Читать книгу: «When the Lights Go On Again»
When the Lights Go On Again
Annie Groves
As this is the final book in the Campion series I would like to dedicate it to all the ‘real life’ families and their descendants, who lived through WWII
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
Also by Annie Groves
Copyright
About the Publisher
ONE
Late August 1943
Jean Campion was standing in her kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. Today was her birthday. Her soft brown wavy hair had been freshly cut and set the previous day especially for the occasion, the last drops of the precious Chanel scent that her son, Luke, had brought her back from Paris the first Christmas of the war, dabbed behind her ears. Jean smoothed down the cotton fabric of her blue floral print summer dress, loose on her now after nearly four years of wartime rationing. She had bought the dress from Lewis’s in Liverpool, when her eldest daughter, Grace, had been working there, before the store had been bombed in the dreadful blitz of May 1940.
The kettle was coming up to the boil. From the front room, with the doors open into the hallway, Jean could hear the voices of her family, come to celebrate with her the birthday she shared with her twin sister, Vi. The voices of her daughters Grace and Sasha, her niece, Bella, her sisters, Vi and Francine. Female voices. Female voices because they were at war and so many men were fighting for their country – and their lives. A heartfelt sigh escaped Jean’s lips.
She was lucky, she reminded herself; many women she knew had lost sons and husbands. Luke might have been injured fighting in the desert, but at least he had recovered now, even if he had made that recovery far from home and, according to his most recent letter – which had miraculously arrived today – was about to rejoin his army unit.
She was lucky too in having the rest of her family close at hand. Grace, who was a nurse, might have moved to Whitchurch because her RAF husband, who was part of the very important and secret Y Section, had been posted there, but she too had her husband living at home with her.
Seb and Grace had come up from Whitchurch today on the train, and right now Seb and Jean’s husband, Sam, were down at Sam’s allotment, no doubt talking about the progress of the war and the recent invasion of Sicily by the Allied Forces, as well as Seb’s desire to turn part of the rambling garden attached to the cottage they were renting into a vegetable plot.
Thinking of that invasion made Jean’s heart thud with anxiety, for Luke, who was with the Eighth Army, and bound to be involved at some stage in the Allies’ push into the Italian mainland to force back the Germans and Italians.
And Luke wasn’t the only one of her children she had to worry about, Jean admitted, lifting her hand to smooth back a wayward strand of hair. There was Lou, who of all things was now learning to fly aeroplanes, if you please, having been transferred by the WAAF into something called the Air Transport Auxiliary service. And Lou’s twin, Sasha, despite having a nice steady job at the local telephone exchange and an equally nice steady fiancé working in bomb disposal, never seemed to be happy.
As she poured the boiling water onto the precious tea leaves, Jean thought how typically generous it was of her younger sister, Francine – a singer with ENSA, and recently married to a major in the army – to have brought her own rations with her for the birthday get-together.
On cue, the kitchen door opened wider to admit Francine, a rueful look of mischief sparkling in her eyes.
‘I thought I’d escape from Vi by coming to see if you needed a hand.’
Francine was by far the prettiest one of the three sisters, with her strawberry-blonde curls and her heart-shaped face. Grace had the same pretty features.
As always, Francine was beautifully dressed, in a floral silk frock. She’d had the foresight to have some new clothes made whilst she’d been posted to Egypt with ENSA. You simply couldn’t get clothes of the quality and style Fran had brought back with her in England now, not with rationing and the rules the Government had laid down for austerity clothing. Not that Jean minded having to stick by those rules, not when she knew the danger the country’s poor merchant seamen had to endure bringing raw materials into the country for the war effort.
No, she didn’t feel the lack of pretty things for herself, but she did feel it for her girls sometimes, Jean admitted, although Fran had been wonderfully generous, not just bringing a whole trousseau of clothes, including her wedding dress, back from Egypt for Grace, but also bringing lovely fabrics that she had shared with them all.
Fran pulled a face. ‘I know that it can’t be easy for Vi with Edwin having left her for someone else, but she doesn’t exactly make it easy for others to sympathise with her, does she? I’ve never heard anyone complain so much, and over next to nothing.’
‘That’s just Vi’s way,’ Jean tried to defend her twin. ‘She’s always been like that, boasting when things are going well for her and complaining about life not being fair and her being hard done to when they aren’t, but Edwin wanting a divorce, and the war, have made her worse. You can carry that tray through for me, if you will.’ Jean nodded at the tray with the pretty china tea set that Grace had given her the first Christmas of the war. ‘And I’ll bring the teapot.’
Over a decade younger than Jean and Vi, Francine had been through such a lot. Pregnant at sixteen by a married man she naïvely believed loved her, Francine had given in to pressure from Vi and her husband to allow them to bring up her baby as their own before she left for America to make a new life for herself there as a singer.
But then the war had brought her back to do her bit for the country, and Francine had found out that Vi and Edwin had not been the loving parents to little Jack that she’d expected. That had been ever such a bad time. Poor Jack had run away from the people Vi had sent him to, supposedly to keep him safe from the war, and Jean had seen what Francine had gone through, wanting to claim her little boy and mother him, whilst Vi and Edwin did their utmost to stop her. And then had come the terrible tragedy of Jack being killed when a bomb had dropped on the farm to which he’d been evacuated. Such a terrible thing to happen. Of course, things had never been the same between Francine and Vi after that.
‘I don’t know how Bella puts up with Vi,’ Francine told Jean. ‘Vi’s done nothing but complain about how hard done by she is since she got here, when it’s perfectly plain that she has poor Bella running round after her, as well as working full time managing that nursery.’
Bella, the elder of Vi’s two children, was in charge of a government nursery in Wallasey where she and her new husband, a Polish fighter pilot, lived.
‘Vi’s worried that, now that Bella’s married, once the war’s over she’s going to be left on her own. She might complain about having Bella living with her when Bella has got a perfectly good house of her own, but she’d be lost without her,’ Jean told Fran.
Fran had picked up the tea tray but now she put it down again, the tone of her voice softening, as she told her sister, ‘I had a letter from Marcus this morning. His regiment is still on home duties but he thinks now that we’ve got Sicily, if we can win Italy, it won’t be long before we invade Western Europe, and that his regiment is bound to be part of that. I feel so guilty at times, Jean. One half of me is jubilant because we’re beginning to win the war at last, even though I know that there is still more fighting to be done, but the other half of me is so terribly afraid for my own happiness and for Marcus. Life is so precious and so very fragile, and loving Marcus makes me feel so vulnerable. If I should lose him…’ She gave a deep shudder. ‘I’m being selfish, I know. After all, there isn’t a woman in the land who doesn’t feel as I do for someone.’
The two sisters exchanged understanding looks.
‘You have Luke with the Eighth Army,’ Francine continued, ‘Bella has Jan with the RAF, and even Vi has Charlie in the army, although to listen to her she seems more concerned about him losing out if Edwin’s mistress has a son than she is about Charlie losing his life.’
Jean knew what Francine meant. With a victory predicted for the Allies and an end to the war, peace seemed so tantalisingly close that it was harder than ever for those at home to hold back their fears that their loved ones fighting for that peace might not survive to share it with them.
‘Mum, Auntie Vi’s complaining that she’s parched,’ Grace announced, coming into the kitchen. Pulling a face, she added, ‘She’s done nothing but complain since she and Bella got here.’
‘We’re on our way,’ Jean answered, laughing.
As Francine followed Jean through the door with the tea things, her mind was still on Marcus. Neither of them had said so in as many words, but Francine knew how much it would mean to him were she to start a baby before he was sent overseas, and not just because they loved one another, or even because his child would be a living reminder of their love, should he fall in combat. Each of them had already lost a child to the war: Marcus when his first wife, who had been pregnant with their first child, had been killed in an air raid, and Francine herself when the same thing had happened to Jack, the child who had never even known she was his mother and with whom she had shared such a short and poignant handful of days on her return to Liverpool from America. Superstitiously, Francine felt that if she did conceive then Marcus would survive the war because, after all they’d been through, God simply wouldn’t let them have a child if both of them weren’t going to be there to love and protect it.
For that reason she had waited with eager anticipation each month, only to be disappointed when her period arrived with relentless regularity. And now Marcus was warning her that he was expecting to be sent into action.
As she pushed open the door to Jean’s small front room the sight of its exclusively female occupants reinforced everything that she had been thinking about the reality of the war and what lay ahead.
‘I wish you could stay up here long enough to spend a couple of days in Whitchurch with us,’ Grace told Francine later on when they were washing up, whilst Jean took some sandwiches and a flask of tea down to the allotment for Sam and Seb.
The kitchen should have been cold and unwelcoming, facing north as it did, but Sam had painted it a bright yellow before the war, and Francine always thought that in addition to the warming colour the homely room held something of Jean’s own comforting warmth about it.
‘Next time I come up I’ll have to do that,’ Francine agreed,
‘Will you be coming back up soon? Only it’s so hard to get Mum to come out to see me, she’s always so busy here, and I know she’d come if you were coming,’ Grace pressed her, adding coaxingly, ‘Seb’s going to be away in a month’s time on a course at Bletchley Park and it would be lovely if you could both come then.’ She gave a small sigh. ‘I know I’m lucky to have Seb stationed here in England, and even luckier for him to be living out so that we can be together, but I do miss Liverpool and home.’
Poor Grace, Francine thought. It was obvious to Fran that what her niece didn’t want to say was that she missed her mother.
‘Of course I’ll come,’ Francine agreed on a rush of sympathy, ‘and I’ll make sure that your mum comes with me.’
Grace’s face lit up. Putting down the cloth with which she was carefully drying the tea set, she gave Francine a fierce hug.
‘Thanks ever so, Auntie Fran.’
‘You are happy in Whitchurch, aren’t you?’ Francine asked. What she really meant was, was Grace happy in her marriage, but that was something she was reluctant to ask straight out.
‘Oh, yes,’ Grace answered immediately and, very obviously, truthfully, to Francine’s relief. ‘It’s just that Whitchurch is only a small place and all the girls I work with are local and have their families there, and somehow that makes me miss my family even more. Then when I do come home I hardly get to speak properly to Mum, she’s so busy. You will come and stay with me and bring Mum, won’t you?’
‘I promise,’ Fran confirmed.
TWO
‘Lou, you are soooo lucky. You brought that Harvard down daisy-cutter perfect first time, but when I had to do it I came in too high and had to go round again.’
‘It didn’t feel like a perfect landing,’ Lou assured her friend and fellow ATA pilot June Merryvale as they walked away from the airfield and its hangars, carrying their parachutes with them.
The breeze filled out the loose fabric of their Sidcot flying suits, worn not, as it was rumoured so many of the ferry pool pilots did, over merely their underwear, but over their smart navy-blue uniform trousers and pale blue shirts. The same breeze was lifting the wind sock on the airfield and also tugging at Lou’s curls, the tips of her hair sun-bleached now by the summer sunshine.
The two girls had been posted to the ATA training airbase at Thame at the same time for their ongoing training from flying Grade 1 only planes to flying Grade 2 planes – advanced single-engined aircraft, primarily fighter aircraft, such as Hurricanes, Spitfires, Typhoons, Mustangs, Airacobras, and even ‘tricky’ aircraft like the Walruses. The aircraft, though, that Lou most longed to fly was the Spitfire, the small fighter plane that those women pilots who had flown them declared were perfect for female flyers.
Spits – Lou’s heart lifted with excitement every time she thought of flying one. She knew that some of the RAF men disapproved of girls flying at all, but especially disliked and resented the idea of girls flying Spitfires, feeling that only the male ATA pilots – those pilots who for one reason or another could not fly in combat, but who were still good airmen – should be allowed to do so.
So much had happened since she had undergone her ab initio training at Barton-in-the-Clay, the small grass airfield where she had spent the regulation two weeks having lessons in ‘ground school’, followed by bumps and circuits in the school’s Gypsy Moth training plane. From there she had gone on to solo flight, before being assigned the thirty cross-country flights every would-be ATA pilot had to complete successfully before getting her ‘wings’. These flights, designed to hone the skills the trainees had been taught in ground school, had involved putting into practice their navigation ability. The rule was that all ATA pilots, no matter how skilled, had to stick to ‘contact’ flying, which meant that they had to fly beneath any cloud cover so that they could navigate using their maps and what was visible on the ground below them. One of the worst test flights, so far as Lou was concerned, had been when she’d had to navigate round the Spitfire factory at Castle Bromwich avoiding the barrage balloons that protected the site.
Every ATA pilot was expected to progress to more complicated planes as speedily as she could – it was her role, after all, to move as many planes as possible around the country – but in accordance with her own confidence and the wisdom of those teaching her.
Once an ATA pilot was qualified and had her wings, she was then sent to one of the ATA ferry pools where she would be given ‘chits’ to collect and deliver planes.
The ferry pools used Avro Ansons in a taxi service to get the pilots to the planes they had to deliver. The pilots then had to collect the planes, and deliver them to MUs, as the maintenance units were called. Only then would the planes be fitted with their onboard navigation systems and other equipment. This was why the ATA pilots had to learn to fly without anything other than basic instruments, and were forbidden to go above the clouds, or from an MU to an RAF station.
Every new recruit was told hideously graphic tales of pilots who had ignored this rule and ended up losing their planes and their lives.
Here at Thame, though, which was close to ATA’s Ferry Pool Number 5 at Luton, Lou had also heard tales of certain daredevil ATA female pilots who not only ignored the rules to fly above the cloud but who also performed acrobatic manoeuvres with the fighter planes they were delivering, something that was strictly forbidden and for which they were not trained.
Lou couldn’t imagine herself ever being skilled enough to do that, even though she had made such good progress in Grade 1 that she had been sent back to Thame to undergo her conversion course to Grade 2 in record time.
‘We’ve both got an off-duty weekend coming up – why don’t the two of us spend it in London?’ June suggested.
‘I’d love to,’ Lou told her truthfully, hitching her parachute higher onto her shoulder, ‘but I can’t. I haven’t been home in an age. My twin has been engaged for over two months and I haven’t congratulated her properly yet.’
Good pals though they had become, Lou didn’t feel she could confide in June how guilty she felt that she and Sasha had drifted so far apart that sometimes, reading Sasha’s short, stilted letters to her, Lou felt as though they had become strangers, and that they had nothing in common any more.
‘Oh, well, never mind,’ June accepted philosophically. ‘But promise that you’ll come with me the next time we get a weekend pass.’
‘Of course I will,’ Lou agreed, wincing as the Tannoy broke into life, announcing that the two pilots whose names had been broadcast were required to present themselves at the admin block for ferry duties.
Lou couldn’t wait until she was properly qualified. What a thrill it would be to hear her own name being broadcast. Inside her head Lou replayed the message delivered in the stentorian accents of the base’s admin controller, but substituting her own name for those of the girls called.
Their admin controller was, like the original instructors for ATA, a BOAC employee. Now, though, the Government, in the belief that the Allies would win the war, had allowed BOAC to recall all its own instructors to start preparing post-war training for the corporation. The job of training ATA pilots had been handed over to instructors who had themselves been ATA pilots, many of them women who had the advantage of knowing exactly what the work of an ATA pilot entailed.
Lou’s instructor this morning, Margery Smythe, who had sent her out on her first solo Grade 2 flight, was a firm disciplinarian but very fair and encouraging.
She had been so lucky to have been upgraded on to a Grade 2 course so speedily after having first qualified, Lou reflected as she tucked into her salad lunch in the canteen. She’d be flying again this afternoon and she didn’t want a heavy meal lying on the butterflies she knew would invade her tummy. June had qualified two months ahead of her and insisted that Lou had to be ‘super good’ to have been pushed up a grade so quickly.
Lou suspected, more modestly, that it was more a case of her being in the right place at the right time. Not that she hadn’t been thrilled and excited. She had, the words almost falling over themselves as she wrote them when she sent Sasha a letter telling her about her potential up-grade to fly advanced single-engined planes, but in her response her twin hadn’t even mentioned Lou’s triumph. What made Lou feel even more guilty now was that secretly she would much rather have spent her precious leave weekend in London with June than in Liverpool with her twin sister.
‘I just hope that when we finish this conversion course we’re both posted together, that neither of us gets posted to Ratcliffe,’ June announced, breaking into Lou’s thoughts.
Lou finished chewing a rubbery piece of Spam, and demanded, ‘Why, what’s wrong with Ratcliffe?’
June raised her eyebrows and shook her head so vigorously that the bun into which her auburn hair was knotted threatened to unravel.
‘Haven’t you heard about those Americans who joined ATA who are based there?’
‘No, what about them?’ Lou demanded.
‘They’ve put it about that they can outfly and outplay any other ATA female pilot, and they’ve got the reputation to prove that they mean it. There was a pilot at my last ferry pool who swore blind that she’d seen two of them deliberately racing one another to see who could put down first. They don’t like us and they’re quite happy to show it, or so I’ve heard.’
‘There were a couple of American pilots at my last posting and they were nothing like that.’ Lou felt obliged to defend the two senior and very dedicated American women she’d seen flying in and out of Barton-in-the-Clay.
‘Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be posted to Ratcliffe. I like a good time but when it comes to some of the things I’ve heard that they get up to, I’m afraid I draw the line.’
‘What kind of things?’ Lou pressed her.
‘Like I just said – wild parties. Very wild parties. The kind where you end up in some man’s bed,’ June emphasised darkly. ‘I mean, I’m no prude, but.’
If what June had said was true then she had to agree with her, Lou reflected as they cleared what was left on their plates into the slop bin and then placed them on the trolley for washing.
‘I’ve got my first solo this afternoon.’ June rolled her eyes. ‘I’m dreading it. What about you – what are you doing?’
‘Margery is going to go through the details of my three cross-country solo flights with me, ready for the first one tomorrow. She’s not told me yet which plane I’ll be flying, though.’
‘See you tonight then.’
Lou nodded.
Although most of the ferry pools didn’t have accommodation blocks, and ATA pilots were normally billeted with local people or clubbed together to rent somewhere between them if they could, at Thame Sir William Currie had put one wing of his Tudor mansion at the disposal of ATA to provide a ‘live-in mess’.
After living in basic WAAF accommodation at an RAF base before transferring to ATA, Lou had been round-eyed with disbelief when she had first been shown her new quarters – a wood-panelled room with its mullioned windows overlooking the knot garden.
She even had a four-poster bed, with the same heavy ruby-red velvet curtains as were hanging at the windows. Her room had its own fireplace, and a large polished wardrobe and a chest of drawers, both of which smelled of lavender.
On the wall next to Lou’s bed hung a sampler, requesting ‘Bless this House’, stitched, so she had been told by the housekeeper, by Sir William’s great-aunt as a young girl.
‘Their’ wing of the large house was accessed via the main hall with its magnificent polished wood staircase, the banister carved with symbols from Sir William’s family crest. Since ATA did not have an officer structure – pilot seniority being denoted by length of service and ability to fly a variety of planes – there was no official ‘mess’. Instead the girls ate their meals in the base’s canteen or occasionally by invitation in the house’s elegant dining room, furnished with an antique Hepplewhite dining-room table and chairs, eating off delicate china and using silver cutlery, with Sir William as their genial host. One of the drawbacks, though, as far as Lou was concerned, were the bathrooms, with their huge baths, which they were allowed to fill with only two inches of hot water.
‘Yes, see you tonight,’ Lou confirmed as she set off in the direction of the hangars.
THREE
‘Yes, Charlie, of course I understand why Daphne won’t be coming with you, with her own mother not being very well, but I must warn you that Mummy is bound to be disappointed. You know how much she thinks of Daphne.’ Bella Polanski pushed the thick waves of her golden-blonde hair back from her face as she spoke patiently but firmly into the telephone receiver. Her blue eyes were shadowed with disappointment as she assured her younger brother that she had got the message that his visit to Wallasey would be a solo affair.
Privately, Bella acknowledged later, she wished that Charlie was going to be accompanied by his wife, even though that would have meant Bella giving up the comfort of her double bed to Charlie and his wife, leaving her to sleep in the boxroom’s single bed, and even though she and Daphne had never been close. And it wasn’t for her mother’s sake either that she would have preferred Charlie not to have returned home alone. Vi had been puffed up with pride when Charlie had announced that he was to marry Daphne Wrighton-Bude, the girl whose brother Charlie had rescued at Dunkirk but who had sadly not survived his injuries, and their father had rewarded Charlie very handsomely financially for his good sense in marrying a girl from such a good family. Not that Charlie was likely to get any money out of their father now that he had left their mother for his assistant, Pauline. Vi had been over the moon when Charlie had told her that he and Daphne were expecting their first child, but then just after Bella and Jan had married had come the sad news that there was not to be a baby after all. Bella, having suffered a miscarriage herself during her own first marriage, had written immediately to Daphne but the only reply she had received had been a frosty little note from Daphne’s mother acknowledging her own letter.
From her small office at the nursery, it was impossible for her to see out into the nursery itself but she didn’t have to do that to be able to visualise the look of tenderness on Lena’s face as she worked with their small charges.
The best thing she had ever done, aside from marrying Jan, had been to listen to her conscience the day she had seen Lena in the street in Liverpool, distraught and heavily pregnant with her brother, Charlie’s illegitimate baby. Moved by the young girl’s plight, Bella had taken her home with her. Out of that one act of compassion had grown a friendship that had turned Bella’s own life around. Lena was happy now, a proud mother of Bella’s adored niece, a happy wife to Gavin, a mother-to-be to his own baby, and Bella’s right hand and a highly valued member of Bella’s loyal team of nursery nurses. After their marriage Bella had offered her own house to Lena and Gavin and had moved back to live with her mother. She’d been delighted when Lena and Gavin had married and Bella felt that the last thing they needed now was for Charlie to reappear on the scene to start making trouble in that way that he had.
On the other hand, Bella also knew how much it would mean to her mother to see Charlie, especially when Charlie himself had hinted to Bella during his telephone call that he expected to be sent into action soon.
She would have to tell Lena about his proposed visit, of course.
She found Lena in the day room of the nursery, soothing one of their new intake of little ones, who had woken up from her afternoon nap confused by her surroundings. Small and curvaceous, with olive-toned skin and thick dark hair, Lena was strikingly attractive, her looks and colouring a perfect foil for Bella’s peaches-and-cream beauty.
The nursery was a light airy place, with two large main rooms, a day room, and a sleeping room where the children could have their afternoon naps. The walls of the day room were painted bright yellow and decorated with the children’s drawings. High chairs for the babies were pushed back against one of the walls, ready to be pulled up to the scrubbed wooden table where the children ate their meals, whilst there were proper chairs for the older children, and four deep comfy armchairs for the staff to sit in when they settled down to read the children their afternoon story, or give some upset child a special reassuring cuddle.
Lena, who was sitting in one of these, had settled the toddler on her lap to dry her tears. She looked up at Bella with a warm smile.
‘You aren’t going to be able to do that for much longer,’ Bella warned her. ‘You won’t have enough room.’
Lena laughed and looked down at the swelling beneath her navy-blue cotton maternity smock, with its white Peter Pan collar and pretty bow.
‘He doesn’t like it at all when I put one of the babies on my knee. He kicks away at them like billy-o.’
‘He?’ Bella teased her, her own pre-war floral cotton dress slightly loose on her slender frame, thanks to the rigours of rationing. Bending down to lift the now smiling toddler from Lena’s lap and watching her whilst she toddled off happily to join a group of children who were playing with some wooden building blocks, she reminded Lena, ‘You were sure that Janette was going to be a boy but you were wrong.’
‘Yes, I know, but I’m really sure this time that it’s going to be a boy.’
It would certainly probably be a good thing if Lena and Gavin’s baby were a boy, Bella reflected. Gavin was a wonderful father to Lena’s little girl and adored her, but Bella felt privately that there would be less chance of comparisons being made between the child that Charlie had fathered, and the one that was Gavin’s own, if this next baby was a boy.
Thinking of Charlie reminded her of why she had come to find Lena.
‘I’ll go and make us both a cup of tea, shall I?’ Lena suggested, starting to get to her feet, but Bella stopped her, shaking her head.
‘There’s something I want to tell you.’
Immediately Lena’s face lit up. ‘You’ve started a baby,’ she challenged Bella excitedly. ‘You and Jan. Oh, Bella, I’m so pleased.’
‘No, it isn’t that. It’s Charlie. He’s coming home this weekend. He told me that he’s expecting to be sent into action soon and that he wanted to come up and see Mummy.’
They exchanged understanding looks.
‘You’ll want to tell Gavin, of course,’ Bella went on, ‘although I don’t think you’re likely to run into Charlie. He’s bound to want to give you a wide berth after the way he’s behaved.’
‘It wasn’t his fault that I was daft enough to think he wanted to marry me when all he wanted was a good time.’
‘It was his fault that he didn’t tell you that he was already engaged to be married, Lena.’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Lena assured her. ‘In many ways I reckon he did me a favour.’
‘A favour? When he left you carrying his child?’ Bella protested.
‘Well, if it hadn’t been for me being pregnant I’d never have got to meet you, and look at all the things you’ve done for me, Bella – giving me a home and a job, and being such a good friend to me. If it wasn’t for you I’d never have met Gavin, and I’d probably have come to a bad end instead of being married to the best husband a girl could have, and having the best friend in the world. Don’t you worry about me accidentally bumping into your Charlie. If I did, I’d tell him how lucky I reckon I am.’
‘Oh, Lena, you’re a real tonic and no mistake,’ Bella laughed.
‘Hug, Auntie Bella, hug.’
The sound of her niece’s voice had Bella going immediately towards the little girl to pick her up and cuddle her close. She smelled of that lovely vanilla and baby powder scent, and Bella’s hold on her tightened as she breathed it in.
Lena’s innocent comment about Bella being pregnant herself had caused a little ache deep inside her body. Once she had been going to have a child, but because of her first husband’s physical assault on her she had lost that baby. Jan had been there then to help her, although then she had believed she hated him.
They had talked during the brief time they had shared together before Jan had had to rejoin his Polish RAF Squadron down on the South Coast, and Bella had told Jan then that she didn’t want to have a baby until the war was over, and until he could be with her.
‘I’m so afraid, Jan,’ she had confessed to him. ‘After what happened before. I couldn’t bear that to happen again.’
‘It won’t. It was Alan who caused your miscarriage,’ he had tried to reassure her.
‘I know that, but I’m still afraid. I need you to be there with me – I need your strength. Somehow I feel that if you are there then everything will be all right…our baby will be all right,’ Bella had told him.
Jan had kissed her then and she had kissed him back, and he had told her that everything would be as she wished. She knew she had made the right decision, but that couldn’t stop her aching with longing to feel Jan’s child growing inside her. It wouldn’t be long now until the war ended. Everyone said so. All she had to do was wait.
Wait and pray that Jan would come safely through it. Bella hugged her niece even more tightly. The Polish Squadron within the RAF had a reputation for bravery and daring. Jan had already been shot down once whilst in action. If she should lose him…but she mustn’t think of that. She must think instead of doing her own bit for the war effort, of playing her part and, of course, of dealing with the fuss her mother would make once she learned that Charlie was going to pay them a visit but that Daphne would not be with them.
So Charlie was coming home. Lena put a calming hand on her stomach as the baby within it kicked hard as though in protest against the intrusion into her thoughts of someone else. Lena looked down at her daughter. She was a beautiful little girl with the same dark curls that Lena herself had inherited from her Italian father, but where Lena’s skin had a faintly olive tone to it, Janette was fair-skinned and blue-eyed. Everyone who saw the three of them together remarked on the fact that whilst her daughter’s hair was the same colour as Lena’s own, her eyes were the same colour as her father, Gavin’s. Only of course Gavin had not fathered her at all, even if she called him Daddy and the two of them adored one another. Charlie had fathered her. Charlie, whom Lena had so naïvely and foolishly believed loved her and had meant what he had said when he had promised to marry her.
How silly she had been giving her heart and her body so immediately to Charlie. She was much wiser now, and with this new baby on the way she had everything she could possibly want.
So why did the fact that Charlie was coming home make her feel so restless and…on edge? A sudden flurry of kicks from the baby punished her for her thoughts and reminded her of where her duty lay. She was so lucky to have what she did, Lena told herself. So very lucky.
Katie enjoyed her voluntary work at the American Red Cross’s home from home for the American military at Rainbow Corner in Leicester Square, although she had to admit that it could be very demanding, especially on evenings like this one, when she was running late. She’d earned herself a disapproving look from the senior voluntary worker in charge on the reception area as she’d hurried in and made a dash for the cloakroom, where she’d removed her blue blazer and her neat white hat with its navy-blue bow trimming.
There’d be no chance of begging five minutes to snatch a hot drink and something to eat, Katie thought ruefully, quickly dabbing Max Factor powder onto her nose and then applying a fresh coat of pink lipstick, before combing her soft dark gold curls. Working at the Postal Censorship Office did not require her to wear a uniform, and the warmth of the September sunshine had meant that she had gone to work this morning wearing a neat white blouse under her precious ‘good’ blazer, and a red skirt with a pattern of white daisies on it, not really thinking about the significance of the colours until a small group of British Army high-ups had passed her when she left work, one of them commenting approvingly, ‘Red, white and blue, eh? Jolly good show, young lady. That’s the spirit.’
It was almost miraculous how things had changed since El Alamein and the Allies’ success. The air of tension and anxiety that had filled London’s streets like the dust from its bombed-out buildings had begun to lift, to be replaced by a sense of energy and optimism. The years of sacrifice, both in terms of human life and going without, of having faith and holding strong, were finally beginning to pay off. You could see it in the pride with which everyone was beginning to hold themselves, especially those in uniform, even if the shadow of Dunkirk and all the losses that had followed it were still there.
Victory – it was so close that you could almost taste it, almost…inside your thoughts, in your conversations with others, but it wasn’t real yet, and there were still hundreds, thousands, perhaps, of young men who would have to sacrifice their lives before it could be achieved.
Some of those young men would be those who were here tonight in the Rainbow Club, Katie knew: eager, enthusiastic, brash young Americans, come to show the Brits how to win a war and not in the least abashed about saying so either.
They didn’t mean any harm, not really. They just didn’t realise the effect their well-fed, smartly turned-out appearance had on a nation that had undergone four years of warfare and rationing. And it wasn’t just Britain’s armed forces that some Americans seemed to look down on. There had been more than one occasion on which Katie’s face had burned with indignation and anger over the way she had heard American servicemen describing British girls, although to be fair she had to admit that the behaviour of some girls did leave a lot to be desired.
At night the streets round Piccadilly were filled with girls offering GIs ‘a good time’; couples openly having sex in doorways and whatever dark corner they could find, with the result that used condoms littered the streets, whilst, according to the authorities, venereal diseases were on the rise.
All this was to be deplored, and it was strictly forbidden for the young women who were judged suitable to work at Rainbow Corner to get involved in relationships with the Americans they met there.
Of course, there were girls who broke that rule, although Katie wasn’t one of them. Not that the young GIs hadn’t tried to date her – they had. Katie, though, always refused. She didn’t want to get involved – with anyone.
A sudden influx of young airmen brought an end to her introspection.
‘Boy, oh boy, it smells good in here,’ one of them remarked enthusiastically, breathing in appreciatively. ‘Coffee, doughnuts and hamburgers, Home sweet American Home.’
They’d arrived on one of the special trains put on to ferry American servicemen from their bases into London for their weekends off, and they were keen to let Katie know how they planned to spend their weekend.
‘Girls, girls and more girls – that’s what we want, isn’t it, guys?’ the one who was obviously the leader informed Katie, looking round at the others.
‘Sure is,’ they agreed in unison.
‘I’m afraid we can’t help you there,’ Katie responded lightly, ‘but if you’d like a map of London, or directions to anywhere…’
‘Yeah, we’ll have some directions to the nearest cat house,’ one of the men grinned.
Katie suspected that they’d already been drinking, but she didn’t really want to get them into trouble by calling for assistance. American GIs were meant to respect Rainbow Corner as though it were their home and occupied by their mother.
‘Why don’t you boys go and get yourselves a Coke and make yourselves at home?’ Katie suggested.
‘That ain’t what we’ve got in mind,’ drawled the one who had first spoken, leaning on the counter, breathing alcohol fumes in Katie’s direction, while the others gathered round him. ‘How about obliging us yourself? We don’t mind taking it in turns, do we, guys?’
Some more men had walked in and had obviously overheard the comment. One of them – an officer, Katie guessed from the insignia on his uniform – walked over to the desk with a grim expression and announced curtly, ‘We don’t treat the kind folks, who are good enough to give up their free time to make us welcome, like that, Soldier, and I suggest you apologise to the lady right now, otherwise I’m gonna be calling the MPs.’
One look at the officer had an immediate sobering effect on the small group.
‘Yessss, sir,’ the culprit stammered as he stood up straight and saluted, a shamed-faced, ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ crossing the desk, before, to Katie’s relief, the young men disappeared at some speed, into the club.
‘Thank you for that,’ she told her rescuer.
He shook his head, his mouth tightening into a grim line.
‘You shouldn’t have had to thank me,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Do you get much of that kind of behaviour?’
‘No,’ Katie told him truthfully.
‘I’m afraid that some of these young idiots try to treat this country as though they’re an invading force, not its ally,’ the officer commented.
Katie smiled but didn’t say anything. What he had said was, after all, true.
A younger officer came hurrying in saluting her rescuer.
‘The general’s car has arrived, sir.’
‘I’ll be right with you,’ Katie’s rescuer answered him, looking back at her. ‘I’m sorry you had to put up with those young fools,’ he told her before turning on his heel to leave the building.
‘Wow, who was he?’ the other girl on the reception desk, who had been taking her break, demanded as she reappeared just in time to see Katie’s rescuer disappearing.
‘I don’t know,’ Katie answered.
‘Looked more like he should be mixing with the top brass at the American Embassy than coming here. That was a major’s insignia he was wearing.’
It was obviously one of those nights, Katie reflected later when she arrived back at the billet she shared with four ATS girls in Cadogan Square, to find Peggy Groves, the most sensible and senior of the young women, waiting anxiously in the kitchen, twisting her engagement ring round on her finger. Katie noticed her khaki uniform skirt was looser on the waist than it had been. Thanks to rationing, they were all quite literally having to ‘pull their belts’ in.
‘I’m waiting for Gerry to come in. I’ve decided that it’s time I had a word with her about the way she’s behaving. For her own sake, not just because it reflects on all of us.’ An anxious frown was creasing Peggy’s forehead. ‘I was working late at the War Office this evening and when I got back the retired colonel from three doors down collared me to complain about what he referred to as “our goings-on”.’
Peggy lit up a cigarette and drew deeply on it, the light from the kitchen’s ugly single bulb shining on her dark auburn hair. ‘If word of Gerry’s behaviour gets to Lord Cadogan’s ears, we could all end up looking for a new billet, and I can’t say that I would blame him. I know that Gerry’s always been a bit on the wild side and that she’s been through a hell of a lot, losing both her brothers this summer.’ Peggy gave a shudder and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘It’s the kind of news we all dread getting.’
Katie nodded. Gerry’s brothers had both been pilots with Bomber Command and everyone knew that the death rate amongst those who flew bombing missions to Germany was very high – higher than that amongst fighter pilots.
‘We’ve all tried to give her a bit of leeway and cut her some slack,’ Peggy continued. ‘If there’s one thing this war has taught me it’s not to judge others. Gerry isn’t the first girl to throw herself into living life to the full, with all that that means, following the death of someone close, and it’s not for me to stand in moral judgement on her. She’s a decent sort at heart, but she can’t keep carrying on the way she is doing, drinking too much and sleeping around with as many men as possible, coming in at all hours, and in the state she does, with torn stockings and her clothes not fastened properly.’
Katie knew what Peggy meant. They were all aware of the change the deaths of her brothers had caused in Gerry. Before, she had spoken openly about the fact that she liked a bit of fun, but now there was a desperation about her behaviour that worried them all.
‘Do you want some cocoa?’ Katie asked, going to fill the kettle.
Peggy nodded, and then frowned again as they heard someone knocking on the front door.
Without saying anything they hurried into the hallway, automatically switching off the lights as they did so, so as not to break the blackout laws.
When Peggy opened the door, Katie could see a couple of GIs supporting Gerry between them, a taxi with another GI standing beside it waiting at the kerb with its meter ticking.
‘Get a move on, you guys,’ the GI standing beside the taxi urged them. ‘We don’t want the MPs catching up with us again.’
His warning of the possible arrival of the Military Police was enough to have the two GIs let go of Gerry, who would have fallen headlong into the hallway if Katie and Peggy hadn’t caught her. She smelled of whisky, and something else – a rank sexual male odour that made Katie gag.
‘We’d better get her upstairs to her room,’ Peggy told Katie as they exchanged despairing looks.
It wasn’t easy. Gerry was so drunk that her limbs were like those of a rag doll, her speech confused, but eventually Katie and Peggy managed to get her into her room and onto her bed.
‘We’ll have to turn her onto her side, in case she’s sick in the night, otherwise she could choke,’ Peggy told Katie practically. ‘Come on, Gerry,’ Peggy instructed her firmly. ‘You’re going to have to sit up.’
‘Don’t want to sit up.’ Gerry told them. ‘Don’t want to do anything,’ but determinedly, and with Katie’s help, Peggy managed to get Gerry into a semi-sitting and much safer position.
‘I don’t really like leaving her on her own in this state, but I’ve got to be at the War Office earlier than usual tomorrow. There’s an important meeting taking place,’ Peggy confided to Katie, when Gerry fell asleep minutes after they had got her sitting up.
‘I’ll stay with her, if you like,’ Katie offered.
‘Would you?’ Peggy gave her a grateful look. ‘I know that strictly speaking it isn’t up to us to look out for her, but—’
‘We’re all in this war together,’ Katie stopped her. ‘I like Gerry and I feel sorry for her. She doesn’t really mean any harm.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ Peggy agreed.
It was over two hours later when Gerry woke up, her attempt to stand waking Katie, who had been dozing in the chair beside her bed. Throwing off the thin grey blanket she had wrapped round herself, Katie got to her feet just in time to prevent Gerry from losing her balance.
‘Oh, Katie, it’s you. That’s funny,’ Gerry announced. ‘The last thing I remember is being with some GIs.’
‘Yes, they brought you back here,’ Katie agreed.
‘And you don’t approve. Oh, it’s all right, I can tell by the sound of your voice what you’re thinking.’ Gerry shivered. ‘I thought that by living I’d be able to make up for the fact that my brothers are dead; that if I had fun then I’d be having fun for all three of us. I wanted to live for all three of us, Katie, but I can’t. I can’t…’ Her voice broke and her body heaved with the intensity of the ragged sobs shaking her.
‘The more I try, the worse it gets, and the worse I feel. Sometimes I wish that I was dead as well. At least that way we’d all be together and my parents wouldn’t have to worry any more; they wouldn’t look at me and think that there should be three of us. It’s so hard there, just being me.’
Katie ached with sympathy and sadness for her.
‘Sometimes I just want to go to sleep and never wake up again. Have you ever felt like that, Katie?’
All Katie could do was hug her tightly, but Gerry’s anguished outburst had filled her with concern, and she knew she had to say something.
Taking a deep breath she told Gerry quietly, as she released her, ‘I do understand how you feel and, well, I think I’d feel the same, but we can’t always just think of ourselves, Gerry.’
The other girl was looking at her now.
‘You are all your parents have left, Gerry. You are the future of your family. You and the children you will have, not just for yourself but for your brothers as well. Sometimes it takes more courage to live than it does to die. Your brothers were incredibly brave and I know that you can be just as brave.’
For a moment Katie thought she had done the wrong thing. Tears were pouring silently down Gerry’s face, but then Gerry flung herself into Katie’s arms.
‘I just don’t deserve a friend as good as you, Katie,’ she wept. ‘You’re right. The boys would be furious with me for being such a coward. From now on things are going to change. I am going to change.’
They hugged again, Katie close to tears herself.
Later on, as she stood in her own room, her hands wrapped round the comforting warmth of her mug of cocoa, Kate reflected sadly on the effect that the war was having on the emotions of young women, herself included. Some, like Gerry, sought escape from its harsh realities in drink and ‘having fun’; others, like Katie herself, avoided anything other than friendship with young men, for fear of the emotional pain of losing them, whilst women like Peggy Groves, engaged or married, prayed every night that their men would return home safely. If she and Luke Campion had still been engaged, she too would have been one of those waiting and praying and hoping against hope.
But she was not still engaged to Luke, Katie reminded herself. That was over and in the past, just like the despair she had suffered when Luke had first broken off their engagement. But ending it had been the right thing for both of them. As much as she had loved Luke – and she had – she had found his dark moods and jealousy difficult to cope with. The turbulence of her parents’ marriage had left her yearning for the calm of a love based more on the comfort provided by friendship than passion, Katie admitted, but she had not known herself well enough then to be able to see that. She had not known herself and she had not really known Luke either; they had never properly discussed themselves with one another. No, she no longer wept for their broken engagement or her own broken heart.
‘What do you reckon, Corp? Think we’re going to make it?’ Andy asked Luke as they kept their heads down, waiting for the landing craft they were on to get close enough to Salerno’s beachhead for them to disembark.
Luke and Andy had joined up virtually together, trained together, and fought together in the desert, and now here they were about to disembark onto Italian soil.
Their unit, along with the remnants of other British units, were now being deployed in Italy under the command of General Mark Clark, of the American Fifth Army, the aim, to break through the German defences and push all the way to Rome.
Right now, though, Luke reflected, as he tried not to let the screams and moans from a landing craft that had just been hit by a German shell, get through the protective wall that every soldier learned to draw around himself, for some odd reason it was Katie who was at the forefront of his mind. Determinedly he pushed her image away to focus on his men and his responsibility to them.
On the beach ahead of them men from the advanced landing craft had started up a smoke screen to protect the landing of the infantry and the equipment.
The sergeant in charge of their troop was giving the command for the men to make for the beach. Wading through churning water, Luke chivvied his own men on, ignoring the sight of a corpse floating in the sea next to them.
All along the landing area men were coming ashore, amid the cacophony of noise and the acrid smell and taste of smoke, and the enemy shells falling around them, to get their equipment safely beached, before starting to push inland, alongside 146th Field Regiment RA, which was now attached to the 7th Armoured Division.
‘Fighting this ruddy war certainly doesn’t get any easier,’ Andy found time to mutter, in an aside to Luke, as the men fell in and started to push forward. The first rule of any beach landing was that you got off the beach as fast as you could, and as far as the enemy would let you.
This time that distance wasn’t very far, a mile or so Luke reckoned, before all hell broke loose and they were under attack from the Germans.
She had done it. Lou felt like whooping with joy as she taxied her plane neatly to a standstill, after her tenth cross-country flight. This one had been the hardest of all: from Thame to the Castle Bromwich aircraft factory – the largest Spitfire factory in the country – surrounded on three sides by barrage balloons to protect it. Lou had not had to land on the airstrip there this time to avoid clogging it up when it was needed for the removal of Spits to the maintenance units. Instead she had been instructed to drop down almost to a landing height and then lift off again. As the barrage balloons stretched to the western side of the airstrip, all landings had to be made to the west and all take-offs had to be made to the east. Today, even with good visibility and a lightly buffeting wind, Lou had been aware of what a challenge it must be to perform those manoeuvres when weather conditions were unfavourable.
Lou had been glad she had listened to the advice of her instructor, Margery, who had told her to return via the maintenance units of Little Rissington, Kemble and Aston Down, where ultimately she would be expected to deliver the new Spitfires for their mechanical fitting out, and then Number 6 Ferry Pool at Ratcliffe before returning to Thame. Since the Fosse Way passed the boundary to Ratcliffe’s airstrip, once she had the road in her view, Lou had stuck with it, holding her breath when they had run into some unexpectedly low cloud.
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