Ellie Read online

  ‘Yes dear.’ Lydia was reading the paper as she ate, and her reply was more courtesy than a real answer. ‘How awful, Leslie Howard is dead. The civilian plane he was travelling in was shot down by Germans. What a terrible way for a man like him to die.’

  ‘Yes, dreadful,’ Bonny agreed politely. She only remembered the man as the drip Ashley in Gone with the Wind. Perhaps he should have had more sense than to travel by plane. ‘You do know Mayfield then?’

  Lydia looked up from the paper. ‘Sorry dear, what was that?’

  One of the things which Bonny liked most about Lydia was her diverse interests. Aside from music and dancing, she liked sport, cars and the theatre. She read everything from magazines to literary books and studied the newspapers to keep abreast of world affairs. There was never any danger of her discussing cake ingredients.

  ‘Mayfield College,’ Bonny repeated. ‘Do you know it?’

  Lydia smiled and put her paper down. ‘Yes I do. Several of my friends went there as girls. What makes you ask?’

  ‘Belinda was talking about it. She said you can do typing and shorthand there. Is it really expensive?’

  ‘Not terribly,’ Lydia said, taking a bit of bread and wincing. ‘Ugh, this bread is disgusting. I don’t know how they expect us to eat it.’

  The national wheatmeal loaf was all they could get now and though it might be more nutritious than white bread, everyone complained about the lumpy bits in it.

  ‘Mayfield sounds nice.’ Bonny knew she had to give Lydia something to think about on her long drive tonight, but at the same time make no demands. ‘I wish Mum and Dad would let me go somewhere like that rather than Romford.’

  Lydia poured them both another cup of tea. ‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to go home?’ she asked.

  Lydia hated the idea of losing Bonny. She thought of her as a daughter now, despite many ups and downs. London wasn’t safe, Dagenham was a wasteland and she was afraid that if Bonny was uprooted now, at such a crucial stage in her life, she might rebel.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bonny sighed deeply. ‘I want to see Mummy and Daddy, but all my friends are here and there’s you.’

  Bonny was never one to miss an opportunity for drama. She managed to squeeze out a couple of tears, then rushed away from the table.

  Lydia followed her, as Bonny knew she would. ‘Why the tears?’ she said, catching hold of Bonny out in the hall. ‘Is there something more?’

  ‘I don’t want to go away from you,’ Bonny whispered, leaning her head against Lydia’s shoulder. ‘But I’m afraid of hurting Mummy and Daddy’s feelings.’

  Lydia held her for a moment. She suspected this might be theatricals, yet she wanted to believe Bonny.

  ‘Look, darling, I’ve got to go now,’ she said. ‘But I’ll give it some thought tonight while I’m working. Now promise me you’ll behave yourself this evening. I don’t mind you going out for a while, but be back by nine. Be sure to lock the door behind you, you know how nervous I am at leaving you alone at night.’

  Jack was waiting at the bridge, sitting on the parapet smoking a cigarette. The moment he saw Bonny coming down the road he leaped down to meet her.

  He had made a great effort with his appearance, but he knew he fell a long way short of smart. His grey flannel trousers were a pair Bert Baker had grown too fat for, but they were still too big for Jack’s slim hips. Mrs Baker had made his shirt out of some old sheets but the collar didn’t sit right. Only his blazer pleased him. It was a really good quality one, passed on to him by Mrs Garside of Amberley Castle. It had belonged to her son, a Battle of Britain pilot who had been shot down over the Channel while returning to his base at Biggin Hill. There was a faint mark on the breast pocket where his RAF badge had been. Jack was proud to wear a hero’s jacket.

  ‘You look nice,’ Bonny said touching the lapels of the jacket with approval.

  ‘Mrs Baker was a bit suspicious,’ Jack sighed. ‘She teased me about going courting. I just hope no one spots us.’

  ‘Why? Are you ashamed of me?’ Bonny said flirtatiously.

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ he retorted. ‘But people will talk because you’re so young.’

  ‘But we’ve always hung around together,’ she said, taking his hand and leading him down to the teahouse by the river. ‘Why should they think this is anything different?’

  She knew it was different. Jack was all clean and tidy, his face scrubbed so hard it looked sore. He’d even managed to get the grease out of his fingernails.

  A couple were sitting at one of the tables, but they weren’t locals. The man was in an Army officer’s uniform and his wife wore a very pretty floral dress and a white hat; they were holding hands across the table, looking intently into each other’s eyes.

  ‘Honeymooners,’ Jack whispered. ‘They arrived this afternoon at the Bridge Inn, and he came over to the garage to ask me to mend his spare tyre. There was confetti all over the inside of his car.’

  ‘Let’s sit here too,’ Bonny suggested, sitting herself down at the last small table. ‘It’s very romantic.’

  The sun was slowly descending towards the bridge, turning the sky pink. Swans were gliding by regally – many of the ducks had already come up on to the bank by the rowing boats for the night. Jack went into the teahouse and bought them both a glass of home-made blackcurrant cordial.

  The drink was too weak to be nice, but it was a pretty colour and Bonny thought it more glamorous than tea. She kept stealing glances at the officer and his wife, wishing Jack would hold her hand like that.

  She told him about Mayfield College and Jack told her that Alec had come back just as he was closing up and given him an extra shilling for finishing the car on time, but neither of them could think of anything else to chat about and the silence hung between them like an invisible net.

  ‘Do you still have nightmares about falling in the river?’ Jack asked eventually. It was so sluggish now it was difficult to imagine how fast it had flowed that day.

  ‘Not so often now.’ Bonny shuddered; talking of that day always had the same effect on her. ‘Just think, if Aunt Lydia had told my parents, they’d have taken me home and we wouldn’t have become friends.’

  That day had been a milestone in Bonny’s life. Not just nearly drowning, but somehow discovering what was important to her. She was so scared Aunt Lydia would tell her parents that she’d behaved perfectly for some months afterwards. She’d found Jack too, admitted to him she told lies, and realised just how much Aunt Lydia cared for her. Yet in a way that day had also brought it home to her how little she really needed her parents. She hadn’t longed for her mother’s arms around her. She had enough here.

  Jack couldn’t stop looking at Bonny. Her skin was peachy brown, those soft full lips a delectable pink. He longed to reach out and run his fingers through her hair, to take her hand.

  It was all so bewildering. A year or two ago she used to let him play with her hair, and he’d do it up in dozens of tiny plaits without ever having these strange and overpowering feelings of wanting to squeeze her or stroke her face.

  ‘Did you mean what you said this afternoon?’ he said, blushing until his face was as red as his hair.

  ‘What did I say?’ She knew exactly, but she wanted him to repeat it.

  ‘That you don’t want to go away because of me?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ It was she who blushed now, looking down at her hands. ‘I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.’

  Jack felt bolder now and his hand slid over hers on the table. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ he suggested.

  The long grass tickled Bonny’s legs as they walked along the river bank. When they turned to look behind them the sun was almost resting on the bridge, the sky red now.

  ‘It’ll be dark any minute,’ Jack said. ‘Shall we sit and watch it disappear?’

  They watched silently, almost hidden by the tall grass, their linked hands lying in the grass between them. The sun dipped again, and the grey
stone of the bridge turned pink too, then slowly the sun was gone, leaving just a faint red glow.

  ‘I’ve never watched it happen before.’ Jack’s voice was tinged with wonder. Midges were flying round them and he knew tomorrow he’d have dozens of itchy bites, but he didn’t care. ‘Are you warm enough?’

  Bonny took the cardigan from around her shoulders and slipped her arms into it. Jack helped pull it on, but as his hand touched the skin of her neck, Bonny turned her face to his.

  She had a faint moustache of blackcurrant. He could smell her hair, her skin, the sweetness of her breath and he felt almost faint with wanting.

  His arm went round her, his other hand cupped her cheek and finally he found the courage to kiss her.

  The kiss during the afternoon was too short to give anything but a taster, but now he held her tight, his lips pressed against hers so hard he could feel her teeth.

  ‘You have to do it more gently,’ Bonny whispered, taking his face in her hands to control him. ‘I’ve watched them doing it on the films and it’s like this.’

  Her lips teased his, with the lightness of a baby’s finger, sending rivulets of delight down his spine. Soon they were lying back on the grass, arms wrapped around one another, each kiss a little bolder, tongues darting out daringly, both lost in a timeless world of pure pleasure.

  Jack pressed closer and closer to her, his hands caressing her back and moving down towards the curve of her buttocks, breath heavy, mouth hungry, wanting more as each second passed.

  Thick darkness descended without them noticing.

  ‘I wonder what the time is?’ Bonny asked eventually, suddenly aware it had to be well past nine. ‘I must find out.’

  Jack pricked up his ears at the sound of an approaching train. ‘It’s ten fifteen. That’s the London train.’

  They had to run then, back along the river bank, up past the Bridge Inn and under the railway bridge in pitch darkness.

  ‘I hope Aunt Lydia hasn’t come home early,’ Bonny said as they raced towards the village. ‘She’ll never let me stay here if she finds out about this.’

  Fortunately for Bonny there was no one around to spot them and Lydia’s car wasn’t outside Briar Bank.

  ‘You must go now,’ she whispered as she reached the steps up to the front door. ‘Mrs Cowie might be looking.’

  Jack looked round nervously at the house across the street. ‘One more kiss,’ he pleaded. ‘That’s all.’

  It was the sweetest kiss of the night. Two young bodies pressing together, both knowing it would seem like for ever until they saw one another again.

  ‘Come to church tomorrow morning,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll say hello and then I’ll wander off so you can speak to Aunt Lydia, ask her something about her car to keep her talking, then tell her how sad I am.’

  Bonny watched Jack through the studio window as he walked away. He was just a dark shape in the black-out but his so-familiar, bouncing walk gave her the oddest sensation, like something tugging at her from the inside.

  Until now she had been so sure her reasons for not wanting to go home were based purely on ambition and a dread of being suffocated by her parents. Now she had the strangest feeling it might really be Jack she didn’t want to leave.

  Chapter Nine

  June 1944

  The banging at the front door became more insistent. Ellie listened from the bedroom, knowing exactly who it was, and more importantly why she shouldn’t answer it.

  A moment’s silence, then a rattling sound. Ellie had a mental picture of short, fat Mr Zacharia, wheezing as he subjected himself to the indignity of bending to peer through the letter-box.

  ‘I know you’re in there, Miss Hathersley,’ he bellowed. ‘You’re six weeks behind with the rent and I won’t stand for it. I’ll be back tomorrow and unless you give me what you owe, you’ll be out on the street.’

  Ellie waited until his footsteps retreated down the stairs, then crossed the hall to Marleen’s room.

  She was now seventeen, and the promise of beauty hinted at at thirteen had been more than fulfilled. Although tall and slender, there was no mistaking the womanly curves beneath her worn cotton dress. Her black glossy hair framed a hauntingly lovely face, often likened by people to Hedy Lamarr.

  But even a casual observer would observe the anxiety in her eyes, the dispirited stoop of her shoulders and the tell-tale mauve shadows beneath her eyes, and wonder why such a lovely young girl looked so troubled.

  The answer was that during the last four years Ellie’s and Marleen’s roles had been reversed. Ellie was now the provider. While she worked as a cleaner and a waitress, shopped, cooked and cleaned their home, Marleen drank.

  Marleen had always liked a drink. In those first few months after Polly was killed, Ellie had been too immersed in her own sorrow, too distracted by the Blitz to notice just how many bottles Marleen got through in a week. When Marleen took a swig from a small flask first thing in the morning and told her it was stomach medicine, she’d been daft enough to believe it.

  Living and working in wartime London was a struggle: queues for food, shortages of just about every necessity from candles to soap, the black-out and of course the bombs. It was hard for anyone to keep their spirits up when they emerged stiff and cold from the shelter on a winter’s morning to find the windows shattered or the gas and water cut off. But in Marleen’s case it wasn’t the hardships or the danger which made her drink, so much as a sense of worthlessness. Her looks were fading; she had a series of failed love affairs behind her and nothing to look forward to.

  For the first two years while Ellie lived with her, Marleen had her drinking under control and was a slapdash but kindly adoptive mother. By day she worked as a waitress in a city restaurant, by night as a barmaid in a West End pub. There was a string of men friends, Americans in the main, and many nights she arrived home too drunk even to undress herself, but she still got up in the morning and maintained an aura of glamour and her sense of humour.

  Marleen never explained why she was fired from her waitressing job, although Ellie suspected it might have been pressure from the restaurant owner’s wife. But her drinking accelerated from then on and now it was out of control.

  Some days there was no getting her out of bed; others she disappeared for two or three days at a time, eventually staggering home without a penny, dirty and foul-smelling. She hardly ate anything, and was so thin it was painful to look at her. But worse still, to Ellie’s mind, was the way Marleen got her drink money.

  Ellie had learnt a great deal about extremes since the war started – about cruelty, kindness, bravery, cowardice, love and hate – but she’d also learned to survive. It was survival which concerned her now, and even at the risk of seeming cruel to Marleen, she had to take action.

  ‘Get up, Marleen,’ she said as she opened the bedroom door, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the sour smell. The room was pitch black, although it was mid-afternoon. The windows had been shattered by bomb blasts so often they were now permanently boarded up. ‘I know you’re awake and you are going to get in the bath now, and then eat something. We can’t go on like this.’

  ‘Don’t go on at me.’ Marleen’s voice was muffled by blankets and Ellie could see nothing more of her than a hump in the middle of the bed.

  ‘I won’t go on at you as long as you do as I say,’ Ellie told her more forcefully. ‘I’ve got something important to talk to you about and I want you cleaned up first.’

  As Ellie ran the bath she couldn’t help but notice that the bathroom seemed to chart Marleen’s downward slide. The first night Ellie had seen it she’d thought it as glamorous and perfect as her aunt. Now there were cracks in the once pristine white tiles, and a black mould grew between them which, try as she might, she couldn’t get off. The pink, fluffy mat was long gone, the curtains ripped by flying glass, the big mirror shattered and the toilet seat missing. Ellie had cleaned up so often in here, after Marleen and her drunken men friends, and she was weary of it
all.

  But how could she leave Marleen like this? Who would look out for her?

  After the incessant bombing of London had ended in May 1941, there had been a long, dreary lull. Sometimes as Ellie walked home in the early hours of the morning, encountering nothing more dangerous than a reeling drunk or an overturned dustbin to trip on in the dark, she would think back to the Blitz.

  The night sky then had been alight with fire, while searchlights scanned for raiders. There was strewn masonry and broken glass underfoot, and teams of rescue workers and firemen with soot-blackened faces searching through the smoking rubble for survivors. The sounds of fire-bells joined the cacophony of wailing sirens, the ‘whang whang’ of ack-ack, the growl of bombers, and the whistle and crump of bombs. But worst of all had been to see those dazed people, refusing to be taken to safety until they knew the fate of a loved one who was missing. Time and again Ellie had wept as she saw bodies being carried out. They weren’t her relatives, but as they shared the same fate as her mother, she felt as if they were.

  Many times in those days Ellie was urged by a warden into a shelter where she spent a sleepless night huddled against strangers. After the raid there was the acrid smell, dust, smoke, charred wood and escaping gas, and the ever-present fear that she might get home to discover that the building had gone, or that Marleen had been killed.

  But they’d got through it. Bomb-sites were cleared, windows and roads mended and people picked up their lives again. But oddly they were more depressed now by the austerity than they had been by the severe bombing. Many people were almost sentimental about the Blitz, claiming that they’d been part of the war then, whereas now it was just one long round of shortages and hard work.

  London was looking very shabby. Where once there had been fine buildings, there were now great gaping holes, boarded-up windows, peeling paint. The big parks were scarred with deep trenches, its railings ripped out, allotments where once had been smooth grass.