Chocolate Girls Read online

  They talked on in a desultory way and Mrs Bonner continued to snooze. Edie felt more and more uneasy. She’d lost track of time and it felt very late. She found herself listening out now, for the sound of the men coming back, but another half-hour passed and still there was no sign of them. She started to feel very tense with anger and a sense of rejection. Jack ought to want to be with her tonight!

  ‘Oh, this is the limit!’ she burst out eventually, unable to contain her feelings. ‘They’re the bleeding end, the pair of ’em! They’re going off tomorrow for God knows how long and they can’t even get themselves out of the pub in time for this once. I could crown Jack when ’e goes on like this, that I could.’

  Ruby was looking strained as well. She wanted to break the news to her mom that she and Frank were planning to get engaged, but her mom was fast asleep and it felt as if the moment had passed.

  When they could stand sitting waiting no longer, Edie and Ruby both went back and forth to the front door to look out and see if there was any sign of them. It was pitch black and they had to close the front door behind them so as not to show a light. Each time, the street was deserted. Mr Vintner next door had long ago been wheeled back inside.

  ‘Oh, blast them!’ Ruby said. ‘Where the hell are they? I don’t even know which pub they was going to.’

  ‘All of them, knowing them,’ Edie said.

  Ruby went out again a bit later, pulled the door closed behind her and stood listening. A sound at the bottom of the street caught her attention. Footsteps!

  ‘Edie.’ She stuck her head in through the door. ‘I bet that’s them!’

  They waited on the step, suddenly lighthearted.

  ‘What time d’yer call this?’ Ruby called down Glover Street.

  Edie shushed her, giggling.

  But there was only one set of footsteps hurrying towards them. Frank emerged through the gloom.

  ‘Awright,’ Edie laughed. ‘What’ve yer done with ’im? Don’t tell us ’e’s too far gone to walk home?’

  Slowly Frank came in through the gate, and then, in the dim light from the door, they caught sight of his face.

  Seven

  All Frank could say was, ‘Oh God, Edie, I’m sorry. Oh Edie . . .’ Over and over again.

  Somehow they all got inside. Edie was shaking so much that Ruby had to catch her before she fell to the floor and sit her down at the table.

  Mrs Bonner woke with a start. ‘Wha—?’ She struggled to sit upright. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Tell me!’ Edie cried. ‘Frank, tell me what’s happened. Where’s Jack? Oh, don’t look at me like that!’ She flung her arm across her eyes to shield herself from the expression in his. His face seemed sucked in on itself, gaunt as a greyhound’s.

  ‘Summat terrible’s happened . . .’ Words choked out of him.

  ‘He’s not dead . . . Jack’s not dead, is he?’

  There was an awful silence. Edie slowly brought her arm back down and there was no escaping Frank’s look now, the ghastly whiteness, shadows under his eyes as if he’d been punched.

  ‘He can’t be,’ she whispered. ‘Are you sure?’ But she could see from the expression in his eyes that it was true. ‘How can ’e be dead? He was with you – he was . . .’ She ran out of words. Full of life, he’d been. Going off with his pals in the prime of life!

  ‘Oh,’ she kept hearing herself saying. ‘Oh no, what’ve you done to him? Where is he?’ And those wailing noises must be coming out of her and she had no control over them! She heard Ruby say, ‘She’s gone as white as a sheet – oh Lor’, I ’ope this don’t bring the babby on . . .’

  Edie felt herself jerking about, her hands moving convulsively in her lap. Then her whole body rebelled.

  ‘I’m going to be sick!’ she cried, a hand going to her mouth. Ruby ran from the scullery with a pail just in time, and orange tea gushed out of her. She whimpered over the bucket, wiping her mouth.

  Ruby stroked Edie’s back, took the bucket away. Edie looked up at Frank.

  ‘Where’s my Jack?’ she moaned. ‘What’s happened, Frank?’ She reached for his hand as if he was a living link with Jack, and he came and took it, standing beside her, both of them shaking.

  ‘It’s my fault, I should’ve got him out of there earlier . . .’ Frank sagged and fell abruptly to his knees beside her. ‘I should’ve stopped him, I should’ve . . .’

  Edie found Frank’s head bent over her lap, the usually slicked-back hair flopping sadly down now. She laid her hand on his head and heard his sobs and the room seemed to come back into focus.

  ‘Frank, don’t. Whatever’s happened, I know it wasn’t your fault. I know you’d’ve done anything for him. Just for God’s sake tell me.’

  Frank raised his head, tears streaming down his contorted face. ‘Oh Edie, I’m sorry,’ he sobbed. In the gaslight she could see the wet of his tears shining.

  ‘We’d come out of the pub, I’d got him to leave and we was only down the road. Jack was tanked up but we was on our way home – me and Patsy and Lol. We’d just gone under the railway bridge when we run into Scottie MacPherson coming down over the Cut . . .’

  Edie’s left hand came up to her throat, clenched in a fist. The others all stood and sat in silence.

  ‘Course – it was red rag to a bull. I tried to get Jack past, but course Scottie’d had a skinful an’ all and he wasn’t going to leave it there and they started the usual old argy-bargy. The rest of us tried to pull Jack off. We was saying, come on, pal – Edie’s waiting for yer. He started coming with us – we’d got up on the bridge over the Cut by then and we thought it was finished, but then suddenly Scottie comes up again and Jack – I don’t know why ’e did it, I mean ’e couldn’t even walk straight – jumps up on to the ledge of the bridge—’

  ‘Oh Frank,’ Edie gasped. ‘Did Jack drown himself?’

  ‘No – ’e daint fall in the Cut, Edie,’ Frank said gently, his eyes filling again. ‘He was up there dancing about on the wall and the three of us were all telling him, come on mate, just get down off there and trying to cop ’old of his hand – ’cept Scottie was leading him on, shouting about how he couldn’t walk along the edge and he was yeller and all that, so Jack starts trying to walk along the bar on the top. And . . .’ Frank could hardly speak now for tears. Ruby was crying as well. It was Edie for now who was dry-eyed, her face set and white.

  ‘Course he couldn’t do it – too much ale inside ’im—’ Frank pulled away from Edie and raised his arms in the air. ‘’E were like this, he just seemed to hang there, and then he went over the side – backwards.’ Frank broke down again and covered his face. In between sobs he said, ‘ ’E just . . . vanished.’

  Edie sat like a stone.

  ‘We daint hear a splash from down there. We just – I thought he’d jump up, that he was joking. But he daint. We ran down to the Cut to see. Jack was lying there, right on the edge. He must’ve given his head a hell of a bang. Patsy ran back to the pub to get an amb’lance.’ Frank managed to speak more calmly now, as if infected by Edie’s stillness. ‘They took ages coming, in the blackout and everything . . . When they got there, they said he’d – gone.’ His face crumpled. He bent over Edie’s hands in silence.

  ‘Where is ’e?’ she whispered.

  ‘They took him.’

  Tears running down her face, Ruby came and knelt the other side of Edie and wrapped her arms round her.

  They tried to persuade Edie to stay in Glover Road that night, or at least to go to her mom’s in Charlotte Road, but she was adamant.

  ‘I want to go home.’ She got up and paced around the room, ready to walk straight out of the door. ‘I want to sleep in my bed – Jack’s and my bed, in our room where we live . . .’ She spoke distractedly, her eyes glassy with shock.

  Ruby tried arguing that it was pitch black out there, that she was in no fit state, but it was no good.

  ‘We can’t leave her like this,’ Ruby whispered to Frank. ‘We’ll have to go with h
er.’

  She went to her mother, who was shocked and tearful.

  ‘Mom, Frank and me are going to take Edie home and stay with her. You and George’re going to have to see to everything for tonight. I’ll ’ave to go straight to work from there tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s all right, sis,’ George said, his fragile features pale and serious. ‘We’ll be awright, won’t we, Mom?’ He looked appealingly at Mrs Bonner, who struggled out of her chair.

  ‘Course we will.’ Weeping, she gathered Edie into her arms for a moment. ‘Edie love, I don’t know what to say. I couldn’t be more sorry for yer.’

  Edie nodded. ‘It hasn’t sunk in, Mrs Bonner. I just can’t . . . I just need to get home . . .’ She trailed miserably into silence.

  ‘I’ll run home and let our mom and dad know what’s happened,’ Frank said.

  While Frank went round to Heeley Road, Ruby made another cup of tea.

  ‘Get this down yer, kid,’ she said to Edie. Edie sipped obediently. When Frank was back and the tea finished, they put on coats and hats and set off into the damp, cold darkness. Frank had a tiny torch which shone a pencil of light at their feet, and he and Ruby walked either side of Edie, each with their arms linked with hers, in grief-stricken silence. Afterwards Edie could never remember walking back there that night. There was almost no traffic on the road except for a last bus of the night, crawling slowly along, lights shaded. The streetlamps were blacked out and gave off the barest sheen of light. They passed the darkened Cadbury works and just as they were turning off an ARP warden loomed out of the darkness, holding a tiny torch of his own.

  ‘On yer way home?’ he asked importantly.

  ‘Yes,’ Frank said. ‘Nearly there.’

  Edie let them into the house, all moving as quietly as they could so as not to rouse Miss Smedley. When she opened the door of their two little rooms, Edie moved about for a few moments, automatically pulling the curtains and blacks, lighting the gas mantle, poking at the dead remains of the fire.

  ‘Come on, love,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ll bunk up with you tonight. Can you manage in the chair, Frank?’

  ‘Course,’ he said wretchedly. He would have slept naked on a bed of nails if it would bring Jack back.

  Edie pulled away from Ruby and walked slowly to the door of her bedroom. She leaned against the doorframe in the dim light, looking in at the unmade bed. The bed where she and Jack had made love last night and talked about the unborn life that was growing in Edie. The bed with the covers open on Jack’s side, thrown energetically back as he got up this morning, full of the vigour and expectancy of his twenty-year-old body. The body which would never now lie beside hers again.

  Unsteadily Edie went to the bed and lay down in his place, burying her head in the dip where Jack’s head had lain, to muffle the howl of anguish which broke from her.

  Eight

  ‘Don’t forget your gas mask, dear!’

  Frances Hatton dangled the battered box on its piece of string out through the door as Janet reached the gate, and she turned back to fetch it.

  ‘Blow it! Do we really need to carry this stinking thing about all the time?’ she said impatiently. ‘We haven’t needed it once yet.’ There were so many things to remember now the war was on. Gas masks, her identity card, which was forever dropping out of her purse until Frances had bought metal identity necklaces they could hang round their necks instead.

  Frances’s serene face smiled back at her. ‘Never mind. Best be on the safe side. Are you going to Joyce’s house or meeting her in town?’

  ‘I said I’d meet her in Corporation Street – outside Lewis’s.’ Janet backed down the path. She quite often spent an afternoon in town or playing tennis with her friend Joyce.

  ‘Have a nice afternoon then—’ Frances, about to close the door, opened it again. ‘Oh, Janet, don’t forget to buy a little something we can send to Auntie Maud while you’re there, will you? Perhaps a nice soap. And love, your hat isn’t straight.’

  ‘Righty-ho,’ Janet called back, absent-mindedly pulling her gloves on and levelling up her hat. ‘All right. I’ll see what I can find.’

  She headed for Bournville Station to take a train into town, dressed, under her coat, in her favourite winter skirt, in a soft sea-blue, with a white blouse and crimson cardigan, and navy court shoes which toned in nicely. Frances had made the skirt for her after the miscarriage, in September. It was, Janet saw, part of her mother’s way of comforting her, of marking a new beginning. Frances’s emotions sometimes expressed themselves through clothes.

  Janet brushed her hand across the front of her body for a moment in an almost unconscious gesture. She’d found herself doing that in the three months since, checking she wasn’t swelling out at the front. While she was still carrying the child she’d kept forcing the thought of it away, denying it to herself. Only after it was over did she realize how the fact of it had pushed into every corner of her mind, changed everything. Sometimes she woke, sick with dread, thinking she was still pregnant. Despite the scouring, the D and C she’d had in hospital, sometimes she thought maybe it was still in there, growing. She would have been six months gone by now, almost certainly too big to hide it. How had she thought she was going to hide anything much longer from a mother who had been a midwife? What dreamworld had she been living in?

  Frances had been extraordinary. That Sunday, sobbing with pain and humiliation, Janet had sat at the kitchen table and gasped, ‘I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding so terribly!’

  Frances stared at her, still holding the gravy spoon, and in those seconds Janet saw her horrified mind asking itself questions, answering them and gearing itself to respond. And despite the appalled expression in her eyes, she did so as if out of a deep well of inner calm. Putting the spoon down, she came to the table.

  ‘Oh my darling!’ Janet would never forget the distress in her voice. ‘We must get you to bed. I knew there was something . . . You’re not . . .?’

  Wretchedly, Janet nodded, beginning to sob.

  ‘My dear – how long is it . . .?’

  ‘Two and a half months – about,’ Janet wept. ‘Oh Mummy, I’m sorry. I’m terribly, terribly sorry.’

  Frances didn’t ask questions. Not then. She stayed with Janet, looking after her through all the cramps, the bleeding, as she expelled the tiny life that had begun in her. Discreetly she contacted Dr Hartley, and when she saw it necessary, took Janet to the hospital for the D and C. Janet shuddered at the contemptuous looks she had had from one of the nurses.

  She stared out of the train window. A fine drizzle was falling. The railway ran close to the Cut and she saw the busy, colourful traffic of joeys and narrowboats hauling laden buttys along the sludgy strip of water, steered by men with their collars up, hats tilted forward against the wet. Many of them were bringing supplies to Cadbury’s: cocoa beans shipped from Ghana to the docks, already shelled into nibs of chocolate, cocoa butter, and gallons of condensed milk from factories in Wales, Staffordshire and other counties, all moving along the waterways to the factory.

  For a moment she allowed herself to think about Alec. How stupid she’d been, how naïve! And yet, despite everything, there came once again the old reflex of longing for him. The thought of his face, those dark eyes looking at her with such desire, could still fill her with a bitter ache. What a stupid fool she was, still hankering after him! But she couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if she’d told him about the baby. She frowned and looked down through a blur of tears into her lap at her worn brown gloves, avoiding the eyes of the elderly woman opposite her. Her emotions were unstable: grief one minute, the next an overwhelming sense of reprieve from what might have been and of youthful freedom, as if she had been reborn herself.

  She got off at New Street, slinging her gas mask over her shoulder, and walked through the Saturday afternoon bustle. The changes which had marked the beginning of the war, the sandbags shoring up buildings and laid over gratings, the new signs pointing to public air
-raid shelters and warden’s posts, had become almost commonplace now.

  ‘Oo-ee!’ Joyce greeted her, waving from near the front entrance to Lewis’s. Her wispy fair hair, which she tried in vain to curl the ends of, was sticking out from under a flat, navy hat which sat precariously on top of it, like a tea-plate. Joyce was a straightforward, friendly girl who spent her days typing invoices at Cadbury’s.

  ‘Let’s go and have a mooch and then we can have some tea and a cake somewhere, eh?’ Joyce suggested. Janet smiled. Tea, cake and a sit down was always Joyce’s favourite part of a shopping expedition. She really preferred chatting to walking round in the crowds.

  ‘That’s all right with me,’ Janet agreed. It was good to be in company and to escape her thoughts. ‘I haven’t very much to buy now anyway. Mum’s already bought me something to give Robert!’

  The two of them strolled through the grand department store, smelling the perfumes and admiring the Christmas displays, wondering at the dolled-up assistants in the cosmetics department.

  ‘I wish I could look like that!’ Joyce groaned, self-mockingly. ‘However long I take over my make-up it always looks as if I’ve put it on with a trowel!’

  ‘No it doesn’t,’ Janet said. ‘You look perfectly nice as you are.’ She thought the girls behind the counters looked overdone and false.

  ‘And who wants to smell like a polecat?’ Joyce laughed. ‘Well, I would, for one, if I could afford something really good!’

  They went to the fabrics department, sighing over the exotic colours of satin and crêpe de Chine. Janet fingered the end of a bolt of peacock blue raw silk.

  ‘Mother would love that for a skirt length,’ she mused. ‘I mean she’d think it was extravagant and she’d never buy it for herself, but she’d love to have it and make it up.’

  She wanted to spoil her mother. She felt a general responsibility for her happiness, but now there was a new sense of debt to her and deep regard. After some agonizing she decided she could just afford a length of the beautiful silk for a straight skirt, and chose an elegant pattern for Frances to make. It was nice to buy a present she knew she’d be pleased with. Joyce bought a few reels of cotton and some hooks and eyes, and was just suggesting that they went out to the Kardomah, when Janet suddenly remembered the gift she was supposed to be buying for Auntie Maud.