Heather Wilkins was most upset when she got back from work that Saturday evening, hot, sweaty and bone-weary, to find that her son had come home a day early and left without seeing her. She knew instinctively that this was the invasion coming. It had to be. So how could he have gone without saying goodbye? When she might never see him again.
‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ she said angrily as she turned on the tap to wash her dirty hands.
The excuse sounded feeble even to Bob’s ears. ‘He was in a rush.’
‘Rush?’ she said, scrubbing hard to subdue her anxiety. ‘What d’you mean rush? He’s never in a rush. Not our Steve. He has everything planned down to the last little detail. Always. He could’ve nipped in and seen me on his way to the station. That I do know. It wouldn’t’ve taken him more than a minute.’ Then she noticed the straw hat and the shopping basket standing beside the dresser and was suddenly and bitterly jealous. ‘I suppose she was with him. That’s what it was.’
‘Well ’course she was,’ Bob said. ‘She’s his wife. And while we’re on the subject, I’ve said she can stay here till they know where he’s been posted.’
Heather’s frown deepened. ‘Why can’t she go home?’ she said, shaking the water from her hands.
‘Her home’s with Steve now,’ he pointed out, doggedly patient. ‘It’s only till she knows where he’s gone. Then they’ll get a room or a flat or something.’
The answer was sensible but she was still irritated. ‘I tell you what, Bob, I’m beginning to think the girls were right. She has run away from home. I thought they’d got hold of the wrong end a’ the stick at the wedding but I’m not so sure now. If she’s going to stay here …’
Bob picked up his repair box and put it away in the broom cupboard, hoping to placate her by tidiness. ‘It’ll only be for a little while,’ he said.
She wasn’t placated. ‘That’s all very well. How long’s a little while?’
His next answer made it impossible for her to argue any further. ‘Till they get a flat or till the invasion.’
So he’d worked it out too. ‘This is it then?’ she asked, her face set. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
He answered calmly. ‘Looks like it.’
‘Does she know, d’you reckon?’
‘She never said nothing,’ he told her cautiously. ‘Neither of ’em did, come to that. But like I told you, they was in a rush.’
She took her kitchen apron from its hook behind the door, put it on and started to unpack her shopping basket. ‘Oh well,’ she said wearily, ‘I suppose she’d better stay, if that’s what he wants.’
‘We won’t say nothing about the invasion, will we.’ It was half question, half command. ‘Let her tell us.’
‘Give me credit for a bit a’ sense,’ she said. ‘Where is she now, if I’m allowed to ask?’
‘Gone with him to say goodbye.’
‘She got the chance you notice. Which is more than I did.’ Beyond the kitchen window the sky was purple with rain clouds. ‘I don’t suppose they thought to take an umbrella.’
‘No.’
‘No sense, these young things,’ she said, studying the food she’d unpacked. She took her chopping board from the cupboard, picked the largest onion and counted out three rashers of streaky, comforted by the routine of domesticity. ‘Good job it’s bacon roll tonight. At least that’ll stretch to three. I got spring greens. There wasn’t much else. I told Mr Fisher that last lot a’ spuds was chronic so these had better be better. Right. That’s everything.’
The bacon roll was tied in its cloth and steaming gently and she was peeling the last of the potatoes when the doorbell rang. The peremptory sound brought a renewal of irritation. ‘You go,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I’ve got my hands full.’ She couldn’t face opening the door to the girl. Not yet anyway, and not in the middle of cooking a meal. Oh why hadn’t he called in to see her, just for five minutes? It would have made such a difference.
Barbara was standing in the porch with her chin in the air and a belligerent expression on her face. Her arms and shoulders were spotted with rain and there were drops spangling her dark hair.
‘You got back just in time,’ Bob said, standing aside to let her in, and thinking how pretty she looked. ‘It’ll be chucking it down in a minute.’
She recognised that he was trying to welcome her but she couldn’t respond to him. It was as if all her emotions had been turned on at full blast and then shaken together until she could barely distinguish one from another. As she followed him upstairs, she found herself observing things with a stupid intensity as if she were in enemy territory and her survival depended on it – Anaglypta halfway up the walls, dark brown and all swirls and ridges, lino on the stairs, six doors on the landing. She was quite sure there were six, because she counted them.
Bob was explaining the layout of the flat. ‘This is our bedroom,’ nodding at a closed door. ‘An’ that one’s your room and that’s the bathroom.’ But although she heard the words, their meaning wasn’t getting through to her. It wasn’t until he opened the kitchen door and strode through saying, ‘Here she is Heather,’ that the full scene came into focus and she knew, with a miserable certainty, that her mother-in-law resented her arrival.
Heather decapitated a potato and wouldn’t look up. ‘Did he get off all right then?’ she asked.
Barbara swallowed hard before she spoke. This was going to be very difficult. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said politely, and added, ‘He sent you his love.’
The sarcasm in Heather’s voice was too pointed to be missed. ‘Nice of him.’
Barbara looked at her mother-in-law’s closed expression and hardened herself for a struggle. You might not like me, she thought, but you can at least give me a bit of respect.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘That hain’t my idea, stayin’ here. Thass your son what want it. That hain’t me. I can always go somewhere else if you’d rather.’
‘No need for that,’ Heather told her, stung by such a direct challenge. She tossed the last potato into the saucepan. ‘We’ve got the room.’
‘I’ll pay my way,’ Barbara told her. ‘I shall get an allowance.’
‘Well there you are then,’ Heather said, salting the potatoes. ‘It’s settled. I’ll show you where to put your things.’ And she marched into Steve’s bedroom as if she were on her way to a war.
The sight of his room made Barbara catch her breath as if she’d been struck. It was so exactly what she expected, four square and neat, with the bed pushed against the wall to make more room, a wall mirror at his head height, prints of cricket and cricketers arranged in ordered rows on the cream wallpaper, and three long shelves full of books ranged above the bed, Penguins mostly and grouped in order, blue to the right, orange to the left. His books. I’ve left you plenty of reading material. But oh! Below the shelves, strewn across the grey-blue bedspread, were his discarded clothes, left where he’d thrown them and still warm to her touch. It was as if he were still in the room, as if she could turn and find him standing behind her, smiling at her, eager for kisses. She missed him so much she felt as if her ribcage was caving in. Oh Steve! My dear darling Steve!
‘Well!’ Heather said crossly beside her. ‘Will you look at that. He must have been in a rush. I never known him leave his clothes lying about, like that. Never in all my born days.’ She sounded surprised and exasperated.
‘He had a train to catch,’ Barbara explained. ‘He had to report to the RTO.’ And she began to retrieve the clothes, opening the wardrobe door to hang them up.
Heather went on complaining. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him, leaving everything to the last minute. It’s not like him. That shirt’ll have to go in the dirty clothes’ basket.’
‘I’ll wash it for him,’ Barbara offered and she held the shirt to her chest. It would be a labour of love.
That didn’t please her mother-in-law. ‘No need for that,’ she said. ‘It can go in with the rest of the wash Monday. I always do a wash Monday. It’s my day off.’
For a second it felt as though they were on the verge of a quarrel. Then Barbara offered a compromise. ‘I’ll help you then.’
Heather hesitated. She could hardly turn down an offer of help, cross though she was. It would look churlish and petty. ‘Well, we’ll see,’ she temporised.
Thank God I shall only have to stay here a few days, Barbara thought, cuddling the shirt. I couldn’t stand much of this. She cut people to ribbons. And she made up her mind that she would certainly help with the washing and with the washing up and that she’d get out of the house as much as she possibly could.
That first supper was an awkward meal because they were all thinking about Steve and wondering where he was. None of them could find anything much to say, and although there was a play on the wireless, it wasn’t entertaining. Barbara had no appetite but she ate what was put in front of her and, when Heather cleared the table and boiled a kettle for the washing up, she took the wiping-up cloth from its hook on the wall and dried as Heather washed. Then her new parents settled down in their two armchairs by the fireplace, Heather boldly, with her knitting on her lap, Bob rather anxiously, cleaning his pipe, and left her sitting at the table feeling in the way.
The evening spread emptily before her. ‘Right then,’ she said. ‘I’m off to see Betty. Take the hat back. Thass orl right, ain’t it?’
‘You must feel free to do whatever you like,’ Heather told her, icily gracious. ‘We turn in at ten. Take the torch. It’ll be dark by the time you come back.’
Bob watched as she picked up the torch from the dresser and put it into the pocket of her red coat. ‘D’you know the way?’ he wondered.
She didn’t but she wasn’t going to ask for help. ‘I can find it.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ he decided, setting his pipe aside. And when Heather gave him a questioning look, ‘I need some fags for tomorrow.’
So he and his new daughter-in-law walked off together under the same umbrella. It was raining steadily and the terraces were monochrome in the fading light, grey roofs, grey walls, grey rain.
‘She’s in a bit of a state,’ he apologised. ‘With Steve goin’ off an’ everything.’
‘Yes,’ Barbara said shortly. ‘I know. I miss him too.’
He was beginning to recognise that her bold expression was a cover for distress but, having been answered so sharply he couldn’t think of anything else to say, so they walked on in silence. Outside Mabel’s house, as they waited for someone to answer the door, he passed the umbrella to her and on impulse, bent beneath it to kiss her cheek. ‘Don’t be late back,’ he warned. ‘She means what she says. We do turn in at ten.’
He’s trying to help me, Barbara thought, warming to him. But she barely had time to smile at him before a shadow darkened the stained glass, the door was flung open and Joyce was standing before them, yelling back into the house. ‘Mum. It’s Uncle Bob!’
‘I’ll be off then,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right with Mabel.’ And was gone before she could draw breath.
‘I brought the hat back,’ she explained, holding it in front of her.
‘Oh!’ Joyce said shortly, giving her a most unwelcoming stare. ‘You’d better come in then.’
The kitchen was full of people but, to Barbara’s great disappointment, Betty wasn’t one of them. Aunt Mabel was sitting at her sewing machine with both feet on the treadle busily turning a pair of worn sheets side to middle, Hazel was doing a jigsaw with the pieces all over the chenille tablecloth and Joyce had been darning a lisle stocking, which she’d left on the sideboard with its needle stuck in the toe, and which she took up again as soon as she got back in the room. And sitting at the table, drinking a cup of tea, was the fat aunt from the wedding – Aunt Sis, wasn’t it? – round face, shrewd eyes, snub nose, dark spiky hair, surrounded by a strong smell of sulphur and cigars, and looking fatter than ever in some sort of railway uniform.
‘Hello Barbara!’ she said. ‘I thought Bob was with you.’
‘He walked me round,’ Barbara explained. ‘Thass all. I brought Betty’s hat back.’
‘She’s out dancing,’ Aunt Mabel said, biting off the thread. ‘I’ll tell her. Everything go off all right?’
‘You’re back early, ain’tcher?’ Sis said and nodded at the chair beside her. ‘We wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.’
Barbara sat down, feeling very out of place. ‘He had a letter,’ she explained. ‘This morning. He’s had to go back. He’s been recalled a day early.’
‘That’s the army for you,’ Sis said, making a grimace. ‘How was the bungalow?’
Barbara’s feelings were on the boil again, bubbling and confusing. So much had happened since she woke that morning that it was hard to realise that the day had begun in the bungalow. But she made a great effort and managed to tell Sis it was ‘lovely’ and to thank her for the things she’d sent in the trunk. ‘I’ll wash the sheets an’ towels as soon as the trunk comes,’ she promised. ‘We ate all the food.’
‘That’s what it was for,’ Aunt Sis said, and she took a cigar from her jacket pocket, lit it with a great deal of smoke and enjoyment and puffed on it as she went on. ‘So I gather he’s gone already, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So whatcher gonna do with yourself while you’re waiting?’
‘That’ll only be for a day or two,’ Barbara hoped.
‘Tell yer what,’ Sis said. ‘If you’re still here next Saturday morning, Joyce and Hazel could show you round the shops. It’s pretty lively round here of a Saturday. Our Betty works in Woolworths. Did you know that? You could all pop in after, an’ see her an’ have a cup a’ tea. They got a caff there. You’d like that.’
Joyce and Hazel didn’t look at all pleased by the suggestion, so Barbara hastened to assure them that she wouldn’t need their services.
‘That all depend on what he says in his letter,’ she said. ‘I mean, I might not be here by Saturday.’
‘Be something to look forward to if you are though,’ Sis said, ‘wouldn’t it?’
That had to be admitted, despite Hazel’s frown. This aunt was plainly the sort of person who was used to getting her own way.
‘Well that’s fixed then,’ Sis said and turned her attention to other matters. ‘Mrs Cronin’s boy got his call-up papers yesterday. Did I tell you, Mabel?’
‘I know,’ Aunt Mabel said. ‘I met her in Davey Greig’s this morning. Reckon he’s going in the RAF.’
Barbara sat in her chair by the fire and felt more and more out of place as the gossip went on. She didn’t know any of the people they were talking about, Joyce and Hazel kept giving her funny looks, and Betty wouldn’t be back for hours. But she could hardly stand up and walk out, not when they were all busy talking, and not when she’d only just arrived. She was relieved when Sis stubbed out her cigar, made a useless attempt to brush the ash from her uniform and announced that she’d better be off.
‘I ought to go too,’ Barbara said, glancing at the clock to support her departure. ‘I’m s’posed to be in by ten.’
‘I’ll walk along with you,’ Sis offered. ‘It’ll be pitch black out.’
So they left together and the entire family came out into the half-lit hall to see them off.
‘Don’t forget Saturday,’ Sis said to the two girls, as they kissed goodbye.
And Barbara asked her new aunt Mabel to give her love to Betty. ‘Tell her thanks for the hat.’
‘I will,’ Mabel assured her, brushing her cheek with an awkward kiss. ‘Mind how you go.’
It was a sensible warning for, once outside the house, it was extremely dark.
‘Grab an arm,’ Sis instructed, offering her elbow as they walked down the path. ‘Got a torch, ’ave yer?’
The rain had stopped so they carried their umbrellas hooked over their free arms so that they could hold their torches one on each side of them like headlights. The air smelt of dust and soot and the blackout was total. At first Barbara could just about make out the gleam of white paint that marked the edge of the curb but as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she began to glimpse the outline of roofs against moonlit cloud and to sense garden walls and privet hedges even if she couldn’t see them.
‘I wonder what our Steve’s doing now,’ Sis said suddenly.
Hearing his name made Barbara ache to be with him again. ‘That won’t take him long to get us a flat, will it?’ she hoped.
But Sis didn’t say no, the way she expected. Instead she plodded on as though she was deep in thought.
‘I do miss him,’ Barbara confessed.
‘’Course you do, duck,’ Sis said comfortably. ‘That’s natural.’
In the darkness it was possible for Barbara to say things she wouldn’t have dared in the light. ‘I wish he weren’t in the army. I know he had no choice but I wish he weren’t.’
‘I felt the same way about my Percy,’ Sis told her. ‘Re’glar army he was. He never had much of a choice neither, poor bugger. He was out a’ work fer two an’ a half years. Signed on in ’32. Seven years in the colours, five in the reserve. An’ then this lot come along an’ buggered everything up an’ they packed him off to France an’ that was that. Thirty-seven he was. He’d’ve been forty-one last week.’
‘I know what happened to him,’ Barbara said, tingling with sympathy and foreboding. Wasn’t that just what she was afraid of? ‘Steve told me. I’m ever so sorry.’
‘War, you see,’ Sis said. ‘Don’t give none of us a chance. We just have to put up with it. I’ll tell you what though, gel, once we’ve won, we’ll make damn sure it don’t happen again.’
‘That’s what Steve said,’ Barbara remembered.
‘He would,’ Sis nodded. ‘He’s a good lad.’
‘Yes.’
She sounded so bleak that Sis felt compelled to cheer her up and she did it in the best way she knew. ‘It’ll all be different after the war,’ she said. ‘We’ll have full employment for a start. That’s the answer. A proper job a’ work for everyone. No more hangin’ about street corners with nothin’ to do. No more idleness. Mr Beveridge hit the nail right on the head about that. He said it destroys wealth and corrupts men. One a’ the five giants, he called it.’
Barbara didn’t know what she was talking about and she was missing Steve so much she couldn’t listen with any attention. The words flowed over her, ‘Five giants. Giant Idleness. Giant Want. Giant Disease. Giant Squalor. Giant Ignorance … if we want a better world when we’ve put a stop to Herr Bloody Hitler, we’re gonna have to fight the lot of ’em … You read it, have yer?’
The question was so direct it had to be answered. ‘What?’
‘The Beveridge Plan.’
‘No,’ Barbara admitted. ‘I haven’t. Should I have?’
‘It’s Steve’s Bible. There’s a copy on his bookshelf.’
They’d reached the corner of Childeric Road and paused to smile at one another in the torchlight. ‘Well look after yourself, kid,’ Sis said.
‘I will.’
‘Tell you what,’ Sis said after a pause for thought, ‘I could get you a job an’ all, if you like.’
There was just enough light for Barbara to see the gleam of her brown eyes. ‘Thass ever so kind,’ she said, ‘but I shan’t be here long enough.’
‘No,’ Sis agreed, but her voice sounded vague. ‘Well bear it in mind. Just in case it don’t work out the way you’ve planned. Let me know when you get your letter. I’m easy to find. I’m in the booking office most days, New Cross Gate. An’ if I’m not there, I live over Green’s the newsagent’s. Just up the top a’ the road. You can’t miss it.’
Barbara wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to kiss her goodbye or not, but decided to risk it. And was quite pleased to be kissed in return.
Sis shone her torch onto the face of her watch. ‘It’s three minutes to ten,’ she said and grinned. ‘You’d better look sharp or she’ll lock you out. Hope you get your letter all right.’
It arrived, as promised, first thing on Monday morning, just as Bob was leaving for work. And it crushed them all.
This won’t be much of a letter because I can’t tell you where I am or what I’m doing. The camp is sealed which means that all mail is being censored and that there will be no further leave so there is no point in looking for a flat. This is just to let you know I’ve arrived and to send you all my love. Stay where you are. Mum and Dad will look after you. I will write to them tomorrow but warn them not to expect any news. We are very busy here, waterproofing our vehicles. A damn sight too busy. Still at least it keeps us occupied. Write soon. I miss you more than I can tell you.
All my love.
‘The invasion’s coming, ain’t it?’ Barbara said. There was such a pain in her chest she could hardly breathe. ‘No further leave … waterproofing our vehicles.’ It could be any time. Oh dear God, any time. But not yet. Please not yet. Let me see him once more before he goes.
For a second, watching her daughter-in-law’s smitten face, Heather felt sorry for her, but then that chin went up and she put on that awful bold expression and her compassion melted away. ‘Yes,’ she said, distress making her brusque. ‘It is.’
‘Write an’ tell him not to worry,’ Bob suggested, offering what comfort he could. ‘Tell him you’ll be all right with us.’
Barbara was still looking at the letter. And she was remembering what Sis had said to her. ‘Just in case it don’t work out the way you’ve planned.’ She knew this was going to happen, she thought. She was warning me, offering me something to do if I had to stay here. Thass why she told the girls to take me round the shops. And fixed for us to have tea with Betty afterwards. She knew.
‘What’ll you do now?’ Heather asked. With a bit of luck she might go back to King’s Lynn.
There was no doubt about the answer to that. ‘I shall get a job. I can’t sit around all day doing nothing. I’d be better occupied.’
They were both surprised but Bob approved at once. ‘That’s the ticket,’ he smiled. ‘Don’t you think so, Heather?’
‘Very sensible,’ Heather said, but she was thinking, if she gets a job here we’re stuck with her, and that didn’t please her at all. ‘Ah well,’ she said. ‘I suppose we’d better get that boiler lit. We got the washing to do, an’ I’m back at work tomorrow.’