she didn’t say anything to Gavin, she decided, as she shook her head and fibbed, ‘No.’

Lena had lied to him. Gavin felt the pain explode inside his chest. His Lena, whom he loved so much, had lied to him and all because of that no-good rotter who had already hurt her so much. Gavin looked away from Lena. Janette was smiling up at him from her high chair. The minute he’d stepped inside she’d held up her arms to him to be lifted out, and Gavin had felt that same spike of emotion now that he’d felt the very first time he’d held her, minutes after her birth. She was his girl, his child, the child of his heart, and he loved her every bit as much as he would do the new baby Lena was carrying.

The new baby. A knife twisted in his heart. Was Lena wishing that she hadn’t married him and that she wasn’t having his child now that she’d seen Charlie again?

They were almost midway through September, but although the days might be growing shorter, double summertime meant that thankfully it was still possible to go out in the evening in daylight, even if blackout curtains had to be put in place ready for one’s return in darkness, Katie reflected, carefully applying a thin coat of precious lipstick, using a small brush so as to use as little as possible of what was left of her favourite Max Factor pink, bought just before the war. Once that was done she ran her comb through her thick naturally curly dark gold hair and then studied her reflection
critically in her bedroom’s full-length mirror. The outfit she was wearing had been a second-hand find, bought when she and Gina had spent a couple of days together in Bath, just before it had been badly bombed, and the silk of her dress floated delicately round Katie’s slim legs. She did feel rather guilty about the fact that she was wearing a pair of silk stockings that had been given to her by a grateful young American GI who had enjoyed the tour of London’s historical sites she had planned for him so much that he had insisted on giving them to her as a ‘thank you’. The ATS girls with whom she shared the house in Cadogan Place had teased her unmercifully about both the stockings and the young GI, but Katie knew that his desire to thank her had been genuine and not a prelude to some sort of ‘come on’.

She had been extremely lucky in her billet, she knew; the house, right in the centre of the city, was in a terrace of elegant late Georgian buildings. Her bedroom was enormous, with a high ceiling and its own bathroom. Luxury indeed, as Katie’s parents were fond of reminding her when she made her fortnightly visits to Hampstead, where her mother and father were now living with friends in a rather run-down Victorian house, both of them missing living in the city, having moved further out during the blitz.

From her bedroom window Katie could see Gina walking towards the house, which fortunately was only a short walk from the tube station close to Harrods. Gathering up her handbag and the warm woollen silk-lined stole on permanent loan to her
from her mother, Katie made her way downstairs to join her friend.

The American Embassy was situated in Grosvenor Square and within easy walking distance of Cadogan Place, as Gina had already said.

‘I had a wonderful surprise when I got back to my aunt’s this afternoon,’ Gina told Katie as they set out. ‘Leonard telephoned from Devonport. They’re under sailing orders, and of course he couldn’t say where they were going, although my guess is that it has to be Italy, now that we’ve got a toehold in Sicily. It was lovely to hear his voice. Hearing that he’d got some leave coming up would have been even better, of course. I mustn’t be greedy, though. Not after him getting two weeks’ leave when we got married, and a forty-eight-hour pass the other weekend. He couldn’t say outright, but he did hint that he might be home for Christmas. I do hope so. Leonard’s parents living so close to my own means that we could see both families, and, of course, the children. Once the war is over we want them to come and live with us full time, but of course it’s best that they stay where they are for now.’

A pair of smartly dressed American marines were on duty outside the American Embassy, faces fixed in stern expressions, eyes forward. An equally smartly uniformed young woman checked their names off her guest list, in the imposing hallway with its marble busts and highly polished floor, the American flag very much on display.

‘I rang and told them I’d be bringing you with me,’ Gina murmured to Katie, who nodded in
response. It was well known that with so many good-time girls on the fringe of London society eager to strike up friendships with the Americans, especially those who were officers, only unattached women who had been vetted were on the official invitation lists.

The American Embassy was very much the hub of the American Military Command in London. Military uniforms outnumbered the diplomatic uniform of city suit and Brooks Brothers shirt almost ten to one, from what Katie could see, as she and Gina stood together just outside the double doors leading into a large reception room, its crimson-papered walls hung with portraits of past presidents, the elegant plastered ceiling and cornices painted white with the detail picked out in gold. Beyond this room a further set of double doors on the opposite wall were open to reveal another room, this one painted a rich royal blue, its windows framed by royal-blue velvet curtains trimmed with gold braid. All very rich and expensive-looking, Katie thought, and not a bit shabby as so many British buildings had become.

A group of what looked like newspapermen were all clustered together on one side of the room, drinks in hand, cameras slung from their shoulders, as they studied the other occupants of the room, a group of military men standing in front of the imposing marble fireplace.

It was easy to see which women were Americans, Katie reflected. All the British women there might have done their best, but their clothes, no matter how smart, did not have the up-to-the-minute
freshness and fashion of those sported by the Americans.

‘Ah, Gina, there you are. Dreadful crush, what?’

‘Uncle Rupert, I’m surprised you managed to spot me in this crush,’ Gina laughed as she was enveloped in a bear hug by her relative. ‘Uncle Rupert, I’ve brought Katie with me. She was my bridesmaid.’

‘Of course, remember her well. Delighted to meet you again, m’dear. Dashed pretty girls, both of you. We’ll show these Americans a thing or two, what? What are you drinking? Champagne, I expect. Best drink for pretty girls.’

With that skill possessed by upper-class men of a certain age and confidence, out of nowhere, or so it seemed to Katie, a waiter was summoned to produce two glasses of freshly poured champagne.

‘And where’s that husband of yours, Gina?’

‘I really couldn’t say,’ Gina informed him.

‘That’s right, good girl. Careless talk costs lives and all that. Still enjoying your job? Not getting too many saucy letters to read, I hope?’

Behind her uncle’s back Gina gave Katie a rueful look, which made Katie both want to laugh and at the same time made her feel sad. So many of the letters they had to check did contain the most intimate of messages, sent, though, from the heart, in most cases, from men desperately missing the one they loved and equally desperate to assure them of their love and be reassured in turn that they were loved.

It wasn’t long before Gina’s uncle Rupert had introduced them both to an American colonel of
his own generation, who announced immediately that he must introduce two such charming girls to his junior officers, adding with a smile, ‘Because if I don’t, they will think that I’m keeping you to myself, and then I reckon I could be in danger of having to subdue a mutiny.’