Where the Heart Is (26 page)

‘No, but the other trustees are still to be approached. I wanted to ask you first.’

Francine could feel his tension. This was so important to him. It would be his gift and his memorial, a testament to all that he was and all that he could have been. He wouldn’t pressure her to take it on, she knew, but if she did it would take over and dominate her life. Take over and dominate? Or give her a purpose, a cause, a role that she already knew would suit her?

‘You speak of sacrifices, Brandon, but there is no sacrifice for me. Rather it will be an act of joy and love, and a very special bond between us, which I shall treasure and do my best to honour, as trustee, as your wife, and as someone who loves you very dearly, and is grateful to know you and to have this precious time with you.’

‘I think this calls for champagne,’ was Brandon’s valiant response.

‘I daren’t look, I really daren’t,’ Betty groaned as she and Lou joined the anxious crowd of Waafs, waiting to read their exam results, just posted up in the admin block.

From the front of the group crowding round the notice board, cries of relief interspersed with the occasional groan were reaching back to them. Lou’s tummy was a mass of squiggly wriggling nervousness. So much depended on their passing, and she was doubly apprehensive about her own results because of the time she had lost.

‘Come on,’ Betty urged her, grabbing hold of her arm. ‘We might as well know the worse.’

‘No, I can’t,’ Lou admitted. ‘You go and look for me.’

The way she felt reminded her of her anxiety when she and Sasha had sat their entrance exam for the telephone exchange, only then she had been hoping that she wouldn’t pass. Now, remembering how anxious Sasha had been that they both passed, Lou felt very guilty. Poor Sasha, she had behaved selfishly towards her. She was older and wiser, though, now
and she would treat her twin and their relationship far better in the future, Lou promised herself.

Betty had reached the board. Lou kept her gaze trained on her friend’s red curls, her fingers mentally crossed.

A taller, dark-haired girl from another hut, who Lou didn’t know, was standing behind Betty, obscuring Lou’s view as she leaned over her, the better to get a look at the board.

Girls who had seen their own results were streaming past Lou, either commiserating with one another or filled with excited relief.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Lou heard one of them say. ‘I had to look three times when I saw Leading Aircraft-woman First Class opposite my name. First Class not just Second. Oh, bliss and heaven, and more bliss.’

Getting upgraded straight to LACW 1 meant that one’s results were exceptional. Only a handful of trainees were ever considered good enough for such an accolade.

Betty had extricated herself from the crowd in front of the board and was making her way back to her, her expression concealed by the peak of her cap.

‘I’ve failed, haven’t I?’ Lou guessed miserably when Betty reached her.

‘No, we’ve both passed.’ Betty assured her, but just as Lou was exhaling with relief, she added triumphantly, ‘Leading Aircraftwoman First Class.’

‘First Class. But … you’re making it up,’ Lou accused her friend, knowing what a tease she was.

‘No, I’m not,’ Betty assured her. ‘It’s true. Come and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.’

Taking hold of Lou’s arm she almost dragged
her over to the board, pointing out triumphantly, ‘Look, there it is, see!’ much to Lou’s embarrassment when several other girls turned to look.

It was typical of her friend’s jolly generous nature that she wasn’t the least bit upset or envious about Lou’s success and was instead happy with her own more modest pass, although she did insist, ‘Well, we jolly well
are
going to celebrate now at tonight’s dance.’

How could Lou refuse? Especially when it turned out that everyone in their hut had passed their examination, although she was the only one to be upgraded to Leading Aircraftwoman First Class.

‘I suppose it must have been all that swotting up I did when I was in hospital,’ Lou modestly answered the other girls’ demands to know how she had done it.

As always on a dance night there were queues for the showers from girls wanting to look their best, even though they had to wear their uniforms.

‘It’s all right for the men,’ Betty complained. ‘They look fine in their uniforms, but just look at me. I look like a sack of potatoes in mine.

Lou grinned at her. ‘No, you don’t,’ she assured her, ‘especially not now you’ve taken in your jacket and the waist of your skirt.’

Betty was very curvy and blessed with a tiny waist, and she had the grace to laugh.

‘OK, I admit I did alter my uniform, but don’t you dare tell anyone else. It’s all right for you, Lou. You’re taller than me and lovely and slender, and the uniform suits you.’

All too soon it was seven o’clock, and Lou hadn’t even had time to sit down and write to her parents to tell them about her results, although Sunday afternoon after church was normally when she did her letter writing.

She’d just pulled her brush through her curls when their corporal came into the hut, commanding briskly, ‘Attention.’

Immediately all the girls obeyed. Mavis Carter, their corporal, was a decent sort, they thought now they knew her, and fair-minded. However, she took her authority seriously and she made sure that those under that authority did so as well. Lou avoided her as much as she could. She still felt dreadfully guilty about the points she had cost the Hut.

‘You’ve all had your exam results today. I won’t congratulate you on a full pass rate for the Hut–we don’t expect anything else. You’ll soon be posted to your new bases to take up the duties for which you’ve been trained here at Halton, but until you do I would just remind you that it is still possible to win–and lose–points for this Hut up until the time you actually leave here. I imagine that tonight you’ll be anticipating celebrating your exam success, so let me just remind you first that base and WAAF rules still apply. Dismissed. Except you, Campion.’

Oh, no, here it comes, Lou thought grimly. She was going to get a private telling-off for the points she had lost them.

The other girls were filing out of the hut, anxious to make the most of their Saturday night off, Betty giving Lou a sympathetic look as she marched
past her, saying out of the side of her mouth in a hissed whisper, ‘I’ll wait for you at the Naafi.

With the corporal’s steely gaze on her, Lou didn’t dare so much as nod in response.

The door banged closed after the last girl to leave, dust motes from the evening sun dancing in the disturbed air, which smelled of scent and excitement.

‘Congratulations on your results, Campion. Very well done indeed.’

‘Thank you.’ Lou didn’t dare relax and add the word ‘Corp', remaining standing stiffly to attention.

‘At ease.’

At ease–she wished she could be, Lou reflected as she did her best to obey the command given with a body that felt as tightly coiled as a steel spring inside, with limbs attached to it as stiff as her mother’s wooden dolly pegs.

‘A pass rate of ninety-eight per cent, which yours was,’ the corporal announced, ‘is considered by the officers here to denote the skill of both a trainee and their tutor.’

Her pass mark has been ninety-eighty per cent? Lou’s knees had gone all weak, her wooden dolly peg legs suddenly turned to jelly. Surely there must be some mistake? But of course the RAF did not make mistakes.

‘The CO feels that something which reflects so well on WAAF Halton should be rewarded,’ Corporal Carter continued. ‘As a result I have been informed that twenty good conduct points will be given to this Hut as a mark of recognition of the achievement.’

‘Twenty points?’ Lou croaked. ‘But that’s—’

‘This puts our Hut at the top of the league table,’ the corporal went on, ignoring her, ‘where I trust it will now remain. Dismissed, Campion, and jolly good show.’

‘Eva, no, I can explain,’ Con protested, expertly dodging the tin of Spam his enraged mistress hurled at his head, followed by a tin of peaches, both taken from the pile of tinned food on Con’s desk.

‘Those tins you’ve just been chucking at me will be dented now,’ he protested. ‘Cost me good money, they did, and I know plenty who would be grateful for them.’

It was unfortunate that Eva had caught him being kissed by little Jenny, the understudy, as a ‘thank you’ for the tinned stuff he’d just given her, and which she’d had to leave on his desk when Eva had burst in on them. But there was no call for her to carry on like she was doing, Con thought defensively, especially not after the way he’d been so generous to her. The trouble with Eva, though, was there was no satisfying her, in bed or out of it. Con grimaced to himself. It would suit him very nicely if Eva took the huff good and proper. And slung her hook, taking herself off to another theatre.

‘Like that harlot who is trying to steal you from me, you mean?’ Eva demanded.

‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Con tried to defend himself. ‘All I was doing was having a word with her about her singing at the nightclub. She’s only a kid, Eva; she means nothing to me. How could she when I’ve got you?’ Con tried to soft-soap her.

Eva had been keen enough to encourage him to
go ahead when he had told her that he’d been invited ‘by a business associate’ to help him set up a new private membership-only nightclub. Joe’s idea, since that was the best way for them to get round the strict antigaming laws, and at the same time to do as Ricky had suggested and have a bit more than a card game to tempt the American troops to gamble away their money.

‘Do you want to break my heart?’ Eva demanded, only partially mollified. ‘Can you not see that that harlot is trying to steal you from me? Well, she shall not. I shall kill her first with my father’s knife. I shall kill you both and then I shall kill myself.’

‘Eva, there’s no need for you to talk like that,’ Con tried to soothe her.

‘Hold me, then; kiss me and tell me that you love me and only me.’

Eva was holding out her arms to him, and the thought of her threat and her father’s knife was enough to have Con giving in to her.

She didn’t know what she’d have done without Wilhelm being here to keep Tommy occupied during the summer holidays, Emily admitted, as she washed the fresh lettuce Tommy had just brought up to the kitchen for her, showing her how neatly he had cut it, under Wilhelm careful eye, and telling her that he and Wilhelm had counted twenty-three slugs in the jar of beer they had put out to trap them in.

Emily had shuddered at the thought of the slugs–there were some things that, no matter how much she loved Tommy, did not have the interest or appeal
for her that they did for him, and slugs were one of them. She’d have their lunch ready soon. Wilhelm had repaired an old wooden table he’d found in the shed and Tommy enjoyed having his lunch there with Wilhelm out in the summer sunshine. Emily didn’t join them; she didn’t consider that it was her place, or fitting. Wilhelm did more than enough for them already without him having to put up with her company as well. She might sit out on the back step after lunch, with it being so warm and sunny. She could leave the door open so that she could hear the wireless, and she could get on with her knitting. She was making Tommy a new pullover for when he went back to school, from wool she’d unwound from an old jumper of her father’s. Her father would have liked Wilhelm, Emily reckoned. A fierce blush burned her face. What on earth was she thinking now!

‘Why don’t you have your lunch here with us?’ Tommy questioned, after Emily had put down their plates and was preparing to go back to the house.

‘It is because your
Mutter,
she is the lady of the house and we here we are the men,’ Wilhelm explained to Tommy.

She really ought to explain to Wilhelm that Tommy wasn’t her son, Emily thought, but now with Tommy himself calling her ‘Mum’ of his own accord, and her never thinking to say something because it meant so much to her to have him do that, it made things a bit difficult.

‘I’m knitting you that pullover for when you back to school, remember,’ she told Tommy now, ‘and I don’t want those nasty slugs near my nice clean wool.’

She’d turned to walk back up the garden as she spoke, but the strong sunlight blinded her for a moment so that she didn’t see the wheelbarrow and stumbled against it.

Immediately Wilhelm was on his feet, taking hold of her as she fell.

It must be the shock of nearly falling that was making her feel so weak and dizzy, Emily told herself as she leaned gratefully against Wilhelm’s supporting arm, just as it also must be that same shock that was making her heart beat so rapidly. It could not and must not be the fact that Wilhelm was holding her so carefully and so comfortingly whilst he asked anxiously if she was all right.

Wilhelm smelled of earth and sunshine and fresh air. His concern for her underlined what a genuinely kind man he was.

‘I am so sorry. I should have moved the wheelbarrow. If you had been hurt, I should never have forgiven myself.’

‘No, it was my fault for not looking where I was going,’ Emily insisted.

‘You are sure you have not hurt yourself? You are able to walk?’

‘Yes. I’m all right.’

Wilhelm still hadn’t released her and although she knew she should move away from him, Emily felt strangely reluctant to do so.

‘You say that, but with your permission I shall walk back to the house with you, just to be sure.’

She could, Emily knew, have told Wilhelm that Tommy would walk back with her, but there was something about the way the warmth and
protection of Wilhelm’s arm around her, and the concern in his eyes made her feel, which kept her silent, so that it was Wilhelm who guided her gently back towards the open back door whilst Tommy continued to enjoy his lunch.

‘You really needn’t have bothered,’ Emily told Wilhelm once they had reached the house. ‘It was my own silly fault for not looking where I was going, and it would have served me right if I had hurt myself.’

‘I am glad you did not. It would not have been your fault.

‘If you want to wait I’ll put the kettle on and then you can take a tray of tea back down for you and Tommy,’ Emily suggested.