When the Lights Go On Again

SEVEN

Things hadn’t gone as well in Neston as he had hoped, Charlie admitted as he drove through Wallasey, heading for his mother’s. His father had flatly refused to give him any money, demanding to know how Charlie expected him to be able to afford to give him money when he was having to support two households. And that despite the fact there had been two cars parked on the drive of the fancy house his father was renting, and Pauline had been tricked out in what looked like three strands of real pearls and a ruddy great solitaire diamond ‘engagement’ ring. Charlie had tried flattering her, hoping that by buttering her up a bit she’d weigh in on his behalf with his father, but he hadn’t reckoned on how hard-faced she was, Charlie admitted, scowling as he remembered how his father’s mistress had waited until his father wasn’t there before telling him that any spare cash his father had would be going into her bank account and not Charlie’s.

Hard as nails, that’s what she was, and now he’d wasted almost the whole of Saturday and his precious petrol driving out to Neston to no purpose. He couldn’t wait to get back to his base and then into London for some decent fun.

Charlie started to turn into the road where his sister’s house was, intending to take a short cut down it to his mother’s. A young woman wearing a swing-back brown coat, a neat-fitting hat perched on her dark hair, was walking along the pavement, her child in a pushchair. Charlie recognised Lena immediately, with a feeling like a violent punch in the chest.

God, but she was pretty. Pretty, willing, married to another man, and Bella had warned him off her. Any combination of two of those facts would have been enough to have Charlie itching to break the rules and have some fun. Throw in his bad temper and his boredom, and seeing Lena was exactly the antidote he needed to cheer himself up.

Lena was aware of the car on the road behind her slowing down. Automatically she turned round, assuming it must be one of their neighbours, the colour coming and going in her face as Charlie brought the low-slung MG alongside her, slowing it down to match her walking pace as he leaned towards her and gave her his best smile, stopping the car and telling her cockily, ‘Hello there, gorgeous. Remember me?’

She should have ignored him, Lena knew that. He was nothing to her after the way he’d treated her. She had a good husband now in Gavin, and in another few months she and Gavin would be giving Janette a little baby brother or sister – a baby that would have a father who had wanted it right from the word go. Not like Charlie.

Her legs had turned to jelly and she was glad to have Janette’s pushchair to hold on to. She’d forgotten how confident Charlie was, and how good-looking. She waited for her heart to react to him with the excitement it had done when she had first known him but instead of thudding with excitement it was thumping with dismay and anxiety. She wished he wasn’t here, she wished he hadn’t seen them; she wished he hadn’t stopped and most of all she wished that Gavin was with them, Lena acknowledged.

It was a funny feeling knowing at last, after all the times she’d secretly worried about how she might feel if she ever saw him again, that she was truly safe, and that she felt nothing at all other than deep gratitude for the fact that Gavin loved her and she was safely and happily married to him. In fact, it was a marvel to her now that she had ever found Charlie attractive at all, despite his good looks. Good looks were nothing when compared to a kind and loving heart.

‘Pleased to see me, are you?’ Charlie grinned at Lena. ‘I’m here all weekend; I could come round and we could have a bit of fun together, just you and me.’

‘We’re both married now,’ Lena pointed out firmly.

‘So what? Come on, Lena, you remember how good it was with you and me, don’t you?’ Charlie coaxed, moving close to her, putting his hand on her arm and looking down at her breasts, feeling his body harden in anticipatory eagerness.

High up in the old oak tree at the bottom of the garden, sawing off one of the branches, Gavin had a clear view of the bottom of the street and what was happening there. He’d been on the point of climbing down when Charlie had first stopped his car, but now, with Charlie holding Lena’s arm and his wife showing no signs of moving away, Gavin felt too heartsick to do anything. Lena had really fallen for Charlie – Gavin knew that – and although she’d told him that she hated Bella’s brother now for the way he’d treated her, in his own heart Gavin had secretly worried that Lena didn’t love him as much as she had done Janette’s father. Now it looked as though he’d got proof that he had been right.

‘I’ve got to get home. My Gavin will be waiting for his tea,’ Lena told Charlie, pulling away from him. ‘And little Janette will be wanting to see her daddy as well,’ she added pointedly.

Charlie frowned. ‘Her daddy? The kid’s mine, not his,’ he told Lena, her refusal to play along with him making him belligerent. Charlie hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the child he had fathered, apart from being relieved that his parents had flatly denied that it could be his, and yet now hearing Lena refer to someone else as its father, a dog-in-the-manger possessiveness took hold of him.

‘Gavin is Janette’s father,’ Lena contradicted him. ‘He’s the one who’s provided for her and he’s the one she loves.’

Before Charlie could stop her she had wheeled the pushchair past him and was walking away from him as fast as she could.

Ruddy women, Charlie cursed her under his breath. Well, there were plenty more where she’d come from. And as for the kid, why should he care about someone else being her father? He didn’t want to be saddled with her or any other kid. The man who’d married Lena was a proper fool. You’d never catch him taking on another man’s kid.

Getting back into his MG, Charlie slammed the door and roared off at speed. He’d had enough of Wallasey, and he couldn’t wait to leave the place and the people in it behind him, he decided as he drove past Lena.

‘See anyone whilst you were out?’ Gavin asked Lena as casually as he could. Lena had called him into the kitchen for the cup of tea she’d made for him.

Lena hesitated. She desperately wanted to tell Gavin what had happened but she knew him and she knew how protective of her he was. If she told him there was no saying that he might not go straight round to Bella’s mother’s and call Charlie to account for the way he had behaved towards her. Lena didn’t care what her Gavin might do to Charlie, but she did care about Bella, and she knew it would cause trouble between Bella and her mother if Gavin went rampaging round there, demanding that Charlie gave an account of himself. Mrs Firth doted on Charlie. He could do no wrong in her eyes, as Lena herself had good reason to know.

No, it was best that she didn’t say anything to Gavin, she decided, as she shook her head and fibbed, ‘No.’

Lena had lied to him. Gavin felt the pain explode inside his chest. His Lena, whom he loved so much, had lied to him and all because of that no-good rotter who had already hurt her so much. Gavin looked away from Lena. Janette was smiling up at him from her high chair. The minute he’d stepped inside she’d held up her arms to him to be lifted out, and Gavin had felt that same spike of emotion now that he’d felt the very first time he’d held her, minutes after her birth. She was his girl, his child, the child of his heart, and he loved her every bit as much as he would do the new baby Lena was carrying.

The new baby. A knife twisted in his heart. Was Lena wishing that she hadn’t married him and that she wasn’t having his child now that she’d seen Charlie again?

They were almost midway through September, but although the days might be growing shorter, double summertime meant that thankfully it was still possible to go out in the evening in daylight, even if blackout curtains had to be put in place ready for one’s return in darkness, Katie reflected, carefully applying a thin coat of precious lipstick, using a small brush so as to use as little as possible of what was left of her favourite Max Factor pink, bought just before the war. Once that was done she ran her comb through her thick naturally curly dark gold hair and then studied her reflection critically in her bedroom’s full-length mirror. The outfit she was wearing had been a second-hand find, bought when she and Gina had spent a couple of days together in Bath, just before it had been badly bombed, and the silk of her dress floated delicately round Katie’s slim legs. She did feel rather guilty about the fact that she was wearing a pair of silk stockings that had been given to her by a grateful young American GI who had enjoyed the tour of London’s historical sites she had planned for him so much that he had insisted on giving them to her as a ‘thank you’. The ATS girls with whom she shared the house in Cadogan Place had teased her unmercifully about both the stockings and the young GI, but Katie knew that his desire to thank her had been genuine and not a prelude to some sort of ‘come on’.

She had been extremely lucky in her billet, she knew; the house, right in the centre of the city, was in a terrace of elegant late Georgian buildings. Her bedroom was enormous, with a high ceiling and its own bathroom. Luxury indeed, as Katie’s parents were fond of reminding her when she made her fortnightly visits to Hampstead, where her mother and father were now living with friends in a rather run-down Victorian house, both of them missing living in the city, having moved further out during the blitz.

From her bedroom window Katie could see Gina walking towards the house, which fortunately was only a short walk from the tube station close to Harrods. Gathering up her handbag and the warm woollen silk-lined stole on permanent loan to her from her mother, Katie made her way downstairs to join her friend.

The American Embassy was situated in Grosvenor Square and within easy walking distance of Cadogan Place, as Gina had already said.

‘I had a wonderful surprise when I got back to my aunt’s this afternoon,’ Gina told Katie as they set out. ‘Leonard telephoned from Devonport. They’re under sailing orders, and of course he couldn’t say where they were going, although my guess is that it has to be Italy, now that we’ve got a toehold in Sicily. It was lovely to hear his voice. Hearing that he’d got some leave coming up would have been even better, of course. I mustn’t be greedy, though. Not after him getting two weeks’ leave when we got married, and a forty-eight-hour pass the other weekend. He couldn’t say outright, but he did hint that he might be home for Christmas. I do hope so. Leonard’s parents living so close to my own means that we could see both families, and, of course, the children. Once the war is over we want them to come and live with us full time, but of course it’s best that they stay where they are for now.’

A pair of smartly dressed American marines were on duty outside the American Embassy, faces fixed in stern expressions, eyes forward. An equally smartly uniformed young woman checked their names off her guest list, in the imposing hallway with its marble busts and highly polished floor, the American flag very much on display.

‘I rang and told them I’d be bringing you with me,’ Gina murmured to Katie, who nodded in response. It was well known that with so many good-time girls on the fringe of London society eager to strike up friendships with the Americans, especially those who were officers, only unattached women who had been vetted were on the official invitation lists.

The American Embassy was very much the hub of the American Military Command in London. Military uniforms outnumbered the diplomatic uniform of city suit and Brooks Brothers shirt almost ten to one, from what Katie could see, as she and Gina stood together just outside the double doors leading into a large reception room, its crimson-papered walls hung with portraits of past presidents, the elegant plastered ceiling and cornices painted white with the detail picked out in gold. Beyond this room a further set of double doors on the opposite wall were open to reveal another room, this one painted a rich royal blue, its windows framed by royal-blue velvet curtains trimmed with gold braid. All very rich and expensive-looking, Katie thought, and not a bit shabby as so many British buildings had become.

A group of what looked like newspapermen were all clustered together on one side of the room, drinks in hand, cameras slung from their shoulders, as they studied the other occupants of the room, a group of military men standing in front of the imposing marble fireplace.

It was easy to see which women were Americans, Katie reflected. All the British women there might have done their best, but their clothes, no matter how smart, did not have the up-to-the-minute freshness and fashion of those sported by the Americans.

‘Ah, Gina, there you are. Dreadful crush, what?’

‘Uncle Rupert, I’m surprised you managed to spot me in this crush,’ Gina laughed as she was enveloped in a bear hug by her relative. ‘Uncle Rupert, I’ve brought Katie with me. She was my bridesmaid.’

‘Of course, remember her well. Delighted to meet you again, m’dear. Dashed pretty girls, both of you. We’ll show these Americans a thing or two, what? What are you drinking? Champagne, I expect. Best drink for pretty girls.’

With that skill possessed by upper-class men of a certain age and confidence, out of nowhere, or so it seemed to Katie, a waiter was summoned to produce two glasses of freshly poured champagne.

‘And where’s that husband of yours, Gina?’

‘I really couldn’t say,’ Gina informed him.

‘That’s right, good girl. Careless talk costs lives and all that. Still enjoying your job? Not getting too many saucy letters to read, I hope?’

Behind her uncle’s back Gina gave Katie a rueful look, which made Katie both want to laugh and at the same time made her feel sad. So many of the letters they had to check did contain the most intimate of messages, sent, though, from the heart, in most cases, from men desperately missing the one they loved and equally desperate to assure them of their love and be reassured in turn that they were loved.

It wasn’t long before Gina’s uncle Rupert had introduced them both to an American colonel of his own generation, who announced immediately that he must introduce two such charming girls to his junior officers, adding with a smile, ‘Because if I don’t, they will think that I’m keeping you to myself, and then I reckon I could be in danger of having to subdue a mutiny.’

Two minutes later Gina and Katie were almost surrounded by half a dozen young Americans in army uniform,

‘Definitely Ivy League,’ Gina murmured in a swift aside to Katie. ‘That’s the equivalent of our Eton and Sandhurst cadets.’

Katie nodded. Her father’s pre-war career as the conductor of some of London’s most famous bands, and the fact that she had always accompanied him when he played, to help him with all the practical aspects of his work, meant that she had had enough contact with the upper classes and the well-to-do not to feel awkward or intimidated in the company of people from a social class above her own.

The young Americans might be inclined to be a little boastful and a little thoughtless about how a British girl might feel hearing them talking about how they were going to win the war, but Katie was wise enough to put their comments down to excitement and inexperience, although she noticed that Gina looked rather nettled, and so wasn’t surprised when her friend excused them both with the fib that they had to ‘catch up with some friends’.

‘I know they are our allies, but I hate it when they are so beastly about our boys,’ she told Katie crossly once they had escaped. ‘Talking like that about showing Hitler what real fighting men are and showing us a good time.’

‘I don’t think they meant any real harm,’ Katie tried to pacify her. ‘They’re only young and, unlike our boys, they don’t really know what war is all about yet.’ Unlike Luke. He knew what war was all about. Luke! Hadn’t she made herself a promise that she would not allow him into her thoughts?

‘I do wish you could fall in love with Eddie, Katie.’

Gina’s plaintive words made Katie smile.

‘Eddie doesn’t really want any girl to fall in love with him. He just wants to have a good time with lots of different girls.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Gina told her. ‘Eddie is a flirt, but he’s really keen on you, and I mean really keen. If you were to give him the least bit of encouragement, I suspect he’d have an engagement ring on your finger as fast as anything. He might be a flirt but you can be sure that he knows that he has a duty to provide an heir for the title.’

‘That’s nonsense and you know it. Eddie’s parents will expect him to marry a very different sort of girl from me, and someone from a similar background to his own.’

Katie said this without any feeling of resentment. In her opinion it was only natural, with Eddie’s father having a title, Eddie’s family should want him to marry someone who understood that sort of thing.

‘Once I dare say they would have done,’ Gina agreed, ‘but right now I think they’d just be glad to see him married. As I’ve just said, if anything were to happen to him, there’s no one to succeed him to the title, and there won’t be until he marries and has a son. Not that anyone can get Eddie to talk seriously about that. He maintains that nothing’s going to happen to him because he’s got Leonard to keep an eye on him.’

‘I like Eddie, Gina,’ Katie answered, ‘but that’s all. However, even if I loved him I don’t think we’d be right for one another. Our backgrounds are so very different. Now, whilst the war’s on, that kind of thing might not matter but once the war is over it will be different.’

She was an ordinary girl and whilst she had liked Eddie’s parents when she had met them at Gina’s wedding, and they had been kind to her, Katie knew that a life like Eddie’s mother’s, as the lady of the manor, was not one that she would ever want.

‘I hope them ruddy naval gunners know the difference between our own lines and them panzers,’ Andy told Luke breathlessly, both of them dropping flat to the ground as they heard a fresh burst of exploding tank shells.

It was two days since they’d come ashore at Salerno, followed by intense fighting with the Germans as they’d tried to push them back from their entrenched position. But now, with the panzers having moved down from the hills beyond Salerno to surround the bay, it was looking dangerously as though they were the ones who were going to be pushed back into the sea, not the Germans forced to give way so that the Allies could advance.

The naval guns to which Andy was referring, as the men dug in, belonged to the battle cruiser Warspite and three destroyers out in the bay, all of which were pounding the panzer-infested hills, whilst the panzers returned fire into the Allies’ lines.