Bia's War Read online

  “I nearly buckled there and then under his kind tone, because I was so tired and I was used to people telling me what a wonderful thing William had done to enlist. Most people ignored the fact that I was working at least fifteen hours a day to keep William’s wife and son in food and lodgings and praised what marvellous things William was doing. I knew conditions wouldn’t be good for William in France, but he’d chosen the road he wanted to travel and hadn’t spared a thought for Simon and me. It was all about William’s ego and manliness, not patriotism or bravery, but I was getting heartily sick of pretending I was proud of him. And his army pay had never materialised either. We hadn’t seen a penny since he’d marched off to war; we could have starved in a gutter. But I pulled myself together and refused to admit any of this to Sam Lymer who was a stranger to me, albeit a sensitive stranger. I pulled my public face back over the real me and smiled at him.”

  ‘It’s not so bad.’ I answered. ‘I’ve got Annie and Peter to help me and at least I’m always there for Simon. If I’d gone out to work he would have had to be farmed out and I don’t want that to happen.’

  ‘I can understand that. My daughter, Alice, looks after her younger sister while I’m out at work. I lost my missis last year and I’ve worried myself sick over the two youngest ones ever since. Our George and Bill joined up a month ago, so there’s only the three girls at home with me now.’

  ‘Three?’ I asked. He’d only mentioned two girls, so I wondered who the other one was.

  ‘Aye. There’s our Hannah as well. She’s the one who brought the order this morning, on her way to work. She’s started working for Dennison, the butcher, but I’m not happy about it. He’s short-tempered and too handy with his fists that one and I don’t want my lass working for him, not since I saw the black eye on his missis last week.’

  ‘She’s telling folk she walked into a side of bacon.’ I said. ‘But it’s more likely to have been stuck on the end of her husband’s fist. It’s a shame he doesn’t enlist so he could take his temper out on the Hun instead of his wife. I find him very unpleasant, even with his customers and I can understand why you aren’t happy about Hannah working for him. But I’m looking for some more help in my shop. I could do with a lass to help make up the orders and to train at making pies and cakes. If your Hannah can turn her hand to that sort of work, then tell her to come and see me tomorrow and I’ll show her what I want her to do. Do you think she’d want to work for me?’

  ‘I’m sure she would, cos she’s frightened of the pig butcher. I’m sure she would much prefer to work for you. She’s a good girl and her mother trained her to bake, so she should be of some help to you.’

  ‘Good.’ I said. ‘She’ll be doing me a favour and she’s best away from that butcher. Thank you, Mr Lymer.’

  ‘Call me Sammy, lass, everyone does. Mr Lymer’s a bit too formal, don’t you think?’

  ‘Ok, Sammy. Tell Hannah to be round at my shop at 7o’clock on the dot tomorrow. We start early in my shop!’

  ‘She’ll be there, bright and early. If you need any help from me, don’t hesitate to let me know. I admire what you are doing, but with your lad away at the Front, you need to know that you’ve got back-up if you need it. Take care going home, Mrs Drinkwater.’

  ‘Call me Bia, Sammy.’ I said. ‘I don’t think I need to be too formal either.’

  ‘Bia? That’s an unusual name, isn’t it? I bet you got some stick for it when you were a kid.’

  ‘My full name is Abia, but I’ve always been called Bia. Nobody ever forgets my name, Sammy. Once seen, always remembered!’

  “So, I left the house and Peter and I finished delivering the orders. Annie was pleased when we got home and I told her about taking Hannah on. She knew Sammy and had known his wife, Sarah, before her death.

  ‘She had too many children, poor Sarah. I think she had fourteen, or something very close to that number.’

  ‘Fourteen!’ I choked. I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘Are you sure, because Sammy only talked about the three girls at home and two boys who enlisted, like William. That’s only five.’

  ‘I think that was half of what was wrong with Sarah. A lot of her children died young.’ Annie said. ‘Sarah had her heart broken so many times when they died, that it finally killed her. Only one of them died at birth, I think, the rest caught one of the childhood diseases and I think one of them was burned to death in a fire.’

  ‘Oh my God. That poor woman! It was no wonder she died young.’

  “I tried to imagine what it would be like to lose Simon through an illness or, God forbid, an accident and I couldn’t do it. My heart went out to Sammy’s wife and to Sammy. He was still living with all his losses and still managing to smile! My opinion of him rose even higher.

  ‘Did you say Hannah is working for the pig butcher?’ Annie cut through my thoughts. ‘I hope he’s not going to cause you any more trouble if he finds out that she’s now working for you.’

  “I had told Annie about Dennison making a pass at me and then being so rude and brutal when I had refused him. I had to admit that the thought of him causing trouble had crossed my mind when Peter and I were walking home, but I had decided to ignore it. Dennison might not be bothered about losing a shop girl and surely he must have an apprentice butcher working with him. There were lots of young girls looking for work at that time, so he would be able to replace Hannah fairly easily. I didn’t suppose for one moment that he was as choosy as I was about staff, so a replacement wouldn’t be hard to find. That was where I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”

  “But why, Nana?” Victoria asked. “Surely even someone as nasty as Dennison wouldn’t do anything bad because one of his staff had left him and gone to work for you. That’s a bit over-the-top, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yes. It would be an over-reaction, certainly, but I didn’t allow for Dennison’s state of mind at the time. There again, I didn’t know much about him, other than that he didn’t like having his advances turned down and that he turned nasty when rebuffed. I don’t think anyone else would have acted any differently from me, given the same insight into his character. It’s something I’ve considered deeply ever since, though. If I hadn’t employed Hannah, would life have turned out the same? I just don’t know. When I consider what else happened, I think it probably would have taken the same course. All I did was exacerbate it.”

  “Exacerbate what, Nana?” Victoria was beginning to feel she was losing track of the story at this stage, as though she had missed an important point.

  “No, I’m getting side-tracked again.” Nana shook herself mentally. “I’ve got to tell this in its proper order or it will all get too confusing for anyone to understand. Where was I? That’s right, Hannah. That was how I got my third member of staff and Hannah turned out to be every bit as capable as her father had said. On top of that, she had a really sunny nature and she would set about tasks with a light heart, singing hymns as she worked. The old biddies who came in the shop liked her to serve them and she had a way with her that could turn any sour face into a smile, so she made life a joy.”

  “Some nights, Sammy would collect her at closing time and he would turn his hand to any job that was beyond Peter’s capabilities, as well as having a fund of stories which amused Simon when he was crotchety. Despite the terrible accounts about the dreadful conditions that were beginning to filter home from the battlefields, life in our little backwater was happy and productive and I felt surrounded by good friends. And then William came home on a few days leave from the Front and he turned everything sour.”

  “Did you know he was coming home?” Victoria asked when Nana paused. “Had he written to you or did the army let you know?”

  “No, he hadn’t written to me at all and the army only got in touch if a soldier died or was badly wounded. I had had no idea that he was coming home, but I must admit that I had hardly thought about him once I opened the shop and I hadn’t written to him. I didn’t even know where I would have sent
a letter. His home-coming was a complete surprise to me and not a welcome one at that.”

  “Why did he turn everything sour, Nana?” Victoria asked. “Didn’t he like the fact that you’d opened the shop?”

  “To say he didn’t like me turning the house into a shop was a massive understatement. He walked into the shop one Friday morning, wearing his uniform, and looking as black as thunder when he saw the customers and the walls filled with shelves.”

  ‘What’s going on here, Bia?’ he growled. ‘What have you done to my house?’

  “Well, that got my goat straight away because I considered it my house now, not his. I’d earned the money to pay the rent on it and I’d done all the work. If Simon and I had waited for William to send money home, we’d have been evicted months before and probably have died of starvation soon after. I hustled him through the shop and into the kitchen, away from the curious eyes and ears of my customers in the shop. Annie was baking at the kitchen table and I asked her if she would go and help Hannah serve while I had a few words with William. Cheery as ever, she walked past William, patted him on his arm and said it was good to see him. He didn’t have the grace to reply to her, he could barely contain himself until she was out of the room, before he launched into a blistering attack on me.”

  ‘What do you think you are doing? How dare you turn the parlour of my house into a shop, without even consulting with me? You have no right to do what you’ve done. When those customers have gone, you can lock the door and don’t ever open it again.’

  “His voice was so loud; I could imagine that they could hear it in the railway station, never mind in the shop in the next room. I was fully aware that all conversation had ceased in the shop and then I heard Hannah launch into a rousing chorus of ‘God Save the King’. Silently, I thanked her for her presence of mind and her kindness to me for what she was trying to do before I turned on William.”

  “He was standing in front of the kitchen range, for all the world as though he was a country squire berating the hired help, with his arm raised and his index finger pointing towards the parlour. Despite my anger at the gall he had to berate me, I couldn’t help but notice how ineffectual he looked, his weedy frame not filling out the uniform he wore. He had lost the extra weight he had carried before he left home and it made him look like a gawky adolescent in a temper. I had never been as angry as I was at that moment and I am sure if I had been carrying a knife I would have slit him open from his throat to his toes. I couldn’t stop myself from answering him, but I had the composure to keep my voice so low that William had to strain to hear what I said, although my actions left him in no doubt as to my frame of mind. I had no intentions of feeding the hunger of the local gossips, many of whom were standing in my shop trying their hardest to hear the argument raging in the kitchen.”

  “My anger was so white-hot I pushed him backwards so that he landed in the easy chair next to the range and then I put my face so close to his we were literally nose to nose and then I hissed very quietly but with as much venom as I could muster,

  ‘Don’t you dare come back here, shouting the odds about your house, your parlour when, if it hadn’t been for me opening this shop, Simon and I would have been out on the streets and no parlour for you to come back to. That shop has kept us housed and fed since you trotted off to play soldiers when you didn’t have to and it’s a bloody good job I opened it. Now get this clear – I’ve paid the rent on this place since the day you enlisted. I’ve worked long hours doing back-breaking work to make this shop successful and you aren’t coming back here trying to throw your weight around and thinking you can boss me about, because you can’t.’

  “I kept poking him in his chest as he cowered in the chair in front of me, but I really felt like taking the poker to him and if he’d said any more I may well have done so. I had a reputation to uphold in the town and I wasn’t going to be the subject of spiteful gossips, spreading the word that my husband didn’t like what I’d done while he was away fighting the Hun. I didn’t want to lose any customers through his attitude, or have my reputation as an honest businesswoman besmirched.”

  “He did feel inadequate, didn’t he, Nana?” Victoria said. “No matter what he did, you would always turn out to be the strongest person in your relationship and he couldn’t cope with it. You were way too strong for him.”

  “Yes, I came to that conclusion eventually, but I was too stupid to realise it at the time. I was only concerned about the shop and Simon, so I defended myself in the only way I could, I argued with him and I came out on top again. I think if I had still loved him, I may have taken a more conciliatory tone with him, but any love I had had for him had died the day he had enlisted in the army and I was only concerned about me, Simon and the shop.”

  “The fire had gone out of William as I towered over him and he stopped shouting at me. He wriggled in the chair until he could get his hand in his pocket, pulled out some folding money and waved it in front of my face.

  ‘I’ve kept the money for you.’ He said. ‘Pay the rent with it and then you can close the shop.’

  ‘You just don’t understand, do you?’ I answered. ‘I don’t want your money; you keep it and spend it however you like. The shop will continue, you aren’t going to ruin it. You are going to put a smile on your face and you are going to speak to all of the customers in my shop as though you are really proud of me. And, you will continue to toe my line until you go back to the Front, which, as far as I am concerned, can’t come soon enough. Do you understand me?’

  “He mumbled his agreement, by now totally cowed, but his visit into the shop was halted when Simon came into the kitchen from the back yard and stood just inside the door, staring at his father. William stood up and held out his arms for Simon to run into them, as he had done since Simon had learnt to walk, but the child wouldn’t move. He stood in the doorway and no matter how William urged him he wouldn’t go near his father.”

  ‘He can’t remember who you are.’ I told William. ‘He’s only three and he can’t recognise you in a uniform.’

  “I think it was Simon’s reaction to him that curbed William’s temper tantrum more than what I had said to him but, whatever it was, he behaved as the proud husband for the rest of his leave. Simon was more comfortable with him once he had changed out of his uniform and, by the time his leave was over, he’d started calling him ‘Daddy’ once again.”

  “It was only after William had left to return to his unit that I realised I had never once asked about the war and what conditions were like at the Front. William hadn’t volunteered any information, in fact he had hardly spoken to me after the first day, and I hadn’t been interested enough to ask. But it spoke volumes for the change in our relationship. The marriage was over in all but name and I had no regrets about it. Annie and Hannah both knew that it was very rocky relationship that we had, but both of them avoided the subject. It took less than a day for the ripples that William’s presence had made in the pond of our lives to settle back out again and we carried on as before.

  Chapter Four

  Victoria was impressed with how well her Nana had dealt with William’s anger, but she felt incredibly sorry for her that her husband couldn’t appreciate the work and effort his wife had put into running the business. As Nana finished telling her about William’s home leave, her mother shouted up the stairs for Victoria to come down.

  “I’m sorry, Nana, but I’m going to have to go downstairs. Mam sounds cross and I don’t want her to refuse to let me come and sit with you.”

  “That’s ok, pet.” Nana said, who was ready for a nap before her lunch anyway, although she would never have asked Victoria to leave. “You go downstairs. I’ll have a nap and perhaps Bia will let you come back this afternoon. Remember, you only come to see me if you want to. I’m not forcing you.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as mam lets me, but it might be later on this afternoon because the shop sounds busy. She might want me to stack some shelves or serve some cus
tomers. I’ll see you later.”

  When Victoria got downstairs it was to find her mother in an atrocious mood, the shop heaving with customers and her father juggling serving customers and boning a side of bacon because they were running low.

  “How long do you intend sitting upstairs with her?” her mother snapped at Victoria as she made her appearance in the kitchen. “It’s nearly Christmas, the shop’s heaving with customers, I’ve got lunch to make for four people and you are just sitting on your backside having a lovely chat. Do you intend giving me a hand or not?”

  Victoria couldn’t cope with her mother when she was in this mood and she knew that no matter what she said or did her mother was going to carry on moaning about it for a few weeks to come.

  “I’ll go and serve then.” she said, knowing that it was a waste of time trying to justify what she had been doing. She hoped that her easy acquiescence would divert her mother’s bile, but it was a vain hope. Her mother’s voice followed her as she opened the door from the kitchen into the shop. This was the most dangerous part, because if her mother was in a really foul mood, she would follow Victoria into the shop and spend the next five minutes continuing her diatribe, despite the number of customers who were providing an audience. Victoria hated it when that happened because it was excruciatingly embarrassing to have her faults highlighted in front of customers, even though a few of them would grimace at her and soundlessly convey that they pitied her. Victoria would much rather do without the pity and not have her character stripped bare in front of witnesses. Thankfully, her mother decided that she was too busy to waste time pointing out her daughter’s faults to the world and his wife that day and Victoria was spared the public humiliation.