Ellie (29 page)

‘How far is it to Stoke Mandeville?’ she asked instead. ‘I thought about going to see Marleen tomorrow.’

Ellie had felt an overwhelming sense of relief when Marleen was transferred to Stoke Mandeville. To see her aunt just lying there in a big, noisy ward at University College Hospital, heavily sedated, her face covered with dressings was distressing enough, but the hopelessness of her situation was far worse. In her few lucid moments she lay crying, wishing for death, and who could blame her when all movement and sight was gone. But then Dr Guttmann, the leading spinal specialist, came to see her, offering her a ray of hope.

‘I think it might be better if you left it a couple more weeks yet,’ Annie said as she took some cups down from the dresser. ‘She needs time to come to terms with her injuries and her guilty feelings.’

In many ways Annie was a more genteel version of some of the ebullient women Ellie remembered from Alder Street, big-hearted, funny and very wise. Her insight was little short of astounding.

‘I wouldn’t want her to think I’d forgotten about her,’ Ellie said, surprised that Annie had mentioned guilt.

‘She knows you won’t forget her,’ Annie said soothingly, laying one hand on Ellie’s shoulder. ‘Write again to reassure her, say how much you miss her, but let her scars heal, her mind clear and give Dr Guttmann time to work on her. It will be better for both of you.’

Ellie saw immediately what Annie meant. Marleen had to accept and adjust to what had happened. To be confronted with the person she believed she’d failed at this stage could set back any progress.

‘The trains are disrupted anyway,’ Charley said. ‘I could probably arrange to borrow a car and drive you there in a couple of weeks.’

‘Could you?’ Ellie smiled. Such a suggestion was typical of Charley – he was so good at organising things. ‘I’d like it if you came too, I’m scared of hospitals.’

‘Me too,’ Annie agreed. ‘Just the smell of them makes me queasy. Now I think I’ll take my cocoa up to bed and read for a while. Lock up for me, Charley.’

Another roar of a doodle-bug halted Annie; again the rattle of windows, the tinkling of china. They were becoming so used to it now they rarely moved.

‘It’s going over St Pancras,’ Charley said with a knowledgeable grin. ‘What did I say about the trains being disrupted?’

Annie picked up her drink, dropped a kiss on both Ellie and Charley’s foreheads and disappeared through the door.

‘I ought to get to bed too,’ Ellie said, sipping her cocoa. It wasn’t often she and Charley were alone together and she felt just a little apprehensive now.

‘Don’t go yet,’ he said, moving round the table to the chair next to her. ‘We never get a chance to talk.’

This was true. Although he worked twenty-four hours on and twenty-four off, he was often called in again during his rest period. When he did finally get a whole day off, sometimes Annie found it impossible to wake him.

Annie had moved Ellie up to an upstairs room. She kept the basement one now as a place to take shelter in the rocket attacks. Few bombs seemed to fall after midnight and Annie saw no sense in leaving Ellie in a miserable damp room when there were good ones upstairs free.

Ellie was so happy to be here. They’d shared her anxiety for Marleen, comforted and supported her and made their home hers too. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else now.

‘Are you cross about me taking that job at the Duke?’ she asked.

‘Not cross, why should I be?’ Charley half smiled. ‘More worried about you being alone with so many men, I suppose.’

It wasn’t done for women to go into pubs unescorted. Some landlords still refused to serve them, regardless of the fact that these same women were driving buses and ambulances and getting less money than their male counterparts. But Ellie, perhaps because of Marleen’s influence, didn’t really feel intimidated by a male province.

‘But there’s lots of men at the Blue Moon,’ she said. ‘No harm comes to me there. Jimbo even sends me home by taxi now.’ This was a recent development. She was singing on an average of three nights a week now and could only attribute Jimbo’s generosity to her increasing popularity.

‘There’s a lot of rough blokes get in the Duke,’ he replied, his frown suggesting he knew something he wasn’t able to say.

‘Don’t you think I’m capable of keeping my distance?’ Ellie said archly. ‘I’m not going there for fun, only for the money.’

‘Let’s get off this subject.’ Charley flashed one of his wide smiles at her. ‘I’ve got no right to tell you what to do.’

‘Tell me about you, then,’ Ellie suggested. She had tried to get him to tell her about his work lots of times but he rarely opened up. ‘Why haven’t you got a girlfriend?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose I haven’t got time to find one.’

‘But you must have had some?’

‘Well yes.’ He looked a bit sheepish. ‘A few, but nothing what you’d call serious.’

‘Don’t be so evasive,’ Ellie retorted. ‘You know all about me. I want to know what the real Charley King’s like. How you came to be a fireman, what it’s like. What you did before the war, what your ambitions are.’

Charley hated to talk about his job. He didn’t mind discussing racing to shot-down German planes or battling against raging fires in factories and warehouses, but he drew the line at even thinking about the carnage these flying bombs were causing. Only a few days ago he’d been sent to help when one fell on a trolley bus at Forest Gate. It was crammed with people going home from work. Dismembered bodies littered the road and some of the standing passengers had been flung at the walls of the houses. Charley had almost been sick. He could still hear the screaming of the few survivors in his head.

But he didn’t mind talking about his childhood and once he started to describe it he painted a very clear and vivid picture. The youngest child, protected and well loved by his four much older brothers, living in close proximity to the appalling slums of Somers Town, yet with the security of a strong family around him. His teenage years were overshadowed by the depression of the thirties, but he’d found work first in a butcher’s and then in a brick factory, and had been taught to drive by his brother Eddie.

‘I was driving a truck before the war,’ he said. ‘Stephen joined up first in the airforce, then Eddie and James went in the army and Bill went to Australia. I couldn’t leave Mum on her own, so I went for the fire brigade.’

He just laughed at Ellie’s suggestion that it was dangerous.

‘It has its moments. In the Blitz it was a bit hairy. But then it was for everyone. When I look back I only remember the funnier things, like the pig we raised.’

Charley could tell a good story – he had a knack of giving enough detail so Ellie could picture it. The pig was called Blossom and he and a group of other firemen kept her in a pen on a bomb-site close to the fire station.

‘I got really fond of her,’ he grinned. ‘I used to hose her down and tickle her ears and I pestered everyone for food scraps for her. But once she was fully grown I hated the thought of her being killed. I came up with the plan to find a mate for her – I thought if she had some babies she’d be saved.’

Ellie laughed as he explained how he got in touch with other fire stations which had pigs, and eventually tracked down a boar out in Essex.

‘The other blokes thought I was mad,’ he grinned. ‘So I had to do it alone. I borrowed a pick-up truck and shoved Blossom in the back. Only trouble was, there was a hole in the partition at the back of the cab and she had her snout through it the whole journey, nuzzling my ear. By the time I got out to Essex I smelt as bad as her.’

‘So what did Blossom think of her husband?’ Ellie giggled.

‘She took fright and scarpered,’ Charley said. ‘Brawn, he was called, a big, ugly thing. As I let down the tailgate, he reared up in his sty and let out a roar enough to wake the dead. Blossom just leaped out, knocked me over and was off like a dose of salts. Before I’d picked myself up, Brawn had crashed through the fence and was off in hot pursuit.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Ran after them.’ Charley grinned. ‘Half the men from the local fire station with me. The pigs ran down the High Street scattering shoppers, women were screaming, someone was blowing a whistle, it was like the Keystone cops. At the end of the High Street was a cricket field. The pigs went over that and into an allotment at the back. People think pigs are slow, but these two went like billy-oh. We finally caught up with them wallowing in a patch of prize leeks. They’d trampled and rolled on just about everything.’

‘How did you get them back?’

‘Don’t ask,’ Charley groaned. ‘It was a nightmare. Blossom wasn’t too bad, she’d had her outing and waving a few cabbage leaves in front of her did the trick. But Brawn was a renegade, he’d had his taste of freedom and liked it. He charged a couple of the men, knocked over a water butt. He was ferocious. But eventually we got a vet to sedate him and I can tell you I was the most unpopular fireman in Essex.’

‘So did Blossom have to be slaughtered?’ Ellie giggled.

‘Well, the most amazing thing was, Brawn must have found time to do the business. A few weeks later we discovered she was pregnant. So she got a temporary reprieve. I was on the carpet, reminded I was a fireman not a pig farmer. Blossom produced eight piglets but the officers at the station insisted they all had to go to farmers. Poor old Blossom ended up on plates.’

‘Oh no,’ Ellie gasped. ‘After all that!’

‘The lads still bring it up even now.’ Charley grinned. ‘They’ve only got to get a whiff of bacon frying and they say things like “Blossom’s frying tonight”. I don’t think I’ll ever live it down.’

It had been just before midnight when they got in from the pub and to Ellie’s surprise it was now nearly two. They had talked about so much – Ellie’s childhood, her time with the Gilberts. She’d even told him some of the story about Marleen.

‘What are you going to do when the war ends?’ she asked him.

As they’d been talking, Ellie had found herself being drawn to Charley. It wasn’t just his looks, though the combination of his lean, muscular body and his boyish face was very appealing. He had clearly inherited his mother’s understanding of people, accepting them without judging. He was honest and modest, able to laugh at himself as readily as he did about everything else.

‘I’d like to go to Australia,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Bill’s got a small farm out there now and he keeps urging both me and Mum to join him. I like the idea of the sun, riding horses and working with animals. There’s a real future in Australia, beautiful beaches, wide open spaces.’

Ellie felt a slight pang. She couldn’t exactly call it disappointment, or even anxiety – after all she was just a lodger, nothing more – but there was something.

‘Wouldn’t you like that too?’ Charley asked.

The question caught her on the hop. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, biting her lip, unsure if she would want such a thing even if it was offered to her. There were no theatres in the outback; she didn’t think they even had a film industry. From what she remembered of the country from school there was nothing but kangaroos and sheep.

‘What is it you want, Ellie?’ he asked, his voice suddenly very soft, almost as if he were afraid of the answer.

Ellie looked into his eyes and their intensity floored her. All at once she understood why he’d come to her rescue, understood his little kindnesses since she’d been here and those jokes from his friends tonight. But at the same time she realised it wasn’t one-sided; she’d had her moments of gazing at him over breakfast, or jumping when she heard his feet on the basement stairs.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. She felt strangely dizzy, the way she did when she had a glass of gin. Her heart was going too fast and nothing seemed more important at that moment than his face.

She thought she knew it so well. The golden blush from the sun, the way his curls snuggled round his ears, a small scar over one golden eyebrow, even a slight bump on his nose. But now she was seeing only his mouth. His lips looked plumper and moist, she noticed too how they curled at the corners as if in a permanent grin, and she wanted them to kiss hers.

‘Is it me?’ he asked, one hand reaching out and covering hers in her lap.

Ellie looked down at that hand, a strong, big hand calloused by dozens of old scars and burns, yet just the touch of his flesh on hers made her insides quiver.

‘I wanted you from the first moment I saw you in my pyjamas,’ he said, his voice husky and very low. ‘It just hit me like a thunderbolt. I never felt that way about anyone before.’

Ellie turned her face to his, leaning towards him. There was absolute silence, not a rattle, not a creak, not a sound left in the world but their breathing, and slowly his lips came down on hers.

She had watched so many long, lingering kisses on the screen, often wondering how the people breathed, or what made them want to stay that way for so long. Now she understood, for every second of it grew more and more thrilling. Her bones felt like rubber, melting against his body, his arms came round her, crushing her ever tighter and his lips parted, his tongue probing into her mouth in a way that sent new shivers of delight down her spine.

‘Oh Ellie,’ he gasped, holding her face between his two hands, covering her nose, eyes and cheeks with more kisses. ‘What are we going to do now?’

There was no reply to this; they were glued to one another, unable to draw apart. Sitting on two hard, upright chairs, wanting nothing more than the touch, the smell and the taste of one another and all the time a bigger need growing inside them.

It was the first time Ellie had ever been painfully aware of her body. All those whispered warnings from other girls about ‘getting carried away’ suddenly made sense. Charley’s hands were cupping her breasts and she was arching towards him, unable to stop.

Charley drew away first. His face was flushed, lips swollen and his eyes sleepy with longing. ‘We mustn’t,’ he sighed, leaning his head against hers as if it had taken all his strength to pull away. ‘It’s not right, not like this.’

Only then did Ellie notice the clock. It was almost four in the morning and Charley had to go to work at seven. ‘Look at the time,’ she said hoarsely.