Leah Fleming - The War Widows

‘Don’t start all that again. Dad was all for progress. He’d be pleased no one has to rise before dawn to heat the copper boiler. We’re living in the modern age now. I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up. Business is doing nicely; we’ve never missed an electric bill yet.’

‘When you’re a married woman with a home of your own you’ll worry about bills and lights left on. We’ve spoiled the lot of you, giving you driving lessons, a van and a fancy education. Now you’ve all got ideas above your station.’

There was no arguing with Esme when she had got her Monday mood fired up.

‘Oh, Mother! I’m duly grateful so let me get on with my breakfast or I’ll be late for work! There’s many round here who’d give their false teeth for an Acme.’

‘Lily, that’s very cruel. You know I can’t stand for long without my hip giving me jip.’

‘All the more reason to let Polly get on with her job then. That’s what we pay her for.’

‘I suppose so, but it doesn’t feel right to be standing around like Lady Muck, giving orders. It’s the thin end of the wedge. Vacuums, irons…it’ll be refrigerators next. It wasn’t like this in my day,’ Esme sighed.

‘Lil’s right for once. We’re the envy of the street for having a washing machine,’ said Lily’s sister-in-law, Ivy, from the doorway, carrying yet another armful of her little son’s clothing.

She was wearing her glamorous pink quilted dressing gown, which puffed out like a satin eiderdown. The effect was spoiled by a line of steel waving clips in her hair, making her look like one of Flash Gordon’s robots.

‘While I remember, Lil,’ she added. ‘Remind my husband to fetch some butterscotch sweets back from the Market Hall. Callard and Bowser’s, the best, not that cheap stuff from the corner shop, and a quarter of dolly mixtures for the little laddie. No use me asking Levi, he’ll only forget.’

‘Neville’ll choke on them,’ sniffed Esme, who disapproved of all the sweet bribery dished out to her grandson.

‘Never! He can pick them over while he’s on the potty. It helps him concentrate.’

‘You spoil that bairn. All my children were clean and dry by the time they could walk, none of this pandering to whims and fancies. I’ve seen that little monkey sitting until his bottom has a rim round it and then you dress him up like a doll and off he goes in a corner to relieve himself. He needs a smacked bottom, not dolly mixtures.’

‘I know,’ Ivy simpered, ‘but we do things differently now. Oh, and, Lil, grab me something from the lending library while you’re passing. Something lighter than the last rubbish you brought me. What would I be doing with War and Peace?. We’ve seen enough of war in this house.’

‘What did your last slave die of?’ Lily muttered under her breath. What was the point? Since Levi’s return from the war, she’d slipped down the pecking order at number 22. Still single and the daughter of the house, she was at everyone’s beck and call.

‘Lily’ll open the shop this morning and do a stock-take so Levi can have a lie-in. She won’t have time to be doing your errands, young lady,’ replied Esme, coming to her daughter’s rescue for once. ‘He made a right racket last night tripping on the steps, and I never thought to hear such language on my stair carpet.’

At last, some welcome support, but it was short-lived.

‘But while you’re there, can you try and get me the latest Nevil Shute novel or another Forsyte Saga?. But not the first two-I’ve read them. I’d go myself but it’s the Women’s Bright Hour committee, followed by a speaker from Crompton’s Biscuits this afternoon. I’ll be giving the vote of thanks, of course, seeing how Crompton’s is a family business, so to speak. How’s Levi, still in the land of Nod?’

‘Sleeping it off, so Lil’ll have to take the bus this morning,’ Ivy replied. ‘He’ll be needing the van. They made a bit of a night of it at the Legion, an Armistice night lock-in. Beats me how they get the booze, with all the rationing, but parading is thirsty work. You know how it is when the lads get together. Well, no, you wouldn’t, Lily. Walter never made it to the Forces, did he?’

Why did the woman always have to rub in the fact that her fiancé, Walter, failed his medical?

‘He’ll need a stomach liner for his breakfast, then,’ Esme added.

Bang went all their bacon rashers for the week again. Levi’s nights out at the Legion were getting to be a habit, leaving his sister to open up and set the stall in order. Not that she minded back when the war was on. She was proud to be holding the fort while the men were away, but now he was back he was happy to play at being the manager while she did all the work. It wasn’t fair.

Esme had seen the pout, the flash of steel in Lily’s grey eyes. ‘Now don’t begrudge your brother a bit of extra, Lily. We’re lucky to have our boys in one piece when there are so many families still in mourning. Being a prisoner of war took it out of him. He was nothing but skin and bone when he came home. You had it easy, my girl.’

But that was two years ago. It was Freddie who was still out in the Middle East doing his duty. There’d not been a letter this week. Perhaps that meant he was being shipped home for Christmas, as they’d promised. She couldn’t wait to see him again.

Levi had milked his hero’s return for all it was worth, though his limp and scraggy bones were long gone. Time to make a fuss of her little brother, who had been on active service since 1940.

Freddie wouldn’t recognise his big brother. He was not the lad who marched away all those years ago; the ace outside half who once had a trial for Grimbleton’s professional football club, the lynx who could shin up and down an apple tree faster than any of the boys in the street, who used to have a spring in his step when he swung the girls around the Palais de Danse in a quick step. Levi had gone to seed.

If it wasn’t for the Winstanley wavy hair and grey eyes, Levi wouldn’t pass for a Winstanley. Now those eyes were dull like damp slate, and he stooped and had grown a paunch, the only one in the family to grow fat on austerity rations. He never looked them in the eye when he was talking and was always turning up late.

Marriage to Ivy Southall had done him no favours. Of all the girls in Grimbleton he could have had his pick-the cream of the grammar school prefects, the tennis club and Zion Chapel-but he’d landed himself with a painted doll who whined like an air-raid siren and put on an accent so thick you could spread it on toast. She’d spun a sticky web of false glamour around herself and he’d flown into her trap, wedded and bedded within a year.

That was mean, Lily thought, as she was biting her toast and Marmite on the run. You’re just jealous because after all these years you and Walt have not got round to naming the day.

It was only right that Levi, who was the eldest, was married first. He’d been to war and back. He deserved to be settled down with his family in the upstairs best bedroom, but she’d done her bit too. It just wasn’t the same as wearing a uniform and doing proper war work, though. Someone had to keep the family business-Winstanley Health and Herbs-in the pink, help Mother with the stall and keep the Home Front loose, limber and productive. No one worked fast when they were constipated.

All those dreams of leaving Grimbleton to join the WAAF or the WRNS and travelling abroad were sacrificed. It was only fair to hold the fort. Freddie had been all over the world: the Far East, the Mediterranean serving with the Military Police, and Levi served in the army on the Continent, in France and Belgium, until he was captured. The furthest Lily had been was the Lake District and Rhyl. There was no time to gallivant when there was a war on.