Ellie Page 17

‘Keeping secrets runs in the family,’ Marleen said tartly.

  ‘What’cha mean?’ Patsy asked.

  Ellie was wide awake now, listening carefully, but she kept her eyes tightly shut, wondering what Marleen was going to reveal.

  ‘Nothin’ Patsy,’ Marleen replied, in that voice she always used when she thought she’d opened her mouth too wide. ‘I don’t tell people’s secrets either.’

  Their voices became muffled after that and Ellie dropped off, wondering what Marleen had meant.

  The all-clear signal woke Ellie with a start. Immediately people started to move and pack up all around her.

  ‘All right, love?’ Marleen helped Ellie roll up the blankets. ‘Grim, ain’t it?’

  Ellie smiled faintly. She was as stiff as a plank, she felt dirty and she longed for some fresh air. ‘Better than being with Miss Gilbert,’ she said, wondering if she’d be able to say that truthfully after a week or two of sleeping down here. ‘I’d rather be roughing it with you than comfortable anywhere else.’

  ‘You little charmer.’ Marleen gave a warm, wide smile. ‘Now let’s see if we’ve still got an ’ome out there. After a wash and brush-up we’ve got to sort out a few things. D’you feel up to that?’

  Ellie knew Marleen was talking about her mother’s death and getting guardianship sorted out. She wasn’t ready for it, but one glance at all these other people packing up intending to go to work regardless of how they’d spent the night decided her.

  ‘I’m up to it.’ She attempted a smile. ‘As Mum always said, “The show must go on.”’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Marleen chuckled. ‘And I want you to do the roots of my ’air later on an’ all. I look like a bleedin’ old tart from Cable Street.’

  Chapter Eight

  Amberley, June 1943

  ‘I’ll just die if they make me go home.’

  Jack smiled at Bonny’s dramatic statement. He stood up from the engine he was mending, wiped his oily hands on a rag and turned to look at her.

  Jack was seventeen and an apprentice mechanic at the Turnpike garage in Houghton Bridge. To his disappointment, he hadn’t grown tall. In his first year living with Mr and Mrs Baker he grew three inches, but the rate had slowed down since, making him an unremarkable five foot eight. But his body was lean and muscular, his shoulders wide, and he still had the same irrepressible cheeky grin, and the freckles. His red hair, though subdued a little by Brylcreem, was still spiky fire and Alec Hatt, his employer, often teased him by calling him ‘the torch’.

  It was a hot Saturday afternoon in June. Bonny had dropped by at the garage on her way to play tennis. She was fourteen now and she’d passed from an outstandingly pretty child to a devastatingly beautiful girl without ever touching on the awkward coltish stage most teenagers endured.

  Bert Baker called her a ‘heart-breaker’. Five foot six, slender, yet curvy, hair like gold satin and wide, turquoise blue eyes which gave her a curious mix of girlish innocence and womanly sensuality. Her white tennis shorts and blouse showed off her sensational, lightly tanned legs and there wasn’t a man in the village who wasn’t distracted when she rode by on her bicycle.

  Beryl Baker called her ‘a minx’. Lydia veered between calling her an angel and a devil. Jack knew she was both, but adored her just the same.

  ‘I don’t know why you mind going back to London so much,’ he said after a while. He didn’t want her to go, but any other girl of her age in the village would give her eye-teeth for the chance to be in London. ‘It’s got a lot more to offer than here.’

  ‘I want to stay for the same reasons as you,’ Bonny pouted.

  Jack just laughed. He and Bonny had been inseparable ever since the day he rescued her from the river, but he wasn’t blind to her faults. She might pretend to love the country, but when it came down to it her real reason for staying here was pure snobbishness. She was ashamed of her parents, and she couldn’t bear the thought of living on a council estate after Briar Bank.

  ‘What’s wrong with going to secretarial college?’ he asked. This place her parents had found for her in Romford sounded very nice.

  ‘I just don’t want to be a secretary,’ she said stubbornly. ‘You know what I want.’

  Jack sighed and turned back to his engine. Bonny was set on going to Hollywood. She’d made him sit through endless Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films and was convinced she could do even better. But though she was a brilliant tap-dancer, she couldn’t act and her voice, though sweet, just wasn’t strong enough.

  ‘It’s tough breaking into films,’ Jack reminded her. ‘It might be better to have something else behind you.’

  Bonny had been home to Dagenham for several brief holidays in the three years she’d lived in Amberley. Each visit made the differences between her life with Lydia and that of her parents more extreme. Her parents were so dull and strait-laced. Her mother could talk of nothing but rationing, war damage and the ingredients for her cakes; her father, his garden and Ford’s. Their imagination didn’t stretch beyond Bonny getting a nice secure office job, marrying a white-collar worker and settling down in a semidetached house in Chigwell or Romford.

  Bonny was consumed with dreams of Hollywood. She saw herself in a spangled costume, dancing her way through spectacular Busby Berkeley routines. If and when she married it would be to someone fabulously rich and she’d set her sights a little higher than Romford.

  Four years of war had made everything so grim in London. All the way through the East End there was nothing to see but bomb-sites, roofs covered by tarpaulins, broken windows, walls shored up and gaunt shells of old tenements. Her parents’ house in Flamstead Road was so poky and shabby after Briar Bank. She couldn’t bear to see her father shaving at the kitchen sink, or watch her mother soaking her corns in a bowl of water. Everything about the way they lived offended her.

  She hated having to go into the Anderson shelter in the garden when the sirens went off, with that awful smell of damp earth, the cold and the fear that tonight might be a direct hit. Sitting for hours by candle-light, with her mother knitting and going on and on about neighbours who’d been bombed out.

  But it was her parents’ mentality that got Bonny down more than anything. They were so old and set in their ways. Everything was so serious to them, and they stuck to regulations as if someone was spying on them. The government said no more than five inches of bath water, so her mother measured it. Every scrap of paper was saved, every bone was washed and dried, every tin flattened religiously. They wouldn’t dream of buying anything on the black market, not even for a special occasion. When her mother heard a rumour that a pig was being kept illegally by a group of neighbours, she shopped them.

  Aunt Lydia did her bit for the war effort, far more than Bonny’s parents, but she didn’t make an issue of it. She had joined the WVS two years ago and she did everything from driving mobile canteens to helping out with finding homes for people bombed out in Southampton. Dancing and music lessons had to be fitted in when she was free, as often she was working for twenty-four hours at a stretch. The spare bedroom at Briar Bank was used as an emergency billet for anyone who needed it.

  In Sussex there was just enough war to be exciting, yet it was distant enough to be safe. There had been one exciting day back in the August of 1940. It was a lovely hot Sunday and after lunch Bonny had persuaded Aunt Lydia to drive her and the three Eastons into Arundel to see a German plane which had crashed close to the castle walls.

  Lydia had only just dropped them at the Great Park gates when they heard the roar of planes coming over from Bognor Regis. Dozens of bombers and an escort of fighter-planes in wing-to-wing formation flew in so close they could see the black and white crosses under their wings. As they watched, the planes wheeled round towards Littlehampton and dived in groups of three. Although the Germans’ target was some distance away, the noise of bombs and guns was deafening.

  They were used to seeing vapour trails in the sky, indicating a battle was taking place.
They heard aircraft overhead, sirens wailing, the rattle of machinegun fire, and sometimes caught sight of a parachutist dropping from the sky or heard the occasional bang of a falling bomb. But until that day in August, 1943 all reports of destruction had been far enough from Amberley for them to be casual about it.

  Bonny had no desire to go back to the austerity of London at war. Sussex was just fine, and if she could find a way to stall her parents until she was old enough to join a dancing troupe, then she’d never return to Dagenham.

  ‘What does Miss Wynter think about this secretarial college idea then?’ Jack asked from beneath the car bonnet.

  ‘She won’t say.’ Bonny pouted, swishing back her hair from her face. ‘I know she thinks it’s still very dangerous in London, but as I’m old enough to leave school next month, I suppose she thinks I’m big enough to leave her too. Can you speak to her, Jack?’

  Jack smiled to himself. He had guessed Bonny’s arrival at the garage today had some purpose behind it. ‘You want me to try and influence Miss Wynter I suppose?’ he said drily.

  He came out from under the bonnet and just looked at Bonny. He adored her, but there were times when he wanted to shake her. She always thought about herself first. Now he was supposed to back her up, tell Lydia Bonny was breaking her heart about going home, yet afraid to hurt her parents’ feelings, when in fact her plans had nothing to do with any of the people who loved her.

  ‘Why do you have to be so devious?’ he reproached her. ‘The real reason you want to stay here is because Lydia will help you get into shows when the war’s over.’

  Bonny blushed. Jack knew her better than anyone, but she hated the way he was always so blunt about her motives. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ she snapped back. ‘You chose to stay here rather than find work in London and help your mum out.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘My mum couldn’t care less about me, or Michael and Tom. I can do more for my brothers by doing an apprenticeship here than giving Mum money so she can go out and get drunk. Your parents are different.’

  Sometimes Jack was very aggravating. Bonny thought he should take only her feelings into account, but he always had to have a broader view.

  ‘Does that mean you won’t stick up for me?’ Bonny tossed her head arrogantly.

  Jack paused before answering.

  Bonny saw his indecision and knew she had to persuade him somehow. Aunt Lydia liked and trusted Jack. He could easily influence her into offering some alternative suggestion that would appease her parents.

  She moved closer to him. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that I might want to stay here because of you?’ she said softly, looking right into his eyes. She could always tell what he was thinking by doing this. They were light brown with amber flecks and they registered anger, hurt, love and disbelief more clearly than anyone else’s eyes. ‘Don’t you know I lie awake at nights thinking about you?’

  She saw his expression change from suspicion to bewilderment. She knew how he felt about her and it gave her a charge when she saw it in his eyes.

  Jack’s heart began to pound alarmingly, sweat breaking out on his brow. He could see the outline of her small firm breasts beneath her thin blouse and he licked his lips nervously.

  ‘Kiss me, Jack?’ she whispered, reaching up and cupping his face between her two hands.

  Her lips touched his before he could stop her. His hands fluttered at his sides, afraid to touch her because of the dirt on them. But the moist warmth of her lips drove away all reason and his eyes closed involuntarily, his body leaning in towards hers.

  The delicious sweetness only lasted for a brief moment. Jack opened his eyes as she moved away from him and found she was smiling.

  ‘Can’t you do any better than that?’ she teased.

  ‘I – I can’t hold you,’ he stuttered, his voice hoarse with emotion. ‘I’m so dirty.’

  ‘Well, clean yourself up and meet me tonight,’ Bonny said, turning away towards the open garage door. ‘At seven, by the bridge.’

  Jack watched her jump on her bicycle and pedal away. She waved one hand but didn’t turn her head. Her hair was flowing back in the breeze and her slim waist and small buttocks made his heart contract painfully.

  He turned back to the engine, knowing he must have it finished by five, but his mind was on Bonny and the taste of her lips.

  Being evacuated to Amberley had been the making of Jack and his brothers. Mr and Mrs Baker had wiped out all the years of deprivation and their mother’s indifference. With Bert and Alec Hatt he’d discovered that real men didn’t have to be brutes. They’d encouraged his passion for mechanical things, letting him work alongside them, and taught him to appreciate nature and the countryside.

  But it was Bonny who’d really motivated Jack. She had vision. Not only did she see herself on the silver screen, but she made dreams for him too. First an apprenticeship, then a garage of his own. One day he could own dozens up and down the country and get others to work for him. She brought magazines down from Briar Bank, glossy ones with pictures of limousines and flashy American cars, and together they’d lapse into happy day-dreams of Bonny in a mink coat and Jack at the wheel of a Rolls-Royce.

  She didn’t stop at dreams, either. It was Bonny who wheedled Miss Wynter into persuading Alec to take him on as an apprentice, then set to work on Alec until he thought it was all his own idea.

  After that day when Bonny had almost drowned, they’d become closer than brother and sister. They climbed trees together, made camps, swopped comics, went scrumping and explored the surrounding countryside. Everyone in the village shook their heads over this odd friendship. Sometimes they thought Jack felt sorry for the girl because no one else liked her; other times they claimed Bonny just used Jack. What they didn’t know was that Jack and Bonny had found something in one another that they couldn’t find elsewhere. Jack loved her plucky nature and her imagination. She was more fun than another boy because the two of them didn’t have to compete; she was the sister he never had.

  To Bonny, Jack was excitement. With him she could do the kind of things her mother would never have allowed, but with the safety net of his protectiveness. He didn’t put her on a pedestal, but liked her as she really was. It was Jack who taught her to ride a bike, to whistle, to light fires. In turn, she taught him how to waltz, to play board-games and to use his imagination.

  Swimming was the only thing he couldn’t persuade her to join him at. Littlehampton’s beach was swathed in barbed wire, but even if they had been allowed near the sea he knew she wouldn’t do more than paddle. She would sit on the wooden jetty by the river watching him swim, but apart from dipping her toes in the water, she went no further.

  It was only since Christmas that Jack had begun to realise his feelings for her were no longer brotherly. He’d gone to watch her dance in a pantomime in Bognor and the sight of her budding breasts under the tight costume had given him an erection. Since then he had fallen asleep nightly thinking about her, torturing himself by imagining holding and kissing her. As the months went by he’d watched her figure changing into a woman’s and sometimes when he was with her he was tongue-tied by her beauty.

  If she’d been sixteen, as she looked, no one would have said anything about them being sweethearts. But she was only fourteen, and he knew if Miss Wynter was to guess what was in his mind, she’d take a horsewhip to him.

  *

  ‘I’ve had it.’ Belinda tossed her tennis-racket on the grass and flopped down beside it. ‘You’re too good for me, Bonny.’

  Bonny fastidiously wiped the sweat from her forehead and joined Belinda on the grass.

  Belinda was Bonny’s only real girlfriend. If Bonny hadn’t carefully cultivated her, it was quite possible she would have been as wary of Bonny as the other girls.

  Belinda was Dr Noakes’s daughter – petite, with dark, curly hair and a sweet nature. The only girl in a family of four boys, she was always grateful for Bonny’s company and she invited her round for tennis or parti
es all the time. Belinda danced too, although she had no plans to make it a career as Bonny did.

  Dr Noakes’s home wasn’t an impressive one: just a plain, Victorian, family house with furniture made shabby by his five children. But the garden was huge, with a splendid view of the river, and although a great deal of it had been put down to vegetables, no one had managed to persuade him to dig up the tennis court.

  ‘It’s so hot.’ Belinda fanned herself with her hand. ‘We had some of our lessons outside yesterday because some of the girls were half asleep.’

  ‘What’s it like at your new school then?’ Bonny asked. Belinda had been moved from the village school when she was thirteen to a small private one in Arundel.

  ‘Stuffy.’ Belinda pulled a face. ‘My teacher Miss Hobbs is an ogre. I asked my father if I could get a job when I get my school certificate, but he’s dead set on me going to university.’

  Bonny saw this as an opportunity to air her problems and launched into her account of the college in Romford.

  ‘I can’t see why you have to go there,’ Belinda said in surprise. ‘Why not go to Mayfield in Littlehampton?’

  Bonny looked blank.

  ‘Don’t you know it?’ Belinda seemed surprised. ‘It’s a bit like a finishing school. You know the stuff, good manners, deportment, French and music, but they changed it just before the war when that sort of thing went out of date. Now they do typing and shorthand too. One of my cousins went there.’

  ‘I suppose it’s expensive?’ Bonny knew her parents were planning to pay for the place in Romford, but this sounded as if it was in another league.

  ‘It can’t be that bad, my aunt and uncle aren’t rolling in it,’ Belinda said. ‘Why don’t you ask Miss Wynter to get a prospectus? You have to wear a posh uniform. Pink dresses and boaters!’

  That decided Bonny. She could just see herself in that outfit.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Mayfield College in Littlehampton?’ Bonny asked Aunt Lydia over their tea.

  Lydia was wearing her WVS uniform, as she would be driving a mobile canteen later. It should have looked awful on her, a grey-green tweed suit and a beetroot red jumper with the kind of felt hat people associated with Angela Brazil books about posh boarding-schools. But Lydia had the suit altered by a tailor and managed to remould the hat to make it look dashing.