Chapter 9
Bobby sought out her sister in the public lounge, still seething. Lilian smiled when she saw the black look on her twin’s face.
‘Did you give him a going over then?’ she asked, taking Bobby’s elbow to lead her upstairs. ‘He’s been worried sick about meeting Dad, but I told him it was you he should be scared of. I hope he isn’t going to have two black eyes on our wedding photograph.’
‘How can you joke about it? Honestly, I could kill the sod!’
‘He’s trying to make it right. That’s as much as we can expect of him,’ she said as she ushered Bobby into her bedroom.
‘What I expected of him was not to do it in the first place.’
‘I keep telling you. It takes two to make a baby, Bobby, and I’m as much to blame as he is.’
‘You are not. He’s had a reputation for years, oiling his way around the pubs looking for women to pick up.’
‘Was my reputation so very spotless?’
‘You liked to have fun, but you weren’t irresponsible.’
‘And yet here we are,’ Lil said, resting a hand on her stomach.
Bobby sighed as she sat down on the bed. ‘Perhaps it is anger making me see it that way. I never thought Tony was a real danger, until… well, until he proved he was.’
Lilian sat down beside her and gave her a hug.
‘You really mustn’t worry about us,’ she whispered. ‘What’s done is done. I think we can be content, once we get to know one another better. We’ll have the baby to unite us soon.’
‘Is that going to be enough?’ Bobby held her back. ‘I saw how you were when I came in. Not speaking, looking so miserable.’
‘We weren’t really miserable. It’s all happened so suddenly that it’s left us both a little shell-shocked.
Tony’s still learning how to behave like a husband, and I’m…
I suppose I’ve been letting myself brood too much on what might have been instead of resigning myself to what is. It’ll come right.’
‘Do you truly believe that?’
‘I have to,’ she said quietly. ‘What was the favour Tony wanted to ask?’
‘He wants me to talk to Don on his behalf,’ Bobby said. ‘See if he can put a word in with Pete Clarke at the Courier that’ll help him get his old job back.’
‘Oh, I do hope he can! Liverpool feels so far away, and so frightening. I know Tony needs to work, but it feels sinful to take a baby right to where the bombs are falling.’
‘You could come to us in Silverdale. Evacuate to the countryside for the duration.’
‘Hmm. I’m not sure leaving Tony alone in a big city is the best idea, are you?
’ Lilian said with a dry smile. ‘For all that he says he’s turned over a new leaf, I think he’s better for being under someone’s watchful eye.
Besides, I don’t really want to be apart so early in the marriage.
We’re starting off on such shaky ground, we need to make sure we’re putting down firm foundations. ’
‘It would be far better if you could both stay here,’ Bobby said.
‘I will talk to Don but I can’t guarantee anything, Lil.
Tony’s burnt a lot of bridges in this town.
He’s got a reputation for laziness and shirking that too many people are aware of, and Clarky’s seen it first-hand.
’ She gave her sister a squeeze. ‘But for you, I’ll do what I can. ’
‘I suppose I ought to fly indignantly to his defence when I hear people running him down as feckless,’ Lilian said with a sigh. ‘He is about to be my husband. That’ll come, I guess, once he’s proved himself to me.’
‘He says he loves you,’ Bobby said quietly.
Lilian smiled. ‘He’d like to believe he does, but that’s just talk to ease a guilty conscience. He does have a guilty conscience though, and that’s something. Plenty of men would turn their backs.’
‘He’s not entirely hopeless,’ Bobby agreed. She rubbed her sister’s shoulder. ‘But however real or otherwise his feelings might be, you don’t love him, Lil.’
‘I’m carrying his baby. And for love of that little unhatched life, I’m prepared to throw in my lot with Tony Scott.’ She sighed again. ‘But I did have such dreams about the man I’d marry.’
‘I remember,’ Bobby said, smiling. ‘You had your wedding day all planned out when we couldn’t have been more than seven.’
‘Your toff friend has got a big wedding planned, I suppose,’ Lilian said wistfully.
‘As far as anyone can with a war on. Topsy’s well-off family and friends have chipped in with money and clothing coupons to help it go off with a bang.’
‘When is it to be?’
‘It was supposed to be at the end of this month, but Teddy petitioned to move it to April so they could do it when the days are longer. It’s arranged for the fourth.’
‘I always imagined what a joyful thing it would be to marry someone I loved,’ Lilian said.
‘Dad giving me away, looking so proud. You my maid of honour. I never dreamed of something like this. Something shameful to be got out of the way as soon as possible, that I’d rather everyone I cared about stayed away from. ’
Suddenly she burst into tears – silent, racking sobs that convulsed her whole body. Bobby put her arms around her sister and held her tightly until she was calm again.
‘Lil, I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.
Lil drew back from the hug to blow her nose. ‘I’m all right, honestly. It’s only the baby making a mess of my emotions. I really should be grateful I’ve had as much good luck as I have.’
Bobby raised an eyebrow. ‘Good luck? I’d say you’ve had about the worst luck there is.’
‘Not compared to some girls. Did I ever tell you about Meg Woods, who I shared a billet with when I was training?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘She was only twenty: good-natured, very pretty. She was married to a lad who was with the BEF at Dunkirk – not one of those lucky enough to get back, but still, lucky enough to be among the captured rather than the killed. He’s been in a POW camp since June 1940.
’ Lilian laughed softly. ‘So there was no way out for Meg when she found herself in a delicate condition over a year later.’
‘She was expecting a baby?’
Lilian nodded. ‘Poor kid. She truly loved her husband, but she was lonely – lonely and afraid for the future. And now what’s her poor husband got to come home to?
It feels like a sin to be crying for my own selfish sake, when I’m lucky enough to have a father for my little one.
’ She winced, and then smiled. ‘Here. Feel this.’
She took Bobby’s hand and placed it on her lightly swollen stomach. Bobby experienced a thrill when she felt something jerk almost imperceptibly under her palm.
‘Oh!’ She flashed her sister a look of delight. ‘He kicked me!’
‘Yes, he just started moving yesterday. He’s an early kicker, the doctor said when I saw him this morning, which is a good sign all is as it should be. Seems he’s going to be a fighter, just like his mother.’
Bobby kept her hand there, feeling the tiny twitches as Lilian’s baby shifted inside her.
It hadn’t seemed quite real until she had felt that.
It triggered something in her – a sort of visceral joy at the indomitable nature of life, and excitement for the arrival of this little person who would soon belong to them.
The feeling faded, however, as she looked up at her sister’s drawn features and tear-stained cheeks.
‘You didn’t have to come all this way just to see me,’ Lil said. ‘What were you going to do, try to talk me out of it? You know it has to happen.’
‘I don’t know. I just wanted to see you before you went ahead with it.
’ Bobby withdrew her hand from her sister’s stomach.
The baby was still now, sleeping perhaps, oblivious to the storm his little presence had created in the world outside.
‘Besides, I didn’t come only to see you.
I’ve to be at a recruiting centre in an hour for a medical. ’
Lilian frowned. ‘You didn’t join up? I thought nothing could drag you away from that little magazine.’
‘I was called up – that is, I will be, once they’ve satisfied themselves I’m healthy. I don’t know where I’m to be sent.’
‘Oh.’
Lilian was silent, frowning down at the tatty olive carpet.
‘What’s wrong?’ Bobby asked.
‘Nothing, just…’ She sighed. ‘I guess I was still clinging to that daydream, that if I couldn’t make things work with Tony there’d be my little sister, waiting with open arms. I know it’s foolish.
You’ve got your hands full with Dad, and besides, you’ll be married yourself soon enough.
But as long as I knew I could run to you if I ever had need of an escape, it felt like I wasn’t completely alone, you know?
That I’d always have somewhere I could call home. ’
Bobby remembered how she had stood at the door of the Courier, thinking about how everyone needed a haven: something unchanging and stable in a chaotic world.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’
Lilian smiled. ‘I’m a selfish mare, I suppose. It never occurred to me you might be somewhere I couldn’t get at you.’
‘Oh, love.’ Bobby put an arm around her. ‘I will always be there for you. If Tony doesn’t shape up, you write to me and I’ll… I don’t know. I’ll work something out. I don’t want you to feel you’re going into this alone.’
‘What about Dad?’
Bobby sighed. ‘Yes, that’s the other worry.
He’s doing well at the moment, but you know as well as I do that can change pretty quickly if something happens to derail him.
Mary’s said she’ll keep a close eye on him, but it’s not the same as having one of us there.
She doesn’t know what it’s like in the really dark times. ’
‘I wish I could be there,’ Lil said quietly. ‘Not that he’d want me now, I suppose. Do you have to go?’
‘I can apply for postponement, but I can’t decide if I ought to.
When I think about Dad, and that you might need me, I feel like it’s my duty to fight call-up any way I can.
But then I watch the newsreels, see all these terrible things occurring, and I feel selfish for caring only about what’s happening on my own hearth.
’ She sighed. ‘Charlie thinks I ought to go. It’s hard to argue when he’s putting his life on the line to win this thing. ’
‘I see what you mean.’ Lilian patted Bobby’s knee. ‘Well, don’t worry about me,’ she said, with sudden brightness. ‘Tony will look after me – he’s sworn he will. You do what you have to, our Bobby.’
Bobby took her sister’s hand to give it a squeeze. ‘Lil, you don’t have to go through with this. There are other ways.’
‘Like what?’
‘You could live away somewhere. Tell people you’ve been evacuated, or that your husband’s overseas, or he was killed.
Any lie you want. I’d send what money I could and Tony would pay to support the baby, or a court can make him if he refuses.
You can take in laundry to earn a little extra, or…
or get a job in a factory maybe, once the baby’s weaned.
A lot of the munitions places have a WVS creche now to look after the little ones while their mams work. ’
Lilian smiled, her eyes filled with a strange sort of peace – or at least with resignation. ‘No, Bobby. I made my bed and now the time’s come to lie in it.’
‘At least consider it, Lil. I can’t bear to think of you trapped in a marriage that’s going to make you unhappy.’
‘I feel like as long as I can keep my baby, I’ll be a type of happy. And you never know, perhaps Tony will surprise us when it comes to the sort of husband he’ll make. Do you remember Mam telling us that it was the wildest colts would grow to make the steadiest mounts?’
Bobby smiled. ‘I remember. I asked if she was talking about Dad, and she went very pink. I wish she was here.’
‘Oh!’ Lilian laughed. ‘Here he goes again. I think he’s longing to be out, and to hell with the next five months.’
Lilian once again placed Bobby’s hand on her belly.
The baby seemed to be giving her insides a particularly vigorous battering.
Bobby let her head sink on to her sister’s shoulder as she felt her future nephew – or niece, she supposed, although Lil was convinced the baby would be a boy – make his presence in their lives felt.
One thing was for certain: once he arrived, life for Lilian would never be the same again.