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She had been astonished, and more than a little wary at first, when her auntie Francine had turned up at the nursery with her young American husband during their visit to Liverpool to attend Bella’s cousin Grace’s wedding, and had shown such an interest in the children and their welfare. The Bella she now was had been acutely aware of the sadness in her aunt’s face when she had played with the children, knowing how terrible it must have been for her to lose her own little boy – not once but twice – the first time when she had given him up to her sister, Bella’s mother, to bring up, and the second time when he had been killed when the farmhouse to which he had been evacuated had been bombed.
Bella looked at her watch. Her mother’s neighbour, Muriel James, had agreed to keep an eye on her mother until Bella could move in herself later this evening. Privately Bella was dreading going back to her childhood home to live. It had taken Lena to show her how devoid of true family love and happiness that home had been, and now Bella’s heart was chilled by the very thought of that emptiness. How she would miss the happy, chatty atmosphere of her own kitchen with her and Lena cooking together; the evenings when they read their books and listened to the radio, or sometimes played cards.
It was selfish to feel so low, Bella warned herself. It would do Lena and Gavin good to have some time to themselves. Gavin was a really decent sort who loved Lena and little Janette, and who deserved to have his wife to himself. It wasn’t as though she was never going to see Lena and her baby again, was it?
‘Four kings.’
The young American was sweating with triumph as he placed his cards down on the rickety baize-covered table in the upstairs room of the Pig and Whistle pub. He and Con were the only ones left in the game now. The other four Americans, and two stagehands from the Royal Court Theatre to whom Con gave a few quid to join the game so that he wasn’t the only one at the table not in uniform, had dropped out. Con knew he must be careful. The last thing he wanted was to arouse anyone’s suspicions. Con might like winning at cards and might not mind cheating to do so, but he certainly didn’t like the kind of trouble that involved fists and accusations flying everywhere.
‘Sorry, mate.’ Shaking his head, Con spread his own four aces on the table, and then swept up the pot whilst the Americans were still grappling with their disappointment.
Not a bad evening’s work. The Yanks put down five-pound notes like they were ten-bob notes, and Con reckoned he’d got himself a good hundred pounds or so in tonight’s haul. Not that it was all profit, of course. He’d have to give that lazy good-for-nothing pair Stu and Paul a tenner apiece to keep them sweet, and then there’d have to be another tenner to Joe the landlord for the use of his upstairs room and no questions asked, seeing as gambling was illegal.
‘Look, lads,’ he told the Americans, putting his arm round the shoulder of the one his aces had just trumped in a false gesture of bonhomie, ‘seeing as you’ve been such good sports, I’ll treat you each to a drink. Show’s almost over at the Royal Court and there’ll be plenty of pretty girls wanting to be taken out for a bit of supper, so why don’t you all come back with us?’
It worked like a charm every time, Con congratulated himself as the young men immediately forgot about the money they had lost and accepted his offer with enthusiasm. Or at least all but one seemed to have accepted it. The soldier whose kings Con had just so cleverly trumped – with the aid of some trickery that had allowed him to remove the aces from the deck right at the beginning of the game and keep them concealed within his own hand of cards – was glowering at him.
‘You know what Ah reckon, boys?’ he announced in an accusatory voice. ‘Ah reckon that this guy here’s been cheating on us.’
‘Come on, Chip. Don’t be a sore looser,’ the first soldier to drop out of the game cautioned him. ‘It’s only a few bucks, after all. Let’s go and see these girls.’
‘That’s right, it’s only a few bucks,’ Con immediately agreed, smiling genially, urging them all towards the door. Once he’d had a couple of drinks and been introduced to the chorus line, the young soldier, who was still glaring at him, would soon forget about his ‘few bucks’. The last thing Con wanted to do was antagonise this new source of income he had discovered. What Con wanted was for these young soldiers to feel they’d had such a good time that they encouraged their friends to ask for an introduction to him for ‘a friendly game of cards’ and the chance to meet pretty girls.
Funny how things turned out. Who would have thought that those card tricks of old Marvo the Magician, who did the panto every Christmas, would come in so handy?
Oh, yes, Con was well pleased with himself. After he’d given Joe his tenner, Con gave the barmaid a wink and patted her on the bottom on his way past.
‘’Ere, get your hands off of that,’ she warned him, but the smile she was giving him told Con that she’d be more than willing if he wanted her to be.
He’d always had a way with women – had his way with them, and all, Con thought to himself, grinning at his own mental joke as he paused briefly as he left the pub to check his reflection in the glass partition that separated the entrance from the taproom, smoothing down his still thick and dark hair. When it came to women you either had it or you didn’t, Con acknowledged, and he had ‘it’ in spades.
Life had really been on the up and up for him since the Americans had started to arrive in Liverpool. It was only natural that they’d find their way to the Royal Court Theatre; Con prided himself on having the best-looking girls in the city in the Royal Court’s chorus. Then when he’d found out about their free-spending ways, of course he’d wanted to channel some of that money in his own direction.
It had been one of the girls who’d told him that an American had been asking her if she knew anywhere where they could join a poker game, and Con had immediately seen a golden opportunity to make some extra money.
Con whistled happily to himself as he shepherded his little group of newly fleeced lambs through the blackout’s darkness of the narrow back alleys towards the Royal Court Theatre.
FIVE (#ulink_926608d0-1c3b-52bb-96b4-ac9b5de7fada)
Katie had been surprised by how quickly her first day had passed. She’d accepted an invitation to go for lunch with several of the girls she was working with, queuing alongside young women both in and out of uniform, and men as well, in a nearby British Restaurant for a bowl of unexpectedly tasty soup and a cup of tea.
Now, having taken the Piccadilly Line from Holborn to Knightsbridge, she was walking a little uncertainly down Sloane Street towards her new billet.
She knew the area, of course, having lived in London most of her life before she had gone to work in Liverpool. Her mother had always loved going to Harrods and looking at the expensive clothes, but Katie, whose tastes were far more simple, had never imagined actually living in one of the elegant squares with their private gardens, which had looked very smart before Hitler’s bombs had caused so much damage to them and the city. It had shocked and hurt her to see just how much damage had been done.
The gardens belonging to Cadogan Place were split in two, bordered on one side by Sloane Street itself and on the three others by what she remembered as elegant four-storey properties, although it was impossible actually to see much of them in the dark and the blackout.
Her destination lay on the far side of the square and it was with some trepidation that, having found the house, she climbed the steps and knocked on the door.
She was still waiting for it to be opened when someone bumped into her from behind, almost knocking her over.
‘Oh crumbs, I’m most awfully sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ Katie assured her. ‘No harm done.’
The other girl was wearing an ATS uniform, her cap rammed onto a mop of thick dark red curls.
‘Are you visiting someone?’ the small whirlwind of a figure, or so it seemed to Katie, asked as she produced a key to unlock the door.
‘Actually I’m supposed to be billeted here,’ Katie told her.
‘Oh, you’ve got poor Lottie’s room then. So dreadful for her when Singapore fell, with her parents both being out there. She was quite overcome by it, poor girl, and the medics have sent her on sick leave. I don’t think she’ll be coming back. Well, you wouldn’t, would you, not if you were her, and your parents had been killed – murdered, really – in such a shocking way? Her mother was at that hospital, you see, the one where the Japanese bayoneted those poor people.’
They were inside the house now, the front door closed, and a single gloomy light bulb illuminating what in happier times must have been a rather grand entrance, Katie suspected. Now, though, denuded of furniture, its walls bare of paintings and the stairs bare of carpet, the house looked very bleak indeed. But not as bleak, surely, as the outlook for the girl whose room she was taking, Katie thought soberly.
‘Oh, you haven’t got anyone out in Singapore, have you?’ the other girl asked, looking conscious-stricken.
‘No.’ Not Singapore, but Luke was fighting in the desert, even if he wasn’t hers any more, and the news from there was hardly much better than it was from Singapore.
‘You’re in luck with your room; it’s one of the best. Sarah Dawkins, one of the other ATS girls here, wanted to move into it but our billeting officer put her foot down. Jolly good show that she did as well, if you ask me, because Sarah gets a bit too big for her boots at times. Oh, no, now you’re going to think badly of us. We all get on terrifically well together, really.’
The front door suddenly opened and another girl in an ATS uniformed rushed in, exclaiming, ‘Oh, Gerry, there you are. I couldn’t remember where we said we’d meet those RAF boys tonight, Oh—’ she broke off and looked questioningly at Katie.
‘Katie Needham,’ Katie introduced herself. ‘I’m the new girl.’
‘Hilda Parker.’
The other girl shook Katie’s hand whilst ‘Gerry’ grinned and announced, ‘And I’m Geraldine – Gerry, for short – Smithers.’
‘There are six of us here in all, including you: me, Gerry here, Sarah, Peggy, and Alison. Peggy’s newly engaged to a corporal she met at Aldershot. She’s a darling but she tends to spend her time reading and knitting and writing to her chap—’
‘Whereas we spend ours looking for handsome men in uniform to take us out. If you are fancy-free then you’d be very welcome to come out with us. As far as chaps are concerned it’s the more the merrier where girls are concerned,’ Gerry added with a giggle.
‘Don’t pay too much attention to Gerry here,’ Hilda warned Katie. ‘The truth is that in a way we feel that it’s our duty not just to keep our own chins up but to try to bring a bit of cheer into other people’s lives as well, if we can. I think it comes from working at the War Office. One sees and hears so much about the importance of good morale, as well, I may add, Gerry,’ she punned, ‘as good morals.’
It seemed the most natural thing in the world for Katie to join in the laughter as Gerry herself laughed good-humouredly at the small joke against her.
Katie couldn’t help but feel her spirits lift a little. The ATS girls might initially have portrayed themselves as a fun-loving, slightly giddy bunch but Katie felt that Hilda’s comment was far more true of what they really felt, and that beneath their pretty hair, and the smart chat that matched their smart uniforms, they were all young women who took their responsibilities towards their country and the men fighting to protect it very seriously indeed.
Perhaps it would do her good to adopt a little of their outward attitude to life herself, Katie reflected. After all, the last thing she wanted to do was to cast a pall of self-pity over the house just because of her own heartache. There was a lot to be said for keeping up other people’s spirits in these dreadful times, the darkest times of the war in many ways, people were saying.
‘It’s a pretty decent billet really,’ Hilda continued, ‘although you have to watch out for the rules—’
‘No shaking of mats or cloths out of any of the windows, no hanging of laundry out of the windows, no spooning on the front step, definitely no bringing men into the house, and no gawping at Lord Cadogan when he’s on home leave and you see him walking past,’ Gerry broke in again, this time leaving Hilda to explain.
‘Lord Cadogan – Earl Cadogan, actually – owns the property. He owns most of the houses here, in fact, although the War Office has requisitioned some of them.’
‘I’ll take you up to your room, shall I?’ Gerry offered, leaving Katie to follow her as she started to climb the first flight of stairs.
Katie’s room was two flights up and was a very good size indeed, with a window overlooking the street and the garden beyond.
The room was furnished with a narrow single bed, a utilitarian dressing table and a wardrobe. It had a fireplace and, to Katie’s delight and astonishment, there was a door that led into her own personal bathroom. Luxury indeed, and yet after Gerry had left her to unpack, and despite her good intentions, Katie acknowledged that she was missing the cosiness of her room at Luke’s parents’ house quite dreadfully, and the loving kindness of Jean, and the company of Luke’s teenage sisters even more.
She must not think like that, she chided herself. She must put Liverpool and Luke behind her and get on with her life as it was now, doing all she could to play her own part in the war effort. perhaps right now this four-storey town house, with its cold air smelling of damp khaki and cigarettes, instead of being filled, as the Campion house had been, with the warmth of Jean’s cooking and her love for her family, might seem alien and lonely, but she must get used to it, and fit into it and with those living in it, and make a new life for herself. She was, after all, alive and in good health, and not suffering as so many people were in this war, and in so many different ways. All she had to live with was a broken heart. The newspapers were full of the most horrific stories of what was happening to others: the people taken prisoner by the Japanese, the Jewish people forcibly transported to Hitler’s death camps. She must put her whole effort into doing her bit instead of feeling sorry for herself.
Francine looked at her husband with some concern.
‘Are you sure you want to go to this reception at the American Embassy tonight, Brandon?’ she asked gently.
‘Sure I’m sure.’
They both knew that what she really meant was, was he well enough to attend the reception being given by the American Ambassador at the Embassy in Grosvenor Square, to mark the arrival of the first American troops on British soil?
Their marriage was an unconventional one in many people’s eyes: Francine was older than her husband by nearly a decade, and he was wealthier than her by several million dollars. What they did not see or know, however, was that Brandon was a young man living under a death sentence because of a rare incurable illness, and that their marriage was one between friends rather than lovers. Brandon had chosen Fran as the person he wanted to accompany him to the end of his personal road, and she had willingly taken on the responsibility of that role. She had lost so much in her life already: her son, Jack; Marcus, the man she loved, the major with whom she had fallen in love in Egypt and who she had lost thanks to the spitefulness of another member of the ENSA group they were both in. She knew and understood what loss was. What she felt for Brandon was a combination of womanly pity and a desire to offer him what comfort she could in memory of the child – the young son – who had died without the comfort of her presence and the warmth of her arms around him. She could not go back and change things where Jack, her son, was concerned. For him she could only grieve and bear the burden of her guilt. But in doing what she was for Brandon, she was, she felt, making some kind of atonement in her own small way.
‘Besides,’ Brandon continued, ‘you don’t think I’m going to miss out on celebrating the fact that America has finally officially joined this war of yours, do you?’
Francine knew better than to try to dissuade him.
Neither of his divorced parents knew of his condition. His father, according to Brandon, would simply refuse to accept that his son could suffer ill health, and his mother would threaten to have a nervous breakdown.
‘Poor little rich boy,’ Francine had sometimes teased him when they’d first met, but now that she knew how apt the description was she no longer used it.
They had met the previous autumn when Fran, as the lead singer in a London theatre revue, had been invited to attend a diplomatic event to help entertain some visiting American top brass.
She knew that her sister Jean had been worried by the speed with which they had married – until Francine had taken Brandon home to Liverpool with her to attend Jean’s daughter Grace’s Christmas wedding and had had a chance to explain the situation honestly to her older sister. Her family might know that Brandon was poorly, but only Jean knew the reality of Francine’s marriage.
Francine had stopped working for ENSA. Brandon’s needs came before anything else now. And for that same reason she had felt that it was wiser for them to live in a service flat at the Dorchester rather than rent a flat of their own. As an entertainer she was used to living in hotels, and Brandon’s service flat was positively palatial compared with some of the accommodation she had had. Not only did it have two double bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and sitting room, there was also a dining room, a small kitchen and a maid’s room. Not that they had or needed a maid, but they both knew that the time would come when the services of a full-time nurse would be required.
Francine was determined that Brandon would be nursed ‘at home’ and amongst the benefits of being at the Dorchester was that, along with room service meals, there was a doctor on twenty-four hour call.
Brandon was insistent that no one outside Fran’s family was to know about his condition unless they absolutely had to.
Tonight was a very special occasion for Brandon, as an American, and Francine could almost feel his pride a couple of hours later when they were waiting in line inside the American Embassy to shake hands with the line up of American military top brass standing with the Ambassador.
The double doors to the room in which the reception was being held were guarded by American servicemen looking far smarter than their war-weary British counterparts. Just the sight of British Army uniforms, though, was enough to remind Francine of Marcus. So silly of her when it was all over between them …
The guests being, in the main, American airmen – commanding officers waiting impatiently for the agricultural land of Norfolk and the South East to be turned into the hard surface airfields on which their huge bombers could land and take off, – there were far more men in uniform than there were female guests, although the Ambassador had obviously done his best to even up the numbers by inviting several women whom Francine recognised as senior members of the American Red Cross, as well as a sprinkling of women in uniform, along with other women such as Mollie Panter-Downes, the London correspondent for the New Yorker.
Eventually it was Francine and Brandon’s turn to shake hands, the Ambassador discreetly stressing Brandon’s name, or so Francine, with her trained ear, felt, as though wanting to underline for the benefit of the Military top brass just who he was.
As an American billionaire, Brandon’s father was a hugely influential political figure, but Francine knew that despite his obvious pride in his country’s decision to join the war, later, when they were on their own, Brandon would be cast down by the sense of personal worthlessness he often felt, that came from being ‘the son of’ his father rather than being valued for his own achievements, however modest.
The American Embassy had originally been owned by the Woolworth heiress, who had given it to the American Government, and was an elegant backdrop for tonight’s well-dressed gathering. Not wanting to let Brandon down, Fran had decided to wear one of the outfits she had had made in Egypt: a beautiful full-length gown in palest blue slipper satin, which followed the curves of her body without clinging vulgarly. High in the neck at the front, at the back the dress dipped down to below her waist, where it was embellished with embroidery in the shape of a butterfly sewn with tiny seed pearls, blue and green beads, and diamanté. A wrap of sheer silk organza dyed the same colour as the dress and sprinkled with seed pearls and diamanté covered her bare arms and back, and Francine carried with her an evening bag made from the same fabric as her dress.
She knew that her appearance – and no doubt her lovely dress, she thought with rueful amusement – was attracting a good deal of attention as they circulated amongst the other guests, but Francine was more concerned about Brandon. She was trying to keep a subtly careful eye on him, whilst at the same time concealing her concern for him beneath the ‘public’ cloak of charm and her well-honed ability to put other people at their ease, which she had acquired during the years of her singing career. Francine was not someone who would ever compromise her own principles or cultivate anyone’s friendship to aid her own prospects. She had far too much staunchly Liverpudlian independence and spirit to do that, along with a Liverpudlian sense of humour, but she did feel that easing the wheels of social discourse was an asset that it made good sense to acquire. Old-fashioned good manners, her own mother and her sister Jean would have called it, she reflected, as she listened politely whilst a general, smelling richly of bourbon, boasted to her about how the Americans were going to ‘show you Brits how to bomb the hell out of Hitler’.
‘Stands to reason you ain’t gonna hit much with them little toy planes of yours,’ he told her with a self-satisfied grin, ‘especially at night. Why, we’ve got bombers ten times their size, with a hundred times their accuracy, that we can send out in daylight raids to hit an exact spot.’
Francine had worked in Hollywood for a while and was familiar with a certain type of bombastically overconfident American attitude, so she held her peace.
Not so, though, Brandon, who immediately swallowed back his own drink and then announced grimly, ‘Sir, we might be able to outdo the Brits with the technical abilities of our bombers, but when it comes to sheer guts and bravery, we’ve yet to prove we’re one hundredth as good as the RAF.’
There was a small uncomfortable silence before someone, Francine couldn’t see who, started to clap their hands in agreement and then within a very few seconds the whole room was clapping, causing the general to propose a toast to ‘The brave men of the RAF’.
‘That was so good of you,’ she whispered to Brandon, her own eyes filming with silly tears. ‘As a British woman, I thank you; and as your wife, I am so very proud of you.’
‘Nowhere near as proud as I am of you,’ Brandon whispered back.
A pianist hired for the occasion had started to play some popular American numbers, and what with all the American accents, the music, and the bottles of Coca Cola that a Marine behind the bar was swiftly opening and handing out, the Embassy felt very much like a small part of America, right in the heart of London.
Francine made a point of joining in the banter and bonhomie.
‘This is exactly the kind of homey American atmosphere we want to create for our boys here in England. After all, it’s the least we can do for them,’ one of the American Red Cross women told her enthusiastically, only to break off with an anxious exclamation that had Francine turning round to see what was happening.
Brandon had semi-collapsed and was being supported by the anxious-looking lieutenant he had obviously lurched into.
Excusing herself, Francine went immediately to his aid, her concern on his behalf not helped by the careless, ‘Damn fool boy obviously can’t take his drink,’ she overheard from a cigar-chomping Texan.
White-faced, with beads of sweat standing out on his pallid forehead, Brandon was making a tremendous effort to brush off the incident, and tears of pity and pride stung Francine’s eyes as she saw the looks of disapproval he was attracting as he tried to straighten up and then swayed as he made to reach her.
Her whispered, ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’ve got you,’ was for his ears only, her seemingly light touch on his arm, in reality a protective supportive grip that was straining her muscles.
As he leaned into her she could see that he was trying to say something, but his voice was so changed by his weakness that it took her several seconds to recognise that he was saying, ‘I’m sorry.’
As he spoke he tried to straighten up but somehow instead he lost his balance and crashed to the floor, his flailing arms sending glasses flying from a nearby table as he did so.
In the silence that followed it was possible to hear the sound of liquid from the broken glasses dripping onto the floor, accompanied by the occasional nervous clearing of a throat. These small sparse sounds gradually gathered volume and pace as they were joined by hushed whispers and speedy footsteps; then the Ambassador’s voice reaching down to Francine as she kneeled on the floor at Brandon’s side, asking curtly, ‘Is he all right?’
Knowing exactly how Brandon felt about his condition, and his determination that no one else was to know about it, Francine could only say shakily, ‘He hasn’t been very well,’
Above her she could hear other voices: ‘He must be drunk …’ ‘How dreadful …’ ‘Shameful …’ ‘But what do you expect? I mean, he’s married that showgirl …’
Ignore them, Francine told herself. They know nothing, mean nothing. Brandon was what mattered.
He wasn’t unconscious, thank heavens, but she could see how shocked and humiliated he felt from his expression. She reached for his hand and held it tightly in her own. His doctor had warned them about this happening: a sudden weakness that would rob him of the ability to move, and perhaps even speak, that would come out of nowhere and then pass – at first – a sign that his illness was advancing.
‘I’ll get you some help,’ the Ambassador was saying and within seconds two burly Marines had appeared and were helping Brandon to his feet, their expressions wooden but their manner faultlessly correct and polite as they went either side of Brandon to support him.
‘It’s the bourbon, I guess. It’s a mite too strong after London’s watered-down whisky,’ one wit was suggesting as Francine made their apologies to the Ambassador and explained that they would have to leave.
‘But I still don’t understand what you’re doing here, Bella. After all, you do have a house of your own.’
Bella tried not to feel too low as she sat with her mother in the kitchen of Vi’s house. It wasn’t just her mother’s attitude that made her feel so unwilling to be here, Bella acknowledged, it was the house itself. Her mother might have insisted on Bella’s father fitting out the whole house with everything that was new and up to date when they had first moved into it a couple of years before Bella had married, but now that she knew what really made a house a home, Bella could see how cold and barren of loving warmth her mother’s house was. Somehow the house was cold and unwelcoming – just like her mother?
‘I have to say that I think it very selfish of you not to have made such a dreadful fuss about it that your poor brother and dearest Daphne felt unable to move into it. It’s your fault that they aren’t living up here, you know. Daphne would have been such a comfort to me, and of course if Charlie had been here working with your father, as he should have been, then that wretched woman would never have got her claws into him. It’s all your fault, Bella. You do realise that, don’t you?’
Her mother’s voice had risen with every imagined injustice she was relaying, causing Bella’s heart to sink even further. There was no point trying to reason with her mother when she was in this frame of mind, Bella knew. Although her mother’s neighbour, Muriel, had assured Bella in a conspiratorial whisper as she had left that ‘Your dear mother hasn’t had any you-know-what whilst I’ve been here, dear,’ Bella suspected that her mother’s current overemotional mood had its roots in alcohol.
