When the Lights Go On Again

In those days, when they had got home from school they had measured the days from the way the kitchen smelled. Mondays, the smell would be of lye soap and laundry, because Monday was wash day, just as on Fridays the smell would be of fish. They were not a Catholic family but their mother had still followed the traditional habit of serving fish on Fridays. Thursday’s smell had always been Lou’s favourite because Thursday was baking day, and they would return home from school to find the kitchen wonderfully scented with the aroma of cakes or scones, or whatever it was their mother had been baking.

Those had been such happy days. She had never dreamed then of what might lie ahead of them, never imagined that there would ever be a time when she and Sasha would not do everything together. Then such a thing had been unthinkable. Then…

The back door was half open. A pang of unexpected happiness, tinged with uncertainty, made Lou hesitate, suddenly conscious, now that she was here, how very much she wanted to make things right with her twin and for them to be close again.

She pushed open the door.

‘Lou!’

Jean stared in delight at her daughter, taking in her air of calm confidence and the smartness of her appearance.

‘Mum.’ Lou’s voice thickened with emotion as she was enveloped in her mother’s loving embrace.

‘You’ve grown,’ Jean told her. ‘A least an inch.’

‘It’s this cap,’ Lou laughed. ‘It makes me look taller. Oh, Mum, it’s lovely to be home. I do miss you all, especially Sash.’

The once bright yellow paint on the kitchen walls might look a little faded and war-weary now, but the love that filled the small room hadn’t changed, and nor had her mother.

‘Tell me all about everyone,’ Lou begged her mother. ‘I get letters, but it isn’t the same as seeing people. How’s Grace liking Whitchurch? And what about Auntie Fran? And Sasha, Mum, how is she?’

Jean sighed and shook her head slightly.

‘I’m worried about her,’ she admitted. Normally she would not have dreamed of discussing one of the twins with the other, but Lou had such an air of quiet competence about her now that unexpectedly Jean discovered that it was actually a relief to be able to voice her concerns about Sasha to someone who knew and understood her so well.

‘There’s nothing wrong between her and Bobby, is there?’ Lou asked anxiously.

‘I don’t think so, Lou. I just don’t know what’s wrong with her, except that nothing seems to please her these days.’

Outside the back door Sasha stiffened, anger and resentment filling her. So that’s what she got for using some of her precious time off to come home early to welcome her twin – overhearing Lou and their mother talking about her behind her back.

Sasha pushed open the door and marched into the kitchen, her unexpected appearance forcing an uncomfortable silence on the room.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ she told her mother and sister. ‘I’ll go up to my room so that you can go on talking about me behind my back.’

‘Oh, Sasha, love, don’t be like that,’ Jean pleaded.

She was upsetting her mother, Sasha could see, and immediately her anger turned to guilt and misery. She knew that her mother was anxious about her, but how could she tell her about the shameful secret that was eating into her? How could she tell her what a coward she was, especially now with Lou standing there in her smart uniform. Lou, her twin, whose letters home were full of the exciting and dangerous things she was doing.

Wanting to change the subject and lighten the mood in the kitchen, Lou announced, ‘I wish so much you’d been with me last night, Sash. A group of us went to this dance and there was this dreadful show-off American girl pilot who was trying to prove that us British girls couldn’t jitterbug, so I had to show her that she was wrong. I did pretty well but it would have been so much better if you’d been there.’

Was that a hint of a smile relaxing Sasha’s frown?

‘Oh, and I’ve got to tell you this. You’ll never guess who was there,’ Lou continued. ‘Kieran Mallory, and—’

Immediately Sasha’s smile disappeared. ‘Kieran Mallory? Why have you got to tell me about him? Do you think I actually need reminding about what he did, or how keen you were to get in his good books? I thought we’d agreed that we’d never talk about him again.’

Lou didn’t know what to say.

‘It was thanks to you and him that I nearly got myself killed,’ Sasha threw at her, red flags of emotion burning in her cheeks. ‘I would have been killed an’ all if it hadn’t been for my Bobby, saving me like he did by taking my place in that bomb shaft.’

Guilt filled Lou. ‘Sash, you know how dreadful I feel about that.’ Remorsefully she reached out her hand to her twin, but Sasha stepped back from her.

‘It’s easy enough for you to say that, but it doesn’t seem to have stopped you taking up with Kieran again.’

‘I haven’t taken up with him,’ Lou protested. ‘I only mentioned him because I wanted to tell you that he was with this dreadful American girl!’

‘And that’s why you wanted to outdance her, isn’t it? So that you could show off to him.’

‘No,’ Lou protested. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’

‘Then why are you so keen to tell me that you’ve met up with him again? If you’re trying to make me jealous of you, Lou, you needn’t bother. My Bobby is worth a hundred of Kieran Mallory. You’re welcome to him. Don’t bother making me any tea, Mum. I’m meeting Bobby at tea time and we’ll have something at Joe Lyons.’

Lou was too astonished and, yes, hurt as well, by Sasha’s unexpected and unjustified attack on her to say anything to defend herself. She’d only mentioned the incident because she’d wanted to take Sasha back to a time when they’d been close to one another. It had never occurred to her that Sasha would place the interpretation on her little story that she had.

Without waiting for any response Sasha pulled open the door into the hall and walked out.

Jean and Lou looked at one another in silence as they heard her feet going up the stairs.

‘It isn’t like Sasha thinks, Mum. I wasn’t telling her about Kieran for any reason. Sasha’s right, though,’ Lou continued soberly. ‘What happened to her was my fault. If we hadn’t quarrelled and she’d decided to go home without me, she’d never have gone across that bombed-out building and fallen into that bomb crater. I should have gone back with her the moment she said she didn’t want to go any further, instead of waiting like I did, thinking she’d change her mind and come running after me and Kieran.’

Lou looked so guilty and upset that Jean’s heart ached for her.

‘It was an accident, with no one to blame, Lou love, and thankfully in the end neither of you came to any harm. I can’t tell you how many years it aged me and your dad when we saw the two of you in that bomb crater, you holding on to Sasha for dear life and her half under that bomb.’

Jean exhaled and then said firmly, ‘I’m going to put the kettle on and make us all a nice cup of tea.’

She turned away from Lou to fill the kettle. ‘And as for this Kieran Mallory…’ she continued, her back to Lou as she turned on the gas and then struck a match to light the burners.

‘He doesn’t mean anything to me now, Mum,’ Lou assured her. ‘Me and Sasha were well and truly taken in by him and that uncle of his who managed the Royal Court Theatre.’

Jean was glad that she had her back to her daughter. Somehow, perhaps because at the time she had been so dreadfully anxious for Sasha and then so relieved when she was finally safe, she’d never made the connection between Kieran Mallory and Con Bryant, although Jean recognised that it must have been there for her to make. Now that she had, though, a fresh apprehension filled her. Con might be dead and buried – Jean had seen the announcement of his death in the local paper – but that did not alter the fact that he had been the cause of such dreadful misery and potential shame to the family when he seduced Francine, and left her pregnant, something which Lou and Sasha knew nothing about. And now here was his nephew, coming between her daughters, a nephew who sounded very much as though he was made in the same mould as his uncle; the kind of man no mother wanted going anywhere near her daughters.

Lou had said that he didn’t mean anything to her, and Sasha was safely engaged to Bobby so there was no real reason for her to worry, Jean tried to comfort herself.

Irritably Charlie Firth gunned the engine of the Racing Green MG and dropped it down a gear so that he could overtake the lumbering army lorries travelling in convoy ahead of him. He hadn’t been in the best of moods when he’d left his base in the South of England for the long drive home to Liverpool, and the slow crawl along roads filled with military traffic hadn’t done anything to improve that mood. Spending, or rather wasting, what could well be his last bit of decent leave before his battalion was posted overseas and into action on a visit to his mother was the last thing Charlie would have chosen to do – not when London and all it had to offer in terms of a good night out with a pretty and willing girl was so conveniently close to the base. Unfortunately, though, he’d had no choice. Thanks to his ruddy wife and her equally ruddy parents, and their insistence on Charlie doing the gentlemanly thing and giving his wife a divorce.

Charlie swore viciously as he took a sharp corner at speed and almost knocked a pair of cyclists off their bikes. He could just imagine how his mother was going to react to the news that Daphne wanted a divorce. Not that Charlie really cared how his mother felt; it was the effect the news of his divorce was likely to have on her willingness to ‘help him out’ with those useful ‘loans’ he kept tapping her up for that worried him. His mother was a snob. She had boasted to anyone who would listen that he, Charlie, was marrying a girl with a double-barrelled surname and she wasn’t going to like what Charlie had to tell her. And he did have to tell her because if he didn’t there was no guarantee that if he didn’t get his side of the story in first, his in-laws, the Wrighton-Budes, just might give her theirs.

They’d never considered him good enough for their daughter, although Charlie had only discovered that on his wedding day, when Daphne’s cousin had let slip that Daphne’s parents and, indeed, Daphne herself had been expecting a local land-owning neighbour’s son to propose to her, and when he had married someone else instead marriage to Charlie had been seen by them as a face-saving exercise.

Now, though, this neighbour’s son was a widower, thanks to the war, and free to remarry, and it seemed that the woman he wanted to marry was Charlie’s wife.

Naturally Charlie had expressed shock and anger when this news had been relayed to him by his father-in-law, but the old fart had outmanoeuvred him by announcing that he knew all about the girls Charlie saw when he was on leave in London, because he had apparently been having Charlie followed, so that evidence could be gathered to back up Daphne’s claim for a divorce. Charlie’s father-in-law had actually had the gall to add that in view of his taste for variety, Charlie might actually welcome the freedom of a divorce.

Charlie, however, wanted no such thing. Announcing that he was married, as he had discovered, was a very effective way of sorting out the girls who wanted to play the game his way and have a good time, from those who were after something more permanent. Now his father-in-law was demanding that Charlie did the decent thing, so that Daphne, her name clear of any wrongdoing, could get her divorce and be free to remarry.

No, he wasn’t looking forward to the coming weekend at all, Charlie admitted.

There’d be no point in trying to tap up Bella, his sister, for a few quid; they’d never been what one might call close, but their relationship had really deteriorated after Bella had taken in that girl who reckoned that he’d fathered her brat.

He had reached the outskirts of Liverpool now, the Mersey a grey gleam to his left, made even greyer by the hulls of the naval vessels and merchant convoys filling the docks.

Liverpool was the port used by most of the convoys crossing the Atlantic, bringing in much-needed supplies of raw materials and food. Not that the vitally important role his home city was playing in the war effort interested Charlie.

Wallasey was considered far more exclusive than Liverpool, the town holding itself apart from the city in the manner of a ‘lady’ keeping her distance from her servants, whilst being dependent on them.

The last few miles of the drive increased Charlie’s ill humour. He’d have given anything to turn the car round and drive back to London, he acknowledged as he pulled up outside his mother’s house.

In the front window a lace curtain twitched ever so slightly, but Charlie was too preoccupied with his own sense of injustice and ill-usage to notice.

‘Bella, it’s Charlie. He’s here,’ Vi Firth announced, letting the lace curtain drop and then hurrying into the hallway, patting the rigid waves of her new hairdo, before going to open the door.

Lord, but his mother looked drab and dull; no wonder his father had left her for someone younger and livelier, Charlie thought unkindly as he submitted himself to Vi’s tearful embrace.

‘Such a shame that dearest Daphne couldn’t come with you. I can see that I’m going to have to travel down to see her,’ Vi informed Charlie, before turning towards the kitchen and calling out in a far sharper voice, ‘Bella, do hurry up with that tea. Your poor brother has been driving for hours.

‘Having Bella living here with me is so difficult at times, Charles. You wouldn’t believe how selfish she can be,’ Vi confided to her son in a lower tone. ‘I blame that nursery. I never wanted her to go and work there, or marry that Pole. Of course, if your father had been here to put his foot down…’ Fresh tears welled in Vi’s eyes.

‘No one would have stopped me from marrying Jan, Mummy,’ Bella announced, appearing in the open doorway from the hall to the kitchen, obviously having overheard their mother’s comment.

‘Where is that tea, Bella?’ Vi interrupted her.

‘In the kitchen,’ Bella answered her.

‘Oh, really, Bella, I thought you’d have made more of an effort for your brother, and prepared a tea tray for the lounge. This dreadful war is causing standards to slip dreadfully,’ Vi complained to Charlie.

Charlie fought to conceal his growing irritation. A good stiff drink was what he wanted, not a cup of tea, but he judged it wiser not to say so, not with the old girl almost having turned into a bit of a lush herself after his father had left. It wouldn’t do to fall out with his mother before he’d won her round, gained her sympathy and got some money out of her, and there was no point in falling foul of Bella otherwise she’d set off giving him an ear-bashing.

An hour later, having spent most of that time forced to listen to his mother cataloguing her various grievances, Charlie was beginning to wish that he had thought to bring a bottle of army rations gin with him to calm his mother down and put her in the right mood for what he had to tell her.

‘…and I still don’t see why you couldn’t have let Charlie sleep in your bed tonight, Bella, whilst you used the spare room,’ his mother was now berating his sister. ‘He needs a decent night’s sleep after driving up here.’

Scenting an opportunity to deliver his bad news, Charlie assumed a morose, mournful expression and heaved a heavy sigh.

‘Don’t worry about me, Ma. I’ve hardly slept a wink this last week since…’

‘Since what?’ Vi demanded anxiously when Charlie deliberately did not continue.

Charlie shook his head. ‘I don’t want to burden you with my problems, Ma, especially after what you’ve been through with Dad.’ He paused and waited, and, true to form, just as he had expected she would, his mother immediately pressed him.

‘Charlie, I’m your mother; you must tell me what’s wrong.’

Charlie shook his head and then cleared his throat as though struggling with his emotions.

‘I’m not going to blame Daphne. It isn’t her fault. It’s mine. I should have realised when her cousin let the cat out of the bag about how Daphne had been involved with someone else before she met me, that she might not love me as much as I love her.’

‘So much that you got another girl pregnant whilst you were engaged to her,’ Bella cut in in a sharp voice, earning herself a look of censure from their mother and a rebuking.

‘I won’t have you bringing that up, Bella. If anyone was to blame, it was that dreadful girl.’ Turning back to Charlie, Vi told him firmly, ‘I shouldn’t let it worry you if you and dearest Daphne have had a bit of a tiff, Charlie.’

Trust his mother to be obtuse, Charlie thought impatiently. She’d always been good at not seeing what she didn’t want to see, and making a fuss over bits of something and nothing because it suited her to do so.

‘A bit of a tiff? I wish that it was just that, Ma.’ Charlie stood up and paced the kitchen floor as though in the grip of an intense emotion that was almost too much for him. ‘Like I said, though, I’m not blaming Daphne.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘No, if anyone’s to blame for her turning against me then it’s her mother. She never really liked me.’ There, that should do it, Charlie reckoned. His mother had never forgiven Daphne’s mother for the way she had behaved over the wedding, treating Vi as though she was a poor relation she’d rather not have known the mother of her daughter’s husband-to-be.

Vi’s reaction was as gratifying as it had been predictable. Her mouth pursed, her bosom swelling with righteous indignation.

‘And who is she when she’s at home, not to like you? You saved her son’s life – well, as good as. It wasn’t your fault that he went overboard again and drowned after you’d rescued him at Dunkirk. Mind you, I have to say that I never really took to her. Well, look at the way she was always interfering and stopping poor Daphne from coming up here. Selfish, that’s what I call it.

‘You must speak to Daphne, though, Charlie, and be firm with her. She’s your wife now, after all.’

Charlie shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that now.’

‘Too late? What do you mean?’ Now Vi was seriously alarmed.

‘Daphne wants a divorce. And the truth is, well, I feel honour bound to agree, especially knowing that—’

‘Knowing what?’ Bella challenged her brother. She knew Charlie far too well to be taken in by the little side show he was putting on for their mother. And besides, being honour bound to do anything simply wasn’t Charlie. If Bella had needed any confirmation of that she only had to think of the way in which Charlie had stolen her jewellery and then tried to blame the theft on Jan. And, even worse, how he had seduced poor Lena and then deserted her, leaving her pregnant.

Charlie exhaled unevenly.

‘This chap – the chap who Daffers was involved with before me – is a widower now, and it seems that he…that they – well, I’m pretty sure that all Daffers intended to do was to offer him her condolences, since he’s a close neighbour, and that he’s the one to blame for things getting out of hand. She’s not the sort to deliberately…Well, like I said, I can’t and won’t blame her, but the truth is that things have gone further than they should and poor Daffers…’ Charlie paused for effect, and heaved a deep sigh.

Her brother really ought to have gone on the stage, Bella thought grimly.

‘Charles?’ Vi begged.

Charlie took another deep breath. ‘I hate to have to say this but the fact is that they were caught out in a compromising situation and now, for her sake, the sooner this chap is able to make a decent woman of Daffers, the better. Of course I could refuse to co-operate, but – well, when you love someone you want them to be happy, and if the only thing I can give her to show her how much I love her is my agreement to being named as the guilty party in our divorce, to protect her, then that is what I will do.’

There were a dozen probing questions at least that Bella wanted to ask but now wasn’t the time.

Vi, who had half made to stand up, was now sitting back in her chair, one hand placed over her heart, the other clutching the edge of the table for support.

Bella knew how much Charlie’s news would upset her mother, and what a blow it would be to her. Pity for her softened Bella’s awareness of how difficult their mother could be. Charlie’s divorce would be very hard for her to bear, and she would see it as another humiliation on top of the humiliation she had already suffered over their father leaving home to live with his assistant.

Everything that Bella was thinking was confirmed when her mother turned to Charlie and told him, ‘Daphne may have behaved very badly, Charlie, but she is your wife. I shall write to her for you and tell her that, and I shall write to her mother as well…’

The last thing Charlie wanted was his mother getting in touch with Daphne or her family and discovering the truth. Furious with his mother for making things difficult for him, he longed to be able to escape – from her and from the problems she was causing him. As always when he was confronted with an obstacle to his plans, he blamed everyone apart from himself.

‘No! You mustn’t write to Daphne or her parents,’ he began furiously.

‘Why not?’ Vi demanded.

Bella had seen and heard enough. She could tell from Charlie’s expression that things weren’t going the way he had planned and that the situation was going to get very unpleasant unless she did something to avoid that.

‘Mummy, you can’t interfere. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be dignified, or worthy of you. Charlie has just told us that he feels honour bound to let Daphne have her divorce and it is only right that you respect his decision, and be proud of his…his generous and honourable treatment of her.’

Charlie listened to Bella with relief. She certainly knew how to handle their mother.

‘That’s right, Ma,’ Charlie agreed. ‘A man’s honour is very important to him. Especially when he’s in uniform and he’s about to go into action. I’m not saying that I wasn’t tempted to plead with Daffers to change her mind, but a man’s got to be a man – and honourable, of course.’

Charlie was right, Vi acknowledged reluctantly. It was important that he did the right thing, and that he put being honourable above his own feelings. And that would certainly show that stuck-up Mrs Wrighton-Bude, Daphne’s mother, which of their two children knew the right way to behave. How ashamed she must feel having to explain to all her friends – her ‘bridge club set’ – that her daughter had behaved in such a shameful way and her with a husband who loved her, who had saved her brother’s life and who was about to be sent overseas to fight for his country. In her shoes Vi didn’t think she’d have been able to show her face anywhere. She, on the other hand, would be able to tell everyone just how well Charlie had behaved. Poor Charlie, whose heart had been broken.

‘Well, I suppose I shall have to feel sorry for Mrs Wrighton-Bude,’ Vi announced, ‘for having been so shown up by her daughter in such a dreadful way. She must feel so ashamed, because of course it will reflect on her and the way she has been brought up.’

‘I wanted to come up and tell you rather than send a letter.’ Charlie quickly picked up the ball Bella had set rolling for him, keen to get the most benefit he could from his mother’s sympathy for him. ‘Not that it was easy. All the way up here I kept on thinking that Daphne should be with me…’

‘You’re over-egging the bread,’ Bella warned him in a quiet murmur, but Charlie ignored her, going over to Vi’s chair.

‘These last few weeks have been pure hell, and to make the whole thing even worse, I’ve practically bankrupted myself driving over to see Daphne and her parents and then sorting out…well, everything that needs to be done, so that I can provide the necessary evidence that will enable Daphne to sue me for adultery.’