Under the Apple Tree (11 page)

niece’s bright, fair hair. ‘I went through it all when I lost

Johnny. I felt cheated, somehow. Not just of his life, though

that’s bad enough, losing the life we were going to have

together, but of his death, too.’ She looked at Judy, whose

sobs had lessened a little. Her face was still buried in her

hands but Polly sensed that she was listening. She hesitated,

hoping she wouldn’t increase the girl’s pain, and then went

on. ‘It’s like it says in that old song - you remember, the one your dad used to sing to your mum sometimes, when we

were round the piano. My dad used to sing it too. All about

sharing the good things in life, and the bad ones too. “Am I

not yours for weal or woe? How else can friends prove true?

Tell me what breaks and brings you low, And let me stand with you.”’

She paused again. Judy lifted her head. Her eyes were red

and swollen, her skin puffy, but she looked at Polly and

nodded. ‘I remember it. The last verse always made me cry.’

‘It makes me cry too,’ Polly said, her own eyes filling with

tears as she thought of the two men who had meant so much

to them - both sailors, both lost at sea. I shouldn’t go on

with this, she thought, it’s too heartbreaking - yet that last

verse, sad though it was, had expressed so well the loss she

had felt, and it had helped her to think that someone else

knew and understood that loss. ‘Do you remember how it

goes?’ She sang the words, very softly.

“So when the night

falls tremulous, When the last lamp burns low, And one of

us, or both of us, The long, lone road must go … Look

with your dear old eyes in mine, Give me a handshake true.

Whatever fate our souls await, Let me be there — let me be

there. There, with you.”’

They were both crying now, their tears falling like rain, yet Polly felt that for Judy the tears were healing ones, no

less bitter, but the tears of a grief shared and understood.

She held her niece’s shoulders firmly, feeling the slim body

shake against hers, and felt her own grief as fresh and sharp

as on the day when she too had received that terrible news.

And we’re not the only ones, she thought. There are

thousands of us, all over the country. All over Europe. And

perhaps, before this awful war is finished, all over the world.

Lives torn apart too soon; wives and husbands robbed of

a lifetime together. Robbed even of that last goodbye.

Judy felt for a handkerchief. There was scarcely a dry one

left in the house, and the one she used now was already

sodden. But there was an air of finality as she rubbed her

eyes and turned to look at her aunt.

‘It’ll always make me cry, that song,’ she said ‘but I’m

going to try to stop now. I’m going to do all I can to help

people who’re worse off than me - and there’s plenty of

them. I’m going to do it for the war effort, and to beat

Hitler, same as before — but I’m going to do it now for Sean

as well. So that he won’t have died for nothing.’

Polly gave her a shaky smile. ‘That’s right, Judy. That’s

what I’m doing. Working for Johnny and my Sylvie - so

that he won’t have died for nothing, and so that she’s got a

life to look forward to. A better life.’

‘There’ll never be anyone else for me,’ Judy said sadly. ‘I

don’t suppose I’ll ever get married and have children now.’

‘I thought that, too,’ Polly agreed. ‘But I don’t know,

Judy - no one ever knows what life will bring.’ She sighed.

‘It’ll have to bring someone pretty special to take Johnny’s

place, all the same. And I don’t even know that I want it to.

Johnny’s got his place in my heart - I don’t think there’s

room for anyone else.’

‘We’ll be old maids together,’ Judy said with an attempt

at a smile. ‘Well, you won’t be an old maid, because of

Sylvie. But when she’s grown up and got her own family, we’ll stay together, won’t we? You and me?’

Polly hugged her. ‘We will. As long as we’ve got each

other, we’ll never be really alone, Judy. Never. You will be

happy again, Judy - I promise. And we’ll always share

things. All right?’

‘All right,’ Judy said, and then her eyes filled again and

she cried out in a voice sharp with anguish, ‘But I’m going

to miss him so much, Polly! I’m going to miss him so

much …’

The end of January 1941 and beginning of February

brought several important visitors to Portsmouth.

Winston Churchill was the first. Accompanied by Franklin

Roosevelt’s Envoy, Mr Harry Hopkins, he went on a

tour of the city’s bombed areas before arriving at the Royal

Beach to meet the City Council members. Judy, lining up

with the rest of the staff to greet him, gazed in awe at his

stumpy figure and the famous cigar wedged in his mouth.

He really does look like a bulldog, she thought - absolutely

determined, as if nothing can stop him. If anyone can make

us win the war, he can.

He made a speech too, as good as any on the wireless. ‘I

thought about you a good deal a few weeks ago when we

knew how heavily you were being attacked,’ he told them,

‘and I am very glad to find an afternoon to come to see you

here and wish you “Good Luck”. Our buildings, our

dwellings, may be destroyed, but the spirit of Britain glows

warmer and brighter for the tribulations through which we

pass. We shall come through. We cannot tell when. We

cannot tell how. But we shall come through.’ He paused and

seemed to look at every person present, as if calling on each

one to live up to his expectations. ‘We have — none of us —

any doubt whatever. And when we have done so, we shall

have the right to say,’ his voice swelled and deepened, ‘that

we live in an age that, in all the long history of Britain, was

most filled with glorious achievement and most graced by

duties done.’

There was a pause as he finished speaking, and then a

spontaneous outburst of applause. All the women and many

of the men had tears in their eyes. Mr Churchill stood for a

moment, smiling broadly, then he nodded his big head and

waved his hand, giving them the famous Victory salute, and

turned to go out of the room.

‘Isn’t he wonderful!’ Judy said, going back to her desk.

‘You can’t help but follow a man like that. I mean, even on

the wireless he makes you feel you could do anything, but

when you see him in person - well, he’s like a tidal wave,

rushing you along.’

‘And the way he puts things,’ Laura agreed. ‘I used to be

good at English at school, but I could never put things the

way he does. And it wasn’t even a big speech, not to go on

the wireless or in Parliament, I mean. It was just to us, here

in Pompey.’

‘It’ll be in the newspapers though,’ Judy said. ‘The Evening News will print it — there was a reporter here taking down every word — and some of the others will too, I expect.

Plenty of people will get to know what he said to us.’

They went back to work, heartened by the Prime

Minister’s words. Judy thought about them, wondering just

why they seemed so different from the bishop’s during the

mass funeral. He, too, had been trying to give them hope,

but somehow it hadn’t been the same. It was as if he were

trying to brush aside and glorify the horrible deaths that so

many people had suffered, whereas Mr Churchill seemed to

suffer with them. He’d seen deaths like that himself, he

knew what they were like and didn’t pretend they were

glorious or ‘happy’, but at the same time he seemed to draw

strength from them, and hand it on to others. What was it

he’d said in that other speech? ‘I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ And, ‘We shall fight them in the streets and the hills and on the beaches. We shall never

surrender.’ He didn’t pretend, but at the same time he gave you hope and some of his own stubborn determination. And

he made you feel that, however small a part you played

yourself, it was important. It was all a part of the great

national effort.

Just at the moment, Judy’s part in that effort was trying

to set up a system for salvage collections - there had been

appeals for binoculars for the Navy, for saucepans and other

aluminium goods for making aeroplanes, for clothes, for rags

and bones. Nothing, it seemed, was to be thrown away;

everything could be put to some use.

‘There are going to be special bins for food scraps,’ she

said. ‘They’ll be collected for pig swill - pigs will eat

anything. There’ll be one on the corner of every street to

start with.’

‘One pig?’ Laura was sorting through a pile of temporary

ration books to be issued to people who had lost theirs in the

bombing.

‘One bin, twerp!’ Judy threw a screwed-up scrap of paper

at her and Laura caught it and threw it back.

‘I hope you weren’t going to waste that - it’ll do for one

of your collections.’ They made faces at each other, grinned

and went back to their tasks, feeling more light-hearted.

The next special visitors were the King and Queen

themselves. Judy, in a flurry of nerves, made Polly help her

drag in the small tin bath the night before, muttering to each

other that it would be a good thing when the potatoes could

be harvested and the big bath returned to its proper use.

They poured in hot water from kettles and added some bath

salts Polly had been given for Christmas. Judy got in first,

luxuriating in the pleasure of having a bath on a Wednesday

instead of the usual Friday or Saturday. Then she got out

again and Polly got in, followed by Alice, Cissie and finally

Dick. ‘We might as well all have a treat,’ Alice said. ‘No

sense wasting the hot water.’

With their hair newly washed and set with Amami lotion,

Judy and Polly joined the rest of the staff and volunteers at the hotel early next morning to receive the Royal visitors.

The King, looking serious but ready with a shy, friendly

smile, was wearing Naval uniform - he’d actually served

during the Great War, Polly whispered to Judy, and been in

the Battle of Jutland. The Queen was in a dark costume,

with a hat that was swept up away from her face, four rows

of pearls around her neck and a fur stole draped over her

arms.

All the bigwigs were there too — the Lord Mayor and

Lady Mayoress, of course, Admiral Sir William James the

Commander-in-Chief of Portsmouth, Brigadier Harter,

Major-General Hunton, Colonel Walker and the Town

Clerk. The men bowed deeply and the Mayoress dropped a

graceful curtsey. As they passed the staff, the latter all

bowed or curtseyed as well, most of them terrified that they

would fall over or get their hair caught in someone’s

buttons. As the door of the Mayor’s office closed behind the

visitors, the staff heaved a general sigh of relief.

‘She looks just like a film star!’ Judy exclaimed. ‘Did you

see those pearls? And that fur — it must have been real

mink!’

‘I can’t see why she needs to dress up like that,’ remarked

Eileen Hall, who didn’t really like royalty. ‘Especially when

she’s going to see people who’ve been bombed out and got

nothing. It’s just flaunting herself and all her money.’

‘No, it’s not.’ Polly was an avid follower of the Royal

Family. ‘They can’t help being rich, and if they’ve got nice

clothes they might as well wear them. Anyway, she says that

if people go to see her they dress up in their best, so why

shouldn’t she do the same?’

‘Oh, know her personally, do you?’ Eileen sneered, and

Polly flushed angrily.

‘No, I read it in the paper, and so could you have done if

you didn’t have your head buried in penny romances all the

time. Anyway, I’ve got work to do and we’d better not start

yelling at each other or they’ll hear us in there and a fine impression of Pompey that’ll give them!’

They went back to their desks, the excitement of the

morning slightly dimmed by the squabble. Polly felt angry

with herself for letting Eileen get under her skin. I ought to

learn to ignore her, she thought as she tried to sort out lists for the salvage collections, a job she had taken over from

Judy who was now busy helping the Mayoress with the

Clothing Depot. All the WVS staff and volunteers were

extra busy that morning, as they were all going to St Mary’s

Hospital in the afternoon to meet the Queen again as part of

her tour.

‘It was lovely,’ Judy told her mother that evening as they

sat round the supper-table eating bubble and squeak. ‘There

must have been a couple of hundred of us there, all WVS,

and there were some Red Cross nurses too. The Queen’s

ever so pretty - smaller than you’d think from her pictures,

with gorgeous blue eyes - and she was so interested. D’you

know what I heard her say? “Sunshine will come again,” she

said. Don’t you think that’s lovely? She couldn’t talk to

everyone, of course, but she managed to have a few words

with quite a lot. And they did so much during the day. They

went and looked at some of the bombed areas down