Under the Apple Tree (41 page)

seem to mind all that much. Our Betty’s having the time of

her life out in the country, even though the work’s hard.

Her dad and me wonder sometimes what she gets up to out

there.’

‘I think a lot of the young women are getting the sort of

freedom they’d never have had otherwise,’ Freda agreed.

‘Our Eunice is the same, proper let off the leash she is, in the ATS. If it hadn’t been for the war they’d have all

stopped at home, under their parents’ eyes, till they got

married. Now you don’t know what they’re doing.’

‘And some of them aren’t getting the lives they thought

they’d have,’ Cissie said quietly. ‘Look at our Polly, a widow

at thirty-five. And Judy, deaf at twenty-two.’ She looked at

Annie Chapman. ‘And what about your Olive? It must have

been ever so hard for her to say goodbye to her husband

only a day or two after their wedding.’

The others nodded soberly. There was no making sense

of it all, they agreed. They came to Alice Thomas’s front

door and said goodbye. Cissie went indoors and found Dick

sitting in his usual chair, his latest rag rug spread over his

knees.

‘I dunno as I’ll be able to go on with this much more in

the hot weather,’ he said, looking up. ‘It’s like having a

blanket over me. Have a good natter?’

Cissie nodded and went through to the scullery to start

getting tea ready. ‘Gladys Shaw’s getting a medal,’ she

called. ‘The British Empire Medal, it is, for what she did in

the raids. She says she doesn’t deserve it, that there’s plenty of others did just as much, but she’ll have to go and be

presented with it all the same. And Peggy says she’s going in

the Wrens now.’

‘Peggy Shaw? She’s too old, surely!’

‘Not Peggy, Gladys. And Diane, their youngest, she’s got

a job at Airspeed, wants to learn to fly.’

‘They’ll never let her. What is she, sixteen? Mind you,

she’s always been the flighty one!’ Dick laughed at his joke

and rolled up the rug. ‘I’ve had enough of this, Cis, it’s

making my eyes go funny. What’s for tea?’

‘I thought we’d have sardines on toast. I got a tin

yesterday.’ Cissie came in and looked at him a little

anxiously. ‘You feeling all right, Dick?’

‘More or less. I’m just a bit hot. And it’s all these

different colours, dazzling me. I dunno who’s going to get this one, but they’d better like bright colours.’ He grinned

again and Cissie laughed too but put her hand on his

forehead. ‘It’s all right, Cis, I haven’t got a temperature.’

‘No, but all the same … It’s not long since that

pneumonia, Dick. You’ve got to be careful.’

‘Careful!’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I could be any more

careful than I am now. All I do is sit in this chair all day

making blinking rugs and listening to the wireless.’

‘You go for a walk every day.’

‘Yes, up to the end of the street and back. Well, I tell a

lie, this morning I walked all the way up to the newsagent’s

shop. That Alice Brunner, she’s looking a bit better these

days. Gave me a nice smile, she did. I reckon that girl of

hers told her to pull herself together.’

‘Joy’s a big help to her mum,’ Cissie said, ‘and Alice has

had a lot of worry, with Heinrich being taken away like that.

I ask you!’ she went on indignantly, coming through the

door and waving a bread-knife. ‘Interning a man like

Heinrich Brunner who’s been in England and running his

own business all those years! As if he was a spy. It’s

criminal. And then sending him off on that ship and getting

him torpedoed. It’s no wonder poor Alice nearly had a

nervous breakdown.’

‘Well, you needn’t stab me to death because of it,’ Dick

said, pretending to cower in his chair. ‘But you’re right, Cis, it was a bad do. There must have been hundreds like

Heinrich Brunner, been living here for years not doing no

harm to nobody, and all put in prison like common

criminals. It was like a sort of panic’

‘They’ve let a lot of them out now,’ Cissie said, goin

back to the scullery. ‘But that doesn’t help men like poor

Mr Brunner, who got killed on that ship.’

She went on getting the tea ready. Presently, Alice came

in from her own afternoon spent helping at the loca

Clothing Store, and then Polly arrived. She had been

working at the salon, cutting and setting hair. With no raids for a fortnight, and then just a few bombs dropped in the

sea, it seemed almost as if normal life was beginning to

return.

‘There’s another letter for you, Poll,’ Dick said, nodding

at the mantelpiece. It had come by second post, not long

after Polly had left for the salon, and Cissie and he had

indulged in some conjecture about it before placing it

behind the photo of Terry in his naval uniform. Letters

weren’t all that common unless they were from Sylvie out at

Ashwood or Terry, somewhere at sea, and this wasn’t from

either of them. It bore a London postmark, and it wasn’t the

first to have arrived in the last couple of weeks.

Polly took it and blushed. ‘I’ll just slip upstairs and

change out of this skirt and blouse,’ she said, trying to

sound casual, and Dick winked at Cissie who had come

through from the scullery.

‘Reckon she’s found herself a fancy man?’ he asked in a

whisper.

‘Well, I don’t know. That’s the third, isn’t it? But I never

thought she’d be interested again, not this soon after losing

Johnny.’

‘It’s eighteen months or more,’ Dick pointed out. ‘And

she’s not old, Cis.’

Cissie pursed her lips. ‘Well, I wouldn’t object myself,

but you know what Mum is like about second marriages.

She wouldn’t like it if Polly got serious about another man.’

‘Yes, but that’s just being old-fashioned. People aren’t so

strict these days, and with so many men getting killed—’

‘Ssh.’ Cissie put her finger to her lips. Alice was coming

in from the outside lavatory, already beginning to tell them

about a woman she’d had in the Clothing Store that

afternoon, trying to exchange a tattered old jacket for a good

three-piece suit. Cissie gave Dick a warning glance and went

back to the scullery where she was spreading margarine on

bread and getting out a new pot of jam from the store Alice had made last summer.

When Polly came down in her old skirt and blouse, they

all sat down round the table. Cissie set the plates of sardines on toast in front of them and looked at her sister, hoping for

some remark about the letter. But Polly didn’t mention it.

Instead, she said, ‘I had that Ethel Glaister from number

fifteen in for a perm this afternoon. What a cat she is!

Doesn’t have a good word to say for a soul. Seems to think

she’s too good for April Grove or anyone in it.’

‘Dunno why she goes on living here then,’ Dick

remarked. ‘If she’s so posh, why doesn’t she move up to

Hilsea or somewhere?’

‘Oh, she says they were just going to when the war

started, and then of course everything stopped. Her hubby

was in the Territorials and he went straight off into the

regular Army. Honestly, you’d think he did it just to spite

her.’ Polly giggled. ‘I dare say he was glad of the excuse to

get away! It must have seemed like a dream come true to

him when war broke out.’

‘Polly! That’s a terrible thing to say,’ Cissie reproved her,

but the others were laughing and she had to smile. ‘Well, I

can’t say I’d like to live with Ethel Glaister for long. How

did you do her hair, Poll?’

‘Oh, the latest fashion of course - Marcel waves. And I’ll

tell you something else.’ Polly leaned over the table and

glanced from side to side as if there might be a spy lurking

behind a chair. ‘That hair of hers isn’t really yellow at all!

It’s practically grey! We have to touch up the roots every six

weeks to stop it showing through.’

‘Dyed. Well, I always suspected it,’ Alice said disapprovingly. ‘You know, I sometimes wonder about Ethel Glaister and where she goes off to every afternoon in her smart suit

and high heels. Now I wonder even more. If you ask me,

she’s no better than Nancy Baxter.’

‘Well, you’d better not say so,’ Polly advised her. ‘You

could get into trouble. And don’t any of you dare tell anyone about her hair. I’d get the sack if Mrs Carson knew I’d let

out something like that about one of the ladies.’

‘Why?’ Dick asked. ‘It’s not that bad, surely. Plenty of

women dye their hair.’

‘Not decent women,’ Alice retorted, but Polly shook her

head.

‘It’s because they don’t want people to know they’re

going grey. Women like Ethel Glaister who think they’re

smart and glamorous,’ the family hooted with laughter,

‘they like people to think it’s natural, see? So that everyone

thinks they’re younger than they really are.’

‘As if it mattered,’ Alice said in disgust. ‘We’ve all got to

get older. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. If you ask me,

people like Ethel Glaister haven’t got enough to do. Ought

to come down the Clothing Store of an afternoon with me

and do a hand’s turn to help. That’d take her mind off being glamorous.’

The evening passed quietly with a game of whist, and at

nine o’clock they switched on the wireless to hear the news.

No matter how quiet it might have been in Portsmouth,

there was always news of some terrible event somewhere

else. A bombing raid on another city, a battle in Africa or

the Mediterranean, a ship sunk by a U-boat in the Atlantic.

‘What was that?’ Cissie gasped, her hand at her throat.

They stared at her, then at each other. Polly opened her

mouth but Dick gestured to her to be silent. In horror, they

listened again to the newsreader’s words, and then the

bulletin ended and Dick reached out a slow, trembling hand

and turned the knob.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Alice whispered, her face as white as

paper. ‘HMS Hood, blown up and sunk in just four

minutes. There can’t be anyone left alive, there can’t be.’

‘Our Terry,’ Cis whimpered, covering her face with her

hands. ‘He said it was the best ship in the whole of the

Fleet. Dick’ blindly, she reached a hand out to her

husband, ‘Dick, our Terry’s been killed. Our Terry’s been killed.’

‘We don’t know that, love.’ But his voice was shaking and

tears were trickling down his cheeks. ‘We don’t know it for

sure. They haven’t said everyone was killed. There might’ve

been survivors.’

‘When it was blown up and sunk in four minutes?’ She

shook her head. ‘How could anyone have lived through that?

Oh Dick.’ She began to cry, while the others wept as well.

Despite Dick’s words, they all knew that Terry’s chances

were very low. Even if he had survived the explosion, how

could he have lived more than a few minutes in the icy

waters off Greenland where the battle had taken place?

People said you froze to death almost at once. And none of

the family had any faith in the Germans having picked up

men in the water. That’s what they were supposed to do,

but would they have done it?

There was little sleep that night in number nine. Cissie

could not stop crying. Every time her sobs eased a little, she

thought of the news announcement, or some little reminder

of her son, and started all over again. She took his photo

down from the mantelpiece and wept afresh, stroking his

laughing face with her fingertips. ‘It’s the only one we’ve

got,’ she sobbed. ‘All those pictures of him at school and

that lovely one that photographer took of him out at

Southsea, with that parrot on his arm, we lost all those in

the Blitz. And all his toys and things, his Meccano and his

comics that he wanted saved - they’ve all gone. We’ve got

nothing left. It’s as if he never existed.’

‘Of course it’s not, Cis.’ Polly, her own eyes red and

swollen, tried to comfort her sister. ‘It’ll never be as if he

never existed, never. We’ll all remember him all our lives,

and so will lots of other people. All the neighbours who

knew him, and Dick’s brother and his family, and Jean

Foster.’

‘Jean!’ Cissie lifted her face and stared at her. ‘She’ll have

heard the news too. Oh, poor Jean - he was talking about asking her to get engaged, last time he was home. I’ll have to

go round and see her.’

‘Tomorrow.’ Alice, looking grey and weary, came in with

a cup of cocoa for them all. ‘Drink this, Cis. It’ll make you

feel better and help you to sleep. Come on, now, it’s no use

making yourself ill. And like Dick said, we don’t know he’s

dead. Miracles do happen.’ She sighed and Polly, glancing

at her, knew that in spite of her words, she too had almost

given up hope. ‘Drink it up and let’s go to bed,’ she said

gently.

Still sobbing, Cissie managed to drink her cocoa and the

family gathered up the cards that had been lying forgotten

on the table and prepared for bed. One by one, they went

outside to the lavatory, washed at the sink, cleaned their

teeth, each going through the motions like an automaton.

Then Cissie and Dick went slowly up the stairs and Polly