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The War Comes to Witham Street

a Mushroom eBooks sampler

Copyright © 2003, Dr Jean Grundy Fanelli

Jean Grundy Fanelli has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published in United Kingdom in 2003 by Mushroom eBooks.

This Edition published in 2003 by Mushroom eBooks,
an imprint of Mushroom Publishing,
Bath, BA1 4BX, United Kingdom
www.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a sampler of The War Comes to Witham Street by Jean Grundy Fanelli. If you enjoy reading these sample chapters and would like to read the rest, you can buy the complete Mushroom eBook edition from the usual bookshops online, or find more details at www.mushroom-ebooks.com.

Contents

1 – WITHAM STREET
2 – THE DOWLANDS
3 – AT GRANDMA’S
4 – THE BROWNS
5 – THOUGHTS OF SCOTLAND
6 – HELEN VAUGHN
7 – FOOD AND SHELTER
8 – AIR-RAID AT THE DOWLANDS’
9 – A HOLIDAY
10 – SHIRLEY AND FRANKIE
11 – AUTUMN PASTIMES
12 – PETER AND HELEN
13 – THE COFFEE HOUSE
14 – MARTY’S TRIP TO HARTSHOLME
15 – SHOPPING
16 – THE BROWNS’ CHRISTMAS
17 – OUR CHRISTMAS
18 – THE NEW YEAR
19 – NEW YEAR ENTERTAINMENT
20 – THE DOWLANDS: GOODBYES
21 – SCHOOL AND WORK
22 – THE BROWNS FACE UP TO FACTS
23 – A SEWING BEE
24 – THE VE DAY STREET PARTY
25 – HOMECOMINGS
26 – BACK TO NORMAL
27 – CIVVY STREET
About the Author

1

WITHAM STREET

Sunday 27 August 1944.

It was a blustery day although the sun was stretching over the fenlands to Lincoln where we were celebrating our street entering the war. We had finally been given the chance to do our bit. The Yanks Were Coming – Over Here. Well, they were already over here really. In fact, they were swarming over the whole of Lincolnshire, but we hadn’t had much to do with them up till then. They weren’t an active part of our lives. Now they would be on our doorstep as our guests.

We had a whopping big banner hanging between two lampposts: ‘Witham Street Welcomes You’. The officer who had come to inspect the housing offered by the volunteer families had told everyone it was our rightful duty to offer hospitality to war-battered servicemen. They were on a rest and recuperate scheme and needed to sample real home comfort. Witham Street area had been promised three men, but in the end only two were assigned to us and only one was a Yank. The other was one of our own – it was a real disappointment.

Now the big day was here with everyone anxious to look the men over. All the women and a handful of embarrassed looking chaps were waiting to applaud loud and long. As the hour drew near, the sun finally climbed over the cathedral hill and smiled in good cheer. A faint chorus of ‘We’re Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’ gathered momentum until it became a call of triumph.

“And we’re going to do them proud,” Mum acclaimed in an ardent but trembling voice, wiping my nose with a starched hanky for the fourth time.

The way our street was decked out would have done King George VI, or even Winston Churchill himself, proud. Bunting criss-crossed the road from one bedroom window to another in sagging lines. Flags were everywhere. We children had tiny hand-held ones made of paper, which fluttered in the breeze. Tea-towel size ones were tacked in front windows or pinned to doors. Tablecloth size Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes, side by side, were fluttering in harmony from wooden flagpoles made out of props normally used for holding up washing lines. They had been hoisted to roof guttering height. There was even a ‘God Bless the Men Who Fight’ banner emblazoned across the baffle wall.

Almost all the women from the street were out there, hoping by this single act to make up for having passed almost all of the five years of the war so far in relative ease. The Browns were out in force. Tilly Brown was standing beside Mum, her arms folded, resolute and challenging. She would have pleased the most exacting sergeant major if his troops had stood like that in their landing craft before reaching the beaches of Dunkirk. She had her black dress on, which had white frills down the front. Being the size of Tessie O’Shea, but without the charisma, she looked like a sumo wrestler in a dinner jacket and natty bow tie. She eclipsed Mum into jockey size; if Mum had been wearing the same coloured frock, she would have passed for a bit dropped off.

The officer got ready for his speech. He had a clipped moustache and sleek hair mostly hidden by his peaked cap. There were wings attached to his jacket, and braid too. He climbed onto a wooden podium that the council had supplied and nodded to us all before addressing us. “By billeting them out with you we know that they will soon be back on their feet, soon back in action. It isn’t always easy to sacrifice your privacy, your time, even your patience. But your effort will not be forgotten. These men have had a bad time. Not physically, thank God, but mentally. That means that with the right treatment, the right comfort and a little help from you all, they will soon be well again. It is up to you to get them back on their feet. See that they have someone to talk to, to confide in, to laugh with. They need the normality of a family. We cannot give them that at an air force base. It is up to you. Your gesture will not only be appreciated by the men themselves, but by our country. You are contributing in no small way to winning the war. It is a war that is drawing to a close. Hitler is on the run. But we still need men to fight. We are most grateful for this gesture.”

When he had first asked for volunteers he got nine offers, although two of the families had a rethink and withdrew their proposals, so he was left with seven. The two chosen were the ones that offered the men a room of their own and the sort of comfortable life-style that the office obviously thought they were used to.

My mum, Amy Knight, was standing in front of the general gaggle. She was part of the welcoming committee, with the special duty of being in charge of the party food. In front of the women was a decrepit air-raid warden whose job was to supervise the crowd, although we were only lined up one deep so he was dealing more with a thin straggle. He marched along the gutter at the side of the road, back bent like a fishhook, down to the end house and back again. He did this continuously, his arms straight, swinging back and forth like those of a tin soldier. The slant of his tin hat, badly askew, betrayed his non-military status.

Tilly Brown, our neighbour, leaned over and whispered to Mum, “I do wish the old codger would stop traipsing up and down like a pregnant father. Gives me the willies.”

Slung over the warden’s shoulder was a gas-mask case, which was gaping. It appeared to contain a bag of sandwiches and a thermos flask with a tin cup on top. “Get them back on their feet, that’s what we have to do,” he called to us as he passed.

“If we let them loose on the hussy at Number Twenty-seven, the chaps will have a devil of a job getting off the bed, let alone on their feet,” muttered Mrs Brown in a voice now clearly meant to reach beyond Mum’s ear.

Mum tittered but then caught the warden’s eye, so reverted to a poker face again for him. “Stop fidgeting and stand still,” she ordered me before turning to Mrs Brown again, confiding, “We’ve had the war easy really. They aren’t asking much of us, are they? I’m pleased to give a hand.”

As the warden once more approached on his round, Mum yanked my arm so that I snapped to attention, mindful of my neat appearance. I was being very careful to keep the sash of my dress tied up so I looked my best, just as she had asked me. Although summertime, I had on my Sunday maroon woolly frock with its white Peter Pan collar. It itched, just like the oiled woolly vest, the liberty bodice with its fleecy lining and the thick brown stockings. It was like being laced between two flee-ridden sheepdogs. Nor was it fair. I was the only one there who was being smothered by cumbersome, bloodsucking beasts. Mum said I was delicate and needed special care.

Mum was in summer array. Goose pimples dotted her arms. She began placing her weight on one foot and shaking the other as if she were doing the hokey-cokey. She never joined in with the hokey-cokey at parties, as she said it was too common. Nice people danced waltzes or Old Time numbers, gliding to the tune of Sir Roger de Coverley. She changed feet now and then so as to relieve the ache of her pinching shoes. She patted her navy crêpe dress over her slim hips, pulling it into place so that the hemline ran true. She had made the dress herself for her first wedding anniversary; it was the only decent thing left in her wardrobe. She touched her light brown hair, pressing flat the regular waves, which bounced in lines above the wide sailor collar. Her snub nose, bow-shaped mouth and round, sparkling eyes seemed a leftover from a previous decade, from a time when petite, rotund features had been in fashion.

“Four o’clock and they’ll be here for sure.” The warden lifted his voice to a small group of women who had suddenly become tired of waiting and were starting to shuffle back home, like grandstand spectators at a race ten seconds after a horse has flashed past the winning post. The warden opened his mouth wider, giving us a full view of rotten teeth sprouting from under his floppy moustache. Then, cupping his open palms to his lips to form his own megaphone, he hollered, “Only ten minutes to go now. Have a little patience, my dears. It’s not much we’re asking of you. Just a little patience.”

By half past four, Mum was not only passing from one foot to the other, but also tap dancing as she switched over.

“I suffer from lack of proper circulation in my hands and feet. It isn’t good for my health to stand on the same spot like a ninny for all this time. If somebody doesn’t get a move on I’m going in to get our tea, welcome or no welcome,” she said to no one in particular. She had spent the best part of the morning over at the scout-hut making peanut butter sandwiches by the hundreds, and shaking white blancmange rabbits out of their moulds and splattering them into green jelly lawns. She was hoping to be appreciated for the time she had given, so I knew that statement must have cost her a lot.

The women began to murmur amongst themselves, buzzing like a lot of film set extras muttering ‘rhubarb’. The babbling increased, forming a soft choral background for the solo voices. Anonymous airings were tossed back and forth, each competing for a titter of laughter from a neighbour. I struggled to see who was speaking. My only vision was that of crêpe-de-chine clad buttocks. The spirit voices floated far away above my head like vapour vanishing into the blue.

“Who’s been picked to look after them then,” said one high-pitched voice.

“We’ve all got to look after them – see they aren’t lacking for company. One of us at a time, of course.” There was a communal giggle.

“Well, I made the roly-poly from ‘The Be-Ro Cookbook’ and that’s as far as it’s going!” said another.

“Roly-poly, my hat. I’ve had none of that for years.”

“I bags the best-looking one. Mind you, I miss my Harry, but I have to admit he must have been in the back row when they handed out fascination – Bela Lugosi’s leftovers. I bet they only have to show his face to the Huns to make them scarper. They’ll be using him as a weapon of war, bet your life.”

“Well, as these two lads have suffered shell shock or summat during their campaigns, I say that a bit of shenanigan is what they need. Should get ‘em back on their feet, and sharpish. They’ll return to the front with a kit-bag full of worthwhile memories, at least.”

The chuckling started again. Mum bent towards me whispering, “Don’t forget Jane, such rowdiness is common. They all want to be radio comediennes. Like Elsie and Doris Waters.”

“It’ll only be for a few weeks until they are posted. Hardly worth starting up a friendship,” came another twittering call.

“Who is talking about friendship?” shouted Mrs Brown, enjoying the banter and nudging Mum to make sure she was aware of her brilliant retorts.

Mum looked at me and grimaced. Then she took me to the corner of Lakeview Road, so I couldn’t hear any more comments or listen to the guffaws. We got a grandstand view of the gaggle as we looked back towards the rows of red roofs, which slanted in a playing card display towards the distant skyline. I could see one of the women had put on her newly knitted pink angora jumper with puff sleeves and was standing crushed against her fence so her bosom dangled over. She seemed to be sporting two oversized fuzzy show medals. From time to time she moved slightly, adjusting her stance and the sweetheart neckline, tweaking a kiss-curl from the edge of her turban. Mum said that folks like her made themselves totty, downright totty. “It’s daft dressing up to the nines like that. Looks as if she’s waiting to be discovered for the flicks. Instead of the David Niven type she thinks she’s getting, I bet they’ll be fellows with squints and ducks disease.”

“What’s duck’s disease?” I asked.

“Behind too near the ground. Probably have a goggly squint and be boss-eyed, too, you see. Some women have no sense of decorum. You have to learn that at an early age, Jane: that way you can avoid being common yourself. It’s better to be natural like us. You know, unadorned and unaffected. Still, what do they say? You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Common is as common does.”

I stared back at the pink snowballs. The jumper was a lovely colour and the lady did stand out in the crowd. She was a friendly soul, so when she saw me staring she waved at me. Mum caught the hand I was using to wave back and lowered it to my side.

Mrs Brown was marching over towards us. “Let’s get back to the scout hut, put the kettle on and mash the tea,” she suggested as she approached. “That’ll bring a smile to the fellows’ faces when they arrive. Make ‘em all happy. Happy as you can ever be in a war that is.” She stopped in her tracks. “One of them’s American. I don’t reckon they drink tea over there.”

“Well there isn’t any Bourbon whiskey so he’ll have to take pot luck like the rest of us. Tea’s our drink and tea it is. I better go and have a peek first, see if there is any sign of them.” Mum glanced back to look at the flock of cackling neighbours with their nodding heads, their flapping hands, their craning over dividing walls, their chin-wagging and casting of furtive glances towards the street corner. Off came the turbans, metal curlers, wave-clippers and pinafores. The women ruffled their newly released locks and, like emerging chrysalises, shimmered in the low sunlight.

From the corner we peered along Lakeview Road again to see if the promised jeep was in sight. It was – with a burst tyre. Three men were scrutinising the damage, one of them already jacking up the chassis to change the wheel. And they still had not reached our street. That would be another surprise for them. Our street was an obstacle course of the most exacting kind for anything on wheels – even a pram. The council had labelled it ‘unadopted’, as it belonged only to the occupants of the street. Mum said she would have been prepared to pay the rates on it to have it taken care of by the council. The council said that while the war was on it would be a crying shame to bother with it, as there were far more important things for them to spend their money on. Instead of a fluid sheet of asphalt we had jagged stones, gravel and gaping holes. Mrs Brown’s boy, Neville, said that a meteorite could have caused the largest of them, as it was that sort of shape. Or even a bomb. He said he had seen other holes like it down near the gas works. Mum said that was daft. We hadn’t had those sorts of bombs down our way. What had worked the nifty job on the road was neglect. And it was a cul-de-sac so no one ever showed much interest in getting it mended as only two of the inhabitants had cars. And they didn’t have any petrol either. She had once suggested that everyone in the street contribute a bucket of cement so that we could all mend it ourselves, but she only got three supporters and three buckets would only have filled one hole, so she gave up. Practically no vehicles ventured down our street at all; even delivery boys on bicycles preferred to walk from the corner or ride on the path. We children could play out there unattended and undisturbed all day. And we had gashed knees, grazed elbows, and holes in our woollen stockings to show for it.

Lakeview Road was long, stretching from the racecourse almost to the town centre. It was beautifully kept and had front gardens and paths edged with silver birches, which bowed low and wafted their fronds at you, like silken veils, as you passed. It was a posh road compared to all its tributaries.

Mum nodded towards the three men. One of them looked smarter than the others, distinguished by a uniform of a finer cloth, a smooth, lightweight stuff, with a cut far more tapered than that of the British man who wore woolly serge of the rough blanket variety.

“Hey, we took a wrong turn. Road’s pretty bad, guess we should have walked,” the Yank called.

Mum smiled and nodded, hiding for a moment behind a baffle wall, licking her index fingers, and passing the tips over her fair, pencil-slim eyebrows, arched by careful plucking to give an expression of permanent semi-amazement. She tucked the odd wisp of hair, which had escaped the orderly waves, back into place.

“They look nice fellows, don’t they Jane? Good-looking chaps, too. Wasting their time on the tyre, as we know. They have a fifty-fifty chance of it going again as soon as they turn into Witham Street.”

The men jumped back into the vehicle, revved the engine and swung the steering wheel, heading for our street. Mum and I preceded them as if we were leading a parade. I waved at the waiting crowd and they waved back and cheered. I felt like a gladiator entering the arena. The jeep slithered back and chugged into first gear, the space between us widening. We turned to see the driver had jerked to a halt, daunted by the dodgem car course needed to avoid floundering in one of the gaping holes. The three men jumped down. The American was tall and older than the English fellow. He had broad shoulders and golden fair hair glinting like sun on beaten corn, and with a parting from forehead to crown that led a crooked path. The English chap had flaxen hair and a shadow of a moustache that somehow gave him a look of faked ageing. With his gauche stance and look of silent resolve, he seemed ill at ease. He badly fitted his clothes. It seemed as if he had just taken any garment at random, whatever had been handed out to him, without being measured up for it.

The officer stepped forward, saluting with a sharp cut of his hand. The warden answered him with a similar gesture, although his movements were slacker, without the chiselled precision. With a snap of heels the accompanying officer then turned to face the four ladies of the committee. There was Mum, whose idea the whole reception was. Next came portly Mrs Brown, who had not really been elected to do anything but had pushed herself in as committee chairman because, as she said herself, she had a marked talent for organisation. Helen Vaughn was a quiet, genteel lady who was to take the English lad. And at the end was Valerie Dowland, who had volunteered to take the Yank. She stood out from the rest of the women, as she was taller and sort of lustrous, with the poise and stature of Vivian Leigh.

The four women nodded and smiled to one another, then at the warden and the men. With solemn pace in keeping with the officialdom expected, the men stepped forward to greet us. A general hum of voices lifted on the air, all echoing how pleased everyone was to meet them, how they hoped they would settle in, how they knew they were going to feel at home.

Mrs Vaughn placed a hand on the arm of the English youth, tugging his sleeve and leading him away. Mrs Dowland approached to do the same for her guest. The Yank suddenly found himself face to face with her, noses only a few inches apart. She slackened her speaking pace as she began “I’m sure we shall enjoy . . .” but her gaze held the fear of an actor forgetting his lines, and she ground almost to a standstill, like our wind-up gramophone did when it tired of Bing Crosby. The world had shunted to a dead-end. The women waited in line for Mrs Dowland to greet her guest who the officer said was named Martin. But she did not move forward. She was trapped in a slow motion gawk for what seemed to the others like a good ten minutes. Then the senior officer re-presented him formally, as if everyone had only been rehearsing up till then and we were having to do the scene all over again for the film shoot.

“This is Martin McLochlan. He is American, as you will gather when he opens his mouth to speak.” The officer coughed on to the back of his hand. “Which I expect will be quite soon.”

The American did not open his mouth, however. Apparently confused, he turned back to greet the other three ladies and a few neighbours who had pushed forward. He nodded to them one by one, smiling gently as he passed along the line, walking like the king and queen did, grasping at outstretched anonymous hands thrust before him, without looking up to see who they belonged to. Then he came face to face with Mrs Dowland again. Her hand was not outstretched but her eyes were looking up at his. Like an actor gathering his next lines, he glanced back towards the officer, the prompter, waiting for a sign from him, or a nod. Then she spoke loud and clear.

“Hello Lieutenant McLochlan. I’m Valerie Dowland. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay with us. We, that is me and my husband, hope you will feel most welcome. If you’d like to follow me I’ll show you where we live.” Valerie flicked her black hair off her shoulders and headed off away from the crowd. She turned to see if he was following, her Gaelic eyes flashing for a moment like fireflies on a warm evening.

Mum whispered to Mrs Brown “Wow. I have a feeling we might be in for a spot of trouble here. Everything’s been smooth running in our street up till now. And this reception was all my idea. I do hope we did the right thing and there won’t be any malarkey.”

Mrs Brown whispered back: “War doesn’t just affect those who go to fight. It affects us all in some way. You have to be prepared to accept that if you get involved.”

2

THE DOWLANDS

Monday 28 August 1944

The Dowlands lived just around the corner of Witham Street in Lakeview Road in one of the bay window, detached houses, which brayed its good taste to passers by. It had a front garden, which circled the house so you could get from front to back without a break. Plate size yellow roses sprawled across the front wall, hiding the cropped railing stumps. There was even a stone paddling pool covered by a grill where yellow kingcups sprouted from the edges of the water, just like they did at the Ornamental Pond on the Common. From a rockery above it, snow-on-the-mountain spilled over in wild delight.

Word had it that they had made their money in glass. George had been lucky in having a father who had passed on the firm to him to manage. They were a couple courting envy, for, as their neighbours noted, theirs was a success that had been handed to them on a plate.

Robert, the Dowlands’ son, stood out from most of the other children in the area in the same way as the white ball on a snooker table. He did not wear a jersey knitted in chameleon stripes made from leftover balls of wool and pulled-down jerseys like all the rest of the children, woollens presented as trendy pattern designs but really dowdy hand-me-downs - some were an embarrassment, as one could trace three generations of wearers through them. There were even homespun, irregular strands threaded through that told a tale of a great-grandma treadling the step of her spinning wheel, as she span wool sheared from Lincolnshire Longwool sheep. The Dowlands didn’t feel any compulsion to wear those knitted symbols of defiance in the face of war and times of need. Robert’s mother had never spent five minutes unravelling old jerseys. And he had never had the ‘Hold your arms straight and wide apart’ orders given to all assistant wool winders who grasped some old spoiled garment firmly at the rib while vicious hands dragged and jerked at the thread as they coiled it into a ball. Robert’s pullover was of soft lambswool and had Fair Isle patterns running across it in regular stripes. He wore a white shirt under it too. On Sundays Valerie dressed him in a tam-o’-shanter knitted in the same Fair Isle pattern as his pullover. At church, one woman had told him that it was a sissy outfit. And unpatriotic. She said that if she had had a son she would have fitted him out with a sailor’s uniform for best; she would never have dressed him as a pansy. Valerie told Robert that the woman was jealous. It was the lot of those better off to be victims of jealousy.

Robert had to face the further embarrassment of his father having been exonerated from military service because of the state of his health. Mrs Brown of Witham Street had said within earshot, “That says it all. Not ruined by the mines though. Oh, no. Never been on the factory floor either. A shirker if you ask me.”

Amy Knight had asked “Why is he poorly? And why don’t they keep him in bed then?”

“Consumption. TB. Caught from too much bathing at Boultham no doubt. Like all service dodgers he’s got a comfy chair under his fat backside, he has. But he’s set squarely for the future. Now that his own father’s retired he’s running the firm his way and making a packet.”

The Dowlands, like other people with an above average income, seemed to be in a world of their own. At call-up time, when Robert was four, George Dowland had received his papers, only to be promptly exempted due to his past record of health problems. Since then, except for the food rationing, the war had done little to change the routine. And after five years, their lives still jogged into step like a synchronised tap-dance duo of Nicholas Brothers perfection.

On the morning a few days after the presentation of the yank, Valerie was preparing a kipper for her husband, along with her own porridge for breakfast. She served them in the dining-room which was graced by floral tributes to their well-being: a cloth with flowers embroidered in satin stitch, whose design was modelled on the tea roses painted in miniature on the Worcester porcelain tea service. As he drew up his chair, George would look at his watch, smile, toss her a compliment from his stock pack of five, and then prop his Daily Express up against the chrome toaster. Valerie said, as she had every morning for years, that using the toaster’s swing-down sides was becoming a tussle. He nodded, apparently unaware that Valerie’s statement was a subtle request for change. Occasionally, at the end of an article, he cast an eye in her direction, nodded his approval of the flawless gait of their lives, of the sheer harmonic blending, of the pleasant chug holding the family in its train of fulfilled domesticity.

“Things all right at the office?” Valerie said, beginning to clear away the crockery.

“Of course. Why shouldn’t they be?”

Even at his office the impact of the war was marginal. Only the nature of the products George made at the glass factory changed. The war meant fewer luxury items, like vases, soap-dishes and inkwells, goods with which the firm had made its name decades before when opaline had suddenly been top fashion. War meant more windowpanes, torches, lamps, windscreens, and hospital equipment.

“The Yank enjoyed the party, did he? Sorry I couldn’t make it. You know how it is. Some chap came to check on our production. Business will never pick up while these Nazi fiends are around. Did you hear the planes going over last night? Hope they were on target over there and gave the bastards hell. How long will this war go on? It’s already been five years. Who wants to buy crystal with a war on?”

“But I thought you were producing glass for vehicles, and goggles, and submarine parts, and…”

George interrupted. “I am. But they aren’t bringing in much of a profit. Crystal bowls and vases are by now only a sideline.”

“I would have thought . . .” Valerie began, but George was pushing his chair aside, tossing his napkin on the cloth, turning to go.

“I may be back late,” he called as he looked round for his briefcase. “By the way, I was thinking about Robert’s sore throat. Don’t take him to the surgery any more. There’s an excellent child specialist up near Yardley Crescent. Past his prime really. Doddery in fact. Still, I hear he’s a wizard in his field. You could give him a try.”

“It’s only a bit of inflammation. I’ll get some Friar’s Balsam. That usually works.”

“Valerie. I said go to the specialist. You never know.” George handed her a slip of paper with the name of the doctor.

“All right dear.” Valerie moved to clear away, pushing his carver chair under the table.

“When’s the Yank due?” George stopped in his tracks in the doorway on his way out.

“I don’t know. He seemed to enjoy the high tea at the scout hut and meeting all the neighbours, but he didn’t say anything about when he would be back. I expect he’ll be on duty all day today: he still has to be at the base. He’ll turn up sometime. Anyway, he has his own key, doesn’t he? Don’t worry George, we are not responsible for him or anything. He’s just here to enjoy the company, take an occasional meal and use the back room when he doesn’t fancy the barracks, that’s all. It was some kind of project. Involve the locals in the war effort. I feel that we had done so little in the past five years. This is a way of helping those who have not been as fortunate as we have. They wanted a nice, stable, happy family to help him through a hard time. That was us, wasn’t it?”

“You should not have volunteered without asking me. I would probably have said ‘Yes,’ but it should have been me who had the final word. I would have liked to have been consulted as head of the household,” George said as he turned to the door. “And believe it or not I am contributing in my way, even at work.” The door slammed shut and was followed by the harsh crack of the latch of the outside gate.

“Come on, Robert. We must go to the doctor’s. Otherwise Daddy’ll be angry tonight as well. I wonder if he sits today. We’ll have to go to the surgery and look up his hours. Feeling poorly, poppet?”

“I’m better. I don’t want the doctor’s. Look.” Robert stuck out his tongue to show a pale pink glow.

“Well, my wee lamb, you have made a miraculous recovery. No doctor then. I knew you wouldn’t need him. Just Daddy making a fuss. I know. We’ll go round to your Grandma’s. She’ll be pleased to see us. And today is Whitton’s Park day and I bet Grandad’ll have a lot of ideas for fun there. Perhaps he can teach you how to play football – he keeps promising he will.”

Valerie left Robert at the home of her in-laws, bought a few groceries in the town and caught the bus home laden with a shopping basket of groceries. Swivelling her body to push the door open with her arm, she twirled round, spilling the goods into the kitchen while trying to dump as much as she could on the kitchen table. She reached for the wireless, twisting the knob and turning up the volume as she waited for the crackling to stop. It was a programme for servicemen and women away from home, all of them hoping to get in touch with what they termed their ‘loved ones’. It struck Valerie that such a high percentage of ecstatic loved ones ran against nature. War tightened up affections for sure. But when they were back together again? Could there be that many ecstatic people around. ‘Forces’ Favourites’, a wallow into the sadness of partings, of loneliness, of aspirations, of the joy of a simple word, bleeped its message to her. A band struck up with ‘You’ll Never Know’. How lucky she had been, she told herself: no problems to face on her own, no partings, no breaks in the routine, and no heartache. That was the secret of contentment: nothing to disturb the routine.

A voice, of suave gentility, announced that a certain Mrs Edna Clara Wallace was pining for her husband of six months. She had only spent one of those months with him. She wanted to assure him of her undying love. She would be waiting for him, for however long it took. She had chosen a song they had danced to before he left for an unknown destination. It was ‘Thank You so Much for that Lovely Weekend’. The husky loudspeaker breathed the voice into the room, strains of the melody seeping into the warmth of the surroundings and splicing its harmony in the cosy hearth.

Valerie sat with her teacup of Co-op tea, staring at her hands and envying just a little the intensity of the sentiment. The announcer then told her that so many requests had been received for the next number – an Al Bowlly song – that he was going to play his own favourite amongst Al’s successes: ‘Love is the Sweetest Thing’. He dedicated it to a girl in ATS uniform who was looking forward to getting to know some bloke she had never met, but who had been writing to her for three years and was at this moment on a troop ship. She had fallen in love with his letters. The announcer hoped the simplicity of the message of the song and Bowlly’s voice would bring home to this mysterious, steadfast friend, whom the ATS girl named as Syd, the affection that she was feeling for him. Valerie wondered how long anyone would stay on a troop ship, if troop ships had wirelesses, and how many Syds were out there listening to the wireless at this moment.

Valerie hummed the words of the song to herself, afraid that she might be overheard. ‘No bird upon the wing can in our hearts more greatly sing, than love’s own story . . .’ It was pure slush. Probably written in half an hour for a dance band – and by someone who wanted quick cash for a drink. But still tears welled behind her eyes.

Upstairs, still picking up bits of the melody here and there, she sat squarely before the dressing table, a sturdy design of hefty oak carved with a frieze of Tudor roses. Facing her were sectional mirrors with rounded corners that one could swing back and forth. George had had them purposely cut at the factory for the cabinetmaker. The face staring back at her was split into sunray segments; a wedge of cubism shot by a prismatic rainbow projected itself on the far wall as the mirrors caught the rays of the sun stretching across the room. Valerie concentrated on the wide central looking-glass, scrutinising her reflection, tucking her hair round an elastic to roll it, plucking her eyebrows so that they formed an arch of surprise, and screwing her lips up into a pucker. She left them pale, saving the lipstick on the dresser for best. Better not be reduced to cochineal tint for lips and cheeks; cochineal was made of crushed beetles. She rubbed her face to give it a rosy glow. That gesture reminded her of when she used to get ready to see George. But that was now more than ten years ago.

Valerie Dowland had met him in the spring of 1934. She remembered the first thing that struck her about him was his dark, sallow features. He had been sent on a training course to London, before taking over his father’s firm at the age of only twenty-eight. His father was gouty and worried constantly about who would carry on if he cracked up. Valerie, just eighteen, had a job with her own father, as his assistant, which mostly meant reminding him of his appointments and when to take his pills. Her mother had been adamant about having her daughter leave Aberdeen with him for London as a treat for her birthday, so she might finally get to see the bright city lights she had so craved. Father and daughter travelled overnight on the Royal Scot.

George was in the canteen at lunchtime on the first day. He was standing aloof, leaning against the far wall, a glass of milk in hand. Painfully thin with hollow cheeks, he had the look of a poet obsessed by the thought of committing his thoughts to paper while he still had time. Valerie’s father introduced himself and spent a little while swapping information about marketing methods, something on which he was an expert. Valerie, trying hard not to yawn hung in the background, although she noticed that George peered round her father’s body to glance at her from time to time. At the lemon curd tart course she whispered to her father that it might be a good idea if she did a little sightseeing. She asked, planting a kiss on his balding head, if he minded being on his own for a few hours. He said he did. Or rather he did not think it was a suitable thing for a girl of her age to go gallivanting around a big city like London on her own. Valerie sighed and left for the adjacent room where she slumped into the nearest armchair, glad to avoid the next barrage of sales talk.

George took a seat next to Valerie’s father when the men got together again for the afternoon session. “I say, sir,” he leaned forward towards him, murmuring low so as not to be heard by the man expounding some method of how to boost sales by mail order. “Would it be all right if I took your daughter on a short sight-seeing trip? Nothing tiring, mind you. It’s just that this afternoon isn’t really of much interest to me. Not my subject – ‘Selling by post’, especially as we trade in glass! But I’d be delighted to have her company and a chat and all that.”

“See what she says. I expect she’ll be happy to oblige.”

George bent low and half-crawled from the room to avoid the panning eyes of the speaker, then dashed into the pavilion where he found Valerie taking tea. She was thumbing through a pile of magazines whose titles all flaunted words like ‘purchase’, ‘sell’, ‘profit’, or ‘market’. He began: “I was talking to your father.”

“Oh.” Valerie looked up towards the slender, smoothly dressed man peering over her. She scrutinised him carefully. He had dark brown hair, which was neatly parted and shiny, an effect obtained by the combination of rigorous brushing and regular dots of hair cream. His suit was a navy pinstripe, which he had matched with a navy tie with just one fine white stripe cutting across. He reeked of self-confidence. She wondered if he ate enough as his cheekbones were taut, and the skin that clothed the long bones of his fingers was tense and whiter near the knuckles. His nose, his mouth, and his forehead were all chiselled in regular smooth curves. He did not smile, nor did he seem inclined to let his feelings ever reach beyond his inner gaze.

“Yes. I knew you wanted to see something of London and, well, I thought I’d offer to take you and show you around.”

“I’m glad for the break.” Valerie deliberately slowed down the rate she was stirring her tea.

“We could start with Kensington which is a smart area to explore. You know, just wander round – see what we find.”

Valerie seemed to ponder the question for longer than it deserved. Did she really want to go? Of course she did. This place was tedium personified. She would at least get to see a few of those monuments they stuck on postcards. She could at least say she had seen Nelson’s Column. She tried to think of something of sightseeing value in Kensington and remembered the statue of Peter Pan. “Well, that sounds pleasant. Why not?” she answered, tossing the magazines back onto the occasional table and picking up her hat.

They toured Knightsbridge and Kensington High Street with its shops spilling an over-abundance of frills and spangles, and where mannequins of bisque stiffness peered into nothingness. In the High Street the windows sported clothes for a life Valerie could only dream of: jungle khaki, picnic hampers fit for ten guests, shimmering beaded silk for receptions, and a bridal train which could trip up eight bridesmaids at one go. They headed towards Chelsea, looking into dwarfish workshops: artists’ studios, places where craftsmen carved wood to fine patterns, workrooms for tailors and seamstresses, and a few which proclaimed with pride that they were temporarily closed for renovation. Nearer the river, an acrid smell of sewers seeped through, mixing with the light breeze. George took her arm to steer her onto the Embankment. There they gazed down at the green plane of water where tugs chugged up and down, barges moored to the banks rattled their chains, and steamers honked their horns and belched long chains of smoke towards Battersea.

“I say,” said George, “now we’re away from the hubbub, why don’t we sit here and get ourselves a drink? We can stop and watch the river awhile. There’s a Lyons over there. Although it might be even better if we found a hotel with a nice comfortable lounge. We could get something to eat. Although, it’s getting on. I told your father I wouldn’t bring you back too late.”

Valerie wondered why her father had been so complaisant about letting her go. It was not like him. Anyway, she should have been consulted as to the hour of her return, and whether or not she really wanted to go out with George. Men presumed where women queried.

The drink slipped into dinner with hors d’oeuvres served in chafing dishes and with fancy ice cream sundae for dessert. The walk back was an exchange of pleasantries. George expressed a wish to continue the friendship. He said he had to leave the next day, but would be in touch as soon as he could.

“I tell you what,” he turned and took her hand, “I’ll come and see you in Scotland – next weekend.”

“That’s very soon.” Valerie wanted to retract the words as soon as they had fallen from her lips. People were presuming again. Did she want a stranger to visit her at home? It’s only a visit, she told herself. What is a visit? Common sense and her mother’s instinct for right and wrong had instilled in her a truth: one should never begin something that one was not interested in continuing. It was not fair.

“I don’t know. It would be nice to see you again but it is such a long way. And I don’t believe there’s a direct train from where you live.”

“I know. But I should still like to make the journey. However, if you don’t think it worth it for me . . .” George’s voice trailed off into the chill air, which had shrouded the riverbank. He adjusted his trilby and buttoned his trench coat so as to trap his scarf at his neckline. His pallor had taken on the ashen tint of the mist over the river.

Valerie was gripped by gross panic, it was as if an executioner had just asked her if she preferred a noose, a firing squad, or an electric chair. A flush swept to her neck and her face, rushing uncontrollably up to the very roots of her black hair. She grasped her coat around her, pulling the collar up to hide her ruddy features.

“This is surely not a lifetime decision. I just thought it would be nice to come and see you. If this upsets you and if you really would prefer me not to, then just say ‘No, thank you’. It isn’t a problem.” George released his grip on her arm and stepped back a little.

Valerie looked at him from over the top of her sleek coat-collar. There was nothing objectionable about George, and so there was no real reason to refuse. He was good-looking in a lean, hungry way. He was manager of a firm that was practically his own now. He liked her. So without warning she heard herself saying, “Well, that would be nice. I’ll look forward to seeing you next Friday evening then.” Valerie waited for the feeling of elation. Girls did feel elated at such times. But the panic had already dissolved into foreboding. She felt she had tangled her foot in a rose briar, one that she could have easily stepped over had she been careful.

As visit followed visit, she had had to admit that George had a stockpile of good traits. His behaviour was exemplary. Just the sacrifice of the time-consuming journey was, in itself, a demonstration of his worth as a suitor. Lincoln to Aberdeen meant not only numerous changes and a long wait at Newark for the main-line train north, but also long stretches in unheated carriages. And there was smoke from the engine seeping in through the windows, guzzling his throat and inciting his chronic cough to rebellion. Despite warnings from his doctor about the dangers of anxiety, both physical and psychological, which might cause his TB to flare up again, George resolutely continued his quest. He was a businessman and that meant following up decisions with actions.

When George reached Aberdeen, he found the time left for pleasantries scythed to little more than one day. A lesser man would have botched an exercise needing such cramming. But George put into that brief time span all the charm he could muster. He sought out places of historic interest, he looked up maps of country walks, and he found the cosiest places for tea. When he said goodbye his face showed no particular distress. He merely said that he was looking forward to the next visit, if he might be allowed it. He hinted that he might not be able to make the journey the following weekend – because of business, of course. When he turned up after all, his effort was doubly appreciated.

Valerie was not quite sure what she was supposed to feel towards a man who took such trouble, who threw himself head over heels into courting. She reasoned that he must know some girls back home, so if he was now prepared to go to such lengths to see her, she ought to beware of leading him on. She asked herself time and again in her dressing-table looking glass if he was what she really wanted. With the honesty one can only give oneself, and in secret, she replied ‘Not really’. But it was pleasant. Pleasant was the strongest word she mustered. If she asked herself how much she enjoyed many of the days when he was not there, at least half of them would also have been described as ‘pleasant’ too. Especially enjoyable were her reading days, her walking-in-the-heather days, her afternoons at the Women’s League of Health and Beauty, and, especially, her meetings at the local branch of the Women in Politics group. If she assessed all her activities, the days with George came out in the upper half. But they did not come out first. She felt a stab of guilt when she mulled over these statistics. How could she be so callous, she who so wanted a new life? Why, most women would clutch at George’s coat lapels till their knuckles turned white. They would have had no scruples whatsoever about tearing any rival’s hair out by the roots for him.

The day after he departed, Valerie used to spend the whole afternoon staring at her reflection in the mirror, trying to work out just what someone in her position should feel. Then, it came to her. She ought to miss him when he was not there. She ought to miss him desperately. And be distraught. And be ready to make sacrifices, and to die if he should ever leave her. She ought to sit for hours scribbling his name on her blotter at the office, and then more hours writing her own Christian name coupled with his surname to see what her married signature might look like. She tried it. But the words ‘Valerie Dowland’ gave her no more excitement than the name ‘Woolworth’ or ‘David Grieg’ on a shop-front.

“I should gaze at the name and find a kind of magic there,” she told the reflection. “And I should not agree with my mother when she notices that George is a little impatient at times, but fight to prove he has no flaws and no faults. I should be blind to all except the man, a godly being, a Zeus, someone who could make even the saints in heaven envious.”

When she finally succumbed to her fate it was neither to George with the beguiling manner, nor to George The Successful Businessman, nor even to George The Dependable Future, but to her parents’ smiling approval. She heard them hand out compliments about George with the freedom they showed when tossing dry crusts for the birds: perfect manners, the corsages for her dress, the late dinners in posh places where salmon was served for starters, the frequent telephone calls to her father’s office to pass messages. How impressed they were when he took her out and showed extreme concern for getting her home two minutes precisely before curfew. They knew how terribly bright she had been in finding someone so dependable, as dependability was such a rare quality in those of George’s generation. Men were normally so selfish, so engrossed in their own feelings. But George was someone she would be able to rely on in the future. George was someone who would take the burden of responsibility off their shoulders. George would be there for her, and her family, as long as he lived.

She had been awarded some important prize, one for finding the right man at the right time, for having a pale complexion, smooth enough to captivate him, for having landed a prize perch without even casting a line. George was a passive trophy, one she would have to accept instead of the one she craved, the one that would have been fodder for her brain, the one for being in the top few in her school, for Higher School Certificate, or for the only woman in a science unit at Edinburgh University. She would, after all, have been one of only two girls out of her class to be accepted that year – perhaps the only one to get a State Scholarship. Even a prize for the best shorthand taker in the evening school she had been forced to attend would have done.

The mirror looked back at her and underlined the hunch of common sense. How could she refuse such a man? Of those thousands of women out there, all looking for a model of masculinity, the majority failed in their quest. She was lucky. And sooner or later she was bound to marry, as almost all those not set on the road to university did. The alternative was spinsterhood, the ‘old maid’ tag. She would have to live on the margins of a society that based a woman’s success on the status of her husband. Hers would be that horror of conditions where one ceased shaving ones legs, wore flat, bunion-deformed shoes, let one’s bosom drop to four inches below the armpit line and had only one choice for a companion, a fellow sufferer. She would be left waiting for a future that never came, a future of one long drawn out lull. With George she would be saved from that dreaded malady, one that her mother declared to be the supreme affliction of the indecisive.

Valerie watched from the window for the approaching train. She was certain now. It would be goodbye to those three years of office boredom, three years of clock-watching, of sneaking books under her desk to read in slack moments. George would mean a new career: no more obligations of paper sorting; no more stamp-sticking, letter folding, typing on an old Remington with several keys that stuck, no more tea-making and the constant sweaty stench of a dank cubby-hole with a Calor gas ring. George offered a haven, unlocking the escape hatch from the pettiness of the other clerks, the wall staring, the no-prospects future. And she would once more be Daddy’s girl. No more rebel talk of wasting years at University. She could agree with him that careers were for men and men only. Men had to support families. That is why they got larger salaries than women did. Men were breadwinners. Men must be helped and nourished by their wives who, content with their lot, smile with pride at their husband’s achievements. Better still, they smile in the background, dressed in a little white apron, a pudding basin and whisk poised at the ready, just like in the adverts of Ideal Home.

She visualised George in the train, smiling to himself in the dank carriage. Did he know that courting was the stuff that schemes were made of? She only knew courting from films, with phrases of ritual dealt out like playing cards: ‘I feel so happy when I’m with you’, ‘I love you and I know you love me even if you are not sure of your own feelings yet’, the ‘You’ll be the perfect wife’, and ‘We must get married as we’re made for each other.’

Valerie rubbed her cheeks to a red glow just before she met him. Then, when he patted his pocket, which concealed a platinum ring set with a diamond, she told herself, with good grace and even a little enthusiasm, that fate had taken a hand.

George had put a photo of their engagement party on his office shelf. It showed Valerie holding her ring finger towards the camera and casting her eyes towards her feet. It stood alongside his diploma from the local business-training scheme and a trophy he had won at school for chess. The wedding was held in Lincoln, at Eastgate Church, and in all the photos there was a glimpse of the Cathedral towers in the background. Another session of photos of the wedding group was arranged for later in the day at Harrison’s studios in the High Street. Valerie replied to her new husband’s question of ‘Happy?’ with ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ Indeed, that was the truth. There was no reason why Valerie should not be happy.

Robert’s arrival little over a year later was a joy. Valerie dressed him in Vyella romper suits embroidered across the yoke with frolicking lambs. She brushed his fair hair up into a quiff with a soft baby-blue hairbrush and rubbed Curlitop into it every evening. As he grew and with the fashions adapted to the coming war, she refused the utility suits on offer at the Co-op. They may have been perfect for dragging on to a child in ten seconds flat, but they made Robert, with his chubby cheeks, look like a swaddled piglet. She obtained a cut of pale blue woollen material, through some rep friend of George’s, to make him a jacket and short trousers instead. She took him to Harrison’s once every six months, and the array of photos, all of identical Little Boy Blue coyness, with the date written in one corner, had been placed on the top of the grand piano in the living-room, alongside a swathe of printed invitations to balls and parties.

“Yes,” said Valerie to herself in the mirror, “it is a well-ordered, pleasant life. And George is a man to be respected. For that, I suppose, I have been lucky.”

Back in the kitchen, two slices of the cold joint from the larder were placed alongside tomatoes and a minute wedge of Cheddar. She smeared two slices of bread as thinly as possible with margarine and turned the wireless up so as to hear the news clearly. Then, she heaved on a pair of wellington boots, tucking the legs of her slacks into the tops ready for an afternoon was dedicated to the garden. Seeds were sprinkled in all the odd, fallow corners. Then there was tying kidney beans, now yellowing and stringy, to stakes and collecting crab apples for jam making. She went into the shed storeroom to find empty Kilner jars, counting all those that were now full standing in rows on a shelf, admiring the mishmash of hues from the beans, plums, beetroot, apple puree, and cherries. As she emerged from the shed balancing several empty jars in her arms, she noticed a lone figure near the gate. Edging to the privet hedge she peered through.

The man smiled faintly on seeing her, showing fine even teeth.

“Hi. I’m Marty. Remember me? You took me to the getting-to-know-you party? Hope I’m not intruding. I finished early at the base. Thought I’d drop round and give a hand.”

She moved forward to let him in, noticing now that, without his uniform, he seemed younger and infinitely more vulnerable. And where yesterday’s eyes had sparkled and danced, today’s were deep-water wells that concealed unknown treachery.

“Why should you intrude? This is to be your home, remember? Come in and make yourself comfortable. Better still, I’m going to ask you to give a helping hand. Anybody who so much as hints at a willingness to roll their sleeves up is never refused. Times like these don’t allow for ceremony. Here, hold this bucket so we can throw in the crab apples, will you?”

Marty followed her round the lawn, collecting the fallen, scabby fruit, tearing off the curled leaves that clung stubbornly, refusing to accept their autumn fate.

“Oh, lovely. Done already,” said Valerie, admiring the overflowing bucket. “Just need a wash and they’ll be ready. I can make plenty of jam with them. I wonder if they bottle? I say, if you like you could strip the peas, too, and I’ll shell them. There you are, give me an inch and I take a yard.” She sat at the wooden table and placed two beige pottery bowls on a tray in front of her, and splitting the pods, running her finger down the insides, sliding out the bright, soft peas.

“I make stock with the pods. Nothing here is thrown away. Well, only a few grubs. I looked up the nutritional value of pea pods. I got a leaflet at the clinic with Robert’s free orange juice and cod liver oil. You know, pea pods are definitely worth cooking. A bit stringy, but full of goodness.” She walked into the kitchen and filled a large saucepan with water, throwing the washed pods into it. Then she fitted a pudding basin with potatoes in the bottom between them. On top she placed a steamer with the fresh peas.

“You don’t have to give a hand, you know. Really. You are our guest. You can say ‘No’ if you like.”

“Fine. I’ll remember that. You know, somewhere way back we had Shakers in the family. Great-great-aunts and uncles, I guess. Ma told me that their idea of praying to the Lord was just to work hard. Said that working was as holy as prayer. It must have brushed off on me. I sort of feel guilty when I’m idle. Even now I don’t seem to be able to sit and do nothing. In my spare time I’m always doing something. I read, write poems, tinker with machines, even cook.”

“I suppose I’m lucky. I still have a man around the house. Not like most of the women around.”

“You can’t suppose you’re lucky. You either are or you’re not. There’s no ‘suppose’.”

“I suppose so.”

“There you go again. I guess you’re one of the few people whose life hasn’t changed that much. Say, I hope your husband doesn’t mind having a stranger hanging around. I guess I can’t expect him to be enthusiastic. Must be used to a quiet life. You neither. I don’t think I really wanted to be part of the scheme – I was convinced that the British are far too closed up to offer open house to a stranger.”

“Why? You’ve seen too many films. The type where they all have stiff upper lips, like Ronald Coleman or David Niven. Hollywood doesn’t really portray England as it is – or the English for that matter. Let alone a Scot like me. Anyway, we are both pleased to be able to help. It’s our way of sharing our good fortune with others. It’s our war effort. Besides, you’ll be at the base most of the time, won’t you?”

“Sure, I have to show up for duty. And I can even sleep there. I still have my bunk”

“What is the duty?”

“Not much at the moment. Lincolnshire air bases don’t seem to need that many extra instructors. So I guess they don’t quite know what to do with me.”

“What did they do with you before?”

“Flying. I was part of an air-crew,” Marty said over his shoulder as he went to fetch his kit bag.

“Lieutenant, I’m sure you’ll want to settle in before we have our meal. In fact, we still have time for tea. I’ll show you where your room is, where you can wash. And I’ll get you something to drink.” Valerie led the way to the landing above. She indicated the spare room.

“Wow. Gee, what a bed – and a real silk eiderdown,” said Marty slinging his kit bag onto the floor.

“It was my grandmother’s. It came down to me along with all the rest of her furniture.”

“This is luxury.” Marty lay on the covers. His toes reached over the end of the bed rail. He turned quickly on his side with his knees bent so that he appeared to fit in easily.

Valerie laughed. “Never thought about the bed being too short. I’ll wait for you downstairs in front of the fire with tea.”

She set out the dainty tea set with the care of a museum curator arranging fossil bones. “Perhaps you prefer coffee, although I don’t know what you’re used to. I’ve only got Camp liquid,” she called to Marty as he bounded over the last stair.

“Camp what?” he said.

“It’s coffee extract in a bottle.”

“I’m used to tea. We had it at home. I’m only one generation American. My mom and dad were born in Scotland.”

“So were mine,” Valerie said, spooning out two small spoons from the wooden tea caddy. “What part?”

“Aberdeen.”

“No! Mine, too.”

“I’d been promising myself a trip over for years, just to see where my roots are. They came to the States as kids but it was still real to them. When I said I was going to war, they kept telling me to go and look up their cousins. It was as if a posting overseas was a great chance to get to know the family. Didn’t work out like that. No time for visiting, so far. Still, who knows? I might make it one day.” Marty poured in milk from a small bone china jug, stirring his cup for more time than necessary. “You know, you just mustn’t treat me this well, Mrs Dowland. I just might start getting used to it. Can’t afford that. Sooner or later they’re going to ship me back to where I came from. Give me tea in a chipped enamel mug and ration me to one Marie biscuit a day.”

“The war can’t last for ever. It’s been going for so long. But there are signs of victory now, aren’t there?”

“There have been signs before. But the enemy musters more troops and makes comebacks. Wasn’t there a Hundred Years’ War once?”

“What an optimist.”

Marty laughed. A stray lock of hair fell on to his forehead. He brushed it back in an automatic gesture. “Yeah. They were scraping the barrel when they took me at thirty. If it goes on much longer they’ll be into the forty-year-olds and then, who knows? Mind you, I don’t suppose they would have bothered with me at all. Just that I had done some flying years before. In a sort of junior military camp. That meant I was down on their list for whenever they might need. Expect they reckoned I’d remember the skills.”

“Am I allowed to ask why you were chosen for our scheme?”

“I’d just come out of hospital. The American hospital at Nocton. The commanding officer thought it would be worth a try, to get me back into the swing.” Marty lifted his cup and saucer, reaching over for more tea. “I told you. I guess they just didn’t know what to do with me. Offering a rest cure in flat Lincolnshire would give me a break. Wouldn’t be too exciting. And I would get to hear the bombers taking off so I’d have no chance to forget that it was still wartime; that I’d not been let off the hook and sooner or later I’d have to get back in the thick of things.”

“Why Nocton? Were the injuries severe?” she said, adding, “You look well.”

He adjusted himself in the armchair, turning slightly so that his face was towards the fire.

“No,” he replied, “There were no injuries to my body at all.” He rose from the chair, placing his cup on the tray. “Well, just breathed in more smoke than was good for me. But no real injuries. Oh, thanks for the tea. Maybe I should go and freshen up or something. By the way, I managed to get some stuff for you. There’s some fruit. And I’m one of the few guys who doesn’t smoke, so I traded in my rations for chocolate and nuts and other odds and ends. One guy gave me the stockings he was saving for his girl. She jilted him. I guess it’s not the sort of present you bring a lady you don’t even know. Still, he chose the packet of Craven A, so here you are.”

She picked up the paper bag, pulling out one of the stockings slowly and stroking it to feel the texture, as if it were rabbit fur. “I’ll have to save them for best. They seem so fragile. My goodness, how fine the thread is. But thank you. You don’t know how pleased I am with them. My last pair has been darned so much that it resembles sacking: I look as if I have scars on my legs. With so many criss-cross threads you could even play noughts and crosses.”

Valerie poked the fire, turning the coals so that the bright red glow lit up their faces, and caused them to flush. “You must be cold. English houses are cold, aren’t they?” she said.

“This is the only English house I have ever stayed in. You can’t count the Officers’ Mess. And it wasn’t too warm there I can tell you. I expect even cold houses become a way of life, if you get to stay long enough that is.” His gaze was fixed on the embers. “I’d only been over here two months before the accident. That was a month ago. Three months in all. Three months to the day.”

He moved slightly, hitching his chair a little towards the fire and away from her. Valerie sat down again in the chintz armchair. She placed the tea set on the butler’s tray table, balancing the tray on the rickety legs with care. Then she poured into the teapot more hot water and arranged a crinoline lady tea cosy over the pot with the spout and handle sticking out from the slots in the skirt. “The tea has to ‘mash’ as they say down here,” she said.

Marty was engrossed in his thoughts, his gaze pouring over the tunnelling glow deep in the fire. She filled his cup with tea again and handed him a plate of biscuits.

“Do have one. We call them squashed-fly biscuits. Bit off-putting. They are really called ‘Garibaldi’. I brought half a pound back from the Co-op today.” She plucked several more biscuits from the paper bag. “I complained about them being broken, but they’d sold all the whole ones. Some women like broken pieces; they’re cheaper. Although you still have to use your coupons.”

“Look, I’ll help you wash up. I’m great at keeping house. Had to look after myself for years at college and when I first started out at law school.” He collected the crockery, placing it carefully on the tin tray. Before she could protest he had swept the tray from her hands, swinging it into the kitchen, running hot water into the sink, sprinkling a generous dose of Omo powder on top and frothing it with his hands.

“No, really, I . . .” Valerie protested, catching hold of the sleeve of his jacket, laughing as she did so. Marty placed his hands, still holding the Omo packet, behind his back as Valerie made a grab.

“Look, we’re going to have to sort out who is boss,” Valerie said as her hand darted round his body.

“Well, who is boss?” the voice at the door asked. “And why not share the joke?” They both turned. George Dowland was standing in the doorway, briefcase clutched in one hand and Robert clinging to the other.

3

AT GRANDMA’S

Mum had not been asked to take one of the men, just to organise the Witham Street Welcome. She seemed worried about the men not knowing that ‘Witham’ was a river. It was difficult really not to be aware of the fact as the water theme had flooded the area, with streets named Derwent, Severn, Leven, and Tay. Mum looked all of them up in our Philip’s Atlas and noted whether they were lakes, rivers or some other watercourse. Ours, being named after the local river, which nobody who lived beyond the city boundaries had ever heard of, demoted us to provincial status. We were the country cousins. She was deeply disappointed about that. She said she would have really liked something with a wider appeal, something in the style of ‘Thames Avenue’ or ‘Windermere Drive’, if she had been given the choice that is. She was of the opinion that councillors who decided on such matters were generally too rough and ready to be capable of choosing anything classy. This was also due to the fact that those left in the city were all over forty and so completely out of touch with modern trends.

Mum had once said that the families who lived in Rhineland Avenue were the best off. Sounded really exotic – turreted castles, knee breeches and tankards of frothing beer. But at the first wireless report of German bombing the road had been stripped of its title and renamed ‘Wash Avenue’ after the sea and the marshes south of Skegness. Mum said she was pleased then that we had not taken one of the houses there. As she remarked to Mrs Brown, people would have thought that ‘Wash’ was something to do with laundering clothes and, well, you could not get lower than that – socially that is.

When Dad volunteered for war service I was just one year old. In the snaps of him in uniform he always looked as if he were delighted by the venture, as if joining the forces had always been his life’s ambition. He was smiling and suave, with sleek black hair that always caught the photographer’s flashlight head on so that there was a stripy glow over it. Somehow in all his war photos Dad contrived to wear his uniform, sometimes with his air-force cap tucked under his epaulettes; later it would be shorts and a pith helmet.

He had volunteered for service because, as he reminded us, you could not know the advantages such an action might provide in the future – if you survived, that is. Being called up was really the same thing as volunteering. Yet somehow if you were to carry out some heroic act in the course of your duties, gaining a medal on the way, the fact that you had volunteered told the world that you believed in the whole charade. Dad had been due for call-up any day, so whether he offered his services or not was hardly of great account. When he stepped through the recruiting office door in an effort to be the first that Monday to sign on the dotted line, it was not exactly an act of heroism. They were in fact down to the dregs. The thirty-plus age group was on the line and he belonged to it.

Mum said all the crafty fellows had entered the foundry, taking downgraded jobs if necessary. She said it with a sneer and more than a hint of disapproval. The only other member of the family who had ever been in the thick of war was Granddad’s brother, Uncle Tom. He had been in the trenches in the First War. Mum said that so few survived so practically anybody who made it to the end had become a hero.

Dad told me that Uncle Tom was more of a hero to his family than to the world at large as he had broken his leg while trying to get out of his trench and, since it did not mend properly, they had to invalid him out. He was rotund and of a Pickwickian mould, with unusually thick grey hair for his age and a bright shining face where lip-corners never turned down. He used to come and visit us often. We could see he had done well for himself as he wore suits of a stylish fit in fine grey woollen cloth. He would press florins in your palm before he left. “Chucks his money away,” Mum commented, “but I expect he can afford to.”

Yet just as no one knew Uncle Tom’s real war experiences, no one knew just how wealthy he was. He never talked about either subject. In fact, he made a rule of treading carefully on topics of conversation, picking ones that had no emotion attached to them, like if the war was affecting trade, was Savile Row still making suits, and was the ballroom open in the Blackpool Tower. He never mentioned the trenches, though he did occasionally talk of his comrades, with whom he met up every year to celebrate survival. Once when Granddad pressed him to tell his account of events of the Somme to all of us sitting round the table on one of our large family gatherings, his lower lip tightened and his teeth gripped like a mastiff’s. “Forgotten it all by now I have.” His eyes flashed from one to the other carefully, scrutinising all our faces. His lip corners still remained resolutely pointed skyward, though if you looked closely at his clenched hands you could see his knuckles were pure white. “Come on Jane, let’s hear how your piano playing’s going. Last time you didn’t even know the notes. Let’s hear ‘The Merry Peasant’,” he called.

Dad had crawled his way out of the back-street semi-squalor of Archway Street to his own house in Witham Street, so he had never given the foundry a minute’s consideration. He was elevated to the position of sales manager after only three years as a travelling salesman. From raking around in an old car, selling livestock foods to shops and farms, he had reached the lofty heights of placing his feet behind a desk and having a secretary to make his tea and open his letters for him. All told, the foundry would have been worse than going down the mines. Even Mum admitted that he had an image to keep up. And volunteering for war duties fitted it nicely. She wasn’t so sure about all the fighting. Fighting was somehow too rough for us. “We are thinking people”, she said.

Dad had once won a championship cup for the best black-bottom dancer in Lincoln. With elephant eared handles, it stood proud on our sideboard, its silver plate elegance a monument to skill, proficiency and achievement. It was witness to Dad’s talent, not only as a dancer but also as a man who could succeed at anything he set his mind to, and with the shortest amount of training necessary.

He was debonair and tall with the palest, bluest eyes you could ever meet. Mum said that being debonair had its drawbacks. Debonair men – and Sir Walter Raleigh was a good example – always got trampled on by people with no sensitivity. “Dad has been rash in offering his services before he needed to,” she would tell me. But when she told other people about this act of bravado, she looked very proud. In fact, she would seek out neighbours who still had their husbands at home and engage them in conversation, just so she could introduce the topic of Dad’s valiant act of self-sacrifice. “Well, you know how it is. There are some men who just feel they have to do what little they can. Well, not exactly active duty, he will be in the accounts department for now. With such a head for figures, they insisted he would be invaluable as a pay clerk.”

When his time came to be posted we all went to Scotland, settling into a two-up, two-down in Greenock on Clydeside and, inspired by wireless reports of imminent peace, we proceeded to feed off promises about how the whole caboodle would be over in a few months. We were, Mum assured us, just biding our time before returning home. Dad said we would be back in Lincoln again in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, complete with the Scotty dog he had always promised us. But months slipped into years with silent stealth. They were years packed with weekend trips to Dunoon to see the sailing boats, jaunts over the hills to see the thick heather clustering in a barrier against the strong island breezes, and puppet shows with teddy bears and rag dolls, played behind a clothes-horse screen of ever-drying laundry.

My mother’s main concern at my wee Scots accent led her to take offence when anyone suggested that I was becoming part of the scenery and well on the way to being a true Bonny Scot. She tried to eradicate many of the words I uttered by shouting at me the English alternative. “How, how, how,” she would yell, “not hoo, hoo, hoo”. What really got her goat were the neighbours butting in and scolding her for correcting me in this way. They would call “Hoch away, let the bairn talk hoo she likes.” She would adopt her dourest expression and reply, “I’m her mother and she’s going to speak the way I want her to. Sooner or later we shall be returning to our own folk and I want them to recognise her as one of them.”

For breaks in our air force life we had our twice yearly visit to Grandma’s back in Lincoln: the one in the summer entailed a trip to Skegness by train to see the barb-wire beaches, while the one in the winter was to celebrate Christmas with all the family. At each visit Grandma would gasp and hold her hands to her cheeks. Expressing amazement at my height, she would grab her tape measure and scrawl a line on the wall just above my head. “See how you’ve grown. Must be six inches since last year.” She always said the same thing however small the gap between one line and the next.

Grandma and Granddad had a multitude of rooms. They were desolate rooms like the ones Bluebeard walled his wives up in, cold to the point that you risked nose-tip frostbite if you so much as peered round the door. And whatever room was opened to you it was always far colder than the one you had just left. Downstairs there were five main rooms and a large pantry, not counting the outside lavatory, washhouse and shed.

We always sat in the middle room when we called because Grandma said that it was the ideal place to entertain. She never had guests in the kitchen-cum-scullery as there was no fire, and anyway Granddad had his shaving gear there with a leather strap and cut-throat in view; it made guests feel uncomfortable. Nor were we allowed to sit in the small dining room, which, though there was a large range with the only welcoming fireplace, exuded a too familiar, too domestic air. The honoured guests were offered the front room, a show-piece with padded, velvet chairs of an electric blue colour and highly polished wooden side tables which had Lalique-type glass ornaments on them. But, not being prized guests, no one thought it worthwhile lighting a fire for us. In fact, as no important people visited Grandma ever, this room was used and heated only once a year, for the afternoon of Christmas Day. The middle room, on the other hand, not only had its own grate but also managed to steal a little warmth from the dining-room range next door, and so took less time to heat up. It was set out as an up-graded dining-hall for when there were more than four people. There was a folding, extending table with barley sugar twisted legs, real leather chairs with heavy Chesterfield studs nailed in, a sideboard with massive cut-glass salad bowls and servers and two matching Minton jugs with snakes crawling up the handles. Granddad always swivelled the chairs into a half-circle when guests came. He seemed to like circles and half-circles which he thought made folks feel at home and wanted. He said he got the idea from the stories of King Arthur.

The middle room held one of the three wireless sets Granddad owned. He tuned in to all the comedy programmes: ‘Happydrome’, ‘Hi Gang’, and his favourite, ‘ITMA’. He sang along with the requests on ‘Workers’ Playtime’, and followed endless news broadcasts piping thinly disguised propaganda. He enjoyed the wireless so much that he would frequently forget the job he was doing as he sat listening. Grandma would pass him the silver to polish but after a couple of forks he would down tools and start rocking back and forth to the music, singing along with the crooners, and practising feeding punch-lines to the comics. Most of his lines began with ‘I say, I say, I say . . .’

He made these entertainment broadcasts the basis of a repertoire of his own theatrical pieces, which he perfected over months of practice. He could even recite a bit of ‘The Bells’ when he’d downed a pint or two, but he always forgot his lines sooner or later – usually at the emotional climax when he was wringing his hands.

Grandma was wary of all this performing nonsense: “Can’t you just finish the knives and forks? Spit and polish is what you are supposed to be at, not reminiscing about being underneath some arches dreaming or climbing staircases to Paradise. Look here, if you don’t stop mooning about I shall give you a kick in the pants that’ll get you to Paradise in record time.”

His dance routines especially seemed to grate on her. Just seeing him trying to imitate a shoe shuffle with his gammy leg would set her off. “You’ll end up breaking something,” she would shout. “One step nearer the ornaments with that fancy footwork and you’ll no longer be what you term a ‘live performer’.”

He ignored her. He said that the stage was to be his life, now that he had retired. “We aren’t half lucky to live in an age of wireless broadcasts and gramophone records. We know what pieces of music should really sound like now. Before, you just sang along at the piano and hoped for the best. Do you know, they’ve invented a box that let’s you see pictures as well as hearing sounds?”

He spent much of his free time working on routines that he said were to be presented formally at working men’s clubs – just as soon as the war ended. He said they would be short of talent. For now he had two main sketches, although he was working on a third. The first was his Policeman Pot-Pourris. He fancied himself in this constabulary role, as if through imitating a man of law and order he would finally regain the esteem and respect that, as a pensioner, was being denied him.

He managed to cadge an old policeman’s helmet and when he adjusted the chinstrap and winked at himself in the mirror you could see he had really fallen for himself in the part. For his police uniform he wore an old navy blazer on to which he had stitched some army badges. Heavy boots graced his feet and, to hide the fact that they had been used for fishing, he polished them with Zebra blacking normally used for the kitchen range. His first number was ‘The Laughing Policeman’; he had learned the music from a shellac record and the actions from the automaton bobby in a glass case at a Skegness fun fair that went through the motions of laughing if you put a penny in the slot. After winding up the gramophone and dropping the needle on, he would stand back and mime the gestures or mouth the words. He acted just as he imagined a real policemen might do: ticking off robbers; rubbing his index finger down the side of his nose; placing his hands on his hips and glancing furtively from side to side; grasping some invisible swindler by the scruff of the neck; and pushing his knees wide open while bobbing up and down. Mum said he should think carefully about this last movement, as his trousers were too tight and it came over a little too lewd. She reminded him that he was not yet in the workingmen’s clubs, and that I was at a very tender, impressionable age. The fact that he did not sing the song himself, of course, left his mind free to develop his movements and his dance routine. As the verse began, he would strut up and down, one hand behind his back, the other held in a menacing pose with a wagging index finger. Then he would go back to the mouthing and a particularly effective silent belly laugh, gyrating as if he were massaging his backside on the chair.

The second number was ‘P.C. Forty-nine’. He sang this himself. To get a special, shuffle-scuffle effect he used to come in with a roll of oilskin linoleum under his arm, throwing it to the ground as the music struck up. He sprinkled this strip with sand from a fire bucket and strode up and down on it, dragging his feet, so that the rasping noise was reminiscent of a distant snake-drum roll or, if one’s imagination stretched that far, of a street skirmish. When he came round to the words of the title his feet would remain firm and he would once more bob up and down with plié knees, this time rolling the long hairs of his imaginary moustache. Grandma used to shake her head as she watched his obvious enjoyment of this part. “They don’t get much dafter,” she would say, “and to think, I married him for his brains – he trained as a schoolteacher you know.”

His third number was ‘The Policeman’s Holiday’ which was wordless. Granddad got Grandma to play it on the piano while he fitted on two glove puppets with papier maché heads. They were all his own work. He hid behind the sofa and acted out a scene with them along the top, as if it were a puppet stage. The tale was all about a burglar and the clever bobby who managed to find a truncheon with which to hammer him on the head. The policeman finally grabbed the burglar’s shoulder and marched him off to prison. It was clearly a plagiarism of Punch and Judy but he told us he had written the screenplay himself and that it had taken a lot of brainwork. “Writing a play like this taxes the brain. Not for nothing is Shakespeare amongst the top ten geniuses. I worked on this plot for a whole month – even before I set pen to paper.” He got two rounds of applause. We felt obliged to offer extra forceful clapping and cheers when Grandma stamped her feet and called ‘Author’.

His second routine was a ‘Scottish Heather’ one. He began with ‘Roaming in the Gloaming’, when he would lean on his stick, his back bent low, and begin rolling his eyes, so that you felt they had become lose in their sockets or he was suffering the advanced stages of an over-active thyroid gland. He tried hard to get the resonant ‘R’ over as he sang the word ‘Roaming’ but it sounded as if he had a mouth full of spit and was trying to indicate to a dentist that he needed to use the swill bowl. He would grasp Grandma’s shoulders and squeeze them with affection as she sat at the piano. And when he came to the words ‘Wi’ a lassie by yer side’ he would bend over and plant a kiss on the back of her neck. She would scowl and try to swat him off, but you could see she was glad to be part of the act and rake in some small gesture of fondness from him, however artificial, as a bonus. His next cabaret turn was his Harry Lauder-cum-Will Fyffe act. That was my favourite, though even after my years in Scotland I was never quite sure what he was talking about. ‘Just a Wee Deoch an Doris’ and ‘Well, if yer can say it’s a broad brich moon licht nicht, then you’re a’ right, ye Ken’ held mystical delights of some lad called Ken wandering around at twilight looking for two dwarfs named Dock and Doris. He would vary this repertoire of ‘Songs of Bonny Scotland’ from time to time by selecting new numbers he thought were more characteristically folksy. He had first made ‘Longing For My Ain Folk’ his linchpin, but it needed a voice with more attributes than his had as it had a wide-ranging melody. When he tried it out on us he noticed that we cringed when he reached for the high notes. Grandma called “Stand on a ladder”. He even insisted on aiming for the tenor high C for a while but when Grandma said ‘Some men have done themselves a real mischief with notes lower than that’ he decided to set it aside. He said he would wait for a time when he had trained his voice to the required standard. There was a chorister of the Cathedral who gave private lessons and if the fellow hadn’t been called up he thought he might engage him as a coach.

His star turn was ‘I belong to Glasgee’, popular with us all. It was accompanied by a tap-step shuffle that he had learnt by practising several Fred Astaire exit-from-stage routines. He had to sit through Fred’s films three times and practice in the foyer of the Regal in the interludes before he had grasped the basics. And Granddad also learnt from Fred how to give it a ‘get-that’ elegant touch by poising, frozen in time, his arms outstretched like a windmill, on the final beat. At home, after this pose, he had to exit left into the corridor that led to the front door. It was always to the thunderous applause of whoever was watching, and the barking of Bob the dog incited by the promise of a walk that the twirling stick usually held. Grandma would just swallow hard and go back to the piano for his encore, ‘Stop your Tickling Jock’, when his guttural sputtering, blending with the prickly laughter, washed out any chance of our finally understanding the gist of what he was saying.

When he donned his homemade Harry Lauder costume and started rolling around with his knobbly walking stick we knew we were in for a treat. He wore a skirt made from a red striped towel in lieu of a kilt. A pair of bulky, coloured football socks graced his hairy legs. He had a very fancy white blouse with a tartan scarf sash across it and a matching tam o’shanter. Although this garb seemed at first glance to have been thrown together from bits and bobs, in truth it was the result of many hours of careful labour. Apart from gathering his props, scouring the house for each item, and sorting through sewing baskets for haberdashery frills, he took on the entire cutting, sewing, fitting and pressing himself. For his cabaret acts he was meticulous, hanging his costumes out the day before and brushing them down with the concern of a gentleman’s valet, polishing his shoes with gusto and even sewing on pompons or buckles if needs be. This was puzzling as he normally wore whatever came to hand. In fact he usually looked as if he were dressed in camouflage apparel for riverbank stalking.

Granddad was amply suited for the broad-Scot role because he had some of the necessary features needed for comedy. His nose was bulbous and his cheeks were like red rubber balls on which bleach had been spattered. He smiled almost all the time. Sometimes I wondered if his cheek muscles dropped when he was asleep to take up a more mundane grimace, and whether they ached with the strain of having been kept buoyant all day.

“You make fun of them, Dad. But they’re nice people up there in Scotland, really,” Mum said on the last of our visits. “Keep themselves to themselves. Mind you, they take a bit of getting to know. You have to put your mind to making friends.”

“Aye, go on. I bet they call you a Sassenach. You’re a yellow-belly born and bred. A real Lincolnshire yellow-belly,” said Granddad who was preparing to start rehearsing his Radio Fun Medley, which he hoped to perfect in time for the following Christmas. It included his Tommy Trinder routine and his falsetto rendering of ‘Lay Down Your Arms’ in imitation of Anne Shelton. “A yellow-belly like me,” he repeated with satisfaction as he sat stuffing one of Grandma’s old brassieres with cotton wool. He shook his head as he left for upstairs to try on a black sleek number, which Grandma said had been part of her mother’s widow’s weeds.

“Why does he dress up if it’s only for us?” I asked.

“’Cos he’s balmy. Runs in the family,” Grandma replied.

4

THE BROWNS

September 1944

Arthur Brown was away fighting in North Africa. His photo, unframed but with a flap-over, crimped-edged paper cover, was propped up on the Browns’ front-room mantelpiece.

The Browns had united forces with the Knights in the face of the enemy, time and loneliness. Amy Knight, having an only child, would take on the two Brown children one day a week after school, or all day in the holidays, in exchange for handing Jane over to Tilly Brown for two days. They lived in one of the terraced houses with low walls with stumps: the pre-war iron railings had been sawn off to provide ammunition.

The terraced houses were not like those on the other side of the street, which were semi-detached properties with fronts that were protected by high wooden, slatted fences. They had passages, one for every two properties. It was essential to get on really well with your twinned neighbour when compelled to share the cleaning of the passage. Noise echoed if people clumped their shoes as they came in, so you were expected to tiptoe all the time to show respect for those who worked nights or who had been up on duty fire-watching for incendiary bombs. The terraced houses backed up to other similar ones in Derwent Road, while the semi-detached ones over the other side had fields behind them. It was consensus of opinion that the back-to-backs were safer as people did not need to keep their doors and windows permanently closed against rats. Apart from an occasional mouse in the washhouse that fell prey to a bit of Cheddar on the trap from time to time, they were practically vermin free. Amy Knight, a woman with a vermin phobia, explained that rats could swarm in where there were fields and open access from the countryside. Rats brought muck and disease and were known to come right into your kitchen in broad daylight without the slightest fear of a whack of a broomstick. They were even known to gnaw at babies in bed. No one had ever reported seeing one in this grisly act but word had it that it was so.

“And tell Tilly that I want you to stay on this side of the street – in her yard. I don’t like you playing in the fields across the other side of the street,” Amy would call to Jane as she left complete with pixie bonnet knitted in blackberry stitch to protect her ears from the cold and any roving rodents.

All the Witham Street children played in the fields as it was the meeting-ground of the kids from the neighbourhood, a place where grown-ups were neither seen nor heard. No one had ever reported spying a rat, only the occasional field mouse, a shy, awkward creature that even shied away from friendship. Apart from a few dumps of unwanted bicycles, zinc baths, enamel basins, and aluminium kitchenware, there were fields. They were overgrown with a carpet of thick grass, which by resting one’s ear on it could be heard to breathe. In spring, the place was cloaked by a frothy white coverlet of cow-spit flowers, which fluttered to and fro tickling the children’s legs as they ran. And in autumn the grass took on a strong smell of mowing where the soggy clumps lay in rotting heaps. Then the stubble soon dried to bristly straw that stung your knees if you knelt without looking carefully. But in any season the ground was friendlier than the road, as falling down meant bouncing without mishap thus avoiding kneeholes and fleshy ladders in woollen stockings.

It was soon discovered that the Browns were not a vermin free home. Neville kept a white rat in a cage. Amy Knight spoke out but, rebuffed, decided to do what she said was the correct thing in a crisis like this and reported the matter to the council. As she pointed out to anyone who was prepared to lend her an ear, most of the folks spent their time trying to get rid of fleas, mites, bed bugs, mice in the coalbunker, and cats with mange. Why should they then tolerate something as filthy and disease carrying as a rat? If you could spread diphtheria by newspapers heaven knows what they might catch from Neville’s white rat Pinky – possibly bubonic plague. The council sent Amy packing. They told her they had other, more important problems, and some of them were of barrage balloon sized proportions, like re-housing the folks who had been bombed out. One old fellow with wire glasses and a stoop staggered to his feet to address her personally before she left his office. He said that they had cooked and eaten rats in the trenches in the First World War so what was she complaining about. It was free food.

Pinky stayed put. Well, until he gnawed his way out one night and took refuge in their coal-bunker. Tilly Brown thought about shifting some of the coal with a shovel but it would have been a week’s work. Besides, it was not just coal. There were old deck chairs, a card-table and piles of yellowing Picture Post thrown on top. So she gave up and they just tried to remember to keep the washhouse door shut to prevent a dash for freedom. Some neighbours did not sleep for a week. Neville kept crying every time he saw the hole in the cage, so his mum went and bought him a new one complete with a lady rat called Rosy. Then Pinky gave himself up in desperation as hunger turned his mind to eating scraps of paper with pictures of gunboats and Judy Garland with the Straw Man on them. All thought of bolting melted and Pinky surrendered by deliberately entering a large meat-sieve trap where a few scraps of bacon rind had been left as a decoy. He found to his delight when he got back into his own cage that he had been rewarded for his escapade with a mate.

Amy practically broke off all contact with Neville’s family after that. She told her brother, Teddy, all about it. His reply was short and to the point: “Breeding bleeding rats – can you beat that. Some folks have no sense of decorum.” He repeated it several times as he liked the flow of the prose.

Anyway, reporting the Browns to the council had not been a good idea. The need of closer ties between neighbours was greater than Amy Knight realised, and to lose the easy coming and going that had marked their lives since war broke out was disastrous for the well-being of her mind. She started feeling down. She kept muttering to herself justifications for her actions, trying to reassure herself that she had behaved wisely. “I did what was right. You cannot have health hazards like that in the community.”

Mrs Brown broke off the friendship by labelling her a blab-mouth and broadcasting this information to the masses.

“All for the better. Blab-mouths usually tell the truth. If you have nothing to hide, you aren’t afraid of the truth, are you? Anyway, rat-fanciers and breeders have nothing whatsoever in common with a family like ours.” Amy was standing in the garden alone talking to the clothes prop. She had tuned her voice up to Gracie Fields volume. The reply was a faint echo.

“Hark at her, Madam Muck in person.”

The Browns lived nearest the corner with Lakeview Road. Theirs was the first of the terraced houses and the only one to have a garage, which was tacked on the side like an afterthought. Mr Brown had built the garage himself in his spare time. No one knew what for as he could not even afford a good Raleigh bike, let alone a car. He said that half of his motive for erecting it was to have the place ready when he was finally promoted to head mechanic and could afford his own tiny black-box Austin. The other was because, in the meantime, he could indulge in his craving for small-size animals. “He were brought up on ferrets so he has tiny furry animals in his blood as it were,” Tilly explained to anyone amazed at their menagerie.

Arthur Brown had started off his animal collection by buying several birds cheap from friends who had just grown tired of having them around cheep-cheeping in teeth-grinding irritation, or who had had to forgo their holidays to feed and clean them. There was soon what amounted to a flock of pigeons for racing and canaries that warbled as if they were paid for it. Then came a black and white rabbit, named Matilda after Tilly, which had no apparent use at all. When Mr Brown left for the war, Neville was entrusted with their care. His first move was to add to the flock with Pinky, which he said would keep the rabbit company in the wash-house – the garage was just for birds – although staring at each other from separate cages was neither’s idea of a ball of fun.

When autumn came, frosty gusts of air round the windowpanes, draughty crevices in the washhouse, plus the blast under the garage door meant that the animals shivered and huddled in the corners of their cages. When it snowed and Neville had to dig his way in to feed them, he said the only way to save the creatures for their poor Dad, fighting to save his country, was to move them lock, stock and barrel, indoors. Tilly raved and ranted for a whole day about how she would be unable to cope with a whole zoo. She even walked around ruing the day she met ‘that rotten sod Arthur’. “It was my mother’s fault. She knew he wasn’t the marrying kind. But she still allowed him to come to court me. And his mother encouraged it, too. Couldn’t wait to shunt those animals out her house. She was prepared to lose a son if she lost them, too.”

Neville started bawling for hours on end about how he had been entrusted with their care and how his mother was going to be responsible for the mass deaths. He even threw in the fact that if anything happened to his dad, then Tilly would be responsible for having betrayed his trust. His dad, he said, was the loveliest, kindest father alive, even if he had once peered over Brayford Bridge to look at the swans and let him, then a mere toddler, fall into the water head first. Well, he’d fished him out, hadn’t he? And dried him off with his muffler. And taken him to the nearest pub to get something strong down him. Neville, feeling the blunt edge of Tilly’s adamant stance on the matter, finally finished up on one icicle spangled day squatting on the garage floor, clad only in his baggy, wide-legged underpants in a heroic suicide bid for animal rights. It was an act worthy of the finest warrior committing hara-kiri in a bushido ritual.

Tilly gave in. She said she could not afford a doctor or sufficient bottles of Gee’s Linctus for Neville’s chest should she have to cure his ailments herself. If he continued he would have to be prepared to die. Neville compromised by vowing the animals were only there for the bleakest days of winter before they would once more be moved outside. Before she could change her mind, he stacked the cages on to the kitchen shelf which ran along the whole length of one wall, alongside the haul-up-in-one washing rods and the dangling fly-paper – the fly-paper stayed up even in the winter when there were no flies to be seen. There was a massive to-do when Pinky gnawed his way through one of the cups of Tilly’s brassiere which happened to be dangling just within his reach to make a nest for his mate, but with a bit of adjustment all the creatures settled down to enjoy the constant company. Nobody was particularly attentive to hygiene in Tilly’s house, so that the odd seed or dropping that fell from the sky in the direction of the gas stove or the oilcloth table cover was ignored. Their crowing, squeaking, squalling, twittering and cooing was not brain shattering as there was a corridor from the kitchen that led to the front room. When they had visitors they kept both doors shut and no one could hear more than a tweet. It was comfy and snug there, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the warm smell of wet hay. It was the sort of place that made one feel one belonged, even before taking one’s coat off – the same feeling Mary and Joseph must have got from the stable.

Living in the house, apart from Neville and his sister Marlene, was Mrs Brown’s sister Auntie Dolly who had been bombed out of her own home when her street had fallen victim to the big raid meant for the iron and steel works. With her was her grown-up daughter Shirley.

Shirley appeared to be shy to the point of appearing struck dumb whenever you challenged her with such mind-bending questions as ‘Isn’t it a nice day?’ or ‘How are you?’. Her mother said she just did not have conversational skills, or perhaps nothing in common with grown ups – girls were like that at her age. What you took to be shyness, or even downright rudeness, was often just plain disinterest: possibly a listless disregard of fellow human beings and their sufferings. Anyway, Shirley made up for the gaps in dialogue with her beauty. She was striking: tall and slim with fine bones and long fair hair, which she wore rolled under, like Anne Todd, as fashion dictated. She had not won a scholarship for the grammar school and so had gone to the secondary modern where she distinguished herself by her talent for dressmaking and attracting wolf-whistles on her way home. When she left school at the age of fifteen her mother said that a career that had something to do with fashion would be best, so she got her a job in the big Co-op department store along Silver Street, in the glove department. All Dolly’s neighbours agreed that it was only a matter of time before she was snapped up for marriage anyway, so whatever she did would be just a time filler.

The Co-op was a port of call for all those seeking gloves. They were, in fact, the one luxury item not to be done without, because they must never be darned. It was considered shoddy. Better to risk frostbite. The Co-op was the only shop where suede was available at prices people could afford. Amy Knight had told Tilly that she really preferred Mawer and Collingham’s, which was an older, well-trusted company, since her mother had always shopped at Mawer and Collingham’s and she was a person of good taste, even to the point of renouncing the dividend ticket which the Co-op dished out to its customers and which Mrs Brown said was a Labour Party trend of the share-and-share-alike genus. If you believed in socialism you shopped at the Co-op and that was that. At the annual dividend share-out, Amy’s mother’s claim was a pittance. Amy’s was not much better. Mrs Brown would have been able to throw a party and offer champagne with hers.

Shirley would always offer the customers personal service. “I can fetch the glove-stretcher,” she would offer as she waited patiently while some woman shot her hands down a kid evening glove and practised tightening and releasing her grip. She was patient while she waited for someone to fiddle around in her concertina-fold purse for a half crown. Then she would smile as she reached up to one of the criss-cross cable lines above her head, unscrewed a wooden jar attached to it, put in the bill and the coin, screwed the top on and re-attached it to the wires. She pulled the handle with an air of authority. The jar went whizzing off at full speed across the large hall right up to the till where it announced its entrance with a prominent ding. The cashier took out the contents, stamped the bill with the word ‘PAID’, made a note of the customer’s Co-op number, re-screwed the jar and sent it flying back on its mini cable-car journey with its three-penny bit change. She looked proud when people stood in revered silence before such a modern technological feat of genius, almost as if she had invented it herself.

At home, Shirley would let Marlene and her friends try out her swansdown powder-puff, her cake of rouge in its little cardboard disk, and her Coty powder. Sometimes she set their hair, making them into child-women. Marlene would sit waiting for her turn, dressed like a bisque doll, her hair fresh from ringlet rags. She kept fluffing up the tulle frills that peeped from under her frock. From time to time she would remember her manners and place her hands together in her lap and purse her lips. Her prime aim in life seemed to be to look like candy-floss, or a pink puffball of it waiting to be blown away.

Shirley spent a lot of time admiring herself in front of a full-length mirror, clad only in her satin underskirt, which outlined the matching cami-knickers underneath. She plucked her eyelashes to a thin scratch, and filled in the outline of her lips with the stump of an Outdoor Girl lipstick.

She had an appointment for that Saturday night, at the Drill Hall. Having finished her routine, she slipped a crepe dress with high padded shoulders over her head, patting it in place as it slid over her willowy hips. She fastened her ankle-strap shoes with their regulation two-inch heels, and finished off with more than a dash of Californian Poppy behind her ears and a good sousing over her wrists. The aroma, kept moist by the steam from the kitchen, mingled somewhat disagreeably with the stench emanating from Pinky and friends’ abodes. Tilly walked through holding her nose hissing “What a pong. Here, our Shirley, parade up and down the kitchen for ten minutes so as to smother all the other stinks.”

“Nice, isn’t it? Sort of exotic,” Shirley said.

“Well, I suppose so. If you like recreating a kasbah atmosphere.”

“For best though I use this blue bottle here.” The tiny miniature in her hand proclaimed its contents as ‘Soir-de-Paris’.

“Well, that’s something we’ve got to look forward to.”

When Shirley had clipped an encrusted gilt broach onto her jumper and cast a final appreciative glance at herself in the hall mirror, she set off for the Drill Hall for dance night. As she walked up the street to collect her friend, a flash of lace curtains rippled along the windows. A bevy of Witham Street eyes beamed in on her made-up face, her ankle-straps and her slim body encased in the clinging dress. Lights were switched-off in front rooms all at once, like fairy lights on Twelfth Night. Noses squashed against panes of glass, and fires burned fiercely in the grates of eye socket envy till she was out of sight. Miss Kitchen at number nine struggled to make her large frame inconspicuous behind a curtain and the sign hanging on one side of the window: ‘Choose to live a good life. Let in the Light’.

Amy Knight was watching with her brother Teddy from her front-room table. They were sipping glasses of shandy Teddy had brought. “That Shirley. She’ll get what she’s asking for one of these days,” she said. “I don’t reckon she’s too much of a good influence on Jane. I don’t know what’s best for a mother, boys who grow up to perish in the war or girls who refuse your advice and make themselves common.”

“Be like me, don’t have either,” said Teddy, “There’s nothing like a working sheepdog for real company. Look at Bob, our dad’s dog. The perfect companion.”

“Apart from the slobbering.”

“Well, that Shirley’s young, isn’t she?”

“I wouldn’t let Jane go there. You know, the Drill Hall’s a real den of vice. Full of Yanks now. They’ve completely taken it over. Don’t know what they are all doing there,” she told him.

“Jitterbuggering about would be my guess,” was his reply.

* * * *

Tempers eventually cooled off about the palaver over the rat. Both Tilly and Amy waited till the breeze of time had wafted over the situation, taking with it the blisters of anger. One day Amy went round with a cake with poppy seeds sprinkled on top. She stepped over the half-moon coconut mat of welcome at the door with a deliberate stride and placed the cake on Tilly’s kitchen table. Tilly didn’t speak. She just stood there, staring her out. When it seemed like she had taken root through the soles of her Clark’s sandals, she began to nod. She nodded for well on a minute like her modum perpetuum figure that stood in the living-room, a bird that kept pecking at a glass of water. She still had her arms folded and her legs set apart, like an Indian squaw preparing for a rugby tackle. Then she bent down, picked up the cake and marched off with it to her pantry, standing it on the marble shelf and covering it with a large sieve. Still silent, she came back into the kitchen and proceeded to put the kettle on and set out the cups that she took, not from the pantry, but from the china cabinet. They were her best, in a snazzy pattern of stylised trees and cottages in violent oranges and browns. She poured out a cup of tea for Amy and handed it to her. Jane got a glass of ginger beer that, at the signal of a flick of the hand from her mother, she took into the next room where Neville was playing. The two women began to speak as if there had never been any ill feeling between them. No one mentioned the disagreement or any past ill harmony. Within five minutes they were laughing like bosom friends again.

“Look here, it’s from our Arthur.” Mrs Brown was handing Amy a letter. “Can you beat that. He’s forgotten to ask after our Marlene. Never even bothered to find out how she’s doing now she’s started tap as well as ballet. But he’s asked for more news of the rabbit and if Neville has considered finding it a mate like he did for the rat.”

“Rabbits,” said Neville.

Jane gazed up at the cages wondering how many more creatures had appeared since the last visit. Neville said that the canaries had laid more eggs. But the chinchilla was still alone, looking morose. He closed his eyes.

“Rabbits. You know, it’s the first day of the month. You always have to say ‘rabbits’ for luck.”

“Oh, rabbits,” Jane said.

Neville had received a new board game. He set it up and they moved the little wooden counter across and shook the dice in turns, retreating and beginning from scratch at least every third throw. Neville started to fidget. He flicked his heels together and gazed round the room. Gales of laughter came from the adjoining parlour.

“I bet you want some lemonade.” He shot up and left before Jane could answer, heading for the pantry where he poured out two glasses of homemade ginger beer from a vat. The liquid had an alien appearance, as if it had been poured through a river dredger; there was frothing beige and a fungus of brown slime floating on top. Jane gave a wan smile, then returned to the board to see where the counter was, sneaking a glance into the depths of the glass to see if she could spot the bottom through the dense mire. When she looked up there was Mrs Brown standing watching her. Amy was just leaving. She cast a menacing glance at her daughter from the door. The girl smiled and placed her lips against the rim of the glass, taking a gulp.

Tilly said “I’m glad you like it.” Then, turning to the departing Amy shouted, “It’s our home-made ginger pop, though the colour’s lost its orange tinge, more a chestnut brown now. Starting to look like beer, in fact. I’ve got at least another twenty gallons brewing in the washhouse. We make it ourselves in the stone vats you get cheap down the corn exchange. We’ve even brewed a few bottles for best that are in the garage – they’re ageing. It’ll be a vintage lot.”

To Jane she said “Drink up and you can have some more. Here,” she said pushing a plate in front of her, “here’s an iced biscuit. I got broken ones cheap.” She blew on to the plate to remove a few millet husks that had snowed down from several overhanging cages where pigeons were cooing and canaries whistling their heads off. “I’ll just nip into the garage for a refill for you.”

“Can’t hear yourself speak, can you?” Neville climbed up to put a black cloth over them. “I’ve a new game. Me mum got it from an advert in the Echo.”

It was Meccano. The children went on to build a bridge from strips of trellised metal. Neville showed Jane how to fasten them together with the Tom Thumb size nuts and bolts and miniature spanner, which was not quite the right size for the nuts, so they had to use their fingers. They tried a windmill, like the ones that still ground wheat over on the broad expanse of low-lying land near Skegness. Neville said a windmill was easy. He opened the Meccano catalogue to show her. You only had to follow the design. It began with just one square piece for the base. He did the foundation pieces and she did the sails ready to stick on. They came out looking wonky, and inclining heavily forward. Doubtless they would never have been picked up by the wind except in a gale. Neville said in his opinion Meccano was more fun than board games because there was something to show for your time at the end.

Neville went in search of more drink and Jane, left alone, peeped through the door of the kitchen into the front room. There was a beige plush settee and two armchairs with filet-work chair-backs. On top of the squat, tiled mantelpiece was a variety of performing pot animals: horses prancing and pawing the air, two robins on a bough, and a cat teasing a ball of wool. Above them, on the floral papered wall, under the jazzy border and the picture rail, was a flight of crimson and blue ducks heading towards the window in decreasing size, as if somebody was aiming a blunderbuss at their backsides. There was one Sunlight Soap tokens print of happy smiling faces and bonnets and hollyhocks, which told of a land where the good were protected by a golden barrier of sunbeams.

In the corner of the room was an enormous gramophone with a central speaker, which had a sunray pattern of wooden slats overlaying beige gauze. Glossy black records were stacked underneath, some in purple or beige paper covers, most of which were torn. Dolly was walking round the room, hands behind her back, a cigarette hanging from the skin of her lower lip. She was wagging her index finger.

“I don’t like her going out, you know. Not to them common dance halls. I mean, real ballroom lessons would be all right. I did offer to pay for the Castle, though she said that the people who went there were too stuck up. Didn’t make friends or something. But the Drill Hall. I ask you. That’s where all the Yanks go.”

“Who took her along in the first place?”

“That hussy who works with her. The one in the shoe department. The one who looks like Anne Sothern.”

“Who’s Anne Sothern?”

“She’s that woman we saw at the Ritz. She’s a film star. You know, she was in that film where she sang ‘The Last Time I Saw Paris’.”

“I’ve never noticed any of Shirley’s friends look like film stars. Anyway, the only film I’ve seen in the last year was ‘Old Mother Riley and Her Daughter Kitty’. And her friends would all do better to stay at home. Gallivanting around in Drill Halls. The local lads will be back when it’s all over and there’ll be plenty of fish to choose from then.”

“She doesn’t let on much, does our Shirley. But I know there’s somebody she’s courting. Your Neville saw her out one Sunday afternoon with some young fellow. Said he must have been in dire peril when he had a bath – thin enough to be flushed down the plug-hole. Oh, and weedy looking. He reckoned he must be a Yank. They are obviously down to the dregs an’ all. At fly weight they’d be able to blow him over while he was on guard duty.”

“Well, she is nearly twenty. And I don’t suppose she goes to the Drill Hall just to dance, does she? Anyway, does she even know how to jive and all that? It looks complicated to me.”

Tilly wound up the spring of the gramophone, grasping the cranking handle and turning it with a rhythmic twitching of her arm. She placed the needle on the turntable and thrust her body into a frenzy, spinning with jerky steps round the room. She was like a giant spinning top racing for the winning post. The strains of ‘In the Mood’ sprayed from the loudspeaker. She held her left hand on her chest and stuck out the other in front, fingers pointing upwards. She said she had seen the American soldiers do it on Pathé News when a clipped voice had announced “They only embarked a few weeks ago, but this is how our allies are spending their time . . .”

“You’re not bad, you know. Doing Joe Loss proud, in fact. If we get fed up with staying in and minding the roost we could always join our Shirley on the floor. And anyway, let’s face it, the only thing your Arthur were interested in were animals. You’ll never have the same attraction as a budgie. That time you got him to dance – you know on your twenty-first – he looked as if he were part of a voodoo ceremony warding off evil spirits. You might find somebody better, you know. Somebody who were suave and knew what life were about. You know, somebody like Joseph Cotton – I always fancied him. Yes, Tilly, you need someone who appreciates your finer qualities.”

Jane, from behind the door strained to see what Tilly’s finer qualities were. Her hair was hidden by metal curlers over which she had pulled a purple cotton turban. Her podgy face with its puffy cheeks and bloated nose seemed to merge into one with the blubber of flesh of her chin, which creased in regular folds till it splashed into the base of her neck. Dolly, on the other hand, was emaciated. She had on lisle stockings that had ladders down the left leg, and were baggy and wrinkled round the ankles. Her clothes were all tinted in various shades of mud. Together they looked like female impersonators of Laurel and Hardy fallen on hard times.

“Mind you,” said Dolly, “I don’t suppose there’s that many Yanks around pushing forty, do you? They’d be too old to fight.”

“To fight who? I shan’t put up a fight.” They collapsed on to the sofa in tears of laughter.

“Hey, pull yourself together, I were asking your advice,” Dolly said, straightening up and pulling up her stockings by tugging at her suspender braced corset.

Tilly adjusted her twisted turban that showed a distinct urge to slither down her forehead. “Advice? I don’t know. She’s under age. Does seem a bit of a responsibility. Can’t you ask her to be home by ten?” she said.

“I did. But the buses go either at nine thirty or ten-thirty and she said nine-thirty was ridiculous, not even worth paying the entrance fee to come out just after nine to catch it.” Dolly picked fragments of cigarette paper from her lips and then spit out those that had remained hidden in her mouth.

“How is it she never gets home before eleven fifteen? The bus only takes fifteen minutes,” said Tilly.

“Well, she says that someone kindly brings her to the door.”

“Well, there you are then. Should be safe. Shouldn’t think anyone in uniform would try anything on. He’d be court marshalled, wouldn’t he? I reckon you’ve nothing to worry about.”

“I bet he’s some Flash Harry,” said Dolly, stubbing out her cigarette in one of the lead-weighted ashtrays hanging on the arm of the sofa as if grinding the Yank’s face in the dirt, “and it still spells trouble to me.”

That's the end of the sampler. We hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to find out what happens next, you can buy the complete Mushroom eBook edition from the usual online bookshops or through www.mushroom-ebooks.com.

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About the Author

Dr Jean Grundy Fanelli was born and grew up in Lincoln, England. She began her working life as a librarian before opting for her great passion – music. She gained music diplomas, a degree, and a doctorate. Now a lecturer on various foreign university programmes in Italy and author of many scholarly articles and five books. Her latest non-fiction work is a general guide to opera, Opera for Everyone. At the moment work is in progress on a history of comic opera as well as a sequel to The War Comes to Witham Street.

She lives in Florence, Italy, is married to an Italian lawyer, and has two grown-up children.

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