The Heart of the Family (34 page)

‘Oh, Mum, look, isn’t it gorgeous?’ Grace laughed out loud with happiness and delight as, in her old bedroom, she held the wedding dress in front of her and then twirled round in an excited pirouette, whilst Jean nodded her head, too overwhelmed by her own maternal emotions to trust herself to speak.

When Francine had first written to say that she had taken advantage of the shops in Cairo to bring back a wedding dress and trousseau for Grace, along with a bridesmaid’s dress for Katie, fabrics for bridesmaids’ dresses for the twins and an outfit for Jean, and that she hoped her family wouldn’t feel offended, Jean and Grace had both been speechless with delight and relief.

It was possible to hire wedding gowns, or to borrow them if one had a friend who had one, but the gift of a beautiful new wedding gown like the one that Francine had brought back was luxury indeed.

The gown had a French label sewn inside it and, knowing her younger sister, Jean knew that Fran would not have skimped on the cost. Even in the dull December light the tiny pearls and diamanté
drops sewn all over the beautifully fragile net overdress, which went over the gown’s supple white slipper satin, bias-cut Hollywood-style skirt, glowed and twinkled so much that Jean, never normally fanciful, felt as though the dress had captured some flavour of the love and joy that every bride should feel.

‘Let’s get it on you then, to make sure it fits,’ she instructed Grace in a practical voice, pushing aside her own uncharacteristically romantic thoughts.

The parcel Fran had sent from London had arrived only that morning, and the eau-de-Nil gown that Fran had chosen for Katie was already hanging up on the wardrobe to allow the creases to drop out of the slipper satin. Fran had written that she had chosen eau-de-Nil because she had bought the gowns in Cairo, and because she knew the colour would suit both Katie and the twins. Katie’s gown was a less dramatic version of Grace’s wedding dress, an evening gown really, Jean guessed, with its bias-cut skirt and strapless top, but Fran had bought with it the prettiest bolero jacket in marabou dyed to match the gown itself.

Because she hadn’t known the twins’ size, Fran had brought back eau-de-Nil fabric for their gowns, and that, along with some of the other fabrics Fran had also bought, had arrived a couple of weeks ago and was already with a local dressmaker, who had offered to make the twins’ gowns for free in return for a length of the lovely fabric as payment.

Grace slipped off her tweed skirt and pale blue twinset, shivering slightly – more from excitement than cold – as she stood in her satin bra and camiknickers Jean and Katie had made from a cut-down old dress,
waiting for Jean to help her into her precious, wonderful gown.

It took them a good five minutes to get the dress on and fastened, but even before she had seen her own reflection in the old-fashioned pier glass, Grace knew how perfect her dress was from her mother’s expression and the combination of a shaky smile and the maternal tears she could see on Jean’s face.

She shed a few tears herself, along with a gasp of delight, when she did see her own reflection. Surely she wasn’t really as slender and so, well … bridal-looking?

She swung round, a look on her face that every loving mother hopes to see on her daughter’s face when she tries on her wedding gown, her lips trembling as she repeated in a choked voice, ‘Oh, Mum …’ before slipping off the dress to put it down carefully on the bed, and then hugging Jean tight, whilst Jean hugged her back, sniffing away her own happy tears.

As it was to be a winter wedding, and given the problem of getting fresh flowers, Grace had seized on Katie’s hesitant suggestion that maybe just a few flowers twined with lots of ivy – something she remembered seeing done at a society wedding breakfast held at the Savoy – might work, and several eager neighbours’ children had been dispatched on ivy-hunting missions with strict instructions not to remove it until closer to the big day.

The wedding breakfast was being held in the church hall. Everyone who had been invited, which was most of the church congregation and their neighbours, offering to help out with ‘a plate of something’, whilst Jean planned to make a trifle using some of the fruit
from Sam’s allotment that she had bottled earlier in the year.

It wasn’t so much Grace’s wedding that she and Jean spoke of, though, as they carefully replaced the gown in its tissue paper, but Fran’s unexpected marriage.

‘She says that she is coming to the wedding and that she’s bringing her husband with her, so I suppose he must be all right,’ Jean confided to Grace, who burst out laughing and said teasingly, ‘Well, of course he will be all right, Mum, otherwise she wouldn’t have married him. ‘I just wish that Luke could be here for my wedding. Katie looks so sad sometimes although she never complains.’

‘I think she might have had a falling out with that girl she works with,’ Jean told Grace. ‘Has she said anything to you about her? Only Sasha mentioned that the last time they went to the Grafton Carole didn’t sit with them like she normally does. Mind you, Sasha also said that Carole seems to have taken up with a couple of lads, even though she’s as good as engaged, so I can’t say as I blame Katie for keeping her distance.’

‘Katie hasn’t said a word to me, Mum, but I wouldn’t worry too much. I’m sure she would tell you if there was anything really wrong.’

Jean hoped that Grace was right. She loved Katie for her own sake and she was going to miss her this Christmas, but it was only fair that this year Katie should go to London to spend Christmas with her own parents and the friends with whom they shared a house. Hopefully next Christmas this war would be over and Luke would be home safe for good, but Sam had told her only the other day not to get her
hopes up. The war, he reckoned would go on for a fair time yet. Like a long debilitating illness, the conditions of living in a country at war were grinding them all down now. Somehow they had found the strength to survive the shock of going to war, and then of Dunkirk, then they had had their spirits lifted by the Battle of Britain before being plunged into the horror of being blitzed, but now, even with the blitz behind them, the prospect of another winter of rationing and going without was dragging everyone down. You could see it in people’s faces, grey and pinched with the constant struggle to ‘manage’ and the constant ache of hunger that came from trying desperately to make the increasingly small rations stretch, with mothers willingly sacrificing their rations for their children and their husbands, and yet somehow having to find from somewhere the energy not just to care for their families but in many cases also having to do their bit for the country as well.

Unaware of the bleak nature of her mother’s private thoughts, Grace hummed happily under her breath. It was almost impossible for her to believe that in just over ten days, on the Saturday before Christmas, she and Seb would be married. Her lovely wedding dress could do double duty as an evening gown for those few precious days of their honeymoon in London staying at the Savoy Hotel, where, thanks to the good offices of Katie’s father, Seb had been able to book them a room and a table for the Savoy’s special dinner dances, a treat to which Fran had added an extra gift – as though she had not already done enough – by getting them tickets for some of the city’s best shows. But best of all, better than anything else, no matter how thrilled and
grateful she was to everyone for their kindness, was that soon now she would be able to wake up in the arms of the man she loved – her wonderful Seb – her husband.

Grace was thrilled with the cottage she and Seb would be moving into in Whitchurch, tucked securely down at the bottom of a narrow lane, but still close enough for him to be able to cycle to The Old Rectory where he was working. It had two spare bedrooms, three in all, which meant that her family could come down and stay with them.

Grace had also had a letter from the matron of the local hospital, offering her a post as a qualified nurse. The hospital treated local people and had a separate military wing as well.

And almost like icing on the cake, Seb had told Grace that Sybil and a couple of the other probationers and been turned down as not being suitable to continue with their training.

Katie looked sideways along the large desk she and all the other girls in her group at the censorship office shared, to where Carole was seated next to her, and then tried not to let her heart sink even further when she saw that, far from responding to her small overture, Carole was deliberately ignoring her and trying to pretend that she hadn’t seen Katie look at her and, even more hurtful and upsetting, that she wasn’t aware of why Katie was doing so. They had been so close that Katie had never dreamed that something like this could happen. She had thought that Carole was as committed to Andy as she was to Luke. She felt torn between her loyalties and her own sense of what was right and what was wrong. If she had said
nothing and gone along with Carole’s plans with regard to the Irish boys, their friendship might still be intact, but how could she have done that and not felt that she was betraying Luke, when she knew how he would feel about her getting friendly with another man? And then there were the Irish boys themselves, with their questions about their work and the discomfort and unease that had brought her. No matter how many times Carole told her that she was being silly when she said they should not discuss their work with them, Katie could not shake off her own belief that it was wrong. And wrong too of the boys to press them so persistently. Perhaps they simply didn’t realise the difficult situation they were putting her and Carole in, but what if they did? What if their interest in their work had more to it than simple curiosity and a male desire to tease them?

It had come as a shock to Katie to realise how differently she and Carole felt. She had assumed that because they did the same work that they would feel the same way about it, but Carole’s attitude had made it plain that she did not share Katie’s sense of responsibility towards the secrecy of their work. Katie had kept to that rule of secrecy even when she had feared that doing so would come between her and Luke, because she had felt it was her duty to do so. Carole, though, seemed to have no such qualms. She had shrugged dismissively when Katie had tried to tell her that she wasn’t happy with the Irish boys’ questions.

Katie knew that she should have been able to talk about all of this with Carole but Carole got so cross whenever she tried to do so that she had felt obliged to drop the subject.

Now, though, Katie was unhappily aware that
Carole was very cross with her anyway, despite all the efforts she had made to keep the peace.

Carole had made that more than clear, turning her back on Katie whenever Katie tried to talk to her, sitting with someone else at tea break and lunchtime, and generally making it plain that she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Katie.

Now Katie was in the horrible position of feeling she had to delay going for her dinner so as not to further anger Carole by trying to go at the same time. Her pleading look at her, ignored by Carole, had been a desperate attempt to try to mend things, but it was plain that Carole was so angry with her that she had no wish to repair their damaged friendship.

Now Katie had to sit pink-cheeked with embarrassment as Carole got up and slipped her arm through that of one of the other girls, chattering away to her nineteen to the dozen as they went for their dinner whilst Katie felt obliged to remain where she was, blinking desperately so as not to humiliate herself any further with silly tears.

‘Katie?’ She had been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn’t realised that Anne, who was in charge of their table, had got up and come over to her, the gentle warmth of Anne’s hand on her shoulder making her jump.

‘I don’t want to pry,’ Anne told her, slipping into Carole’s vacated seat, ‘but as table leader naturally I want our table to work together well. It’s obvious that something has happened between you and Carole. Would you like to talk about it? I don’t want to pry but the two of you were such good friends, and anything that affects the good working of my table is of concern to me.’

‘There isn’t much to talk about really,’ Katie answered her uncomfortably. ‘I’ve tried to make things up with Carole but she won’t even look at me, never mind let me say anything.’

‘Make things up? So you had a quarrel then? That doesn’t sound like you, Katie. You’re such a kind level-headed sort of girl. What was the quarrel about? Not boys, obviously, since you are engaged to Luke and Carole’s as good as engaged to Andy.’

The small tremor that shook Katie’s body gave her away even before she felt obliged to say uncomfortably, ‘It is sort of about boys. That is to say … well, I know that Carole doesn’t mean any harm, and there’s nothing wrong in wanting to have a good time and go out dancing, but, well, I know that Luke wouldn’t like it if he thought that I was going to the Grafton to meet up with someone, even if it was just to dance with them, but Carole doesn’t see it that way. Not that I’m saying what she’s doing his wrong,’ Katie defended her friend determinedly, ‘but Andy’s different from Luke, and, well, I know I wouldn’t like to think that my Luke was meeting up with another girl when he’s on leave overseas, even if Liam and Danny say that he and Andy are probably doing that.’

‘Liam and Danny?’ Anne pressed.

Katie nodded. ‘That’s these boys that Carole wants us to go dancing with.’

‘Well, it is hard when your own chap is far away, and you want to have a bit of fun and go dancing,’ Anne sympathised, ‘but I do agree with you, Katie, that it isn’t very fair to wear a chap’s ring and then go out with someone else. As for what your Luke is doing abroad, well, I dare say he feels exactly the
same about you as you do about him. Where did you meet these boys?’