The Heart of the Family (21 page)

‘Hurry up with them curlers, will you, Lena? Oh, and don’t forget them clean towels as well.’

Lena was rushed off her feet. The town centre salon, with its proximity to the Royal Court Theatre and its theatrical clientele, was far busier than Simone’s had ever been, and its clients far more demanding. But not, Lena acknowledged tiredly, as demanding as her new employer, who always seemed to be yelling at her for something or other. Lena could understand why, as the sulky receptionist had confided to her, Judith’s assistants never stayed very long. The hours were long and the pay was small, and with Judith taking so much from the tips for herself, Lena barely had enough to cover the rent she had to pay to Judith’s mother, who claimed that she was not charging her as much as she might have done as a favour to her daughter, but that she expected Lena to help out with the household chores in recognition of her generosity.

Still, on the other hand, she did have a job and a roof over her head, and just listening to the clients kept Lena open-mouthed and wide-eyed. She had even struck up a bit of a friendship with the sulky receptionist who had turned out to be nowhere near as bad as Lena had first imagined, and they were talking about going out dancing together if ever Judith let them finish early enough to do so.

Unlike Simone, Judith operated a business that was open well into the evening, with chorus girls and sometimes even the big stars coming in without an appointment, all in a state and wanting their hair doing.

Sometimes, Judith had told Lena, when it was a really big star, they got asked to go over to her dressing room to do her hair there.

Lena was determined not to think about Charlie, and most of the time she didn’t. She was so exhausted when she finally went to bed that she fell asleep the minute her head touched the pillow. She did occasionally think about Gavin, though, and wondered if he had sorted out his gran and if Dolly had given in and allowed her daughter to take her back with her into the country.

Although Jean had insisted that her younger sister, Francine, would not mind one bit if Katie wore the beautiful clothes she had left behind when she had joined ENSA and gone abroad, now that she was settled in Liverpool Katie still felt a bit guilty about doing so, so tonight she was wearing one of her own summer dresses, in cornflower blue with white daisies appliquéd round the hem.

‘Here’s Luke, and he’s early,’ Jean called out to Katie as she saw her son walking through the garden to the back door.

Luke was a very good-looking young man, tall and broad-shouldered, with thick dark hair, strong features and blue eyes, but it always made Katie’s heart give an extra bump of mixed love and fear when she saw him wearing his uniform.

She wasn’t the kind of girl who could bring herself to run to her young man and openly embrace him, especially in front of others, so she hung back a little whilst Jean hugged her son and told him about the twins’ successful job applications.

‘I’ve agreed that the twins can go to the Graffie tonight, but you and Katie will have to keep an eye
out for them, Luke,’ Jean warned her son. ‘You know what they’re like. Oh, and we’re having a bit of a picnic at the allotment tomorrow after church, if you can manage to get time off.’

‘Dad around?’ Luke asked the minute Jean had released him and with such an air of studied nonchalance that Katie knew immediately that something had happened. Her stomach muscles tensed and she looked at Jean, but for once Luke’s mother didn’t seem to have picked up on what Katie herself had sensed, so Katie tried to calm herself, thinking that she must have made a mistake. She and Luke were still so newly in love and she was still got so easily upset and on edge when they had a falling-out that Katie acknowledged to herself that she was never totally relaxed in the first few seconds when they saw one another again after an absence, no matter how brief that absence had been.

‘He’s here now,’ Jean answered.

‘Thought you’d be here about now,’ Sam greeted his son.

Katie knew from Jean how much Sam loved his son, even though he didn’t often show that love in the same easy affectionate way he did with his daughters.

‘We’ve had orders,’ Luke announced abruptly in a soldierly manner and with a mixture of bravado and pride.

It took several seconds for his words to sink in, and it was Sam who spoke first, demanding curtly, ‘Have they said where you’ll be going?’

Jean placed her hand over her mouth as she protested shakily, ‘Oh, Luke, no,’ and Katie moved closer to Luke’s side, all the colour leaving her face.

‘Not yet,’ Luke answered Sam, ‘but we’re all taking a guess that it will be the desert.’

He turned towards Katie and reached for her left hand. ‘Remember what I said to you about if I got posted overseas?’

She was still in too much of a shock to think properly, so she simply nodded in assent.

Luke was still holding her hand and she could feel the slight tremble in their fingers, although she didn’t know if it was just from her own or if Luke’s fingers were trembling as well.

Luke had produced a small jewellers’ box from his pocket, and now he was holding it in his free hand.

‘I’ve spoken to your dad to ask his permission to do this,’ he told Katie gruffly, as he kneeled down in front of her. ‘Will you wait for me, Katie? Will you wear my ring whilst I’m gone and marry me when I come back?’

A huge wave of love and fear for him swamped her. All their petty little quarrels and all her own equally silly doubts were forgotten.

‘Yes,’ she told him, her voice choked with emotion. ‘Yes, Luke. I’ll be proud to do all of those things.’

Tears glistened in her eyes, making the pretty diamond ring he was removing from the box and sliding onto the ring finger of her left hand sparkle and shine in her sight. It fitted perfectly, and then Luke lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. A huge sob was wrenched from Katie’s throat, her tears falling on Luke’s down-bent head as she leaned towards him.

It was Sam’s cough that broke the intensity of the moment, his stern, ‘Come on now, you two, that’s
enough of that,’ bringing Luke to his feet, and having Katie reach into her pocket for her handkerchief. However, when she’d dried her eyes and looked at both Luke’s parents, she could see that their eyes were wet with tears too, and she knew they shared her own love and pride in Luke – and her fear for him.

‘Don’t you go forgetting that you’re mine now,’ Luke warned. He was still holding her hand tightly. Was he afraid too of what this posting could mean? The thought of Luke being vulnerable and even possibly wounded and far away almost broke Katie’s heart with protective love.

‘As if she would,’ Jean scolded him, adding, ‘And you can be sure that we’ll look after her for you, Luke. I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have as a daughter-in-law than Katie.’

Katie tugged her hand free of Luke’s to go into Jean’s open arms, and then they were hugging one another tightly, both of them crying and laughing at the same time, whilst to one side of them Sam started to ask Luke when exactly he would be leaving.

‘Don’t know yet, Dad, but it’s going to be soon, I reckon, seeing as they’re giving everyone extra leave this weekend.’

When the twins – who had been upstairs finishing getting ready for their Saturday night at the dance hall, which was so popular with Liverpool’s young people – came into the kitchen, Luke’s news had to be told all over again. The way Lou and Sasha went automatically each to one side of him, and the way he hugged them both, made Katie smile lovingly. The Campions were such a close family and she was so very happy that she was going to be a part of it.
Her own parents, much as she loved them, were more like a responsibility and a worry to her than a source of comfort and protective love, and a part of her had always craved the mothering that Jean gave to her children. She would be so very happy being part of this family and knowing always that she could turn to Jean for help, support and advice. Fresh tears stung her eyes. She would never forget this day or the fact that it was Luke who had made it possible for her to become a part of his family. She could have loved him for that alone. But of course she didn’t – she loved him for himself.

‘Grace will have a shock when she gets in, Luke, and she learns that you’re going overseas,’ Sasha told her brother, adding as she turned to Katie, ‘The picnic tomorrow will have to be your engagement party, Katie.’

‘That’s a very good idea,’ Jean approved, but as she and Sam exchanged looks, Jean knew that, delighted though she was about the engagement, it was Luke and his imminent departure that would be foremost in their minds, and that she and Sam would not feel very much like celebrating. Not, of course, that she would say as much to the young ones and spoil their happiness. Poor Katie had looked as white as sheet when Luke had told them he had been posted overseas. War was so hard on everyone.

It must be because of the warmth of the May evening that she was feeling so restless and so aware of the emptiness of her house, Bella decided, as she got up from the deck chair in her garden, where she had been sitting since finishing some paperwork. It was now official that she was the manageress of the crèche
– not that her mother had been as impressed as Bella had expected her to be. She had been more interested in complaining about how hard Bella’s father was having to work and how little she saw of him.

Bella was in the garden because the house had felt so empty. It was today that Jan had been getting married, and naturally Bettina and Marie had gone to Cookham, where the bride and her father lived, for the wedding.

She bent down, tugging at one of the weeds growing in the lawn, wrenching at it to tug out its roots and then sitting back, scarlet-faced with effort, when all that came away were leaves. With the root still embedded in the lawn, the wretched thing would grow back, just like her own anger and self-contempt over that stupid, stupid incident when she had tried to seduce Jan. How could she have humiliated herself like that? Would he tell his new wife?

Everything was so quiet after the bustle of the crèche and people coming and going. What was the matter with her? She didn’t have to be on her own, after all. She had turned down an invitation on Friday to attend the Tennis Club’s Saturday evening dance with a young army officer, who was home on leave and to whom she had been introduced by the vicar. The young man had made it plain enough that he thought her attractive but, conscious of her new status and the importance of maintaining a professional attitude, Bella had decided to refuse. She was tired of men who thought they could deceive her and make a fool of her, and an unfamiliar lack of confidence had made her feel that she no longer knew which men were serious and which were not. And besides,
she wasn’t really interested in dating anyone. She had more important things on her mind now that she was manageress.

There was something so very bittersweet about dancing with Luke tonight, Katie thought, knowing that this might be the last time they would dance together for a long time, and knowing too that this was the first time she had worn his ring.

Carole and Andy had met up with them inside the Grafton, and Katie had seen immediately that Carole had been crying.

They had been planning to get engaged on her birthday in July, Carole had confided to Katie, and today Andy had tied a piece of cotton round her ring finger in lieu of the ring he hadn’t got as yet.

‘He says he’ll bring me one back when he comes home,’ she had told Katie whilst the boys had been at the bar getting their drinks, her face crumpling as she had added tearfully, ‘All I want is for him to bring himself home, Katie.’

Katie knew exactly what she meant. After all, that was the way she felt about Luke.

‘Would you like to dance?’

Sasha’s face went pink, and she looked from the self-conscious cleanly scrubbed face of the young man standing at their table to that of her twin, her expression one of uncertainty.

‘Course she does, just as long as you haven’t got two left feet,’ Lou answered for her twin, giving Sasha a nudge as she told her, ‘It’s him that took your place the night you fell under that bomb.’

‘I know,’ Sasha retorted, her face a deeper shade
of pink now, whilst the young bomb disposal sapper had gone crimson.

The twins had been sitting on their own at the table they were sharing with Luke and Katie, Carole and Andy, and very much under Luke’s stern elder brotherly eye. However, Luke and Katie were dancing now, and from the looks of them they weren’t in any state to pay too much attention to anyone other than one another, Lou decided.

She looked away from her brother and his new fiancée to study her twin instead. The bomb disposal lad was a good dancer, and whatever he was saying to Sasha was making her laugh.

The tiny little tear in Lou’s heart, made by the fact that she and Sasha seemed to be changing and growing apart, deepened. One day Sasha would dance away from her for ever in some lad’s arms and then nothing would ever be the same again. Lou shivered. She’d never really thought before about them growing up and getting married, and what that would mean …

She glanced idly round the dance floor and then froze. Kieran! And in RAF uniform. Her heart banged into her ribs. It couldn’t be him. He’d never join up, at least not willingly. She looked again. It
was
him, and the girl he was dancing with looked as though she thoroughly approved of both her dance partner and his uniform. Well, she didn’t know him like Lou did, and what was more she was welcome to him. All he’d ever done to her was lie to her and lead her on, pretending he liked her best, and then going and saying exactly the same thing to Sasha. A girl would have to be a total fool to waste any time thinking about Kieran Mallory.

The music had stopped. He was looking towards the table. Had he seen her? Would he come over? Even as she shrank back into the shadows, Lou’s heart was banging like a drum.

Sitting together on the bench in her father’s allotment in the fading light that was not yet dusk, Grace leaned her head on Seb’s shoulder. They had got back too late to go to the Grafton to catch up with the others, and besides, Grace wasn’t sure that she wanted to be there. It was all very well for the newly engaged like Katie and Luke, and girls like the twins, but right now more than anything else what she wanted was to be with Seb and only Seb.

It was a warm evening, but she still snuggled closer to him, her hand resting against his chest and his heartbeat, whilst his arm held her close.

‘I’m going to miss you so much, Seb.’

He kissed the tip of her nose and automatically she lifted her face towards his, yearning for the sweetness of those kisses that increasingly lately had taken them deeper into dangerous waters. Tonight, though, she didn’t care about the dangers. All she cared about was showing Seb how much she loved him.

It had been a shock to get home and learn that Luke was being sent overseas, and one that had snapped her out of her own misery, to think instead how lucky she was that Seb would be remaining in England where it was so much safer. She had let her own feelings blind her to the fact that there were others far worse off than she was herself, Grace acknowledged, and now she was feeling a bit ashamed of herself.

Seb stroked her hair off her face, his hand tenderly
cupping her jaw. As he kissed her Grace moved closer, exhaling in a soft sigh when his hand moved down to her breast, her, ‘Oh, Seb’ quickening with longing, as their petting grew steadily more urgent until eventually Seb very gently pushed her away, his voice thick with longing and that amusement that she so loved about him as he told her, ‘I don’t think your dad would be very pleased if he were to come out now for a last smoke.’