‘What an amazingly resourceful man your Reg is, Dottie,’ she said, walking on. ‘Yes, of course you can take the scrapings. And when Christmas comes, don’t forget to bring a rasher or two for the doctor, will you?’
They’d reached the bedroom where Josephine was struggling with the buttons on the back of her wedding dress.
‘I’ve told Dottie to help you, darling,’ said Mrs Fitzgerald. ‘I’ll have to get back to the guests.’
As they heard her mother run back downstairs, Dottie gave the bride a conspiratorial smile. ‘Are you all right now, Miss?’
‘Oh, Dottie,’ Josephine cried happily. ‘It’s been a wonderful, wonderful day, and I know, I just know, tonight will be just fine.’
‘I’m sure it will, Miss.’
‘Mrs,’ Josephine corrected her dreamily. ‘Mrs Malcolm Deery.’ She gathered her skirts and danced around the room, making Dottie laugh.
Between them, they got her out of the wedding dress and into her going-away outfit, an attractive pink suit with a matching jacket. The skirt was tight and the jacket nipped in at the waist. Her pale cream ruche hat with its small veil set it off nicely. She wore peep-toe shoes, pink with white spots and a fairly high heel. She carried a highly fashionable bucket-shaped bag.
Mr Malcolm, who had changed in the spare bedroom, was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. He was dressed in a brown suit and as he waited, he twirled a brand new trilby hat around in his hand. The newlyweds kissed lightly and, holding hands, they began to descend. Halfway downstairs, however, Josephine broke free and ran back.
Dottie was slightly startled as she ran to her, laid both hands on her shoulders and kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you, Dottie darling,’ she whispered urgently in her ear, ‘thank you for all you’ve done.’
‘It was nothing,’ protested Dottie mildly.
‘Oh yes it was,’ Josephine insisted. ‘And if I’m half as happy as you and your Reg have been, I shall be a lucky woman.’ With that she turned on her heel and ran back to her new husband and they both carried on downstairs.
As soon as she’d gone, Dottie went back into the bedroom. As happy as you and your Reg have been? Had they been happy? If they had, it was all a very long time ago. She could hardly remember their courtship, but they had been happy in the beginning … hadn’t they?
Even her own wedding day had been rushed. The phoney war was over by then and Reg was nervous, afraid he’d be sent abroad. Under the circumstances, Aunt Bessie had been persuaded to let them marry by special licence on August bank holiday weekend. The gossips had a field day. She knew the rumour was that she was pregnant, but she was a virgin when Reg took her to bed that night.
Remembering all that the boys had gone through at Dunkirk, when Reg wrote to say he was being posted to the Far East, she’d been pleased. ‘At least he’ll be out of all this,’ she had told Aunt Bessie.
But after he’d gone, she’d felt bad about saying that. She had little idea what happened out there, but if the newsreels were to be believed it looked far worse than what happened in Germany. He didn’t want to talk about it when he came back, at the end of ’48, and he had been a changed man. His chest was bad and he needed nursing. Reg didn’t seem to want her for ages but when he recovered and tried to make love to her, he was so rough she hated it. It was hard not to cry out with Aunt Bessie next door. And that was another thing. He and her aunt didn’t see eye to eye but funnily enough, when she died, Reg had been deeply affected. The shock of it left him with another problem: he couldn’t do it. She wished she had someone to talk to, but it wasn’t the done thing, was it? A married woman shouldn’t talk about what went on behind the bedroom door.
Dottie sighed. She was still only twenty-seven and if things went on the way they were, she was destined to be barren. There would never be any babies.
She put Josephine’s wedding dress on a hanger and, hanging it on the front of the wardrobe door, she spent a little time smoothing out the creases, until the overwhelming need for tears had passed.
Four
It was cool in the shed. Reg pulled the orange box from under the small rickety table behind the door and sat down. He kicked the door closed and the soft velvety grey light enveloped him. This was his haven from the world and, apart from the occasional passing chicken that might have crept in to lay her egg under the bench, he knew the moment he shut the door he would be left alone. Dot would never come in here uninvited. This was the place where he kept his pictures. She didn’t know about them of course, but when the mood came over him and she wasn’t there, he’d come out here and have a decko. They were getting dog-eared and yellow with age but he wouldn’t part with them for the world. Although he still burned for the love of his life, he might have forgotten what she looked like if he didn’t have the pictures.
They weren’t the only pictures he had. He’d still got the ones he’d bought off some bloke at the races. Now they really got him going. Those tarts would pose any way the punters wanted them. They got him all excited and when Dot was around, doing her washing or something, he’d watch her through the knothole on the shed wall and have a good J. Arthur Rank. It wasn’t as exciting as the real thing, but he liked it when there was an element of danger. And with the way things were at the moment, he wasn’t getting much of that either.
But looking at his pictures wasn’t the reason why he’d come out into the shed today. He positioned the box near the small window and next to the place where the pinpricks of sunlight streaming through the wood knots in the boards would give him plenty of light to read the letter. Dot had propped it on the table but he hadn’t opened it. He’d shoved it straight into his pocket while he ate his dinner. He wanted to be alone when he read it, somewhere he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed.
First he took out his tobacco tin and his Rizla paper and box. As he lifted the lid, he took a deep breath. The sweet smell of Players Gold Cut filled the musty air. Putting a cigarette paper in the roll, he shredded a few strands of tobacco along its length. Then he snapped the lid shut and a thin cigarette lay on top of the box. Reg licked the edge of the paper and rolled the cigarette against the tin. He pinched out the few loose strands of tobacco from the end and slipped them back inside for another time. The years spent ‘abroad’ had made more than one mark on his character. Reg was a careful person. He hated waste and he always knew exactly how much of anything he’d got. That’s how he knew Dot had been eating his Glacier Mints. There had been twenty-four in there when she gave him the new bag. Now there were only twenty-three.
Putting the thin cigarette to his lips, he lit up and the loose strands at the end flared as he took his first drag. He laid his lighter and the Rizla box onto the bench and reached into his back pocket for the letter.
The envelope was flimsy. Airmail paper. The stamp was Australian. He stared at the handwriting and a wave of disappointment surged through his veins. It wasn’t what he thought it was. Now that he looked carefully, the sloping hand was unfamiliar. He turned the envelope over for the first time and stared at the name on the back.
Brenda Nichols – who the devil was she? He ran his finger over the writing and sucked on his cigarette. A wisp of smoke stung his eye and he closed it. The address on the front said ‘The Black Swan, Lewisham’. He dug around in the recesses of his mind but he couldn’t place it.
Reaching over to the jam jar on the shelf under the tiny window, he took out his penknife. The smoke from his cigarette drifted towards his eye again and he leaned his head at an awkward angle and closed it as he slid the knife along the edge of the envelope and tore it open. There were two sheets of paper inside the wafer-thin, transparent blue airmail envelope. The larger was white. A letter.
Reg’s hand trembled as he read slowly and carefully.
Murnpeowie. June 1951
My dear Reg