Chapter 25
By the time she needed to start cooking tea, Bobby had covered several pages of her notebook.
What she had produced was a more mature version of the stories she’d written in childhood.
It drew heavily on her experience in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
Bobby was a little worried it might be too similar to a story The Girl’s Own had already serialised, ‘Worrals of the WAAF’, but since she had little other experience to draw upon as the basis of a thrilling adventure story, she had decided to stick with what she knew.
Besides, her WAAF heroine – Lindy Langstaff, Bobby had named her – wasn’t much like well-to-do Worrals.
She was from a more humble background for a start, which Bobby hoped would make her relatable to girls from lower-class families.
She well remembered how she had longed to read about girls like herself as a child, rather than the plummy heroines she seemed to encounter in every tale.
She had also drawn on her experience in The Flying Aces concert party and given Lindy theatrical aspirations.
The story dealt with Lindy using her experience as a ventriloquist to outwit a Nazi paratrooper, throwing her voice in order to lure him to her commanding officer.
Of course, the CO then rewarded the plucky teenage airwoman with instant promotion.
Bobby smiled as she thought how her ventriloquist friend Ellis would appreciate that.
She had tried to infuse her story with humour too, which she modestly felt she wrote well.
Bobby had no idea if the story was any good, but writing it had significantly improved her spirits.
For so long, writing had been something she had done as part of her job, always striving to earn the approval of those above her – whether that meant Reg Atherton, Don Sykes or the nobs at the BBC.
This was the first time in ages that Bobby had written something solely to please herself.
It had been enormously satisfying to lose herself in the world she had created.
Stuck in the house as she had been since passing the six-month point in her pregnancy, sighing as she watched the fells putting on their spring garb through the window, it had been liberating to join Lindy for her adventures.
Even if, when she read it back, Bobby felt the story wasn’t something The Girl’s Own could be interested in, she felt she was now in a state of mind to bite her thumb at the BBC brass with aplomb.
Her sex wouldn’t count against her with the Girl’s Own editress.
There were a few male authors who contributed, but the majority of its stories were written by women.
She could abandon subterfuge, submit material under her own name and experience the pleasure of seeing that name printed under the story’s title – if, of course, the story was deemed good enough.
Many writers for the periodical were professional authors, like Captain W.
E. Johns, the creator of Biggles, who wrote the Worrals stories.
That was some stiff competition. But the magazine did have a wide pool of contributors, not all of whom were famous names, and after all, she was a professional writer.
Bobby decided that she would read her story back with fresh eyes after a few days, and if she felt it had a future, she would take a chance and send it in.
By the time Charlie arrived home, Bobby was in the kitchen, humming merrily as she stirred a pan of stew.
‘You sound happy,’ Charlie said when he came in, wrapping his arms around her sizeable belly and kissing her neck.
‘I am,’ Bobby said, rather surprised to find this was true. Whether her story was accepted for publication or not, writing it had done wonders for her spirits. Not to mention that her brain had been kept too busy to let her worry about the imminent delivery of her baby once.
Of course this immediately brought on the familiar feeling of guilt about the pleasure she had got from writing, losing herself in it to the exclusion of thoughts of her child.
‘Really, you’re not worrying about anything today?’ Charlie said. ‘Are you sure you’re my wife?’
‘Well, I never said I wasn’t worrying about anything.’
‘Go on, what is it this time?’
Bobby turned to face him. ‘Charlie, do you think I’ll be a good mam?’
‘If I didn’t, I’d hardly allow you to carry my baby. I don’t think you’ve ever thanked me for that, by the way.’
She smiled. ‘You’re all heart. I mean it though. Do you think I will?’
‘Don’t be daft. You’ll be the best mam there is. Why, do you think you might have suppressed Fagin tendencies and set Marmaduke to work stealing hankies as soon as he can walk?’
‘It’s something your brother said to me, I suppose. About how I could never be a good mother while I had my mind on work.’
Charlie frowned. ‘Reggie didn’t say that, did he?’
‘Not exactly, but that’s what my brain filed away. I worry that because I do want to do things other than be a mother, it means I won’t be able to do it well.’ She looked up at him. ‘But I do need more, Charlie, the same way you do. That isn’t wrong, is it?’
‘Of course it isn’t. Reggie’s talking out of his hat. Didn’t you tell me your mam worked in the mills nearly all your childhood?’
‘That’s right, and took in washing when she wasn’t able to. A lot of mothers down our way worked after having families. They had to.’
‘So she must’ve been a bad mother then.’
‘She was not,’ Bobby said, glaring at him. ‘I’d never have been the person I am without my mam to tell me I could make something of myself. She was an incredible woman. The best mother there was.’
‘And so is her daughter an incredible woman who’ll be the best mother there is. I don’t know why you listen to Reggie’s Victorian nonsense when you’ve got your own mother to inspire you.’
Bobby smiled. ‘All right, clever clogs. That was a devious way to make a point, getting me all cross.’
‘But it worked, and now you’re smiling again.’
She gave him a kiss and turned to stir her stew.
‘What’s brought on the good mood then?’ Charlie asked, resting his chin on her shoulder.
Bobby wished she could confide in him about the story she had written.
She would love to have him read it, but she was still determined to keep her writing endeavours secret until the time felt right.
She wanted to see if she would have any success submitting to The Girl’s Own before she said anything.
‘Going out shopping, I suppose,’ she said, grimacing slightly at the fib. ‘Not that there’s much fun in queuing forever and eternally, but I do get sick of being in the house.’
‘You should ask Mary or your sister to pick up our rations now you’re seven months gone. The doctor says you oughtn’t to be on your feet too much. And suppose Marmaduke decides to arrive early and you give birth in the middle of the grocer’s?’
‘Please, Charlie, don’t take this away from me. It’s the only freedom I still have. I swear I’m about to start talking to the faces in the wallpaper, stuck indoors constantly.’
‘What faces in the wallpaper?’
‘Exactly.’ Bobby sighed. ‘It was lovely seeing all the spring flowers starting to appear. I wish I could get out more to enjoy them.’
‘I wonder when we can go up into the fells again,’ Charlie said dreamily. ‘Every time I see Dick Minchin, I ask if he thinks my leg’s recovered enough to do a little modest hiking. I hardly need to use my stick any more. But it’s always “Soon, Charlie, soon.”’
‘I doubt I’m going to be able to make it to the peak of Great Bowside for a while yet,’ Bobby said, putting her hands over his on her stomach. ‘I’m surprised you can still wrap your arms around me.’
He turned her around to kiss her. ‘You’re beautiful.’
‘I’m huge.’
‘Well, yes, but I like that in a wife. Makes me feel I’m getting my money’s worth.’
Bobby smiled. ‘Tea’s nearly ready. How was work, love?’
He sighed. ‘Humiliating.’
‘Why, what happened?’
‘Ugh. Bill Lawrence came in for an appointment with Miller. He wants to arrange a mortgage so he can move his practice to bigger premises.’
‘Why should that be humiliating?’
‘It’s humiliating when I’ve told everyone I’m a clerk and Bill finds me taking dictation.
He just had this expression on his face, you know?
Like “how the mighty have fallen”.’ Charlie rested his forehead against hers.
‘We always had a healthy rivalry when we were running neighbouring veterinary practices, and now I have to see that look of pity where there used to be respect.’
‘I’m sure there wasn’t anything of that nature. Bill knows why you had to stop practising. That alone merits his respect.’
‘Perhaps it was my imagination, but I couldn’t help feeling that way.’ He closed his eyes. ‘And then there was Phil Reynolds.’
‘Who?’
‘A farmer from Skipton way I know a little. He came into the bank today too. He didn’t know I’d left the Air Force. Of course, the first thing he wanted to know after we’d exchanged “good mornings” was why.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘That they’d invalided me out. Phil took one look at me trembling and drew his own conclusions.’ Charlie laughed bleakly. ‘Didn’t even shake my hand. No doubt it’s all over Skipton by now that the RAF kicked me out as an LMF case.’
Bobby felt her protective hackles rise. She scowled at the unknown Farmer Reynolds.
What right did this man have to judge Charlie when he knew nothing of his injuries?
When he had no idea of the horrors her husband had seen, or the friends he’d lost?
And that went for Bill Lawrence too, if he’d really dared to show Charlie pity.
It was easy for men in reserved occupations to stand in judgement, when they got to remain safe at home.
It made her wish Charlie would accept the DFC, and wear it with pride. Then men like Phil Reynolds would be forced to acknowledge him a hero. She knew it was no good saying this to him, though. He would rather accept Reynolds’ sneers than exploit his decoration to score points.