With her eyes closed, Lilian could focus completely on the sensation of being held by another human being. It wasn’t one she was used to, and it felt so safe and secure.
Over time, Lilian learned that the handsome stranger’s name was Reggie, that he was 27, and that he had been born and brought up in Kirtlington. He worked at the Morris Motor Company factory in Cowley, near Oxford, which to his delight was now producing mine sinkers and Tiger Moths instead of cars.
Suddenly Lilian’s life was full of music, dancing and laughter. She and Reggie went dancing in the village hall every Friday and Saturday, and for long country walks together on Sundays. Reggie always escorted her home to the gamekeeper’s house on the outskirts of the village, and with no Harry Tull around they smooched on the doorstep for as long as they liked.
‘He’s such a lovely-looking fella,’ swooned Lilian’s mother Edith. ‘Such nice manners, too.’
‘It’s not fair,’ complained Lilian’s sister Edie. ‘Why can’t I meet someone like Reggie?’
‘We’ll find you a nice man soon enough, don’t you worry, my girl,’ said her mother.
Edith’s promise was fulfilled sooner than she expected. A few days later, she returned from shopping in the village to see a lorry parked at the side of the road and a young soldier standing next to it.
Wandering over to see if he was all right, she discovered that the young man’s vehicle had broken down and he was waiting for assistance, but it was likely to be a while coming. He was shy and sweet-looking, and Edith took to him instantly. ‘Come inside for a cuppa, why don’t you?’ she said, smiling to herself, and he happily followed her into the gamekeeper’s house.
‘Edie,’ she called, as she came in, ‘there’s a young soldier here’s broken down and wants a cup of tea.’
Edie came rushing to the door, smiling her most winsome smile, and the man looked at her as if he had just walked through the gates of heaven.
Harry, as he was called, was a farm labourer from Suffolk who was down in Oxfordshire with the Army on manoeuvres, and soon he and Edie were a couple of lovebirds like Lilian and Reggie. Their mother looked on in pleasure at her two daughters and their handsome young men.
‘We’re Edith and Harry, just like you and Dad!’ Edie told her. ‘Ain’t it perfect?’
‘What would Dad do if he could see us now?’ Lilian chipped in.
The question hung in the air and she and Edie both shuddered slightly. Then they burst out laughing.
The country idyll ended all too soon for Lilian when she was called up for war work and assigned a job at the Plessey electronics factory in Ilford, which was now producing shell cases and aircraft components. Her Aunty Hilda, her father’s sister, had found the family a new house in Cranley Road, Plaistow, and Lilian was to move back in with her father and brother. She was devastated.
‘Reggie,’ she sobbed, ‘promise me you’ll write.’
‘Course I will,’ he said, holding her tight. ‘I’ve got a little something for you for when you’re not with me.’
He reached into his pocket and drew out a small photograph. ‘I had it taken in Oxford,’ he said, proudly.
Lilian clasped it to her breast, grateful to have something of Reggie to take with her.
Back in the East End, the days at Plessey’s were long and the work was frequently interrupted by air-raid sirens. Lilian was sad to discover that her friend Lily Middleditch had joined the forces and was no longer around. She lived only for Reggie’s letters now, rushing to the door to be the first to get her hands on the post so that her father wouldn’t see them, and squirrelling them away until she was safely on the bus out of Plaistow. She would read every letter slowly, making each word last. Every break time the latest missive would come out again and Lilian would reread it, until the creases in the paper had worn thin.
At first, Lilian was sending two letters for every one she received from Reggie. Then it became three, then four. To her desperation his correspondence was petering out. She wrote to him again, begging him to reply, and his letters became more frequent. Lilian’s heart soared. But it was short-lived, and soon the letters were thinning out once more.
At work, Lilian found it hard to concentrate and before long her clumsiness got the better of her again. A piece of machinery came down on her finger, leaving a scar.
‘What’s wrong with you, girl?’ asked her forelady.
‘I’m sorry,’ she cried. ‘I just wasn’t quick enough.’
To avoid the long evenings at home with her father, and to take her mind off Reggie, Lilian volunteered as an air-raid warden. Every night she donned her blue uniform and set out on the lookout for fires. But no matter how many flames she doused, her love for Reggie burned all the stronger.
When her mother and siblings returned to London, however, she discovered she wasn’t the only one with problems stemming from those carefree country days.
Lilian was walking along Cranley Road on her way home from work when she heard the unprecedented sound of shouting coming from her house. Nervously, she pushed open the front door, slipped inside and closed it quickly behind her.
Her father was in a rage the like of which she had never seen before. ‘It’s a disgrace,’ he was shouting, ‘a disgrace to the whole family!’ Before him stood her mother and, sobbing in her arms, a distraught Edie. As Lilian entered the room, Harry Tull stormed out of it, and Edie collapsed to the floor.
‘Edie, what’s happened?’ asked Lilian, rushing over to her, but Edie was too upset to speak.
‘She’s pregnant, love,’ said her mother, quietly. Lilian looked down at her sister’s shaking body. ‘I should have done something,’ Edith continued, miserably. ‘I should have done something.’
‘No, Mum,’ said Edie, suddenly looking up, her face wet and patchy with redness. ‘It’s not your fault.’ Then she looked at Lilian. ‘Oh Lil,’ she said, ‘what am I going to do?’
‘We’ll just have to write to Harry and get you two wed,’ said her mother, hopefully. ‘It’ll all work out fine, just you see.’
If Harry had been close at hand, no doubt Edie’s father would have marched him to the altar immediately, but he was far away, fighting abroad. The agonising wait for letters to be sent and received ensued, and when the response finally came it was worse than they could have feared. Harry, it turned out, was already married.
The girls’ upstanding, Victorian father was facing the unthinkable: an unmarried daughter giving birth to a child under his roof, with no hope of being made an honest woman. The disgrace to the family was beyond measure. How would Harry Tull cope with the shame? Would he disown Edie? His wife knew she had to do something fast.
‘I’ve found out about a lovely little place run by the Salvation Army,’ she told Edie a few days later. ‘It’s in Hackney, up in North London, so no one from round here will know where you are.’
Edie nodded silently. She knew there was no point in protesting. Lilian said goodbye to her sister, and for the next few months Edie disappeared from their lives, seen only by their mother in discreet visits.
In the autumn of that year, Edie returned, looking older and more womanly than Lilian remembered. In her arms was a little baby boy. ‘I named him Brian,’ she said. ‘Brian Tull.’
Her father looked down at the sleepy face of the baby, not so unlike little Charlie who had been lost before the war, and his heart melted.
Before long Harry Tull was out in