The Way Ahead (11 page)

‘Granted,’ said Edward, after his Uncle Sammy. ‘So long, guys.’ And he went on with Leah.

‘Excuse me, Edward,’ she said, ‘but did you actually say what I think I heard you say?’

‘I can’t say I didn’t,’ said Edward, ‘because I heard it myself, and it reminded me that I’ve been thinking of writing a letter to your mother and grandfather. With your permission, of course.’

‘What kind of a letter?’ asked Leah, as they passed the bandstand, the rendezvous at this moment of several young ladies of the United Kingdom and their young gentlemen of the United States Army. ‘Is it relevant to what you just said to that American soldier?’

Edward cleared his throat and addressed her with the formality of a young Victorian gent.

‘My dear Miss Goodman, I want to let your mother and grandfather know that in a year’s time when I’m twenty-one, I hope to be so bold as to ask you to do me the honour of becoming my wife.’

‘Crikey,’ said Leah, a born Londoner, ‘what a lovely mouthful. Edward, could I ask you to say it again?’

‘Certainly,’ said Edward, taking in a lungful of the park air. ‘In short, if I still feel the same about you next year as I do now, Miss Goodman, I’ll definitely be asking you to do me the aforesaid honour, and I’ll have to let your mother and grandfather know
of
my prospective intentions in advance in the hope of receiving their approval.’

‘Crikey,’ said Leah again, ‘that’s in short? It was more than before. I never heard such a lovely mouthful. Could I ask you to—’

‘No, you couldn’t,’ said Edward, ‘I’m out of breath.’

‘So am I!’ said Leah, giddy.

‘D’you think you could tell me what you think will be your own feelings in a year’s time?’ asked Edward.

‘Well, they’re all giddy at the moment, and so am I,’ said Leah. ‘Edward, excuse me for asking, but do you mean you love me?’

‘Does it embarrass you?’ asked Edward.

‘I should be embarrassed?’ said Leah. ‘How could I be?’

‘You don’t feel you’re too young to be told?’ said Edward.

‘Pardon me, I’m sure,’ said Leah, brown eyes brilliant and pulse rate galloping, ‘but I’m not in pigtails and socks. I’m a working girl with prospects of being a WAAF. Edward, are we serious about all this?’

‘I am, believe me,’ said Edward, ‘but I’m not sure if your mother and grandfather are going to be in favour.’

‘Because of religion?’ said Leah. The atmosphere of the park, a green oasis, was not a place for contentious issues. It encouraged agreement, compromise and tolerance. ‘Edward, we’ll have to talk to them. I’m sure they’ll listen.’

‘Yes, but I’d like to write to them first to give
them
a chance to think about it,’ said Edward.

‘My own thinking’s very positive,’ said Leah. ‘I mean, if you do ask me to marry you, I’m certain I’d say yes. Will you have to give your own family time to think about it?’

‘Mum and Dad already know how I think about you,’ said Edward, feeling extraordinarily chuffed that this stunningly lovely girl favoured him.

Leah, who had met his parents and liked them a lot, said, ‘You’ve actually told them that when you’re twenty-one you’ll ask me to marry you?’

‘I spoke to them on the phone a couple of evenings ago,’ said Edward. ‘Dad thought I’d be lucky if a girl like you said yes, and Mum asked if I’d take on your religion or you’d take on mine. I said I wasn’t bothered about that, and she said well, she didn’t think there was anyone in Grandma’s family who’d ever been anything except Church of England. I said that could change, and Mum said well, she’d always liked your mother and that you struck her as being a nice respectable girl, which Grandma would approve. Grandma’s great on respectability, although Mum said the old lady might get a bit confused about having different religions in the family. That meant Mum was thinking she’d probably get confused herself, and she’s like Grandma in believing families should avoid confusion and not let it sneak in through a letterbox.’

‘Edward, if you say much more like that,’ said Leah, ‘I’ll get confused myself, especially as I’m still a bit giddy.’

‘Religious differences are something our elders
will
think about a lot more than you and I will,’ said Edward soberly.

‘Oh, bother differences, it’s feelings that count much more,’ said Leah, ‘but isn’t it a happy thought, Edward, that in our country a mixed marriage won’t cause a blood-letting riot?’

‘I’ve heard that people of mixed marriages in Germany are executed,’ said Edward soberly.

‘Mama is sure terrible things are happening there,’ said Leah. ‘Thank goodness that here we’ve still got our Parliament and Mr Churchill. Isn’t he splendid? You can actually hear him growling when he’s on the wireless and talking about what he thinks of the Nazis.’

‘He’s working up to a roar,’ said Edward. ‘Something’s going to happen that Hitler won’t like. Well, that’s what slipped out of my section sergeant’s mouth the other day. He’s a friend of mine.’

‘Your section sergeant’s your friend?’ said Leah.

‘Yes, he says do this or do that, and I do it,’ said Edward. ‘But about you marrying me, Leah, you might find some people getting spiteful.’

‘Yes, some,’ said Leah, ‘but most people won’t fuss. They don’t in our country. Edward, do you realize we’re talking as if we’ve already agreed to get married?’

‘Yes, I’m noticing that, but I think we’d be sensible to wait a year before we become engaged, don’t you?’ said Edward.

Something told Leah he was right. Well, he wasn’t yet twenty and she was still only seventeen. But she couldn’t quite come to terms with being
sensible
, not in this sunny park, and not when she was high on adrenalin.

‘Oh, I suppose so,’ she said, ‘but I think I’ll be counting the days.’

‘Is that a fact?’ said Edward, an arm around her waist.

‘Edward, I just know I’d love to be married to you,’ she said.

‘Blimey,’ said Edward, ‘then I think I’ll be counting the days myself. You’re a lovely girl, Leah.’

‘Oh, my life,’ she said happily. It didn’t matter to her that Edward wasn’t husky or broad-shouldered or a Clark Gable. She knew, she just knew, he was kind and sincere, and comforting to be with. He was manly and protective, and he belonged to the family that her mother always said was the finest in the land, made so by their remarkable matriarch, Mrs Maisie Adams. Show me, her mother said once, any woman who has given the country three sons more splendid than Boots, Tommy and Sammy Adams.

Loitering GIs whistled at her. She simply walked on with Edward, pushing the problems of their different religions to the back of her mind, where they settled down without twitching.

Sunday

MR HAROLD FORD, WEATHERBEATEN
in his middle age, and known as the Gaffer, was at the gate of a house in Wansey Street, Walworth, when an expected taxi from Waterloo Station pulled up. The cabbie got out, opened the passenger door and helped Mrs Cassie Brown and her children to alight. Six-year-old Maureen, called Muffin, and four-year-old Lewis, scampered up to the open gate and into the arms of the Gaffer, their granddad. Although the house was strange to them, Muffin being only two and Lewis an infant when their mother took them to live in Wiltshire, she had spoken of the place so often that they knew they were home.

‘Granddad!’ cried Lewis happily.

‘We’re here, Grandpa!’ exclaimed Muffin.

‘As expected and on time, which is a compliment to me old railways, eh?’ smiled the Gaffer, a ganger foreman, who had just transferred from Swindon back to his old working habitat with South-Eastern Railways. ‘Here I am, Cassie,’ he said, moving from
the
gate to help with the luggage the cabbie was depositing on the pavement.

‘Hello, Dad,’ said Cassie. She was in her twenty-ninth year, and still looked at life out of eyes that always seemed to be in search of unexpected gifts. A clear crisp sunny morning in December or a new balancing act by Lewis counted among the delightfully unexpected. She and her good old dad, together with the children, had been living in Wiltshire out of the way of bombs for well over three years. Finally, and because air raids on London were now rare, she had decided she could no longer wait to get back home. Home was here, in Walworth, and Walworth was the place of a hundred happy memories for her, most of them relating to her times with Freddy. Her decision had been helped by the moving out of wartime tenants from the house a month ago, and she had chosen to make the journey on a Sunday, when travel was just that much easier for a woman with two children and lots of luggage. ‘Dad, what d’you think now of us coming back?’ she asked.

‘I’m happy because I know you are,’ said the Gaffer.

‘Home’s home,’ said Cassie. Her dad, a great handyman who could plug leaks in tin kettles, create a built-in wardrobe, and successfully fight the animosity of a burst pipe, had left Wiltshire a few days in advance to get the house in complete order for her and the children. Hubby Freddy, overseas with a battalion of the East Surreys, had written by Forces airmail five weeks ago in response to her letter telling him she was thinking of returning to
Walworth
. He said that as long as she was sure they weren’t going to run into any air raids, the move was fine by him. Being head of the family, he said, I’m appreciative of you asking for my approval, which I’m giving. Keep the kettle warming on the hob, he said, in case I turn up myself. Freddy love, I wish you would, she’d said in her reply. As for him being head of the family, she reminded him that Queen Victoria was old bones now, and that there were two equal heads to the family, except hers was more equal than his, which they’d agreed on ages ago. She was now waiting for his next letter, although letters from him were beastly irregular. He always apologized for keeping her waiting, but she knew why irregularity persisted. Freddy was in Burma.

She paid the cabbie, and gave him a generous tip.

‘Well, bless yer, lady,’ he said, ‘and good luck. You’re the kind the lads are fighting for. Wish I had two kids like yours. Instead, I’ve got four racketin’ gals, all in the Wrens and all a danger to the King’s Navy. Lucky they ain’t Queenie’s kitchen maids or they’d of blown up Buckingham Palace by now. They’re what yer might call accident-prone, like. Still, I’ve got a soft spot for all of ’em, specially as they ain’t blown me up yet, nor me dear old Dutch. Well, so long, lady, been a pleasure.’

‘Ta-ta,’ said Cassie, and took a look up and down Wansey Street as the taxi moved off. The street was just the same, just a little bit superior to most others in Walworth, and it had escaped bombs, the bombs Germany had unleashed in fiery storms on all its opponents, thus creating reigns of terror from the
skies
, for which its people, so triumphant at first, were now paying dearly.

However, there were no hideous gaps in Wansey Street, no brick-torn desolation, just the quiet street in which she and Freddy had started their married life. Across the way, a little farther down, was the bright front door in which lived Mr and Mrs Cooper, adoptive parents of Horace, husband of Freddy’s younger sister, Sally. I’ll call on them tomorrow, thought Cassie, following her dad into the house, he carrying the last of the luggage. She heard the children romping around in the parlour, discovering everything that was new to them. Her dad left all the luggage in the little hall for the time being, and went through with Cassie to the kitchen. The range fire was alight, a kettle on the hob, and the room was warm, homely and comforting.

‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ said the Gaffer, and transferred the kettle to a gas ring in the scullery. Back he came, tireless.

Cassie looked at him, weatherbeaten and iron-grey, and just about the best dad in the world. He’d been a tower of strength all through their time in Wiltshire.

‘Dad?’

‘Well, Cassie?’

‘Wiltshire was lovely, I know, but it really is nice to be home, don’t you think?’

‘Bless yer, Cassie, that I do. I’m thinking of having a pint of old-fashioned wallop down at the pub tonight.’

‘You do that, Dad.’

‘I’m hoping to run into an old acquaintance, Henry Williams.’

‘Him?’ said Cassie. ‘But you never liked him.’

‘Sanctimonious geezer, always was, always will be,’ said the Gaffer. ‘Met ’im down the market yesterday. Know what he said? That it was criminal of Churchill to approve all this bombing of Germany.’

‘Well, I like that, I don’t think,’ said Cassie. ‘If any people’s asked for it more than the Germans, I don’t know who.’

‘If I see him in the pub tonight, I’ve got a few things to say to him,’ said the Gaffer. ‘Things I’ve thought about.’

‘Yes, go get him, Dad,’ said Cassie. ‘You’ve got everything in order in the house?’

‘Everything, Cassie, including the beds all aired. You can put yer feet up soon as you’ve had a cup of tea, eh?’

‘I’m fine, and the children were no bother,’ said Cassie, taking off her hat and pushing at her thick black hair. Boots would have liked her hairstyle. There were no curled rolls, only long shining hair down up in a crown. Cassie looked after her own hair to save what money she could out of her allowance from the Army. ‘Dad, all we’ve got to do now is wait for Freddy to come home.’

‘He’ll walk in one day, Cassie, you bet he will,’ said the Gaffer. He knew just how much Cassie missed her bloke. They’d been inseparable from the moment they first met, when Cassie was only ten. By the time she was fourteen, she was pulling out the hair of any girl who threatened to be a rival. But the perishing war had done what nothing else
could
have. It had taken Freddy into the Army and away from Cassie, and there were times when she was pretty down in the mouth. ‘Soon as we’ve laid ruddy old Hitler low and chopped ’is block off, Freddy’ll walk right in, you’ll see,’ he said.

‘Dad, I love you,’ said Cassie.

‘Well, bless yer, Cassie,’ said the Gaffer, and coughed.

Lewis yelled from the parlour.

‘Mum! Granddad! Muffin’s jumping on me! Mum!’

‘No, I’m not,’ called Muffin, ‘I’m just sitting on him, that’s all.’

But perhaps Lewis did have something to complain about. Muffin was plump and he was a lightweight. Cassie smiled. Wiltshire or Walworth, one was the same as the other to lively, runabout kids. For herself, the atmosphere of home was what counted most. Old Walworth was grey and sooty. Wiltshire was green and clean. But Walworth was where she and her family belonged, where she and Freddy had enjoyed endless years of togetherness, first as boy and girl, then as husband and wife, and then as parents.