Wartime Sweethearts (10 page)

He smiled down at her. ‘I wish I had time to at least walk you home, but things being the way they are …’

‘It’s finally happened,’ she muttered, feeling as though somebody had tipped a bucket of cold water over her head. ‘Everything now seems so … trivial in comparison. Though I still think my bread was worthy of winning,’ she added quickly, not wanting him to feel he’d got the better of her.

‘I didn’t say it wasn’t worthy, and anyway, I thought your sister baked it.’

Her eyes met his shoulder before lifting to study his face. His expression and tone seemed sincere enough.

‘My sister …’ She stopped. ‘Perhaps she misunderstood.’

‘You can say that again, but hey. It’s water under the bridge,’ he said as he opened the gate to let her out.

‘Yes. In more ways than one,’ she said, her anger all but gone. The news of war had altered everything.

‘I’ll see you again?’

She nodded. ‘I expect so.’

‘I have to go.’

An odd wailing sound suddenly rent the air which set the dog howling before he lay down flat on the ground, his paws over his ears.

‘Air-raid sirens,’ said Michael, his eyes narrowed as he looked up at the sky before smiling reassuringly at her. ‘Don’t worry. It’s only a test run. Hopefully that’s all it will ever be.’

The dog continued to howl.

‘He’s got sensitive ears,’ said Michael.

‘It’s a dreadful sound.’

‘Until we meet again.’

‘Yes. I have to go. My family will be wondering where I am.’

What she meant was that they too would have heard the wail of the sirens and wondered if anything drastic was about to happen.

‘Be my guest.’ He opened the gate wide, his eyes watching her with interested intensity.

She could feel that look, but couldn’t bring herself to meet it. All she wanted was to get home. Once through the gate, she began to run.

‘No need to run,’ he called after her. ‘Nothing happens that quickly.’

‘And how do you know,’ she whispered, her legs kicking high out behind her despite the height of her heels. How much do any of us know? she thought. We didn’t know this was going to happen today, so how can we know what will happen tomorrow, in the next hour, in the next minute?

Getting hot under the collar about a silly loaf of bread now seemed excessively stupid; focusing on a baking competition, she’d ignored the portents of bad things happening.

There’d been talk for days that the world was on the brink of war. The German army had invaded Poland on the first of September and all she could think about was winning a stupid competition! Would there even be a semi-final in Bristol? And what about the final in London? Worst of all, what about Ruby? She’d set her heart on leaving home. Would it be easier or more difficult to leave now?

Then there was Charlie. He’d already stated his intention to join the merchant navy.

‘I don’t fight much, but I do eat,’ he’d said to them laughingly. ‘I’ll bake bread and cook food for the blokes who guard the grub. That’s the job for a baker!’

By the time she reached the end of Court Road, the air-raid siren sited on top of the village hall had ceased its ear-splitting wail.

She ran all the way back along the High Street to the bakery, surprised that the village was so quiet, that nobody was around, and that not even the bells of St Anne’s were ringing to call people to prayer.

It was as though the world was holding its breath, people tuned into the BBC, waiting for the next step. Pray God no bombs fall here, she thought, as she ran straight to the open door of the bakery and into her father’s arms.

‘Mary! Thank God you’re safe.’ His worried expression lifted.

‘I’m fine, Dad.’

Stan noticed the rip in her dress. ‘What happened?’

‘I caught it on a bramble bush.’ She knew better than to mention the dog. Her father might report it and she didn’t want him to. The lives of Michael and his friend Guy were about to be disrupted enough.

‘You should be more careful.’

‘Dad? Where’s Scampton?’

‘I’m not sure. Lincolnshire I think. Why do you ask?’

‘Someone I know is going there. He’s a pilot. Have you heard the news? We’re at war!’

That Sunday was the first time ever the Sweet family ate their roast lunch in silence. The beef was succulent and marbled with enough fat to moisten and tenderise the meat, the roast potatoes crisp and neatly browned at the edges, the cabbage, peas and carrots freshly dug from the garden.

Mary had baked an apple and blackberry pie for dessert. Ruby managed to burn the custard.

‘Ruby! Whatever’s the matter with you?’

‘I lied about Michael Dangerfield purposely stepping on the bread.’

Mary stopped laying the table and looked at her. ‘Why?’

Ruby took the saucepan and its contents outside to the pig bin. On her return she braced herself for telling the truth.

‘He criticised British baking and British taste. I thought it was unpatriotic. Well, it is, but then when you told me he was with the RAF, over here to fight – well. I shouldn’t have done it.’

‘No. You shouldn’t.’ Mary took the apple pie out of the oven, setting it on top of the stove.

‘Do you forgive me?’

‘Of course I do,’ Mary said brightly. ‘We’ll just have to make do with tinned cream instead!’

On being told it was to be tinned cream rather than custard, Stan Sweet raised his eyes in distaste but then resigned himself that he had to put up with it. Ruby seemed to be taking the news of this war worse than any of them. On the other hand nobody was quite themselves today and who could blame them?

At the end of the meal, Stan pushed his plate away and prepared to put his thoughts into words. His children read the signs and knew he had something to say.

‘Leave the washing up for a minute,’ he said when Mary moved to take the dirty dishes. ‘Ruby. Get some glasses. Charlie, get that bottle of sherry we were saving for Christmas. And Ruby, get a glass for Frances. I know she’s only a child, but we’ll all be needing a bit of liquid courage before this lot’s over.’

‘Do you want to do the honours, Dad?’ asked Charlie. He held the bottle with both hands as he passed it to his father, as though afraid he would drop it.

‘Might as well.’

Stan Sweet poured a measure of sherry into each glass, a half measure for Frances.

The glasses were passed round, each family member refraining from drinking until their father gave the word, though if left to their own devices they’d knock back the lot: the situation called for it.

Pressing down on the table with both hands, Stan Sweet rose to his feet and reached for his glass. The rest of the family followed suit.

‘To our family,’ he said, raising his glass in a toast. ‘Dark days are coming. May God protect us all.’

His son and daughters repeated the toast. ‘May God protect us all.’

Frances, pleased at first to be given her first grown-up drink, had wondered why everyone had been so quiet when they were eating their meal. She hadn’t heard the BBC broadcast because she’d been too busy hiding her snail farm under the bed while the twins were not around. Frances liked snails. She also found insects quite fascinating. She knew from the worried tones she’d been hearing over the last few weeks that war was bad. Very bad.

Her face turned white as she scrutinised her cousins and her uncle. Her uncle had asked God to protect them. But could he? He hadn’t protected her father. He hadn’t stopped her mother from leaving … What if?

There was a loud thud as she returned her glass to the table before bursting into tears and running from the room.

Mary made to go after her, but her father bid her stay.

‘Leave her, Mary. It might be just as well she doesn’t hear what I’m about to say. First things first. As you know, I fought in the last war, baking bread for the soldiers at the front and using a rifle and a bayonet when I had to. I fear this one is going to be worse than that and all of you, all of you,’ he stressed a second time, ‘will be involved in it one way or another. To what extent you’ll be involved and in what field, we don’t yet know, but I remember enough from the last lot to know that what they was saying on the wireless is right: this island is incapable of feeding itself. So let’s pour another drink. Matter of fact, why don’t we finish the bottle. It might be the last we’ll see for a while.’

By the time the bottle was finished, they spoke less nervously, more intensely as though every word counted. The main subject was Charlie making plans to join the merchant navy before his call-up papers arrived, though not until he was sure his family could cope without him.

Even when the girls began to clear the table and wash up, the conversation continued against a background noise of clattering pans and crockery.

‘Call up’s likely to be men under forty,’ said Charlie. He was looking and acting subdued yet both twins detected a sparkle in his eyes. So did his father but pretended nothing had changed. Inside he worried deeply. He’d seen that sparkle back in the days of the last war, a young man’s yearning for excitement. For most of them it was also their first foray into a foreign country.

A lot of those young men had never come home. He hoped and prayed his son would survive or that the great powers even now might come to their senses before a terrible tragedy unfolded.

Despite everything, Stan Sweet felt obliged to keep their spirits up even though his heart was breaking. His country would want his children, especially his son. He didn’t want to hand them over. He was the one who’d raised them. There had been no government official to give a hand when one of them woke crying in the middle of the night, sick with measles or some other childhood ailment. Where was his country when he needed it? And now his country would send his son to war.

He sipped more sherry to help him concentrate and say what he wanted to say.

‘Yes, there’ll certainly be a call up. There’ll be rationing too. Bound to be. They brought rationing in too late at the end of the last war. My guess is it’ll come in earlier this time – that’s if they’ve learned their lesson from doing too little too late. We need to take stock of what we have, both for the bakery and for our own stomachs. It’s a sin to hoard, but let’s just say everything will count in this year’s harvest festival. Nothing’s to be wasted and everything that doesn’t ruin must be stored. I fancy putting in some early broad beans. And if you can find me some old net curtains, I’ll throw them over the sprouts. No sense in making a gift of greens to the snails and sparrows. Let ’em go plant their own!’

They all managed a subdued laugh.

Leaving Ruby to clear the last of the dishes, Mary excused herself. ‘I’ll just go and see how Frances is.’

While taking the dirty plates and crockery to the sink, Ruby cocked an ear to what was going on.

‘They’ll be calling you up, Charlie. We know that.’

‘And the girls? I hear it’s on the cards.’

Stan Sweet held his glass in both hands, gazing at the dark red liquid so he could concentrate his thoughts and control his expression. He didn’t want them to know that he was worried the girls might be called up too.

‘’Course, women did a lot in the last war,’ he said. ‘Munitions, factory work, driving trams and even enrolling in the services, only office jobs and such like, but it did get them away from the kitchen sink, that’s for sure. I reckon this time they’ll end up doing even more in the services now, even go abroad to the front line I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Getting away from the kitchen sink? Well, that’s for me,’ exclaimed Ruby, halfway between table and a sink brimming with dirty dishes immersed in hot water. In order to tackle the grease, she’d thrown in a handful of soda crystals.

Stan Sweet wished he hadn’t said anything, not with Ruby within earshot. ‘You’ll be safer at the kitchen sink, my girl.’

‘Perhaps I don’t want to be safe,’ she said somewhat crossly.

Her father threw her a warning look. ‘You’ve no idea what it means to be in danger. Stay put, Ruby. That’s my advice to you.’

‘Isn’t that up to the government?’ Her face was turned away, her hands now in the hot water. The steam rose in a thick cloud, reddening her face and plastering her hair to her head.

Mention of women being called up had grabbed her attention. There was still a chance of getting away from the village and she sorely wanted to get away. News of her no longer pulling pints behind the bar of the Apple Tree had spread. Various conclusions had probably been made and Gareth himself would have added fuel to the fire. She could hear him now. ‘
Oh, she was a hussy that one. And me an innocent widower
.’

Then there were his other women, the ones who smiled at him, winked and hinted at things that might have gone on between them, things she’d refused to believe. She believed them now and the thought that people were lumping her in with them rankled.

She’d seen a few housewives tittering behind their fat hands, women with hands red from laundry and household tasks. She brought one of her hands out of the water. It was very pink. In time it would be like theirs, reddened through being immersed in hot water, the prerequisite of most household tasks.

She washed the dishes quickly while listening to her father and brother exchanging views on what would happen next and how the British forces, along with the French, would stack up against the Germans.

After wiping her hands on a tea towel, Ruby pulled her hair from behind one ear and over her face. Her mole safely hidden, she joined them at the table.

‘What sort of things would they want women to do this time do you think?’ She adopted a disinterested expression, as though getting involved in war work was the last thing on her mind.

Her father regarded her with a concerned frown. He’d been led to believe that twins were alike in every way. He knew from experience that this wasn’t quite true. His girls looked alike, but differed in character. Mary was the strong, serious one while Ruby could be careless and defiant. It was that defiance he feared. He could see it in her eyes and wished it wasn’t there. Soon, very soon, she would leave and there was nothing he could do about it. Still, now that she’d asked, he couldn’t deny explaining what he thought women might end up doing.