After You've Gone E-Book

Joan Lingard

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 399

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Willa is a polite and respectable young woman, trying to cope with the tedium of her life whilst her husband is away on a year-long cruise with the Navy. Living with a controlling mother-in-law only serves to fuel her sense of claustrophobia. Her only escape is to submerge herself in books, and at her local library she meets Richard, a charming and intelligent young writer who shares her passion for reading. As their relationship blossoms, it begins to change Willa's life. Despite her initial reluctance, she allows herself to enjoy the taste of a different existence, yet all the while struggling with the knowledge that Tommy's steady progress will eventually bring him back home...

Leseprobe

After You’ve Gone

JOAN LINGARD

In memory of my parents Elizabeth and Henry Lingard

Contents

Title PageDedicationAcknowledgement~ 1 ~~ 2 ~~ 3 ~~ 4 ~~ 5 ~~ 6 ~~ 7 ~~ 8 ~~ 9 ~~10 ~~ 11 ~~ 12 ~~ 13 ~~ 14 ~~ 15 ~~ 16 ~~ 17 ~~ 18 ~~ 19 ~~ 20 ~~ 21 ~~ 22 ~~ 23 ~~ 24 ~~ 25 ~~ 26 ~~ 27 ~About the AuthorBy Joan LingardCopyright

Acknowledgement

The letters in this novel are based on a journal kept by my father Henry James Lingard, who served on the HMS Danae with the British Special Service Squadron on a world cruise, November, 1923 to September, 1924.

~ 1 ~

Freetown, Sierra Leone,West Africa11th December, 1923

Aboard the light cruiser HMS Danae, serving with the British Special Service Squadron, under the commands of Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Laurence Field and Rear-Admiral the Hon Sir Hubert Brand

HMS DanaeCaptain FM AustinOfficers and men 470Length 471 feet, 4,700 tonsGuns 6 – 6 ins, 2 – 3 ins4 – 3 pounders & 2 pompoms1 machine gun, 12 torpedoes

Dear Willa,

I am sure you will be glad to hear that we have arrived safe and sound in Sierra Leone, having left Chatham Dockyard on 23rd November and covered the first 3,161 miles of our journey. We are travelling in the following order: HMS Hood, Delhi, Dauntless, Repulse, Danae, Dragon. The Dunedin, the seventh ship, will join us later.

Sierra Leone became a British Colony in 1808. Why we bothered with it I am not sure – there are nicer places in the world. It has been known for years as the White Man’s Grave, malaria being prevalent, due to the swamps where great swarms of mosquitos breed. There is a plentiful supply of rice, tapioca, peanuts, bananas, oranges, limes, mangoes and pineapples. We are enjoying the last two especially. They are most refreshing. The heat is intense and moist so that one perspires continually.

Willa shuffled her chair closer to the range seeking its warmth. The letter had been dated early December but here in Edinburgh they were into the first days of 1924. It was a cold new year at that. Squalls of wind and rain were rattling the window making it difficult to imagine this overheated alien place in the heart of Africa. That was what Tommy himself had called it. ‘To start with,’ he had said, ‘we shall be going to the very heart of Africa’, and shown her the pink blotch on the globe. He prided himself on his phrases, something she had noticed on the first night she had met him at the Palace Ballroom, at the foot of Leith Walk. ‘Would you like to take a little turn around the floor with me?’ he had asked, extending one hand to her, keeping the other tucked behind his back. She kept having a recurring dream in which he appeared, standing, with one hand visible, the other, not.

The globe was standing on the table in amongst the clutter of odds and ends, the salt and pepper shakers, shaped like gnomes, a scatter of kirby grips, a packet of Bismuth lozenges, their passbook for the Prudential Insurance company. Anything and everything was tossed onto the table. All the surfaces in the room were covered. When Willa had first moved in the mess had bothered her, but by now she had adjusted to it. She had had no option. This was the way her mother-in-law lived.

Tommy had bought the globe so that they could follow the progress of the squadron on its world tour. Willa pictured them steaming in line, advancing in stately fashion through the oceans of the world, leaving white ripples of foam behind them. They were to be away for almost a year.

She went back to the letter written by this man who was her husband but whom she was finding difficult to recognise in these carefully scripted lines. He had asked her to keep all his letters, as a record: that might explain it. Normally he talked in a rather fast jokey sort of way, but Willa realised that when people wrote letters they often changed their tone of voice. She had a feeling that he had not been thinking of her while he was writing.

A horse will not live in the heat of Sierra Leone so the transport is carried out by natives carrying goods on their heads. This gives the woman a fine upward straight figure with majestic carriage.

Trust Tommy to notice that. Would they be wearing clothes, these black women with the splendid figures? Willa pulled herself up out of her slump. Tommy’s mother was forever telling her she should be wearing a corset, especially now, after the birth of the bairn, or else she’d never get her figure back. Willa had, in fact, lost the extra weight she’d put on, whereas her mother-in-law’s stomach sagged like an overstuffed pillow, in spite of being encased daily in a pair of greying-pink stays. When she slackened the laces in the evening she’d groan with the relief of it and fall back in her chair. Willa hated the sight of the stays which made her think of body armour for some enormous female warrior. Their owner strung them up on the pulley to air overnight and didn’t bring them down until after they’d breakfasted. They sat at the table eating their porridge with the suspenders dangling over their heads. Willa, while taking care not to look up, remained conscious of them throughout. She could smell the dried sweat and other body odours.

She heard the front door open and then the sound of her mother-in-law’s heavy footsteps as she advanced along the hall. Ina Costello came into the kitchen, her shoulders weighted down by her shopping. She dropped the bags on the floor with a thud.

‘Those stairs’ll be the death of me yet,’ she announced.

‘I could have got the messages,’ said Willa. She usually did and was glad to, to escape from the house for a bit.

‘I got some tripe. You couldn’t beat the price.’ Ina knew Willa wasn’t fond of tripe and onions cooked in milk. Then she noticed the letter. ‘Is that from Tommy?’ she asked accusingly. To Willa, at least, the voice sounded accusing, implying that she should have waited till her mother-in-law, his mother, was present for the ceremonial opening of the envelope even though it had been addressed to her. Mrs Thomas Costello. She found it difficult to believe that was actually her. He’d printed SWALK on the back flap.

‘He’s in Sierra Leone,’ said Willa. ‘Eating mangoes and fresh pineapples. Not tinned.’ Such exotic fruits were never to be seen in their local greengrocer.

‘He’ll need to watch his stomach.’ Tommy’s mother dragged a chair up to the range and collapsed onto it. ‘It’s aye been delicate. What else is he sayin’ then?’

In the year 1897 a house tax was levied and the following year the natives revolted, led by their chiefs who wanted the old days of slavery and heathenish practices back again. This was quelled though unfortunately many whites were murdered. Tranquillity reigns supreme now.

‘Thank the Lord for that,’ said his mother. ‘I’m not sure about some of those places he’s going to.’

Willa skipped over the detailed description of how the natives built their huts which she would read herself later. She would read the whole letter over again, when she was alone in her room, so that she could think about him in peace.

The natives are timid in remote places but they do like bright colours. Some remarkable sights are to be seen amongst the black ladies who will wear any old article of European apparel, notwithstanding that it does not suit or fit them. We saw one with an old felt hat perched on top of her short-haired head while the rest of her was naked except for a loin cloth. The men are usually totally naked except for their loin cloths though we did see one wearing a battered silk top hat. You can’t help laughing at some of them. Sunday is the best day for this kind of sightseeing. It is all very amusing.

‘I hope they dinna go too close to them,’ said Ina.’ You never know what they might catch.’

‘I hope they weren’t laughing out loud at the women,’ said Willa.

‘Why in the name not?’

‘Well, it’s not very nice making fun of them, just because their customs are different from ours. We wouldn’t like it if they came over here and laughed their heads off at us, would we?’

Ina snorted. ‘No much chance of that. People like them don’t come over here.’

‘How do you know?’ Willa felt stubbornness coming up her back, which was how her mother used to describe it. She was aware of a stiffening in her shoulders and the back of her neck.

‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Where would they get the money, tell me that if you can!’

That round went to Tommy’s mother. Willa returned to the letter.

We set sail for Cape Town on December 13th. One and all are wildly excited, for two reasons. Firstly, the crossing of the line ceremony. Secondly, Cape Town has promised us a roaring good time. Who would not look forward to a visit to South Africa? I trust this finds you all well, including wee Malkie.

I have a bit of a rash on my stomach, due, no doubt, to the heat.

But don’t worry as I expect it will go away.

Give Mother my love.

Yours most fondly,

Tommy xxx

‘Told you he should watch his stomach,’ said his mother. ‘Too much fruit doesn’t do you any good.’

‘The rash is on the outside,’ said Willa abstractedly, for she was studying the last three lines. Yours most fondly. Her eye jumped back up a line to Give Mother my love. Did Tommy equate fondness with love? She found it difficult to decide. He had never said he was in love with her, unless it came into a song, like ‘Let me call you sweetheart’. He had a habit of breaking into song when he wanted to avoid an issue. He had a nice voice so, to begin with, she had found it amusing as she wasn’t accustomed to singing men. On his last leave though, there had been a couple of times when it had annoyed her.

Her friend Pauline said she didn’t think many men came right out and used the word ‘love’, not in Scotland anyway. They might be frightened of being called Jessies. Perhaps Italian men would be different but, then, Tommy was only half Italian, on his father’s side, even though he looked wholly Italian. But he had been brought up by his mother, who was one hundred per cent Scottish.

‘I’m very fond of you, you know, Willa,’ Tommy had said when he’d asked her to marry him. By then she’d been expecting Malcolm though he’d sworn he’d been going to ask her anyway. They had been going out together for some months, in between his spells at sea, of course. He was forever coming and going. A niggle of doubt had stayed with her. Would he or would he not have asked her? The most important thing was that he did marry her.

He had written his name with a flourish. He had a fine hand; you could only admire it. His mother said he’d always been top of the class for writing. His letters sloped to the right without threatening to topple over and his loops were beautifully formed, reminding Willa of sitting at her school desk, copying the perfectly formed sentence above into the space below, watching that she did not go over the lines, dipping her pen carefully into the inkwell, anxious that it would not plunge too far in and stain her fingers. She usually did stain them, up to the first knuckle.

‘What line’s he talking about?’ asked his mother.

‘The equator.’

‘What’s so special about that?’

‘They dress up, I think. Fancy dress.’

‘He was good at composition at the school. There was one of his teachers, a Mr Jackson, who took a liking to him. He said Tommy could be a writer. He’d a friend who worked on the Evening News, offered to put a word in for him if he’d like. Tommy might have been working for the paper now if he hadn’t upped and joined the Navy at fourteen.’

It was one of the few decisions that Tommy appeared to have taken without his mother’s consent. He had gone out and done it and come back and told her. She had found a little comfort in the fact that he’d joined the Royal Navy, not the Merchant. I joined the Navy to see the world, he liked to sing, as he shaved in front of the bathroom mirror. And what did I see?I saw the sea.

He was seeing more than the sea now.

Willa could understand why he hadn’t wanted to work on the Edinburgh Evening News and report local events, such as weddings, funerals and council meetings, though she’d have jumped at it herself if she’d got the chance. It would have been more interesting than sitting on a high stool in the Co-op office totting up figures, and she’d been good at English, too, at school. But Tommy had itchy feet; he hated sitting still, liked to be on the go. Where Tommy was, there was life. That was what she’d felt about him from that first meeting when he’d asked her to dance the Charleston. It was his kind of dance though he’d taken her up for a slow waltz afterwards and held her close, disturbingly close. She’d kept thinking she ought to try to move back a bit but his arm round her waist had been strong and unyielding. He’d murmured into her hair, telling her it was the colour of beech leaves in autumn. Willa’s friend Pauline had snorted when Willa reported that. ‘Don’t trust a man with fancy talk!’

They’d been in the cloakroom combing their hair and collecting their coats after the last dance.

Pauline had just had her hair bobbed and Willa had been considering it but now she was thinking that maybe she shouldn’t after all. Tommy had also said a woman’s hair was her crowning glory but she was not going to repeat that to Pauline who would only sniff. He had asked to take her home and she was thinking that maybe Pauline was miffed about that though they had always had an understanding that if one of them met a man the other would go home on her own.

‘You can see him coming from a mile off!’ declared Pauline, batting her nose with her powder puff, then wrinkling it to make a face at herself in the dim mirror. Several of the bulbs along the top were dead. Their faces looked ghostly in the pocked glass. ‘He’s only out for what he can get, with that flashy smile of his. Fancies himself as the second Rudolph Valentino! You watch yourself, Willa!’

Willa thought he did look a little like the film star. She and Pauline had gone to see Valentino in The Sheik three times and had come out after each showing entranced.

‘If he’s got his mac with him you’ll know he’s got other things in mind,’ said Pauline.

‘How do you mean?’

‘For lying on, stupid!’

‘I’ll ask him if he’d mind if you walked up with us.’

‘He wouldn’t want me tagging along. I’d get in his way, wouldn’t I? I’ll get a tram.’

Tommy didn’t propose a tram. ‘Let’s walk!’ he said. The night was warm and dry but he did have his mackintosh with him. He carried it slung over one shoulder. Still, thought Willa, with Scottish weather being what it was, he might have decided to be on the safe side. She wasn’t going to damn him for that one little thing.

He had already ascertained that she lived in digs in Bread Street, which was on his way home.

‘It’s a great night for walking,’ he said. ‘And it’ll give us more chance to get acquainted.’ He broke into song. ‘Shine On Harvest Moon’. He slid his arm round her waist and from time to time he squeezed it, pulling her in towards him, saying to cuddle up and keep the cold out. They were walking so close they kept bumping hips but he just laughed and when they rounded the corner at the east end of Princes Street he eased her into the store’s doorway and kissed her.

‘We could go for a little stroll through the gardens,’ he murmured, running his fingers over her face, feeling her cheekbones. His touch was light and made her tremble.

‘Will the gates not be locked?’

‘I’ll lift you over the top. I’m sure you’re light as a feather. It’ll be nice in the gardens. Nice and quiet.’ It was May-time and the flowers were opening.

For a moment she found herself almost about to give way, then she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Right you are!’ He did not insist and she respected him for that.

She thought then that he might not ask to see her again and maybe Pauline was right, that he did only want one thing from a girl and if he didn’t get it he would lose interest. On the way along Princes Street and up Lothian Road they talked about their lives, finding that they had both been pupils at Tollcross Public School, though at different times. He was five years older than her. He told her that his father had died when he was a baby and he’d been brought up by his mother. She told him that her father had fallen at Ypres and her mother had died in 1918 after a long struggle with tuberculosis. Since then she’d been on her own, lodging with a neighbour and working as a clerk in the Co-op.

When they reached her stair door he kissed her again but that was all. He didn’t try anything else on, not like some of them who seemed to think they were entitled to a reward just for seeing you to your door. Tommy said he was off to sea next day but he’d like to take her out when he came back. She didn’t expect to see him again but she did, at the Palace, a few weeks later. Pauline nudged her and said, ‘Don’t look now! Your Rudolph Valentino’s back in town.’

‘He’s not mine.’ Willa looked the other way, trying to assume indifference.

But he came straight over to her, cutting across the floor, weaving his way through the dancing couples.

‘Remember what I’ve said!’ hissed Pauline. ‘You watch yourself!’

Tommy held out his hand to Willa, the way he’d done before. ‘May I have the pleasure?’ She rose without a word and he moved in close on her and she remembered the feel of his legs against hers from the last time and the way his knee kept nudging between her knees.

‘I was hoping I’d see you here,’ he said. ‘I didn’t forget you, you know.’ She felt too shy to tell him that she hadn’t forgotten him either but she sensed he knew. They left before the last waltz.

His energy drew her. It was invigorating to be with someone who liked to enjoy life. ‘Let’s go!’ he cried, snapping his fingers. ‘Let’s be a little crazy!’ He waltzed her along Princes Street singing ‘If you were the only girl in the world’ in her ear, making her giggle and her neck wriggle with pleasure.

He told her he’d fallen for her hook, line and sinker! She laughed and he laughed. He wooed her and she succumbed quickly and easily to his charms, surprising herself, offering little resistance as she lay on his mackintosh in a hollow of the gardens with the dark castle standing guard high above them. When that moment arrived she forgot Pauline’s warning. Saying no did not even come into her head. Nothing did. He was the first man she had lain with but she was aware that she would not have been his first girl. She resolved not to ask. What she didn’t know didn’t hurt her. That was to be her motto, and it was what she said to Pauline later.

‘It’s all right saying that,’ Pauline retorted.

* * *

An angry cry erupted from the bedroom at the front. The bairn had good lungs on him. Willa made to rise but Tommy’s mother was already pushing herself up onto her feet and telling her, ‘You stay where you are. I’ll get him. You could put a bit more coal on the fire.’

Willa shovelled a shuttleful of coal noisily into the range. When she’d finished she could hear Tommy’s mother’s voice mumbling. She came back into the room with the baby cradled against her big bosom.

‘You’re just the spitting image of your daddy,’ she was telling him. ‘The spitting image. But you’ll no join the Navy and run off and leave your granny, will you, Malkie?’

‘Malkie’ grated on Willa’s ears though she had been trying not to let it. After protesting a couple of times she’d realised she might as well save herself the trouble. Tommy had said ‘Malcolm’ was too po-faced for a wee bairn but he’d given in because Willa had felt strongly about it. It had been her father’s name.

She wanted to take the baby into her own arms but his grandmother was holding onto him and rocking him and cooing into his face and he was gurgling and she was saying, ‘You know your granny, don’t you, son? Yes, you do, you know your ould granny.’ The ‘son’ irked Willa too but, again, she tried not to let it. She sometimes wondered if the woman did it to annoy her. She couldn’t make up her mind if Ina Costello was a kindly person or not. At times she seemed to be; at others, not. Willa was supposed to call her ‘Mother’ but she couldn’t get the word out.

Pauline said she should thank her lucky stars that Tommy’s mother had become attached to the child. It would have been awkward if she hadn’t. After all, she’d taken Willa in and given her a home and it wasn’t as if Willa had a mother of her own to go to. When Willa had started going out with Tommy she’d been attracted by the idea of being part of a family again. She’d realised that he was fond of his mother, and that had pleased her. Any man who was fond of his mother must be a good man. It showed a sense of duty and the ability to love. So she had reasoned.

Malcolm’s face had turned brick-red and his eyes were bulging.

‘He’s filling his nappy,’ pronounced his grandmother with satisfaction. ‘I’ll away and change him in the bathroom. You might reach me a clean nappy down from the pulley.’

When they’d gone Willa picked up Tommy’s letter again. He’d added a PS.

Hope you have a good New Year. We have been told we shall celebrate Christmas right royally. The boys are really looking forward to it, yours truly included.

Was he hers truly? Could she be sure? Oh shut up, Willa, she said to herself. What good did it do thinking this way?

Tommy knew that they didn’t celebrate Christmas much at all, not the way they did south of the border, in England. The shops were open as usual, the trams ran and folk went to their work. New Year was the big celebration, and that, like Christmas, had been and gone. On Hogmanay they’d gone up to Tommy’s Aunt Elma’s, his mother’s sister. She lived in a three-bedroom flat in Marchmont with her master butcher husband Gerry, whom she insisted on calling Gerald, to his annoyance. Elma hated the name Gerry, for it made her think of the Huns, but he said he’d been called that when he was a lad, long before he’d ever heard of them. He’d managed to stay out of the war, which was the way Ina Costello put it. He had a dodgy stomach, was forever sucking Bismuth lozenges, which he kept in a tin in his top jacket pocket. ‘Whose stomach is perfect?’ Ina wanted to know. Her Tommy’s wasn’t, yet look at him! He’d seen active service and been torpedoed in the North Sea, after which he’d been brought back to a convalescent hospital in Edinburgh, to her relief. ‘See you don’t make too quick a recovery,’ she’d told him. ‘It’s nice and comfy in here. When they do put you out and the war’s over we’ll see if we can get ourselves a better place.’

The war had ended and the Costellos had stayed on in the same one-bedroom flat with the box room where Tommy had slept as a boy. His mother had surrendered her bedroom to the young couple on their marriage and made do now with a double bed-settee in the sitting room where she was comfortable enough. They seldom used the room so it didn’t cause much inconvenience. Most folk who visited were taken through to the kitchen at the back where it was warmer, the only exception being the minister and, very occasionally, the doctor. The last time he’d been in the house was when Malcolm was born. Willa had been fortunate in having a relatively short labour and straightforward birth; as her mother-in-law had stressed for she herself had suffered greatly bringing Tommy into the world. But she had never held it against him, not for a single minute.

‘When Tommy gets promoted we’ll get a two-bedroom,’ she said. He was currently a Yeoman of Signals, hoping to be elevated soon to the rank of Chief Yeoman.

She envied her sister Elma her three-bedroom flat in Marchmont, a more select district than Tollcross.

For New Year Elma had spread her table with plentiful quantities of shortbread, Black Bun, Dundee Cake and Cloutie pudding. She’d laid them out on dainty, frilled doilies, which seemed out of keeping with the heaviness of the offerings. Elma took pride in being ‘particular’. Gerry kept the whisky circulating. When one bottle was finished he reached for another and tossed the old one over his shoulder into the bin. ‘For luck,’ he said, ignoring his wife’s baleful eye. He’d been in the pub earlier so that he was pretty well stotious by the time Willa and Ina arrived. As the hours went by Willa herself became a little tipsy and her mother-in-law warned her she’d better watch she didn’t get her bairn drunk. The whisky would go through on the milk. But even she was looking flushed and laughing at Gerry’s risqué jokes and she sang along with the neighbour who’d come in to first foot them with a lump of coal. If Tommy had been there he would have done it for he was darker than any man present. The darker the man, the better luck he would bring with him.

‘I belong to Glasgow,’ sang Tommy’s mother, who had visited the city only once and returned to report that it was clarty and not a patch on Edinburgh.

Then Bunty, Ina’s youngest sister, embarked on ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’, hiking her already short skirt up above her knees to show off her red satin garters, which caused her sister Elma to issue a rebuke. ‘Honest, Bunty, at your age! It’s time you grew up, so it is. You’d give anybody a red face.’ When she went out to the kitchen Gerry snapped one of the garters against Bunty’s leg and Bunty screamed in mock protest. Everyone laughed. Elma was the only one of the company to remain starkly sober. She’d allowed a trickle of sherry to pass her lips at midnight but nothing more. Even that had caused her to grimace, as if it were cough medicine she was swallowing.

Ina had to take Willa’s arm on the road home. They walked back from Marchmont to Tollcross at three o’clock in the morning, Willa pushing the pram through a smattering of sleet, flanked by Tommy’s mother and aunt. She enjoyed the walk, with the streetlamps glimmering in the white mist and lights blinking at windows. The city was still awake. There were folk on the street, merry for the most part and good-natured, on their way home from parties. As they passed they called out, ‘A Happy New Year to one and all!’ and they called back, ‘And the same to you!’

They passed the King’s Theatre, shuttered and dark, and Ina said they must go and see Goody Two Shoes before the show ended. Bunty said Florrie Ford had been great in Cinderella at the Empire. Her friend Mr Parkin had taken her.

‘I think I’d prefer Goody Two Shoes,’ said Ina. ‘It’s a bit different.’

‘How is it?’ demanded Bunty.

‘Well, everyone’s seen Cinderella, haven’t they? I mean to say, it’s quite common.’

Bunty let it drop. She wheeled off shortly to go to her own place.

‘Mr Parkin seems to think he’s the bee’s knees,’ commented Ina.

A drunk was loitering in the doorway of their stair.

‘Excuse me,’ said Ina and gave him a little push to the side. He made no move to resist. His eyes were glazed and his mouth slack.

Willa bumped the pram up the step and Ina closed the door behind them and put the latch down.

‘He’d be in here relieving himself, given half a chance,’ said Ina.

Willa parked the pram at the end of the lobby, by the door that opened into the communal back green, put on the cat net, and carried the baby up the stairs against her shoulder. Ina had to rest on both the first and second landings. The three flights were getting to be too much for her, especially with her bulk.

‘Well, that’s 1923 over and done with,’ she declared, as they came into the flat. ‘Now it’s back to auld claes and parritch.’

‘We had a good time, though,’ said Willa.

‘Aye, and the house has been redd up.’

They had toiled the whole of Hogmanay, blacking the range, washing windows and curtains, scrubbing floors and polishing furniture and brasses until the place shone. Ina Costello would not allow a speck of dirt to stain the beginning of a new year.

‘Pity, though, Tommy wasne with us,’ she added with a sigh. ‘I missed him.’

Willa nodded. Even to think of him brought a lump into her throat.

~ 2 ~

Cape Town, South Africa 27th December, 1923

Dear Willa,

She paused to study the address, needing to let her mind adjust to the shift of time and place. When Tommy had written the letter he had still been in the old year and here they were well on in January. She felt out of step with him in a way she had not been before and was going to be for the best part of a year. With just herself and the baby, and Tommy’s mother. The latter was waiting expectantly.

This is a wonderful city to visit. Beautifully laid out, with Table Bay for a sea front and Table Mountain behind, it is truly a striking and picturesque spectacle. The suburbs are pretty, the lawns beautifully kept, with large, vividly coloured flowers growing in profusion. This would be a wonderful country to live in. Who knows? One of these days…

We have had a few dips in the sea at Camps Bay and also been enjoying the surf bathing. It is a fine pastime, and very refreshing, especially at this time of year. I took to it straightaway. I am sure you would too. But I think our Scottish seas might be a bit cold for it. Brrr.

Willa allowed herself a small sigh. Unlike Sierra Leone, with its steaming heat and mosquito swamps, she could form a picture of this place in her head. She could hear the pounding of the surf and see the golden sand and brilliant flowers. The seaside in South Africa would be nothing like what it was at North Berwick, washed by the steel-grey North Sea. She’d managed to go in as far as her ankles when she and Tommy went there for their three-day honeymoon. His mother had been nippy about them going, had said she was surprised they were bothering with a honeymoon, under the circumstances, and they might be better putting the money towards the baby’s layette. When she’d first heard that Willa was pregnant she had been surprisingly accepting. ‘Och well,’ she’d said, ‘these things happen. Better if they didn’t, mind,’ she’d added with a touch of tartness in her voice.

Willa and Tommy had stayed in a bed and breakfast on the front in North Berwick so they’d been able to hear the sea at night. She’d liked that. It had been nothing of course to Tommy, who was used to the sounds of several seas, bigger and more boisterous than that edging the East Lothian shore.

They’d walked along the sands, arms entwined, and he’d sung to her. ‘Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside’…That had made her laugh but ‘After You’ve Gone’ had sobered her.

After you’ve gone, and left me crying, after you’ve gone, there’s no denying, you’ll feel blue…

It was he who was going to go away, not her. She couldn’t ever imagine leaving him. She’d said, ‘Och, don’t sing that, Tommy. I don’t want to think about you going away.’ He’d laughed and said, ‘It’s only a song.’ He loved singing. It meant that there were never any silences between them. He’d moved on to ‘I wonder who’s kissing her now’, breaking off to stroke her cheek and say softly, ‘I’d kill anyone I caught kissing you.’ At the time it had given her a little thrill to think he cared so much.

‘It’s nice he’s getting some sea bathing,’ said his mother. ‘It’ll be a good tonic for him. And he’s a braw swimmer. He’s got all sorts of certificates.’

He’d learnt to swim at Warrender Baths in Marchmont, as had Willa herself, though at different times. When he’d told her how he used to go to the baths she remembered watching a young man with sleek black hair – a boy, really, only fourteen – standing on the edge of the top diving board, his toes curled over. She’d have been about nine at the time. She’d watched him, wondering if he would dive. After a couple of minutes he’d raised his arms very slowly above his head and still taking his time moved up onto his toes and plunged into the green water like a perfect arrow, his muscles taut. Emerging, he’d shaken his head and at that moment she’d caught his eye and he’d winked at her. Later, when she’d started going out with him, she had realised that it must have been him. After that time in the baths she hadn’t seen him for years as he’d been about to go off and join the Navy. That had been his last dive before freedom, he’d joked.

His mother was looking at her. She resumed reading.

The Cape is wonderfully healthy with a very clear atmosphere. Fruit is plentiful and most houses in the suburbs have fruit trees in their gardens. The people look fit and are jolly fine sportsmen. They have the breezy colonial manner, which makes them easy to get on with. There are plenty of black people to do the heavier work.

The population is very enthusiastic about the squadron’s visit and the hospitality is far beyond anything we expected. The list of entertainments we have been invited to partake in includes tennis, shooting, picnics, parties, motor driving and dances. It is not possible to accept every single invitation we receive. We have been snowed under with them. Everybody wants us!

‘I’m sure Tommy would be popular wherever he went,’ said his mother. ‘He’s got a good way with him.’

He had, Willa knew. His ready smile and friendly manner made people warm to him straightaway. He was a tactile person, too. He’d put his hand on a person’s arm when speaking to them. She remembered his touch on her arm, on the nape of her neck…

‘What are you waiting for?’

Willa’s head came up.

‘You were miles away,’ said her mother-in-law.

We spent Christmas with various newly made friends in their lovely homes and they showered us with gifts. It made us realise how much our colonies value us. My mate Bill and myself were taken to a superb house out in the veldt where the family made us extremely welcome. They had a turquoise-blue swimming pool (bit smarter than Warrender Baths!) in their garden. We swam in the evening under the stars and afterwards were served iced cocktails on the verandah followed by a sumptuous meal comprising various kinds of white fish, lobster, prawns, chicken, different meats, salads, etc. We ate till we were stuffed. My rash has gone, you will be pleased to hear.

Give Mother my love. I hope her chilblains are not bothering her too much.

I remain, as ever, your fond husband,

Tommy xxx

‘What a rare life he’s leading,’ sighed his mother. ‘Showered with presents! That was nice of him asking after my chilblains. He was always a thoughtful boy. When you write back tell him they’re no too bad yet. There’s still a fair bit of winter to come, mind.’

‘Will I tell him about your corns?’ asked Willa, feeling a little wicked.

‘I don’t think you need to do that,’ said Ina uncomfortably. When Tommy was at home she went into the bathroom to pare them.

Willa folded up the letter. No mention of the baby! Malcolm had been only three weeks old when his father had left Edinburgh so perhaps it was not surprising. Tommy probably didn’t think of him very often, not like her, with him night and day. He was never out of her head. She’d have to rib Tommy about it in her next letter, say something like, ‘Hope you haven’t forgotten you’ve got a son!’ She wondered how often he thought even of her, with all those entertainments on offer. Parties. Picnics. Dances. Cocktails on the verandah. There would be girls at the dances, well, of course there would, young girls, pretty girls, carefree girls, with smooth tanned skin; and Tommy was not one to sit on the sidelines watching. He’d be up on the floor as soon as the band struck the first chord, holding out his hand.

Would you care to take a little turn with me?

She returned the letter to its envelope. He’d put SWALK on the back flap again but somehow it didn’t seem to offer much comfort. She got up.

‘I’m going to the library.’

‘You’re never away from the place.’

‘I read fast.’

The library was her main source of pleasure, always had been, but especially now, with Tommy away – apart from the baby, though he, whilst she loved him dearly and intensely, was not an undiluted pleasure. At times, when he wouldn’t settle and she was sitting nursing him in her room, looking out at the rain, she felt so frustrated she thought she could burst. She longed to go to the pictures or the dancing with Pauline, not that she’d ever think of doing that. Tommy wouldn’t like her to go to the Palace or the Palais de Danse without him and his mother would be scandalised. There was only one name for married women who went to dancehalls without their husbands.

‘You can leave Malkie if you like.’

‘All right.’ Willa nodded. When she took the pram she had to leave it at the library door and lift Malcolm out and then sometimes he’d wake up and girn or occasionally burp up a gobbet of sour milk and the librarian she didn’t like would give her a look and she’d have to be quick and choose the first two books that came to hand.

‘You could go to the fishmonger’s on your way back. Get a couple of herring. Make sure they’re fresh, mind! Don’t let him palm you off on yesterday’s.’

Willa went through to her room at the front where Malcolm lay asleep in his cot, tightly swaddled in his shawl. He needed to be well wrapped up for the room was high-ceilinged and warmed only by a small paraffin stove that took the chill off, but not much more. Willa leant over the cot, studying her child’s face. She spent hours gazing at him. He was a bonny baby; others thought so, not just herself. His granny said he was the image of his daddy when he was a baby. He had strong features, a thatch of dark hair and very long dark eyelashes. Streetsweepers, his Great-aunt Bunty called them. And his eyes were large and darkening rapidly from the blue they’d been at birth. ‘He’ll break a few hearts, that one,’ Bunty had said when she’d seen him the first time. ‘Funny how you can tell straightaway.’ Then she’d winked at Willa where she’d sat bolt upright against the pillows in her bed. Tommy’s family seemed prone to winking, which disconcerted her. Not his mother, though. Tommy hadn’t been home for the birth but he’d got leave and come a week later. He’d stayed five days before going back to rejoin his ship and prepare for their world cruise.

Willa straightened herself up and went to the window to check if it was still raining. It was. They’d had snow, too, recently. It was proving to be a hard winter and already there was a coal shortage. There was also talk of strikes. Unlike Tommy’s mother, Willa liked living at Tollcross. From up here, she could look down on the intersection, the meeting of the ways, and the traffic coming from four directions. It was a hub, maybe not of the world, but of the city. She enjoyed seeing the motor cars going by and the horses clopping along in their cart-shafts and the trams as they came rattling round the clock, the overhead cables sparking as the pole clicked on a point. She didn’t mind the banging of their wheels as they passed over the rail joints or the clanging of the warning bells as they slowed on approach to a stop. At times the trams might get stuck in a jam but they’d soon be on the move again, going somewhere, even if it was only down to Princes Street or Leith Walk or up to Morningside Station. She wasn’t so keen on watching the men coming up from the underground toilet on the clock island, often still buttoning themselves up. But none of the noises of the street bothered her. At the rear of the house, in the kitchen, when Ina was out, it was dead quiet except for the tick of the big wall clock. You looked out, if you looked out at all, on the backs of other tenements and back greens where washing hung on sagging lines.

She’d brightened her room with yellow curtains and two brilliant-blue velvet cushions that glowed when the lamps were lit. She’d bought them with some of their wedding- present money. She hadn’t been able to afford new wallpaper so must live with the autumn leaves. Ina had sniffed and said she didn’t know why Willa was throwing good money away when there’d been perfectly good curtains at the windows already, chenille, colour of putty, colour that would go with anything, didn’t show the dirt. Being on the main street, surrounded by chimneys spewing out dark smoke, there was no lack of that. All the rooms in the flat were decorated in shades of beige, brown and russet. Autumn colours were nice, said Ina. But these were dying autumnal colours, at the back end of November, when all life has gone out of them.

Willa took her library books from the bedside table, John Galsworthy’s A Man of Property and The Crimson Circle by Edgar Wallace, and put them in her shopping bag. She’d enjoyed each in its own way. They’d taken her into different worlds, far removed from her own. They’d allowed her to dream a little. She lifted her mackintosh and umbrella and checked again on the baby before going into the hall and calling out, ‘I’m away now. Malcolm’s sleeping. I’ll leave the door open so that you can hear him.’ She knew his grandmother would have him up, whether he wakened or not, the minute she was out of the house.

As she tugged the flat door shut behind her, their neighbour across the landing came up the stairs. Mr MacNab was a printer but currently jobless. He’d been out of work for over a year and felt bitter about it for he’d fought in the war and been gassed, which had left him with a racking cough. Nobody seemed to care, he said. They were having to live on the ‘parish’, he and his family, for the national insurance had stopped after six weeks. They had been means-tested and given vouchers for essentials such as bread, margarine, cheese, tea and sugar. One day Willa had landed up in the Co-op when Mrs MacNab was at the counter paying for her few groceries with the vouchers. She’d looked embarrassed to be seen with them. Walking back up the road with Willa, she’d told her that a ‘visitor’ had called to see them and had poked into every corner of their flat, looking to see if they had any money stashed away or any valuable items they could have pawned. He had even looked under the lino!

Mr MacNab’s shoulders were slumped and failure was written all over his face so Willa knew she needn’t bother asking him if he’d managed to find any work. He’d gone on the hunger strike to London in December, 1922. The men, gathered in their hundreds in Princes Street at the bottom of the Mound, waiting to set off, had been quite a sight. Willa had cheered them on, along with many others. But, as Bunty said, what good did it all do?

‘How’re you doing?’ asked Willa.

Mr MacNab shrugged. ‘I went to see if there was anything going at the rubber factory over in Fountainbridge.’

‘The North British?’

‘Aye. I heard they were taking on men, but they only wanted half a dozen and there was a queue a mile long when I got there.’

‘I’m sorry.’

That was another thing Pauline said Willa should thank her lucky stars for: Tommy’s job was secure and she got money paid direct to her, and regularly. Willa suspected the MacNabs often couldn’t buy enough food. They had five children to feed and their faces looked pinched. Sometimes Tommy’s mother, if she’d been baking, would pass in a cake or a pie to them. That was the kind side of her mother-in-law; Willa acknowledged that.

‘Oh well, better luck next time, Mr MacNab,’ said Willa limply. The sight of him or his wife always deflated her. Mrs MacNab, in her mid-thirties, looked fifty. ‘Be warned,’ Pauline had said to Willa. ‘You’re not wanting five weans. Though I suppose with Tommy away so much it limits the chances. If you fall again let me know. I heard of a woman in Morrison Street.’