Wartime Brides (9 page)

‘Is this old and worth a bit?’ she asked, her fingers playing over the polished wood in the same way as a child might. ‘Or is it just old junk to tide you over?’

He had been half way back behind his desk, but at her words he stopped, turned and faced her, his arms folded across his chest. She looked up fully expecting to see amusement in his eyes. She saw it on his lips, but there was a different expression in his eyes, something there that she could not quite comprehend.

‘Five hundred pounds,’ he said in a calm but firm voice.

‘That’s what it’s worth?’ Amazed, she glanced towards a second chair. ‘That for the pair, is it?’

He shook his head. ‘And there’s this too,’ he said as he pulled forward an equally well-upholstered footstool. He patted at the back of a chair. ‘Now. Let’s take a look at that ankle.’

I like the smell of this place, she thought, as she placed her foot on the stool being careful to do it slowly, gently as if it still hurt like hell – which it didn’t.

Dr Hennessey-White sat in the chair opposite her. ‘Remove your stocking, please.’

He didn’t look at her when he said it. She hesitated, briefly wondering about his intentions before remembering that doctors were not quite the same as
real
men. Their profession didn’t allow it.

She reached up under her skirt, slid the button out of the back suspender and the farthing out of the front one. Damn it, why hadn’t she thought to fix a new suspender onto her corset before coming?

She coloured slightly, keeping her eyes downcast and clutching the farthing in her hand as she rolled her stocking down her leg and away from her toes.

Her foot was in his hands. She gasped. ‘Always cold,’ she said. ‘Doctors’ hands.’

He frowned. She sensed his disapproval.

‘Cold hands, warm heart,’ she added with a light laugh.

‘It seems fine now,’ he said letting her foot go and sitting straighter in the chair. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d be limping at all by now.’

Polly thought quickly. ‘It was a long walk from the bus stop. I got off at the wrong one.’

‘Well,’ he said slapping his thighs before getting to his feet. ‘I should think another one or two days and you can go back to work.’

‘That’s a laugh! What work?’

The mocking in her voice seemed to make him stand more rigidly, almost as if she’d shoved an iron bar up through the back of his coat. He looked genuinely concerned. ‘You have no work?’

She shook her head ruefully. ‘Everything bombed. Canteens overflowing with staff taken on during the war and not wanting to be put out now. Not much work at all for cooks. Not even assistant cooks. Though I’d take anything, mind you. Shop. Factory. Even thought about learning to type.’ She refused to recognise her role in Woolworths as merely that of a counter hand. She always meant to be a cook but people always wanted experience and she had none.

Dr Hennessey-White looked thoughtful. Polly dived in.

‘Do you know somewhere that’s taking on?’

The enthusiasm in her voice seemed to jerk him quickly out of his thoughts. ‘Not canteens, no. But neighbours of mine could do with some help. Their cook’s son has come home complete with a new wife. Italian I believe. They’ve moved in on her, the wife is expecting a child and the woman wants to be at home with them. Would you be interested? Good family. Respectable.’

‘Oh I am!’ Polly exclaimed, hardly daring to believe her luck.

‘I’m talking about the family you’d be working for,’ he said.

‘Oh, doctor, I’m so grateful,’ she said, uncaring that her skirt was half way up her thigh as she struggled to fix the farthing back into the broken suspender.

Again he looked at her strangely, as though he was planning something. But she disregarded it as one of those things. She could bring out the worst in men as well as the best.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said as he escorted her to the door.

And no funny business, thought Polly.

She was taken by surprise. Just as he reached for the door handle, the flat of his hand gently slapped her bottom.

She gasped. The dirty man! Then she wondered what his wife would think if she knew. Well, Polly Chandler knew how to handle the likes of him!

She sang all the way home, her step lighter and her limp non-existent as she swung off the bus and marched up York Street, mindful that the curtains were twitching and imagining their disappointment to see she had no one on her arm.

The smell of the plush consulting rooms – and the smell of the doctor – stayed with her. What made it so attractive? Suddenly it came to her. Money. Both Dr Hennessey-White and the place smelled of money and both were irresistible.

Meg was rocking backwards and forwards on the settee, a sleeping Carol cradled in her arms.

She looked up as Polly breezed in, flung her hat to one
side
and hooted with laughter because it landed on top of a Victorian urn of riotous colour with ornate handles that stuck out like perforated ears.

‘I’ve got a job!’ she cried. ‘Well, almost!’ she added spreading her arms and twirling round because she really was feeling she could almost fly.

‘I thought you went to the doctor’s.’

‘He knows someone who wants a cook.’

Meg beamed. ‘Glory be! You could have a job for life doing something like that.’

Polly stopped twirling. ‘It’s only until I marry Aaron and go off to America.’

A disconcerted look came to Meg’s face. ‘Has he asked you?’

‘I’m going to ask him.’ She glanced warily at Meg. Her aunt returned her gaze.

‘You haven’t known him long and you haven’t told him about Carol yet, have you?’

Polly shifted her gaze. ‘No. But I will when I’m ready.’ She’d been out with him almost every night, meeting him at one of their favourite pubs or outside the Kings’ Picture House. Although she’d allowed him to walk her to her front door that first night, she’d been lucky that Carol hadn’t cried and she didn’t want to scare him off just yet. Since then she’d only let him walk her to the end of the street.

‘I’m late,’ she said, as she reached for a comb and shook a lipstick from her handbag.

‘I know,’ Meg blurted. ‘He called in a few minutes ago. I told him to …’

Polly turned sharply, her heel digging into the threadbare carpet so that it swivelled around with her. ‘You didn’t tell him about Carol did you?’

‘No! I didn’t. She was out back asleep, but I did tell him to …’

‘To go! You told him to go! You don’t like him, do you? You don’t like him because he’s black!’ Polly was livid. She hardly heard Meg trying to explain. The only words she heard were something about the chip shop.

‘I don’t hold nothing against him,’ Meg shouted after her. ‘Think of your daughter, you hard little bitch!’

Polly slammed the door behind her. Meg shouldn’t have said that. She had no right …

Her daughter’s disturbed whimpers turning to a loud wail drifted out into the street where the sound of the slamming door had set the curtains twitching at number 28 directly opposite.

Polly’s head jerked in that direction. Mrs Gardiner! The cow!

She poked out her tongue. ‘Where do you think you are? The bloody Hippodrome? Think I’m the star turn, does you? Nosy cow!’

But no matter her daughter’s crying, no matter the fact that Meg had lost her temper and – yes – made her feel like dirt, the urge to be with Aaron and have the chance of a better life was too much to resist. She ran off down the road.

The noise from the shunting yards muffled the sound of her flying feet as she ran over the uneven paving slabs of York Street then skidded around the corner onto the cobbled
surface
that ran all the way down the ‘Batch’ and into Midland Road.

Meg’s words rang shrill in her mind, yet still her urge to find Aaron was too strong to ignore. He had stepped out of the night and into her life so recently, and yet she felt she had known him far longer than that. Perhaps it was because he reminded her of those other GIs – Government Issue, that’s what it stood for. And he represented a general mix of those that had gone before. He had the uniform, the size, the glib way with words, just like all the others. But he had something else. Aaron was not just the person she saw on the surface. It didn’t all come bursting out like it did with a lot of the other guys. There were deep emotions; anger, hate, pride and passion. They were all there but coated with a warm, calm and cultured surface. Far above her experience, but intriguing all the same.

Nothing distracted her as she ran, not wolf whistles from lonely men, or the catcalls of the whores who seemed to think they had first call on anything in trousers. Just sluts. That’s all they were; no one important enough to make her slow down. No one and nothing could be that important.

As dusk fell, the last dray of the day was returning to Georges’ Brewery at the bottom of the Batch, the heavy shires snorting, their chests and flanks foaming with sweat. Polly heard them, turned her head and saw the fear in their eyes as their ironclad hooves slid on the glistening cobbles.

Keen to get home, the driver had let the brake off. Big
backsides
of big horses were not enough to keep the empty vehicle from swerving to one side and pulling them over. She’d seen it happen before, one horse, perhaps both, going down and lying with their chests heaving, perhaps with a broken leg, just waiting for the shot to the head that would put them out of their misery.

And here it was again. Would the fools never learn?

The dray was slap-bang against their rears and gradually their legs were splaying out from under them.

Going hell for leather and keen as mustard to get to Aaron, she still had time to shout out exactly what she thought. ‘Put the bloody brake on, you rotten sod!’

A hand sign, not unlike the one Churchill was so keen on giving, yet with a completely different meaning, was accompanied by a suggestion that she should ‘fuck off!’

Polly slowed, her fists clenched, her brow heavy with anger. She stepped into the road and was just about to return his abusive language with some of her own, when the piercing sound of a police whistle stopped her in her tracks.

Just fifty yards further down the Batch, the unmistakable gleam of silver against blue serge shone like a saviour in the middle of the road.

A shouted order and a raised hand closely followed the sound of the policeman’s whistle. The brake on the dray was pulled on, the wheels screeching like the cry of a scalded cat. The worst was over. Still snorting white foam down their flaring nostrils, the horses came to a halt.

Polly caught the driver’s eye, grinned and returned the hand gesture he had given her earlier. ‘Now who’s fucked
you
rotten …?’ She didn’t finish her sentence. Somehow she knew he was there standing behind her. His presence was tangible even before he spoke. Perhaps she could smell him, his uniform or even his maleness.

‘That was quite a performance. Great horses.’

At first she didn’t turn round. She merely smiled and closed her eyes, letting the sound of Aaron’s voice wash over her like the hoppy, yeasty, smell of warm beer when it’s just coming up to being fully cooked. The only time she liked beer was when the steam was rising from the chimneys of the brewery, the smell like a wet blanket lying all around.

She eyed the scene before her. A few other people had gathered round, shouting up at the driver and daring him to get down from his perch.

She said, ‘I don’t like people who are cruel to animals. I don’t like any kind of violence, especially now. Think we’ve ’ad enough of it, don’t you?’

When she turned to face him he was smiling down at her and shaking his head. ‘I would have thought that judging by the size of them horses, ma’am, they’d be quite capable of looking after themselves!’

She laughed at his ‘field talk’ as he called it. Reaching out she fingered the buttons of his tunic as though she were some shy virgin from a home where they read the Bible on Sundays and never went to pubs and dances. ‘You’re pretty big yerself but I bet you could do with some looking after.’

He caught at her hand, his fingers wrapping tightly around hers. ‘Are you offering?’

She raised her eyes slowly to his face and paused before she spoke. ‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’

His lashes were incredibly dark, she noticed. What was he thinking when he smiled like that? It was such a secretive smile, yet confident as if he were a captain and not merely a corporal.

‘Let’s walk.’

He took her arm and slid it through the crook of his. It made her feel small, sweet and fragile. She fitted well enough into the first description, but no one, once they got to know her, ever considered her sweet or fragile.

‘Madame. Allow me!’

‘Thank you kindly, sir.’

As they walked the warmth of his body seemed to permeate his clothes: her clothes. She wanted to look at his face, to study the colour of his skin, the shape of his nose and the arched curve of his upper lip. Holding that urge in check was torture, but when the moment came and she did look …

Oh, the shivers of delight! Blood raced through her veins, thudded at her forehead. It was all so crazy, her wanting to marry a Yank and see the world, and him popping up like a genie from a bottle, a big dark genie as exotic as anything she’d read about in the Arabian Nights.

It had been such a short time, but now she found herself wanting him to want her as other men had wanted her – and had her. Past sins and old guilt were irrelevant now. This man was becoming more important than her dream. The raw excitement of being with him, of seeing other
people’s
eyes follow them, some disapproving, only heightened her desire. If he didn’t marry her, if he didn’t take her with him … The thought was terrifying. Not only would she be disappointed, like the war itself, it would change the whole of her life.

They continued to walk arm in arm, the recently re-lit streetlights throwing amber pools across their path. We must look like an old married couple, she thought. She grinned.

‘What’s so funny?’ Just like him to notice.

She shrugged and looked into his face, her eyes just above the level of his shoulder. ‘I was just thinking how funny we must look together.’ He blinked. She knew what he was thinking. ‘You so tall and me so small,’ she lied.