Women on the Home Front (23 page)

‘Yes. Sublieutenant. I've just finished my training at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, and I should receive orders as to which ship I'm to join pretty soon.'

He paused and then came towards her, saying, ‘Sally . . .' Immediately she stepped back from him, holding up her hands as though to ward him off, relieved when he moved away.

‘Your father misses you,' he told her abruptly, ‘and so too does Morag.'

‘He's all right?' Sally couldn't hold back her anxiety.

Immediately Callum's smile deepened, as he said reassuringly, ‘Yes, apart from the fact that he misses you.'

Sally stiffened and turned her head away as she told him fiercely, ‘I miss my mother and I always will.'

‘Sally, you aren't a child,' he told her in a sharp voice. ‘I can understand your loyalty towards your mother but do you really feel she would want this? For you to cut yourself off from your father?'

‘He cut himself off from her and from me when he married Morag.'

‘You're being unfair.'

‘
I'm
being unfair?' She made a small bitter sound. ‘Morag married my father three months after my mother's death.'

‘Your mother would never have wanted your father to be alone; she would have understood.'

‘Understood what? That your sister, and my best friend, whom she had treated as another daughter, was offering him the . . . the comfort of an intimate relationship whilst she lay dying? And as for my father being alone, he would have had me. I'd like you to leave. Now. I don't want to talk about it. I don't know why you came here. After all, I've made my feelings plain enough. Your sister betrayed our friendship and the kindness my mother showed her.'

‘Your mother encouraged them to be together.'

‘Not in that way! You say that because it's what you want to believe, because Morag is your sister, but it isn't the truth.'

‘Because you don't want it to be the truth? Your mother wanted your father to be happy, to be cared for and loved as she had cared for him and loved him. She told Morag so.'

‘Do you really expect me to believe that? Well, I don't.'

‘I thought better of you than this, Sally, I really did.'

Now his voice had become colder, sharper, critical, stabbing into the soft vulnerability of her emotions.

‘Just as I thought better of your sister,' Sally defended herself. ‘Now we've both been disappointed. How would you have liked it, Callum, if our positions had been reversed? It's all very well for you to come here and tell me how I should feel; you're bound to take Morag's side.'

‘Sally, it isn't a matter of taking sides. Your father loves you and misses you. I know you were upset and shocked by their marriage, but surely out of your love for your father – and I know that you do love him – and the friendship that you and Morag shared, you can find it in your heart to accept that they genuinely want to be together?'

‘What, and betray my mother, like Morag betrayed our friendship?' She shook her head. ‘No. Never.'

‘Sally, it's almost Christmas. A time for families to be together, to stand together, especially when we are a country at war. And besides . . .' He paused and looked at her and there was something in that look – a mixture of sadness and pity – that ripped at her defences and made her want to cry out to him, ‘What about your loyalty to me and what we could have had? What about taking my side? What about understanding me?' But of course she didn't; couldn't when he had put himself so clearly on Morag's side.

She saw his chest rise and fall as he took a deep breath. Then he told her, ‘I was hoping that you would agree to see your father and Morag before I had to tell you this, but obviously you won't. There's to be a child, Sally, due in May. Your father and Morag desperately want you to share in their joy.'

The room spun wildly round her, nausea clawing at her stomach, the sound of her vehement denial echoing inside her own head.

Callum caught hold of her, his hands gripping her upper arms as she fought against the faintness threatening to overwhelm her.

Above her she could see the once beloved face of the man she had hoped to spend the rest of her life with, a man she had thought so morally superior, so kind, so everything she could ever imagined wanting in a man and more; but who was now her enemy, and the pain inside her was so strong she thought it would break her apart.

‘Sally?'

Was that yearning she could hear in his voice? If it was then it was a brother's yearning for her to uphold a sister, not a man's yearning for her love.

Bitterly, she shrugged off his hold.

‘I don't want to hear any more,' she told him. ‘I don't ever want to see you again, Callum, or them.'

‘Have you no message for your father, Sally? He loves you and misses you.'

‘Does he? Well, he will soon have another child to love in my place, won't he?'

She turned to the door and held it open, telling him, ‘I want you to leave, Callum.'

Silently, his mouth grim, he collected his cap and walked past her to the front door where he paused to say, ‘I thought better of you, Sally, I really did.'

‘Maybe I thought better of you as well, Callum,' was the only response she allowed herself to make as he opened the door and disappeared into the darkness beyond it.

A child. Her father and Morag were to have a child. Revulsion filled her. Revulsion and anger, and pain. If things had been as they should, then it could have been her and Callum announcing the conception of their child this Christmas. Not only had her father and her once friend stolen her past and belief in the devotion of her parents to one another, like swans partnering for life; they had also stolen her future. She would never ever forgive them.

‘So you're not coming home for Christmas then?'

Even as her mother asked the question, it was Edith she was watching, Dulcie thought resentfully as she observed her sister talking animatedly several yards away to a group of admirers, who had halted her progress across the crowded floor of their local working men's club where she had been singing.

Dulcie hadn't wanted to come to listen to her sister and she certainly hadn't wanted to listen to her mother praising her so dotingly for doing so, but she'd got caught out on Sunday after church when her mind had been on the previous evening and not what her mother had been saying to her, and too late she realised she'd agreed to join her family to listen to Edith's debut as a professional singer.

The club was a rectangular room with a bar occupying the full length of the wall at one end, apart from a door that led into a narrow passageway containing the ladies'. The gents' was outside in the yard where the brewery loaded the beer barrels into the cellar. Behind the bar was a kitchen where volunteers, who sometimes included Dulcie's mother, made up sandwiches sold at the bar under a glass cover. The distempered walls were stained with the cigarette smoke, which wreathed round the room, gradually rising toward the ceiling.

Behind the bar, with its mirrored back and glass shelves, the club's manager, overweight and sweating, was pulling pints whilst his wife and the barmaid washed glasses at the small sink.

Dulcie hated the place as much as the rest of her family seemed to love it. It was where the whole neighbourhood came to celebrate weddings, births and deaths, after going through the formal church proceedings attendant upon such occasions.

Since tonight was a ‘social' night, which meant that the all-male membership was allowed to bring along their other halves and families, the place was packed, whole families, including grandparents, aunts and uncles, in some cases, crowded round the cheap shabby tables on equally cheap, shabby and mismatched chairs. A harsh light beamed down on the small stage, where Edith had performed, at the opposite end of the room to the bar. The whole place stank of stale beer, male sweat, and cheap cigarettes, Dulcie thought, fastidiously wrinkling her nose. A door in the middle of one of the long walls opened into the pool room – a holy of holies that women were not allowed to enter – and it was plain from a few all-women tables that some of the men had already taken advantage of that embargo to escape into it.

‘No,' Dulcie answered her mother's question.

‘Are you sure this landlady of yours wants you staying there over Christmas? It seems a rum do to me. You'd think she'd want her house to herself and not filled with lodgers. I know I would. Christmas is for being with your own folk.'

Her mother's words hit a nerve but Dulcie wasn't going to let her see that. Olive had been very cool with her since the night Tilly had rebelled, and Dulcie knew that her landlady blamed her, even if she hadn't said so. The truth was that hers was probably as welcome a presence at number 13 over Christmas as it would have been at her own home, Dulcie thought bitterly. Just as her mother would be fussing over Edith, so her landlady would be fussing over Agnes, making a big thing of her not having a family of her own. Not that Dulcie was going to tell her mother that.

Dulcie tossed her head, her blonde curls caught back in a pretty diamanté bow-shaped hair clip that she'd managed to get reduced, after she'd discovered that it had been slightly damaged. Dropping it on the floor earlier in the week and deliberately twisting the clip so that it didn't fasten properly had been easily done whilst Miss Timmins, whose eyesight wasn't very good, and who was really supposed to be retired but who worked one day a week had been in charge of the hair ornaments counter. Poor old Timid Timmy, as they all called her, had looked confused and blinked desperately, her thin, veined hands trembling slightly as she tried to examine the faulty catch. She had been easy for Dulcie to manipulate, and the departmental floor manager when summoned had agreed that the clip could be reduced. He might have given Dulcie a sharp look as she had paid for her purchase but she had felt triumphant rather than guilty. Just like she had felt triumphant that Saturday night at Hammersmith Palais, knowing that David would rather be with her than with his stuck-up fiancée-to-be.

Feeling triumphant was very important to Dulcie. It made her feel she was in her rightful place in the order of things.

‘Actually,' she told her mother untruthfully, ‘my landlady asked me especially as a favour to her if I would stay there over Christmas.'

‘Oh, well, if she wants you there . . .' her mother responded, using a tone of voice that suggested to Dulcie that her mother couldn't understand why that should be the case. Immediately Dulcie's combative spirit was aroused.

‘She does. She told me that she thinks of me as another daughter and that she doesn't know how she'd manage without me there to give her Tilly a few words to the wise when it's needed, me being older than Tilly and everything. Of course, I told her that I'm pleased to do my bit. Treats me ever so well, she does, just like I
was
her daughter really, always getting me little bits of treats.' Warming to her deception, Dulcie started to embroider the fabrication she had created.

‘She took us all shopping to the Portobello Market the other week and she bought me ever such an expensive blouse, pure silk and French design, and—'

‘Oh, here comes Edith now.'

The warmth for her younger daughter in her mother's voice as she interrupted her infuriated Dulcie, causing her to say unkindly, ‘I don't know where Edith got that dress from but she's certainly not dressing anything like as well now that she hasn't got my wardrobe to raid any more. It doesn't suit her at all.'

‘She looks lovely in it,' Dulcie's mother protested indignantly. ‘Pink always was Edith's colour. I remember when she was born I had this lovely pink layette that I'd saved ever so hard for. The first new baby clothes I'd had. I had to make do with hand-me-downs for you and for Rick.'

‘Oh, Mum, I thought I was never going to get over to you, so many people wanted to stop and tell me how well I'd done,' Edith enthused, laughing happily as she hugged her mother.

‘More like they couldn't believe what you were wearing and wanted to get a closer look,' Dulcie told her nastily, causing the smile to disappear from Edith's flushed face as she turned back to their mother, looking tragic and upset.

‘Take no notice of Dulcie, love,' their mother comforted Edith. ‘If you ask me, Dulcie, it's just as well you aren't coming home for Christmas, the way you're always upsetting poor Edith.'

‘It's just because she's jealous, Mum, because I can sing and she can't,' Edith trumped Dulcie's earlier insult.

‘Call that singing?' Dulcie returned, not to be outdone. ‘It sounded more like someone was trying to kill a cat. And you missed that top note in your last song.'

‘No I didn't.'

‘Yes you did.'

‘Dulcie, why do you always have to upset poor Edith?' their mother demanded.

‘Why do you always have to take her side?' Dulcie shot back, taunting her sister, ‘Mama's little girl who can't do any wrong.'

‘Here comes Frank, Mum. I'll have to go. We've got to talk with the manager and the band leader about some future bookings,' Edith announced, ignoring Dulcie as she jumped up hurriedly.

Watching her sister walk away with the man who had swaggered up to them, a cigar stuck in his mouth, his thinning hair greased back from his beefy florid face, Dulcie asked, ‘Who's that?'

‘His name's Frank Lepardo, and he's Edith's agent,' her mother told her with obvious pride. ‘He saw her singing the other week and went backstage to sign her up there and then, he was that pleased with her. He's a real impresario and he reckons that Edith is going to be big – bigger than that Vera Lynn everyone raves about. He's had one of the top ones from ENSA pleading with him to let Edith go on the wireless. Your sister is going to end up famous.'

Dulcie gave the two departing figures a cynical look. She knew men and she certainly knew what kind of man Frank Lepardo was. He had spiv and chancer written on him in letters as wide as the white stripes in his navy-blue suit.

‘If you ask me, the only place Edith is likely to end up with him, is underneath him,' Dulcie told her mother bluntly, earning herself a furious look.

‘I'll not have you talking about your sister like that. Frank Lepardo is a gentleman. Came especially to see me and your dad to get our permission to represent Edith, and he gave your dad ten pounds as an act of good faith.'

‘And I'll bet Dad's lost it already down the dog track,' Dulcie said cynically.

It was more than likely that the real reason Frank Lepardo had gone to see her parents was to find out how naïve they were, she thought grimly, but she knew there was no point in continuing to warn her mother about Frank Lepardo. Anyway, why should she? It would serve Edith right to get what she deserved, the way she continually showed off and made out she was so special. Why was it that everybody was always against her, Dulcie? It wasn't right and it certainly wasn't fair.

The Christmas tree was up, decorated by Tilly and Agnes with the decorations that had been collected over the years and which Olive kept so carefully.

Agnes had gazed in delight at the pretty painted tin bird with its feather tail, amazed when Tilly demonstrated to her how it was also a whistle. Olive watching them had remembered the Christmas she had bought the novelty decoration from a street market. Tilly had been only little then, entranced by the whistle herself.

This year there were no new decorations to add but they had no need of any. There were plenty to fill the Christmas tree, which they'd put up in the front room. Pretty electric lights of various colours shaped like flowers illuminated the tree, the fairy in her sparkly costume placed at the top. They'd even clipped on the old-fashioned metal candle holders, with their candles, a reminder of long-ago Christmases before electric lights had come in and, Olive had always thought, potentially very dangerous, especially around children. These, though, would not be lit; they were just there for decoration now.

Multicoloured paper garlands had been strung from the central light fitting in both rooms to the corners, adding to the festive décor.

Tonight, whilst the girls were out dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, she'd finish wrapping their presents and put them under the tree, once she'd made the pastry for her mince pies. The news that Dulcie was planning to stay had caused Olive to panic slightly over the fact that she had knitted sets of gloves with matching scarves and hats for the other three but not for Dulcie. Luckily, she'd been able to get some more wool and, by knitting frantically every spare minute, she'd managed to produce a set for Dulcie as well.

On her way back to the shops this morning, where she'd gone to collect her goose, her sausage-meat and the ham, she'd paused outside Holborn's famous bookshop, said to be one of the oldest in London, remembering the set of Beatrix Potter books she'd bought there for Tilly. She'd saved so hard for those books, and Tilly had been thrilled with them, even if Olive's mother-in-law had scorned what she considered to be a waste of money. Olive had been determined right from the start that her Tilly would have a proper education, so that she could hold her head up in the world.

There were sweets to put in the stockings she made for the girls from some cheap felt she'd bought, a sugar mouse for each of them, and some sugared almonds.

Upstairs the girls were getting ready for their night out. Tilly had almost been bursting with excitement over tea, and so had Agnes, who had told Olive shyly earlier in the week that Ted had mentioned that he might as well go along to the Palais, seeing as Agnes was going.

Guessing that Agnes was seeking her approval, Olive had nodded and told her, ‘I think that's a good idea, Agnes, and very kind of Ted. There's nothing worse than going to a big dance, for the first time and then feeling left out because the other girls seem to know lots of boys and have partners.'

One member of the quartet from number 13 probably wouldn't lack partners or confidence, Olive thought wryly. She suspected that Dulcie would never be behind the door when it came to putting herself forward. She had convinced herself now, though, that it was better for Tilly to discover what Dulcie was for herself, instead of her criticising her and then having Tilly jump to her defence.

She could hear the girls clattering down the stairs. Tilly was first into the room, the air around her positively crackling with excitement and energy.

‘Will I do, do you think, Mum?' she demanded, doing a swift twirl, the panelled skirt of her new velvet dress swirling round her.

Olive's breath caught in her throat. She'd seen the dress on before, but now tonight, looking at Tilly wearing it, she was filled with maternal emotion – pride combining with anxiety. The dress, with its sweetheart neckline, long sleeves and nipped-in waistline showed off Tilly's slender figure, the sweep of its panelled skirt making her look taller, revealing a hint of the woman that Tilly would become. Olive's heart ached with love, but of course she wasn't going to tell Tilly how beautiful she looked. Instead she told her calmly, ‘I should think that dress would more than do for any dancehall, Tilly, even the Hammersmith Palais. The dressmaker really has done an excellent job with that velvet.'

The pretty gold locket that Tilly's father had given her mother as a wedding present gleamed softly against Tilly's skin. Her eyes had filled with tears when Olive had suggested she should wear it.

‘Your dad would have been so proud of you, and it's right that you take a bit of him with you tonight to look out for you,' Olive had said.