Wartime Brides (2 page)

‘Ouch!’ said Geoffrey. ‘You’re strangling me.’

‘Sorry,’ said Charlotte and proceeded to loosen the tie, just as she used to do for David when she had inadvertently slipped into a daydream.

As she patted the tie flat and straightened Geoffrey’s shirt collar, she glanced at the pre-war photographs sitting on top of the piano. Shots of the family at the seaside, the children on their first bikes, Janet on a pony, the children as babies. Eventually her gaze rested on her wedding photograph. She smiled sadly. So long ago. A different world. Then she looked at the photograph of David in his army captain’s uniform, taken before he departed for ‘somewhere in Europe’. He’d looked so different, so distinguished, yet he’d still been the same man beneath. She didn’t doubt that he still was, but she had heard sad stories since working at the Marriage Advisory Centre. Some men had been drastically changed by war. But not David, she thought. Too strong. Too level-headed.

‘Come on Geoffrey,’ she said brightly, as the sound of Janet’s footsteps dragged down from one stair tread to
another
. ‘Let’s go and meet your father. And remember,’ she said, her voice taking on a more serious tone as Janet re-entered the room, ‘he’s been through a lot, so if he doesn’t seem like his old self at first, don’t worry. He soon will be.’

‘Of course he will,’ said a confident Janet, unable to contemplate him being anything other than the daddy she remembered, willing to give her anything it was in his power to give – perhaps even lipstick, she thought hopefully.

Charlotte noticed her hands were shaking again as she picked up her kid gloves, which were finely made and honeycomb yellow. ‘Most people are bound to be affected by war. We certainly were.’

‘He won’t be. He’s an officer,’ said Geoffrey as if that explained everything.

Polly always took great care to look smart. Her preference for wearing black and white certainly helped, and it went so well with her blonde hair and bright blue eyes.

Gavin, her Canadian sweetheart, had said it was the first thing he’d noticed about her. He’d also said he liked girls who were slim and had boyish bottoms and feminine bosoms. And he’d also said he loved her and that he would marry her and they would leave for Canada together once the war was over. Another train was due at Temple Meads railway station at noon. This time he just might be on it.

She took out her powder compact to check whether she needed a touch more lipstick. If Gavin did arrive on the
train
she wanted to look her best. So much depended on it. Going to Canada meant escaping rationing, bombsites, and the dreary poverty she’d known most of her life. The idea of living in Canada or the USA had filled her mind ever since the friendly invasion of the early war years. They were so different and glamorous, so representative of everything she’d ever adored on the movie screen. She’d adopted the word ‘movies’ since the Yanks had arrived. Discontentment with her own lot had set in and she’d made a vow that she would marry a man in uniform, but not one from her own country. The British Isles had been invaded by big men from a big country and nothing would ever be the same again.

She closed her eyes and said a swift and selfish prayer. ‘Please God let him be on this train. If he’s not, he’s had his chips!’ She opened her eyes, then had a second thought and closed them again. ‘And don’t expect me to be responsible for my actions. I’ll be downright irresponsible in future if you don’t help me now!’

Carrying her peep-toe suede shoes under one arm and her clutch bag under the other, she crept on stockinged feet over dull brown linoleum. First open the inner door. The deep blue and ruby-red glass of its upper half threw pools of colour onto the varnished walls dull as dried out shoe polish. Despite her being careful the door creaked on its hinges.

Polly stopped and took a deep breath. Even though she’d set her mind on going to the station, she still had a twinge of guilt about leaving without telling Aunty Meg. She glanced down the passage to the door that opened
onto
what remained of the back of the house. Unlike the rest of the street, Aunty Meg’s house only had two bedrooms. The third bedroom had been blown off by the blast from a bomb in an air raid. ‘No sense of direction,’ Aunty Meg had shouted skywards at the time. She was right, of course. The bombers had been aiming at the goods trains that sat in the shunting yards beyond the brick wall at the end of the back garden. Garden was really too grand a name for something that was little more than a yard. Potatoes and cabbages grew weakly through the stony soil and Christmas poultry clucked impatiently in a makeshift coop.

She sucked in her breath as her feet met the cold lino. Pausing she bent down and slid her feet into her black suede court shoes. So far, so good. But her luck didn’t last.

Aunty Meg came in from the scullery just as she reached for the front door. Polly blinked guiltily.

Meg shook her head and tutted like she might at a small child. ‘I take it you’re meeting the twelve o’clock train.’

Polly tightened her grip on the door catch. Her eyes met those of her aunt. ‘Don’t tell me not to go,’ she said with a determined jutting of her chin. ‘I have to see if he’s on it, for Carol’s sake as much as for mine. He might be, he just might be. I meant to ask you to look after Carol until I get back, honest I did. You will do that, won’t you?’

Meg’s jaw stiffened. For the briefest of moments Polly thought her aunt was going to shout at her, tell her she was making herself look cheap and she should have more pride. Perhaps she should. But she couldn’t ignore the
desire
that gnawed inside her. She had a dream to pursue and nothing would shake her from her path.

‘You could have asked before sneaking out,’ snapped Meg. She tucked her hands behind her apron and under her breasts. A formidable stance, but Polly wasn’t fooled. Meg was soft hearted. The round-bodied, caring woman that Polly had lived with since her parents’ death sighed resignedly and lowered her eyes. There was no doubt in her mind that Gavin wasn’t coming back. He’d either got killed or had flown straight back to Canada, but she couldn’t condemn Polly for hoping.

‘Get out of it,’ growled Meg, ‘before I change me mind.’

‘Thanks.’ With a jaunty air that she always got on a day when a troop train was due, Polly was off.

Meg stared at the closed door before wiping her eyes with the blue gingham apron that was almost a dress because it crossed over her breasts and tied at the back. How many trains had Polly met in the hope, a fainter hope now after twelve months, that her Canadian would be on it? How many more would she still meet until she finally gave up and admitted to herself that she would remain unwed and her child fatherless?

Men, even nice young men like Gavin, a squadron leader at only twenty-five years old, did foolish things before they went overseas to do even more foolish things. Who was to know he didn’t have a family already back home in Alberta or Manitoba or wherever it was? All over the country, men from overseas were being repatriated. No questions would be asked when
they
got home as to whether they’d left any dependents behind.

The sound of crying drifted in from the backyard where Carol was lying in a pre-war pram that had a deep body and small wheels. Meg would have liked a new one for the baby, but Polly had told her there was a waiting list. Besides, married women got priority, or at least it seemed that way.

Time for Carol’s feed, thought Meg with a sigh, and turned back to the scullery door, dragging her slippered feet over the cold floor and wishing she could do more than she’d already done for her niece. If only Polly’s parents were still alive. She especially missed her own sister, Marian. John, Polly’s father, had died of TB and Marian had been in an air raid shelter at the aircraft factory where she’d worked which had taken a direct hit. She had been another casualty of war. But, Meg thought with a sigh, there were a lot of casualties in war, and not all of them were left dead or injured, just hurting.

Chapter Two

THE MINUTE HAND
on the station clock that hung over platform nine was just approaching five minutes to twelve. The smell of soot mixed with the dampness of steam exhaled from engines called Bristol Castle, Truro Castle, or any other castle with West Country connections. The grey, pungent clouds rose only as far as the iron beams, where they hung like a brewing storm before gradually escaping into the sharp blue beyond.

Temple Meads Railway Station was showing signs of wear. Wartime neglect had left paint peeling like crisp skin and, although signs bearing the station’s name were being re-erected after their long absence during hostilities, they looked dull and tired as though they’d just been roused from a long, dust-laden sleep.

Already the platform was crowded with people. The waiting families were herded like cattle behind barriers by railway personnel who informed them they had to stay there until the train came in. A few grumbled. After two, three, even four years, they still had to follow orders.

Privations aside, there was bright expectancy lighting the faces of most of those waiting though, like the station, many of them looked shabby unless their means went beyond wartime clothing coupons or they’d acquired friends in the US Army.

Charlotte Hennessey-White was one of those whose clothes, although pre-war, were of a quality made to last. They had been bought with David’s encouragement on the day after war broke out. They’d driven to Castle Street in the centre of Bristol, parked just across from the Dutch House, a fine old seventeenth-century black and white timbered building whose upper storeys hung over the street like a benevolent frown. Despite some people insisting that the war would be over by Christmas, David had not been convinced. He had been generous, purchasing clothes for her and the children. She felt close to tears as she remembered asking him why he wasn’t buying clothes for himself. With a wry smile he had answered, ‘Because the government will be supplying me with all I need for the duration.’

Bittersweet as it was, she cherished the memory of that day. And memory was all it was now. Castle Street was no more and the Dutch House that had survived three centuries and Edwardian demolition plans to widen the road was gone. Only ash and rubble remained.

David had been right about the length of the war and he’d been right about being needed. As a doctor he was called up almost immediately.

She parked the car, her hands trembling with excitement so that she was barely able to lock the door once she
had
unloaded Janet and Geoffrey. It was as though there were no bones in her fingers or as if they had minds of their own.

David was coming home! David was coming home!

The words were like the lyrics of a song running through her head, the music spilling into her fingers, making her drop the keys. And all because David was coming home! It was like being eighteen all over again and meeting him for the first time. But it’s only been two years since you last saw him, she told herself. Just two years!

She paused, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. What could she say? What would he say? Would he have changed that much since his last leave? He had seemed a little strained back then compared with pre-war, but was she really remembering how he had been? It was difficult to say. Nineteen thirty-nine seemed so long ago. September had been a russet-red season when they had walked and talked more than they had for a long while. They’d snatched moments to discuss with nervous excitement what might happen, how the gas masks smelled of something lately dead and how small the Anderson shelters seemed. But none of it had been as important as just touching and talking. It seemed as if each minute was snatched in lieu of a future when they would be apart, perhaps for ever. Suddenly Charlotte was overwhelmed with a great feeling of relief. He’d been one of the lucky ones. Her legs felt weak. Solid objects in the world around her seemed to wobble and blur around the edges. She closed her eyes and leaned against the car.

‘Thank you God,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank God he’s safe.’

Her moment of gratitude was swiftly shattered.

‘Noooo!’ Geoffrey, then a scream of car tyres.

Her eyes snapped open and she turned sharply.

‘Geoffrey!’

He was standing at the kerb, one foot in the gutter. The wooden aeroplane was wedged under the front wheel of a gleaming Bentley and the driver was looking peeved rather than upset.

‘Let me get it,’ she heard someone say. ‘There. It’s not broken.’ The young woman who had spoken and now handed Geoffrey back his toy looked vaguely familiar.

‘Geoffrey!’ Charlotte ran to him, grabbed his shoulders and angrily spun him round to face her. But her ire was short lived, overwhelmed by excitement and anxiety.
Please. Don’t spoil this very special day
.

She took a deep breath. ‘Geoffrey!’ Gently she held him by the shoulders and manoeuvred him around until he faced the young woman. ‘What do you say to this kind young lady?’

‘Thank you,’ Geoffrey muttered sheepishly, eyes downcast and his chin resting on his tie.

‘I’m sorry, but today is a day for us all to remember,’ Charlotte said apologetically, aware of the excitement in her voice but curiously unable to control it. ‘Geoffrey’s not usually so careless. It’s just that his father’s coming home today. I think all three of us are far too excited.’

‘I suppose you are, ma’am,’ said the young woman,
already
moving away as the unmistakable discomfort of class deference came to her eyes.

Charlotte immediately felt that pang of regret she always did at times like these, that yearning to reach out and explain that she was no different from her. Show me who you are without fear or shame, she wanted to say. She had seen that look on the faces of people she’d helped in the Marriage Advisory Centre she’d been working in during the last two years. Before that it had been the WRVS. Marriage guidance had been available before the war but had been promptly disbanded on its outbreak. Then, as men went fighting overseas and long periods of separation and loneliness ensued, the service was rapidly re-formed. Charlotte found she was a natural at giving help and advice.