Polly's War (11 page)

But Lucy was happy for him, she was really. Belinda was a lovely girl, though what she saw in her head-in-the-clouds brother, she really couldn’t imagine. Maybe she was jealous in a way for wouldn’t she just love a man of her own; a life other than one with herself and two children packed in the spare room of her mother’s house.

That Christmas the Ministry of Food handed out free Christmas puddings and one was given to Lucy, since she was bringing a family up alone. A part of her resented this act of charity even as she gladly accepted it. Every day she was forced to remind herself that Tom was only
missing
, as if she needed to drum this fact into her head. Yet however much she might do so, deep down she held no hope that he would ever return, which left her feeling like a widow with all the problems that brought. But what if she wasn’t? Others, besides Lily Gantry and Minnie Hopkins, didn’t see her as such, so how could she ever rebuild her life, ever start again with another man until she knew for certain one way or the other.

She missed having someone to confide in, to chat with, to open her heart to as she’d used to be able to do with Tom. She didn’t always see eye to eye with her mother though it was admittedly true that Polly had never been one to interfere and when she offered advice, it was usually wise. Like the time she’d urged her to apologise to her employer for those telling sharp words. Nevertheless even a loving mother or a friend like Belinda, however valuable, couldn’t make up for the loss of a soul mate, a husband and lover.

As always Lucy took refuge from her troubles in hard work. It was the only way she could cope with her grief. Every morning she went to the end of the street and cleaned number 179, keeping a well buttoned lip despite much provocation from Minnie Hopkins. Lucy still couldn’t stand her but at least she’d kept her job, one she needed and enjoyed, and they both became reconciled to a state of what might be called an armed truce between them. Generally speaking they managed to keep out of each other’s way, circling each other whenever they met, like a pair of sparring dogs.

Lucy enjoyed looking after Michael. He was a kind and gentle man, had even stood up for her when she’d asked if she could have Sean with her while she worked, since the day nursery had closed. Minnie had been vehemently opposed to the idea, but Michael very reasonably pointed out that if Sean didn’t come, neither would his mother. And by that time, even Minnie had come to appreciate the excellent meals the young woman cooked for them, so had grudgingly accepted the situation.

To Lucy this was a huge relief as it eased the pressure on her over-full day. Sean, though curious about the big house was no trouble and seemed to benefit from spending more time with his mother. He played either in the long back yard or safely in the small front garden. Little bigger than a pocket handkerchief with a few stalwart marigolds surrounded by a privet hedge, the little boy seemed content with his chalks and slate, toy soldiers, or bowl of soapy water for blowing bubbles, and Lucy could keep an eye on him from out of the many windows as she rubbed them clean.

Yet she was aware, as Michael returned each dinner time from the haulage depot where he worked as foreman, of how he watched her with concern, often remarking that she worked too hard, that she’d lost weight and looked worn out.

One day when Lucy made a delicious mutton hot pot, he insisted she sit and share it with them. Minnie looked outraged but for once, wisely perhaps, kept her opinions to herself. Lucy was equally opposed to the idea but the more she protested, the more Michael insisted. Cushions were placed on a chair for Sean and, finally succumbing to the mouth-watering aroma of good meat, the like of which Polly could rarely afford since all her spare cash was being poured into restarting the business, Lucy urged the small boy to be on his best behaviour and seated herself beside him. She was aware, throughout the meal of Minnie Hopkins’s grim silence, apart from the clicking of her false teeth as she sucked on the mutton bones.

After the meal Michael walked the length of the street with her, while Sean skipped and hopped along in front, riding his imaginary cowboy horse. As they approached number 32 among the more tightly packed terraces where Lucy lived, Michael said, ‘You still look tired. What you need is a rest, a day off.’

Lucy laughed out loud at that. ‘What chance do I get for a rest? Today, I have to pick up our Sarah Jane on her way home from school, then make a bite of dinner for everyone. That’s my job, d’you see? Mam, or sometimes Charlie, usually cook supper. Then I’m off to Taylors this afternoon to do their weekly clean through. That’s after I’ve washed the dishes and dropped our Sean off next door and Sarah Jane back at school. Pick the kids up again at four. Then there’s only all the washing, ironing and mending to do, which never stops with two children, plus my share of the housework. After that my time is my own!’
 

‘You do too much,’ he said as she finished on another laugh, tucking her brown curls behind her ears.

‘When you come up with a way of earning brass without having to work for it, do let me know.’

Michael was thoughtful for a while as they walked, before returning to his argument. ‘I still think you need a day off, a day all to yourself, and by heck I’ll see you get one.’ He was gripping her arms now, swinging her round to face him and the heat of his touch was doing peculiar things to her insides. ‘You could have a day trip to Belle Vue, or Blackpool. I’ll take you myself, Lucy Shackleton.’

‘Belle Vue? Blackpool?” She stared at him in wonder, as if he had suggested a trip to the moon. ‘And who’d take care of the children, if I did?’

‘They’d come with us, of course.’

A day in Blackpool. A ride in a tramcar, a dance in the tower ballroom, sucking on a stick of rock and paddling her feet in the sea. Ooh, it sounded grand. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed such a day. Ah, yes, with Aunt Ida and Uncle Nobby just before the war. They were no more than courtesy titles, them being old friends of Charlie’s, but they’d always been good to Lucy. They’d stayed at a boarding house in York Street for a full week, in one of those tall terraced houses with stairs that seemed to reach all the way up to heaven. But she wouldn’t say no to another visit, nor to an afternoon at Belle Vue. Near as it was to her home, she’d rarely visited this magical place, as she’d scarcely had the money since the children were born. A few hours with nothing to do but gawp at exotic animals, lick candy floss like a big kid and whizz on a whirligig. Wouldn’t that be grand?

For a moment as his big broad hands gripped hers she felt dizzy at the prospect of such heady joys. The temptation was so great, happiness so nearly in her grasp that she almost flung her arms about his neck and said yes, she’d love to, before reality drenched the madness.

She couldn’t let Michael pay for them. That wouldn’t be right. Both the children needed new shoes, and hadn’t she enough trouble finding money to pay the bills, let alone to waste on whirligigs and candy floss. She was supposed to be saving hard for a place of their own; her children deserved a bit of space and privacy, even if they no longer had a dad. So she laughingly refused his kind offer. ‘You must be soft in the head. I’ve no time to take a day off. Anyroad, it’ll be too cold now. Maybe next year?’

‘Is that a promise?’

Lucy could hardly meet the intentness of his gaze. It seemed to be burning her up. ‘Barring accidents, as they say,’ she commented brightly. Yet it stayed in her mind, this foolish dream, and Lucy couldn’t help but wonder what Michael Hopkins would look like dressed up all smart, instead of in his blue work overalls.

Chapter Seven

Lucy was keenly aware that Sean missed the nursery and that he also missed his dad. For all he had never known him, she’d made sure that he kissed Tom’s photo every night and he’d got it into his head that this father would one day come home, play football with him and teach him how to fish. It was surely all her fault if the little boy now felt let down, as if a promise had been broken.

‘When is Dad coming home? He hasn’t forgotten me, has he?’ and Lucy would explain that he might never come back, that she didn’t know the first thing about fishing or football, and he should ask Uncle Benny. But Uncle Benny was always too busy with his own affairs these days, looking for the shop of his dreams and taking Belinda out. When Sarah Jane had gone back to school at the beginning of the autumn term, it was hard for the little boy to accept that he couldn’t go too. It made him feel even more left out of things.

‘You can go next year, perhaps by next summer, if the teacher will let you. You’ll be four and a half by then, love,’ she’d told him.

‘Dad’ll be home soon, won’t he?’

‘No, love. I don’t think so.’ In a little tantrum he’d picked the photo up from where it stood on the dresser and flung it to the stone floor where the glass had shattered into a dozen pieces. Sean was a child with a determined nature. Lucy tried to explain this to Michael one morning after he’d found her weeping as she swept the endless stairs in his aunt’s house.

‘I can’t bear to see you cry, Lucy.’ He laid a hand on her shoulder and something inside of her seemed to unfold at his touch, as if her body were reaching out to him.

‘It’s our Sean. I’m that worried about him.’

‘Don’t be, you’re a wonderful mother to him.’ And to her surprise he reached over and placed his lips very gently upon her cheek. It was nothing more than the sweetest breath of a kiss but it left her with a strange sensation of anticipation, not to mention a trembling breathlessness in the pit of her stomach. The next minute his mouth was seeking hers, then his arms were tight about her, holding her against him and offering her such wonderfully solid comfort and her heart was thumping like an express train.

Afterwards, she swore to Polly that she hadn’t been distracted at all, that of course she’d been keeping a proper eye on Sean. He’d asked to go down into the front garden to play and she’d thought it perfectly safe, with the small green gate fast shut and the sneck tied up, since she was aware how resourceful he was. But while she stood in the dark intimacy of the stairs with Michael’s arms about her, out in the garden Sean dealt quite easily with the bit of string that held it fast and was soon marching smartly up Pansy Street straight as a soldier, just like Uncle Benny.

He knew where the school was. Hadn’t he walked with Mam and Sarah Jane often enough? He turned the corner quickly and kept on marching, trying not to look at the round things at the crest of the hill that looked like bogeymen’s heads, but which Mam had once told him were chimney pots. He wasn’t sure he could believe her. Grown-ups didn’t always tell the truth. Mam had said his dad was coming home. Now he wasn’t.

The school yard was empty when he arrived, which threw him for a minute. Then he realised that the children would be in their classrooms having lessons, and all he had to do was walk down the long corridor to find Sarah Jane’s room, and she’d tell him which was the right class for him. But first he had to cross this busy road.

Lucy and Michael leapt apart when Minnie came to find her. Lucy began to sweep for all she was worth, brandishing the stiff hand brush with vigour while Michael attempted to adopt an air of casual interest. She wondered if her lipstick was smeared and that was why Minnie glared at her so fiercely.

‘Do you realise you left the front gate open? Anybody could have walked in,
 
perfect strangers who might have murdered me in my bed, if I’d still been in it, that is.’

Lucy stopped sweeping, a small cloud of dust settling upon her head as she froze and stared up at Minnie Hopkins. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said I could’ve been murdered ...’

‘No, no, about the gate.’

‘I’ve told you, it were wide open and ...’

Lucy dropped the brush and scrambling to her feet almost fell down the stairs in her haste, heart racing. She saw the gate swinging open and stood transfixed before turning and flying back through the house, calling his name, ‘Sean. Are you there, Sean?
Sean!
Oh, my God, where is he?’

Minnie, puffing down the stairs after her, caught some of Lucy’s alarm and her beady black eyes shot wide. ‘I never thought of t’lad. He’s probably hiding somewhere. Playing some sort of daft game.’ Michael dashed out to the back yard, flinging open the doors of various outhouses. None of them contained a small boy.

Panicking quite out of control, Lucy couldn’t begin to think. ‘Oh please God, not the canal. He’s kept pestering me to take him fishing but I always put him off. What do I know about fishing?’

‘He can’t have got far,’ Michael said, trying to calm her but she was running now, and Minnie wasn’t far behind, her short legs having a hard time to keep pace. Michael caught her up easily. ‘I’ll search down by the wharfs and the canal.’

While Minnie scoured the length of Pansy street from top to bottom, Lucy tackled the wasteland where the abandoned air-raid shelters were. It was just like Big Flo all over again, only this was a small boy who could wriggle his way into all sorts of tiny, fear-filled places. Heart in mouth, Lucy searched every place she could think of, yet could find no sign of him. She was considering calling the police when she suddenly saw Sarah Jane and her teacher walking down Duke Street beneath the railway bridge and clutching tightly to Sarah Jane’s hand was Sean, his tears making grubby tracks down his chubby face.

‘I didn’t know whether to hug him or smack him,’ Lucy told Michael that evening as she sat sipping a welcome sherry in the Dog and Duck on the corner of Pansy Street. He’d decided that she deserved one, for the shock. Polly had disapproved strongly of her going out, giving her a hard time and accusing Lucy of the kind of carelessness she’d expected only to find in Benny. Lucy couldn’t for the world have refused Michael’s invitation, even if it were only out of kindness. She had to see him, to be with him, however innocently. It made her feel good just to see him smiling at her.