The War Widows (13 page)

In her pocket was a list from Esme and instructions for Levi from Ivy. Could she risk leaving the two girls alone while she covered for Levi on the stall? They had the price of a cup of tea and a bun each, and were told not to dawdle on the way home for it would get dark early and there might be more snow.

‘It’s madness letting those two out by themselves,’ said Ivy. ‘I don’t want them hanging around the market, making an exhibition of themselves…You’ll have to keep an eye on them, Lil. I don’t trust them.’

‘We can’t keep them cooped up out of sight like prisoners of war,’ Lily argued. ‘Have a heart. Don’t you think that two women who’ve faced jungle and mountains, prison and interrogation, lived by their wits, scavenging for food and shelter in makeshift tents and first-aid posts, can find their way around Grimbleton without us sending out a search party?’

‘I don’t know why you’re getting so pally with them all of a sudden. I’m sure Walt’s not enamoured with all the fuss you make of them,’ Ivy sneered. There was a mean glint in her eye. Whatever Levi saw in this woman was a mystery. Why did she have to rub the sore spot on Lily’s conscience that since Freddie’s wives arrived there was no time to run round after him like before? If she could split herself in two it would help-no, make it three counting the market stall.

Before Freddie’s memorial service, the last time she
had made the effort to call into Bowker’s Row, Walt was down the pub and she sat all evening listening to the rumblings of poor Elsie Platt’s stomach and fending off all her questions about the new arrivals. That thought reminded her to make up a peppermint tisane for Elsie’s indigestion.

It was not as if she was deliberately avoiding her future husband and mother-in-law, but it seemed important to keep Freddie’s affairs strictly within the family and Walt wasn’t family, not yet. Elsie could fish all night but Lily wasn’t rising to the bait.

The pavements were clearer in the town but the pram was splashed by trams and buses and children throwing snowballs on their way home from school. They sauntered through the shopping parade, looking in all the windows, but there was nothing to see but cardboard pictures of stock and notices for coupons. How many they would need. They found their way to the outdoor market stalls where the men shouted across the aisles and Ana smiled.

‘It is like
agora
in Canea where village people sell eggs and fruit, honey and chickens.’

Here there were only potatoes and roots, and not many of them. No fruit, no eggs, no honey, but further on there were stalls selling cotton material, stripes and spots and plain colours by the yard.

‘I make pretty dress for Joy,’ said Su, shoving through the crowd, picking over the fabric remnants in a basket and barging into the fray. ‘And Dina.’

‘I make lace for them,’ Ana added, not wanting to be outdone, digging into the basket too.

‘Here, you lot…wait your bleedin’ turn!’ shouted one irate shopper in a woolly checked headscarf.

Su looked up, surprised. ‘There is no queue,’ she smiled sweetly.

‘And which jungle did you come out of?’ the woman retorted. ‘Go back to where you came from! We don’t want your sort in our country!’

‘But I am British, like you,’ Su said, puzzled by her outburst.

‘Pull the other one! I don’t see many your colour in my street,’ the woman laughed. She turned to Ana, seeing her all muffled up. ‘And you don’t want to be hanging about with darkies, young lady, not if you want to get on in this town.’

‘Parakaló?
Please, no understand.’ Ana stared at the stranger.

‘Hell’s bells! Two of them as bad as each other…You’d better learn some proper English. We don’t want you sort round here!’

Lily rushed over, red in the face. ‘Take no notice of her, she’s just a rude old biddy!’

‘’Ere, who are you calling old?’ came the reply, but Lily was already guiding the girls quickly out of earshot. Perhaps they weren’t so safe in town as she had thought.

There was a wet fish stall, which was closed, and a butcher selling scrag end bits. Finally Ana found a bag of pot herbs, green, red and white bits of herbs, and sniffed it. The stall woman looked at them with suspicion.

‘Nowt wrong with my stuff,’ she called out.
Ana nodded politely. ‘I just like smell,’ she said, and they walked away.

They were fingering everything and then putting it back, making Lily pink with embarrassment. Everyone was staring at them. ‘We don’t touch before we buy,’ she suggested.

‘How do you find a good chicken if you do not smell it?’ said Susan.

‘Chicken is for Christmas, if you’re lucky. We’ve not had one for years, just scraggy potboilers from the allotment. You have to get what you’re given here.’ Lily tried to explain how food shortages were hitting both shops and customers.

‘War is over. Why no chickens, no eggs, no fruit?’ Ana shook her head. ‘England is poor country now. Poor Lily. At home we have chickens and eggs and fruit-oranges, lemons, cherries in our yard-but Jerry steal all food on the island though we hid oil in caves and bury food in hills. They bring dogs to find it.’

‘You have sun and so things grow quickly.’ Lily tried to explain how damp and cold and long the winters were. ‘We have to eat food that keeps us warm: potatoes and stew and hot soup.’

‘I don’t like that,’ Susan said, looking at the stalls. ‘It makes plenty ladies fat, but not you, Lily. You are a bamboo pole.’

Lily was not sure if that was a compliment or not.

The search for olive oil took them to three chemists, all to no avail. ‘No call for that here,’ an assistant said, pointing to castor oil and ointments. ‘What’s yer trouble?’

‘She wants to cook with it,’ Su said, and the assistant stared at Lily as if they were mad.

‘We cook with lard and dripping,’ the lady explained, shouting as if they were all deaf. ‘Oil is for engines and rusty iron.’

‘But we cook meat with olive oil, and make soap.’ Ana was puzzled.

‘This is England, not the Continent. I’ve got a bar of Palmolive,’ smiled the chemist. ‘Will that do?’

They dawdled down to the indoor Market Hall, a huge vaulted building with wrought-iron rafters and a glass roof. The stalls were dotted around the floor in ovals divided into four, with canvas curtains they could pull round at night. There was that oh-so-familiar smell to welcome them.

‘We will find oil in here,’ said Ana determinedly. ‘It smells of market.’

There were clothing stalls and delicatessens, grocery stalls and millinery, sweet stalls and pastry makers, and tucked in the middle was Winstanleys, with a big poster on the back advertising: ‘BLISS. NATIVE HERBS. The great purifying kidney and liver regulator. Herbal medicine vendors for 100 years.’ Levi was standing in a white coat as if he were directing traffic, while a little woman in a striped overall darted hither and thither at his command.

‘Now then, Enid, come and meet the two Mrs Winstanleys,’ he winked.

Lily was getting tired of his insinuations but smiled politely at the little woman with iron curls clipped around her head so tight she looked like a pinwheel.
Enid Greenalgh helped out when Lil wasn’t around, and knew the contents of each box of remedies better than anyone.

‘Pleased to meet you…Dreadful news about Fred,’ she whispered to Lil. ‘Which one is the widow? He was allus one for a lark. It were a right good turnout for the memorial. It was the best that could be done with such a sad do…’ She paused, looking at both the girls with sympathy. ‘And them so young to be widows. I do know what it’s like. My Harry went west at Passchendaele…sad job all round,’ she sighed. ‘Are you staying long?’

Levi was quick to jump in with a, ‘Just till they get settled…bit of a shock all round. Can I help you ladies or are you on a sightseeing trip to view the natives at work?’ he quipped.

‘Ana is looking for olive oil,’ Lily replied, searching the shelves.

Levi looked as if they had asked for diamonds. ‘Ooh…no, no. Not had any in for months. Can’t get that sort of stuff yet, not since before the war. I can give you Macassar oil or beechnut oil, but that tastes like engine cleaner. There’s castor oil to clear your system but no olive oil. Sorry, there’s no call for it. Some of our lads saw a bit too much of that stuff in Italy…you know how it is. They want fish and chips and lard. You could try Szymanski’s, the stall the Poles go to. They sell foreign stuff or you could ask the Eyeties at Santini’s. I bet they use it on their hair.’

Lily hadn’t thought about Santini’s. That might be just the place to try.

‘You’ll find them by the King’s Theatre,’ she offered. ‘Out of the door, turn left and up towards the church. I’ll come and join you later.’

‘Don’t you go telling Mother and Ivy you’re into fancy cooking. They like stuff plain and NO garlic. It smells the place out.’ Levi tapped his nose in mock conspiracy and Lil felt like hitting him. If ever someone needed taking down a peg or two it was him. Brother and sister they might be, but they had no common ground, not since he came home and took over the management as if he was cock of the midden. It was sad he wasn’t the big brother she’d had as a kid. And she didn’t like the way he was eyeing Su as if she was a piece of pork tenderloin.

By now Joy was fighting over ‘Precious Teddy’ and wanting to get out of the pram for a toddle, being nearly a year older than Dina.

‘They’ve got their hands full,’ smiled Enid. ‘As it is their first outing, you should go with them and I’ll hold the fort. I’ve got my sandwiches in my tin box.’

‘But it’s your break, love,’ Lily replied, knowing how desperate she herself got to get off the stall on quiet mornings.

‘I’m fine here, honest.’

Enid was one of life’s givers, Lil thought. If only there were more of them in the world. Meanwhile Susan had found the stocking bar and was negotiating for a pair of lisle stockings. She was gathering an audience of onlookers, transfixed by her golden skin and exotic looks. They stood staring at her silk scarf with tassles, the colour of peacocks’ tails.

‘My friend here is a refugee, a relative of the Winstanleys. She has no stockings without holes. We have money. We can buy some from you, yes?’ she ordered like a pukka memsahib.

Shirley, the stall owner, was all fluffed up in an angora jumper in traffic light stripes. She shook her head until Lily sidled up to her and whispered in her ear. Then she ferreted underneath the counter and shoved something into a paper bag.

‘You tell Levi that is one book he owes me now. I can’t keep doing him favours.’ She shot a glance in his direction, patting her hair.

Susan paid for the goods and shoved them under the pram top.

‘Thanks, Shirley, love. We owe you,’ Lily whispered. It was embarrassing to find out just how many coupons Levi was squandering at that stall. Ivy was behind it, she must be.

‘Come on, we’ll find Santini’s, one last try and then home before dark,’ she smiled, guiding the big blue baby barge out of the hall as they launched forth once more on their quest. Everyone was tired and thirsty and ready for a sit-down. Santini’s ice-cream parlour was sandwiched between the theatre and the cinema in Kirkgate, with an alley on the other side.

Just to say the word ‘Santini’s’ was to conjure up a world all of its own, snug and warm, buzzing with chattering shoppers, an oasis where the weary of Grimbleton could rest aching legs, smoke, sipping steaming mugs of Bovril, tea or dip a spoon into an ice-cream soda.

There was no room for a pram so they lifted out
the infants and put it outside the window. They stood waiting for a corner seat until someone got up to leave. There was a smell of cigar smoke and chicory, the clink of the sugar spoon chained to the table. The tables were wiped clean by a waitress with satiny black hair tied with a scarf, gypsy fashion, around her curls, who darted in and round the bar like a black beetle, while the owner, with a black moustache and greased-back hair, kept the orders coming. It was going to be a long wait for service. Perhaps, Lily thought, she should leave them here and go back to relieve Enid on the stall?

There was always a buzz and a certain smell. She could hear the rattle of Italian being shouted in the back kitchen and the operatic voice of someone singing while they worked. The ice cream came in coloured glasses with fruit syrup on the top and golden wafers stuck at an angle. Ana ordered a scoop in a glass of fizzy pop to share with Dina, but the others ordered hot cocoa to warm themselves through.

‘Isn’t it cold enough outside?’ Su laughed.

‘I want to shut my eyes and dream of hot summers. There was bar on Canea harbour. Italians made the best ice-cream sundae in Crete, all the colours of the rainbow. I see
“la volta”–
the evening parade-when everybody walk and show off their clothes…before the war come and spoil it. You try it?’ Ana sighed, waving her spoon in the air like a sword.

Lily dipped her spoon in the ice to savour the moment. It tasted of cornflour and tinned milk, not much else, but it was sweet and gritty and there were
ice particles clinging to her tongue. It would do. ‘Very nice but very cold.’

Joy was in raptures at the taste.

Ana’s breasts were beginning to leak. She needed to nurse and opened her blouse, but Susan gasped, ‘You can’t do that in here! It is not done in a public place to open your titties to view. Is it, Miss Lily?’

‘I have no choice or I leak all over blouse. No one can see. I tuck her into my coat, look. She is happy. I am dry. Everybody happy,’ Ana said.

‘You are so Greek,’ Su replied, trying to distract Joy with the spoon, but Joy was watching, alert, and began to tug her own shirt open. ‘Now look what you’ve done. Dina is too old for the breast milk. She is a big girl. I used a bottle, more hygienic and polite. We do like the British ladies in Burma.’

‘British have no time for baby,’ Ana snapped. ‘They wrap them up and put them out of sight. They do not take them out at night. They like only quiet babies. Here it is like home,’ Ana argued. ‘I like it here.’

‘I thought you were enemies, Italy and Greece?’ Lily asked, knowing a little about the conflict between the two countries.

‘I hate Mussolini and his men but I have friends in Canea. Many Italians were my friends. The war is over now. We are all far from home,’ Ana sighed, sucking the dregs of the soda, trying not to slurp.