Where the Heart Is

Thankfully her kind neighbour Ivy Wilson had immediately said that Biddy was talking nonsense and that Emily was to be applauded for her charitable act, but of course the damage had been done by then and Emily had hardly dared look at anyone since when she went shopping, she felt so uncomfortable and self-conscious about what Biddy had said.

She was glad that it was still winter and the days short. That way Tommy wasn’t going to start asking when he came in from school why Wilhelm hadn’t been round. Proper fond of Wilhelm, Tommy was. It did a boy good to have a decent hard-working man around, not like that feckless husband of hers. Not that he had approved of her taking Tommy in, not for one minute. But then it was her money they’d been living on and her house they’d been living in, and for the first time in her marriage Emily had stuck to her guns and told her husband that if it came to a choice between him and Tommy then she was choosing Tommy.

Now that she had done exactly that she was happier than she had ever been in the whole of her life, or at least she had been until she had gone and made a fool of herself with those socks and frightened Wilhelm away.

‘What are you still doing here, Lena? Your shift finished half an hour ago. Gavin will have something to say to me, I’m sure, if he thinks I’m making his wife work longer than she should,’ Bella teased her billetee, before bending down to look into the pram where Lena’s nearly three-month-old baby daughter, Janette, named after Gavin’s mother, Janet, was smiling up at them both, her big brown eyes wide open, her soft dark curls escaping from under her white knitted bonnet, one fat little hand lying on top of the smart white coverlet embroidered with yellow daisies that had been made from an old dress of Bella’s.

‘And how is my precious, precious niece, the prettiest angel that ever was?’ Bella cooed at the baby, who immediately dimpled her a delighted smile.

‘Spoiled rotten by you and Gavin, and Gavin’s mum, and just about everyone else that she winds round her little finger, that’s how she is,’ Lena laughed, but it was plain that she adored her baby.

Behind them the walls of the nursery, painted a bright sunny yellow by Lena’s husband, Gavin, gave the day room an air of warmth no matter what the weather was outside, the small tables and chairs spotlessly clean, just like the cots and small beds in the ‘sleeping room’ beyond the day room, where the children had their afternoon naps, in comfortable and safe surroundings, watched over by Bella’s carefully selected and trained nursery staff.

‘I was going,’ Lena continued, ‘but Mrs Lewis was late picking up her Cheryl, and so I hung on because I wanted to tell her about Cheryl being a bit off colour and not wanting her dinner.’

Bella was very proud of the nursery in Wallasey, of which she was the manageress. All her girls were handpicked by Bella herself, but there was no doubt in Bella’s mind that Lena was the best of them all. Even so, she didn’t want Gavin thinking that she was taking advantage of Lena and expecting her to work longer than she should. Gavin and Lena were newly married, after all, and the last thing Bella wanted to do was to cause trouble between them.

Lena loved Gavin, Bella knew that, but Lena also felt a strong sense of gratitude towards her. Such a strong sense of gratitude, in fact, that Bella felt she had to be especially careful never to do or say anything that would in any way hurt Lena.

It had been totally out of character for her to take Lena under her wing, Bella would have been the first to admit. Before knowing Lena, she had been selfish and uncaring. But the war and the problems it had brought her, along with the responsibility she felt towards Lena, had changed her, and now Bella knew that she was a very different person from the Bella she had been in 1939 on the eve of her own marriage.

That Bella seemed so alien to her now.

It had taken betrayal by her husband, widowhood, falling in love with the wrong man, having to cope with her father’s desertion of her mother, and her brother’s abandonment of Lena, the girl he had so carelessly impregnated before marrying someone else, to change her into the Bella she was now: a Bella who truly knew the value of friendship and kindness and doing one’s bit for others and a Bella who had suffered the pain of forbidden love and the sacrifice that had entailed for the sake of others. A Bella who no longer felt the need constantly to scheme to make sure that she was considered the prettiest and most sought-after girl in the area, and a Bella who longed only to be the very best person she could be. The Bella who was truly worthy of the love of the man who could never be hers, but who she knew she would love for ever – Jan Polanski, the Polish Air Force pilot, whose mother and sister had been billeted with Bella at one time, and whose marriage to the daughter of a close family friend meant that no matter how much he and Bella loved one another, they could never be together.

‘Well, you must go now,’ Bella warned Lena, ‘otherwise there will be no dinner on the table for Gavin when he comes home from working on the river.’

Gavin was a junior river boat pilot – one of the men who brought safely into dock the convoys of ships that crossed the Atlantic in such dangerous conditions to bring much-needed supplies into the country.

‘However, before you do go, there’s something I want to say to you. It’s about the house.’

Immediately Lena gave Bella an anxious look. Lena and Gavin were now living with Bella in the house Bella’s father had given Bella and her husband when they had first married, and which now belonged to Bella. Guessing what Lena was thinking, Bella gave a quick shake of her head.

‘No, it isn’t anything for you to worry about. It’s my mother, Lena. I don’t have to tell you the situation.’

Lena knew that Bella’s mother, Vi, who had been living on her own since, shockingly, her husband, Edwin, had left her to live with his secretary, had been very badly affected by her husband’s departure.

‘It’s ever such a shame that she’s taken your dad going off the way he did like she has, and I know how much it upsets you, her drinking like she does, and showing herself up in front of her neighbours. Oh …’ Lena paced her hand over her mouth and looked guilty. ‘I’m ever so sorry, Bella. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.’

As though Janette had sensed her mother’s concern she gave a small cry. Bella smiled down at her whilst Lena rocked the pram soothingly.

One of the things Bella insisted on was that no baby in her nursery was ever left to cry.

‘You could never do that, Lena. I don’t have any secrets from you,’ Bella assured her younger friend. ‘It’s true that Mummy is causing both herself and me embarrassment with her drinking, and it’s not good for her health either. Her doctor has told me that. When I called round the other day the cooker was left on. Lord knows what might have happened if I hadn’t decided to go and see her. That was the last straw really, Lena.’ Bella closed her eyes for a moment, remembering what a terrible fright it had given her to walk into her mother’s kitchen and see the ring on the cooker burning. ‘I can hardly sleep these days for worrying about her, so I’ve decided that little though it is, it’s what I want to do—’

‘You’re going to move her in with you?’ Lena guessed, adding immediately, ‘You’ll want me and Gavin to find somewhere else, I expect.’ Lena tried not to sound as low as Bella’s news made her feel. She knew how lucky she and Gavin were, and how generous it had been of Bella to let them live with her.

‘Would you mind, though, Bella, if just for now perhaps me and Gavin could move into Janette’s room with her? I don’t want to put you out, not when you’ve been so good and generous to us, but Gavin was only saying the other night that Mrs Stone, his old landlady, has let his room, and—’

‘No, Lena, please stop,’ Bella pleaded, holding up her hand to stem Lena’s outpouring of words, horrified that Lean would think that she would ask them to leave. ‘Of course I don’t want you and Gavin to find somewhere else. Lena, I thought you knew me better than that.’ Bella gave Lena’s arm a loving shake. ‘Haven’t we both already agreed that we are the sisters to one another that neither of us ever had? And isn’t little Janette here my niece, my own flesh and blood, and Gavin so clever and kind about doing things around the house and here at the nursery that he saves me a small fortune?’

All of which was true, Bella thought, mentally running through all the small jobs that Gavin did so willingly, often noticing that they needed doing before Bella did herself, and not just at the house but here too at the nursery, fixing rattling windows, cleaning out gutters and downspouts.

But more important than any of that was the love Lena gave her, the kind of generous freely given love that Bella had never known before, and that Bella truly believed had changed her and her life for the better.

‘Do you really think I would want to lose any of that, and most especially you? No,’ Bella answered her own question, ‘what I have decided to do is to make you and Gavin my official tenants for my house. That way you’ll have a spare room for when Gavin’s mum wants to come and stay, and I will move in with my own mother.’

For a few seconds, as she struggled to take in the generosity of Bella’s offer, Lena couldn’t speak. When she could she protested, ‘Oh, Bella, no. You’ve always said as how you value your own independence and how you could never go back to living under your mum’s roof.’

‘That was before,’ Bella replied calmly. ‘Mummy can’t possibly be left on her own any more and I’d never forgive myself if … well, if anything happened.’

As Bella’s voice fell away she couldn’t bring herself to look at Lena, knowing what she would see in the younger girl’s eyes. But she had no choice, Bella reminded herself firmly.

Lena’s tenderly sympathetic, ‘Oh, Bella …’ prompted her to admit, ‘I haven’t said anything before, but to be honest, Lena, Mummy isn’t looking after herself or the house properly. When I went round the other day there wasn’t a clean cup anywhere, and Mummy was looking dreadfully untidy. When I think of how smart she was, and how house-proud.’ Bella bit her bottom lip. ‘I feel guilty, Lena, because I’ve been pretending not to know how bad things are, not to see how much Mummy needs me to be there with her. I’ve been trying to blame my father—’

‘And why not? It was his fault, after all,’ Lena defended her best friend fiercely.

‘Yes, but, well, I’ve made up my mind, Lena, and tonight when I come in I shall start packing up my things so that I can move in with Mummy. It is all for the best, for you and Gavin and Baby, as well as for Mummy. You are a newly married couple, after all, and you should have a home all to yourselves,’ she told Lena generously.

‘Oh, that is so typical of you, Bella – that you put everyone else before yourself,’ Lena told her emotionally. ‘I shall miss you dreadfully, you know.’

‘And I you,’ Bella admitted. ‘But we shall see one another every day here, and I dare say that you and Gavin will invite me round for tea some Sundays,’ she added teasingly.

Lena’s ‘Oh, Bella,’ was muffled as she reached out and hugged Bella tightly.

After Lena had gone Bella turned to go to her office and then stopped, unable to resist giving the nursery a swift look of pride. The air was filled with the hum of quiet industry and sounds of contented babies and children. Bella had even managed to expand the facilities modestly in order to provide simple little lessons for those children who were ready for them – just learning their letters and that kind of thing, Bella had explained earnestly to Mr Benson, the senior civil servant in charge of the Government administration of nursery care for the area, an initiative allowing young women to work to help the war effort.

He had been very generous in his praise for her expansion, and had even managed to find her nursery some little slates and an easel from somewhere.

It was Bella’s ambition to have ‘her’ little ones ready for school, with their letters and figures all learned by the time they were ready to leave the nursery.

Their small kitchen provided simple nourishing meals for the children, satisfying the Government’s stringent rules and directions on nutrition. There was no cost-cutting in Bella’s nursery so that those who worked there could benefit at the children’s expense, and in fact Bella had a growing number of little ones under her wing who by rights should not have been there, but who, Bella had learned, were in need in one way or another, and who she had felt compelled to help: little ones who might not otherwise have had a good hot meal, or a bath, or a clean bed, to sleep in.

She had been astonished, and more than a little wary at first, when her auntie Francine had turned up at the nursery with her young American husband during their visit to Liverpool to attend Bella’s cousin Grace’s wedding, and had shown such an interest in the children and their welfare. The Bella she now was had been acutely aware of the sadness in her aunt’s face when she had played with the children, knowing how terrible it must have been for her to lose her own little boy – not once but twice – the first time when she had given him up to her sister, Bella’s mother, to bring up, and the second time when he had been killed when the farmhouse to which he had been evacuated had been bombed.

Bella looked at her watch. Her mother’s neighbour, Muriel James, had agreed to keep an eye on her mother until Bella could move in herself later this evening. Privately Bella was dreading going back to her childhood home to live. It had taken Lena to show her how devoid of true family love and happiness that home had been, and now Bella’s heart was chilled by the very thought of that emptiness. How she would miss the happy, chatty atmosphere of her own kitchen with her and Lena cooking together; the evenings when they read their books and listened to the radio, or sometimes played cards.

It was selfish to feel so low, Bella warned herself. It would do Lena and Gavin good to have some time to themselves. Gavin was a really decent sort who loved Lena and little Janette, and who deserved to have his wife to himself. It wasn’t as though she was never going to see Lena and her baby again, was it?

‘Four kings.’

The young American was sweating with triumph as he placed his cards down on the rickety baize-covered table in the upstairs room of the Pig and Whistle pub. He and Con were the only ones left in the game now. The other four Americans, and two stagehands from the Royal Court Theatre to whom Con gave a few quid to join the game so that he wasn’t the only one at the table not in uniform, had dropped out. Con knew he must be careful. The last thing he wanted was to arouse anyone’s suspicions. Con might like winning at cards and might not mind cheating to do so, but he certainly didn’t like the kind of trouble that involved fists and accusations flying everywhere.

‘Sorry, mate.’ Shaking his head, Con spread his own four aces on the table, and then swept up the pot whilst the Americans were still grappling with their disappointment.

Not a bad evening’s work. The Yanks put down five-pound notes like they were ten-bob notes, and Con reckoned he’d got himself a good hundred pounds or so in tonight’s haul. Not that it was all profit, of course. He’d have to give that lazy good-for-nothing pair Stu and Paul a tenner apiece to keep them sweet, and then there’d have to be another tenner to Joe the landlord for the use of his upstairs room and no questions asked, seeing as gambling was illegal.

‘Look, lads,’ he told the Americans, putting his arm round the shoulder of the one his aces had just trumped in a false gesture of bonhomie, ‘seeing as you’ve been such good sports, I’ll treat you each to a drink. Show’s almost over at the Royal Court and there’ll be plenty of pretty girls wanting to be taken out for a bit of supper, so why don’t you all come back with us?’

It worked like a charm every time, Con congratulated himself as the young men immediately forgot about the money they had lost and accepted his offer with enthusiasm. Or at least all but one seemed to have accepted it. The soldier whose kings Con had just so cleverly trumped – with the aid of some trickery that had allowed him to remove the aces from the deck right at the beginning of the game and keep them concealed within his own hand of cards – was glowering at him.

‘You know what Ah reckon, boys?’ he announced in an accusatory voice. ‘Ah reckon that this guy here’s been cheating on us.’

‘Come on, Chip. Don’t be a sore looser,’ the first soldier to drop out of the game cautioned him. ‘It’s only a few bucks, after all. Let’s go and see these girls.’

‘That’s right, it’s only a few bucks,’ Con immediately agreed, smiling genially, urging them all towards the door. Once he’d had a couple of drinks and been introduced to the chorus line, the young soldier, who was still glaring at him, would soon forget about his ‘few bucks’. The last thing Con wanted to do was antagonise this new source of income he had discovered. What Con wanted was for these young soldiers to feel they’d had such a good time that they encouraged their friends to ask for an introduction to him for ‘a friendly game of cards’ and the chance to meet pretty girls.

Funny how things turned out. Who would have thought that those card tricks of old Marvo the Magician, who did the panto every Christmas, would come in so handy?

Oh, yes, Con was well pleased with himself. After he’d given Joe his tenner, Con gave the barmaid a wink and patted her on the bottom on his way past.

‘’Ere, get your hands off of that,’ she warned him, but the smile she was giving him told Con that she’d be more than willing if he wanted her to be.

He’d always had a way with women – had his way with them, and all, Con thought to himself, grinning at his own mental joke as he paused briefly as he left the pub to check his reflection in the glass partition that separated the entrance from the taproom, smoothing down his still thick and dark hair. When it came to women you either had it or you didn’t, Con acknowledged, and he had ‘it’ in spades.

Life had really been on the up and up for him since the Americans had started to arrive in Liverpool. It was only natural that they’d find their way to the Royal Court Theatre; Con prided himself on having the best-looking girls in the city in the Royal Court’s chorus. Then when he’d found out about their free-spending ways, of course he’d wanted to channel some of that money in his own direction.

It had been one of the girls who’d told him that an American had been asking her if she knew anywhere where they could join a poker game, and Con had immediately seen a golden opportunity to make some extra money.

Con whistled happily to himself as he shepherded his little group of newly fleeced lambs through the blackout’s darkness of the narrow back alleys towards the Royal Court Theatre.

FIVE

Katie had been surprised by how quickly her first day had passed. She’d accepted an invitation to go for lunch with several of the girls she was working with, queuing alongside young women both in and out of uniform, and men as well, in a nearby British Restaurant for a bowl of unexpectedly tasty soup and a cup of tea.

Now, having taken the Piccadilly Line from Holborn to Knightsbridge, she was walking a little uncertainly down Sloane Street towards her new billet.

She knew the area, of course, having lived in London most of her life before she had gone to work in Liverpool. Her mother had always loved going to Harrods and looking at the expensive clothes, but Katie, whose tastes were far more simple, had never imagined actually living in one of the elegant squares with their private gardens, which had looked very smart before Hitler’s bombs had caused so much damage to them and the city. It had shocked and hurt her to see just how much damage had been done.

The gardens belonging to Cadogan Place were split in two, bordered on one side by Sloane Street itself and on the three others by what she remembered as elegant four-storey properties, although it was impossible actually to see much of them in the dark and the blackout.

Her destination lay on the far side of the square and it was with some trepidation that, having found the house, she climbed the steps and knocked on the door.

She was still waiting for it to be opened when someone bumped into her from behind, almost knocking her over.

‘Oh crumbs, I’m most awfully sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ Katie assured her. ‘No harm done.’

The other girl was wearing an ATS uniform, her cap rammed onto a mop of thick dark red curls.

‘Are you visiting someone?’ the small whirlwind of a figure, or so it seemed to Katie, asked as she produced a key to unlock the door.

‘Actually I’m supposed to be billeted here,’ Katie told her.

‘Oh, you’ve got poor Lottie’s room then. So dreadful for her when Singapore fell, with her parents both being out there. She was quite overcome by it, poor girl, and the medics have sent her on sick leave. I don’t think she’ll be coming back. Well, you wouldn’t, would you, not if you were her, and your parents had been killed – murdered, really – in such a shocking way? Her mother was at that hospital, you see, the one where the Japanese bayoneted those poor people.’

They were inside the house now, the front door closed, and a single gloomy light bulb illuminating what in happier times must have been a rather grand entrance, Katie suspected. Now, though, denuded of furniture, its walls bare of paintings and the stairs bare of carpet, the house looked very bleak indeed. But not as bleak, surely, as the outlook for the girl whose room she was taking, Katie thought soberly.

‘Oh, you haven’t got anyone out in Singapore, have you?’ the other girl asked, looking conscious-stricken.

‘No.’ Not Singapore, but Luke was fighting in the desert, even if he wasn’t hers any more, and the news from there was hardly much better than it was from Singapore.

‘You’re in luck with your room; it’s one of the best. Sarah Dawkins, one of the other ATS girls here, wanted to move into it but our billeting officer put her foot down. Jolly good show that she did as well, if you ask me, because Sarah gets a bit too big for her boots at times. Oh, no, now you’re going to think badly of us. We all get on terrifically well together, really.’

The front door suddenly opened and another girl in an ATS uniformed rushed in, exclaiming, ‘Oh, Gerry, there you are. I couldn’t remember where we said we’d meet those RAF boys tonight, Oh—’ she broke off and looked questioningly at Katie.

‘Katie Needham,’ Katie introduced herself. ‘I’m the new girl.’

‘Hilda Parker.’

The other girl shook Katie’s hand whilst ‘Gerry’ grinned and announced, ‘And I’m Geraldine – Gerry, for short – Smithers.’

‘There are six of us here in all, including you: me, Gerry here, Sarah, Peggy, and Alison. Peggy’s newly engaged to a corporal she met at Aldershot. She’s a darling but she tends to spend her time reading and knitting and writing to her chap—’

‘Whereas we spend ours looking for handsome men in uniform to take us out. If you are fancy-free then you’d be very welcome to come out with us. As far as chaps are concerned it’s the more the merrier where girls are concerned,’ Gerry added with a giggle.

‘Don’t pay too much attention to Gerry here,’ Hilda warned Katie. ‘The truth is that in a way we feel that it’s our duty not just to keep our own chins up but to try to bring a bit of cheer into other people’s lives as well, if we can. I think it comes from working at the War Office. One sees and hears so much about the importance of good morale, as well, I may add, Gerry,’ she punned, ‘as good morals.’

It seemed the most natural thing in the world for Katie to join in the laughter as Gerry herself laughed good-humouredly at the small joke against her.