Home for Christmas (2 page)

‘I wanted to tell you,’ he continued, ‘but Morag wanted to wait until after Christmas. She thought it would be easier for you then.’

‘Easier for me to be told that my father and my supposed best friend were betraying my mother’s memory in the most grotesque and horrible way?’ Sally demanded on a choking breath of disbelief that was getting close to hysteria. ‘Dad, how can you think that? How can you do this, when Mum . . . She’s not even been dead two months yet. Two months and yet already Morag has somehow managed to worm her way into . . . into the place that should only ever belong to my mother.’

‘Sally, that’s enough!’ The stern note in her father’s voice shocked Sally into fresh despair. ‘I will not have you blaming Morag – for anything.’ The loving look her father gave Morag made Sally feel as though someone were squeezing her heart painfully hard. ‘If you must blame anyone, then blame me. I love Morag and I know that the love I have for her would have had your mother’s blessing.’

‘No!’

The denial was torn from Sally’s throat as she pulled open the back door and ran out of the house, ignoring her father’s plea for her to stop.

It was dark now and Sally didn’t know how long she’d been crouching here beside her mother’s grave, anger and grief spilling from her with the tears she had shed.

In two days it would be Christmas, but there was no place in Sally’s heart now to celebrate that special season.

‘Sally.’

The sound of a much-loved voice saying her name had her crying out in relief. She turned to him as he crouched down next to her, the scarf her mother had knitted for him last Christmas twisting in the ice-cold wind blowing across the bleak graveyard.

‘Oh, Callum . . .’

She was in his arms and he was holding her tight, the warmth of his embrace thawing her emotions, so that fresh tears fell.

‘I suppose you know what’s happened?’ she asked him when the tears had finally stopped and she was drying her face with the handkerchief he had offered her.

‘Yes. I’ve just come from the house.’

‘Callum, how could they betray my mother like that? My father and your sister my best friend – I still can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to see Morag ever again. I don’t want her coming to the house or having anything to do with my father. I blame her more than I do him. I—’

‘Sally, I know you’ve had a shock, and I can understand that right now you feel a certain amount of betrayal, but I promise you that the only reason they didn’t tell you about their feelings for one another was because they didn’t think you were ready. When they discussed it with me—’

Whilst he had been speaking to her Callum had stood up drawing Sally to her feet as he did so, and now he was holding her cold hands in the warmth of his, but for once she was barely aware of his touch.

‘You knew? You knew about this and you didn’t tell me?’ she demanded angrily.

‘They asked me not to, although . . . Sally, we all know how much you loved your mother, and how much her death has upset you, but you are an intelligent girl and, to be honest, I’m surprised that you didn’t see the love growing between them for yourself. I know that your mother did, and that she welcomed it, knowing that two people she loved so much would find happiness together.’

‘No, that’s not true. My mother would never have wanted . . . She loved my father.’

‘Yes, she did, and in my view it was because of the great love she had for both him and for Morag that she welcomed the knowledge that your father would not be left alone after her own death.’

‘You’re on their side, aren’t you?’ Sally accused him.

‘It isn’t a matter of taking sides.’

‘It is for me.’ Sally pulled away from him, adding bitterly, ‘And I know now whose side you’re on, Callum. I wish I’d never met either of you. I trusted Morag. I thought she was my friend, but I realise now that I never knew her at all. No one who was a true friend to me would have done what she’s done, betraying my mother, stealing my father, and you taking her side. I never want to see either of you again.’

‘Sally, please don’t be like this.’

‘Don’t be like this? How do you expect me to be? Am I supposed to be glad? Am I supposed to welcome the fact that my best friend has been making up to my father behind my back whilst my mother has been dying?’

‘Sally . . .’

Callum was reaching for her, his dark hair, tangled by the cold wind, flopping over his forehead, as he held out his arms. The pain she was feeling was more than she could bear. She had loved him so much, and she had thought that he loved her, just as she also believed that Morag was her friend and that her father was devoted to her mother. But all of them had deceived her, and betrayed her mother, and she would never be able to forgive them. Never. She stepped back from him.

‘Don’t touch me. Don’t come anywhere near me.’ Her furious words were raw with bitterness and pain.

Chapter One

12 September l940

Sally Johnson pushed back her mop of dark red curls, briefly freed from the constraint of her starched acting sister’s nursing cap, and slipping off her shoes, wriggled her toes luxuriously.

She was sitting in a small windowless room close to the sluice room of the operating theatre where she worked. In this small haven the nurses were unofficially allowed to have a kettle, tucked away, when not in use, in the cupboard above the sink along with a tin of cocoa and a caddy holding tea so that they could make themselves hot drinks. The place was more of a large cupboard than a room, the dark brown paint on the skirting boards like the dull green on the walls, rather faded, although, of course, both the floor and the walls were scrupulously clean. Staff nurse would have had forty fits if her juniors hadn’t scrubbed in here with every bit as much ferocity as they did the theatre itself.

When it had three nurses or more in it there was standing room only. Right now though as she was in here on her own, Sally had appropriated one of the two chairs for her tea break. Nurses always had aching feet when they were on duty. They’d had a busy shift in the operating theatre: a list of patients with all manner of injuries from Hitler’s relentless bombing raids on London.

Thinking of their patients brought home to Sally how much more responsibility she would have when she got her promised promotion to sister. She was very proud of the fact that Matron thought she was ready for it, even if there were times when she herself worried that she might not be. Sally loved her work, she was a dedicated and professional nurse who always put her patients first, but right now she couldn’t help thinking longingly of her digs in Article Row, Holborn, and the comfort of a hot bath. What a difference time could make – to some things. Article Row was her home now and the other occupants of number 13 as close to her as though they were family. Family . . . Sally’s expressive eyes grew shadowed. What she had left behind in Liverpool no longer had the power to hurt her. And besides, Sally reminded herself as she replaced her cap firmly over her curls, there was a war on and she had a job to do.

On Article Row another member of the household at number 13 was already on her way home, or rather she had been until she’d bumped into a neighbour.

‘Tilly, let me introduce you to Drew Coleman,’ said Ian Simpson. ‘He’s an American and he’s going to be my lodger.’

Tilly smiled politely as Ian turned from her to the tall, broad-shouldered, hatless young man, whose open raincoat was flapping in the breeze.

‘Tilly’s mother knows all about lodgers, Drew. She’s got three of them. All girls too,’ Ian grinned.

Article Row possessed only fifty houses, all built by the grateful eighteenth-century client of a firm of lawyers in the nearby Inns of Court, whose fortune had been saved by the prompt action of a young clerk articled there.

Number 13 had belonged to Tilly’s paternal grandparents originally. Tilly and her parents had moved in with them when Tilly had been a baby because of her father’s ill health. Tilly couldn’t remember her father. He had died when she was a few months old, his health destroyed by his time in the trenches during the Great War. Her mother had nursed first Tilly’s father, then later her mother-in-law, and then her father-in-law through their final illnesses. It had been after the death of Tilly’s grandfather, just before the start of the current war, that Tilly’s mother had decided to take in lodgers to bring in extra money.

‘Four girls all living under the same roof?’ the young American queried with a smile. ‘Oh, my. I’ve got four sisters at home, and they fight all the time.’

‘We don’t fight,’ Tilly informed him reprovingly, shaking her head so that her dark brown curls bounced, indignation emphasising the sea green of her eyes and bringing a pink flush to her skin. ‘We’re the best of friends. Sally – she’s the eldest, she works at Barts Hospital – St Bartholomew’s, the oldest hospital in London – like I do. Only she’s a nurse, and I work in administration for the hospital’s Lady Almoner. And Agnes, she . . .’ Tilly hesitated, not wanting to tell this stranger that poor Agnes was an orphan who had never known her parents. ‘Agnes works at Chancery Lane underground station, in the ticket department. Then there’s Dulcie, who works in the perfume and makeup department of Selfridges, the big department store on Oxford Street. She’s ever so stylish, although she’s got a broken ankle at the moment.’ A small shadow crossed Tilly’s face at the still raw and frightening memory of what had happened only a few nights earlier, on her own eighteenth birthday, when the four of them had been caught in a German bombing attack on the city on their way out to celebrate. Dulcie had caught her heel in the cobbles of the street and had fallen over, breaking her ankle and banging her head. As all of them had admitted to one another afterwards, they’d thought they were going to be killed, but they had stuck together, determined not to run for safety and leave Dulcie to her fate. Now, because of that, a bond had been formed between them that they all knew they would share all their lives. Tilly really felt that she had grown up that night.

‘Drew here has been sent over to London by the newspaper he works for in America to report on the war,’ Ian explained to Tilly.

Tilly nodded as she surreptitiously studied Ian’s lodger. He looked as though he was in his early twenties, his thick mid-brown hair slightly sun-bleached at the ends. He had warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, his smile revealing white, even teeth. On his right hand he was wearing an impressive-looking gold ring with what looked like a crest on it. Not wanting to seem too curious, Tilly looked away politely.

Ian Simpson worked as a print setter on Fleet Street, for the
Daily Express
. His wife and their four young children had evacuated to Essex at the start of the war, and Tilly’s own mother had often said that it must be lonely for Ian living in the house on his own during the week.

Tilly had heard American accents before, but Drew was the first American she’d met in person. She gave him a friendly – but not too friendly – smile. At just eighteen, and with the experience of several months of war behind her, which had included her foolish crush on Dulcie’s handsome army brother, Rick, Tilly now considered herself wise enough not to pay too much attention to a good-looking young man, and Drew
was
good-looking, she had to admit.

Tilly glanced back in the direction from which she had come, at the pall of dust hanging on the air, the result of nightly bombing raids on London’s East End by the German Luftwaffe.

‘Well, you’ll certainly have had plenty to write about for your newspaper, with the bombings we’ve had these last few nights,’ she told the young American gravely.

‘Yes.’ Drew’s voice was equally grave. ‘I went over to Stepney in the East End this morning. I thought I had the makings of a good journalist, but finding the words to describe the devastation and horror of what’s happened there so that the folks back home will understand . . .’ He shook his head, and Tilly knew exactly what he meant. As they talked Tilly resisted the temptation to look up at the sky. These last few days of relentless air raids had left everyone’s nerves on edge, but she certainly wasn’t going to give in to her fear in front of this young American.

‘I’ve heard there were over four hundred killed on Saturday night, and three hundred and seventy on Sunday in the East End with over sixteen hundred injured,’ Ian told them. ‘And I’ve lost count of the number of air-raid alarms there’s been. Three times this afternoon we heard the air-raid warning go off, and had to leave the printing presses to get down to the shelter.’

‘It was the same with us at the hospital,’ Tilly agreed. ‘Our shelter is down in the basement of the hospital, and they’ve got the operating theatres down there as well. We can hear the bombers, even down in the shelters, though.’

‘I think you British are being magnificently brave,’ Drew told her with great sincerity.

‘It’s all very well being brave, but what I don’t understand is why we don’t hear our own anti-aircraft guns firing at the Germans,’ Tilly said with some concern.

‘Well, I might be able to answer that question for you,’ Drew told her. ‘You’ll have heard of Ed Murrow?’

Tilly nodded. Ed Murrow was a well-known American radio broadcaster.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘He does the nightly “
This
is London” wireless programme to America doesn’t he?’

Drew beamed her a smile of approval. ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘Well, I heard him talking to some other journalists last night in the American Bar, and he was saying that the Government has left the skies open for your own fighter planes to blow the Germans out of the air.’

Tilly gave him a wan smile. She knew he had wanted to cheer her up, but as far as she could see from the terrible damage being inflicted on the city, their own fighter planes didn’t seem to be doing very much to stop London being blitzed by German bombers. Not that she was going to say so, of course. She was far too patriotic to do that.

Being patriotic, though, did not mean that there were times when she didn’t feel afraid.

All the occupants of number 13, with the exception of Sally, who was on duty, had spent the last two nights in their Anderson shelter in the garden, all of them pretending to sleep but none of them actually doing so, Tilly was sure. They had lain in their narrow bunk beds, listening to the dreadful noises of the assault on the city. The worst, in Tilly’s opinion, were those heart-stopping few minutes when all you could hear was the approaching relentless menacing purring sound made by the engines of the German bombers coming in over the city. Your stomach tensed terribly against what you knew was going to happen when the bombs started to fall. She could feel herself holding her breath now, just as she did at night when she lay there waiting for the full horror she knew was imminent: the whistle of falling bombs; the dull boom of huge explosions, which shook the ground. Somewhere in the city houses were being destroyed and people were being killed and injured. In Article Row they had been lucky – so far – but she had seen at work what was happening to those whose families and homes had been blown apart by the bombs: numbed, disbelieving white-faced people visiting their injured relatives; or even worse, those poor, poor people who came to Barts hoping against hope that the loved one who was missing might be there and alive.

Tilly, like everyone else in the department, had had to put her normal routine to one side because of the work involved in recording the details of the patients now flooding into the hospital.

You could see the tension in people’s faces. When you were out on London’s streets, crunching through the broken glass littering the pavements, you hardly dared to look at the fearful shapes of the destroyed buildings – and certainly not towards the river, where the docks had been bombed night after night and where, in the morning, some of the fires were still burning. If you heard a loud sound fear automatically gripped you, but you pushed it aside because you had to, because you didn’t want Hitler thinking he was beating down your spirit, knowing how afraid you really were.

‘Oh ho,’ Ian warned, interrupting Tilly’s thoughts, ‘here comes Nancy. Nancy likes to keep us all in order,’ he told the American. ‘She’s a bit of a stickler for making sure that none of us does anything that might lower the tone of the Row. Isn’t that right, Tilly?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’ Tilly was forced to admit ruefully. ‘Nancy likes to disapprove of things. She’s also a bit of a gossip,’ she felt obliged to warn Drew.

‘She certainly is.’ Ian pulled a face. ‘When I brought my cousin home with me the night she’d been bombed out, Nancy was on the doorstep first thing the next morning wanting to know who she was and if Barb knew she’d stayed the night. Lena soon put her right and told her what was what.’

‘I’d better go,’ Tilly told Ian. ‘Mum will be wondering where I am.’

‘It sure was nice to get to meet you,’ Drew told her with another smile.

He seemed a decent sort, Tilly acknowledged as she hurried towards number 13. Not that she was remotely interested in young men, not since Dulcie’s elder brother, Rick, had taught her the danger of giving her heart too readily. That had simply been a silly crush, but it had taught her a valuable lesson and now she intended to remain heart free.

In the kitchen of number 13, Olive, Tilly’s mother, was trying desperately not to give in to her anxiety and go to look out of the front window to check if she could see her daughter.

Although it was unlike Tilly to be late home from work, normally Olive would not have been clock-watching and worrying, but these were not normal times. When the Germans had started bombing London night and day almost a week ago, they had bombed normality out of the lives of its people, especially those poor souls who lived in the East End near the docks.

As a member of the Women’s Voluntary Service Olive had already been to the East End with the rest of her local group under the management of their local vicar’s wife, Mrs Windle, to do whatever they could to help out.

What they had seen there had made Olive want to weep for the occupants of what was the poorest part of the city, but of course one must not do that. Cups of hot tea; the kind but firm arm around the shaking shoulders of the homeless and the bereaved; giving directions to the nearest rest centre; noting down details of missing relatives to relay to the authorities, the simple physical act of kneeling down in the rubble of bombed-out houses to help shaking fingers extract what looked like filthy rags from the carnage, but which to those pulling desperately at them were precious belongings – those were the things that mattered, not giving in to tears of pity for the suffering.