Ellie Read online

  Bonny side-stepped Jack’s enthusiastic hug at the Pavilion door and hurried towards Aunt Lydia and Mrs Baker in the car. The other girls were coming out and although the road was pitch black she wasn’t taking any chances.

  ‘What did you think of the show?’ Bonny asked Lydia the moment she was in the back of the car, Jack beside her.

  ‘Much better than I expected,’ Lydia said thoughtfully. ‘The dance routines were very slick, all you girls looked very disciplined. The singer Larry what’s-his-name wasn’t terribly good and the comedian didn’t make me laugh. But the show as a whole was better than average for a summer seaside entertainment.’

  Jack saw that Bonny was disappointed in Miss Wynter’s opinion. ‘I thought it was brilliant, especially you.’

  ‘So did I, love.’ Mrs Baker turned to pat Bonny’s knee. ‘Your little feet twinkled and you looked so nice in that spangly waistcoat in the last number. I can’t imagine how you remember all the steps.’

  ‘Mr Dingle’s found me digs.’ Bonny thought she’d better bring this up while she had Jack and Mrs Baker’s support. ‘I’ll be sharing a room with Sally and Frances. They say the food’s not bad. I’ll move in tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Well, it looks like it’s an end of an era, Beryl.’ Lydia looked sideways at the older woman as she drove. ‘Your Jack off to the army and Bonny to the stage.’

  ‘The village will be so quiet.’ Beryl looked round at Bonny and Jack holding hands in the back. Bonny was surprised to see she had tears in her eyes. ‘You’ve been a pair of scallywags and no mistake, but it won’t be the same without you both.’

  Beryl Baker had put aside her wariness of Bonny tonight because she loved Jack. All through the show she’d been remembering how she’d felt at being separated from Bert in the First War and she was big-hearted enough to hope it would work out for them both.

  It was raining hard at eight the next morning as Bonny ran down towards Houghton Bridge. Saying goodbye last night to Jack in the stationhouse with the Bakers and Aunt Lydia looking on wasn’t enough. She had to see him one more time, alone.

  His train was leaving at half-past nine and she’d slipped out without a word to Aunt Lydia. She wished now she’d thought to bring an umbrella; her old school raincoat was already sopping wet and her hair felt like wet seaweed.

  Jack was waiting for her, leaning back against the parapet of the bridge, smoking a cigarette. As he saw her come down the road, he dropped the cigarette and ran to her, the Blakeys in his boots making a cluttering sound.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come in this,’ he said breathlessly. ‘I was just wondering if I dared come up to Briar Bank.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed saying goodbye to you,’ Bonny said. She didn’t mind if he did have red hair this morning, and he didn’t look ugly to her. All she could think of was all they’d been to one another for so long. ‘I can’t really believe that you won’t be in the garage any more.’

  ‘It won’t be for more than a couple of years.’ Jack caught hold of her hand and led her down to shelter under the tree by the water’s edge. ‘Remember this tree?’ he said, looking up at it.

  ‘That’s when it all started,’ Bonny said in a small voice, afraid she might cry. ‘And now you’re going away.’

  ‘Look.’ Jack led her closer to the trunk and pointed.

  There on the trunk a heart was carefully carved. Inside it were the words ‘Jack and Bonny. For ever.’

  ‘When did you do that?’ she asked.

  ‘Last night. I wasn’t tired so I came down here to think about things. I had my knife and a torch, so I just did it.’

  Bonny’s heart lurched painfully. ‘Will it really be for ever?’

  The river was as dark a grey and as fast moving as it had been that day four years ago. Suddenly she felt scared, as if she were being swept away again, this time by her new life and her ambitions. There had been no opportunity to make love since that night. Lydia had made sure they were never alone and they hadn’t even spoken of it.

  ‘Of course it’s for ever.’ Jack pulled her into his arms, hugging her so fiercely she could hardly breathe. ‘You mean everything in the world to me.’

  ‘Do you think about what we did that night?’ she whispered, burying her face in his neck. He was as damp as her, his old tweed jacket smelling of engine oil, cigarettes and him.

  Jack tilted her face up to his, brown eyes looking deep into her blue ones. ‘Sometimes I can’t think of anything else,’ he said huskily. ‘Our time will come, Bonny. I’ll take you somewhere beautiful and romantic and I’ll love you till you squeak.’

  He unbuttoned her coat and slid his arms inside it, gently stroking her body as he kissed her. Bonny sensed he was trying to memorise each and every curve and the tenderness in his touch brought tears to her eyes.

  ‘You were made for love,’ he whispered, nibbling at her ear, drinking in the smell and feel of her slender body. ‘But save yourself for me, Bonny, because I’ll never be able to love anyone as I do you.’

  The rain splattered down on the canopy of leaves above them, filtering through and damping them still further as they kissed. Passion swept aside in the pain of parting, memories of the past flooding back.

  Jack remembered the small sodden body in a red siren suit and Alec pumping the water from her. His mind flittered though scenes of them daring each other to walk on cow-pats and heard again their shrieks of laughter as the crust broke on newer ones. Of roly-polys down the hill at the back of Amberley Castle, of hide and seek in the railway sidings.

  Bonny remembered that night when they’d both been tucked into bed in the stationhouse after her near drowning and the feeling she’d had that Jack was all-important. Of his hands pulling her up into trees, of watching him swim in the river as she sat on the bank. Now she would have only his younger brothers to remind her of him. They shared his looks, but not his warmth or sense of fun. Amberley would never seem like home until he came back.

  ‘I love you Jack,’ she sobbed, aware now that he was indeed the one person who was important to her. ‘Write to me, won’t you?’

  ‘I’m not much good with letters.’ He bent his forehead against hers, tears running down his cheeks unchecked. ‘But I’ll try. You’ll be in my heart, though, and every bit of leave I get I’ll be back to see you.’

  ‘Don’t stay to wave me off,’ Jack said hoarsely as they walked back later towards the station. ‘I might not be able to get on the train and my brothers will be there.’

  Bonny took a picture out of her pocket. A press photographer had been to the theatre in the first week of rehearsals and she’d persuaded him to let her have a print. She was only in practice clothes, one leg up on the barre, arms outstretched, but it was the first picture she’d seen of herself where she looked like an adult.

  ‘Keep it close to you.’ She pressed her lips once more on his then turned to rush away.

  Jack watched her until she was out of sight. He looked down at the photograph in his hand and a tear rolled down his cheek.

  Her blonde hair was tied back, but tendrils had escaped, sticking damply to her neck and face. Her beautiful curvaceous body was revealed as clearly as if she were naked, such long, slender legs and tiny waist.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered, tucking it into his jacket. ‘For ever.’

  Chapter Twelve

  London, February 1945

  Annie got into her bed wearing a long, faded, flannel nightgown, a cardigan and bedsocks, and as a further precaution against the bitter cold she put a shawl around her shoulders and tucked her hot-water bottle between her knees.

  In the days when Annie had been a maid, this small, rather dark room at the back of the ground floor was old Mrs King’s private sitting-room. Annie remembered being summoned by the bell at dusk to light the gas and add more coal to the fire as the old girl sat at her desk going over her household accounts. After Ted was killed, Annie changed it to her bedroom and let out the bigger room on the first floor
that she’d shared with her husband. Not only was it warmer, but it put her in a better position for making sure none of her lodgers skipped out without paying her. She’d kept the nicest pieces of furniture: the desk, a small chintz-covered settee, and the glass-fronted china cabinet with its collection of family mementoes. Her few clothes were tucked away in a bow-fronted chest of drawers and a single divan bed gave the room a nice modern touch.

  Tonight, however, wind seemed to be coming from all directions at once, rattling the windows, blasting under the door and sending eddies of soot down the chimney into the empty grate. It was cold enough to snow and perhaps that was why there wasn’t the usual roar of aircraft overhead on their way to bomb Germany. Annie welcomed the peace and quiet, but she couldn’t remember ever being so cold in the house before, or feeling quite so alone.

  ‘Don’t be so silly,’ she said aloud. After all, it had been a long and bitter winter and she ought to be used to it by now. ‘You’ve got three nice lodgers, and Charley and Ellie. There’s letters from the boys, your neighbours. You’re just getting old and cranky.’

  It was only half past eight, but she’d come up to bed because of the cold. It made no sense keeping a fire going down in the kitchen just for her. When the lodgers came home they’d be straight to their beds and so would Ellie. Charley wouldn’t be home until morning.

  She flicked through Britannia and Eve, looking for a short story she hadn’t already read. She paused at a knitting pattern, thinking the short-sleeved jumper would suit Ellie – perhaps she could unravel an old jumper of her own for it. But somehow she couldn’t concentrate on reading.

  It seemed the war was almost over. The Allies had the Germans on the run, and they were fast approaching the Rhine. Just a few days earlier they’d heard the shocking news about a terrible camp in a place called Auschwitz in Poland where it seemed Hitler was intent on destroying the entire Jewish race. Annie hoped that when the Allies came face to face with that monster they’d string him up by his feet and cut a bit off him every day.

  The Home Guard was disbanded. On Febuary 1st, twenty-five thousand part-time firemen were finally released from their duties. The barrage balloon in Regent’s Park was brought down for the last time. Railings were going up again round the parks and the Board of Trade relaxed the regulations intended to save material, which had prohibited turn-ups on men’s trousers and the number of pockets on their jackets. The black-out had become ’dim out’; some streets in London had at least partial street lighting again. But even if these things did signify the end, the war in the Far East was still going strong, and the menace of the V-2s was still with them.

  At first the government had explained away these massive explosions as gas mains blowing up. The men in Whitehall meant well enough: they didn’t want panic, or for the Germans to know the damage they were doing with these huge, pilotless rockets. But it had become something of a joke. When people heard the formidable bangs, saw the billowing dust like a vast mushroom over the roofs of their houses they turned to one another, saying ‘Another bleedin’ gas mains!’

  They weren’t a joke, though. Annie knew from Charley just how deadly these V-2s were, even if the newspapers kept most people in the dark. He spoke of entire blocks of flats flattened, of people blown out through windows and crushed under mountains of rubble. To make matters worse there was no warning at all.

  But it wasn’t the war that bothered Annie tonight: she’d grown used to the hardships and irritations that came with it. It was Charley and Ellie that worried her.

  On the face of it, life at number 33 was topping. They had three nice business lodgers who went home to their wives most weekends and rarely wanted an evening meal. Charley had a job he loved and the girl of his dreams. With Ellie’s help Annie didn’t have to work so hard. They had money saved, they ate better than most of their neighbours and they could afford a few treats. But Annie knew her son well and she sensed his deep anxiety, even though he made a good show of hiding it.

  Charley was desperately and hopelessly in love with Ellie, and she with him. It shone out of their faces, strong and beautiful. They left each other soppy notes, they mooned over every love song and treasured each spare moment with one another. When Steve and Mike had come home on leave last year they’d both agreed with Annie that it was a match made in heaven. But in the last couple of months it had become evident, to Annie at least, that the happy road the pair of them had set out on together was approaching a crossroad and that unless one of them was to bend to the needs of the other, a parting of the ways was bound to occur.

  Charley loved the fire brigade and he was torn between staying after the war and going for promotion, or emigrating to Australia. Although he was a lot less rigid in his outlook than most of his friends, he was still old-fashioned enough to believe the man should be the provider. Yet Ellie was earning more than him now, singing at the Blue Moon almost nightly doing an earlier spot in a restaurant in Greek Street, Soho two or three evenings a week too. Charley stoically accepted that he could seldom have Ellie’s company in the evenings. He stayed awake after finishing a twenty-four hour shift just to spend the day with her. He was always encouraging and supportive, and so very proud of her talent too.

  But Annie saw Charley’s underlying frustration and felt deeply for him. He wanted marriage: romance wasn’t enough any more. So many times Annie had come in to a room to find them jumping guiltily apart with flushed faces. She’s heard Charley tossing and turning in the night, seen the looks of longing that he gave Ellie, and guessed it was only through the girl’s iron will that they hadn’t become lovers.

  But even though Annie felt for her son, she understood and admired Ellie’s steely resolve. Just as Annie had learnt from old Mrs King to speak properly, to lay tables correctly and run a household, so Ellie had ambitions for a better life than she’d been born into. Who could blame the girl for being cautious when one slip-up could mean being tied to a kitchen sink with a parcel of kids and her dreams down the plughole?

  Ellie had the courage to go all out for what she wanted. She’d become sophisticated and perhaps a little harder, yet that hadn’t changed her warmth, thoughtfulness or generosity. She was always bringing home things she’d bought on the black market – bacon, tinned fruit and chocolate. Just before Christmas she’d used up all her points to buy a tweed coat for Annie when she badly needed one herself. She wasn’t one bit selfish, just ambitious.

  Annie put down her magazine and slid right down under the covers. ‘Charley’s got to sort this one himself,’ she said to herself. ‘He’s a grown man now, not your little boy any longer.’

  Brenda glanced round at Ellie as she zipped up her dress. Ellie was sitting in front of the mirror, wearing just a pair of silky pink camiknickers and nylon stockings, applying some rouge to her cheeks.

  Sometimes Brenda found it hard to believe Ellie was the same girl who little less than a year ago had come in with dirty bare knees from scrubbing floors. She’d had a permanent wave recently and despite Brenda’s pronouncements that it would spoil her silky hair, it hadn’t. Now she had loose curls piled up on top of her head and cascading over her shoulders, and she’d learnt to pluck her eyebrows into that fashionable look of surprise and to apply just enough vaseline to her eyelids to give a dewy-eyed image.

  Brenda glanced at herself in the mirror and winced. Her hair needed peroxiding and her skin was ageing fast. Until a few months ago she’d always looked so classy, but you needed more money than she earned to keep up that image, especially when you had a child to keep.

  ‘Is that a new Teddy?’ she asked enviously.

  Ellie turned and smiled. ‘Yes, do you like it? It’s not real silk, of course, just that Viscana stuff, but it’s pretty, isn’t it?’

  Brenda hesitated before speaking. In the year Ellie had been working at the club their positions had reversed. Brenda was no longer Jimbo’s ‘pet’ as she had been before, neither was she queen in the glamour stakes. Quite often it was she these days
who couldn’t run to a pair of stockings, while Ellie was always beautifully turned out.

  ‘How did you get it, Ellie?’ she asked. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but I don’t like to think of you getting in over your head.’

  She couldn’t really imagine Ellie accepting gifts from black marketeers in return for a few favours, especially when the girl was so wild about her fireman. But plenty of other girls had fallen for the temptation.

  ‘I bought them.’ Ellie at first looked surprised, then shocked as it dawned on her what Brenda meant. ‘I got them cheap, without points, but not how you’re thinking.’

  ‘Sorry, love.’ Brenda’s pale face blushed a becoming pink. ‘It’s just you’re such a lovely kid and I worry about you. Jimbo uses you, I see you singing your head off night after night and lining his pocket and I get scared you might take a few short cuts.’

  Ellie got up, reached for the red evening dress she wore for her singing spot and stepped into it. She knew Brenda wasn’t being spiteful, as other waitresses had been. She was too kind-hearted for that and rather maternal.

  ‘I’m not quite as dense as I may look,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’m using Jimbo too, to gain experience. The moment I get a chance in a theatre, I’ll be out of here. Charley’s the only man who figures in my life and even if Clark Gable was to offer me a part in a film in return for sleeping with him, I wouldn’t take it.’

  ‘I would,’ Brenda laughed. ‘I’d sleep with him without the offer of a film.’

  Ellie smiled. ‘Well, I might be tempted,’ she said, her dark brown eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘But I’ll get the break one day, without selling my soul or anything else.’

  Brenda zipped up Ellie’s dress for her. She admired Ellie for a great many reasons, but the underlying one was her courage. A great many girls of her age without any family would have floundered by now – heaven knows this club alone was a hotbed of temptation. But Ellie hadn’t let her success as a singer go to her head: she helped Charley’s mother and visited that poor crippled aunt in hospital whenever she got the chance.