Our Lizzie (46 page)

“I'm working in munitions, actually. Doing my bit for the war as well.”

“That doesn't surprise me at all. Have you ever been back to Overdale?”

“No, never.” Not even to retrieve her clothes.

“Mother says your old house is still empty, though
he's
been back a couple of times on leave.” Those visits had coincided with a brick thrown through the window of the shop and a fire lit in the outhouse, but Peter didn't tell Lizzie that. The guilt wasn't hers.

She told him about the munitions work and how she was currently using a press to make detonators, a job where you had to be really careful because one wrong move could cause an explosion and a girl had lost two fingers a few weeks previously. But Lizzie had learned to be very careful during her years with Sam Thoxby and she'd had no trouble so far at the factory. Well, not much.

“You're not yellow,” he teased. “Not turned into a canary girl, then?”

“No. The chemicals made me ill and I can't stomach milk, which they give you to help with the poison when you're testing the springs, so they took me out of the spinning room after a week.”

“I'm glad. I don't want you getting hurt.”

She looked across the table and found him gazing at her seriously, but with a tender expression on his face, as if he liked what he saw, as if he really did care what became of her. A warm feeling stirred in her stomach. She liked all the Deardens. Then she felt sad as she remembered that there was only him and his mother left now.

“I've often thought about you, Lizzie, wondered how you were getting on,” Peter said softly. “Do you think—when I go back to the Front—you could write to me? We do look forward to letters from home and Mum's not much of a correspondent.”

Lizzie knew she shouldn't, because there was no future to it, but she nodded anyway. Letters from home helped soldiers endure the horrors of war, for everyone had heard the tales from those who returned permanently, men glad to have copped a Blighty, an injury bad enough to get them out of the Army. One woman at the factory had left suddenly to care for a husband who no longer had any legs and whose lungs had been partly destroyed by mustard gas.

Lizzie and Peter spoke at once, then both laughed. “Give me your address before we forget,” he said. “I'll write first, if you like?”

“All right, but I'm called Smith now.”

“I won't forget that, young Lizzie Smith.” He liked it better than Lizzie Thoxby, that was certain.

They borrowed pencil and paper from the sympathetic waitress, who slipped them an extra pot of tea with an admiring glance at Peter.

That made Lizzie look at him anew and realise what an attractive man he'd turned into. It wasn't just the uniform, but the air of assurance he had now. And although he'd never be exactly handsome, his whole face reflected his innate kindness. That had always made folk warm to him and she'd seen several women turn their heads to look at him as they'd walked towards the café.

Lizzie felt a funny little feeling inside as she studied him. If things were different, she could warm to this new Peter herself—but she squashed that feeling instantly. Things weren't different and the minute the war was over she had to get as far away from Sam as she could manage.

“A penny for them,” he said softly.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come out and she got caught up in staring at him, as he was staring at her, as if he'd never really seen her before.

“Ah, there you are, Lizzie!” a voice called, breaking the spell, and the other girls from the factory came across to join them. “We've been searching all over for you.” And then it was introductions and general conversation, with Peter buying the others a cup of tea and a scone each, smallish scones, limited to two ounces weight per person by the new regulations.

Just as well we were interrupted, Lizzie decided. But she wished he wouldn't look at her quite so fondly in front of her friends. She took a deep breath and set out to make them all laugh, a talent she'd discovered in herself since working at the factory. And she succeeded, too. It distracted the other girls, anyway, but it didn't take the warmth from the way Peter looked at her.

As they were all parting, he pulled her aside and asked urgently, “Do you think—you wouldn't be able to get out tomorrow and meet me again, would you? You did say you were on a week's holiday.”

“Well…” She looked up at him, then decided on frankness. “Are you sure that's wise, Peter?”

“I'm not sure it's at all wise, but I do want to see you again. Very much. Please, Lizzie?”

She decided she didn't feel very wise that day, either. “All right. Tomorrow.”

“Meet me here, then?” He raised one eyebrow. “Ten o'clock?”

She nodded.

He hesitated, then planted a kiss on her cheek.

Lizzie could feel the imprint of his lips all afternoon.

Her friends teased her all the way home about her “new fellow” and wouldn't believe her denials. And even Peggy heard about it—Lizzie Smith, who never had anything to do with fellows, had met one in Manchester and he was a bit of all right, too. Being Peggy, she came round and asked bluntly who he was.

“Just the son of my old employer,” Lizzie said quietly. “And before you say anything, I know I shouldn't be seeing him again, but I've missed everyone so. And—well, he's been injured.”

Peggy gave her a quick hug. “Go and enjoy yourself for a change, girl. You're far too serious normally. The only fun you have, apart from kidding around at work, is when we drag you down to the cinema.” She grinned for it was a joke in their group that Lizzie had seen every film ever made, most of them more than once, and it was usually she who dragged her friends to the pictures.

After that week, during which she went up to Manchester every day, Lizzie didn't see Peter Dearden again for a very long time. But they wrote, stiffly at first, then more comfortably as they grew used to sharing their thoughts. It was strange how alike they were in their attitudes and opinions nowadays. She received postcards from him as well as letters. Some had cartoons on them which made her laugh. Others had war scenes and “
La guerre dans le nord
” written under them—scenes showing streets full of rubble and damaged buildings, or stretcher bearers carrying wounded men along trenches. She had to ask Peggy what the French words meant. Lizzie worried a lot about Peter getting killed as she pored over those postcards, trying to imagine what it was really like out there, and even showed the pictures to her landlady who sometimes shared her son's letters.

Lizzie didn't tell Polly about her meetings with Peter and she didn't share news of him with her co-workers as some girls did. Those letters and cards were her treasures, though, and she read them over and over. Peter's fondness for her showed through, even though he said nothing direct about his feelings. She hoped her own growing fondness for him wasn't too apparent. After this was all over, she rather thought she would take the cards and letters with her to Australia. Just to remember him by. Because she had no right to care for anyone. She was still a married woman.

*   *   *

Sam Thoxby continued to be a loner, but as most of the other men in his platoon and many in his regiment were killed, inevitably those who'd been there from the start began to draw closer together as new platoons were formed and re-formed. He was a sharpshooter now, when occasion required, though the young fool of an officer who'd first noticed his skill with a rifle was long dead.

As the killing continued, he found himself making an improbable friendship with a cheerful young fellow called Ronnie, who seemed impervious to bullets and whose kindly grin and high spirits won over even a dour fellow like Sam Thoxby. Ronnie was happily married and liked nothing better than to talk about his wife and two small children, reading extracts from his Vi's letters to Sam, who nodded dutifully at intervals while listening intently.

For the first time, he began to realise how much more there could be to a marriage. Ronnie spoke most tenderly of his wife. To listen to him, Vi was perfection itself, and yet from her photo she was a lumpy young woman with crooked teeth.

One day Sam couldn't resist asking, “Did you ever have to—you know, give her a thump? To make her do what you want?”

“Crikey, no!” Ronnie shook his head emphatically. “I'd as soon stick my head in a gas oven as lay a finger on my Vi.”

“But what if she does something that upsets you, like?”

“She's bound to do that—and I'm bound to upset her—but we just rub along together, taking the rough with the smooth.” Ronnie looked sideways at him, a thoughtful look on his face. “Is that what you used to do, thump your wife?” By now he knew that Sam's wife had run out on him.

A nod was the only answer.

“I couldn't do that. I'm much stronger than she is, so it wouldn't be fair. And anyway,” he grinned, “I reckon she'd take a rolling pin to me if I ever tried it.”

Sam pursed his lips and changed the subject. He didn't sleep well that night. He kept seeing Lizzie's face as it had been against the white hospital pillow, the bruises on it—bruises he'd made—and he kept remembering that he'd killed his own unborn child. Maybe that was why he was a bit more careless the next day and got his first wound. Not a bad one, just a bullet going through the fleshy part of his thigh, but it was deep enough to get him sent back from the Front to a hospital, which gave him more time to think.

He even got some home leave to finish off his recovery and gave young Fred a thorough telling-off about the state he'd let the house in Maidham Street get into. Dora was pleased to come in and clean things up, but she didn't do as good a job as Lizzie had. Nor did she cook very well, either. Lizzie had been a good little cook. And she'd always had everything sparkling clean. And he'd never even said how much he liked that.

It all made him think. You could think too bloody much, that was the trouble. In a strange way, Sam was glad to go back to the Front. And this leave he didn't chuck a brick through Deardens' window, though he had intended to. Well, he had too much on his mind to bother with them snooty sods.

Back in France, he was utterly delighted to see Ronnie still alive. They pounded each other's backs and called each other all the insulting names under the sun, as men will when they're happy to be reunited. And, of course, he had to catch up on Vi's doings and see pictures of the children. Yet again, it made him wish desperately that he had a child of his own. If he was killed now there'd be no one to carry on his name and blood. He'd never thought about that before, not till Ronnie said soberly one night, “At least I've got a son, so the Rotsons won't die out, whatever happens to me.”

The Thoxby name would die out if he didn't find Lizzie, Sam thought glumly. He'd tried several times to relieve himself with whores, but somehow his heart wasn't in it and he'd failed even to get a proper hard on. Sodding women. They got into your blood. You grew used to them. Sodding everything. Especially this war. Would it never end?

He roused himself to start a chorus and banish the pictures of Lizzie that kept taunting him.

O-o-oh, why did we join the Army, boys?

Why did we join the Army?

Why did we come to fight in France?

We must have been bloody well barmy!

The others joined in, as they always did, and soon the song was ringing down the trenches.

*   *   *

Percy had met Sam in the street while he was home on leave and had stopped for a chat. You couldn't refuse to speak to a soldier who had been wounded in the service of his country. Meg was furious with him for not inviting Sam round for a meal, but he wouldn't do that. It would seem disloyal to Lizzie somehow.

A few days later Percy went round to call on Emma, but she was a bit distracted and Blanche kept watching her secretly, as if worrying about her. So he didn't stay long, just went home to his mother, who had been a little better lately.

“I want to go and see Polly and my grandson,” she announced one night over tea. “On Sunday. Will you take me?”

“I don't know.” He knew perfectly well that Polly wouldn't be glad to see their mother.

“Well, if you won't come with me, I'll go on my own. It's a poor look-out if I can't see my own grandchild, the only one I'm ever likely to get. It is, that.”

He sighed and when he failed to persuade her out of it, wrote a quick letter to Polly warning her to expect them on Sunday.

In fact, the visit went quite well, though things were a bit stiff at first. Mam was on her very best behaviour and Percy began to relax a little. After a nicer dinner than usual, because food was more plentiful in the country, Polly suggested a walk into the village.

“I'll stay here and have a bit of a nap, I think,” Meg said, snuggling down in Eddie's big armchair. “I'm not as young as I used to be.”

She looked so sleepy that they all went out together, with Percy pushing the pram, for a treat, and beaming down at his nephew.

When they'd gone, Meg opened her eyes and smiled. She tiptoed round the room, as if they could still hear any noise she made. After a while, when she didn't find what she was seeking, she went upstairs to the little bedroom. There, she went through Polly's drawers, being most careful not to disturb anything. And her search was rewarded for she found some letters from Lizzie.

“Ah!” she breathed. “I knew they'd be writing to one another. Disloyal cow, she is, running away from a fine man like Sam.”

Carefully she memorised the address, then went back downstairs and settled herself for a real nap. She'd got what she'd come for. They all thought she was batty but she wasn't. She was smarter than they were. And poor Sam deserved some support from his wife's family, indeed he did. Why, he'd even stopped to say hello to her in the street the leave before last and had slipped her a bob to have a drink on him. A fine figure of a man he made in his uniform. Not as handsome as her Stanley had been, but still better than Lizzie deserved.