The Evacuee Summer: Heart-warming historical fiction, perfect for summer reading

There had been hiccups between them in recent years but probably not more so than most couples had to endure, Peggy had told herself on more than one occasion. But with her much longed-for pregnancy, she had wholeheartedly believed that she and Bill had safely navigated choppy waters.

Bill rallied. ‘Maureen works, er, worked, at the NAAFI as a volunteer, an’ we’d ’ave the odd drink an’ then that became mebbe a bit o’ a laugh on the odd evening in the local pub. I didn’t see any ’arm in it at first, ’onest I didn’t, Peg – yer ’ave ter believe that.’

With a vehement shake of her head, Peggy didn’t think she did have to believe that at all.

Bill couldn’t see her reaction, of course, and so he ploughed on. ‘But one day ’er sister were away an’, er, well, I took the opportunity of mitchin’ off camp an’ then – an’ I still don’t know how it really ’appened – I found myself stayin’ over wi’ ’er as she was very persuasive,’ he said very quickly in a voice now higher pitched than was usual.

‘When was this?’ Peggy made sure her words remained low and slow, and she fancied she could feel Bill’s answering wince racketing down the telephone cord straight to the old-fashioned Bakelite handset she was grasping so tightly. She felt compelled to know all the sordid details of what Bill had been up to.

‘She were fun, an’ ’er ’air reminded me of yours, Peg. An’ she fair set ’er cap at me, all the lads ’ere said so. It were first on Bonfire Night that we, er, um, um, yer know, Peg … yer know! An’ I suppose that I then jus’ kept on seein’ her as mebbe I thought I could get away wi’ it as I were missin’ you right badly. But it were only if I could wrangle time away from the camp – yer know wot I mean – an’ she were ’ere and you weren’t, an’ yer know that I never liked sleepin’ alone.’ Bill had to feed some more pennies in at this point, and Peggy took the opportunity to wipe under her eyes.

His voice rang out again, ‘I didn’t want to as such— ’ Peggy snorted with contempt at this point ‘but she were insistent, although when I got back from ’ers on Christmas morning to find that yours an’ my little love ’olly had been born, and you’d ’ad such a fright, I thought enough’s enough, an’ I didn’t wan’ ter see ’er any more, an’ I told ’er so. But Maureen wouldn’t let me go, an’ then she threatened ter telephone you “to put you right”, an’ so then it were easier ter go along with it fer a while at least, while I made up my mind what to do. Er, you weren’t there an’ anyways I thought you’d never find out.’ Bill sighed dramatically as if he was in physical pain, and as if by mere chance life had dealt him a bad set of playing cards.

And then finally he confessed in a very small voice, ‘An’ now she’s ’avin’ my baby.’

If Peggy had thought the news of Bill having sexual relations with another woman was the worst thing she could hear, it was now hideous to discover that with the news of his forthcoming bastard offspring came a new depth of hurt and despair. She couldn’t believe that Bill could have been so stupid or so cruel.

Suddenly Peggy felt even hotter than she had before, and then deathly cold. Her belly slid icily lower, and for a fleeting but nonetheless terrible moment her mouth flooded with saliva and she thought she might vomit. She struggled to regain her equilibrium.

This was the worse of all possible outcomes.

Of course she had grasped already that sexual relations with another woman was what Bill had been up to. But to hear him actually put into words that he had made another woman – his floozy! – pregnant provoked a totally animal response from somewhere deep within her that was unlike anything Peggy had ever experienced.

She thought about what her husband had just told her, and then she realised with a huge jolt so powerful that it was as if she had just stuck one of her fingers straight into a live electric plug socket, that she and Bill had only been apart for a mere two months before he had given into temptation despite the wedding vows they had solemnly made to each other, vows she had always been proud to hold dear.

How could he?

She would never have done that to him.

How could he, the rat, the pig?

She hated Bill right at that moment. Loathed, and detested, and – well, she couldn’t think of any other word to describe what she felt at that moment – just absolutely hated him.

It was a hatred that felt pure and strangely fortifying.

If Bill had been standing in front of her, Peggy felt almost as if she might have leapt at him and tried to hurt him physically with her bare hands, marking indelibly the body that in the dark she had once enjoyed running her hands over so much, such was the abject rage that immediately began to thrust furiously up and down and through what felt like every cell of her own body, her pulse thumping with a beat faster than it ever had, surpassing even its most delicious throes of passion.

Peggy knew she verged on the unhinged as she began to shout, but she was suddenly beyond caring. ‘Did you not for one moment think about your own wife and baby, who have both been missing you and longing for you, Bill? The woman – me! – whom you made a solemn vow, standing before our friends and families in church, to honour each other come what may, or our child who was conceived after such a long time, a baby that you said that you were so happy about and that was the light of your life? Is this how you want someone to treat your own little girl, our dear Holly, when she is all grown up? Is what you’ve done the sort of behaviour and the type of person you wish for her to marry, a shallow and selfish man who is unable to keep his trousers done up? I was reluctant to come to Harrogate, but I did it because you were insistent and I wanted to keep you happy, and now I wish I’d just stayed at home as keeping you happy clearly isn’t worth a bean.’

Peggy paused and looked downwards towards the quivering hem of her skirt caused by her trembling knees, and then she continued bitterly before Bill could say anything in his own defence. ‘That little tart. That horrible stupid little tart. Maureen? Maureen… Maureen! What sort of name is that? And you’re no better than she! You’re a pathetic excuse for a husband, Bill Delbert. What could that trollop Maureen have ever seen in you? And what did I see in you? You tell me now, this very minute, Bill Delbert, precisely when that stupid strumpet is having your baby?’

Peggy was close to screeching, unable to control her emotions in any way, although in this maelstrom of feeling she remembered guiltily for a split second that once she’d actually had a very nice friend at teacher training college called Maureen and so actually really she had nothing against women with the name, other than this particular piece of work, of course.

Then Peggy realised with a whump that almost made her physically crumple, forcing her to grab the back of Roger’s desk chair in support, that at the very moment she herself had been close to rapture with a burst of sunshine springing from her heart at seeing a tiny Holly reaching innocently for her father’s finger when Bill came to meet his daughter for the very first time, the truth of it was that her supposedly loyal husband was nursing, close to his heart, the dangerous viperous secret of his infidelity and another woman opening her legs for him as she beckoned to him from under the covers. And so a precious memory that Peggy had believed was good and pure had been, in a crushing twinkling of an eye, tainted and besmirched for all time, leaving her flattened and despondent.

Peggy felt a shriek of anguish building in her, but she forced herself to hold it in, although her hand holding the telephone was vibrating violently with the effort.

‘I noticed Maureen were plump round the middle a few days ago an’ she says she’s got three months to go.’ Bill sounded glum as he went on regardless, and as if he’d given in.

Then Peggy did the mathematics in her head, and suddenly her need to know any further grisly details of the affair evaporated into a puff of nothingness. She understood that Maureen had almost definitely already been pregnant when Bill travelled to Harrogate to see Holly. It may be illogical, but the very idea of him playing the doting daddy in Yorkshire having already fathered somebody else’s baby was nothing short of abhorrent in Peggy’s eyes.

‘Well, you’ve made your bed, Bill Delbert, and now you have to lie in it. For your information, I shall take care that you never see Holly again,’ Peggy declared.

Bill let out what she could only think of as a howl, and an instant later Peggy heard the sound of shattering glass as presumably her husband had in temper flung his beer bottle furiously to the concrete floor of the telephone box.

‘Holly is innocent and untainted by anything,’ Peggy went on resolutely, as if Bill were standing there eager to hear what she had to say. ‘She certainly doesn’t need to be contaminated by somebody as morally reprehensible as you, not now, and not ever, Bill. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?! And as for myself, I hope never to see you again. I don’t care what it costs, and I don’t care if I have to work for the rest of my life to pay it off and I don’t care how people will look down on me for being divorced. Your monkey business with that MaureenFromTheNAAFI tart is going to cost you, and I’m not thinking about money.

‘Our treasure is Holly, and as far as you are concerned she’s been thrown to the wolves by you, and there’s no return from that. I really hope that MaureenFromTheNAAFI gave you the very best time ever between the sheets, as if she didn’t, well, words fail me.’

It was very unlike Peggy to veer onto such coarse territory, but she wanted oh so badly to shock Bill.

‘She didn’t, Peg, she were nothing like as good as—’ he said weakly.

‘Tough, Bill. Tough.’ Peggy’s tone was brutal as she cut him dead.

She willed herself not to sob, but to avoid the risk she didn’t give Bill the opportunity to say anything else.

As, surprisingly softly, she replaced the handset on the telephone, Peggy heard Bill’s last-ditch plaintive appeal sound increasingly tinny as she moved the handset from her ear and put it back in its place on the base of the telephone, his ‘But I love yo—’ being sliced off decisively.

She stood head bowed and statue-still at first. But it wasn’t long before Peggy started to sway from side to side, and she had to grab hold of the edge of the desk to steady herself, as wave after wave of fresh emotion swept over her, and then washed back through what felt like every fibre of her very being.

And then with a long clamped-down shriek of what felt like agony Peggy picked up the closest thing to her, which was the leather desk tidy in which Roger kept the pencils that he used to draft his sermons, and she hurled the whole lot with as much force as she could muster against the wall, the pencils cascading to the ground and then bouncing merrily around, with Roger’s carefully sharpened lead points shearing off the pencils as they smashed against the stone flags of the floor.

The crash was a surprisingly loud noise that cut across the calm of Tall Trees and wrecked the peace.

But Peggy couldn’t hear anything now, such was the rushing of blood in her ears. Keening desperately, she continued to rock both left and right.

She picked up the pile of scrap paper on which Roger would write and she rent it this way and that, virtually growling with the effort of ripping it into tiny unusable squares, and then with a final shove of her elbow she cast the telephone and handset off the desk, the loud crash and the strange hawk of the telephone’s ring of surprise at such harsh treatment finally quelling Peggy’s temper.

Exhausted, she sank down onto Roger’s desk chair, with the chaos of his desk settling askew on the floor around her, and bitter sobs shuddering her slim shoulders and setting her curls a-quiver as she leant forward on her folded arms and howled, wishing herself to be any place but where she was.

Roger and Mabel, who had been inspecting the vegetable patches on their way back from church and had only just come through the kitchen door, came running, their faces panicked at the unusual sounds erupting from within the study.

However, when Roger saw the state Peggy was in, he stayed on the other side of the door and stood aside to make way for his wife, as he beckoned Mabel forward in place of himself.

He knew Mabel would be much better at the helm of this situation than he.

As the older woman crouched down to clasp an exhausted Peggy to her breast without saying a word, Peggy gave into ugly, animal noises and a fresh avalanche of tears.

A worry-faced Roger was left to creep into the office as silently as he could, stepping behind the women so that he could replace the receiver on the telephone as he always felt panicky at the thought of a parishioner in distress being unable to reach him, although he left the telephone on the floor, after which, without catching the eye of either woman, he hotfooted it to the kitchen in order to deal with baby Holly.

She had been rudely woken by all the kerfuffle in the study and was keen to let everybody know this, bellowing with all the strength she could muster in her little lungs in tandem with the throaty blubs of her distraught mother just across the passageway.

Chapter Six (#ulink_6a3eab5b-c340-5978-8adc-37a865161bd1)

Over at the train station Jessie and Angela remained outside with a bored-looking Milburn, while the other children headed onto the platform to wait for Larry.

After Jessie had gently teased Angela that he and Connie thought that maybe Tommy had a bit of a soft spot for her, Angela went very pink, leaving Jessie to guess whether she might reciprocate these feelings.