Telegrams and Teacakes: A heartbreaking World War Two family saga, page 8
‘Oh, but a pretty face and good conversation are so good for morale, Mrs…?’ Sam said.
‘Barton,’ said Pat. ‘Mrs Patricia Barton.’
‘Mrs Barton,’ said Sam. ‘My mind is always on the job. How can it not be? I’ve sailed thousands of miles from home, of my own free will, to put my military training to good use and help defeat Hitler, to win peace and freedom for us all. I don’t mean any harm by letting off a little steam and taking a pretty girl to a dance. I’m a gentleman through and through. Betty knows that, don’t you, Betty?’
Betty, lost for words, nodded and busied herself with arranging the books. Pat, seemingly humbled by his words, looked apologetic and mumbled, ‘Of course,’ before continuing with her task.
‘Anyway, I’m making a nuisance of myself, so good day to you, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Good to see you, Betty.’
He began to walk away, and Betty tried not to stare at his physique beneath his jacket. He looked incredibly strong – like he could lift an aircraft, not just fly one.
‘Come on, Betty,’ said Pat, tutting. ‘We need to get on with our next delivery. If you want my advice, keep away from flirts like Sam.’
Pat quick-marched out of the hotel first, and, managing to tear her gaze away from Sam’s shoulders, Betty started to follow her. There was a tap on her arm and she turned to find Sam grinning at her. Eyeing Pat, he quickly handed her a piece of paper and winked.
‘Betty!’ called Pat from the van. ‘Come on with you!’
Betty glanced at the piece of paper and saw that he’d written a message: To B, 6 p.m. at the clock tower, tomorrow. Jitterbug lesson. From S x
Grinning, Betty stuffed the piece of paper into her pocket and ran towards Pat, who was waiting with an impatient look on her face, but not before she glanced back at Sam, gave just the slightest nod of her head and mouthed, okay.
Mary waited until Audrey was with Uncle John in the bakehouse, discussing tomorrow’s bread orders, before she crept into the kitchen in stockinged feet from which one big toe had escaped. Tucking her silky bobbed hair behind her ears and with a mix of excitement and trepidation in her heart, she quietly opened the cupboards, searching for ingredients. Blinking into the dark cupboards that Audrey kept spotlessly clean and astonishingly organised, Mary breathed in the heady fragrances of baking: ginger powder, cinnamon and nutmeg, currants and treacle. Though she longed to delve her little fingers into the neatly wrapped packets of dried fruit and squirrel away fistfuls of the sweet treats, she knew they were reserves to be kept for the bakery’s Christmas orders. Instead, she reached for the dried milk powder and pulled it out of the cupboard.
‘Margarine, sugar, dried milk powder,’ she muttered, carefully lining up the packets on the kitchen table. Realising she needed a bowl and spoon, she quietly moved across the kitchen, pausing when she heard the sounds of the neighbourhood’s children playing out on the street. Throwing open the window, she stuck her head out to see what games they were playing and to check that those American soldiers weren’t handing out sweets. Traffic light lollies were her favourite. Goodness knows where they found them but find them they did.
‘Oi, Scary Mary!’ shouted a voice from the street. Squinting in the sunset and hearing the seagulls overhead – a nice change from those noisy aircraft that seemed to drop in and out of the clouds like yo-yos – she scanned the faces until she recognised Billy, a bully boy from her class at school who smelled like soused herring and had once told her he weed on the raspberry bushes just after she’d picked and eaten some of the berries. Dressed in grey flannel shorts that were way too small on him, he called her ‘Scary Mary’ because once, when a siren had gone off while they were at school, Mary had been too scared to come out from under her desk. She hadn’t been able to find the words to tell him what it was like to watch her brother die when a bomb had hit their home.
When he saw her, he stuck out his tongue, so she stuck out hers in return and slammed the window shut. Deciding she wasn’t missing out on anything if he was there, she climbed onto a chair and poured the ingredients into a bowl. Creaming them together, she frowned – how was she going to make this cake look like a banana?
What can I use to make this yellow? she mused, returning to the cupboard and scanning the tins and packets, finally settling on a bright yellow tin of Colman’s dried English mustard powder. That would do it! Though she wasn’t sure how mustard powder would taste in icing, she decided to give it a go. Surely Audrey would be delighted with the banana cake even if it didn’t actually taste like bananas. As she mixed in the mustard powder, the icing started to resemble a yellow sludge, but after spreading it onto the bread and shaping it into a banana shape, Mary was satisfied. She giggled, but was distracted by a stone being thrown up at the window.
‘Billy, will you go away?’ she muttered, licking her fingers and cringing at the flavour.
When another stone, bigger this time, hit the glass, Mary worried that he’d put a hole right through it, so she opened up the sash window and peered outside. The children had mostly gone and in Billy’s place was a man three times his height, with broad shoulders and hands as big as saucepans.
‘Sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘I saw someone was in there but couldn’t get an answer at the door. I’m looking for Betty. Does she work here?’
Mary instinctively sensed danger but she was hopeless at acting and the man got the answer he wanted from her silence.
‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘Do you know where she’s staying? There’s a shilling in it for you. Don’t be frightened of me. I’m Betty’s brother.’
Mary mulled over the man’s words and stared at the coin in his palm. With that shilling she could buy Audrey a birthday present to show her how much she cared – and if he was Betty’s brother, why wouldn’t she want to see him?
‘If you give me the shilling,’ Mary said. ‘I’ll tell you.’
The man laughed.
‘You’re a smart one,’ he said, tapping his skull. ‘Now, where is she?’
‘She’s staying next door to the Metropole Hotel in town,’ said Mary. ‘You can catch the bus straight there. It’s opposite the clock tower.’
‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Now keep this a secret, will you? I want to surprise her.’ The man tossed the coin up into her hand and walked off down the road without waiting for an answer. Mary trembled, wondering now whether she’d made a mistake. Following him down the road with her eyes, she eventually tore herself away from the spot at the window and moved back to her cake, slipping the coin into her sock. The evening was warm, and the mock icing was already dripping unattractively down the sides of the bread. Hearing Audrey’s footsteps on the wooden staircase, she quickly put a dish over the banana cake.
‘Mary, were you talking to someone?’ Audrey said, popping her head round the door. ‘I thought I heard your voice.’
Mary thought about telling Audrey about the man for a second before shaking her head. She couldn’t tell her the truth because then she wouldn’t be able to keep the shilling and buy her a gift. No, she’d do as the man said and keep it a secret.
That night Betty got ready for bed with a knot of excitement and fear in her belly. Sitting at the tiny table at the end of her bed, which served as desk and dressing table, she studied the note that Sam had given her. Even his handwriting, which was like lace, was a little bit thrilling. Maybe it was wrong to have butterflies in her stomach, she thought, glancing at her pink cheeks in the small mirror hanging on the wall in the room, but she couldn’t deny they were there. And why shouldn’t she be thinking of enjoying herself for a change? With the war on – and after the shock of Robert’s deception – she needed to let her hair down now more than ever before.
Tucking the note into the pages of the book Pat had given her, then spreading the colourful crochet blanket out on her bed, she thought of a speech that Winston Churchill had made on the wireless earlier in the week. Some of his words had stuck in her head: ‘…we may stride forward into the unknown, with growing confidence’ he’d said. Of course, Churchill was talking about military operations, for which he had said ‘there was only one end’, but somehow his words seemed to apply to her personal life too.
Before climbing into bed, Betty glanced out of the window criss-crossed with Splinternet tape and peered up and down the street, hoping there would be no air raid siren tonight. Just as she was about to turn away, a sudden movement in the bushes opposite caught her eye, making her suck in her breath and the hairs on her arms stand on end. She stared out into the darkness, thinking she could see something – or someone – staring back at her. Squinting, she rubbed her forehead and tutted.
‘Robert?’ she whispered, before shaking her head and rolling her eyes at herself, thinking that she was becoming paranoid. There was nothing and nobody there, just a seagull standing proudly on the clock tower.
Letting down the blind and sliding into bed, Betty wondered if she would ever be free from her fears or whether she’d always be looking over her shoulder, expecting Robert to have found her, wanting his money back. Shrugging off her anxiety, she pulled the blanket over her head and thought again about the note Sam had written. She would meet him tomorrow at 6 p.m. Whatever their meeting turned out to be, she was willing to give it a chance. If only for a few hours on one evening of her life, she would put the past behind her and live in the moment – striding forward into the unknown, with growing confidence.
Chapter Eleven
‘There he is, the angel of death,’ said Audrey to herself, standing outside the bakery in the sunshine, watching the young telegram messenger boy pedalling quickly over the potholes up Fisherman’s Road on his red bicycle, the badge on his arm glinting in the early morning sunshine. Poor lad was only fourteen years old, if that, and his arrival at the front door was dreaded by everyone, in case he was delivering bad news from the War Office. As soon as they’d seen him coming people couldn’t help staring at where the boy was headed, sometimes shouting out ‘Telegram boy!’ to warn their neighbours he was on his way, with their heads poking out of their windows, or waiting cross-armed at the garden gate as if standing guard. Sometimes the messenger boy would defy the nosy neighbours by going round the backs of the houses, down alleyways and through backyards – but either way, it didn’t take long for news to get around. If you didn’t hear the piercing scream of shock and grief from a woman given bad news about her husband or son, the news would still spread like wildfire in a blaze of whispers over the garden fence.
‘Poor lad,’ she whispered to herself. ‘He carries a lot of responsibility on those young shoulders.’
Mind you, she thought, boys not much older were facing death in the battlefields, seeing goodness knows what. Every youngster was having to grow up so quickly these days.
‘Mrs Barton?’ said Freda, the postwoman, suddenly next to her, making Audrey jump out of her skin. ‘Post.’
‘Oh good heavens,’ Audrey gasped when she realised she was holding out a letter. ‘Thank you.’
Ripping open the envelope, her legs almost gave way as she recognised the handwriting and digested the words scribbled on one sheet of paper. It was from her dearest Charlie.
Audrey,
You know I’m not one for writing long letters, but I got your three letters all at once and I nearly fell off my chair when I read about the baby. After all these years… I can see the shop sign now: Barton & Son or Daughter. Look after yourself, dear girl. Let John do the lifting in the bakery. You’re always in my thoughts and thinking of our life together at the bakery keeps me going. I am keeping all right here, so you mustn’t worry about me.
Charlie x
Tears rushed into her eyes and she quickly blinked them away as a bolt of relief passed through her body. She clutched her throat. She felt like yelping in joy. It was the morning of her birthday and there couldn’t have been a greater gift than Charlie’s letter. Though, out of the corner of her eye, she could see the messenger boy knocking on the door of the poor cobbler and his wife at the other end of Fisherman’s Road, and her heart broke for them, she couldn’t deny her own sense of relief. Charlie was alive. Charlie knew about the baby. At long last he had written.
His letter, however, made her feel his absence like a wallop on the head, and she longed to hear his voice and throw her arms round him. Suddenly light-headed with emotion, she held onto the frame of the bakery doorway to recover her balance, then, staggering a little, walked back inside the shop. She clutched the letter in her hand, shaking her head in disbelief. After all these months of waiting, she’d finally heard from him. Betty stopped sweeping up crumbs and, leaning her hands on the broom handle, stared at Audrey in concern.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Barton?’ she said. ‘Do you need to sit down? Have you had bad news?’
Audrey blinked. Music played quietly on the wireless and she felt as if time had stopped. All she could see and hear were Charlie’s handwritten words. They were as clear in her mind as if he’d spoken them into her ear.
‘No, thank you, Betty,’ said Audrey quietly. ‘I am perfectly well. In fact, I couldn’t be better. Charlie has written to me and for now at least, I know he is safe.’
Returning to her position behind the shop counter, Audrey pulled the ledger book from the drawer of the wooden till and tucked the letter inside for safekeeping.
‘That’s wonderful news, Mrs Barton,’ said Betty. ‘I’m pleased for you. You must miss him very much.’
Audrey unconsciously patted her pregnant bump and smiled.
‘I do,’ she said, and saw sadness pass like a shadow over Betty’s face. ‘Oh Betty, I’m sorry. I know you have your own heartache to endure.’
‘Actually,’ said Betty, propping the broom up against the wall. ‘A Canadian airman, called Sam, has invited me out tonight.’
Audrey’s attention had been momentarily drawn by two women who were admiring the window display and pointing at the plaster of Paris wedding cake cover. Folk still thought they were real.
‘Has he now?’ said Audrey. ‘And is this Canadian a handsome chap?’
‘He is,’ said Betty. ‘I like him, but, as you know, I’m still married to Robert. Do you think it’s okay if I…? Or does that make me as bad as him?’
The two women entered the shop, chatting to one another about the trials of shopping in wartime, and Audrey winked at Betty. ‘I think it’s okay,’ she said, ‘but I’d be honest right from the start. Hello, ladies,’ she went on quickly, ‘what can I get for you today?’
‘Have you heard?’ one said. ‘We were just in the shop when the messenger boy came. The cobbler’s boy is injured, but he’s going to be okay. They had a telegram, see. I’ve never seen people so glad.’
Audrey closed her eyes in relief before realising the irony of the whole thing. The cobbler and his wife were glad that their son was injured rather than killed. That’s how war made you: simply grateful to be alive.
Preparing the customer’s order, she noticed the wide grin on Betty’s face, and thought there must be something in the air today. Despite the horrors of war, there was a feeling of hope blowing around them, and even if it only lasted a day, or just a few hours, it was a reprieve for which Audrey was deeply grateful.
* * *
During the afternoon, the good weather broke. The sky over Southbourne turned pavement-grey, and unrelenting rain beat down against the bakery shop window, turning passers-by on the street into eerie dark blurs. The sea merged with the sky – but inside the bakery, the sun was still out and Betty hummed happily along to Music While You Work on the wireless. Though deep inside she feared that she might be playing with fire by going out with Sam, she couldn’t wait for the evening. She hadn’t felt this excited in a long while. After the terrible bombing in Bristol, the exploding skies and the crushed homes and dreams, she desperately wanted to feel like a normal young woman living a normal life. And, if Robert was enjoying himself with someone else, why shouldn’t she? Their marriage vows meant nothing to him, so why should she remain tied to a man who didn’t love her?
‘This is a new start,’ she told herself. ‘I won’t be held prisoner by Robert’s lies.’
When Audrey let her go from work early, she burst out of the bakery and ran, with a newspaper over her head and splashing through puddles, towards the bus stop, where she planned to catch the bus back to her digs and change into a different dress. While waiting for the bus to arrive, she wiped the rain from her face and squeezed the water from her hair. She was dreaming of conversations she would have with Sam, wondering how best to explain her situation, when she felt a firm hand grip her arm. Her heart hammering in her chest, she cricked her neck and turned to face Robert. Unshaven, his hair unclipped and with dark bags under his eyes and his collar turned up, he looked like an unkempt villain who had been out on the ale.
‘Betty,’ he said, in a tone of voice that made her blood run cold. ‘I’ve found you.’
‘Get your hand off me,’ she said, pulling at his fingers. ‘You’re hurting me.’
‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ he said. ‘You’re my wife! You can’t just up and leave me. Come with me. There’s something I need to tell you.’
He yanked her arm again and pulled her away from the bus stop, frogmarching her down the road. Betty sighed bitterly, watching the bus and her evening with Sam disappear into thin air. How could she have ever imagined, even for a second, that she could enjoy an evening out with a dashing young Canadian? She was a married woman. She had run away from home. She had stolen money. Her newfound freedom was never going to last.
‘Robert, I know all about you and Dor—’ she started, but Robert was quick to interrupt and silence her with his words.
‘You don’t know nothing,’ he said, gruffly. ‘Just hear me out.’
Mary thought she would burst if she had to wait much longer. Bagging and selling the stales for a penny had taken for ever and now, watching Audrey turn the shop sign to closed and sweep up the crumbs from the floor, she impatiently shifted from one foot to another.
