When the Lights Go on Again (19 page)

Kieran cursed under his breath.

‘I’m thirsty. I need a drink. I’ll have a gin and tonic.’

‘You’ll have no such thing,’ Kieran informed her grimly.

‘Chuck will get me one,’ Lou announced determinedly.

Kieran looked across at the GI who was glowering at him and reflected to himself that a drink wouldn’t be all that Chuck might want to give her. Not for the first time or, he suspected, the last, he cursed the fact that his mother had seen fit to tell him every day of his growing life, ‘You’re the eldest, Kieran, and that means that it’s up to you to look after the little ones, especially with the girls.’ And had thus instilled into him an indestructible sense of responsibility.

It was no good telling himself that Lou meant nothing to him and there was no reason why he
shouldn’t simply leave her to fate and her GI. He knew girls like Lou; he had grown up amongst them. They were the sort of girls who didn’t go messing around with boys and who insisted on an engagement ring on their finger and the banns called before they permitted anything more than a few kisses. Respectable, brought-up-in-a-certainway girls, who kept to the rules. The war might have given some of those girls a freedom their mothers had never had, but ultimately the war would end, and those who had lost their good reputations could end up regretting that freedom.

The truth was that Kieran did feel a sense of responsibility for Lou. There was no point dwelling on things that had happened in the past, though if he were honest with himself then he did still feel uncomfortable about the way he had played Lou and Sasha off against one another, manipulating their emotions and taking advantage of their naïvety when he had gone along with his uncle Con’s plans to put them on the stage for his own financial benefit.

He hadn’t wanted to listen then to his mother’s warning to him not to follow in her brother’s footsteps. He had had to learn for himself what he really wanted from life. Joining the RAF was the best thing he had ever done. It had shown him a different kind of life, where respecting others and earning their respect in turn were more important than pulling a fast one over the naïve in order to earn a few quid.

Lou was trying to pull free of his grip and if he wasn’t careful, judging from the way her GI
admirer was watching them, an unpleasant scene could easily develop. The best thing he could do now was get Lou back to wherever it was she was staying, but he knew that telling her that wasn’t going to be a good idea.

Instead he walked her firmly towards the exit, answering her angry, ‘What are you doing?’ by telling her, ‘This place will be closing soon. Everyone will be moving on to another club.’

‘Does it have a dance floor?’ Lou demanded.

Kieran nodded.

Lou had felt so hot that she welcomed the sharp coldness of the November air against her flushed face, pulling away from Kieran as she hummed under her breath and then began to dance on the pavement.

‘Come on, there’s a taxi.’ Kieran started to lope towards it, pulling Lou with him, forcing her to stop dancing to keep up with him.

Kieran could see from the cabbie’s face that he wasn’t keen to have them as passengers, but Kieran bundled Lou into the cab before the driver could protest, and then got in himself.

‘Where to, guv?’

‘We’re going dancing,’ Lou responded before Kieran could say anything. ‘We’re going to dance all night.’

In the mirror the cabbie’s gaze met Kieran’s.

‘What’s the address of your hotel, Lou?’ Kieran asked.

‘What do you want to know that for?’ Lou asked indignantly. ‘We’re going dancing. You said so. I want to get out.’ She was reaching for the door.

‘Know where you’re going yet, guv, only me meter’s ticking away and—’

‘The Montgomery Hotel, please, it’s just off the King’s Road, the Sloane Square end near the barracks,’ Kieran answered, giving the address of his own hotel.

The taxi took off at such a speed that Lou was thrown against Kieran as they turned a corner, the taxi driver obviously eager to get rid of them as quickly as he could.

‘Stop, I want to get out. I want to go dancing.’

‘Carry on driving, cabbie,’ Kieran contradicted Lou.

‘I want to get out, and you can’t stop me. You had no right to…to take me away from my friends.’

The cab swung onto the King’s Road, the damp pavements and road glistening under the light from the moon, couples clinging together in sheltered doorways. If he let Lou get out of the cab now it would be like letting a new-born kitten cross a busy road.

‘Looks like your girl has been having a good time,’ the cabbie commented.

‘I’m not his girl,’ Lou corrected him.

‘She’s my sister,’ Kieran fibbed, ‘and not really used to London.’

‘You’d better keep a watch on her, then, ‘cos this city ain’t the place to be these days if you don’t know what’s what. All sorts, we’ve got here, and some of them not too fussy about how they behave.’ As he spoke a Jeep screamed out of a side street: the American MPs, with the white gloves
that had earned them the nickname ‘snowdrops’, no doubt on the lookout for servicemen breaking the rules.

Kieran’s hotel was at the bottom end of what might once have been described as ‘shabby genteel’, and had, Kieran suspected, been dying a slow death until the war had increased the demand for hotel rooms. He had been meant to be sharing with another pilot, who had cried off at the last minute, leaving Kieran in sole occupation of the double room.

Lou wasn’t feeling very well at all. Her heart was pounding so unsteadily and heavily that she could almost hear it beating; she felt slightly sick and dizzy and wanted to lie down, but at the same time something inside her felt as though it had been wound up tightly, filling her with an unfamiliar sense of desperate, restless urgency. As she followed Kieran out of the taxi she looked curiously at the façade of the hotel whilst she waited for him to pay the cabbie.

‘This doesn’t look like a club,’ she told him.

Ignoring her, Kieran took hold of her arm in a firm grip and prayed mentally that the hotel’s reputation of turning a blind eye to its guests returning from an evening out accompanied by a friend, provided the doorman was tipped generously, could be relied on.

Luckily, though, the hallway was empty. It was probably too early for most of the guests to be returning, Kieran thought, as he urged Lou up the stairs and then along the landing towards his room.

They had almost reached it when Lou, who
mercifully hadn’t said anything for several minutes, suddenly announced, ‘I don’t feel right,’ and then collapsed against him.

Luckily they were close enough to his room for Kieran to be able to half carry and half drag her into it and then get her on one of the room’s two single beds before turning to lock the door. When he turned back to the bed, Lou was lying there watching him.

‘How do you feel now?’ he asked her.

‘Strange,’ Lou answered him truthfully. ‘Like my head’s an express train with things rushing through it all the time and I can’t make them stop. It’s as though everything inside me is fizzing and wanting to do things, and yet at the same time I feel really dizzy and sickly.’

‘Patti put some amphetamines in your drink, that’s why you’re feeling like that.’

‘Patti? You mean your girl? The one who was boasting about buzzing some poor farmer?’

‘Yes, but she’s not my girl.’

‘Well, she was acting like she was,’ Lou pointed out spiritedly. ‘Why would she put amphetamines in my drink?’

‘To get even with you, I should imagine, and because she was hoping they would encourage you to throw off your inhibitions and make a fool of yourself, or worse.’

Lou was beginning to feel dreadfully weak and shaky all of a sudden, but her head was still buzzing and just trying to listen to her own thoughts was exhausting her.

‘And did I?’ she asked Kieran in a small voice.

‘Did you what?’

‘Did I throw off my inhibitions and make a fool of myself?’

Kieran paused to weigh his words. ‘It depends on what you consider to be making a fool of yourself. You were certainly doing a lot of dancing.’

‘Without my inhibitions?’

Kieran shrugged. ‘You’re a good dancer, and you aren’t the sort of girl to forget the way you’ve been brought up, but if that GI you were dancing with had had his way, it would be
his
bed you’d be in right now.’

Lou’s face burned. ‘I wouldn’t have done anything like that.’

‘You might not have been able to stop him.’

Lou put her hand up to her head. She could remember dancing, but only in a vague sort of way. Showing off, her father would have called it. Her face burned hotter. Her father would not have approved of the way she had behaved tonight and neither would the powers that be within ATA.

‘I showed myself up, didn’t I?’ she asked Kieran in a small voice.

‘It’s London, there’s a war on and you’re on leave – you aren’t the first to let that go to your head and you won’t be the last.’

‘I suppose I should thank you for rescuing me.’

‘Save your thanks until I’ve got you back to your hotel. It’s a pity your pals left the club without you.’

Lou bit her lip, a memory surfacing of June’s anxious expression when she had pleaded with her to leave with them.

‘June, my friend, will have something to say to me, I know. At least I can tell her that it wasn’t all my fault and that my drink had been interfered with.’

‘You stay here. I’ll go downstairs and check that there’s no one around – the last thing either of us needs now is for someone to see you coming out of this hotel or, even worse, out of my room – then I’ll find a taxi to take you to where you’re staying. I shouldn’t say anything about coming here to your pals, if I were you.’

‘No. They’ll be thinking badly enough of me as it is, without thinking I’ve deliberately gone to a man’s hotel with him,’ Lou acknowledged shakily, rubbing her forehead tiredly. ‘My head won’t stop pounding,’ she went on, ‘and my heart feels like it’s racing, and I’m so tired.’

Classic symptoms of using amphetamine pills, from what Kieran had heard from those RAF crews who took them.

‘Wait here. I won’t be long,’ he told Lou, going to unlock the door.

Once he had gone Lou slumped back on the bed. She felt dreadful, nauseous, tired, guilty and ashamed. How could she have behaved the way she had, dancing like she had, and speaking to June the way she had done? Was it really just the amphetamines Patti had put into her drink that had made her behave like that? Unexpectedly, Lou suddenly longed for her twin sister. Sash would have known how much of the way she had behaved was her and how much was the pills, Sash wouldn’t have let her show herself up, and Sash would have defended her if she had done.

Sash. Tears welled up in Lou’s eyes. She wished so much that her sister was here with her.

Downstairs in the hallway Kieran had become trapped in conversation with a fellow pilot, Robin Lewis, from the same base as Kieran, who was telling him drunkenly about his girl, who had left him for someone else.

‘She never wanted me to join up. Wanted me to go into a reserved occupation like her dad, but a chap has to do his duty, doesn’t he?’

‘I should go and get some sleep, old chap,’ Kieran suggested. ‘You’ll feel better in the morning.’

‘No. Tried that before. Doesn’t work. Drink works, though. Want you to have a drink with me. Shouldn’t drink alone. Got a bottle…’ He waved a half-empty bottle of gin in front of Kieran.

Lou would be wondering where on earth he was. Kieran just hoped that she wouldn’t take it into her head to come looking for him. The last thing either of them needed was for Robin Lewis to start telling everyone that Lou had been in Kieran’s room, once he’d sobered up and they were back at their base. Word spread fast in the small community pilots inhabited, especially when it was gossip.

She was so tired. Where was Kieran? Lou stretched out on the bed. It wouldn’t hurt to close her eyes for a few minutes. They felt gritty and strained. Her heart was still racing, thudding into her chest wall, its fast pace wearying her. Lou closed her eyes. Inside her head she could still hear the beat
of the music she’d danced to earlier. The GI had been a good dancer, but dancing with him hadn’t been as much fun as dancing with Sash. A small smile softened Lou’s mouth.

Sash. As girls sharing a bedroom their beds had been so close together that they could reach out and hold hands.

Sash. A tear rolled down Lou’s cheek from beneath her closed eyelids, followed by another. Her heart was still racing. Lou put her hand on her chest, wanting somehow to slow it down.

She was so tired. She yawned and then settled herself more comfortably on the bed, giving in and letting sleep claim her.

Kieran exhaled in relief as he finally managed to extricate himself from Robin’s drunken grip, mainly by redirecting his attention to a group of equally inebriated pilots and assorted crew members who had just returned from their evening out.

Now, though, the hallway was crowded with them, and it was going to be next to impossible for him to get Lou out of his room and safely into a taxi without anyone seeing her.

The first thing Kieran saw when he opened the door to his room was Lou flat out and dead to the world, and making that small snuffling sound as she breathed that he remembered his sisters making as children.

Kieran looked back towards the stairs. From the sound of male voices sharing ripe descriptions
of their evening’s entertainment, the hallway was still packed and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

He looked back at the bed where Lou was fast asleep. There was nothing else for it now, he decided reluctantly. Lou would have to spend the night in his room. Then he’d have to wake her and get her out before any of the other hotel guests were up and about.

‘Lou, thank goodness. I’ve been so worried about you. Where have you been? You’ve been gone all night.’ June was sitting up in bed as she spoke, rubbing a tired hand across her eyes, and looking rather disapproving.

Lou forced what she hoped was a reassuring smile as she sat down on the bed in the hotel room she and June were sharing – the unslept-in hotel bed, because last night – but no, she must not think about that. Kieran had said and she had agreed that last night was something it would be best if they both pretended had simply not happened. Not that they – she – had done anything wrong. When Kieran had woken her just over an hour ago she had been shocked by the sight of him standing over her, and then horrified when the events of the previous evening had come back to her.

They had agreed, reluctantly on Lou’s part, since June was her best friend and closest confidante, that all she would tell June was that when she had realised they had left the club, she had felt so unwell
and alarmed that she had taken a taxi to her aunt’s apartment at the Dorchester, where she had spent the night.

It had been unfortunate, though, that one of the occupants of the other rooms had seen her leaving Kieran’s room this morning before Kieran had hurried her downstairs and then found her a taxi. Lou’s face burned as she remembered the leering, knowing look he had given them both. A man’s reputation would not suffer any harm because a girl had been seen leaving his room, but her reputation would certainly suffer if it became known that she had spent the night in a man’s bedroom. Working with so many men as they did, it was essential that they were able to command the respect of those men. A girl with a reputation for spending the night in men’s rooms would certainly not command any respect.

‘I know. I’m sorry if you were worried about me. I should have left the club with you when you said you were leaving,’ Lou admitted penitently, avoiding looking directly at June in case her guilty expression gave her away, as she added, ‘When I realised you’d gone I was feeling so off colour that I got in a panic and decided the best thing I could do was take a taxi to my aunt’s – you remember I told you about her? She was with ENSA but she’s married now to a major and they live in an apartment at the Dorchester. Luckily she was at home. I should have asked her to ring the hotel and leave a message.’

‘Yes, you should,’ June agreed, obviously not entirely placated, which made Lou feel even worse
about lying to her, but Kieran had been insistent that a confidence shared with even one person was potentially no longer a confidence.

‘How are you feeling now?’ June’s initial coolness had thawed and she sounded genuinely concerned as she drew her knees up under the bedclothes and rested her arms on them, leaning forward to listen to what Lou was saying, her concern making Lou feel even more guilty about lying.

‘Tired,’ Lou told her truthfully, adding equally truthfully, ‘I’m really sorry that you’ve been worrying about me, June.’

‘That’s OK. I’m just relieved that you’re all right.’

The truth was that she was far from ‘all right’, Lou acknowledged later, breakfasting in the crowded ground-floor room along with June and some of the other girls. Whilst they were exchanging banter, raising their voices so that they could hear one another above the clatter of breakfast activity and talking about their night out, her mind was on the horrible situation she was in. She hated being deceitful, especially to such a good friend as June, but she had had no other option. Good friend though June was, Lou had been forced to admit to herself that if she knew where she’d been June would be bound to wonder if Lou’s night in Kieran’s bedroom was as innocent as it truthfully had been, because in June’s shoes she would probably have asked herself that question. Kieran was, after all, a very good-looking man, the kind of man who women noticed, the kind of man who a girl was
highly unlikely to fall asleep on, should he take her back to his room. But it was different for her. For her, Kieran was part of Liverpool and home, and his behaviour towards her over the last twenty-four hours had reminded her of the elder brother superiority and bossiness that she remembered from her own brother, and that Kieran himself had so often exhibited towards both her and Sasha when they had both been desperately keen to have him think of them as dashing young women, not silly young girls.

Kieran’s parting words to her had been a groaned comment that she was causing him more trouble than all his own four siblings put together. Confirmation, had she needed it, of exactly how he thought of her. Not that she wanted him to think of her in any other way. Not for one minute. And if for some silly reason it had made her eyes sting with tears to wonder what it might be like to have Kieran treating one with the tenderness and adoration of a man towards the girl he loved, well then, that had just been silliness and obviously something to do with the pills in her drink.

‘Oh, Lena, he’s so beautiful. His little nose is just like Gavin’s, but otherwise he’s the image of Janette.’

Bella’s voice softened with emotion as she looked down at the three-week-old baby nestled in her arms, whilst Lena looked on in silence.

Little David Gavin was a lovely baby – David for Gavin’s late father and Gavin for Gavin himself. Lena had insisted on that, even though Gavin had
protested, saying it would cause confusion. Lena had been so proud of her son, and so proud of the fact that Gavin was his father, that she had wanted the world to know it. That had been in the euphoric aftermath of the birth when she had managed to convince herself that everything was going to be all right and that it was just her imagination that things hadn’t seemed right between Gavin and herself. Then she had been remembering how Gavin had reacted to Janette’s birth, how tenderly he had looked at her, how wonderfully he had taken control, said that they were to get married and that Janette was to be his. Now with the new baby, his own baby, he had barely seemed to look at him. In fact, Lena had hardly seen him at all.

‘Work,’ he had told her brusquely, when Lena had made herself ask him why he was spending so much time away from the house. The port was so busy with incoming and outgoing convoys that they were all having to do overtime.

‘It isn’t because of the baby, is it?’ Lena had asked him worriedly. ‘I don’t want you half killing yourself with too much work because we’ve got an extra mouth to feed.’

Of course she had been hoping that he would laugh and say she was talking nonsense and that there was nothing he wanted more than a row of little mouths to feed, and their mother along with them, and she had been hurt when he hadn’t.

Even his mother had remarked on the change in him, putting it down to the war and the pressure it was putting on everyone.

Lena, though, knew better.
She
was the cause of Gavin’s grim manner and withdrawal into himself, she was sure. It was because of her that he came in late and went out early and hardly looked at little Davie, because he wished that he hadn’t married her.

Lena had always feared deep down inside herself that being loved by Gavin was too good to be true, that somehow there had been a mistake, that one day she would wake up and find out that he didn’t love her after all. Why should he? How could he when she was what she was: unwanted by her father’s Italian family, despised for her Italian blood by her mother’s side, thrown out by her mother’s sister because she had let Charlie have his way with her. Pregnant and unmarried. As an adult the spectres of what her life might have become if Bella hadn’t taken pity on her and rescued her were always there at the back of her mind, and Lena knew she would fight tooth and claw to protect her own daughter from the fate that could so easily have been hers. When she had fallen in love with Gavin, with his respectable family background, his decency and kindness, his good looks and sense of humour, she had hidden that love, feeling that he could only despise her. But then had come the miracle of him telling her that he loved not just her but baby Janette as well.

She had been so happy. Too happy?

She looked down at Davie. When Janette had been born Gavin had been besotted with her – her cot had been the first place he had gone when he came in from work – and Janette had returned his
love, her first smile for him, her daddy, and not for Lena. Janette was a real daddy’s girl. Tears burned the backs of Lena’s eyes. She had been so thrilled to be carrying Davie, secretly hoping all along that she would have a boy, her gift to Gavin for his love for her and Janette, but Gavin scarcely paid any attention to Davie.

Reluctantly Bella handed Davie back to Lena. He was a strong and sturdy baby and in due course Lena would come back to work at the nursery, bringing both Janette and Davie with her. Lucky Lena to have two children. Bella opened her arms to Janette, who had decided that her new baby brother had had enough adult attention.

Just because she and Jan had not started a baby yet, that did not mean that there was anything to worry about, Bella reassured herself. They had scarcely had any time together, after all. And just because she had lost that first baby when she had been married to Alan, that didn’t mean that there would not be other babies, despite her mother’s old wives’ tales about ‘some women just not being able to carry a baby’. She wasn’t worried at all, really, Bella assured herself. It was just that seeing Lena with Davie made her feel a little envious, that was all. There was plenty of time for her and Jan to start a family. But what if there wasn’t? What if the unthinkable should happen? Jan was a Spitfire pilot who had already been shot down and taken prisoner once. What if…? But no, she must not think like that otherwise she’d start getting like her mother, who couldn’t so much as listen to a wireless news bulletin without working
herself up into a dreadful state because Charlie was in action in Italy.

It wasn’t long now until Christmas, and Jan had written that he hoped to have some leave then. Mentally, Bella imagined the two of them sharing an intimate Christmas alone together, in a remote and romantic cottage, thatched and beamed, perhaps close to the South Coast, where Jan was based. There would be an open fireplace in the bedroom so that they could lie snuggly in bed in one another’s arms. With any luck it would snow, heavily, and she and Jan would be snowed in…

That, of course, was just a dream. The reality was that, if Jan did get leave, they would spend Christmas at her mother’s, with her mother, who would allow them no privacy whatsoever, and of course they would have to make time to see Jan’s mother and sister as well – not that Bella objected to that. She liked her mother- and sister-in-law. It was just that the time they had together was so precious and so short-lived, and she so longed to be able to hold their own baby in her arms, a baby with Jan’s eyes and dark hair and Jan’s nose and mouth, and…Oh, Jan. She missed him so much.