Follow Your Dream
Patricia Burns
“She was following her dream. And I’m going to do the same. I’m going to be a dancer. ”In January 1947, Lillian’s Aunty Eileen escaped their family’s grim Southend boarding house to find her own path. Now Lillian’s gran rules the family with an iron fist and Lillian, the youngest, is no better than a slave. She takes comfort from her Aunty Eileen’s example, knowing that she will one day leave and become a dancer.As the austere Forties give way to the excitement of the “never had it so good” Fifties, Lillian joins a touring company, dancing in the chorus line. Her dream is so close she can touch it. The only thing missing is James Kershaw, who Lillian thinks is the love of her life, but who regards her as no more than a little sister.When a family crisis demands her return to Southend, and to James, Lillian starts to think – is it time to find a new dream to follow?Other books by Patricia BurnsWe'll Meet AgainBye Bye Love
Follow Your Dream
Patricia Burns
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
PATRICIA BURNS is an Essex girl born and bred and proud of it. She spent her childhood messing about in boats, then tried a number of jobs before training to be a teacher. She married and had three children, all of whom are now grown up, and she recently became a grandmother. She is now married for the second time and is doing all the things she never had time for earlier in life.
When not busy writing, Patricia enjoys travelling and socialising, walking in the countryside round the village where she now lives, belly dancing and making exotic costumes to dance in.
Find out more about Patricia at www.mirabooks.co.uk/ patriciaburns
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Patricia Burns
WE’LL MEET AGAIN
BYE BYE LOVE
To the Swanwick Fun Club – for their wit, wisdom and silly emails
.
Chapter One
LATE one January night in the bitterly cold winter of 1947, Lillian’s Aunty Eileen made a break for freedom.
Lillian woke up when Eileen crept out of the bed they were sharing. One side of her felt suddenly cold from the space her aunty had left, while the other was still warm where her older sister Wendy was curled up with her back against her. Moonlight was shining into the attic room through the crack between the threadbare curtains. It outlined her aunty as she pulled on two layers of clothes and carefully lowered the old suitcase from on top of the wardrobe.
‘What are you doing?’ Lillian whispered.
Eileen started. She caught her lip between her teeth as she stared at the little girl. Then she tiptoed over to the bed, bent and kissed Lillian on her chilly cheek.
‘I’m escaping, sweetie-pie,’ she breathed. ‘I’m going to follow my dream. I’m going to be happy! Don’t tell anyone, all right? Not a word. It’s our secret, just you and me.’
‘Can I come?’ Lillian asked.
Beside her, Wendy stirred. Eileen put a finger to her lips. They both held their breaths, willing Wendy to stay asleep. They both let out a sigh of relief when she turned and settled. Eileen smoothed back a lock of hair from Lillian’s forehead and kissed her again.
‘Bye-bye, my darling little Lindy-Lou. Not a word, remember! And listen, you make sure you follow your dream too, when the time comes. Don’t let them stop you.’
‘I won’t,’ Lillian breathed, though she hardly knew what she was promising.
Eileen propped a note up on the washstand and tied a scarf over her hair. Then, with her shoes tucked under her arm and the suitcase in her hand, she carefully turned the doorknob and slid out onto the landing. The door closed behind her with a creak from the carefully released handle, and she was gone.
Lillian lay for a long time, wondering what it was all about. Where had her aunty gone? How could you follow a dream? Dreams disappeared as soon as you woke up. Even she knew that, and she was only six-and-three-quarters. It didn’t make sense. Of one thing she was sure—there was going to be big trouble in the morning. Worrying about what Mum and Dad and, most of all, what Gran would say when they found out kept her awake for what seemed like half the night.
Yet at some time in the early hours she must have fallen asleep, for the next thing she knew was Wendy sitting up beside her and shaking her shoulder.
‘Where’s Aunty Eileen?’
Lillian looked at the space beside her in the lumpy double bed. Where was Aunty Eileen? Strange memories stirred. Aunty Eileen in her outdoor clothes. Aunty Eileen kissing her. But it was a dream. There was something about a dream.
‘Dunno,’ she said.
‘Oh, you! You never know anything. I s’pose she’s got up early. Go and get my undies.’
Lillian growled and pulled the blankets tight round her. She was lovely and warm in bed, and in the room it was freezing.
‘You get ’em.’
Wendy reached under the sheets and pinched her hard on the bottom. Lillian squealed and kicked backwards with her hard little heels, catching her sister on the shins.
‘Ow! Kick donkey! Go and get my undies, go on! And my shirt. Or I’ll tell Gran you kicked me.’
‘I’ll tell her you pinched me,’ Lillian countered.
But she knew it was useless. Wendy was three years older than her, three years bigger and stronger and far more than three years more ruthless. She always won the arguments in the end. Lillian slipped out of bed, scampered across the room to the chest of drawers, pulled two sets of vests, knickers and liberty bodices out of the left-hand top drawer and two blue cotton school shirts out of a lower one. Just as she was about to run back and shove the clothing under the sheets to warm up, another memory surfaced, of Aunty Eileen carrying a suitcase. She pulled open the right-hand top drawer, the one that belonged to her aunt. It was empty.
She caught her breath. At that moment, Wendy piped up, ‘What’s that on the washstand? Is it a letter?’
Lillian stared at the envelope. So it wasn’t a dream. Aunty Eileen had gone out in the middle of the night. She had kissed her and said goodbye. Fear, grief and a sense of betrayal began to churn inside her. Slowly, as if it might bite her, she reached out and picked it up, dropping the school shirts as she did so.
‘Give it here,’ Wendy demanded.
‘It ain’t for you,’ Lillian told her.
Oblivious now of the cold air that was bringing her arms and legs out in goosebumps, she stood gazing at the writing. It was Aunty Eileen’s all right. Just one word, in pencil, in her unmistakable sprawling hand. Mum.
‘Give it,’ Wendy repeated.
‘No.’
Lillian clutched it to her chest. This was her link with Aunty Eileen. Wendy was not going to have it. Her sister bounced out of bed and tried to snatch it from her. Lillian squealed and held on tighter. Wendy twisted at one corner. There was a rip and the cheap paper gave way. Both girls stood still, aghast.
‘Now you done it,’ Wendy said.
‘It wasn’t me, it was you! You shouldn’t of grabbed it.’
‘You should of let me have it.’
‘It’s for Gran,’ Lillian told her.
They both went silent, thinking of their grandmother’s wrath.
‘You better give it her, then,’ Wendy said.
‘No. You wanted it. You tore it. You give it to her.’
‘Finders keepers,’ Wendy said, taking her underclothes from Lillian and jumping back into bed with them. From the warmth of her cosy nest she added, ‘You better take that to Gran straight away. She’ll be cross if you don’t.’
The thought of facing Gran first thing in the morning with bad news, and bad news in a torn letter at that, made Lillian feel quite sick. Shaking now with nerves and cold, she opened the door of the dark oak wardrobe. All Aunty Eileen’s clothes were gone. All that was left was a faint smell of the scent she used.
Wendy started nagging at her again. Lillian pulled on her baggy navy knickers, tore off her nightie and pulled on her woollen vest as fast as possible, then struggled with the fiddly rubber buttons of her liberty bodice. Next came her school shirt, her gym slip, her cardigan and the knee length grey socks with elastic garters to stop them from falling down. Every single item had once been Wendy’s. Some of them had been Eileen’s before. She couldn’t remember ever having had a new piece of clothing.
‘Hair,’ Wendy said.
It would never do to appear before Gran with untidy hair. Lillian looked on the washstand. The hairbrush that she and Wendy shared with Aunty Eileen was gone. She picked up the comb, dragged it through her straight hair and shoved a couple of hairgrips in to hold back the side-parted curtain. Lillian had similar colouring to most of the family, who had hair ranging from fair to mousy and eyes of greyish blue. Wendy was the lucky exception. She had inherited her mother’s wavy blonde hair and clear blue eyes. Wendy was pretty and she knew it. She was her daddy’s darling. Lillian was just Lillian, the smallest and the skinniest.
At last there was nothing more she could do to delay the moment.
‘Go on,’ Wendy ordered.
Lillian stepped out onto the cramped landing. All the family except Gran slept on the attic floor, the girls in one room, the two boys in another and Mum and Dad in the third. She went down the steep narrow stairs to the second floor landing. This was reserved for the PGs—the paying guests. At this time of year there were no PGs at all, nor likely to be any, since nobody came to Southend in the winter except a few commercial travellers, but still Gran insisted that the family stayed in their cramped quarters.
‘You never know when someone might knock at the door. We don’t want to have to turn money away just because we haven’t got a room ready,’ she stated.
And because the house belonged to her, they all had to agree, even Lillian’s dad. The PGs’ bathroom, however, was not out of bounds. Lillian dodged in, used the toilet and gave her hands and face what her mother called a lick and a promise. It was far too cold to wash properly, but she didn’t dare appear before Gran without washing at all. That done, she went down the main staircase with its gloomy brown paint and narrow runner of threadbare carpet held in place by brass rods. They were stairs that Lillian knew intimately from having to clean them every day with a dustpan and stiff brush. Down she went again to the ground floor, where she hesitated in the hall. At the end of the long corridor with the step halfway along it was the kitchen. Her mum would be in there, stirring the porridge, cutting the bread, boiling the kettle for tea. But first she had to face Gran.
Biting her lip, Lillian knocked on the door of the front room, the room that was the best parlour in most houses, used only for funerals and Sunday visitors.
‘Come in,’ came a gruff voice from inside the room.
Lillian took a deep breath and opened the heavy brown-painted door. It was gloomy inside the room, even though the rust-coloured curtains had been drawn back. Heavy furniture, a black marble-effect fireplace, green and brown leaf-patterned wallpaper and a brown patterned carpet square with a fawn lino surround made it look wintry on the brightest of summer days. Now, on a grey January morning, it was downright depressing. Lillian saw little of the detail. What took all her attention was the woman sitting up in the iron-framed single bed by the wall opposite the bay window.
Whenever the teacher read fairy tales to Lillian’s class, the princess in the story always had Wendy’s face in Lillian’s imagination, while the wicked witch or the evil stepmother always looked just like her gran. The same tight steel-grey curls held in place, as Gran’s were now, with a hairnet, the same hard hands, the same piercing grey eyes and grim mouth.
At least Gran had been given her early morning cup of tea, Lillian noted with relief. And she had had her first cigarette of the day. There was a smell of fresh smoke in the room and a mangled fag end in the ashtray by her bed. All this was good. It meant that Gran would be more approachable. But still Lillian’s stomach churned with fear.
‘Well?’ Gran said. ‘What is it? What are you bothering me with at this hour of the morning?’
Lillian came into the room and shut the door behind her as she had been taught. There was a dark red chenille curtain hanging behind it to keep out the draughts. She stepped forward and stood by Gran’s bed, the letter clutched to her chest. Reluctantly, she held it out.
‘It’s for you. I’m sorry it’s torn. It was Wendy, she tried to take it from me, but I said no, it was for you, not for her.’
‘Don’t blame others for your crimes,’ Gran told her, taking it. She stared at it. ‘There’s no stamp, no address. Where d’you get this? Give me my glasses, girl.’
Lillian did as she was told. Gran settled the steel-framed spectacles on her nose and peered again at the pencilled writing.
‘“Mum”,’ she read out loud. ‘Who’s this from?’
‘Aunty Eileen,’ Lillian mumbled, looking down at her feet.
‘Eileen? What’s Eileen doing writing me letters? What’s all this about?’
Lillian didn’t dare suggest that she open it and find out. Instead, she just muttered, ‘Dunno,’ and kept her eyes downcast. Through her lashes, she saw Gran rip the envelope and take out a single sheet of cheap lined paper. The only sound was Gran’s laboured breathing as she took in contents. Then came the eruption.
‘What? Gone? How dare she—? What do you know about this? Where’s she gone? What did she tell you?’
Lillian shrank back. ‘N-nuffing,’ she stuttered. ‘I don’t know nuffing. Honest.’
Gran glared at her. ‘You must know something. You and her are thick as thieves. What did she say? When did she go?’
‘Last night. But she didn’t say nuffing to me,’ Lillian lied desperately.
‘You saw her go?’
‘No!’
‘Then how do you know she went last night?’
‘She—she—she wasn’t here this morning. Just that letter. She left that letter.’
‘Didn’t you hear anything? You must have. You share a bed.’
Lillian shook her head emphatically. It seemed less bad than actually telling a lie.
‘What about Wendy?’
‘She didn’t neither.’ That at least was the truth.
Still Gran’s eyes bored into Lillian’s. She could feel herself going red.
‘You know what happens to liars, don’t you?’
Lillian nodded. Liars’ tongues shrivelled up and dropped out. But she had promised Aunty Eileen not to tell.
Gran made a disbelieving sound in her throat. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me. Go and get your dad.’
Relieved to be let off the hook, if only for the moment, Lillian turned and trotted out of the room. Her father rarely had a kind word to say to her, but he wasn’t as frightening as her grandmother. She carefully closed the door behind her and went down the chilly passageway to the kitchen. There she found her mother at the sink and her father sitting at the table with a bowl of porridge in front of him, reading the Mirror.
‘Gran says you’re to come,’ she told him.
Her father sighed and turned slowly to look at her. ‘What?’ he said, as he always did, to gain time.
Lillian repeated her message. Her mother started drying her hands on her floral apron.
‘Oh, dear, what’s the matter? What does she want?’ she asked, nervous as a bird.
‘She wants you,’ Lillian told her father. She didn’t want to be accused of repeating the message incorrectly. She was in enough trouble already, covering for Aunty Eileen.
Doug Parker sighed again and stood up. He was a tall man, but already he had an apologetic stoop which made him look older than his years. His once handsome face was marred by lines of discontent and his right arm hung awkwardly, the result of a fight with his brother long ago in the butcher’s shop the family had once owned.
‘S’pose I better go,’ he said, as if he had some choice in the matter. They all knew he was just deceiving himself. In this household, when Gran said jump, you asked how high.
Lillian and her mum waited as he went down the passageway and into the front room. Neither of them suggested that Lillian might start eating her breakfast. They needed to know whether Gran would want them next. From the front room came Dad’s voice, raised in anger and dismay as he heard what his little sister had done.
‘Gone? Gone where?’
Nettie Parker flinched. ‘What is it?’ she whispered to Lillian. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Aunty Eileen’s gone,’ Lillian told her.
‘Oh, my Gawd!’
Nettie put her two hands to her thin cheeks. ‘Now we’re for it,’ she predicted. ‘Eileen! The silly girl. How could she do this to us?’ She pulled out a chair with a shaking hand and sat down. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked. ‘Your gran’ll go mad. It’s terrible, terrible.’
Before Lillian could work out whether she was supposed to answer this, her father put his head round the front room door and yelled for her to come back in. Reluctantly, Lillian obeyed. As she walked back towards Gran’s room, she saw Wendy sitting on the stairs grinning at her through the rails. She put her tongue out at Lillian as she passed. Lillian did the same back. At that moment her two big brothers, Bob and Frank, came clattering down the stairs.
‘What’s up?’ Frank hissed. ‘What’s going on?’
Aunty Eileen’s done a bunk,’ Wendy said, her blue eyes as big as saucers with the excitement of it all.
Frank whistled and sat down beside her. ‘She ain’t? What, done a midnight flit?’
Wendy nodded. ‘She’s taken everything, even the hairbrush. She just left a letter for Gran.’
‘Wow!’ Frank was fond of American expressions. ‘She’s got a nerve, ain’t she? You got to hand it to her.’
‘She’s a very silly young woman, if you ask me,’ Bob said from his lordly position of oldest son and the accepted clever one of the family.
‘Nobody did ask you,’ Frank told him.
Their father’s head appeared round the door again. ‘Lilli—! Oh, there you are. Come in here when you’re told, girl.’ He caught sight of Wendy and his voice softened. ‘And you better come as well. She can’t of gone without either of you hearing nothing.’
This time it was Wendy’s turn to look alarmed and Lillian’s to make a face before both of them lined up by Gran’s bed. It was easier with Wendy there, as she vehemently denied knowing anything and Lillian just stood beside her, agreeing with everything she said. But Gran still had her suspicions.
‘You and her, you was like blooming Siamese twins,’ she said to Lillian. ‘I can’t believe she’d go and not say nothing to you, whatever she might do to the rest of us, the ungrateful little madam. Walking out in the middle of the night like that! I never knew the like—’
Gran went off on a long tirade. The two girls stood silent, knowing better than to make any comment. Their father nodded and agreed with everything. But eventually Gran came back to her original point.
‘So come on, what did she tell you?’
Lillian shook her head. Despite her concern not to give anything away, the full impact of what had happened was finally getting through to her. Aunty Eileen had been more like a mother to her than her real mum, who was worn down with housework and miscarriages and trying to please everyone. Aunty Eileen had always stuck up for her and put her first. Out of nowhere, tears welled up and spilled over.
‘I don’t want her to go!’ she wailed. ‘I want her to come back!’
Try as they might, her father and grandmother could get nothing more out of her. A sharp smack round the ear from her father only made her cry harder.
‘Get her out. I can’t hear myself think with all this racket going on,’ Gran ordered. ‘You get off to work early, Douglas, and on your way ask at Madame Pauline’s if they know anything. She must of told them; she can’t just walk out of a decent job. And, if they don’t, there’s only one thing for it—we’ll have to go to the police.’
Lillian found herself pushed out into the hallway again, where Frank and Bob grabbed her and demanded to know what was going on.
‘The police!’ Bob said. ‘Gran’s never going to ask them to come here, is she? She’d never do that. It’d give the neighbours a field day.’
‘You’re such an old woman,’ Frank scoffed. ‘But come on, Lill, spill it. Where has Eileen gone?’
He loomed over her, his pale face gleaming with the excitement of it all. Nothing as dramatic as this had happened in their family in their lifetimes.
Lillian stamped her foot with frustration. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! She’s just gone. She went in the middle of the night—’
She was saved by her father putting his head round the door.
‘Clear off into the kitchen, you lot. Your gran don’t want all this row outside her door. Go on, get!’
It was the beginning of a difficult time. The police were sympathetic but, with nothing to work on, they were unable to do more than suggest that the family get in touch with the Salvation Army. Gran continued to rant and rave about the situation, but all her bad temper couldn’t bring back the daughter who had escaped her heavy rule. Gradually, they all came to realise that Eileen really had gone for good.
Her absence was felt by all the family, though to different degrees. One fewer wage coming in made a difference to all of them, so did one fewer ration book. Mum missed a strong pair of hands to help with the many chores involved in running a guest house. Wendy missed having her blonde curls tamed into cute ringlets. They all missed Eileen’s cheerfulness. Her stories of difficult customers at the hairdresser’s where she worked had livened up the tea table no end.
But Lillian felt it most of all. She had lost her friend, her ally, her source of love and security. There was nobody now to give her a big hug and ask how her day at school had been, nobody to take her on their knee and tell her how sweet she was, nobody to stop the others from treating her as a general dogsbody. Lonely and miserable, Lillian would creep inside the wardrobe and breathe deeply through her nose, taking comfort from the lingering remnants of Evening In Paris. But there came a day when even that had gone, and Aunty Eileen with her ready laugh and her unquestioning love seemed to have disappeared from her life for ever.
Chapter Two
‘YOU’RE not going to wear that tie, are you?’ James’s sister Susan nagged.
James looked at the tie in the spotted mirror over the fireplace and adjusted the knot. ‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’ he asked.
‘Can’t you see? It’s too loud.’
James laughed with sheer disbelief. Who could possibly say that dark red with small interlocking yellow squares was ‘loud’?
‘What you mean is, it’s not the sort of thing that Boring Bob wears,’ he said, and waited for the explosion.
Susan’s pretty round face went quite red and her eyes glittered. She clenched her fists. ‘Will you stop calling him that? Bob is my young man and he is not boring!’
James grinned at her. At seventeen, he was taller than her now and able to look down at her, which she hated. She was the elder by two years and had bossed him around when they were children.
‘Not if you like watching grass grow,’ he teased.
‘You—! You’re just so hateful! Mum! Mum, James is being horrible.’
Cora Kershaw came out of the bedroom that she and Susan shared in their tiny flat. Her blue frilly blouse was not yet tucked into her pleated skirt, and her thin hair was all over the place. Her soft face looked even more anxious than usual.
‘Children, please—Jamie, darling, you mustn’t—’
Susan took in her mother’s appearance and found a new target.
‘Mum! You can’t wear that blouse with that skirt!’
Cora looked mortified. ‘Oh, darling, really? Are you sure? Only I thought—Mrs Jefferson gave me this blouse, you know, and she buys her clothes in London. But if you think—I don’t want to let you down. Not when we’re going to tea with the Parkers.’
James went and put an arm round her. He faced his sister.
‘Leave Mum alone, Suse. She looks perfectly all right. More than good enough for the flaming Parkers. Anyone would think we were going to Buckingham Palace.’
Tears of frustration were gathering in Susan’s eyes.
‘Can’t you see? This is important to me. The Parkers have invited all of us to go round and meet all of them. I want it to be perfect. I mean, look at this place—’ She gestured at their home, three rooms and a kitchenette on the first floor of a small terraced house, with an outside toilet that they had to share with the people downstairs. ‘The Parkers live in that great big place just off the seafront.’
‘It’s a guest house,’ James stated. ‘They don’t live in all of it.’
‘But it’s theirs. They own it. They don’t rent it.’
Their mother sighed. ‘I know it’s not what you want, darling. You deserve better than this, both of you. It’s so poky in here. When I first got married, I never expected to still be living somewhere like this, all these years on. Never in a month of Sundays. We had such dreams, you know. We were going to have a big house with a garden and a garage and everything, one of those lovely places down in Thorpe Bay. If only your poor dear father had survived…’
Her voice trailed off. James and Susan were silenced, as they always were, when their mother started on this subject. The words ‘If only…’ had threaded all through their childhood. There was nothing meaningful they could say, for it was true, things would have been completely different for them if their father had not been killed in the war. The eyes of all three of them turned to the photograph in pride of place on the mantelpiece, showing a tall man in cricket whites with dark hair and eyes and a narrow, clever face who looked back at them with a sunny smile. As James grew older, it was becoming ever clearer that he was the image of his father.
James gave Cora another hug. ‘You won’t live here for ever, Mum. I’ll buy you a house with a garden one day, you’ll see.’
He might be the youngest of their little household, but he was the man of the family, had been since he was five years old, and it was up to him to provide.
Cora reached up and patted his cheek. ‘You’re a good boy, Jamie.’
He could tell that she didn’t really believe him. How could a boy who worked in a garage ever get to buy a house?
‘And anyway,’ he said, returning to the argument that he and Susan were having, ‘just because the Parkers live in their own place down by the seafront, it doesn’t mean they’re better than us. So stop having a go at us, Susan. We’re not going to let you down.’
‘I didn’t say you were. I just said I wanted it to be perfect, and you—’ Susan broke off, catching sight of the clock. ‘Look at the time! We’ll be late if we don’t set off in five minutes. Come on, Mum, I’ll help you do your hair.’
After a brief flurry of activity they set out, James and his mother arm in arm, Susan walking just ahead of them.
‘Doesn’t she look a picture?’ Cora said, smiling proudly at her daughter’s back.
‘Lovely,’ James agreed, to keep her happy.
Susan was tip-tapping along in her polished court shoes, neat and proper in the powder blue suit that she had made herself on the old hand-cranked Singer sewing machine. She wore a little blue felt hat perched on top of her head and new white gloves. Her black handbag hung from her arm. The whole outfit had taken months and months of saving from her wages as a junior in the office of a department store in the High Street.
‘Just like something out of a magazine.’ Cora sighed. ‘You look just like something out of a magazine,’ she called ahead to Susan.
Susan turned her head and smiled back at her. ‘Really?’
Even James had to admit that his sister was looking pretty. Plenty of men would be delighted to go out with her. Why she was so stuck on Boring Bob was a mystery to him.
‘I do hope the Parkers will like us. This is so important to Susan,’ his mother said.
‘Mum, the Parkers aren’t as wonderful as Suse likes to make out, you know. Has she told you how they came to be living here?’
‘No, but—’
‘Susan told me one day. She says that Gran Parker’s husband once had a butcher’s shop in Upminster, but he died of a heart attack and his elder son, Norman, took over. Norman was useless, and what profits he did make he spent at the races. On top of that, he had a nasty temper. Bob’s father, Doug, was the younger son and he thought he could make a better fist of it and said so, and one day when they were having a row Norman picked up a knife and attacked Doug. His arm was so badly injured that at one point they thought it was going to have to be amputated. Norman walked out, joined the army and died in India of malaria, the butcher’s went bust and, with what money was left, Gran moved to Southend with Doug and his family and put a deposit on the guest house. Which was fine until the war came and that business nearly went bust too. From what I can make out, they’re just about hanging on now, with people wanting to go on holiday again. So you see, they’re not a grand family living in a big house. They’re ordinary people who’ve had a lot of bad luck, just like you have.’
‘Oh—yes—I see. Dear me, what a terrible story! Fancy one brother attacking another like that. How dreadful.’
Going over the tale kept them occupied as they made their way along the depressing back streets with their rows of almost identical houses till they could see the grey gleam of the Thames estuary, finally emerging on to Southend seafront just past the gasworks. All three of them paused to take in the scenery. Susan gazed at the dome of the Kursaal, where she had met Bob at the dance hall. Cora looked mistily at the pier, marching out across the grey mudflats to the shining river. She and her late husband had taken many a romantic stroll along its mile and a quarter of decking. James looked at the Golden Mile of amusements and longed to be there with his friends, playing the machines and eyeing up the girls, instead of being stuck with this gruesome family tea with the Parkers.
It was still too early in the year for many day trippers to be about, but the sunny weather had brought out plenty of locals to walk off the effects of their Sunday lunches. Young couples wandered hand in hand, families marched along in groups, elderly people stopped to look at the fishing boats or across the water to the hills of Kent, dogs ran around barking at the seagulls.
A brisk walk along the promenade in the spring sunshine brought the Kershaws to the Sunny View Guest House, set a few houses back from the seafront on a side road. There was not much to set it apart from any of the others in the terrace. They were all three storeys high with square bay windows, grubby brickwork and dark paint. All displayed ‘Vacancies’ signs. James couldn’t imagine wanting to stay in any of them. They looked most unwelcoming.
The front door of Sunny View was opened by a skinny kid of thirteen or so with long plaits. She looked about as pleased to see them as James was to see the Parkers.
Susan put on her grown-up voice. ‘Hello, Lillian dear. How are you today?’
‘All right, I s’pose. You better come in.’
Bob came to meet them in the hall, took Cora’s coat and gave it to the kid to hang up, then opened the door to the front room.
‘We’re in Gran’s room today,’ he told them, in a tone of voice that made it clear they should think themselves honoured.
The entire Parker clan was gathered in the gloomy room. After the fresh sea air it smelt stale, a mixture of cigarette smoke, polish and cooking fat. James found himself introduced to each family member—Bob’s grandmother, parents, younger brother Frank and the kid Lillian. But none of them made any impression on him, for there, sitting amongst them, was the most stunning girl he had ever seen.
‘My sister Wendy,’ Bob said.
She was a natural blonde, her hair in soft curls round her lovely face. Her eyes were big and blue and her lips were luscious, while her body was as alluring as Marilyn Monroe’s. She wore a pink jumper that showed off her magnificent breasts to perfection, and a wide belt emphasized her narrow waist. James was mesmerised. There was a general shaking of hands, during which James got to grasp hers.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he managed to say. He felt hot all over.
Wendy kept hold of his hand a few telling moments longer than necessary. ‘Likewise,’ she said with a cool smile.
James was horribly aware that she knew just what effect she was having on him and, what was more, she was enjoying it.
He sat on the dining chair nearest to where Wendy perched on the arm of her father’s seat. Around him, the two families were making polite small talk. The words buzzed about him but made little sense. Then he realised that Susan was hissing at him.
‘James!’
‘What?’ he asked, disorientated.
‘Mrs Parker is asking you a question.’
With difficulty, he focused on Bob’s grandmother. She was a grim-looking old bat, dressed entirely in black with a large cameo brooch at the neck of her blouse.
‘Yes, Mrs Parker?’ he said, trying to sound intelligent.
From across the room there came a snigger. James glanced over. It was Frank, a lanky young man of about twenty with a shadow of a grin on his face. He understood just what the problem was.
‘I asked what you did for a living, young man.’
James looked back at the grandmother.
‘I’m an apprentice mechanic at Dobson’s garage,’ he told her.
‘Hmm, well, it’s a good thing to have a trade. Our Bob has a position at the bank, of course.’
‘Yes, Mrs Parker,’ he said. Nothing on earth was going to make him sound impressed.
‘It’s such a comfort to have an office worker in the family. Bob takes after his grandfather. He has the brains of the family.’
There was a murmuring of agreement from the older members of the family.
James couldn’t help glancing at Bob. He was sitting there looking like the cat that got the cream, and there was Susan, gazing at him with her face glowing.
‘Susan has an office job,’ James pointed out. Nobody was going to make out that the Parkers were better than the Ker-shaws.
‘But not in a bank,’ the old bat stated. She shut her mouth in a tight line, to show that she had said the last word on the subject.
‘It’s a good job though, for a girl,’ James argued. Susan had let slip how Gran ruled the roost round here, but she wasn’t his grandmother and he wasn’t going to let her shut him up like she did the others.
Mrs Parker turned her stony glare on him. ‘When are you going for your national service, young man?’
‘July.’
Mrs Parker gave a satisfied nod. ‘That’ll knock the cheek out of you. You won’t know what’s hit you.’
‘Make a man out of you,’ Bob’s father said.
Bob and Frank both agreed. They had done their national service. They sat there with the superior expressions of those who had been through the mill and survived it. James was conscious of Wendy, sitting there watching the fun and waiting for his reaction.
‘I’ve been the man of our family since I was five,’ he said.
Gran made a harumphing noise in her throat and looked at Bob’s mother, who had so far said nothing.
‘Time to put the kettle on, Nettie. And you, Lillian, go and help her.’
Susan, her voice brittle with strain, steered the conversation into a discussion of the weather. Everyone seemed relieved when tea was ready and they could move into the next room. In the hallway, Susan caught hold of James’s arm.
‘How could you?’ she whispered accusingly.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Be so rude to Mrs Parker.’
‘I’m not. I’m being perfectly polite.’
‘James, please.’
He relented. She was his sister, after all, and she wanted to make a good impression on these awful people. ‘OK, sis.’
They went into what was usually the guests’ breakfast room, where the small tables had been pushed together to make one large one. Plates of sandwiches and dishes of shrimps and cockles and whelks were set out all along it. James made a beeline to where Wendy was sitting, but found himself outmanoeuvred. She was flanked by her father on one side and Frank on the other. The only spare seat was between Bob and the kid. James sat down, resigned to being bored.
Eating, making polite remarks about the food and discussing the best place to buy fresh seafood took up most of the meal. James let them get on with it, while he tried not to stare at Wendy. He was surprised to find Lillian speaking to him.
‘You work in the garage, then?’ she said.
‘Yup.’
‘So you’re good at fixing things?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Only I’ve got this bike, see. I bought it at a jumble sale but it won’t go properly.’
Despite himself, James was interested.
‘If someone’s sent it to the jumble, it must be pretty bad. How rusty is it?’
‘Quite a lot,’ Lillian admitted.
‘And do the pedals go round?’
‘No.’
From the other side of the table, Frank joined in. ‘It’s a heap of junk. Best thing to do with it is to give it to the rag-and-bone man.’
‘It’s not a heap of junk,’ Lillian said.
Frank gave that sneering grin of his. ‘Junk,’ he repeated.
‘Have you had a go at it for her? Given it an oiling or anything?’ James asked.
‘Got better things to do with my time, mate.’
‘Pig,’ Lillian muttered.
James felt sorry for her. It must be pretty grim having Frank and Bob as big brothers, and that old hag ordering her around all the time.
‘I’ll have a look at it for you, if you like,’ he offered.
Her sharp little face lit up. ‘Would you? Really?’
‘’Course. After tea, if you like.’
‘Oh—I got to do the washing-up.’
‘After that, then,’ James offered.
So he found himself half an hour later in the back yard. Lillian disappeared into a rickety shed and wheeled out a rusty ladies’ bike. James was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t as ancient as he had thought it would be.
‘It’s a Raleigh, and that’s good for a start,’ he said, trying the brakes, examining the chain. ‘The parts will be easy to get. You know what I think? This has been dumped in someone’s back yard for years in all weathers. The tyres aren’t very worn—see, there’s plenty of tread on them—but they’re cracked from neglect. There’s even quite a bit of wear in the brake blocks, once I get the brakes going again.’
‘They will work, then?’ Lillian said.
‘Oh, yes, nothing that a good clean and a bit of oil won’t fix. That saddle has had it, but you could put an old beret over it for now, if you’ve got one. You’ll have to buy new tyres and inner tubes, though. Can you afford that?’
‘I’ll save up my paper round money.’
‘Good, well, if you get on with getting rid of all this rust—’ He explained what to do, while Lillian listened and nodded. ‘You don’t mind getting your hands dirty, then?’ he asked. It wasn’t a job that Susan would have considered tackling.
‘Oh, no. Not if it means I’ll have a bike to ride. But what about the brakes and the chain?’
‘I can’t do it now ’cos I’ve got my best stuff on and I haven’t any tools with me, but I’ll come back and do it next weekend, if you like,’ James offered.
‘Would you really?’ Lillian sounded amazed. She was looking at him with glowing eyes. ‘You’ll come back and do it for me?’
James didn’t like to tell her that it was worth it to have the chance of running in to Wendy again.
‘’Course,’ he said.
‘Wow! That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.’
For a moment he thought she was going to fling her arms round him, but instead she veered away and turned a perfect cartwheel, allowing a glimpse of her long slim legs and her navy knickers.
James clapped and Lillian laughed with pleasure.
‘I was dreading this tea party, but now I’m really glad you came,’ she confided.
‘Me too,’ James agreed.
He never thought he would admit it, but Boring Bob’s family had turned out to be much more interesting than he’d expected.
Chapter Three
‘WHERE are you off to, squirt?’ Frank demanded, barring Lillian’s way downstairs.
‘None of your beeswax,’ Lillian told him, making to dodge under his arm.
She wasn’t quite quick enough. Frank caught hold of her wrist.
‘Not so fast, squirt. You’re supposed to be helping.’
It was the time of the dreaded spring clean. All the paintwork had to be washed, all the windows cleaned, inside and out, the curtains taken down and washed, the carpets and rugs taken outside and beaten, the floors scrubbed, the fireplaces scoured and the furniture polished. Everyone, even the men, was supposed to be helping. Gran, of course, was organising it all. She didn’t actually do any physical work.
‘I’ve done mine,’ Lillian said. Her hands were red and raw from the sugar soap solution she had been using to wash the paint in all the first floor rooms. It was now all clean and shining, but nothing could disguise the fact that it was chipped.
‘No, you ain’t, because the back room floor’s got to be done yet.’
‘That’s yours. You was on floors,’ Lillian protested.
Frank’s grip tightened. He bent her arm up behind her back. ‘I got better things to do. You can finish it for me.’
‘What’s in it for me?’
‘You’ll be sorry if you don’t, that’s what.’
He pushed her arm a bit further up. Lillian bit back a squeal of pain.
‘I’ll tell Gran you’ve bunked off,’ she threatened.
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Try me.’
Another hitch of her arm. Lillian gritted her teeth.
‘Sixpence,’ she managed to say.
Despite the fact that he was by far the bigger and stronger, Frank was forced to bargain. He didn’t dare risk Gran knowing he had wriggled out of part of his task.
‘Thruppence.’
‘Fivepence ha’penny.’
‘Fivepence, and not a farthing more.’
‘Done.’
Frank released her and she held her hand out for the money. Her back and arms and knees were all aching from the cleaning she had done already, but five pence was not to be sneezed at. She needed a lot more than that before she could buy the new tyres and inner tubes for her bike. With a sigh, Frank fished four pennies and two ha’pennies out of his pocket, slapped them into her palm and went clattering downstairs, whistling the latest Johnnie Ray number. Lillian knew just where he was off to; he was going to join his mates and hang about down at the amusement arcades on the seafront. She was doing him a favour, taking some of his cash off him. He would only go and lose it all on the machines.
Half an hour later, Lillian emptied the now filthy cleaning water into the first floor toilet and lugged the bucket and scrubbing brush and block of green Fairy household soap downstairs. The whole house smelt of damp floorboards and polish and the vinegar that had been used to shine the windows. The windows and doors were all open to give the place a good airing. On her way through to the yard, she met her dad coming in from work in his lift attendant’s uniform.
‘You finished already?’ he asked.
‘Yup.’
He looked at her suspiciously. ‘You done it all properly? Your gran’ll be up there to check.’
Gran was sure to find some fault, but Lillian knew she had made a good job of it. She had been well trained.
‘Yup, every bit.’
‘Right, well, you can go down the newsagent’s and get me a packet of fags.’
Lillian groaned inwardly. She wanted to go out in the yard and get her bike out. James was coming to see what she had done when he finished work today.
‘All right,’ she sighed, with as good grace as she could manage. After all, there was no getting out of it. She was the youngest, the runner of errands.
Her father counted the exact amount into her hand, so there was no chance even of being given the change. Lillian went out of the back door—nobody ever used the front—wheeled her bike out of the shed and leaned it against the fence, then went through the rickety gate and along the alleyways, emerging into the street six houses up from her own. Outside, it was warm in the spring sunshine, even though it was now late afternoon. Freed from the day’s chores, Lillian felt light and happy. Today was the day that James had said he would come—lovely James who treated her as if she was somebody. She had to stop herself from putting a skip into her step. After all, she was fourteen now, not a little kid. Next year she would be leaving school.
At the newsagent’s, a woman was buying sweets. The paper bags were lined up along the top of the counter, half pounds of toffees and pear drops and humbugs. Now she was hesitating between mint creams and nut brittle.
‘Oh, I’ll have a half of each,’ she decided.
Since sweet rationing had been taken off in February, people had been going mad for sweets. Lillian drew in the sugary smell, her stomach rumbling. In her pocket was the five pence that she had extracted from Frank. She gazed at her favourite, Fry’s Five Boys chocolate. But then there was nougat as well. She loved nougat, and it lasted longer. She jingled the money, sorely tempted. No, she mustn’t. Every penny brought those tyres nearer, and with them the day she could get on that bike and ride it.
As she stepped out of the shop with her father’s Player’s Navy Cut, she saw James just rounding the corner into her road on his bike. She let out a shriek.
‘James! Wait for me!’
He skidded to a halt as she raced towards him, amazed that he had actually stopped. No one in her family would wait for her like this. She pounded down the road, her plaits bobbing on her back as she ran.
‘Oh—’ she panted as she joined him. ‘You’ve really come. I didn’t know if you would.’
James looked faintly puzzled. ‘I said I would, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, but people don’t always do what they say they will,’ she pointed out.
‘I do,’ James told her.
And she knew absolutely that this was the truth. He was not the sort of person who would let you down. It gave her a strange glow inside.
‘You’re not like my family,’ she told him as they started towards her house. ‘But never mind them. I’ve been working really hard on my bike. Just wait till you see it! It’s shiny as new.’
He actually listened to her and asked her sensible questions. Lillian could hardly believe it. She led him in through the back way to where the curtains were still drying on the washing lines in the yard.
‘We’ve been spring cleaning,’ she explained.
‘Oh, yes. My mum goes mad on that each year for a bit, but she never gets very far. Susan and I usually finish it. But we’ve only got a little flat to clean. It must be a big job doing all this place,’ James said, looking at the back of the house as it reared up above them, the bare windows gleaming. ‘Do you all help? Wendy as well?’
‘Even Dad’ll have to tomorrow, when he’s off work,’ Lillian told him. ‘Oh—I got to go and give him these cigarettes. Would you like a cuppa?’
James said that he would.
‘You can see what I’ve done to my bike while I’m making it,’ she suggested.
When she came back out with a large cup of tea and the biscuit she’d dared to take, he was already busy with his tool kit and oil can. He admired what she had done and for a while they talked cogs and chains and brakes. Lillian soaked up all the information.
‘You’re very clever,’ she said.
James shrugged. ‘I enjoy getting things working. Bikes are easy. Cars take a lot more skill. Some of the blokes where I work, they do the job but they don’t think about it. If something’s a bit tricky, they just adjust a few things and get it moving but they don’t make it sing. If a car’s going well, you can hear it, it speaks to you.’
He gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I suppose that sounds daft.’
But Lillian knew just what he meant. ‘No, no, it doesn’t. I know when a movement is just right. It’s the same thing. Look.’
She stood up, took a pose, then executed a series of pirouettes across the concrete yard, finishing by the door. James grinned and clapped, but Lillian hadn’t finished.
‘No—that’s what I mean. Anyone could do that if they practised. Now watch.’
She came back again the other way, this time making every part of her body as graceful and fluid as possible. Everything had to be right—the angle of her head, the way she held her arms, the expression on her face—as well as doing the steps perfectly.
‘See?’ she asked.
James was looking at her in amazement. ‘Where did you learn to do that? Do you go to ballet classes?’
Lillian sighed. If only. It was her dearest wish.
‘No, my best friend Janette does, and she shows me.’
‘Well, you’re very good at it. It was different again, the second time. You looked like a proper dancer.’
Delight coursed through her. No one had ever said that to her before.
‘Really? Do you think so?’
She gazed at him, desperate for approval.
‘Yes, but—well, I don’t know much about it—’
Of course he didn’t. He was a boy and they weren’t interested in things like dancing. But he hadn’t laughed at her. That was the important thing.
‘At least you watch properly. None of my lot do.’
Lillian sighed and squatted down beside the bike as it stood upside down between them. Her sense of the unfairness of life, never very far from the surface, welled up. Here was someone who might understand. ‘You’re the youngest of your family, aren’t you? Don’t you think it’s horrible being the youngest?’
James appeared to consider this. He adjusted a nut on the rear wheel and gave it a turn, nodding as it ran smoothly.
‘I suppose it’s different for me. There’s only the three of us, and Mum—well, it’s hard for her, being a war widow. Susan and me, we’ve always sort of looked after her as much as she’s looked after us. She’s not strong, you know. When we were little, she used to go out and do cleaning jobs because what they give her for a pension doesn’t go very far. But she always found it very difficult to manage working and seeing to us. Now we’re both working she doesn’t have to any more. We made her give up the last job she had a year or so ago. If she could have carried on, we might have been able to move to a better flat, but it was making her ill. That’s why I left school at fifteen. I had to get out and get earning.’
Lillian understood this. ‘Yeah, I’ve got to leave next year. My gran says education is wasted on girls because we’re only going to get married. It’s Bob who got to stay till he was sixteen. He’s the brains of the family, so they’re always saying. He passed his eleven plus, so he got to go to the grammar and get his school certificate and his wonderful job at the bank. You should see him in the morning, making a fuss about his clean collar and his tie and his shoes, like he’s the bank manager or something, instead of a clerk. I’m the one who has to do his blooming shoes, not him. He’s too important. And Gran looks at him and goes on about at least someone in this family is doing all right. It makes me sick.’
‘Boring Bob,’ James said.
Their eyes met through the spokes of the bicycle wheel. They both smiled, knowing that the other one felt exactly the same.
‘You got it,’ Lillian agreed, revelling in the warm glow of understanding. The intimacy of the moment propelled her into further revelations.
‘Everything’d be different if my Aunty Eileen was still here. I suppose—like it’d be different for you if your dad hadn’t been killed. She used to be on my side. She was lovely.’
‘Eileen? Susan’s said nothing about an Aunty Eileen,’ James said.
‘Oh, they never talk about her. She’s our black sheep, or at least that’s what Gran says. A black sheep, or a viper in the bosom. Isn’t that a horrible thing to say about someone—a viper in the bosom?’
‘It’s from the Bible. But what did she do?’
‘She ran away from home when I was six. She went in the middle of the night.’
Lillian sat back her heels, looking back down the years to that bitter night when her aunty had left her.
‘She told me she was going to follow her dream, and I didn’t know what she meant ’cos I was only a little kid, but later I thought she meant she was going to do something amazing, like being a film star. I was so sure she was going to be a film star that I looked at all the posters outside all the cinemas to see if her picture was there.’
She glanced at him, worried suddenly that he would laugh at her for being so stupid, but there was no hint of it on his face.
‘What had happened, then?’ he asked.
Lillian hesitated. It was so lovely to talk like this, so seriously, like grown-ups. It was intoxicating just to have him listen to her without making fun. But, however much she was drawn to confide in him, still this was a family secret.
‘Promise you won’t tell?’ she begged.
‘’Course not.’
‘Not even Susan? Only I haven’t told anyone, not even my best friend Janette. And Gran’d kill me if she knew.’
‘Cross my heart,’ James said.
She thought she did see a shadow of a smile then in his eyes, but it was soon gone, and the need to draw him in, to make him a confidant, was too strong for her to resist. She lowered her voice.
‘She ran away with one of our guests, one of the regulars, a travelling salesman. Only the thing is, he was a married man.’
Which meant that her Aunty Eileen, her wonderful, funny, loving aunty was a wicked woman living in sin. It simply didn’t match up with her sunny memories. She felt sick suddenly. She had betrayed her aunty, and all for a moment’s attention. She wished with all her heart that she could take the words back, but it was too late now. They were out, and it was all her fault. She wanted to shrivel up into the ground.
James gave a low whistle. ‘That was brave of her,’ he said.
Lillian stared at him, hardly daring to believe it. It was all right. He understood. It was a miracle. Relief lit up her face.
‘It was. You see, she had to do it, ’cos Gran would never have allowed it.’
‘No, well, she wouldn’t, would she?’
Lillian knew what he meant. To have a family member living in sin was a terrible disgrace ordinarily. But Aunty Eileen was different.
‘Like I said, she was following her dream. And I’m going to do the same. I’m going to be a dancer.’
Once again, she wished she had not said it. She couldn’t understand what was getting into her, giving away all her closest secrets like this, baring her heart to this boy. This time he really was going to laugh at her. After all, lots of girls wanted to be dancers, but they ended up working in shops and getting married, just like everyone else. No one else could see that inside she knew she was different.
She stole a look at James from under her thick lashes to see what his reaction was. His serious face gave away nothing as he worked at loosening the brake callipers. Then he stood up, turned the bike the right way up and squeezed the brake levers on the handlebars to see if it was all working properly. The pause before he replied seemed like a hundred years to Lillian.
‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘I don’t know anything about it, but they do say it’s a hard life.’
‘I don’t care. I’m used to working hard, and it’d be working at doing something I love,’ Lillian told him.
James stopped fiddling with the brakes and looked at her. ‘That’s what makes the difference, isn’t it? I don’t mind how hard I work when I’m trying to get a car going. But I’m not doing that for someone else all my life, slaving away to make them money. I want a garage of my own.’
Lillian felt quite breathless. He was offering her his secrets.
‘Is that your dream?’ she asked.
‘That’s my dream. I’ll have a business of my own with people working for me, and a car of my own, and I’ll get a decent place for my mum to live with a proper kitchen and bathroom, so nobody can look down their noses at her any more—’
He broke off, gazing over Lillian’s shoulder, a rapt look on his face. Where a second ago his attention had been all hers, now it was as if she was no longer there. Slowly, he straightened up.
Lillian didn’t have to turn round to know who was there. She was seized with such a storm of rage and jealousy that she thought her chest might burst open. She didn’t know where it had come from or how to deal with it. She gritted her teeth and growled, only just stopping herself from leaping up and attacking her fascinating sister with teeth and nails and feet.
Wendy stopped a couple of feet away. Lillian picked up one of James’s spanners and started jabbing it into the sour earth for all she was worth. In spite of herself, her eyes were drawn to her sister. Wendy was still dressed in the old skirt and blouse she had been wearing for the spring cleaning, with a spotted scarf over her hair. Anyone else would have looked scruffy and bedraggled after the hard day’s work. But Wendy had stopped to apply bright red lipstick to her full mouth, her waist was cinched in with a wide black elastic belt, her blonde curls escaped from beneath the scarf and the blouse was undone at the neck just enough to give a tantalising glimpse of cleavage. She stood with one hand on her hip and flicked James with a cool assessing glance.
‘So you came to see to the famous bike, then? She’s been going on about it all week.’
‘She’s made a good job of it. I’ve just done a bit of maintenance.’
‘Yeah, I can see that. Your hands are covered in oil.’
James flushed. ‘It’s honest dirt. You like men with soft white girly hands, do you?’
Wendy gave a knowing smile. ‘I like a man who can take me out dancing and show me a good time.’
‘I can dance,’ James said.
‘They all say that. Then they tread all over your feet. I can’t bear being trampled on.’
‘No danger of that with me.’
For a moment their eyes locked, each of them challenging the other. It was as if Lillian didn’t exist. She wanted to leap up and scream Look at me! but something held her squatting by her bike, raging inside.
Wendy raised her eyebrows and turned away. ‘I don’t think I’ll take a chance on it.’
She walked back into the house. James’s eyes were fastened on her opulent backside until the door shut behind her. Even then he didn’t come back to Lillian immediately. He stood staring at the closed door.
‘Idiot!’ he muttered. ‘What did you go and say that for?’
‘What?’ Lillian asked.
Slowly, he turned his head to look at her, his eyes seeming to adjust like someone who had just come indoors from bright sunshine outside.
‘I went and told her I could dance. I can’t, not properly.’
A whole beautiful new vista of opportunity suddenly stretched out before Lillian. She beamed at him.
‘I can,’ she said. ‘I could teach you, if you like.’
Chapter Four
THE kid’s bike was the perfect excuse to get in with the Parker family. Or, to be more precise, to get closer to Wendy. Wendy filled James’s days and haunted his dreams. He had never met a girl like her before, not in real life. She was like something out of a film, what with her luscious body, her lovely face and her exotic natural blonde hair. And then there was the way she treated him. He knew she didn’t take him seriously. He was only a few months older than her, and she was looking for men in their twenties with money in their pockets, so he knew she regarded him as a kid who hadn’t even started his national service yet. But he was not without hope. There was something in the way she looked at him, a certain challenge in her big blue eyes and her mocking smile, that kept him coming back for more.
So when Lillian announced that she had saved up enough for the tyres and almost enough for the inner tubes, he offered to loan her the rest.
‘The weather’s getting almost summery. You want to get out on that bike as soon as you can,’ he said.
She looked at him in total amazement. ‘Would you?’ she cried. ‘You’d do that for me? Trust me with your money?’
If only it were so easy to please her sister.
‘’Course,’ he said. ‘I know you’re good for it.’
‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘You must be the nicest person in the world!’
And as she often did when really pleased, she put her delight into action, crossing the narrow yard in two flick-flacks. James laughed and clapped. It was a pleasure to see her dance or perform gymnastics. She moved with such grace and athleticism that even someone like himself, who knew nothing about it, could see that she was good.
Once the bike was up and running, it was more difficult to find reasons to visit the Parkers. What was more, time was getting short. In July he would be eighteen, and then his call-up papers would arrive. But luck was on his side. He called in after work one Monday with the excuse of making sure that Lillian was managing all right, and found Mrs Parker in despair over the mangle.
‘It’s stuck,’ she explained, practically in tears. ‘And we’ve had PGs in over the weekend and there’s all these sheets to get dry.’
She indicated the big galvanised tub full of wet bedlinen.
James had rather overlooked Wendy’s mother in the past. There were so many large personalities in the family, what with Wendy herself, and little Lillian, and their old hag of a grandmother, as well as Boring Bob and Shifty Frank, as he thought of them, that Mrs Parker rather faded into the background. He smiled at her as she stood there in her floral overall, her wispy hair tied up turban-style in a scarf and her sleeves rolled up to reveal thin arms and red, work-roughened hands.
‘Would you like me to take a look at it for you?’ he asked.
Relief flooded her tired face. ‘Oh, would you? I’d be ever so grateful.’
It was the work of a moment. Mangles were hardly difficult pieces of machinery to understand. Mrs Parker was so fulsome in her thanks that James was ashamed to earn so much praise for so little.
‘Let me turn it for you,’ he offered. ‘You just feed the stuff in.’
Turning the heavy handle to squeeze the water out of the washing was easy for him, young and strong as he was. In no time the job was done. James carried the basket of damp sheets and towels and pillowcases into an outhouse, ready to be pegged out on the lines in the morning. Just as he had done this, Wendy’s father arrived home. He looked at James with suspicion.
‘You here again?’ he asked.
There was something about the man that irritated James. Maybe it was the apologetic stoop to his shoulders, or the way he always seemed to be looking for a way to get at other people. James supposed he must be bitter about having a crippled right arm and just managed to bite back a sarcastic reply. After all, this was Wendy’s father. He needed to keep in with him.
‘Oh, Doug,’ Mrs Parker said. ‘James has been such a help to me. He got my mangle going and everything.’ She turned to James with real warmth in her smile and for the first time he saw something of her daughters in her. ‘Won’t you come in for a cuppa, dear? Kettle’s boiling.’
After that, he seemed to be accepted as the fixer of anything mechanical, just as he was at home. Mr Parker couldn’t have done these tasks, not with his bad arm, but it amazed him that neither Bob nor Frank seemed capable of doing them. He was glad that they weren’t, though. He now had the perfect reason to be calling in at the Parkers’ whenever he liked. He soon found out what time Wendy got in from her job at the big department store at the top of the High Street, and timed his arrival to coincide with hers.
Of course, she knew perfectly well what he was up to.
‘You’re a regular little ray of sunshine, aren’t you?’ she commented. ‘Fixing Gran’s glasses, getting the clock going. Whatever would we do without you?’
‘I’m sure I could fix something for you, if you let me,’ James told her.
Wendy gave him one of her dismissive up-and-down looks. ‘I don’t think there’s anything I need from you, sweetie.’ And she teetered elegantly out of the room on her high heels.
Lillian, who always seemed to be around when he was there, launched into a savage take-off. She put her hand on her hip the way Wendy did and looked back over her shoulder with the same don’t-touch-me pout.
‘I don’t think there’s anything I need from you, sweetie,’ she repeated, with exactly Wendy’s intonation, and walked to the door with an exaggerated wiggle to her bottom.
Despite his disappointment at the brush-off, James had to laugh. ‘You’ve got her to a T,’ he said.
‘Huh, she thinks she’s so wonderful, but really she’s such a cow.’
‘Lillian, language!’ her mother protested feebly.
‘But she is,’ Lillian insisted.
Her mother handed her a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits.
‘Take these along to your grandmother, there’s a good girl.’
Lillian sighed and went. A few minutes later, she came back through the kitchen and out of the back door.
‘Got to go and get something for Gran,’ she explained as she went.
Her mother hardly seemed to notice.
This was something that James had picked up on since he’d been spending more time at the Parkers’. Lillian hadn’t just been whinging when she’d said it was horrible being the youngest. None of her family seemed to speak to her except to tell her off or get her to do something for them. She was forever running around doing errands. It had changed his view of what it was like to be part of a large family. Often when he was young he had yearned to have lots of brothers and sisters like the families he read about in adventure stories. Now he was beginning to realise that, though his family was a bit claustrophobic at times, at least they did all value each other. He certainly wasn’t left out like Lillian seemed to be. He brought up the subject with Susan one day.
‘Don’t you think it’s unfair, the way they all treat Lillian?’
His sister looked surprised. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, getting her to do all their jobs for them, like she’s was some kind of servant.’
Susan didn’t seem to think it was important. ‘Oh, she doesn’t mind. And it keeps her out of mischief. If she wasn’t doing something useful she might be getting into trouble. She’s got that wild look about her, don’t you think?’
‘No, I don’t. I think she’s rather a nice kid, and she’s getting a raw deal from that lot. She does all this stuff for them, but do they do anything for her? No. She cleans your Bob’s shoes for him every day, but it wasn’t him who helped her with that bike, it was me.’
Susan just laughed. ‘Oh, yes, and why did you do that, I wonder? Out of the kindness of your heart, or to get to see Wendy?’
She was right, of course.
‘At least I did do it. Now the bike’s roadworthy and Lillian can ride it,’ he pointed out, not wanting to lose the argument.
He didn’t like to admit that he was taking advantage of Lillian’s good nature himself. The dancing lessons were a great success. There had been a problem to start with, because both of them wanted to keep it a secret. There was always somebody around at the Parkers’ so going there was no good, but then Susan had started going out with Bob on Tuesday evenings as well as at the weekend, which just happened to be when his mother went to her Townswomen’s Guild meeting.
‘Won’t your parents think it’s a bit off, you coming round to mine of an evening?’ James asked. His mother always wanted to know where Susan was and certainly wouldn’t have let her go to an older boy’s house when nobody else was there. After all, he knew his intentions were entirely innocent, but the Parkers might not look at it that way.
Lillian just shrugged.
‘They won’t notice. Or, if they do, I’ll say I’m going round my friend Janette’s.’
He had to take her word for it. And she was an excellent teacher. They didn’t have a record player or much space, but they pushed back the furniture and rolled up the carpet square, then twiddled the tuner of the big Bush wireless till they found some dance music. Lillian showed him the basic steps to the waltz, quickstep and foxtrot, and soon he was moving round the floor with confidence.
‘I can do it!’ he said, as his feet began to obey the music.
Lillian beamed at him. ‘It’s fun, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘I never thought it would be, but it is.’
She was a strict teacher.
‘Don’t look at your feet,’ she told him. ‘Head up—arm higher—elbow out—now glide, glide, don’t just walk—think of Fred Astaire!’
‘That’ll be the day,’ James said.
He asked her how she came to learn to dance herself. ‘Did you say your friend taught you all this?’
‘Yeah, Janette. Her parents have got the newsagent’s on the London Road—you know?—and they let her go to lessons, lucky thing.’ She sighed. ‘She goes to everything—ballet, modern, tap and ballroom. It’s so unfair! She’s an only child and they let her do everything she wants. I wish I was her.’
James gave one of her plaits a little tug. ‘I bet she’s a spoilt brat. Not like you,’ he said.
Her sharp little face flushed with delight. ‘Do you like me?’ she breathed.
He was shocked by the longing in her eyes.
‘Of course,’ he said, feeling uncomfortable. ‘You’re a good sport. Now, show me again how that reverse turn goes.’
By the beginning of June he felt he knew enough to venture onto the floor at the Kursaal dance hall on the seafront. He spent an evening steering various girls around, managed not to step on anyone’s feet or bump into any other couples and even found he enjoyed himself.
‘It was fun,’ he admitted to Lillian afterwards. ‘I think I might get to like this dancing lark. Now, the question is, am I good enough at it to ask Wendy out?’
The dancing lessons had been the highlight of Lillian’s life. She could hardly believe her good fortune when James had actually taken her up on her offer. Here was her chance to be really useful to him, to do something for him that nobody else could. She was beside herself with excitement, imagining wafting round a ballroom with him like a film star. More than once she’d got into trouble at school for daydreaming, picturing herself in a wonderful gown, waltzing in James’s arms. Mostly she’d managed to banish from her mind the fact that James wanted to do this because Wendy had said she liked men who would take her dancing. When she did remember, it sent her into such a pit of despair and hatred for her sister that she could hardly bear to be in the same room as her.
For once she was pleased that her family took no notice of her, for nobody remarked on her volatile state and nobody questioned where she was off to. But the pressure of all these new emotions was too great to be contained. She’d confided it all to her best friend Janette as they’d sat eating sweets in her pretty pink bedroom in the flat above the newsagent’s.
‘He’s just the most wonderful person in the whole wide world,’ she said with a sigh.
‘Ooh—’ Janette teased. ‘Have you got a pash on him?’
‘No! It isn’t a pash—’ Pashes were what first formers got on prefects, or even the young PE teacher. This was far more serious, far more painful. It was taking over her life. But she didn’t know what to call it.
‘P’raps it’s love,’ suggested Janette. She reached up to stroke the picture of Frankie Laine that she had cut out of a magazine and pinned on her bedroom wall. ‘I’m in love with Frankie. I kiss him every night before I go to sleep.’
‘That’s only a picture,’ Lillian scoffed.
‘But he’s much more handsome than your precious James,’ Janette said, highly offended. ‘And he’s famous, and he’s got a wonderful voice. When he sings Answer Me I know he’s singing it just for me.’
She sighed dramatically and gazed at her hero.
‘It’s not the same,’ Lillian insisted. ‘The days when I don’t see James are like…like…a desert.’
She didn’t admit, even to Janette, that she cycled the long way back from school each day just so that she could go down the street where James worked. The garage seemed the most wonderful place in the world, while the smell of petrol was sweeter to her than roses. She never got to see him there, although once she had heard someone call his name. She had waited to see if he appeared, but in the end whoever had called must have gone to seek him out. After hanging about outside the garage, she would cycle down the street where he lived, even though she knew he wasn’t there.
‘Do you think he’s interested in you?’ Janette asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Lillian said miserably. ‘He can be so kind, but—’
Burnt into her memory was the time when he had said she was a ‘good sport’. Sometimes she managed to convince herself that this was a compliment, but mostly it brought her close to tears, for she knew in her heart that it was a brush-off.
She slid off the bed and went to study herself in the looking-glass above Janette’s dressing table, adjusting the triple mirrors so that she could see all round. She twisted this way and that, hoping in vain to find someone more exotic than a fourteen-year-old girl with long thin legs and white ankle socks. Her skinny body was beginning to fill out a little. She had small rounded breasts and a proper waist. She dug her hands in above her bony hips to emphasize the curves, but she knew she looked nothing like Wendy. Wendy’s vital statistics were a perfect 36-24-36, even before she wriggled into her elastic roll-on.
She undid the rubber bands at the ends of her plaits, shook her hair out and gathered it up on top of her head, trying to look more sophisticated.
‘D’you think I’m pretty?’ she asked.
‘’Course,’ Janette said loyally.
But Lillian turned away and flopped down on the bed, tears welling in her eyes.
‘It’s not fair,’ she wailed. ‘I’m never going to be as pretty as Wendy. You’re just so lucky, being an only child.’
That had been last week, and now here was James asking if he was a good enough dancer to ask Wendy out. Lillian couldn’t believe that something could hurt so much. It made her want to cry out loud.
‘You—you don’t really want to, do you?’ she managed to ask.
James laughed, as if it was some sort of joke.
‘But of course! That’s the whole point. I’ve got to do it before I have to go off to national service. Now, come on, what do you think? You’re her sister. Do you think I’ve got a chance?’
Lillian was torn. The last thing she wanted was for Wendy to get her claws into him, but neither did she want him to stop coming to their house.
‘I dunno,’ she muttered.
‘You must have some sort of an idea,’ James insisted.
Goaded, Lillian burst out with the truth. ‘If you must know, I think you’re much too nice for her. She only likes spivvy types with cars and patent leather shoes.’
‘A car!’ James was looking at her as if she had just handed him the Crown jewels. ‘If she likes blokes with cars, then I’m her man.’
‘You haven’t got a car,’ Lillian said.
‘No, but I can get hold of one.’
‘I didn’t know you had a driving licence.’
‘I don’t, but who’s going to ask? I can drive all right. Lillian, you’re a genius! I’ll come round your place and ask Wendy if she wants to go for a spin.’
Lillian wanted to cut her tongue out. Whatever had made her mention cars? That night she cried herself to sleep, convinced that all was lost.
Two days later, she happened to be in her grandmother’s room at just about the time Wendy was due home from work. Gran’s main occupation, apart from smoking and reading the newspaper, was making hooked rugs. Since wool was expensive, it was one of Lillian’s jobs to go to jumble sales and find handknitted garments in the colours that Gran wanted for her projects. Now she was busy unravelling last Saturday’s finds and winding them into hanks to be washed before use. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a vehicle stop outside their house and turned to look. Gran was immediately on the alert. Plenty of delivery vans pulled up in their road, but only one family owned a car.
‘What’s that car doing by our front door? It’s not that dreadful man that your sister wanted to go out with last week, is it? Go and look.’
Lillian did as she was told, pulling aside the net curtain so that she could see better. There at the kerbside was a smart black Morris, and inside it…
‘It’s James,’ she said, unable to keep the distress out of her voice. He had done it. He had got a car to impress Wendy with.
‘James? James who?’
‘James Kershaw. Bob’s Susan’s brother,’ Lillian explained.
‘What’s he doing here with a car?’
Gran’s heavy footsteps thudded across the room. She leaned over Lillian’s shoulder. As she did so, James got out of the car and looked up the road. Craning her neck, Lillian saw her sister walking towards him. Her heart thudded so hard in her chest that she could hardly breathe. James was leaning against the car as if he owned it. Wendy came to a stop beside him, looking it over. Lillian strained to hear what they were saying, but it was impossible with Gran keeping up a running commentary right by her ear.
‘What’s going on out there? What’s he up to? I’ll give her a piece of my mind, standing there as bold as brass in the street like that talking to a young man…’
Gran rapped on the window with her knuckles. James and Wendy both looked up, then Wendy walked down the street to the alleyway, leaving James staring after her. Something about the slump of his shoulders gave Lillian hope.
‘Go and tell her to come in here,’ Gran demanded.
Lillian went to meet her sister at the back door.
‘Gran wants to see you. She wants to know what you were doing out there with James,’ she gabbled.
Wendy cast her eyes to heaven. ‘She needn’t worry. I wouldn’t be seen dead out with a kid like that, even if he has got hold of a car.’ Muttering with irritation, she went off to obey the summons.
Lillian spun round and round, hugging herself with joy. James was safe! James was still hers! Everything was well with the world.
Or at least it was for a day or so. James did not appear at the house again. More days dragged by, long, achingly dull days with no James in them.
‘What exactly did you say to him?’ Lillian demanded of her sister.
Wendy examined her perfect nails. ‘Oh, I told him to sling his hook.’
Two weeks went by, then three. The summer visitors were flooding into the town now, and Lillian was kept busy helping her mother prepare bedrooms. But nothing could keep her heart from yearning to see James again. June turned into July. Susan announced that her brother’s call-up papers had arrived. Lillian could bear it no longer.
‘He is going to stop by and say goodbye to us, isn’t he?’
‘Oh, I expect so,’ Susan said.
‘Will you ask him to?’ Lillian insisted.
‘Stop nagging, Lill. Susan’s got better things to do than pass on messages for you,’ Bob told her.
Susan patted his arm. ‘It’s all right. I don’t mind. I think James has got a bit of a soft spot for your little sister.’
Lillian could have kissed her.
For the next three days she lived in a state of nervous excitement. And then, when she had almost given up hope, there he was at the back door.
‘James!’ she squealed, leaping up and running to meet him. ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’
She just about stopped herself from throwing her arms round him.
‘Oh, well—you know—couldn’t go without saying goodbye,’ he said.
As bad luck would have it, all the family were home and sitting in the kitchen having tea. Lillian could hardly get a word in as Bob and Frank vied to give James advice on how to survive his basic training. And then it was over, and he was shaking everyone’s hand. When he got to Lillian he tugged at her plait and gave her a quick wink.
‘Don’t let them get you down, eh?’ he whispered.
She nodded, too close to tears to speak. It might be weeks before she saw him again. The back door closed behind him, and he was gone.
Desperate to be alone, Lillian went down the yard to the shed where she kept her bike, the bike that he had helped to fix. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she cried out in amazement. There was a note propped up on the saddle. As she snatched it up, she realised that the saddle itself was different. The saggy old thing covered in a beret had been changed for a brand new one, red and black to match the paintwork. Lillian scanned the note, almost too excited to take in the contents.
Thanks for all the dance lessons. Good luck. J.
Lillian clasped it to her chest.
James had done this for her, had taken the trouble to think of what she really needed and quietly fitted it on without making a fuss in front of her family. Life was worth living after all.
Chapter Five
LILLIAN cycled along the seafront with the wind in her hair. The tide was in, the sun was sparkling on the water and the seagulls were soaring in the blue sky. It was a warm July Saturday and everyone had their summer clothes on, the women in cotton dresses and straw hats, the men in short sleeves and open-necked shirts. Everyone seemed to have a smile on their face. Everyone but Lillian, whose heart was broken.
The summer season was practically at its height. Not so many people came to Southend for a whole week any more, but the day trippers were out in force. After years of war and then of austerity, people were sick of rations and restrictions and making do and general dreariness. It was a new age, there was a new young queen on the throne, and they wanted to have fun again. Hundreds of families came down the Thames on steamers, landed at Southend pier and streamed down its mile and a quarter to spread out along the seafront. Others came by train from the City or the East End. The quieter people got out at Leigh or Chalkwell or Westcliff, looking for more genteel pleasures. The rowdy ones stayed on for Southend and headed for the Golden Mile. Clubs and workplaces booked coaches which trundled down the main roads, stopping off at pubs along the way, till they arrived at the huge coach park behind the Golden Mile, their passengers happily drunk and ready for a good knees-up.
As she approached her own street, Lillian slowed down. She had already cycled all the way along the seafront to Shoebury and back and she ought to turn in and go home. But at Sunny View there was Gran and a whole list of chores. She couldn’t face it. She hated her family and she hated doing chores. Past the top of her road she went, past the Kursaal with its fairground and its dance hall and its famous dome, along the Golden Mile and all the amusement arcades and finally under the pier and out the other side. Here she stopped at last and treated herself to an ice cream.
She leaned on the rail at the edge of the promenade and looked down at the go-karts roaring round the speedway. The whiff of petrol and exhaust fumes set off a wave of longing.
‘Oh, James,’ she said with a sigh.
She was missing him so much. He was a month into his basic training now, and it had seemed like the longest month of her life. Nothing was fun any more. Nobody cared. Even Janette was fed up with hearing her talk about him and refused to listen any more.
‘Why don’t you write to me?’ she said out loud.
She still hoped against all logic that he would, but always she was sorely disappointed. She had to rely on Susan, begging her for news of her brother every time she came round to their house. Bob was often cross with her, telling her not to bother his girlfriend, but Susan was surprisingly nice.
‘He says he’s surviving it OK,’ she told Lillian. ‘He’s not letting the NCOs get him down.’
Or, ‘He’s been square-bashing all week and he’s got blisters, but at least he knows his left from his right, which is more than some of them do.’
Or, ‘He’s enjoying the rifle practice; he says he’s quite good at it.’
Always he sent his regards to the Parker family. The family, not Lillian personally. It hurt every time.
There was still another two weeks until he finished basic training and got a weekend pass. Would he call in at Sunny View? He had to. She couldn’t bear it if he was so close and she didn’t get to see him. A small cold voice of realism told her that he might well come to see Wendy. She gripped the handrail, growling with jealousy. It wasn’t fair! Why couldn’t she be beautiful like Wendy?
Below her, the young men running the speedway showed off, jumping on the side bumpers of the cars driven by pretty girls and flirting with them. All these people enjoying themselves. For her, summer only meant more work to do at Sunny View. She finished her ice cream and sighed deeply. She didn’t want to go home, but staying here was only making her feel more fed up.
She drew her eyes away from the speedway and looked at the pier pavilion with its theatre. A long banner advertised the summer show, with its singers and dancers. Dancers. An even deeper gloom settled on her. That was another thing. She was no nearer her dream of becoming a professional dancer. Then into her mind came something that James had said when they were discussing their futures.
‘It’s no good just waiting for fate to take its course; you have to do something yourself.’
‘I am,’ she had told him. ‘I practise every day.’
‘But that’s no use if nobody sees you but me and Janette. We’re not going to give you a job on the stage.’
Lillian had flared up at that, and asked him what he was doing towards becoming the owner of a garage with a car of his own.
‘At the moment I’m learning all I can, not just how to fix cars, but how to run the business. There’s all sorts of things that could be done better where I work,’ he told her. ‘Then I’ll try to get into REME when I do my national service and get a bit more training there, and when I come out I’m going to start doing repair work for people on Sundays and evenings and build up a list of customers while I save up for equipment. Then I’ll rent a small place and work my way up.’
Lillian had been very impressed. He really did have it all planned out. His was not just a dream, it was a real ambition. It made hers look like childish fantasy.
As she thought of this, her eye was caught by a poster with a dancer on it fixed to the railings just along from where she was leaning. She moved over to read it better.
Carnival Talent Contest—Children—Juniors—Adults—Big Prizes—Enter now!
A bubble of excitement formed inside Lillian. This was it! This was her chance to show what she could do! She grabbed her bike and pedalled up the steep hill to the Carnival offices to get an entry form, then freewheeled back down again and headed for home, her head buzzing with ideas of what she might do.
The moment she stepped in at the back door, she was in trouble. Bob was sitting at the kitchen table, studying for his banking exam.
‘Gran wants to see you,’ he said in a tone that made it sound like a threat.
Her confident mood evaporated. It was as if a heavy cloak had fallen over her shoulders, weighing her down, smothering her. Lillian went along to the front room and knocked. Gran didn’t even call for her to come in, she opened the door herself.
‘Where on earth have you been? Why are you never here when you’re needed?’
‘I…I didn’t know…’ Lillian stammered.
‘That’s no excuse. Your mother’s ill or something—’ Gran managed to imply that the illness was minor and probably imaginary ‘—and the sheets need to go on number five. What if we want to let that and it’s not ready? Go and see to it straight away.’
It was no use Lillian suggesting that someone else might have done it. Wendy was still at work; Frank was probably out, Bob was studying and of course Gran herself couldn’t do it. She was about to run upstairs when there was a ring at the front door. She hesitated. Usually she would have hurried to answer it, but Gran was just as near as she was and, as it was sure to be potential guests, she would want to look them over.
‘What are you standing there for?’ Gran demanded. ‘Go and answer it before they go away. We can’t afford to lose good money.’
Lillian did as she was bid. Standing on the doorstep were a young couple with a cheap suitcase each. The girl looked very nervous. She was half hiding behind the man. Lillian knew immediately what their fate would be but, with Gran listening to what she was saying, she didn’t dare suggest politely that they tried elsewhere.
‘If you’d like to come in, I’ll just fetch the landlady,’ she told them, using the formula that Gran required.
She put her head round Gran’s door again, informed her that there were guests to see her and set off to get the sheets out of the airing cupboard. As she went up the stairs, she heard Gran’s heavy footsteps crossing the hall floor and her icy voice.
‘Are you married?’
The man answered, sounding offended. ‘Yeah, ’course we are.’
‘You don’t look like it. Where’s your wedding certificate?’
‘At home, ain’t it? We don’t carry it around with us,’ the man said.
‘I don’t have any funny business going on under my roof.’
‘Here, what are you saying? You calling me a liar?’
The man sounded really truculent now. Lillian opened the airing cupboard door as quietly as she could, so that she didn’t miss anything.
‘I’m saying I have a right to say who I have using my rooms.’
The young woman spoke now, her voice squeaky with fear. ‘Come on, Pete, let’s leave it.’
‘No, I’m not bleeding leaving it. This old bat thinks we’re here for a dirty weekend. Bleeding cheek!’
‘I will not be sworn at. Kindly leave.’
Lillian leaned over the banisters. She could see the top of the young couple’s heads. The woman was edging towards the open door.
‘Please, Pete—’
‘Don’t worry, love. I wouldn’t stay here if you paid me. The cheek! I never heard the like. Come along, we’ll find somewhere what’s pleased to take our money.’
‘This is a respectable house,’ was Gran’s parting shot, before she closed the door behind them.
Lillian changed the bedlinen in room five, making crisp hospital corners as she had been taught, then ran up to the attic and tapped on the door of her parents’ room. Her mum was often what she called ‘a bit under the weather’ but she very rarely took to her bed, especially not on a Saturday, their busiest day.
‘Mum?’
She peeped round the door. Her mother was lying curled up in the high double bed. The green curtains were drawn, giving her face a ghostly tinge.
‘Mum, are you all right? Can I get you anything?’
Her mother opened her eyes a little. ‘Does your gran want me?’ She sounded very tired.
‘No, no, it’s all right. I’ve done number five, and I can do tea if you like. What’s the matter, Mum? Has the doctor been?’
‘No, no, it’s just—you know—women’s troubles.’
Lillian did know about women’s troubles now, but hers had not yet caused her to take to her bed.
‘D’you want a cuppa or anything?’
‘No, nothing. I just want to sleep.’
She closed her eyes again. Lillian crept away. It didn’t even occur to her to wish that she had a mother she could confide in, someone whom she could share her hopes with and consult about what she might do for the talent contest. Her mother had always been too tired or too busy to give her any attention. But oh, if only Aunty Eileen were still around…
The rest of the afternoon passed in a flurry of work. Two more lots of guests arrived, passed Gran’s stringent suitability test, were told the house rules and were shown their rooms. Lillian got on with buttering the bread and setting the table so that tea was ready for when for Dad and Wendy came in from work and Frank turned up from wherever he had been. After tea she had the washing-up and clearing away to do. Wendy was supposed to help her, but she was getting ready for a date.
Lillian was dying to rush round to Janette’s, tell her about the contest and sift through her pile of records to find a suitable one to perform to. But with Mum in bed and Wendy and the boys going out, there was nobody left but herself to make tea and cocoa, answer the door to any late guests and see to anything Gran might want. Lillian spent the evening humming tunes and trying out steps. A fast happy song or a slow dreamy one? Tap or ballet? She just couldn’t make her mind up. And then there was the question of what she was going to wear. It was all a lot more complicated than she had first thought. One thing was clear, though, she now had something to prove to James that she was just as serious as he was about achieving her aim.
On Sunday morning her mother was on her feet again, though looking far from well, but Lillian still had to help prepare the breakfasts for the PGs, clear away and wash up afterwards and strip their beds when they had left. Then there was Sunday lunch, with more washing-up and the cooker to clean.
‘Horrible, horrible thing!’ she growled, scrubbing grease from the inside of the oven.
It was nearly three in the afternoon before she finally made it round to Janette’s, and by then she was just bursting with impatience.
Her friend was thrilled with the idea of entering the talent contest.
‘You are brave! I like doing shows with the dancing school, but I couldn’t get up there and dance in front of judges.’
‘It’s a way to get noticed,’ Lillian said.
‘Won’t your family mind?’
This had been bothering Lillian. There was no danger of their going to the contest but, if she won, she would be in the local paper. She couldn’t imagine what the reaction would be.
‘I’m not going to think about that,’ she said. ‘Let’s decide what music I should choose.’
It took two days of constant mind-changing before she finally decided on We’re a Couple of Swells. The music was jaunty but not too fast and gave her an opportunity to put some gymnastics into the dance. She and Janette cobbled together bits of routines Janette had learnt at her classes with new ideas of Lillian’s that had been inspired by trips to the cinema and the variety shows she had watched on Janette’s parents’ television.
‘It’s no good trying to look like Grace Kelly or someone like that. My dance teacher says people like young girls to look like young girls, not sophisticated women. You need to be fresh and lively. People like lively. It makes them feel happy,’ Janette said.
Lillian had to take her word for it.
‘More like Petula Clark?’ she suggested.
‘Sort of. The gymnastics are good. They’re your strong point. Nobody at my class can do cartwheels and handsprings and stuff as well as you.’
So they all went in.
Costume was easier—Lillian could get into Janette’s pink taffeta party dress and her last year’s ballet shoes, so all she needed was a pair of frilly knickers to wear underneath.
‘Do I look all right? Isn’t it a bit babyish?’ she asked anxiously, peering at herself in Janette’s mirror.
‘It’s very pretty,’ Janette said, offended.
Lillian filled in her form and paid her entrance fee. She came away from the Carnival offices feeling rather sick. She was committed now. It wasn’t just a pipe dream; she really was going to get up there in front of people and perform. All she had to do now was to buy the sheet music for the pianist and practise until her dance was perfect.
James was due home the weekend before the carnival. Lillian stayed in all day on Saturday on the off-chance that he might call in. She whiled away the time practising her dance routine, but by late afternoon she couldn’t stand being inside any longer and went out into the yard to oil her bike. After all, James had told her to maintain it properly, and she didn’t want him to think she had been neglecting it.
She was busy pumping up the tyres, all the while keeping her ear tuned to any possible visitors to the house, when there was a pounding of footsteps in the back alleyway. Lillian looked up as Frank came crashing through the gate clutching a bundle wrapped in sacking. He dived into the shed, shuffled around a bit and then came out again without the bundle.
‘If anyone asks, you ain’t seen me, right?’ he said to Lillian.
‘Yeah, but—’
‘Ain’t seen me all day. You got that?’
‘Right.’
‘Mind you remember. It’s life or death.’
At that, he disappeared out of the back gate again and could be heard running northwards, away from the seafront. Lillian was about to go and investigate the bundle when she heard men’s voices coming from the other direction.
‘Which is his one?’
‘They all look the same.’
‘Count—his is the sixth one up.’
The tall back gate wobbled and opened to reveal three young men in Edwardian-style jackets, bootlace ties and drainpipe jeans. They sported long sideburns and their hair was brushed back in James Dean quiffs. When they caught sight of Lillian they stopped and stared for a moment. Lillian looked stonily back, trying to control a lurch of fear. Teddy boys! They might look very smart, but they had a bad reputation. They always went around in gangs and usually carried knuckle dusters and flick knives.
‘You Frank Parker’s sister?’ one demanded. He appeared to be the leader. The other two just stood there looking tough.
Lillian nodded.
‘Where is he?’
Lillian swallowed. They did look very threatening. ‘Dunno.’
‘He indoors?’
‘No.’
‘You sure? Only he was heading up this way.’
They took a couple of steps towards her. Lillian stood up. Life or death, that was what Frank had said. He might be a pain, but he was her brother.
‘I ain’t seen him all day.’
It came out without a wobble. Lillian was proud of herself. The three men looked unconvinced.
‘I been out here doing my bike for half an hour or more,’ she elaborated. ‘So I’d of seen him come in. We always use the back.’
‘You’re not lying, are you?’ the leader asked.
All three of them pressed forward, surrounding her. Their faces were menacing. The leader pushed her in the chest with his hard fingers.
‘Only you better not be lying. We don’t like liars.’
One of them picked up her bike. ‘This yours?’
Anger laced with fear came flooding through her. ‘Don’t you touch that! I ain’t done nothing to you.’
The young man laughed and heaved it over the fence, where it landed in next door’s yard with a clatter.
‘You pig! You better not of damaged it!’ Lillian cried.
What would James say if he found it was broken?
The leader poked her again. Lillian’s heart beat with fear.
‘That’s just a warning. If we find out you’re lying, you’ll be over that fence next, see? Now, where’s Frank?’
‘I dunno!’ Lillian repeated desperately.
She tried to turn and run inside, but one of the Teds grabbed her and spun her round to face the leader.
‘You leave her alone!’ A new voice rang out.
There was a blur of khaki and a smack of fist on flesh. First one then the other Ted yelped and Lillian found herself released.
‘James!’
For it was him, in his uniform and very angry.
The third Ted, the one who had thrown her bike over the fence, yelled, ‘Blimey, it’s the army!’
James landed two more punches on the leader.
‘Yeah, and you better scarper before my mates get out here. They’ll make mincemeat of you,’ he threatened.
For a long nerve-stretching moment, Lillian thought the Teds might set on James with bicycle chains or flick knives. James made a move towards the third one. It broke the deadlock. All three turned and ran.
Lillian’s legs turned suddenly to string. She staggered and James caught her in his arms.
‘Lillian, are you all right? What was all that about?’
‘Where’s your friends?’ Lillian asked stupidly.
‘What? Oh, there aren’t any. I didn’t want them to think it was three to one. Lillian, what’s going on?’
Shakily, Lillian managed to explain.
‘I don’t think much of the company your brother keeps,’ James said. ‘Come on, let’s get you inside.’
For once in her life, Lillian was the centre of attention.
‘Oh, Lillian, thank God—’ her mother gasped. ‘Those dreadful Teddy boys—sit down, sit down—’
She found herself sitting at the kitchen table, clasped in her mother’s arms.
‘Hot sweet tea, that’s what she needs for shock,’ James was saying.
Susan filled the kettle. ‘Did you take them on all by yourself?’ she asked her brother.
‘He did. There were three of them; they were looking for Frank,’ Lillian explained.
‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to, really I don’t,’ her mother wailed.
Gran appeared, alerted by the raised voices. ‘What’s going on here?’
Everyone tried to explain at once.
Gran laid a hand on Lillian’s shoulder. ‘You all right, girl?’ she asked gruffly.
Lillian nodded. It was the first time she had ever been shown any concern from her grandmother.
‘That boy; he’s heading for trouble,’ Gran stated. ‘I’ll have a few words to say to him when he gets home.’
A cup of hot sweet tea was put in front of Lillian. She sipped it, basking in her temporary star status.
Gran was fulminating about Frank bringing the family in disrepute while Bob agreed with her. Susan distributed more tea.
‘What did they want Frank for, I wonder?’ James said.
With a jolt, Lillian remembered the bundle. What was it, that caused so much trouble? And was it still in the shed? She wanted to go and look but, when she made to get up, James pressed her down into her chair again.
‘You just stay there.’
And then she thought of something else. ‘My bike! Have they damaged my bike?’
‘I’ll check in a minute. If they have, I’ll mend it,’ James assured her.
Nettie looked up at him. ‘You saved my little girl,’ she said. ‘I’ll never be able to thank you enough.’
By the time Dad and Wendy arrived home, James was the official hero of the hour.
‘Fought them off single-handed, he did,’ Nettie said.
‘If I’d have known what was going on, I would have been there with him,’ Bob explained.
‘Of course you would, dear,’ Susan agreed.
Even Wendy looked mildly impressed.
Everyone wanted to know all about James’s basic training, and he kept them all entertained with stories of the hardships he had survived until Susan reminded him that their mother was making him a special meal.
‘Nothing skimped now rationing’s over,’ she boasted.
And he was gone. Lillian had been rescued by him, but had had no chance to speak to him and tell him about what she was doing towards making her dream come true. It was very poor compensation to hear Frank getting a rollicking from Gran when he finally made an appearance close to bedtime.
Chapter Six
THE Wednesday of the talent contest was wet and windy. Ja-nette came to call for Lillian and they cycled along the gusty seafront in their school macs carrying the party dress, ballet shoes and sheet music plus make-up that Lillian had stolen from the messy cache in Wendy’s side of the chest of drawers. They were heading for the bandstand, which was at the top of the cliff gardens on the far side of the pier from where Lillian lived. As they went, Lillian kept her nerves at bay by telling her friend all about her brush with the Teddy boys and James’s heroic rescue. Janette was awestruck.
‘Weren’t you terrified?’ she asked, her bike wobbling as she gazed at Lillian.
‘You bet I was! I thought they were going to pull me to pieces. They don’t care, you know. They don’t care about anything, Teds don’t.’
‘But what was in the bundle?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lillian admitted. ‘When I went back to have a look later, it was gone. Frank must’ve sneaked in and got it some time in the evening, ’cos he didn’t come home properly till gone eleven. I think he thought everyone’d be in bed by then. Well, usually they are, but Gran and Dad stayed up. He didn’t half get a telling off from them, I can tell you.’
‘Serves him right.’
‘Do you know something? He had a go at me the next day about it! Said I should of kept quiet about it with the family! I said to him, “You owe me, Frank. I didn’t say anything to the Teds, and I didn’t tell Gran and Dad about that stuff you hid and, if James hadn’t come along, I’d of been chucked over the fence and landed on top of my bike.” But he wasn’t a bit grateful.’
‘The beast,’ Janette sympathised. ‘But what a bit of luck, James arriving just at that moment.’
‘Wasn’t it?’ Lillian agreed. The biggest bit of luck she’d had for a long time. The trouble was, she was going to have to live on that memory now, for she had seen nothing more of James that weekend. According to Susan, he had gone out with his friends on the Saturday night, stayed in for Sunday lunch with the family the next day and had set off back for Catterick by late afternoon. Now it would be another long, long six months before he got any more leave.
They had no breath left for talking as they laboured up Pier Hill, and from there it was only a short spin along the cliff top past the Never Never Land gardens to the band stand. The building was oval shaped, with a covered stage facing away from the sea and covered seating on three sides. In the centre was a large seating area open to the weather where on nice days people sat in the sunshine to enjoy the concerts and look at the view through the glass walls.
By the time Lillian and Janette arrived they were wet and dishevelled. Everyone else seemed to have come with their mothers, and the place was awash with loud-voiced women chivvying their children and insisting on somewhere decent to change. Lillian and Janette found the harassed-looking organisers and asked what they had to do.
‘Who did you say you were, dear? Lindy-Lou Parker? Oh, yes. And you’re doing what? Dancing? Have you got your music? You’re number eleven on the running order. Off you go round the back there and get changed, then someone will tell you where to sit until it’s your turn.’
Janette was snorting with laughter as they walked away.
‘Lindy-Lou? Where does that come from?’
‘It’s what my Aunty Eileen used to call me,’ Lillian told her.
‘But you were only six then.’
‘All the same, it’s better than Lillian. More sort of stagey.’
‘More sort of babyish, if you ask me.’
Still arguing, they found a damp corner of the cramped room beside the stage. Lillian stepped into the taffeta dress. As a party dress it would have been much too short for her, but it was fine for dancing as it showed off her long slim legs.
‘You should have tights on underneath really, but your legs are nice and brown, so perhaps it won’t notice,’ Janette said.
‘I did them with gravy browning, like they used to during the war. You don’t think they’ll go streaky in the rain, do you?’ Lillian asked.
‘Keep them covered, just in case.’
The night before, Lillian had borrowed some of Wendy’s setting lotion, combed it through her hair, then made it into six tight little plaits. Now she unplaited them and brushed the now crinkly hair into two bunches, which she tied up with pink ribbons.
‘What d’you think?’ she asked.
Janette put her head to one side, considering. ‘Well…’
Lillian’s confidence plummeted. ‘You think it’s horrible,’ she accused.
‘No—’
Lillian peered into the hand mirror she had brought with her.
‘You’re right, it is horrible. Oh, if only Aunty Eileen were here, she’d of done it beautifully for me.’
‘Well, she isn’t, so it’ll have to do,’ said her practical friend. ‘Sit down, and I’ll do your make-up.’
Lillian submitted to Janette’s efforts with the powder and lipstick. Once more, Lillian looked in the mirror.
‘I look like a doll!’ she exclaimed, horrified.
‘It’s stage make-up. It has to be like that,’ Janette insisted.
Lillian looked about her. Some of the pushy mothers were applying real greasepaint to their little dears’ faces. All of the performers looked like badly painted dolls. Reluctantly, she accepted Janette’s word for it. After all, Janette had performed in dancing school shows. For all her ambitions, Lillian had never set foot on a stage before.
The time for the start of the competition drew near. The competitors were herded off into seats alongside the stage while the mothers and Janette had to sit in a different part of the bandstand. Day trippers and holidaymakers out for some entertainment huddled in the sheltered seats and the four judges sat at the table at the centre back. There was a huge gap of empty seats in the middle where nobody wanted to sit in the rain. A compère with an over-jolly voice came on and made a couple of feeble jokes, introduced the judges and the pianist, and the contest began.
First on was a boy of twelve or so who played The HappyWanderer on the accordion. He got a decent smattering of applause and went off again looking fairly pleased with himself. Next came a lumpy girl in a short frilly dress and ringlets who sang On The Good Ship Lollipop in a shrill voice. The girl sitting next to Lillian leaned close and commented, ‘There’s always someone who does Shirley Temple. Isn’t she dreadful?’
‘Ghastly,’ Lillian agreed.
Nerves were really getting to her now. She felt sick and her hands and legs were shaking. Whatever had made her think that this was a good idea?
Two girls dressed up as twins went next and did a tap dance. Lillian couldn’t really see them from where she was sitting, but she could hear that they weren’t entirely in step.
‘That was pretty crummy,’ the girl beside her commented.
One by one the competitors went up. Singers, dancers, a conjurer, a violinist. Then it was the turn of the scornful girl next to Lillian. As she got up, Lillian started trying to warm up. It was difficult in such a restricted space. She could hear the girl singing Oh My Papa in a big brash voice. It was quite a crowd-pleaser, bringing in the most applause there had been yet. Lillian had a feeling of doom in her stomach like a stone. How was she going to follow that? It was obvious that the girl had been having lessons for ever and made a habit of going in for talent contests. She wished she could just run out of this place and keep running. But a motherly-looking woman with a clipboard was beckoning to her. Shaking, Lillian walked towards her. This was it.
‘And next—’ boomed the compère, ‘we have little Miss Lindy-Lou Parker dancing to We’re a Couple of Swells.’
The woman with the clipboard gave Lillian a little push. ‘Go on, dear, it’s you.’
Lillian took a deep breath and stepped onto the stage. There was a smattering of applause. It seemed very high up and exposed, and the audience was an impossibly long way away, sheltering at the back. Facing her were rows of wet unoccupied chairs. Lillian wanted to jump off the stage and crawl underneath them.
But then the pianist struck the opening notes, thumping the piano with unforgiving fingers, and something happened to Lillian’s body. The music, pedestrian though it was, told her what to do. She performed a perky stroll round the stage and launched into the routine she had practised with such persistence. The steps, the turns, the arm movements ran seamlessly one into the other. She began to actually enjoy herself. The smile she had pasted on her face became genuine as she projected her joy in dancing to the people huddled at the back at the bandstand. Before she could believe it, the last phrase was rolling out. Lillian executed a series of pirouettes, turned a perfect cartwheel and dropped into the splits on the last chord. She bowed and looked up, still with her legs splayed on the floor of the stage. They were clapping! They were clapping her! She bounced up and bowed again. There was more applause. This was wonderful. They liked her. She wanted it to go on for ever.
‘Thank you, Lindy-Lou,’ the compère was saying. ‘Thank you. Off you go, now.’
He was ushering her off the stage. There was a sniggering from the wings. Lillian saw the next child waiting to come on and realised that she had outstayed her welcome. Scarlet with embarrassment, she ran off.
On the other side of the stage from where she had been waiting to go on, the competitors who had already performed were penned up together. The Oh My Papa girl spoke to her with grudging respect.
‘Sounds like you were quite good,’ she said. ‘Better than most of this lot, anyway.’
‘You were smashing,’ Lillian said politely. ‘You’ve got a—a big voice.’
‘My teacher says I’m going to be the next Anne Shelton,’ the girl said.
Lillian could believe it. The famous singer must have sounded similar when she was young.
As the excitement of performing drained away, Lillian found she was cold and hungry. She sat shivering as the long list of young people did their turns. The crowd in the seats on her side of the stage grew and grew. The scornful girl continued her commentary on everyone’s efforts. Lillian had time to wonder how Janette was, waiting out there in the damp with all those mothers. And then at last it was over and the compère was telling jokes as the judges made up their minds. Nerves were gnawing at Lillian’s stomach again. She chewed her knuckles. She really, really wanted to win a prize. First prize, preferably, but anything would do, just some recognition that she could do it, she could be a dancer if she tried hard enough.
‘I can’t bear it, this waiting,’ she said to the girl next to her.
‘They always make such a to-do about the judging. I don’t know why, when it’s obvious who’s best.’
‘It is? Who is?’ Lillian asked.
The girl gave her a pitying look. ‘Me, of course, stupid.’
‘Bighead,’ Lillian muttered.
Then the pianist played a fanfare and the carnival queen and her court came onto the stage to huge applause to present the prizes. A photographer from the local paper got ready to snap the winners. The head judge handed a piece of paper to the compère.
‘Right then, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Here are the results in reverse order. Highly commended—’
Two names were read out. Part of Lillian was disappointed, another part was still hopeful of even better things.
‘Third prize—’
It was the accordion boy. He bounded up onto the stage, beaming all over his chubby face. Lillian felt she was going to burst with suspense.
Please, God, she bargained silently, please let it be me. I’ll be good for the rest of my life.
‘Second prize—Lindy-Lou Parker.’
It was her. They were saying her name. Lillian just sat there, confounded.
‘Go on,’ her neighbour said, poking her. ‘That’s you. You’re second.’
Her head swimming with amazement, Lillian stood up. Somehow she made her way onto the stage. There was a polite round of applause. She walked across to the carnival queen, an impossibly glamorous young woman in a long white gown and a blue cloak with a crown of what to Lillian looked like sparkling diamonds on her head. Lillian curtseyed, which made some of the court ladies giggle.
‘Well done, dear,’ the queen said, handing her an envelope. ‘Smile for the camera.’
She was directing a brilliant smile at the photographer. Giddy with delight, Lillian did the same. There was a flash, and then it was over. Once again, she was being ushered off stage. There was a shriek from the audience.
‘Lillian! We done it! We done it!’
There, in front of the mothers’ seats, was Janette, jumping up and down and waving both arms over her head. Lillian squealed and managed to wave back before she was grabbed and pushed into the wings. Somewhere behind her the winner was announced. It was the Oh My Papa girl. Lillian didn’t care. She had got a prize! The judges thought she was good. She was really going to be a dancer one day. It was all just too wonderful to be true.
All the way home the girls went over every detail of the contest, but at Lillian’s house they parted and Janette went on her way. Lillian was still buzzing with her success as she pushed her bike through the back gate. She did a couple of handsprings as she crossed the yard, out of sheer exuberance. As ill luck would have it, Gran was in the kitchen when she arrived, checking the state of the shelves.
‘Time you grew up, young lady,’ she said. ‘Kicking your legs up in public like that. What would the neighbours think if they saw you?’
Any lingering hope Lillian might have had that her family might be interested, let alone pleased at her success, instantly died.
‘Sorry, Gran,’ she said.
‘And what’s all that muck on your face?’
‘Oh!’ Lillian’s hand went to her cheek. In the excitement, she had forgotten to wipe the make-up off. ‘Er—Janette and I were playing about with her mum’s make-up. Her mum doesn’t mind.’
‘She ought to mind. Letting a young girl go out looking like a scarlet woman! Go and wash it off at once. And then you can go and get a loaf and a pound of streaky bacon. We’re full tonight.’
Lillian had been too self-absorbed to notice the ‘No Vacancies’ sign up in the front window. Carnival week was the busiest of the year. There were two processions, one on Saturday and a torchlight one on Wednesday evening, a funfair at Chalkwell park, dances and dinners on somewhere in the town every evening and various competitions and displays. It was no wonder they were full mid-week.
‘That’s good,’ she said.
‘Seems people have got money to waste,’ Gran commented with a sniff of disapproval.
Lillian did not hang around to point out that surely it was not wasted if it came into Gran’s pocket.
It was one of the PGs who gave her away. She was bringing the toast into the guests’ breakfast room when a middle-aged man recognised her.
‘Well, if it isn’t Miss Lindy-Lou Parker!’
Lillian went cold. Gran was right behind her, making sure that the guests didn’t pocket the cruets or fill their flasks from the teapot.
‘Oh!’ the man’s wife exclaimed. ‘So it is. Oh, we did enjoy the show, dear. You was ever so good.’
‘Lovely little dancer,’ her husband agreed.
‘Lovely. Ain’t she a lovely little dancer?’ the woman asked Gran. ‘You must be very proud of her.’
Lillian could feel her grandmother’s piercing eyes on her, shrivelling her up inside.
‘Yes,’ Gran said.
Lillian knew she was only saying that to keep face in front of the guests. Sure enough, as soon as they were all safely out of the house, she was summoned to Gran’s room.
‘What’s all this about dancing?’
Lillian glared back at her, her heart beating hard.
‘I was in the Carnival Talent Contest,’ she said, her voice loud with defiance. ‘I got a prize.’
‘You went up on a stage and made an exhibition of yourself in public?’
The way Gran said it, performing on a stage was something disgraceful. Anger overcame Lillian’s fear of her grandmother.
‘I wasn’t making an exhibition of myself, I was dancing. What’s so wrong with that? And I was good; I came second out of lots of people.’
This made Gran even angrier. If there was one thing she didn’t like, it was people arguing with her.
‘Don’t you defy me, my girl. If I say you’re not to go up on a stage, then you’re not, and no questions asked. Understand?’
‘No, I don’t!’ Tears of anger and frustration were gathering in Lillian’s eyes now. ‘Just tell me what’s so wrong about it!’
‘You lied to me. Lied by sneaking out and doing it behind my back. And I won’t stand for liars. You’re a disgrace to the family—’
Gran was off on one of her tirades. Lillian stared at a point above her shoulder and tried not to listen.
‘—and you’re not too big to be punished.’
Lillian came back from the place where she had been mentally sheltering to see that Gran had the stick in her hand. With a wicked swish, it came down hard on her calves, sharp and stinging, five times. She couldn’t contain a squeal of pain.
‘There—’ Gran was looking at her with satisfaction now, breathing hard. ‘Now say you’re sorry.’
‘Sorry,’ Lillian mumbled, with huge reluctance.
‘Let this be a lesson to you. No going out for two weeks.’
‘But, Gran—’
This was a real blow. Lillian had been looking forward to going to the funfair with Janette and her other friends.
‘No buts. Go and see if your mother needs some help.’
Sore, angry and resentful, Lillian did as she was told.
To her surprise, Wendy was completely on her side. In bed that night, she wanted to know all about the contest.
‘Good for you, kid,’ she commented. ‘Don’t you take any notice of what Gran says. Blooming killjoy! It’s Eileen, you know. She thinks if she’s hard enough on us we won’t turn out like her.’
Light dawned in Lillian’s mind. So that was it.
‘But how could going in for a talent contest mean I’m going to run away with a married man?’
‘Search me, kid. That’s Gran, isn’t it? Grumpy old bag. I always wanted to go in for the Carnival Princess, but I never dared. I bet I would of won, too. Maybe next year I’ll go in for the Carnival Queen. That’d show them!’
Warmed by the thrill of sisterly solidarity, Lillian agreed. ‘I think you should, if that’s what you really want. Aunty Eileen said you should always follow your dream. That’s what she did.’
‘Bully for Eileen. I hope she’s enjoying herself. She was right to escape from this family,’ Wendy said.
Despite the gating, Lillian didn’t regret her actions for a minute. It was more than worth it when she relived her short spot on stage, the heady thrill of performing, and the dizzy moment when her name had been called out.
Ten days or so after the event, support came from an unexpected quarter. As the family sat round the tea table, Bob made a pronouncement. ‘I think we may have been a little hard on Lillian. After all, she did win a prize in that contest.’
Lillian gazed at him in astonishment. Her brother was sticking up for her! It was unheard of. Only Bob, with his status as the brains of the family with a respectable job, could have got away with saying such a thing. Even so, Gran did not look best pleased.
‘What, for kicking her legs up in front of a lot of strangers?’
‘But it was for the Carnival Fund. That’s a very good cause, you know. They’re building bungalows for deserving old folk. Mr Caraway supports the Carnival Fund. He said that our Lillian was a credit to us, giving her time and her talent.’
Mr Caraway was the manager at Bob’s bank, and second only to God as far as Gran was concerned.
‘Huh, well, that’s as may be. I’m sure it is a good cause, though no one ever offered me a bungalow, but it still doesn’t mean I want to hear of my granddaughter making an exhibition of herself in public,’ Gran said, unwilling to concede the point, even to her favourite.
It was only later that Lillian found out how Bob came to be championing her. Susan had written to James about it, and James had written back in her defence. Susan had then used her influence with Bob. Lillian was overjoyed. Even far away in Catterick, James had thought to come to her aid. It was practically another prize.
Chapter Seven
THERE were far better reasons for a forty-eight-hour pass than attending your sister’s engagement party, James thought as he watched the lighted windows of the eastern suburbs of London trundle by. Especially when that sister was set on marrying Boring Bob Parker. The party itself didn’t promise to be a bundle of laughs, either. His army pals had envied him his trip home, assuming that the celebration would be a big booze-up at the pub. James hadn’t told them that it was going to be Saturday tea at the Parkers’ place. Even with a cake made and iced by Susan, it was not his idea of fun. Still, family was family and Susan had insisted that the celebration be postponed until he could get leave, so here he was on the train to Southend, ready to be happy for his sister and his mother, both of whom appeared to be delighted with this turn of events. And, of course, there was the bonus of seeing Wendy again. Maybe she was an unattainable star, but he wasn’t going to give up trying.
Homecoming was always special, engagement or no engagement, and as the train passed through Leigh-on-Sea James put away his book and stared out into the darkness, trying to see the estuary. Moonlight spilled through a gap in the clouds as he gazed, making a silver path across the Thames and emphasizing the dark shapes of the boats moored in the shallows, while across on the other side the flames from the oil refineries flared like beacons. It was good to be back.
Susan and Bob were waiting for him at Southend Central. An irrational disappointment dragged at James when he saw it was just the two of them. He hadn’t expected Wendy to be with them to greet him. He hadn’t even hoped. It was Friday night and she was sure to be out with some flash bloke enjoying herself. But, all the same…He pulled himself together and strode along the platform to meet them.
‘Hello, you two! Congratulations—’ He kissed Susan’s cheek, shook Bob’s hand. ‘I hope you appreciate what a treasure you’ve got in my sister.’
‘Oh, James—!’ Susan exclaimed, embarrassed but pleased.
‘But of course I do. She’s going to be the perfect wife,’ Bob assured him.
James could believe that all right. Susan had been in training for it all her life. She was an excellent cook, even with the limited facilities they had in their tiny kitchen, an accomplished needlewoman and a fanatical housewife. And she was used to managing on a limited income. There would be no overspending in their household.
Susan threaded her arm through her fiancé’s and gazed up at him with pride.
‘And Bob will be the perfect husband.’
This James doubted. How could his sister be in love with such a dull stick? It was still a mystery to him.
‘How’s your family?’ he asked Bob, hoping for news of Wendy.
‘Oh—fine, fine, thank you. All very well. They’re looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. Lillian wanted to come with us to meet you this evening! But of course it was out of the question.’
Little Lillian. James smiled to himself. That put him in his place. He hoped for Wendy and got her kid sister. Well, at least someone was pleased he was back.
All the way home, he was treated to an account of how Bob and Susan were saving up for the deposit on a house of their own. Before they had crossed the High Street, he was bored almost to tears with the minutiae of percentages and repayments and surveyors and solicitors. It all seemed so dry compared with the active challenges he had been tackling every day on his army training. It was only when they arrived at the flat that his own achievement was recognised.
‘My darling boy!’ His mother gave him a welcoming hug. She seemed smaller than when he had last seen her. He could feel the frail bones of her back.
She held his upper arms to take a good look at him, then realised what was under her fingers.
‘What’s this? A lance corporal’s stripe? You clever thing! Well done! Look, Susan, Bob—James has been made a lance corporal already!’
James gave a shrug. ‘It’s only one little step up the ladder, Mum.’
But he couldn’t help sneaking a look at Bob, who he knew had only got his stripe a month before leaving the army.
‘You’re spending your time yelling at your platoon, then?’ Bob said.
‘Oh, yes, I got my drills one and two, and my marksman’s. All helps put a bit extra in the pay,’ James said, deliberately playing it down. They both knew that not everyone got these qualifications. He had spiked Bob’s right to patronise him when it came to army service.
It wasn’t until Susan had gone off to the Parkers’ the next afternoon to help with the party food that James had a chance to speak to his mother about the engagement.
‘Do you really think Susan’s doing the right thing?’ he asked.
His mother looked at him in amazement. ‘But of course she is, darling. She’s so happy! And Bob’s such a steady chap, he’ll look after her well. They’re saving for a house of their own, you know. Bob has it all worked out—’
‘Yes, I do know.’ He had heard more than enough about it last night. ‘But is that enough? I mean, is that all you need to be happy with someone?’
‘Susan loves him, and he’ll be a good provider. Not like some young fellows these days. The things you hear about those Teddy boys! I’m afraid his brother is one of them. Now, if our Susan wanted to marry Frank, I’d be very worried, but Bob’s quite different. He’s solid, is Bob.’
So that was all that women wanted? A house and a good provider? He was sure that Wendy wanted more than that. Unbidden, into his mind came the memory of Lillian telling him of her dream of becoming a dancer. She certainly wanted something out of the ordinary. But then she was just a kid. It was different for his sister.
The celebration tea at the Parkers’ was slightly less gruesome than the one ten months ago when the two families had been introduced to each other.
After months of army food, just having a good tea was a treat for James. Now that rationing had at last ended, everyone was enjoying a more varied diet. Susan’s cake took pride of place in the centre of the table, a fluffy sponge covered with royal icing and fancy piping, with her name and Bob’s inside a sugar heart. It was resting on a green glass plate that James and Susan’s parents had received as a wedding present. Around it were jam tarts and scones, and four different sorts of sandwiches—banana, egg and cress, corned beef and ham and mustard.
‘What a feast!’ James said, and earned grateful smiles from all the womenfolk who had been involved in providing the spread.
All, that was, except Wendy. She was looking more opulent and desirable than ever in a baby-blue fluffy jumper and a grey pencil skirt.
‘Typical man, thinking about his stomach,’ she remarked. It sounded dismissive, but there was that challenge in her eyes.
‘I was thinking what a good party this is for Bob and Susan,’ James said.
His hands ached to run down her spine and over her beautiful backside.
‘We all helped,’ another voice piped up.
A small part of his mind registered Lillian’s presence, but his attention was still on her sister.
‘Oh, yeah, the happy couple,’ Wendy said.
For the first time, he realised that they thought the same about something. Wendy was no more delighted with the occasion than he was but, with both their families within earshot, they could say nothing more. One thing was for sure, though—he was determined not to be outmanoeuvred at the tea table this time. He pulled a chair out and invited Wendy to sit down. To his delight, she accepted. Swiftly, he sat on the chair next to hers. Mission accomplished. His knee was just inches from hers.
The rest of the family were sorting themselves out. The older ones hadn’t changed in the time since he had last seen them. Wendy’s mum was still faded and anxious-looking, her dad still carried his dark cloud of resentment against the world, her grandmother still ruled them all. But the young people had changed. Bob looked practically middle-aged; he was even going a bit thin on top, though he was only twenty-five. Frank was sporting a DA and sideburns to go with his full Teddy boy rig of draped jacket, drainpipe trousers and brothel-creeper shoes. And Lillian—Lillian was sitting at the corner of the table furthest from him, in between her mother and grandmother. Her schoolgirl plaits were gone and in their place was a fashionable ponytail. She was wearing a white blouse and bright red cardigan with a full blue and grey checked skirt, and around her waist was one of those wide elastic belts that Wendy favoured. She would have looked surprisingly grown-up, had she not been in a huge sulk. James caught her eye and was given a glowering look. He couldn’t imagine what he had done to upset her. Why, he’d hardly spoken to her, so what could he have said wrong? He gave her a grin and a wink across the table. She went red and looked away. James gave up on her. He had more important things to do than worry about a sulky kid.
As the conversation limped along at the table, James gradually let his leg sag sideways, until his knee touched Wendy’s. He expected her to twitch her leg away in a huff but she didn’t, so James moved his foot as well, so that it was resting alongside Wendy’s. He could feel the warmth of her shapely calf against his as she talked to the others, natural as anything, not giving anything away.
When most of the food was eaten, Susan stood up to cut the celebration cake. Flushed and happy, his sister sliced into her white-iced masterpiece and handed it round the table to polite noises of admiration from everyone. James did not want to move from his delicious closeness to Wendy, but he had been planning a surprise for this moment and he didn’t want to let it pass. The Parkers might have the big house to hold this party, but the Kershaws were not going to sit there playing the poor relations, not while he could do something about it. He reached behind him for the brown paper bag he had set down by the wall.
‘Before we eat Susan’s lovely cake—’ he said.
Voices round the table fell quiet. Surprised eyes turned on him. Gran Parker looked affronted at his interruption, Susan’s face was frozen in dismay. He smiled at his sister, trying to reassure her that he was not about to ruin her big moment.
‘—I thought it would be nice to have something a bit more exciting than tea to toast the happy couple with.’
He produced a bottle of sherry and a half bottle of Scotch. There was silence for a couple of heartbeats while the entire Parker clan looked at Gran to see what her reaction would be. The old woman pursed her lips, then, to everyone’s surprise, she gave a nod.
‘I wouldn’t say no.’
There was a general letting-out of breath and happy clamour. Lillian was sent to fetch glasses and James poured sherry for the ladies and Scotch for the men, making sure that Lillian got a drop along with the others. Keeping a firm hold on the initiative, he stood up and raised his glass.
‘To Susan and Bob—may they have a long and happy life together,’ he said.
‘Susan and Bob!’ everyone chorused.
Glasses clinked, drinks were sipped, the cake was eaten, everyone relaxed for the first time that day. Across the table from him, James was glad to see his sister glowing with pleasure and his mother wiping away happy tears. The Parker men had a more complicated reaction. They were obviously delighted to be having a drink, but mortified that someone younger than them had had the courage to risk Gran’s disapproval. One up to the Kershaws, he thought as Wendy’s leg brushed against his.
When the meal was finally over and the smokers were lighting up, Gran gave Lillian a poke in the arm. ‘Dishes, Lillian. And you, Wendy.’
Susan got up to help as well, but James stood at the same time.
‘It’s all right, Suse, I’ll do it. This is your party.’
This time, though, his plan fell apart. Wendy helped clear the dirty plates but, once they were piled up in the kitchen, she made for the door.
‘Won’t be long,’ she said.
Lillian slammed the cutlery into the sink.
‘Huh. That’s what she always says. That’ll be the last we see of her. She’ll only come back again if she thinks Gran’s about to come and inspect what we’re doing.’
James was torn. He wanted to follow Wendy to wherever she was off to, but a sense of fairness held him where he was. Everyone took advantage of Lillian. He didn’t want to be the same. He gave her glossy ponytail a playful tug.
‘What’s up with you, Lill? You’re like a bear with a sore head.’
She jerked her hair away. ‘Don’t call me Lill. I hate it.’
‘OK, OK.’ James picked up the tea towel. ‘So what shall I call you? Lillian’s a bit of a mouthful.’
Lillian didn’t answer. She washed the cups and saucers and plates with swift efficiency and stacked them on the draining board for James to dry. He could tell just by the set of her shoulders that something was up.
‘What do you think?’ he persisted, while wondering where Wendy was. Probably the only places she could hide were the bathroom or her bedroom, neither of which he could go to.
‘My Aunty Eileen called me Lindy-Lou. But don’t you dare say that’s babyish,’ she growled.
It was babyish, of course. But he couldn’t keep his mind on the subject. Supposing Wendy had been expecting him to follow her? Was he missing his big chance? But then, if he didn’t follow her when she wanted him to, did that give him the upper hand? Perhaps, if he did try it on, she would just laugh at him…He wasn’t used to this games playing. He wasn’t even sure if it was games playing. Maybe Wendy simply didn’t like washing-up.
He was roused from his reverie by the sound of a sob. He glanced at Lillian and was horrified to find that she was crying. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
‘Hey—what’s the matter? Whatever’s wrong?’
No doubt her ghastly family had done something to upset her.
Lillian threw the dishcloth into the water and held on to the rim of the sink with white-knuckled hands. Her shoulders were shaking.
‘Why are you so h-horrible to me?’ she sobbed.
James was shocked. ‘Me? What have I done?’
‘You’re ignoring me. You’re treating me l-like I’m not here, just like they all do. You used not to. You used to be n-nice to me. You treated me like I was a p-proper person and you l-listened to me.’
‘I am listening to you,’ James protested.
‘You’re not! You’re thinking about Wendy.’
This was so true that he was silenced.
‘I hate her. She’s so beautiful and everything, she just does what she likes. It’s not fair! I saw what she was doing. Just ’cos I said you were going to be rich—’
‘What?’ James asked. He couldn’t follow this at all.
Lillian bit her lip. For several moments she didn’t answer. She just stood there, fiddling with the dish cloth. Finally it burst out of her.
‘I told her you were going to be rich one day, and own a garage and a car and everything, and now she’s sitting next to you and looking at you with those goo-goo eyes—’
Now it was James’s turn to be angry. He didn’t want to be seen as some stupid boy boasting about what he was going to do, when he knew no one would believe him. His own mother didn’t believe him when he said he was going to get her out of that flat one day. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe it himself. He did, completely. But he knew how it looked to other people—just a pipe dream.
‘You told her about that? Lillian, I told you in confidence. That was between you and me. I haven’t told anyone about your dreams. I wouldn’t even think of doing so. They’re your private thoughts.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry—’ Lillian was shaking her head from side to side as she listened to him. Now she looked up at him with anguished eyes, her face pinched and her mouth distorted. ‘I didn’t mean to, honest. It just sort of came out. We were talking, and we never talk usually and she was being nice for once and telling me what she wanted and about marrying someone rich and that and I just sort of let it out. Oh, now I’ve spoilt everything! I wish I was dead—’
Living with two women over the years had made him used to coping with emotional outbursts. He put his arms round Lillian and rocked her as she sobbed on his shoulder.
‘Come on, now, you don’t mean that. And I know you wouldn’t have let it out deliberately; you’re not like that. It’s not the end of the world—’
‘Well, well, well! What a touching little scene!’
James looked round. There in the doorway was Wendy, standing with one hand on the frame and the other on her hip, smiling. James felt his face going red. This must look bad.
‘She’s upset,’ he said.
‘She’s fifteen,’ Wendy said, as if that explained everything. She strolled into the kitchen and picked up a spare tea towel. ‘Good thing it was me and not Gran or Dad what came in.’
With a howl, Lillian backed out of his now loose embrace and ran from the room.
Wendy shrugged. ‘She’ll learn,’ she said. ‘You can finish the washing. I don’t want to ruin my hands in that water.’
‘But shouldn’t we—couldn’t you go after her, say something?’
‘She’s all right. Like I said, she’s fifteen. She’ll get over it.’
When everything was neatly stacked away, she leaned her back against the sink and gave him one of her slow, considering looks.
‘You’ve made yourself really useful round here, haven’t you? I wonder why?’
This time James didn’t stop to think. He stepped forward and put his hands on her narrow waist, pulling her towards him. His mouth closed on her shining, mocking smile. For a second or two she resisted him, then her lips opened and responded and he fell into a whirlpool of a kiss. When Wendy pulled away, she almost looked impressed.
‘My—you’re quite good at that, aren’t you?’
‘Come out with me tonight,’ James said.
Wendy put a hand to her head, smoothing an imaginary stray lock back into place. ‘Oh, no—just because you’ve got a stripe up already, it doesn’t mean I’ll go out with you. Maybe if you get made a sergeant.’
She gave a superior smile. They both knew that national servicemen hardly ever got made sergeants.
She made for the door.
‘Is that a promise?’ James pressed. He knew he could get the trade qualifications needed. He already had the skills from his time at the garage. He could certainly get to be corporal. After that, being made even an acting unpaid sergeant depended on someone dropping out.
Wendy looked back at him over her shoulder. ‘Maybe.’
He would make it, James resolved, if it was the last thing he did.
Chapter Eight
‘BUT I don’t want to work in a shop!’ Lillian protested.
Easter was fast approaching, and with it her last weeks at school. Now she was fifteen, she could leave and get a job. Staying on till the end of the school year was out of the question. Gran was annoyed enough that she had to stay on till the end of term. She was even more annoyed that Lillian should question her choice of a job.
‘Don’t want has got nothing to do with it, young lady. You’ll do as you’re told.’
‘But I want—’ Lillian hesitated. She wanted so much to be a dancer. The thrill of those precious few minutes on stage at the bandstand had confirmed everything she had always imagined. Hidden in an old chocolate box at the bottom of her underwear drawer was the newspaper picture of her receiving her prize from the carnival queen. She got it out and looked at it whenever she was feeling low, and it always gave her a boost. But it was no use even trying to explain this to Gran. In fact, it was important that she kept quiet about it. What Gran didn’t know about, she couldn’t forbid.
‘I want to be a hairdresser,’ she said, surprising herself. Her Aunty Eileen had been a hairdresser.
‘That means a long apprenticeship with you earning next to nothing.’
‘Well, if money’s the thing, I’ll work in a factory. I’d earn more in a factory than at a shop.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. Our family has always worked in shops. We had a shop once, after all. We’d still have it now, if there was any fairness in this world.’
Lillian knew she was defeated once Gran referred to the shop.
‘Yes, Gran.’
‘Your sister says there’s an opening at Dixon’s, in the household department. You’ll go and apply for it tomorrow.’
The last thing Lillian wanted was to be working at the same place as Wendy. After the way she had behaved towards James, Lillian could hardly bear to look at her. She muttered something that sounded like agreement, but in her heart she was refusing. She marched straight out of the house, fuming. Why wasn’t her life her own? Why couldn’t she do what she wanted? She walked to the High Street and went along looking at the shop windows. Halfway up, one of the shoe shops had a notice in the window—Junior wanted. Lillian went in and asked to see the manager. A tall man with thinning hair was fetched. He looked at her over his half-moon glasses.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve come for the job. In the window,’ Lillian said.
As the words came out of her mouth, she could hear that they sounded stupid. She should have planned this better.
‘My name’s Lillian Parker. I’m leaving school at the end of this term,’ she explained.
‘I see. Right. And what makes you think you are suitable to work here?’
‘I…I’m very interested in shoes,’ Lillian improvised. ‘And I’m used to looking after people. My family has a guest house and so I’m dealing with the public quite a lot and I know how to be polite and find what people want.’
That sounded much better. She was surprised at herself. She gave a tentative smile. The manager did not respond.
‘I take it you can make tea?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Lillian said. What had that to do with selling shoes?
‘And can you handle money? Eighteen and elevenpence ha’penny, what’s the change from a five pound note?’
‘Four pounds, one and a ha’penny,’ Lillian said promptly. That was easy. She had been doing shopping since she was five years old.
The manager nodded. He went and took a red stiletto from one of the displays and handed it to her.
‘Go into the store room and find the other half of this pair,’ he said.
Lillian went through the door at the back of the shop. It was dark and cold out here and the floor was bare, unlike the cosy carpeted brightness of the shop. She found the light switch and gazed at the shelves and shelves of shoeboxes, stacked right up to the ceiling. Where to start? She scanned the rows, looking at the pictures on the ends of the boxes. The nearest ones were all men’s shoes. She found the ladies’ section, dismissed the flat styles, scanned the stilettos. There—at the top! She grabbed a stepladder that was standing nearby, climbed up, checked the size, pulled out a box. Inside was just one shoe, the partner of the one she was holding. She scampered into the shop.
‘There!’ she said, triumphant.
The manager looked vaguely surprised. ‘That was very quick.’ He offered her a trial of a month.
It wasn’t a very exciting job, as it turned out. On her first morning, the manager set her to dusting the shelves.
‘Have you finished that?’ He ran a finger over the surfaces. ‘Yes, well, that’s all right. You can go and put the kettle on now and start making tea for the mid-morning break.’
After that, she was set to sorting out the stand containing the shoelaces. By the end of the day, she had hardly touched a shoe. She certainly hadn’t spoken to a customer. That set the pattern. As the junior, she was mostly cleaning and tidying, fetching things for the other staff and running errands for the manager. But it was her job and she made the best of it. It was nice to put on her own clothes in the morning instead of hand-me-down school uniform, and to be called ‘Miss Parker’ in front of the customers. It was lovely to get her little brown paper envelope of money at the end of the week, even if most of it did have to go to her mother for her keep. She was a grown-up now, taking her own place in the world.
A small corner of her heart hoped that this might help her when it came to seeing James again. Mostly she felt totally humiliated when she thought of their last meeting. However much she told herself that it had all been Wendy’s fault, she knew she had behaved badly. Of course he was going to treat her like a child if she shouted at him then blubbed all over him like that. What had made her do that? She couldn’t understand what had happened to her. Being with him seemed to bring on a sort of madness, making her lose all self-control. Every time she thought of it, she wanted to curl up and die. But then there had been that wonderful, wonderful moment when he’d taken her in his arms. She relived that a thousand times, making it end differently in her imagination. Maybe, just maybe, when they next met he would see this young woman who worked for her own living and not just a scruffy kid. The thought kept her going until the next blow fell.
‘James had some worrying news in his last letter,’ Susan announced one evening. Now that she and Bob were engaged and saving up for a house, they spent a lot of evenings at each other’s homes rather than going out to the pictures or dancing. This particular evening, Lillian was sitting at the table in the kitchen reading a library book while Bob studied for his banking exams and Susan knitted him a jumper. Bob merely grunted at her statement, but Lillian was instantly alert.
‘Did he? What was it?’
‘Well, he’s been made a corporal, which is good, of course, but he’s got a posting abroad.’
A terrible chill struck Lillian, like an icy hand clutching at her entrails.
‘Posting?’ she managed to say.
‘Yes, he’s being sent to Cyprus. Poor Mum’s beside herself. It’s so dangerous out there with all those dreadful EOKA people letting off bombs and things. James is playing it down, of course, so as not to worry Mum. He says in Cyprus there are oranges and lemons growing on trees, which must look so pretty.’
‘When they say you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go,’ Bob commented, without taking his eyes off the page he was looking at.
‘Well, yes, I know,’ Susan agreed, ever the good fiancée. ‘But poor Mum! It’s brought it all back to her, you see, having James go off to a war zone. She can’t help thinking about Dad.’
‘It’ll all blow over soon enough,’ Bob said. He had never been further than Catterick on his national service.
‘W-when’s he leaving?’ Lillian managed to ask.
‘Next month. He’ll be there till he’s finished his time.’
A whole year! James was going to be away for a whole year! And to Cyprus, where guerrilla fighters were attacking British troops. It wasn’t just a jaunt abroad, like being sent to Germany. He could be involved in real fighting. How was she going to bear it? She couldn’t even spill it all to Janette the next morning like she used to when they were at school together, but had to wait all through a miserable day till she could cycle round to Janette’s after tea.
‘My life is finished!’ she announced as she burst through the door to Janette’s flat. ‘There’s nothing left to live for.’
‘Oh, so you won’t want to see this, then,’ Janette said, waving a blurry carbon copied piece of paper in front of her.
‘James is going to Cyprus. He’s going to be away for—what’s that thing?’
Despite herself, her eyes had lighted on the word Dancers on Janette’s paper.
‘Sure you want to see?’ Janette teased, backing away from her with the paper held above her head.
‘Yes—come on—what is it?’
‘No more flipping James?’
‘OK, OK.’
Eagerly, Lillian read the notice. Do you like dancing? it asked. Are you fifteen or over? Come and audition for the Mamie Hill Dancers and help with our charity work dancing for Old Folks etc.
Her excitement dimmed a little at the words charity work. This was not a professional troupe, then. But it was a start. It was dancing, up on a stage, in front of an audience. She made a note of the time and place of the audition and spent the rest of the evening discussing it with Janette. James wasn’t forgotten, but she did have something to look forward to once more.
Mamie Hill turned out to be a tall lady with a cigarette in a long holder and rather too much make-up, who could have been any age from forty to sixty. She made an exotic figure in her bright dress and flowing scarves in the middle of a dusty church hall. What impressed Lillian was the fact that she had been a professional dancer—it showed in every movement she made.
After a word or two about the troupe, she got each of the dozen or so girls who had arrived to dance on the stage, accompanied on the out-of-tune piano by a woman who chainsmoked through the whole proceedings. Lillian did her We’re a Couple of Swells routine, enjoying the thrill of it all over again. As she dropped into the final splits on the rough boarding of the stage, she felt a splinter ram into her thigh, but managed to keep the bright smile on her face. She got up and looked at Miss Hill. Had she liked it? So much was riding on this. This was more than just one contest, this was the chance to learn and perform.
Mamie Hill opened her notebook, her gold propelling pencil poised. ‘What did you say your name was, dear?’
‘Lindy-Lou Parker.’
‘And have you been dancing for long?’
‘Oh—ages,’ Lillian said.
‘Mm—well—I won’t ask who taught you, but you’ve got a lot of rough corners to knock off. A lot. But you’ve got oodles of raw talent, and you can perform. That’s the thing, dear—performing. You have to give out to the audience, you have to give all of yourself, and you do that. Now, are you prepared to come to two practices a week and be available whenever we’re asked to perform?’
Was she? There was only one answer to that.
‘Oh, yes, Miss Hill! I’d love to.’
‘Very well, then. Be here at seven o’clock on Thursday.’
Lillian cycled home six inches above the ground. This was it! This was her start. Her feet were on the yellow brick road.
The only problem, and it was a huge one, was deciding what to say to the family. After the fuss about the talent contest, she feared that if she admitted to what she was doing it would be forbidden. Round and round her head went Aunty Eileen’s last words to her—Don’t let them stop you. Maybe the best way was simply not to tell them. But if she went ahead and did it, lying in the process, then there would be even bigger ructions when she was finally found out. She couldn’t bear the idea of being stopped before she had started, so she opted for secrecy and said she was going to see friends when she went to practices. Maybe something would turn up to change Gran’s mind. It was a long shot but she went for it, closing her eyes to the consequences.
Mamie Hill was a tough teacher. She treated the girls as if they were a proper dance troupe, picking up sloppy steps and lazy arms and making them all work really hard, going over each movement until it was right.
‘Practice, practice, practice!’ she insisted, gesticulating with her cigarette holder.
Some of the girls groaned and complained as they did a sequence for the tenth time. Two got so fed up that they left. But Lillian loved it. This was what she wanted. She could feel her body responding to the discipline. She welcomed the criticism and did everything that Miss Hill suggested. She got up early each day to do ballet exercises, using the chest of drawers as a barre and ignoring Wendy’s complaints at being disturbed. She went over the dance routines in her head as she cycled to work and practised steps in the store room of the shop as she searched for shoes.
The troupe got their first booking, a request to entertain the Darby and Joan Club at their birthday party. Lillian was thrilled. Then Miss Hill started to talk about costumes. Lillian listened, appalled, as ideas for three different outfits were described. How on earth was she going to make these? Like all girls, she had learnt some basic needlework at school, but a sailor suit? A frilly satin dress? How was she going to make those? And the cost! It was going to take all the money she had left from her earnings after giving her keep to her mother.
‘Now, I’m sure your mothers will be able to help you with this,’ Miss Hill was saying. ‘All mums are clever with their needles, and they love a pretty project to do. It makes a nice change from turning sheets sides to middle and mending trousers.’
Quite apart from the fact that she had not yet told the family about the Mamie Hill Dancers, Lillian could just imagine her mother’s reaction if she asked for help. That weary, washed-out look would come over her face.
Oh—I don’t know—really I don’t—your grandmother wants me to—
There was always something that Gran wanted doing. And the summer season was looming.
It was no use asking Wendy. She hated sewing and, anyway, she never helped anyone if she could get out of it. If only her aunty Eileen were still here, she would be delighted to try. Turning it over in her mind, Lillian realised that they did have someone in the family who could sew. Susan. Asking her would mean having to admit to what she was doing, and then of course Susan would tell Bob and then the whole family would know. But Susan, on James’s request, had come in on her side when she’d gone in for the talent contest, so maybe she would support her this time.
The next time Susan came round to their house, she waited till Bob was out of the room and broached the subject.
‘Oh, that sounds interesting, dear. A stage costume! I haven’t made a stage costume before. Let me see the pattern.’
Lillian showed her the sketches and the newspaper patterns that had been copied from the expensive tissue ones. Susan nodded and commented on the technicalities involved. Just as Mamie Hill had predicted, the project interested her. It was something a bit different from ordinary dressmaking. By the time Bob came back into the room, she was getting enthusiastic.
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