‘Go on, Zena! Give us a twirl!’
Ethel beamed with pride as her beautiful, raven-haired daughter led the dancing in the street, to the cheers of their neighbours at their VE Day party.
She was the brightest, the prettiest of all the girls and what’s more, she was kind too; she’d sung her way through many an air raid in the tube stations during the blackout, to keep everyone’s spirits up. Even when she was almost dead on her feet from dancing, she still found time to entertain the folks who’d been bombed out down at the rest centres.
No one knew where she’d got it from, but Zena seemed to have the most extraordinary talent for making people smile. When she walked into the room, it was like the sun coming out. Ethel and Len doted on their daughter, and now this dreadful war was over, they were even thinking of setting up a dance school for her, so she could achieve her dream of being a teacher. She was fifteen now and lovelier with every passing day.
Len’s dairy business and shop in Clapham Manor Street was doing well and he treated Ethel like a queen. Zena was his princess and William, well, he was growing up to be a young man, who was nearly twenty now. He looked the spitting image of his father and he was prone to his moods, too, which Ethel despised. Len knew how to handle him, though. He’d get him working away in the shop or, better still, pushing the handcart full of milk around the streets on his daily rounds. Len always had a spring in his step when he went off every morning and Ethel loved him dearly.
Ethel felt a little tug at her sleeve and gazed down to see one of the snotty-nosed local tearaways looking up at her.
‘Can I have some of that jelly, Mrs Ebdon?’ he said, pointing to the bowl on the table.
‘Of course you can,’ she said, serving him a big helping. She’d put by a whole stash of tinned fruit and jelly when the war broke out and it was wonderful to be able to share that with the children, to make the day one to remember.
Everyone called her Mrs Ebdon as a mark of respect because she helped run the shop; she was a pillar of the community. It almost made the long hours standing on the freezing floor of the dairy worth it, although she hated having to turn the greying sausages over to the pink side to make them look a bit more appealing so they’d sell.
Her life now in London was everything she could have wished for. Well, except for one fly in the ointment. Sometimes she’d lie awake in bed at night and worry about what would happen if Harry ever came back. That dreadful afternoon when Zena was a baby and he’d caught her with Len still haunted her. In fact, she carefully locked the front door and checked all the windows every night, just in case. She didn’t want him barging his way back into their lives. He could be dead for all she knew – not that she cared. There was always that sister of his in Newcastle who she could ask, but Ethel wasn’t going to chase her; they’d never got on in any case. It was best to let sleeping dogs lie, that’s what Len said.
As far as the local community was concerned, nobody spoke about where Harry had gone or why she was living with Len. She’d just put the word out to Doreen that he’d walked out on the family and it was good riddance to bad rubbish, and neighbourhood gossip did the rest. Da took her side about Harry and he seemed to approve when she took up with Len, who worshipped the ground that Ethel walked on. It had been tough for a while when she and Len had first moved in together, because Da knew that she was still married to Harry, but he was so captivated by his beautiful granddaughter, Zena, that he was prepared to overlook that. And Len was charming to Da, who now lived in a flat around the corner, and was always welcome in their home.
With every passing year, it got easier to think less about Harry – except for the fact that William was so like him, not just in looks, but in his bookish ways and his interest in politics. That rankled with Ethel, but she allowed him to go off to the library on his bicycle or spend hours alone in his room, just to keep him out of her way, which she preferred.
Sometimes, when she was down the pub, she found herself spinning yarns about how she’d run away from Newcastle when she was just eighteen to start a new life in London. Perhaps it was wrong to do that but she couldn’t help it; it was just easier to gloss over the truth, that’s all. Meeting Harry had been her stepping stone to being here, with Len, where she was meant to be and it was better if he didn’t feature in her life story, which sounded more glamorous and entertaining when she told it the way she did.
Len had bought her a beautiful wedding band which she wore with pride, but they weren’t married, not that she’d ever let on, not even to the children. Len wanted to marry her, of course, but they couldn’t walk up the aisle together because she was still married to Harry.
They couldn’t afford a divorce and if they’d tried to trace Harry and he refused, it would have spoiled everything they’d worked for. She did not want that lunatic back in their lives. Len was well respected and she was the queen of the street – the woman everyone looked up to – and that was before she got onto all the attention she got because of being Zena’s mother. The child had star quality, like an actress from the films she still adored watching at the cinema most weekends. Yes, Ethel was living the life she’d hoped for and now this blasted war was over, they could all start to enjoy themselves a bit more, even if there was no end to rationing in sight.
Living on rations didn’t bother her – she was thin as a pin anyway because her clothes fitted her better that way and Len liked it. But she wanted to take some days off from the shop, to go to the seaside or up West, to the theatres, to wear the lovely mink stole Len had bought her before the war and really let her hair down a bit.
She spotted William at the end of the trestle tables, pouring himself another drink from a bottle of sherry. He was already glassy-eyed.
‘I think you’ve had enough,’ she said, going over to his side.
‘It’s a party, Mum!’ he said, rocking back on his heels and laughing. ‘Don’t be such a spoilsport!’
He was a big lad now, taller than Len, and handsome with it but he had a determined streak and a liking for the drink, which worried her. And when his grey eyes settled on her, it was like going back twenty years, to the Hoppings fair in Newcastle, where she first met Harry.
William had cried for his dad so much that first year after he left but when Ethel put her foot down and said that was that, the tears had stopped and the moods had started. She’d slapped him once, when he was unforgivably rude to her. But Len had handled it all in the end, explaining that his dad had problems and didn’t want to be with the family in London for his own reasons. That seemed to do the trick and William accepted Len as his stepdad because he was such a kind, caring man. Zena didn’t know anything about Harry, of course, other than what she might have overheard in whispered conversations – that he had deserted the family before she was born. William knew better than to raise his name within earshot of Ethel or she’d give him what for. Just a glance from her was enough to let him know he was sailing close to the wind.
The truth about what had happened with Zena was a secret she kept, uneasily, but out of necessity, for all their sakes. As she watched William pouring himself another drink, she had a fleeting sense of unease about whether she’d been too hard on him when he was growing up.
But then Zena skipped over and hugged her and the fella from the pub brought out his accordion, to the delight of the kiddies, who started waving their Union Jacks in time to his version of ‘Rule Britannia’, amid shouts of ‘We won the war!’ In that moment, the past was forgotten.
Ethel only wanted to look to the future now, a future that was as bright and sunny and vivacious as her beautiful daughter. She wasn’t anything like her father, Len, in looks, but then, daughters didn’t always take after their dads, did they?