Always I'Ll Remember Read online

  Always I'll Remember

  RITA BRADSHAW

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2005 Rita Bradshaw

  The right of Rita Bradshaw to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 7590 5

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE - Abby 1937

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  PART TWO - Goodbyes 1939

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  PART THREE - Goings on Down on the Farm 1942

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  PART FOUR - Gum, Nylons and GIs 1943

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  PART FIVE - Grasping the Nettle 1944

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  PART SIX - Changes 1945

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  PART SEVEN - Completing the Circles 1955

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Rita Bradshaw was born in Northamptonshire, where she still lives today. At the age of sixteen she met her husband - whom she considers her soulmate - and they have two daughters and a son and two young grandsons. Much to her delight, Rita’s first attempt at a novel was accepted for publication, and she went on to write many more successful novels under a pseudonym before writing for Headline using her own name.

  As a commited Christian and passionate animal-lover Rita has a full and busy life, but her writing continues to be a consuming pleasure that she never tires of. In any spare moments she loves reading, walking her beloved, elderly dog, eating out and visiting the cinema and theatre, as well as being involved in her local church and animal welfare.

  Rita Bradshaw’s earlier sagas, ALONE BENEATH THE HEAVEN, REACH FOR TOMORROW, RAGAMUFFIN ANGEL, THE STONY PATH, THE URCHIN’S SONG, CANDLES IN THE STORM and THE MOST PRECIOUS THING, are also available from Headline.

  This book is dedicated to my precious little furry baby, Jessie-Peg, who was so much more than a dog and who won the hearts of everyone who knew her.

  Peg, your amazing understanding, love, quirky little ways and utter devotion have left a void which can never be filled. You were so very brave at the end and fought so hard to get better, but it wasn’t to be.

  You had my heart in your little paw from the minute you came into my life, and I know I had yours.

  Always, always I’ll remember.

  Acknowledgements

  I draw on so many sources I can’t name them all, but special thanks for some of the background to this book which features the magnificent work of the Women’s Land Army must go to War in the Countryside by Sadie Ward, The Wartime Kitchen and Garden by Jennifer Davies, Wartime Women edited by Dorothy Sheridan, and The World at War 1939-45, Readers Digest.

  Prologue

  1921

  The tall, golden-haired woman standing at the kitchen window eased the collar of her blouse as she stared out into the mean little backyard. The February day was a raw one and a thin coating of ice covered the thick snow outside, but inside the kitchen the range was glowing, the smell of fresh bread pervaded the air and it was as warm as toast.

  ‘Let him come.’ The words were breathed on the air and trembled in the silence broken only by the regular ticking of the wooden clock on the mantelpiece. He had to come now the coast was clear.

  It was ten minutes later when she heard the backyard gate creak and her heart began to race. She put the loaf of bread she’d just fetched out of the oven onto the kitchen table and turned to face the scullery, smoothing down her apron as she did so.

  The big man who entered the kitchen through the scullery door a moment or two later was good-looking in a rough-hewn way, and as his eyes went to the woman he didn’t smile. She stared at him for a second before saying, ‘Hello, Ivor.’

  He nodded, rubbing his hand across his mouth. ‘I told Raymond I’d make sure I brought the coal in and check if there’s anything you want while he’s on this trip, you just having had the babbie an’ all.’

  ‘Did you? That was kind of you.’ Her voice was soft, almost teasing, and the thickly lashed blue eyes were laughing at him. ‘Well, there is something I want. Can you guess what it is?’

  ‘Don’t start that.’ It was said on a groan. ‘We can’t go back to that, we agreed—’

  ‘I didn’t agree to anything. You were the one who said we couldn’t when I was expecting, but I’m not expecting any more, am I?’ She glanced over at the small wicker basket in front of the range which held a tiny occupant who was sleeping soundly. ‘She’s over six weeks old now and I’ve missed you. Haven’t you missed me?’

  ‘We can’t,’ he repeated, but more weakly now. ‘We never should have in the first place. Damn it, I don’t know how it all came about. She’s your sister, for crying out loud. Don’t you feel any guilt or shame?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Aye, I do. By, I do. It keeps me awake half the night, if you want to know.’

  ‘Poor love.’ She reached up and undid the bun at the back of her head, releasing the golden cascade of silky hair which fell about her shoulders, enhancing the deep blue of her eyes and the pearly tint to her skin. Holding out her arms, she said, ‘Let me make it all better. I guarantee you’ll forget all about it in a little while.’

  He swallowed, shaking his head. ‘I promised meself it wouldn’t happen again.’

  ‘Promises are like piecrust, made to be broken.’ As she spoke she walked past him and into the scullery, returning a moment later after she had slipped the bolt on the back door. He was standing exactly where she had left him and he hadn’t objected to her locking the door. She smiled. ‘I love you,’ she said softly, ‘and we’re not hurting anyone, are we? No one knows. No one will ever know. And you have missed me, I know it. She’s never done any of the things we did, has she? I could tell. I bet she never even lets you keep the light on.’ Her smile widened, showing small white teeth. ‘There’s fresh sheets on the bed.’

  ‘What about the babbie?’

  ‘She’s not been long fed, she’ll sleep for a couple of hours or more.’ Her voice was trium
phant.

  He made no reply but stood looking at her. It had started to snow again outside, fat white flakes blowing against the kitchen window and sliding down the glass to collect on the ledge. ‘Why?’ he asked quietly. ‘Why me?’

  She looked straight at him, the blue of her eyes very clear and bright. ‘I’ve told you,’ she said. ‘I love you.’

  ‘But Raymond’s a good man.’

  ‘Perhaps I don’t want a good man, perhaps I want a bad one.’ She was laughing at him again.

  ‘You’ve got to take this seriously.’

  ‘Oh I do, Ivor. I promise you I do.’ She wasn’t smiling any more. ‘I love you and I can’t live without you. Is that serious enough?’ She undid the top two buttons of her blouse and as his eyes went to the soft swell of her breasts, she said, ‘Tell me you love me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Say you love me more than her.’

  He said nothing, staring at her as though in bewilderment and after a second she walked over to him and put her arms round his neck. Standing on tiptoe she pressed her lips against his. His arms tightened after a few moments as she’d known they would, and when she drew back to look into his face, she whispered, ‘You will, one day. You will say it.’

  And then she led him out of the room, into the hall and up the stairs . . .

  PART ONE

  Abby 1937

  Chapter One

  ‘So tonight’s the night you’re going to tell her, eh? You couldn’t see your way clear to wait till I’m away on the high seas and out of reach of her temper?’

  He didn’t mean it. Abby Vickers grinned at her father and pushed him with her elbow as they walked down the hot dusty street, one of many hot dusty streets which made up the hub of the north-east town of Bishopwearmouth. Her da knew how her mam was with her when he wasn’t around. She couldn’t remember how old she had been when he’d warned her mam he’d do for her one day if the beatings didn’t stop, but it had been after her mam had sent her flying across the room and she’d caught her head against the fender. She touched the small scar on her brow just below her hairline, a memento of that incident. Since then her mother hadn’t laid into her when her da was home from sea, but he was away an awful lot.

  ‘I only heard I’d got on the course today, Da, and it starts this Thursday. It’s been oversubscribed, the letter said, that’s why there was a delay.’ Abby’s voice held the lilt of excitement. ‘But I got in, Da!’

  ‘Course you got in, me bairn. I wouldn’t have expected anything else. Even them airy-fairy types at the technical college recognise a little gem when they see one.’

  ‘Oh, Da.’ Again she pushed at him, her smile widening. ‘You just put all your details on an application form and send it in.’

  ‘Aye, but you said there was a bit where you had to tell them all about yourself and why you wanted to go on the course.’

  ‘Aye, there was, and like I said, I put down I’d been saving for ages and that I didn’t want to work in a factory all of my life.’

  ‘There you are then, that’ll have clinched it. Shows a bit of backbone, you see.’ And his eldest bairn had plenty of that. Raymond glanced at his daughter who, at the age of sixteen, was already showing signs of a beauty that would take a man’s breath away in a few years. The last remnants of puppy fat were fast disappearing from the still slightly childish face and body, and the thick wheat-coloured hair and large, heavily lashed brown eyes were an unusual contrast. She’d shot up since her birthday in January too; he reckoned she must be at least two or three inches taller.

  This last thought caused Raymond to tweak the long plait falling to below his daughter’s shoulder blades as he said, ‘You’ll soon be taller than your mam, lass, the rate you’re growing. I thought you was going to take after my side but I could be wrong.’

  She grinned at him again, her round face alight. From her first day at school when two older girls had pointed out she was small and fat like a beer barrel and had made her life a misery for months, she’d become acutely aware of her shape. Even after she had gone for them one day and in the ensuing fracas ensured they didn’t pick on her again, she had remained sensitive to the fact that she was tubby and the smallest one in her class. But that was changing at last. It was almost as if reaching sixteen had triggered some magical change and she couldn’t be more grateful.

  ‘So . . .’ As the two of them turned off Silksworth Row, continuing past the bottom of the tramway depot and into Rose Street, Raymond said, ‘How you going to put it to her then, lass? You know she’ll kick up blue murder.’

  Abby nodded, her bright smile fading. Her mother had raised the roof two and a half years ago when she had said she wanted to stay on at school rather than leaving at fourteen, and she had found herself installed in the pickle factory in the heart of town before she could blink.

  She was lucky she had the chance of a decent job, her mother had ranted. Any other girl would give her eye teeth to be set on somewhere, with unemployment so widespread, and what did she want with learning anyway? It was no good to a lass. She ought to be down on her bended knees giving thanks to a mother who would take the trouble to go and see an old acquaintance - who also happened to be forewoman at the factory - to ask for work for such an ungrateful little chit of a daughter.

  Abby hadn’t gone down on her bended knees. Instead she had argued in vain for her point of view to be heard, and the result had shown itself in a bruise across one cheek-bone which had still been faintly visible when her father returned from sea some two weeks later. But it had all been too late by then. She had been forced into the noisy, hot, smelly confines of the pickle factory, where the days were long and exhausting and most of the time you couldn’t hear yourself think. The stench of onions was ingrained in hair, skin, nails - a stench which no amount of scrubbing in the old tin bath in front of the fire would remove - and her eyes were constantly irritated, causing them to weep and feel raw. But it was the mind-deadening quality of the job which was the biggest cross to bear.

  Abby looked at her father’s profile. ‘I’m not staying on at the factory a day longer than I need to, but I won’t leave until I’ve finished the shorthand and typing course and got another job. She’ll have to be content with that.’

  ‘Hinny, the day I witness your mam being content about anything’ll be the day Father Finlay says hello and God bless you.’

  Abby giggled, her hand going over her mouth. Her da was awful the way he was about the priest, but then the Father wasn’t very nice to her da, saying he’d burn in hell’s flames and always going on at him to repent and join the one true faith.

  She supposed the priest had to try and convert her da. It was his job in a way - if you could look at it as a job, which you probably couldn’t. But Father Finlay didn’t have to be so - the word which sprung to mind was nasty but she didn’t dare use it about the priest - so dogmatic, did he?

  As a child the priest’s visits to her mother had made her feel physically sick, worrying herself silly about her da not being a Catholic and taking Father Finlay’s dire warnings about the state of her da’s immortal soul to heart. It was only when she started work at the pickle factory and heard the chit-chat among the workers at lunchtime that she had begun to think differently, and question - if only in her heart - whether the priest was always right. There were all the missionaries and people like that who weren’t Catholics for a start, she just couldn’t imagine the same God who sent His Son to die for the sins of the world consigning them to hell’s flames along with ordinary men and women who just happened to be Protestants or Hallelujahs or whatever.

  ‘If I were you I’d tell her when we’re having a cup of tea after the meal. That way the others can skedaddle with full bellies if they need to.’ Raymond had stopped a couple of houses short of their front door, his voice low, and as Abby stopped too she nodded her reply.

  The grim terraced street was full of bairns making the most of the dying sunshine, playing hopscotch, swinging on a rop
e secured to the iron lamp post or playing marbles in the gutters. Abby knew full well her sister, Clara, wouldn’t be outside. In spite of being only four years old, Clara would be inside doing chores their mother had set for her. And Wilbert, a year younger than herself but who’d been working a forty-seven-hour week at Austin’s shipyard for the last twelve months, would be expected to do his quota when he got in from work. She didn’t know what their mam did all day given the amount of chores that awaited them all when they got home of an evening. Her da was the luckiest one, he was away out of it on the sea for most of the year.