‘Where was Stan while all this was going on?’ In the workroom above the shop, Muriel sounded irritated. ‘The idea was for him to go with you this morning to keep an eye on you, wasn’t it?’
Violet pulled out some tacking stitches in a white blouse she was making for Kenneth Leach’s wife, Avril. The order had come in while she was in Welby and she’d started work on it as soon as she got back. ‘One look at Douglas Tankard was enough for him.’
‘Was it that bad?’ Muriel peered at Violet over the rim of her glasses, scissors poised.
‘Yes, Stan wasn’t in a mood to forgive. And I didn’t help by asking if our father had ever loved my mother. I put my foot in it good and proper. Poor Stan didn’t know where to put himself. That’s why he stormed off.’
‘But you’re glad you stayed to hear the man out?’
‘I wouldn’t say glad was the right word.’ The tacking thread slipped easily through the silky rayon material. Violet held up the half-finished garment and decided that it was time to start on the collar.
‘Sad then?’
‘No, not sad either.’ On the train journey home, Violet had pulled herself together and done her best to explain to Stan what had led Tankard to desert them but Stan was having none of it.
‘He was saving his own skin, that’s the truth of it. I don’t care if he was going blind – he should’ve been a man and owned up to what he’d done.’
‘Then he’d have had the army to deal with,’ Violet had reasoned.
Stan had shaken his head and stared truculently out of the window, refusing to say another word about his father – not just now but for ever. He’d done his best to back Violet and look after her, but for him the subject was now closed.
‘Relieved?’ Muriel steered a lightweight worsted fabric under the pounding needle of her sewing machine as she made a tailored jacket for Ella Kingsley.
‘Yes, I suppose that’s it.’ Violet relived the moment when she’d handed over the bracelet and loosened the chains of the past. ‘Honestly, though, it would break your heart to see Douglas Tankard and to hear what he had to say.’
‘Your trouble is you’re too soft,’ Ida muttered.
‘Really it would. As it was, he wouldn’t let me pity him. But I can’t help it when I think about what he had to go through – the mud and the guns and the gas. It was enough to make me cry, just listening.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting that he ran away from his comrades?’
‘Crawled away,’ Violet insisted. ‘If you ask me, he only did what a lot of other men would have done given half a chance.’
The ring of the shop bell down below told them that they had a customer. ‘I’ll go,’ Muriel said swiftly.
She left Violet sewing interfacing to the collar piece, reflecting on where the day’s events had left her. Not glad, not sad. Relieved because she knew she was undergoing a sea change and what it boiled down to was this: it wasn’t her, Violet Wheeler, who wasn’t fit to be loved, but her father, Douglas Tankard, who couldn’t love.
‘It was the sight of him sitting there holding the bracelet that hurt the most,’ Violet confided in Eddie when he came to the shop that evening to take her to the rehearsal in Hadley.
All day Eddie had been worried about her, hoping that Stan had been the right choice to go to Welby with her. Eddie had finished his decorating work early and arrived at Jubilee at half past five on the dot to find Violet pulling down the blind and putting up the Closed sign. ‘You did the right thing by handing over the bracelet to him.’
‘It belongs with him. But his hands were shaking and of course he’s blind so he couldn’t see to read the note he’d written to my mother.’
‘I know how to take your mind off things. Come on, Vi – let’s go for a spin.’ Eddie’s sudden suggestion was aimed at pulling her out of the past into the present. ‘We’ve got time to stop at Little Brimstone if we set off now.’
‘But it’s raining.’
‘No, it’s nearly stopped. What are we waiting for?’ So they locked the door and climbed on the bike just as the clouds lifted and by the time they reached the moor road, the wind had swept them away completely.
‘Do we have to stop?’ Violet asked, her arms clasped around Eddie’s waist as he pulled into the usual siding. ‘Couldn’t we just ride on like this for ever?’
He laughed and parked the bike. ‘If we follow our noses in that direction we’d be in Morecambe and the Atlantic would stop us. The other way it’s Scarborough and the North Sea.’
‘We could get on a ferry and keep going all the way to America,’ she said wistfully. ‘You and me without a care in the world.’
Eddie kept hold of her hand as he led the way down the narrow path bordered by sodden bracken. ‘And live on what – fresh air?’
‘They need dressmakers in America, don’t they? We could ride to sunny Hollywood and you could show the latest flicks in the picture palaces where they’re made. I could sew costumes for Claudette Colbert.’
‘And pigs might fly.’ They arrived at the clearing to find Kitty’s café closed and boarded up in readiness for winter. Eddie chose a bench to sit on and together they gazed out over the eruption of black boulders scattered across the steep hillside. In the background they heard the sound of their very own tumbling stream. ‘I don’t think we’d fit in,’ he said with a smile.
‘Where?’
‘In Hollywood. We’re Yorkshire born and bred. It’s where we belong.’ Rooted in the black earth of the open moors, treading the paved streets of the town shoulder to shoulder with mill girls and mechanics, shop workers, lamp lighters and delivery men.
‘I know that.’ Violet smiled back at him. ‘I don’t really care where we go.’
‘As long as we’re together?’
She nodded. Her heart swelled with love for Eddie – for his laughing brown eyes and the way his black hair refused to stay slicked back no matter how much Brylcreem he combed through it. She loved him for the way he sat, legs splayed and stretched out in front of him, his head tilted back and resting against the green wooden boards of the window shutters, looking at her through half-closed eyes. ‘Yes, that’s what I want.’
He sat up straight and drew his feet back under the bench. ‘That’s all right then. Listen – I want to say something but as usual it might not come out right.’
‘Try,’ she murmured, slipping an arm around his waist and nestling close.
‘First off, I realize you’re down in the dumps about Tankard. I know he wasn’t what you hoped he might be.’
‘No, I wasn’t too surprised, just sad. And it was upsetting to find out that he can’t see, and that makes me sorry for him.’
‘But you’re glum because you wanted to love him and now you can’t – that’s the heart of the matter.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Even as Violet protested she knew he was right. Meeting her father had drawn attention to a lifelong space in her heart that he would never be able to fill.
‘So if you want someone to love, why not try me?’ Eddie held his breath, waiting for her reply.
‘You already know I do. I told you,’ Violet said softly, reaching up to touch his cold cheek.
‘I mean I want to take it one step further,’ he murmured, turning his head to kiss her palm. ‘We love each other. We don’t need anyone else.’
‘That’s right – we don’t.’
‘So we can get married.’
‘Oh, Eddie!’ Violet pulled free, stood up and walked across the clearing.
Eddie followed her, afraid that he’d picked the wrong time and so upset her. ‘Not straight away. Not if you’re not ready.’
‘Stop. I wasn’t … I don’t …’
‘I didn’t say it right, I’m sorry.’
The doubt in his eyes made her take his hands between hers. ‘What about Jubilee?’ Could she marry Eddie and still sit at her sewing machine with Ida and Muriel? ‘Getting married doesn’t mean I have to stop work, does it? Only, that’s the way Ida sees it – she says she can’t marry Harold and expect to carry on working.’
Eddie gave a small shrug. ‘Ida sees things in black and white, remember. Who’s to say you can’t do both?’
‘That’s right, I can!’ Violet saw it in a flash – a white wedding in a dress made in the Jubilee workshop, a rented house on Brewery Road or Chapel Street that Eddie would decorate, with two bedrooms – one for her and Eddie, one for the baby that would arrive in due course. She ran ahead of herself so far and with such a dazzling smile that Eddie couldn’t help wrapping his arms around her and drawing her close.
‘Where there’s a will there’s a way,’ he said, his lips touching her forehead.
She tilted her head back. They were so close that his features blurred. She closed her eyes and kissed his mouth.
After a while he drew back, still with his arms around her waist. ‘I know you don’t have any family left now, Vi,’ he said gently, ‘but I won’t run away and leave you on your own – not ever.’