Katie King - The Evacuee Summer - Heart-warming historical fiction, perfect for summer reading

When she had sorted out the kitchen to her satisfaction, which was a much tidier and cleaner satisfaction than Mabel, or even Peggy, would have deemed acceptable, Barbara made a fresh pot of tea that she placed on a doily-covered tray along with two cups and a small jug of milk. She put a couple of plain biscuits that Gracie had made on a side plate and popped that on the tray too.

As Barbara carried the tray out of the kitchen she could hear her twins laughing out in the yard as Roger attempted but failed to get Milburn to open her mouth so that he could put the bridle on. The familiar sound of them enjoying themselves brought a rush of happiness to Barbara’s chest.

Barbara climbed the stairs right to the top of the house and tapped on Peggy’s door, and was greeted with a husky ‘come in’.

Holly was sound asleep in a large but battered crib that looked as if it had had the pleasure of nursing many children from babyhood through to them being ready for a ‘big’ bed.

Looking distinctly bleary, a blinking Peggy watched her sister put the tray on top of a chest of drawers, and then a bit reluctantly it seemed, she pulled herself up to sitting position and gratefully accepted the cup of tea that Barbara poured for her.

Barbara tried not to look too obviously at the darkly shadowed puffy bags under Peggy’s eyes, or her dry and cracked lips, her rumpled cotton summer dress that was hanging too loosely on her slender frame, or the constant twitching of a muscle in one of her eyelids that was punching out a tiny SOS of distress. Peggy did look a mess and a wretched sight but her sister thought it kinder not to say.

‘Peggy dear, I’m so very sorry to hear that you’ve been through the wars today,’ said Barbara sympathetically in the sort of voice that she knew her sister would take as an invitation to talk about what had caused such a ringing disagreement between husband and wife. She perched on the edge of the bed with her own cup of tea in her hand as she looked towards Peggy with her eyebrows raised in encouragement.

‘It was horrible, just horrible,’ said Peggy, as she stared without focusing at Barbara’s face before turning to look mournfully down at the tea softly swirling in her cup.

‘Another woman?’ Barbara said softly. What else could it be, she thought, to cause such a maelstrom of emotion in the normally so level-headed Peggy.

‘Another woman,’ her sister agreed morosely.

Barbara wasn’t sure what to say. She’d always found Bill to be pleasant enough company although, try as she might (and she had tried very hard over the years), she had never believed him to be quite good enough for her sister.

Once or twice Barbara had thought Bill had looked as if he’d had a roving eye, and just before he and Peggy had married all those years previously, bolstered by two port and lemons one Saturday night at the Jolly, Barbara had even been so bold as to say outright to him, ‘I do very much hope you’re going to be true to Peggy, Bill; she deserves the best, and she absolutely doesn’t need some dog of a husband who’s going to be hard to keep on the doorstep.’

Bill had replied in such an earnest voice that Barbara found herself somewhat mollified, saying that he knew he wasn’t worthy of someone such as Peggy, but if she would deign to marry him then he’d never so much as even look at another woman or do anything at all in Christendom to make her unhappy, God strike him down dead if ever he did.

Thinking about it later, Barbara hadn’t quite been placated but she had allowed the matter to lie, and over the ensuing years a lot of time had passed without any obvious shenanigans on Bill’s behalf and so gradually she had done her level best to think well of him.

Then, when Bill and Peggy hadn’t easily been able to have their own children, Barbara had started wondering about him again, fuelled at this point by Ted telling her that there had been the odd rumour heard in the Jolly about Bill and a fancy-woman flying around the docks.

Still, Peggy and Bill had seemed to weather that particular storm, helped no doubt by the announcement of Peggy’s unexpected pregnancy with Holly after ten barren years of marriage. And at the time Barbara was pleased that she had kept quiet, at Ted’s advising, over Bill’s reported peccadillo. She thought he might have well overstepped the mark once or twice although not necessarily in a really serious manner, and therefore she hadn’t want to upset Peggy with no firm evidence to back up the allegations. And once the pregnancy had been announced Peggy had seemed so full of happiness that it would have been a desperate shame to ruin her unadulterated joy, and although Barbara had scrutinised Bill carefully, he never gave so much as a hint that he wasn’t just as thoroughly delighted that he and Peggy were going to be parents.

However, this time around, Barbara thought now, the cat seemed to have been well and truly set amongst the pigeons.

‘Why don’t you get it all off your chest, Peggy? I’m sure you’ll feel better if you do,’ Barbara cajoled. She still had no idea precisely what it was that Bill had done, and she was keen to know more.

‘I feel a fool, Barbara, such a total fool. While I’ve been stuck up here, away from you and Ted, and far from home and all that I know, looking after our dear Holly and washing and feeding her, and bringing in some money working at June Blenkinsop’s, and trying to do the right thing by your two as well, and never suspecting a thing about what Bill might be up to, he’s clearly been living the life of Riley.’ Peggy’s sentences jumbled into one another, but she didn’t seem to care although Barbara wished she’d get to the point. Then Peggy sighed dramatically and took a sip of her tea, before adding with a sarcastic tinge to her words, ‘She’s called Maureen, and she was working in the NAAFI, he told me. And he’s been seeing her since November, although apparently he wanted to end it at Christmas, although somehow he never did. And now she’s having his baby, and only has three months to go.’

Peggy swallowed, making a strange swigging noise in her throat that caused her to pause what she was saying, and despondently she looked down at her cup and saucer once more. Barbara rubbed Peggy’s arm that was closest to her in sisterly support, expecting a fresh outburst of sobs.

The forthcoming baby would be the clincher that Bill had passed a point of no return as far as her sister was concerned, Barbara knew.

Peggy remained dry-eyed to her sister’s surprise, although her voice was quieter when she was able to continue, ‘Barbara, I’m ashamed to say I more or less told him to go to hell, and then I said to him that he’d never see Holly again.’

‘Of course that was what you said at this news, Peggy! Any woman would have told him that. I would have, make no mistake, and then probably gone a whole lot further as well.’

‘But who’s going to suffer, Barbara? Not Bill, as he’ll be back in MaureenFromTheNAAFI’s bed quicker than a rat can get up a drainpipe, I’ve no doubt, as he’s not the sort to stay on his own if he can help it, and I’m pretty certainly he’ll have found a way to sneak off camp to be with her whenever he can. She’s obviously keen on him, and so his nest is already feathered, even if it doesn’t feel like that to him just at the minute. And I’ll get over him – I’ll make sure of that as otherwise I’ll let his actions punish me every day and I refuse to do that. Obviously my heart feels shattered to smithereens, and I despise him for what he has done to me and Holly. But the thought we meant so little to him will help, and so I think if ever I waver I’ll remember how little he cared about us and so I’ll hold firm,’ said Peggy.

‘No, it’s little Holly who’ll pay the price, don’t you think?’ she went on. ‘The poor little mite is going to grow up knowing that while many brave and honest men will die in this war, a louse like her father is very probably going to come through it unscathed and end up living with some other family that he’ll have had after her, and with him completely forgetting that he already has a daughter. I’m old-fashioned as I do think a child needs both parents, but it’s not going to be the case for Holly as he’s a canker that needs to be removed from our lives, and so the poor dear thing will never know what it’s like to be loved and cherished by her very own father. That breaks my heart more than anything Bill Delbert could ever do to me , I’ll tell you that for nothing, Barbara.’