Wednesday 15 May

‘It’s bad news, isn’t it, now that the Dutch have surrendered?’ Jean asked Sam worriedly.

They were alone in the house, the twins having gone to the cinema and Francine being at a rehearsal.

‘Ay, love, it is,’ Sam agreed. He saw her expression and knew what she was thinking.

There had been so much bad news these recent weeks. The Germans had already overrun Norway and now this. The Bank Holiday had been cancelled because of the crisis and the papers had been full of the shocking fact that the German Wehrmacht had invaded France and Belgium.

‘Don’t worry about Luke,’ he tried to reassure her. ‘I reckon that now Chamberlain has gone and Churchill’s taken his place he’ll have our lads back safe and sound.’

Jean knew that Sam was trying to comfort her but she knew him too well for him to be able to deceive her. He was as worried as she was, and not just for Luke. Everyone was talking about how easy it would be for Hitler to bomb England now that he would be able to set up bases in Holland. Jean still couldn’t believe the awful finality of what had happened.

‘Everyone said that it would never happen, that Hitler wouldn’t be able to overcome Holland’s defences.’ Her voice shook.

‘I know, love,’ Sam agreed. There was no real comfort he could offer her. He was as shocked as she was. The Germans had moved with such speed and such force. It seemed that nothing and no one could stand in their way.

‘Well, Mrs Parker, I have some good news for you.’

The doctor was smiling encouragingly at her. He probably wasn’t going to give her a tonic because it was on ration or something, Bella thought crossly. Well, she wasn’t going to leave until he gave her one.

‘I’m just exhausted, Doctor,’ she told him, ‘what with having to look after these refugees I’ve been landed with and everything.’

‘Well, yes, of course you will be feeling tired. That’s quite normal in the early months, especially with a first pregnancy. You mustn’t overdo things, you know, my dear. You must put Baby first now.’

Baby? Bella stared at him. ‘But I can’t be having a baby,’ she told him flatly.

He had stopped smiling now and was looking at her rather sternly. ‘Indeed you are, my dear, and I’m sure you’ll be very pleased about it once you’ve got used to the idea.’

‘But I’ve just had my monthlies and—’

‘I see,’ said the doctor. ‘Well then, in that case it may well be that you were carrying twins. Sometimes it happens that one of them is lost in the early weeks. I can assure you, though, that you are most definitely pregnant.’

She was pregnant after all, and now Trixie would have to keep away from Alan. She had done it. She had got what she wanted, so why was she feeling all sick and shaky, and as though she wanted to sit down and cry?

Bella could hear the wireless as she opened her front door. They were clustered around it, listening to it in silence. She was tired and still in shock but instead of jumping up to make a fuss of her as her mother would have done, her unwanted house guests simply ignored her. She should be feeling angry, Bella knew, but somehow she felt more as though she wanted to cry. She went into the kitchen and filled the kettle, making a lot of noise as she banged it down on the stove to show her disapproval and relieve her mood.

If they had to have the wireless on without asking her permission first, then why on earth couldn’t they have some music on instead of some dry, dusty news-reader, boring on again about the war and Hitler?

The telephone rang and when she went to answer it, it was her mother, asking how she had gone on at the doctor’s.

‘He says that I’m having a baby,’ Bella told her.

There was a sound from behind her and as she turned round she saw Jan standing in the hallway.

‘The kettle was boiling,’ he told her. ‘So I have switched the gas off.’

Had he heard her telling her mother about the baby? What did it matter if he had? After all, she hadn’t done anything wrong, had she? Not like Trixie. Bella nodded her head and then turned her back on him, as he walked back to join his family.

‘Yes, of course I’ll make sure I get plenty of rest, Mummy,’ Bella told her mother. ‘No, I haven’t told Alan yet, but I will tell him when he comes in … When? Oh, not for ages yet, not until January.’

Bella was upstairs lying down when Alan came home – early for once – and her stomach muscles tightened as she heard him coming up the stairs. Outwardly she might be blaming Trixie for that kiss she had witnessed, but inwardly no matter how hard she fought against it, there was a small hard impossible-to-destroy kernel of knowledge that said otherwise.

If Trixie was to blame and she had told Alan that Bella had confronted her, then surely Alan would be returning home feeling both guilty and anxious to reassure her. She was the one who had the upper hand after all, because she was his wife.

Alan thrust open the bedroom door carelessly, letting it bang against the wall before slamming it closed again.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, going into the office like that and upsetting poor Trixie?’

This was not what Bella had been expecting. Guilt, defensiveness and, hopefully, remorse, yes, but not this savage anger.

‘All I did was warn her to keep away from my husband,’ Bella defended herself.

‘Your husband? I’ve never been your husband. All I’ve ever been is the fool you managed to trick into marriage. Well, it’s over now, Bella. I’ve spoken to my father and he reckons that I can get the marriage annulled; after all, it was never properly consummated, not really. And once I’m free of you I’m going to marry Trixie. She’s the one I love. She’s the one I’ve always loved, and I’d be married to her now if it hadn’t been for you.’

Annulled? A thrill of horror electrified Bella into sitting up in bed. The thought that Alan might actually be planning to leave her hadn’t crossed her mind, at least not properly. All she’d feared had been looking a fool because he spent more time at work with Trixie than he did at home with her. And he wasn’t just planning to leave her, he wanted to have their marriage annulled, making it look as though she hadn’t been a proper wife to him; as though there was something wrong with her. Well, they’d soon see about that!

‘Is that what you’ve told Trixie?’ Bella accused him furiously. ‘Because if it is you’d better go back and tell her that it isn’t the truth, hadn’t you? Our marriage is a proper marriage.’

‘A proper marriage, when I had to be so drunk that I could hardly perform, just to go anywhere near you.’ Alan’s face was red and he had raised his voice to such a pitch that he was almost screaming at her.

‘But you did do it, didn’t you, every night for a week? Have you told your precious Trixie about that?’

‘Yes I have,’ Alan shot back. ‘She’s not like you, Bella; she’s the most darling brave girl. I’m not worthy of her and I never will be. She actually blames herself because she said that we had to wait until I could leave you officially. She knows that it was only my frustration with wanting her so much that made me turn to you. I should have paid a whore instead. It would have been cheaper and I’d certainly have enjoyed it more. God, but you’re cold. It’s like having it with a dummy.’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Bella hissed at him. ‘The refugees will hear you.’

‘I don’t care if they do,’ Alan yelled at her. ‘In fact I hope they do. The more people who know what you’re really like, the better. It doesn’t matter anyway if I can’t get an annulment; I’ll get a divorce instead. Trixie will wait for me.’

‘You can’t divorce me, Alan. I’m pregnant. I’m having your baby.’

‘What?’

This was the moment, her moment, when she should have been feeling triumphant and smugly self-righteous, knowing she was in an unassailable position. Whatever Alan’s father might choose to say to his son in private, Bella knew her in-laws well enough to realise that neither of them, but especially Alan’s mother, was going to want the stigma of having a son who walked out on his pregnant wife. There’d already been one or two comments from people about the fact that Alan hadn’t joined up, and Bella knew that her own father, despite the fact that he had been so angry with Charlie for having done so, had taken full advantage of the fact that his son was doing his bit, whilst his co-councillor’s son was dodging doing his by claiming that he was needed in his father’s business.

Yes, this should have been her moment of moral superiority over Alan but instead, when she saw the way he was looking at her, what Bella did actually feel was a sharp stab of very real fear.

‘What?’ Alan’s face had lost its colour. He looked shocked and trapped and absolutely furious.

He was coming towards her, panicking Bella into scrambling off the bed, ignoring the weakness that dizzied her. In order to reach the door she’d have to get past him. He had already bunched his fists. Bella felt sick. It was too late now to remember that other time that she had pushed so determinedly to the back of her mind as though it had never happened.

There was a knock on the bedroom door. Before Alan could stop her, Bella ran past him and opened it.

Jan was standing outside, his expression unreadable in the shadows of the landing.

Bella couldn’t bring herself to look directly at him. A feeling she didn’t recognise was spilling painfully through her. It burned her face and hurt her pride. It made her want to run and hide herself away from everyone.

‘I would like permission to use your telephone. I have to call my commanding officer.’

It was just coincidence that he should choose now to ask to use the telephone, paid for by Bella’s father when Alan’s father had refused to do so; there was no reason for her to feel she had to be grateful to him, Bella reassured herself. After all, he’d hardly bother to come to her rescue, would he? Jan had made it plain enough with those cold dismissive looks of his what he thought about her, and Bella was pretty sure that his sympathies would lie with Alan, not her.

But he had given her the opportunity to escape.

‘Yes, of course you can use it.’

She couldn’t stay here now; not when she felt so afraid of Alan. She would go to her parents and tell her mother what had happened. Her mother would know what to do.

‘Oh, Teddy, I’m so frightened. It said in the Daily Mail this morning that the Allied line had been pierced in three places.’

Teddy hugged Grace tightly, even though she was in uniform and they were standing by his ambulance.

‘Don’t worry, the RAF Advanced Air Strike Force will stop them.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t,’ Teddy assured her, but Grace wasn’t convinced.

The Germans’ advance, smashing into the Low Countries and forcing them to surrender, had been such a shock to everyone, and Luke and Charlie were both in France with the BEF. Grace prayed that they were safe, especially Luke. No one could talk of anything else but the war and their growing concern, both for the men in the BEF in France and for themselves.

‘If you ask me we’ve just got to get on with things as best we can,’ Hannah said stoutly when they were having their lunch.

‘You should try telling that to Lillian,’ said Jennifer. ‘She was in tears on the ward this morning, crying that she couldn’t cope with all the worry. You should have seen Sister’s face. She wasn’t at all pleased, I can tell you. Mind you, Lillian got away with it in the end. One of the young housemen just happened to be there and she managed to faint right into his arms. She’s been sent to the san to rest her nerves, but I reckon if there wasn’t a war on and so many nurses needed, she’d have been told to pack her bags and leave.’

‘I should think so too,’ said Hannah firmly.

‘I had a letter from home this morning,’ Doreen told them. ‘Mum says that they’ve had two Dutch refugees billeted on them.’

‘One of them wasn’t wearing a crown, was she?’ Iris joked, referring to the fact that it had been in all the papers that Queen Wilhelmina, and the rest of the Dutch royal family had been brought to safety in England ahead of many other refugees.

Grace was touched when, despite everyone’s growing concern about what was happening, Hannah still managed to find time to catch up with her as she left the dining room to ask how Teddy was.

‘It still upsets him that he can’t do more,’ Grace answered her.

Alan was sleeping in the spare bedroom, thankfully empty again now that Jan had left to rejoin his fellow Polish pilots at Northolt in Middlesex, where the Polish squadron was based.

Bella was at her mother’s, sitting in the garden and enjoying being fussed over. Her mother had already assured her that it had now been agreed that there was to be no divorce.

‘Daddy has told Mr Parker how shocked we are by Alan’s behaviour, but that we understand that in times of war young men do things they would not normally do, especially when unscrupulous young women encourage them to do them,’ she informed Bella, blithely disregarding the fact that Alan wasn’t involved in any way with the war.

‘But what about Trixie, Mummy?’ Bella pressed her mother. ‘She means to have him, I know she does, and now with me having the baby to worry about …’ Theatrically Bella placed her hand on her still flat stomach.

‘Well, naturally that young hussy won’t be able to work for the Parkers any more, and I said as much to Mrs Parker at the WVS meeting yesterday. One or two of the other ladies who happened to overhear me came up to me afterwards to say how dreadful it was that she had behaved so disgracefully. It was very noticeable that that mother of hers wasn’t there lording it over everyone like she normally does. Alan’s mother didn’t have much to say for herself either, especially when I said how the doctor had said that he wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the shock of finding out what was going on that caused you to lose one of your babies.’

Mother and daughter exchanged a complicit look. Of course, Bella’s doctor had said no such thing, but Bella certainly wasn’t going to object to her mother rubbing Mrs Parker’s nose in it a bit, after the way the woman had favoured and fawned over Trixie.

‘I think those parents of hers should be ashamed of themselves, and it’s no wonder they’ve sent her away to stay with relatives in Scotland,’ Bella told her mother virtuously.

‘I agree. Someone like that shouldn’t be allowed to mix with respectable folk. Like I said to Mrs Parker, I feel sorry for her, really I do, for having been so taken in by her. It’s shameful the way that Trixie behaved.

‘I shouldn’t be surprised if your father’s right when he says that the Parkers being so friendly with her parents could mean that Mr Parker won’t be re-elected to the council. People don’t like women who go round breaking up marriages. It’s like I said to the other ladies at the WVS meeting, you’ve nothing to blame yourself for. You’ve been a perfect wife, and with Daddy being generous enough to buy that house for you, and Alan not even having to worry about being called up or pay a mortgage, he should be grateful he’s in such a fortunate position. Mind you, as Mrs Nicholls said, sometimes it’s a matter of having too much of a good thing and some young men need a taste of army discipline and doing their duty to make them appreciate how lucky they are.’

Bella nodded as she listened to her mother. It was just as she had hoped it would be. When she had arrived on her parents’ doorstep in tears after Alan’s demand for a divorce, she had told her mother everything, apart from the fact that Alan had already been violent towards her once and she had been afraid he might be again. Men who hit their wives and the women who were married to such men did not live in Wallasey. They lived down by the docks and off Scotland Road in the slum areas of the city. There was something too shameful about that kind of violence to discuss with anyone, and now that she was safe, and Alan was being forced to behave as he should, Bella wanted to forget that horrible moment when she had thought he was going to hurt her.

‘Your father’s told Mr Parker that in his shoes he’d think again about Alan staying at home whilst other young men are fighting. Everyone knows that some unscrupulous families are getting their sons jobs in reserved occupations, and Daddy told him outright that he didn’t think that kind of thing would go down very well with the rest of the council, or in the newspapers if they were to get wind of it. People talk, and it certainly doesn’t create the right impression, not now that so many young men are volunteering.

‘No, I know. Alan’s joined the Local Defence Volunteers this week, so when he isn’t working, he’s out doing things with them.’

‘Daddy’s had a word about those refugees you’ve got billeted on you, and said how worried we are that running round after them all the time might be too much for you in your condition. I’m afraid, though, that nothing can be done at the moment, darling, not with all these new refugees coming over from Holland and Belgium.’

Bella nodded again. In some ways now that Jan had gone to join the other Polish pilots at Northolt, she didn’t mind quite as much as she had done about having the two women there. At least their presence meant that she didn’t have to be on her own with Alan, who thankfully had started going home to his mother’s for his tea, and not coming home until Bella was safely in bed.

Monday 27 May

‘They’ve said in the papers that Hitler’s given the order to the Panzers to halt so that the Luftwaffe can finish off the BEF, and then bomb England.’ Jean’s face was white and set, her voice shaking. ‘Do they know, do you think? Luke and all those other boys?’

‘Oh, Mum, don’t,’ begged Grace. It was her half-day and she had come home to spend it with her family, knowing that they, like her, would be filled with anxiety and despair over the increasingly bad news that had been coming in ever since Amiens and Arras had fallen to the Germans on 20 May, and the German Forces had then broken through to reach the English Channel, whilst the British Expeditionary Force retreated. But what would happen when they reached the Channel and were at Hitler’s mercy?

Even the twins were affected by the mood of fear and despair that was gripping everyone, their gramophone silent and their faces drawn with apprehension.

Francine listened to her elder sister, her own heart feeling as though it was being wrenched apart. She should not have come back. She knew that now. Better perhaps to have stayed in America and not known how Vi had betrayed her and she in turn had betrayed Jack. Nothing she could say could persuade Vi to change her mind and tell her where Jack was. She had even tried to find out from his school, but the school had told Vi, who had been furious with her – and anyway, as she had discovered, Vi had arranged a private evacuation for Jack, sending him away before his school had gone.

Now with Jean so obviously sick with fear for her own son, Francine couldn’t bring herself to ask her yet again to try to persuade Vi to relent. At least Jack was safe. But was he happy? Vi did not love him – Francine had known that immediately. That was the hardest thing of all for her to bear. How could she not have known before? Why had she not had a mother’s instinct to warn her that Vi had not kept her promise to her and loved Jack as though he truly had been her own?

‘What will happen to them, Sam? If the Germans take them prisoner.’ Jean’s voice cracked with fear.

‘General Lord Gort will have them all evacuated before that happens,’ Sam told her, but Jean could see that he wasn’t any more convinced than she was herself that it would be possible to bring so many men home safely so very quickly.

According to the papers, Hitler’s Panzers had now taken Calais and were surrounding the BEF at a place called Dunkirk, where they were now trapped. The inconveniences of war the month had brought, like the increase in the cost of petrol and the butter ration being cut, meant very little when compared with what was happening on the other side of the Channel.

Jean went to put the kettle on whilst they all sat close to the wireless, waiting for the BBC news, just like virtually every other household in the land.

British and French Forces held a thirty-mile stretch of coastline running from Gravelines through Dunkirk to Nieuport. Inland the front reached almost to Lille, where the French Divisions were surrounded by seven German ones.

Lord Gort’s BEF was determined to get home come hell or high water, according to the papers, and despite everything the Germans could throw at them on land, by sea and in the air, and Lord Gort was equally determined to have them home. But the country waiting desperately for news of its men knew the enormity of that task and the slenderness of it being accomplished.

The news came on. Jean’s hand trembled so much she couldn’t even pour the boiling water onto the tea leaves and had to let Grace do it for her.

When the newsreader announced that eight thousand men had been evacuated from Dunkirk’s beaches Jean sobbed out aloud.

‘Eight thousand? But there are three hundred and fifty thousand of them to bring home.’

Sam got up and went over to her, putting his arms around her. Sharp tears stung Grace’s eyes. She had never seen her mother like this, and her stomach churned sickeningly at the thought of the fate of all those brave men who were still there.