Heartaches and Christmas Cakes: A wartime family saga perfect for cold winter nights Read online

  Heartaches and Christmas Cakes

  A wartime family saga perfect for cold winter nights

  Amy Miller

  ‘If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?’

  T.S. Eliot

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  A Letter From Amy

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Autumn 1939

  With a threepenny bit in her clenched hand, Audrey Barton pushed her way through the jostling crowds on the platform. Bournemouth Central railway station was crammed with people waiting to board the train bound for Southampton docks and Audrey’s eyes skittered from face to face as she tried to locate her brother. Trembling in her blue swing coat, her dark blonde hair resting on the collar, she tried not to stare at the drama all around her. With sunlight slipping through the station ceiling and casting beams of light like spotlights onto the platform, the concourse felt to Audrey like a giant stage. Except that this was real life, she thought solemnly, and nobody was acting. There were fathers wordlessly shaking their sons’ hands, misty-eyed mothers and grandmothers handing food parcels to their beloved boys and dear, sweet infants and toddlers in their fathers’ arms, not understanding the gravity of what this farewell kiss, planted heavily on their young cheeks, might mean. Already on board the train were young, fresh-faced recruits leaning out of the windows, one writing on the train door in chalk, ‘Look out Mr Hitler we’re coming to get you!’

  And what of the sweethearts? The fragrance of Evening In Paris scented the air and Audrey could almost hear lovers’ hearts breaking above the hiss and whistle of the steam engine. One girl was balancing on the shoulders of her friend so that she could kiss a young soldier leaning out of the train window. When he gripped her around the waist as if he would never let go, a ripple of applause broke out. Another girl clutched a bunch of lavender handed to her by a strapping uniformed man over six feet tall with shoulders almost as wide. He kissed her softly on the forehead while she tried to hold in her tears. Since Chamberlain’s declaration of war less than a month earlier, there had been a rush of weddings in the town. Barton’s, the bakery Audrey ran with her husband Charlie, had had more orders for wedding cakes than she’d known what to do with. Now some of those young newlyweds would begin their married life wrenched apart, unsure of when, or if, they would meet again. Audrey’s throat ached with the emotion of it all.

  She swallowed hard and, glancing at her pocket watch, began to panic. She had arranged to meet her brother William before he left, but he was nowhere in sight. Though she was privately terrified by him joining the British Expeditionary Force, she could not let her fears be known. What good would that do to anyone? Besides, William could think for himself and had never been swayed by anyone else’s view.

  ‘Sis!’ said William, appearing beside her. ‘I couldn’t see you in all the faces. Is Elsie with you?’

  William was tall, slim and had long limbs that had earned him the ‘gangly’ name tag at school but that he’d grown into as a twenty-one-year-old, giving him the easy elegance of Jimmy Stewart. He had a heart-shaped face, pronounced by his wavy hair combed back from his forehead and the fine vertical line that ran between his eyes, almost as if drawn on with a pencil. He had been courting Elsie for a year, and they made the most handsome, head-turning couple.

  ‘I thought she’d be with you,’ Audrey answered, standing on tiptoes to look for Elsie in the throng. ‘Gosh, where is she? Maybe Beales wouldn’t let her out. Her boss in the Needlework Department rules with an iron fist.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s had doubts about me?’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m not as good at the mouth harp as I’d like to think.’

  William’s harmonica was as much a part of him as his arm or leg. Where most men could be seen cradling a cigarette to their mouths, William’s habit was playing the harmonica. During his breaks at the bakery, where he’d worked as an apprentice baker until now, he’d perch on one of the huge sacks of flour and play tunes that rivalled the songbirds.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. ‘That’s one of the reasons she fell for you. She says your heart beats to a Larry Adler tune. I’m going to miss listening to you play and…’

  Words failed her, as she battled not to tell him how desperately worried she was about him going. She hugged him tight instead. William grinned, dipped into his pocket and handed Audrey the battered red case of his M Hohner harmonica.

  ‘Can you give her this?’ he asked. ‘Inside there’s… well, it’s not the most original thing… and it’s not exactly a rock. I wanted to give it her myself and do things properly and take care of her like a husband should, but there’s not enough time and the war won’t wait…’

  For a moment, despite his stature and dashing good looks, William seemed lost, like a five-year-old boy on his first day at school. Audrey felt suddenly fiercely protective of him, and held his face in her hands.

  ‘William,’ Audrey said. ‘I’ll make sure she gets the ring. There’s something I want to give you too.’

  She placed the threepenny bit in his palm. ‘Can you remember when Mother used to put this in the plum pudding at Christmas? You bit into it one year and broke your tooth! It was supposed to bring us luck. Not that our mother has brought us much luck over the years, quite the opposite, but I’ve always kept this coin…’

  The thought of their mother, and the fact she wasn’t there to wave William off like the dozens of other mothers on the platform, infuriated Audrey. She smiled ruefully and William laughed gently, tucking the coin into his breast pocket. He put his arm around her and she resisted the temptation to cling onto his coat and not let him go.

  The trainmaster blew his whistle and there was a sudden push towards the train doors, puffs of steam billowing into the rafters and scattering pigeons.

  ‘It’ll be over by Christmas,’ William said, jumping onto the train and pulling shut the door. ‘And I’ll join you for plum pudding!’ he called out above the din. ‘And tell my Elsie I’ll marry her when I come home, if she’ll have me.’

  ‘I will,’ said Audrey. ‘Farewell William!’

  ‘Farewell Sis!’ he called, raising his palm.

  As the train moved off in a cloud of steam, a rousing chorus of male voices singing ‘Homeland, Homeland when shall I see you again…’ burst through the windows. Audrey waved until her body swayed with the force of it, not just at William but at all the young men leaving their lives in Bournemouth for an uncertain future. Tears escaped her eyes and she swiped angrily at them. She mustn’t let William see her cry.

&nbs
p; Now, with the train gone, the station was eerily quiet and Audrey walked slowly to the front of the building, lined with sandbags, with a heavy heart.

  ‘AUUUDREY!’ she heard Elsie yell. Audrey turned to see Elsie running towards her, overcoat hanging off her shoulders, stockings ripped at the knee and with one of her smart work shoes in her hand. Her cheek and forehead were oil-streaked and her breathing, as she stopped running and bent over to rest against her knees, was ragged.

  ‘Goodness, Elsie,’ Audrey said, gently pulling a green leaf from Elsie’s shiny dark curls. ‘What on earth has happened?’

  ‘My bicycle!’ she said. ‘The wretched chain fell off. I came flying off, bent a wheel and then lost my shoe in the road under a wheel of a bus. I tried to get the chain back on, but my fingers were shaking so badly I couldn’t do it! I ran all the way here and now… now I’ve missed him, haven’t I? The train’s gone, hasn’t it! That wretched bike, it’s as useless as a chocolate teapot!’

  Elsie looked at the sky and growled in exasperation. A moment later, hand shielding her eyes, her small frame shook with angry sobs.

  ‘Oh Elsie, you poor girl,’ Audrey said, hugging Elsie and glancing at the harmonica box. ‘Come on. Wipe your eyes and let’s go home. I’ve got something to tell you that might help heal your heart.’

  Elsie’s lovely face – hazelnut eyes, peachy cheeks, lips painted in ‘Theatrical Red’, with deep dimples like full stops either side of her mouth – turned towards Audrey. She managed a watery smile and breathed in, visibly pulling herself together. Audrey handed her a cotton hanky and she blew her nose noisily. Together they walked away from the station as William’s train rumbled towards Southampton docks.

  While the girls linked arms, William stood in the corridor of the packed train watching the town that he so loved blur and eventually disappear, the threepenny bit in his breast pocket, close to his pounding heart. And so it all began.

  Chapter One

  June 1940

  Audrey opened the bakery shop window blind to a sky so blue and spit-shine spotless, for a fleeting moment she could almost believe there was no wretched war to worry about. Living with the blackout these last months made daylight all the more sweet. Unlocking the door of Barton’s Bakery, the brass bell merrily jingling, and releasing delicious wafts of sweet-smelling fresh bread into the neighbourhood’s nostrils, she suppressed a deep yawn. Up since before dawn, scaling and moulding the dough for loaves and buns, and preparing the counter orders; another busy day lay ahead.

  ‘Morning,’ she called to two scrawny evacuee boys from Portsmouth – no more than six years old – who were leaning their backs against the bakery wall, the bricks warm after the night’s baking, waiting for a spare crust, like sparrows searching for crumbs.

  ‘Mornin’ miss,’ one boy said, his gaze fixed on the young delivery boy, Albert, who was wobbling on the delivery bicycle down the street with the neighbourhood’s orders of warm, fresh and perfectly golden tin, Coburg and bloomer loaves stacked in the basket, a hungry seagull above tracking his route. Albert would be gone for hours – some of the spinsters he delivered to looked forward to their cup of tea with Albert more than the bread itself! ‘I spend more time doing odd jobs and drinking tea than I do delivering bread,’ he’d told an amused Audrey last week. Knowing how lonely some folk were, Audrey was glad of Albert’s patient nature and friendly open face.

  ‘Keep up the good work, Albert,’ she’d told him. ‘You make some people’s day.’

  Audrey stood for a moment blinking in the early sunlight, like one of the sand lizards in the dunes, trying not to feel disappointed that the cramps of her monthlies had arrived last night, regular as clockwork. Another door to motherhood slammed. After five years of trying to fall pregnant, she should know better than to expect any different. It’s not meant to be, she thought, busying herself watching Fisherman’s Road, the street in Southbourne in east Bournemouth she lived in, coming to life.

  Barton’s Bakery was on the south side of Fisherman’s Road, part of a bustling parade of shops including the chemist, dairy, shoemaker, stationer, draper, café, grocer and the Post & Telegraph Office. The grocer, Old Reg, opposite Barton’s, was opening up and wiping down the enamel Red Seal Toffees sign outside his shop, whistling a Gracie Fields song. Since rationing had started, Old Reg said he had aged twenty years. He had many a story to tell about disgruntled customers forgetting to bring in their ration books, or who expected Reg to have precious oranges saved ‘behind the counter’ for them, at which point he’d gesture to his shelves filled with jars of loose biscuits, tins of Fray Bentos soup and gooseberry pie filling, OXO cubes and the slab of cheese and cheese wire on the counter and say ‘This is your lot! Like it or lump it!’ It wasn’t easy being a shopkeeper these days. With Hitler’s U-boats attacking shipping bound for Britain, limited imported goods and raw materials were getting into the country.

  ‘How are you, Reg?’ she called to him as he knelt down to polish his front step, as he did every morning, until it shone like a new penny.

  ‘I’m all right, Audrey,’ he said. ‘It’s just the rest of ’em that ain’t!’

  Audrey smiled but the smile quickly vanished from her face when she caught sight of Mabel, the postwoman. Giving a small wave, Mabel shook her head regretfully and cycled on by without stopping. Audrey’s stomach twisted into painful knots. They hadn’t heard from her brother William since February when he was posted overseas after he’d completed his military training. With all that was now going on in the war – there was news of the German forces invading Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg by air and land, and, according to the new Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a German invasion in Britain was now a real possibility – the war felt very close to home. Just to hear a word from William, even if only ‘Okay!’, would be a blessed relief. For a letter to arrive for next week, when it was Elsie’s birthday, would be perfect timing.

  ‘No news is good news,’ Audrey told herself, taking a lungful of fresh air. You could taste the sea salt on the breeze today blowing in from the Channel, she thought, tucking an escaped strand of hair behind her ear. Audrey was forever thankful for where she lived – one-hundred yards from the cliff top where sweet-smelling yellow gorse and sea pinks were flowering, and down steep stone steps, or a zigzag path, to the water’s edge. On hot summer days when the shop had closed, she would sometimes wade into the water up to her ankles and cool off, scrunching the wet sand between her toes. But that was before the war. Now, with the pillbox lookout posts, concrete ‘dragon’s teeth’ anti-tank obstacles and rolls of barbed wire to deter the German army from landing on the coast, even the beautiful beaches seemed threatening. Many of the hotels across the town, formerly enjoyed by holidaymakers, had been requisitioned for military accommodation or were closing down too, and there had recently been talk of all the entertainment on Bournemouth pier being cancelled – a sad thought.

  ‘Audrey?’ she heard Charlie’s voice from behind her. ‘Morning goods ready for the shop! The boy’s taken the delivery order. I’ll take the van out for the final deliveries. Come on, love, the night shifters will be here soon for their breakfast rolls! You know how they love their hot rolls.’

  Biting her lip, she tried to ignore the irritation in Charlie’s voice. She knew he was exhausted after baking and tending the ovens most of the night and needed his rest – he lived on four hours’ sleep a night – but his recent short temper shocked her. She turned to face him, wondering whether to tell him about the disappointing arrival of her monthlies, her eyes taking a moment to readjust to the darkness in the shop. With a sigh, she decided against it. However tender she was towards him recently, it was as if he had locked the door to his heart and thrown away the key into a dark pond. Audrey felt she had waded into that pond and was tangled in the weeds.

  Charlie, using a hessian sack to protect his hands against the heat, placed the tray of hot baked goods onto the service counter and then wiped his brow with his handkerchief. He mana
ged a tired smile. His dark hair and eyelashes were powdered with flour and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to expose muscular arms. The job of a baker was hard physical work. Charlie had young Albert helping out with deliveries and his uncle John, a proud, semi-retired baker with a belly as big as a bloomer, working alongside him part-time, but John was fifty-nine now, with joints that creaked like old floorboards.

  ‘Oven temperature’s fallen enough for the rock cakes,’ Charlie said, picking up the long-handled wooden peel that he used to put cakes into the oven. ‘I’ll put them in. Don’t forget Mrs Common’s order is to be kept behind the counter for her until she comes in at midday,’ he continued, rolling his shoulders to release the knots. ‘The tins’ll need scraping, coke brought in and I’ll need to do that paperwork today. The Ministry of Food want every bag of flour and every ounce of fat accounted for.’

  Charlie stifled a yawn and rubbed his eyes with his thumbs.

  ‘We’ll be counting out the currants to go in the rock cakes soon!’ Audrey said, only half-joking. ‘You should get some rest Charlie, you’re tired.’

  ‘Don’t fuss, there’s nothing wrong with me except that the day’s not long enough!’ he said. ‘Did you hear on the wireless that they want men to join the Local Defence Volunteers? They need any man aged between seventeen and sixty-five. I could join if John does a few more hours here at night.’