Laurie Graham - The Future Homemakers of America

This novel is a work of fiction, and all names, characters, events, places and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, names, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006

Previously published in paperback by Fourth Estate in 2002

First published in Great Britain in 2001

Copyright © Laurie Graham 2001

Laurie Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover illustration © Rachel Ross

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007234073

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007393091

Version: 2017-03-30

From the reviews of The Future Homemakers of America:

‘A warm, life-affirming novel that offers its readers pure pleasure’

The Times

‘Graham has a sure-fire comic touch and a wayward invention…Occasionally compared to Alan Bennett, Graham exhibits precisely the same blend of toughness and sentiment’

Guardian

‘Superlative…the writing sparkles from first to last…the detail is delicious…A rich, many-layered portrait of Middle America in the second half of the last century. Where others have heaped scorn on the American Dream, or peddled dewy-eyed optimism, Graham simply tells it like it was – and tells it brilliantly’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Crackles with energy and snappy dialogue…Graham has always been good at catching and compressing how people speak, but here she has pulled off an absolute triumph; the voice of her sassy narrator, the redoubtable Peggy, never falters as she unfolds 40 years of friendship’

Daily Mail

‘An absorbing, funny, lively and sometimes moving story’

Sunday Times

‘A warm, witty and wise novel about female friendship…A feel-good book that can’t help but make you smile’

Hello!

‘A tenacity of voice and a deftly judged lightness of touch have always been Laurie Graham’s strengths as a novelist…a fast-moving and often funny saga’

ALI SMITH, TLS

For my own hardy perennialsBridget, Liz, Rachel, Trish and Vivvy

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

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About the Author

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We were down at the commissary, just for something to do, me and Lois, pushing Sandie in her stroller. Breath puffing out like smoke every time we laughed and just hanging there in the air. The cold hadn’t killed the scent of the beet harvest, though. All my born days, I never knowed such a sickly smell.

‘I swear,’ she said, loud as you please, ‘this place is colder than a gravedigger’s ass.’ Lois always did have a mouth on her.

‘Uh-oh,’ she said, ‘here comes the Pie-Crust Queen.’

And sure enough, there was Betty running after us, flagging us to wait till she could catch her breath and tell us the big story.

‘Peggy!’ she said, gasping and wheezing and hanging on to my arm. ‘Have you heard the terrible news?’

When your husband flies F-84s, sitting up there on 3,000 gallons of jet fuel, cruising – now there ’s a word – cruising at 510mph, hoping to get his tail waxed by some Russki so he can be Jock-of-the-Week back at the base, there’s only one kind of Terrible News, but we both knew, me and Lois, that it wasn’t that.

That kinda news comes quiet, on flannel feet. The base chaplain brings it to your door, and the CO’s wife follows through with a few brisk words about courage and dignity. After that, you better hope you got some friends. Some squadron wives to take turns answering your phone and feeding your kids and keeping you from falling into a thousand pieces.

When Terrible News comes to married quarters, there’s no pulling down of blinds. Military don’t hold with closing the drapes. Word gets round, but you’d never know, looking in from outside, that anything was happening, because heck, if air force wives went around yelling ‘Have you heard?’ the whole thing could run out of control. Next thing you know, every girl on the base’d be out there screaming, ‘His poor wife! His poor orphaned children! It’s so tragic. It’s unbearable. But I’m okay. I ’m okay. It’s not me. Not this time!’ And that would never do.

Still, I guess we both missed a beat. Terrible news?

‘His Majesty King George of England,’ she said, ‘died in his sleep at Sandring Ham Palace.’

Betty always had a thing about royalty, clipping photos, pasting them in her albums, specially anything about that Princess Margaret, or the royal babies.

‘Princess Margaret had tea with General and Mrs Eisenhower,’ she told us one time. ‘She was fifteen minutes late, but it wasn’t her fault. They had angel-food cake and dainty little sandwiches, but the princess probably didn’t do cake, watching her lovely figure an’ all. She wore a yellow shirt and the cutest black dirndl skirt.’

‘Well, I’ll be dirndled.’ Lois was always taking the rise out of Betty, but she took it in good part. When you’re in a hole you gotta stick together and USAF Drampton was a hole, no two ways.

I knew Betty from way back, at Topperwein High, Class of ’42. I was captain of the softball team and she was president of Future Homemakers, stuffing toy bears for needy children and selling lunch-boxes for Healthful Living Week. We really didn’t run with the same crowd. But then she married Ed Gillis and I married Vern Dewey which made us both 96 thBomber Wing wives. By the time we were posted from Travis, Texas, to some frozen salt-marsh, East Anglia, next stop Siberia, we were blood-sisters, near enough. Never would have thought I’d be so glad of Betty’s everlasting cheerfulness. That’s homesickness for you.