Leah Fleming - The War Widows

Not that he practised what he preached, for standing next to him at a match was a revelation. He would yell and rant and cuss and swear. ‘Get them off, the pair of sissies! Hang up yer boots, lad, yer shot was a twopenny bus ride from the goal!’

If only the Zion minister could have heard his trusty steward letting rip at the goalie, Lily smiled.

Theirs was a special bond built on his delight in having a girl in the house. ‘This one’s the sharpest blade in the knife box.’ He would point to her with pride. ‘Not the fanciest to look at but she does it right first time, my Lily of Laguna. If you want owt doing, she’s your gal!’

He would be proud that, like the famous Windmill Theatre Revues, they never closed for the entire duration of the war. Together with Esme, Lily had kept the stall going against the odds when all the rules and restrictions came into force. Many herbal stores were forced to close but they decided to open half the stall as a temperance bar, serving juices, hot cordials and a good line of medicinal sweets and herbal homemade cough candy, dispensing what little stock they could.

It was a tough time, fire-watching in the evening, keeping the Brownie pack alive with badge work and salvage drives, but nothing to what her brothers had to go through in Burma and on the Continent.

She was looking at her wristwatch, surprised that it was mid-morning already, when a welcome figure tapped her shoulder.

‘Time for our cuppa?’ Walter towered over her in his brown dust coat, pointing to the café opposite. She could sit down and keep her eye on the stall at the same time.

‘You bet,’ she smiled, pecking him on the cheek. ‘Where were you yesterday at the Armistice parade? I missed you at the cenotaph.’

‘I was there with Mam but you know it gets her all upset. We went home early.’ You couldn’t fault a man who was kind to his mother, but Lily had been hoping to invite him back for tea.

‘Hey, you missed a cracking match on Saturday, two nil to the Grasshoppers. They’re on a roll this season.’

‘Yes, I’ve been hearing reports all morning,’ she sighed. ‘I had to stand in for Levi again.’

‘I saw him in the directors’ box with all the toffs, lucky beggar.’

‘I just wish he’d give me a Saturday off, once in a blue moon. When did you and I last get to watch a match together?’

‘It was the best game this season.’

‘So everyone keeps saying, so shut up,’ she snapped.

‘The lads were on form, Wagstaff dribbling the ball down the outside right, passing to Walshie and he spins it straight in the net, brilliant!’

‘Walter Platt, don’t torment me.’ She tugged his sleeve but he was oblivious.

‘The second goal came just before half-time. I reckoned we finished them off there and then.’

She missed the crowds gathering, the noise and cheering, a chance to let off steam. Redvers had taken them all as a treat and left them at home as a punishment. There were chips in newspaper on the way home, which no one was to tell Esme about, for it was too common for a Winstanley to eat in the street.

‘When we’re married we’ll bring all our kiddies to see the game,’ Lily sighed, imagining a five-a-side of gleaming faces.

‘Oh, no, love, it’s not a place to bring youngsters with all that swearing and rough talk, and there’s germs to think about.’

‘It never did us any harm,’ she replied, surprised by his attitude.

‘Mother says it’s all that standing as did my back in. I grew too tall for my bones.’

‘I thought the doctor said you had a bit of a curved spine…’

‘It’s the same thing,’ he replied.

‘No, it’s not. It means you’re born with a bend in your back,’ she continued.

‘Oh, you do like to go into things, Lil. All I know is, it never bothered me until I was out of short trousers, when my legs just sprouted like rhubarb. I bent over one day and couldn’t get up. Never bin right since. You’ve no idea what it’s like to live with backache.’

‘I’m sorry, it must be a pain,’ she said, seeing the grimace on his face.

‘So you should be. You’re going to have to nurse it when we’re wed, with one of your liniment oils.’

‘Shall I give you a rub down later?’ she winked.

‘Lily Winstanley, none of that sauce from a respectable woman! Mother can see to it, thank you very much. By the way, could she have a few more liver pills? Her stomach’s playing up again.’

‘Has she thought of trying a lighter diet? She does like her pastry and her chips,’ Lily offered, knowing that Elsie Platt was a little beer barrel on legs.

‘A widow’s got to have a little comfort in life. We’ve no money spare for fancy diets,’ he said, staring across at her stall. ‘It’s all right for your family.’

Money was always a sensitive topic between them. His wage was small but steady, and her family had two wages and a war pension and shares from Esme’s connection with Crompton’s Biscuits. Better not to go down that route again.

‘It must be hard,’ was all she could say. ‘Did you go and see that house for rent in Forsyth Lane, the old cottage by itself? It’ll need doing up. But it’s worth a second glimpse, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, no, love, Mam says they’re built over wells, and damp, and it’s a bus ride away from Bowker’s Row. It’s much too far for her to travel.’

‘You didn’t even look, then?’ Lily felt the flush in her cheeks. When would he do anything off his own bat? ‘That’s a pity because I thought it was ideal for us, half in the country but on a bus route. It was you who wanted to have fresh air and a nice view.’

‘Perhaps we should try for something bigger and bring her with us? She gets mithered when I’m not there.’

And I shall go mad if Elsie Platt is on the other side of the wall listening to our sweet talking, Lily thought, but swallowed her words back just in time. ‘It says in my Woman’s Own that a young married couple should be alone for a while to set up their home.’

‘What about your Levi and his wife? They live with you.’

‘That’s different…’

‘No it’s not.’

‘It’s just that Waverley House has five bedrooms. They have their privacy and a baby.’

‘So, we’ll be having babies and Mother can look after them for us so you can do all your gallivanting.’

‘I’m not gallivanting, just serving my community. I’d hardly call choir practice and Brownies gadding about!’

‘There you go on your high horse over nothing. It was just a suggestion,’ he barked.

‘I’d like us to start off together on our own,’ she repeated, sipping her Bovril and noticing his shirt collar was frayed at the edge and needed turning round.

‘Then we’ll have to keep on looking until we find something that suits us both.’ His voice was hard and his lips were pursed up just like Elsie’s whenever they arrived back late.

Lily looked at her watch. There was still no sign of Levi. ‘I’d better get back. Are you coming for your tea tonight? We can look in the Gazette to see if there’re any more flats to rent, then borrow the van and go and view them together.’

‘If you can give us a lift back home first and get my mam’s washing. Now you’ve got that new-fangled machine, she was wondering if you’d lend us a hand and throw a few things in for us.’

Anything to oblige, Lily mused. Word travelled fast and Elsie was not one to miss a trick. Would she expect the washing to come back ironed as well?

Oh, don’t be mean, she sighed. Walt’s mother was widowed young in the Great War, her son is the sun, moon and stars to her. The thought of him leaving her clutches is painful and threatening. Be grateful you can help them out.