The Heart of the Family (5 page)

‘Bella, you aren’t listening.’ Her mother’s protest broke into her angry thoughts.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Bella repeated. ‘I only came round to ask if you’d managed to get in touch with Auntie Jean to see if everyone’s all right. I know it was Bootle that got the worse of it last night but they are in Liverpool.’

Bella could see immediately that her mother wasn’t pleased by her remark.

In fact, if she was honest, her concern for her mother’s sister’s family’s safety had surprised Bella herself. She had put it down to the fact that since she was now involved in the war effort herself it was only natural that she should be more aware of what was happening.

‘Well, of course they’ll be all right. Why shouldn’t they be? It’s poor Charles you should be worrying about, after what happened to him, being set on like that and left for dead … Oh, that will be your father,’ Vi announced as they heard the front door being opened. ‘Now you’ll be able to tell him about those refugees, but I warn you he isn’t going to be pleased.’

Her father already didn’t look pleased, Bella acknowledged as he came into the kitchen, not even when her mother announced happily, ‘Charles’s release papers have arrived, Edwin.’

He greeted that news with a mere grunt, before saying that he was going upstairs to get changed and then he was going back to work. ‘And don’t expect me back tonight if there’s another air raid.’

‘Hadn’t you better open Charles’s letter, Edwin? There might be something he needs to sign, and if there is, Bella can go into Liverpool and take it to him. I do wish the hospital would say when he can
come home. Poor brave boy. Bella, go and fetch the letter for your father.’

It was easier to comply than to argue, Bella decided, retrieving the envelope and handing it over to her father with an angry swish of the skirt of her cotton dress, thinking to herself: Poor brave boy nothing.

‘I’m so glad that Charles will soon be out of the army. He should never have gone in,’ Vi told Edwin, as she tried to smooth her dress over the curve of her hip. Thank goodness it was May with the summer ahead of them, during which she could try to lose a few pounds. Presenting a smart appearance to the world was important to Vi. Not that a little extra weight would have mattered if she’d been able to buy herself some new clothes, but with Lewis’s bombed there was now a shortage of shops where one could buy smart clothes. Vi certainly didn’t intend to go shopping somewhere like Bon Marche, Liverpool’s more price-conscious and less stylish department store.

‘Well, he did and according to this letter he’s going to have to stay in,’ Edwin announced, causing Vi to gasp and Bella to look at him.

‘But that’s not possible,’ Vi protested, her face flushing with anger. ‘You must have read it wrong, Edwin. He can’t possibly stay in the army. He’s getting married.’

Edwin shrugged, handing the letter over to Vi, saying curtly, ‘Here then, read it for yourself.’

Bella was surprised that her father wasn’t making more of a fuss. It wasn’t like him to take bad news so calmly.

‘You’ll have to do something, Edwin,’ Vi told him when she had read the letter.

‘Like what?’ he demanded testily.

‘Well, surely there’s something you can do,’ Vi insisted. ‘After all, you can’t possibly continue to manage with only that dreadful young woman to help you.’

‘Well, it looks like I’m going to have to, doesn’t it?’ Edwin responded.

‘But, Edwin …’

‘Don’t start, Vi,’ he warned her sharply. ‘I’ve got more than enough to worry about without you carrying on.’

‘But what will Daphne’s parents say? And poor Daphne too – she’s expecting to move up here with her new husband and how can she do that if the army won’t release him?’

‘Well, she’ll just have to lump it or leave it, won’t she?’ said Edwin unsympathetically, opening the kitchen door and disappearing into the hall.

Bella looked at her mother as they heard him going up the stairs.

‘I really don’t know what gets into your father at times,’ Vi complained. ‘I know he’s busy, but you’d think that would make him realise how important it is that he does something about getting Charles out of the army as quickly as possible.’

Vi’s pursed lips and flushed face warned Bella that there was likely to be a row when her father came back downstairs. She didn’t want to be dragged into it, not when Charlie getting out of the army and coming home with his new bride meant that she had to give up her house.

‘Look, Mother,’ she told Vi firmly, ‘I’d better go. We’re going to be inundated with requests to take in more children with all this bombing. I’ve already
requisitioned extra supplies and I want to get back to the school and see if they’ve arrived.’

‘Your father is going to have to do something to get Charles out of the army. He’s getting married,’ Vi repeated, plainly still too concerned about the bad news in the letter to pay attention to what Bella was saying.

‘Being in the army doesn’t prevent him getting married,’ Bella pointed out, ‘and there’s nothing to stop Daphne staying where she is with her parents, seeing as Charlie is based closer to them than he is to Wallasey. It’s what plenty of newly marrieds are having to do, after all.’

‘I might have expected you to say something like that,’ said Vi crossly, ‘but I wouldn’t go counting any chickens if I were you, Bella. I’m sure your father will be able to sort something out. It means so much to him to have Charles home and working with him. He’s been looking forward to them working together as father and son ever such a lot. He’ll be dreadfully upset.’

Her father hadn’t looked particularly upset to her, Bella reflected, as she kissed her mother on the cheek, and then paused to ask her, ‘You won’t forget to find out if Auntie Jean’s all right, will you?’

The look of affronted astonishment her mother gave her was well-deserved, Bella admitted, as she stepped out of the back door and into the May sunshine. After all, she wasn’t close to her aunt and uncle and their family – not even to Grace, who was a similar age to herself – and in fact rarely gave them any thought.

A pall of grey across the sky to the south obscured the horizon, and in the air there was a smell that
reminded Bella of the scent of the morning after Bonfire Night, only this was much stronger.

She wrinkled her nose. There’d been civil defence workers coming into the newly created rest centre this morning telling tales of bomb blasts that left people covered from head to foot in soot from collapsed chimneys, and Bella had seen for herself the now dispossessed-looking, disgustingly dirty and down at heel. She looked at her own immaculately clean summer frock and gave a small fastidious shudder. She simply didn’t know how she could possibly cope without her lovely clean bathroom and her freshly laundered clothes.

Bella’s comment about Jean had left Vi feeling thoroughly cross. Since when had Bella had any interest in the welfare of her auntie Jean and her family?

The freedoms that widowhood and having her own roof over her head, not to mention an allowance from her father, had given her were encouraging her daughter to get rather above herself, and all the more so since she’d got involved in this crèche, Vi decided. That was the trouble with this war, it was encouraging young women like Bella to do all manner of things they would not normally have been doing. Vi had heard other mothers of grown-up daughters saying exactly the same thing. The war was giving Bella’s generation far more freedom that Vi and her contemporaries had ever enjoyed. Too much freedom, in fact.

It was a great pity that Bella wasn’t more biddable and dutiful like dearest Daphne.

Edwin would
have
to do something about getting Charles out of the army.

Vi heard her husband coming down the stairs and went into the hall, but before she could say anything he told her irritably, ‘Not now, I haven’t got time.’

Vi opened her mouth to protest, but it was too late: Edwin was already opening the front door and on his way out. She certainly couldn’t say anything to him now when the neighbours might hear.

She’d have to go into Liverpool and tell Charles the bad news herself. Poor boy, he would be devastated.

Grace’s heart sank as the first person she saw when she came back on the ward after her break was her aunt, but it was too late for Grace to avoid her.

‘Poor Charles, I hope you’re looking after him properly, Grace. He has been through a very bad time, you know. Of course he’s been fearfully brave, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t recommended for a medal of some sort. He certainly deserves one.’

He certainly did, Grace thought grimly. She could agree with her aunt on that point, but the medal she would like to pin on her cousin wouldn’t be for bravery. Oh, no, it would be for swinging the lead and flirting with any nurse gullible enough to be taken in by him.

‘He’s just had a terrible shock, you know. I’ve had to give him some dreadful news, but he’s borne it bravely.’

Grace glanced towards the bed where Charlie was lying, his face turned away from them as he watched the new probationer who just happened to have a very good pair of legs.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Aunt.’

‘Well, yes, of course. How is your mother?’

‘She’s fine. I’ll tell her that you were asking after her.’

Asking after her but not making any mention of going to visit Mum, Grace thought critically. But then that was her aunt all over.

As he lay watching the probationer with the good legs, whilst his mother stood talking to Grace, Charlie realised that he was by no means as bothered about having failed to convince the Medical Board to discharge him from the army as he had pretended to his mother he was.

Stationed where he was in barracks with easy access to London, and on home duties, might not give him as much money in his pocket as working for his father would have done, but it gave him one heck of a lot more freedom, and besides, there were always ways and means of making a bit of money if you knew how to go about things. There were always spivs hanging about the barracks ready to buy a chap’s drink and cigarette allowance – every soldier got either a bottle of Scotch or a bottle of gin a week – and anything else that might be going that could be sold on the black market. A brisk business was conducted selling items that had found their way out of the stores, and then there were the card schools, and one or two other wheezes.

Being here in hospital had given Charlie time to think and what he had been thinking was that he might have been a bit rash in letting his mother persuade him into getting engaged to Daphne. Typically for Charlie, it was always someone else who was responsible for those things in his life for
which he did not want to take responsibility. He had conveniently forgotten how pleased with himself he had been when it had first occurred to him that proposing to Daphne would be a good way of getting himself into his parents’ good books and getting out of the army.

Now in Charlie’s memory of events it was his mother who had urged him to propose to Daphne, and his father who had urged him to leave the army, whilst he had simply and good-naturedly allowed himself to be carried along by their enthusiasm.

Army life was really a bit of a doddle if you knew how to work things in your own favour, which Charlie boasted to himself that he did. He and a few other like-minded lads had scarcely missed a weekend in London the whole time he’d been at the barracks, and even when he had, there had still been some fun to be enjoyed locally, what with the townspeople eager to entertain them and the prettiest girls in the town eager to dance with them.

Marriage was all very well, and something that a chap naturally had to do at some stage, especially with the country being at war, and a chap’s parents making a fuss, but lying here in hospital with pretty nurses everywhere made a chap think, it really did, and what it had made Charlie think was that he wasn’t sure he was quite ready to get married yet.

The fact of the matter was that he’d actually been thinking about suggesting that he and Daphne put things off for a while. They could stay engaged, of course, but as he’d planned to remind Daphne, her own mother had originally suggested that they should wait. However, when he’d outlined this plan to his mother a few minutes ago, she’d opposed it immediately,
getting herself into one of her states, and protesting that it was far too late for him to talk about delaying the wedding now, and reminding him of how lucky he was to have such a sweet girl to marry as Daphne Wrighton-Bude, and how generous his father had been on account of him marrying her.

Listening to his mother had suddenly brought home to Charlie just what his life would be like if he did leave the army and come back to Wallasey to work for his father, which was why right now he was actually feeling rather relieved that his discharge had been refused, and that he was to report back to camp as soon as he had been declared medically fit to leave hospital.

The pretty nurse with the good legs and the knowing smile, with whom he’d already indulged in a bit of harmless verbal flirtation, walked past the end of his bed and, after a quick look to make sure that his mother was still deep in conversation with his cousin Grace, he winked at her and congratulated himself mentally on being one of those people for whom life always had a way of working out well.

‘Well, tell your mother that I was asking after her, won’t you?’ Vi reminded Grace, for all the world, Grace thought indignantly, as though her mother was nothing and her auntie Vi was something very special indeed.