A Distant Dream

by Pamela Evans

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

A loving family. A deadly illness. A country on the brink of war. Pam Evans, much-loved author of In the Dark Streets Shining, brings us an enthralling and heart-wrenching saga about the enduring power of love, courage and friendship during the dark days of war. Perfect for fans of Dilly Court and Cathy Sharp. 'A superb and heartwarming read' - Irish Independent It's 1936 in West London, and fifteen-year-old May Stubbs and her family have endured the worst of The Depression. Looking forward to a more prosperous future, they take on a derelict cricket pavilion, convert it into a café and general store, and find it quickly becomes the hub of the community. Then May contracts tuberculosis, and the way ahead looks less certain. Leaving her best friend, Betty Lane, and lifelong soul mate, George Bailey, behind, she is sent away to fight off the illness. But on her return to London, she finds things have changed. And when war is declared, it is clear that serious complications and heartache lie in store for them all. What readers are saying about A Distant Dream : ' Where would the book world be without Pamela Evans books to brighten our day! I can't praise this book enough and am eagerly awaiting the next one from this author' 'Not just a wonderful story, but wonderful characters... you feel as though you have made new friends. I always thoroughly enjoy Pamela Evans books and think this one has to be one of her best '

Release date: March 14, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 418

Sample

Errand boy George Bailey swung off his delivery bike, propped it up in the kerb and bounded in to the Green Street Pavilion, a white-painted shack adjacent to a children’s playground in the back streets of Ealing in west London.

‘Morning, Mrs Stubbs,’ he greeted the woman behind the counter, a jolly blonde of middle years who was wearing a floral pinafore over a summer frock. ‘Lovely day.’

She nodded towards the sunshine outside. ‘It certainly is. What can I do for you, George?’

‘The usual, please.’

‘A cup of tea and a currant bun coming up,’ said Flo Stubbs, who had blue eyes and a beaming smile that was genuine now after years of pretence when times were hard. ‘As long as you’re not behind with your delivery rounds. I don’t want your boss coming round here and giving me an earful for encouraging you to skive.’

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my stopping for a breather so long as I keep on top of things,’ he suggested. ‘I’m a fast worker. I don’t hang about.’

‘What the eye doesn’t see, eh?’

‘Exactly,’ he said, winking at her.

She lifted a large cream-coloured enamel teapot with green edging, poured the tea into the cup through a strainer and added a generous helping of milk from a jug, then took a sticky bun from under the glass cover and put it on a plate.

‘Ta very much,’ said George, helping himself to sugar from a bowl on the counter and handing her a ha’penny.

‘You put your money away, boy,’ she urged him. ‘Have this one on us.’

George hesitated. He preferred to pay his way, especially with decent people like the Stubbses, who hadn’t had things easy in the past. ‘It’s generous of you to offer,’ he began, hoping not to cause offence by seeming ungrateful, ‘but you don’t want to be giving stuff away, not here at the shop anyway.’

‘And we don’t as a rule, but I’m in a good mood today and I think we can afford to treat our daughter’s pal every now and again,’ responded Flo, thinking what a handsome lad George was growing up to be, with his shandy-coloured eyes, curly chestnut hair and cap worn at a jaunty angle. He was the image of his father, God rest him. The boy’s cheery demeanour gave no hint of the trauma he’d been through or how tough things had been for him at home these past couple of years. The Stubbs family knew him well because their daughter May had been friendly with him since they’d started school together aged five. Now both fifteen, they were still close friends and George was a regular visitor at the house. Sweethearts? Not as far as Flo knew, but they were far too young for that sort of thing anyway. They both needed to grow up and spread their wings a bit first. ‘It won’t happen often, so make the most of it and enjoy.’

He thanked her warmly and sat down at a table in the sunshine on the roomy veranda. He was soon joined by other errand boys, to whom this little café and general store was a magnet as a stopping place on their rounds. Having served the lads with tea, Tizer, cheese rolls and seed cake, Flo worked her way through the queue of women wanting sundry provisions they’d run out of or forgotten to get at the Co-op. That was the service they provided here at the Pavilion; people could get things cheaper in the shopping parade, but they came here for convenience and a chat with the locals.

The café was a big attraction, being in a heavily populated residential area and the only one of its kind close at hand. Their menu was limited to light refreshments – sandwiches, cakes and a variety of hot and cold drinks – but they did very well, especially with their seasonal favourites: home-made ice cream in summer and toffee apples in the autumn when the fruit was plentiful.

A trip to the playground next door with the children was less of a chore for adults now that there was somewhere they could enjoy a snack while the children played. Crowds of fearless infants clambered on to the witch’s hat roundabout and the see-saw, some hurtling head first down the slide and hanging on for dear life to the ends of the swinging horse as it creaked from side to side. On fine weekends the Pavilion was packed out.

Glancing around in a quiet moment at the potted geraniums and pansies on the veranda, a splash of bright colour embellishing the white-painted wooden structure, Flo thanked God for this place, which had come to them unexpectedly four years ago. Not only had it rescued the Stubbs family from abject poverty, it had also given Flo a new sense of purpose and had later helped her to cope with the grief that haunted her even now, though it was three years since they’d lost their beloved ten-year-old son Geoffrey to diphtheria.

It had been a gamble taking on a derelict cricket pavilion that had been empty since the cricket club moved away several years before, especially as neither Flo nor her husband had any experience of shopkeeping or catering. But when one of the gentlemen Flo cleaned for surprised her with a modest sum in his will in recognition of her hard work and kindness, she’d seen an opportunity to get Dick off the dole and herself out of charring, and to build some sort of security for their family.

She had long thought that a commercial venture was what this back-street area next to the recreation ground needed. Fortunately there was plenty of space inside the pavilion, and room on the veranda to add a few tables, while water and electricity had been installed by the previous owners.

Being in such a state of disrepair and a long time on the market, the shack had been going at a rock-bottom price and there had been just enough money left over from the purchase to do it up and stock it. After a slow start, the place had soon gathered momentum, and Flo believed that it was now a real asset to the community. It didn’t earn them a fortune, but it did give them a decent living, and now that May had left school and was working as well, the deprived days were behind them; for good, she hoped.

In theory, Flo and Dick ran the business together, but it was actually Flo who was in charge. Dick was an asset serving behind the counter, being such a popular and gregarious soul, but he had no initiative for shopkeeping and was happy to leave the management to her. His skills lay elsewhere. A qualified metalworker, he’d lost his job during the worst of the depression and had been on the dole for several years before their change in fortune.

Now, in the summer of 1936, things were still very hard for people in parts of the north of England and Wales, but here in the south-east there had been an improvement for some areas these last few years, mostly due to the new industries and an increase in housebuilding, especially in the London suburbs. Factories producing such things as aircraft and electrical goods had opened in nearby areas and were flourishing and keeping unemployment down. So it had proved to be a good time to start a business.

Dick appeared from the stockroom wearing a brown overall and carrying a carton of tinned peas, which he began stacking on to the shelves. He was a tall, jovial man with greying dark hair, his liking for a sociable pint or two manifest in a sizeable beer belly.

‘Can you look after things here, Dick, while I pop home and do a bit indoors?’ asked Flo. ‘I need to go to the butcher’s as well to get something for dinner.’

‘Righto, love,’ he agreed affably.

She left the Pavilion and walked briskly past the playground and through the serried ranks of red-brick terraced houses with their privet hedges and tiny low-walled front gardens. She was home within minutes. It was very convenient living so close to the job, she thought, as she turned the key in the lock, noticing that the red doorstep needed some polish and deciding that she would deal with that before she tackled the rest of the housework.

Flo was an energetic woman and an avid housekeeper, occupation was her salvation, and with a home and a business to look after, she didn’t have time to mope. That wouldn’t be fair to her husband or her beautiful daughter May, whose endless exuberance filled the house with light. May and her father had both suffered the loss of Geoffrey too, and Flo made sure she didn’t forget that by being self-indulgent in her attitude towards her own grief.

Oh well, let’s get cracking, she said to herself as she stepped into the narrow hall, itching to take the broom and floor polish to the lino.

Dick Stubbs cleared some empty tables and stopped for a chat with two elderly men who came to the café every morning for a newspaper and a cup of tea.

‘How’s your luck, me old mate?’ said one of the men, who was wearing a trilby hat and a dark suit despite the warm weather.

‘Not so bad,’ Dick replied.

‘It’s a bit better than that, I reckon,’ joshed the man. ‘This place must be a little gold mine.’

‘Hardly that,’ said Dick, ‘but it keeps the wolf from the door so I’m not complaining.’

‘It was a good idea of yours to open up a café here,’ remarked the man. ‘It’s somewhere for us to go out of the way while the missus is cleaning.’

‘Not half,’ agreed his friend.

‘It was my wife’s idea actually,’ Dick explained.

‘Good for her,’ the man enthused. ‘We don’t know what we’d do without it now.’

‘Glad you’re pleased.’

‘Will we see you in the local tonight?’ asked the man in the trilby.

Dick nodded, smiling. ‘I expect I shall come in for a quick one,’ he said, moving away as he saw someone approach the counter. ‘I’ll see you boys later.’

When he’d finished serving, he fell into reflective mood. All of this, the shop, the café, the satisfied clientele and the fact that he and his family were no longer on the breadline was almost entirely down to Flo. She made everything run like clockwork and it was her kindly nature that had enabled it to happen in the first place. She’d been astonished to receive a legacy from the old man she cleaned for, but knowing her as he did, Dick guessed she’d put more than just housework into the job. As well as extra favours like shopping and changing his library books she would have taken the trouble to listen if he wanted to chat, no matter how busy she was. Flo had the ability to hide her true feelings from the outside world. She could seem to be cheerful when her life was actually falling apart. Only he knew how much she had suffered when they lost young Geoffrey. Even May had been protected to some degree from her mother’s grief because Flo had considered it her duty to be strong for their daughter. Dick was well aware that he was married to a very special woman.

Their standard of living was better than it had been for years and working here was a pleasant enough way of life. But although he would never say as much to Flo after all her efforts, there was something missing for him. His trade! He was good with his hands and missed the satisfaction his work had given him as well as the atmosphere of the workshop and the male company. It had been hard graft compared to this but it was what he’d been trained for and he’d been proud to call himself a tradesman. Most of the time working here didn’t feel like work at all, except perhaps when it was his turn to get up at the crack of dawn to sort the newspapers for the rounds.

Still, he was a very lucky man in all other respects and he had no intention of complaining.

‘We have something new in that you might like to consider, madam,’ said May Stubbs to a customer at Bright Brothers Department Store where she worked as a junior in the lingerie department. A blond girl with the look of her mother about her, she opened one of the wooden-framed glass-fronted drawers behind the polished mahogany counter, took out a pair of pink satin French knickers with lace edging and spread them out on the counter. ‘We have them in white and blue as well. Beautiful, aren’t they?’

‘Indeed they are,’ agreed the customer, who was middle aged, attractive and well dressed though in matronly style like many women of her age. ‘But I’m not quite sure if they are right for me.’

‘For a special occasion perhaps?’ suggested May.

A sharp poke in the back startled her and she turned round quickly to see her superior, Miss Matt, glaring at her.

‘The customer has plain white knickers of the larger, comfortable variety,’ whispered the older woman. She’d been serving someone with a winceyette nightdress but had left that to flex her senior status muscles over May. ‘She’s been shopping here for years and that’s what she has.’

‘But these are so pretty, and new in, so I thought perhaps . . .’ began May.

‘Plain white interlock cotton with elasticated legs,’ hissed Miss Matt. ‘You should know that’s what older ladies prefer.’

May turned back to the customer. ‘I can see that you are doubtful about them, madam,’ she said tactfully. ‘Perhaps something a little plainer might be more to your taste.’

‘These are very nice, though,’ remarked the customer, fingering the lace lovingly.

‘My assistant is young,’ interrupted Miss Matt dismissively. ‘She’s still learning the job. You can trust us here at Bright Brothers to look after your best interests as always.’

‘The French ones are ever so pretty,’ began the customer, enthusiasm growing.

‘We have something much more appropriate,’ Miss Matt cut in speedily. ‘Get them, please, Miss Stubbs, and quick about it. You’ve kept the customer waiting for long enough already.’

May did as she was bid and laid a pair of huge cotton interlock bloomers on the counter, putting the others to one side.

‘Mm,’ murmured the customer. ‘They do seem a little . . . er, heavy in comparison. May I see the others again? The white ones as well, please.’

‘Certainly, madam,’ said May, leaning down to the drawer, feeling the full blast of Miss Matt’s disapproval and crushing her own urge to giggle.

‘But the lady purchased several pairs of each type of knickers,’ said May defensively, having had a thorough trouncing from Miss Matt as soon as the customer had made her way out of the store, which was all dim lighting and dark polished wood. ‘That must be good for business, surely.’

‘Personal service is what we pride ourselves on here at Bright Brothers,’ lectured Miss Matt, who was middle aged, plain and very prim. ‘We aren’t the sort of store to concentrate on a quick sale to boost turnover. We look after our customers so that they will stay with us in the long term.’

‘I thought we were also supposed to promote our goods and make recommendations,’ remarked May.

‘We are, of course, but our suggestions must be right for each individual customer,’ said the older woman.

‘The lady seemed very pleased with her purchases. I’m sure she’ll continue to shop here.’

‘If she does come back it may well be with a complaint against us for encouraging her to purchase inappropriate garments.’

May decided to push her luck. ‘Please don’t think I’m being rude, Miss Matt,’ she began with the respect demanded of a junior, ‘but why exactly are the pretty ones inappropriate?’

‘The customer is a married woman of a certain age, not a Hollywood film star.’

‘If she can afford pretty underwear, why shouldn’t she have it?’ May enquired.

‘Because it’s the way things are,’ insisted Miss Matt, exasperated. ‘Why can’t you just do as you’re told without questioning every darned thing?’

‘I’m just naturally curious, I suppose,’ replied May, an energetic girl with bright blue eyes and a sunny smile.

‘Well you know what curiosity did; it killed the cat, so let’s have less of it please.’

‘But I thought the management would want us to take an interest in our work,’ persisted May.

‘That may well be so, but they certainly don’t want junior members of staff questioning the decisions of their superiors,’ claimed her colleague.

‘So are you saying that a woman has to wear hideous drawers for the rest of her life just because she’s over forty?’

‘She doesn’t have to, but most respectable older women do,’ Miss Matt explained. ‘It’s only right and proper. Besides, people like to be comfortable when they get older.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said May, finding it rather a dull prospect.

‘Anyway, that’s enough of your questions,’ said Miss Matt, bringing the conversation to a swift conclusion. ‘We’ve work to do. There is some new stock to put away and everything needs tidying up in the department.’

‘Yes, Miss Matt,’ said May politely.

May’s best friend Betty thought the French knickers incident was hilarious.

‘Oh you never tried to sell them to some old girl,’ she said, giggling as they walked home together through busy Ealing Broadway, past the Palladium Cinema and Lyons tea shop, the brightly coloured striped awnings being taken in as the varied assortment of shops closed for the day, the pavements crowded with people queuing for electric trolley buses and hurrying towards the station. ‘No wonder old Matty blew her top. You might as well try and sell satin knickers to your mother.’

‘The customer bought them anyway,’ May pointed out, ‘and good luck to her. I hope she enjoys them even if she does have a few grey hairs.’

‘At least you get to work with nice things,’ said Betty wistfully. A brown-eyed brunette the same age as May, she was employed at Bright Brothers too, in the bedding department. ‘All I see is boring old sheets and pillowcases.’

‘Come on, you do sell the occasional eiderdown,’ said May, teasing her.

‘Thanks for reminding me,’ retorted Betty, taking it in good part.

‘I must say, I do enjoy being in the lingerie department, though Miss Matt is a bit of a pain,’ admitted May. ‘At least I get to see a bit of glamour, even if I can’t afford it myself.’

‘Maybe we’ll have enough money to buy satin underwear one day,’ said Betty.

‘We certainly can’t at the moment on the wages we get from Bright Brothers,’ May responded.

‘We’ll have to wait and have it for our trousseau then.’

May laughed. ‘That’s looking a long way ahead,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to find someone to marry us first.’

‘You’ll be all right. You’ve got George,’ Betty pointed out.

‘George is just a friend and he’ll have lots of girls before he finally settles down, Mum says, and I’ll have boyfriends,’ added May. ‘She says I’m much too young to think about things like that.’

‘Mums always say that sort of thing,’ Betty remarked. ‘Mine is just the same. You’re too young for this that and the other . . . especially the other.’

The girls thought this was very funny and erupted into laughter.

‘I can’t imagine life without George,’ said May when they had recovered and were being more serious. ‘I’ve been close friends with him all my life and I know I always will be, whatever happens between us and no matter what Mum says.’

There was rather a long silence.

‘Anyway, will I see you after tea?’ asked Betty, moving on swiftly rather than linger on the subject of May and George and their special friendship.

‘I think I’ll go for a bike ride if you fancy coming,’ said May.

‘No thanks,’ replied Betty. ‘That’s far too much like hard work for me.’

‘As you wish,’ said May.

Betty nodded. ‘Where are you going to cycle to?’

‘Wherever the mood takes me,’ replied May casually. ‘I need the fresh air and exercise.’

‘Haven’t you had enough exercise, on your feet all day at work?’ said Betty.

‘Cycling is a different sort of exercise,’ said May, who’d had a bicycle from her parents for her fourteenth birthday. ‘It makes you feel really good somehow.’

Betty was sometimes in awe of her friend and often very envious of her. May had something that Betty lacked: an independent spirit and opinions of her own, whereas Betty tended to go along with the herd. Cycling to Richmond on her own was nothing to May; she even went all the way to Runnymede on her bike by herself sometimes. Betty didn’t do anything without company, but May would do things alone if she had no one to do them with.

The worst thing for Betty was the green-eyed monster with regard to May and George Bailey. Betty actually hated her with a passion over that. George was the best-looking boy around and he only had eyes for May. Always had! The confusing part for Betty was the fact that she loved May as a friend very much. She was great fun and there was no one else Betty would rather spend time with. So why did she hate her so much at times instead of being pleased for her? Betty, May and George had been friends since they were children, but there had always been something special between those two and Betty had always secretly resented it.

‘George will probably go for a bike ride with you,’ she suggested as reparation for being so ill willed.

‘Yeah, he might do,’ agreed May. ‘I’ll call at his house on my way out to ask him, though he may be going to the boxing club, in which case I’ll go on my own.’

‘No harm in mentioning it to him, is there?’ said Betty.

They headed past the train station on the other side of the street, the road crowded with motor vehicles, bicycles and some horse-drawn carts, and walked along by Haven Green alongside the railway line and into the back streets, chatting amiably until they came to Betty’s turning, which was the one before May’s road.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ said May.

‘Okey-doke,’ responded Betty.

‘I’m ever so hungry, Mum,’ said May, digging a knife into the potatoes bubbling in the saucepan on the gas stove. ‘These are done. Shall I drain them?’

‘Turn the gas off but better leave the spuds in the saucepan to keep hot while I make the gravy,’ Flo suggested. ‘The meat pie is ready.’

‘I’ll set the table,’ said May.

‘Thanks, dear.’

In the living room at the back of the house where the family had their meals and took their leisure, the front room only coming into use on special occasions, May took the tablecloth and cutlery from a drawer in the sideboard, pausing to look at a framed photograph of her brother and herself in the garden a year or so before he died. She would have been about eleven; he was nine. Every day she looked at this and still got a lump in her throat.

It seemed strange, even now, that Geoffrey wasn’t around anywhere, ever. They used to argue like mad – as siblings do – but they’d loved each other for all that. Being the elder she’d always felt duty-bound to look out for him, and after he died she’d thought it must be her fault.

She’d come to realise that it wasn’t after a while, but she missed having him around even if sometimes he had been her annoying little brother. Now it was just her and Mum and Dad. No other young person in the house to josh with; no childish squabbles, or shouts or giggles or standing united against parental authority. It was as though the youthful spirit of the house had died along with Geoffrey. She loved Mum and Dad dearly – and empathised with them all the time over the loss of their child – but they weren’t young. May had become an only child on that terrible day three years ago. There was something awfully lonesome about that.

But she had her two best friends, George and Betty, and they both meant the world to her. She wiped a tear from her eye with the back of her hand and got on with laying the table. Tiddles, the family cat, strutted into the room with his usual proprietorial air and rubbed himself around her legs meowing demandingly. She picked him up and stroked him, loving his shiny black fur, yellow-green eyes and the feel and sound of his vibrating purr. He was a glutton for cuddles and that was fine with May, because she enjoyed making a fuss of him.

Her father came into the room and sat in the armchair by the hearth, unlit at this time of year. As he opened the newspaper she noticed a picture of the American athlete who was doing so well in the much-publicised Berlin Olympic Games that were on at the moment.

‘Has Jesse Owens got another medal, Dad?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he replied, peering at her over the top of the paper after glancing at the headline.

‘The star of the games so they say.’

‘He certainly is, and Mr Hitler will be none too pleased about that,’ he said.

‘Is that because he only wants his own people to win?’ she enquired.

‘Something like that,’ replied her father.

May knew that there was some sort of controversy about the games in Germany and that it concerned Hitler and the Nazi party. But her interest in the Olympics was purely sporting and everything else went over her head.

‘Grub’s up,’ called Flo from the kitchen, and May went to help her bring the food in.

There was an argument in progress when George Bailey got home from work, which wasn’t unusual because his sister and their mother were always at daggers drawn lately.

‘Oi oi,’ he said, hearing shouting coming from the kitchen. ‘Pack it in, the pair of you.’

‘Tell your sister that,’ said his mother Dot, a sad little woman with dark shadows under her eyes, her once black hair now almost white. ‘She started it.’

‘What’s it all about this time?’ he sighed, and turning to his sister added, ‘Sheila, what have you been saying to Mum to upset her so much?’

‘She’s pathetic,’ declared Sheila, a feisty thirteen year old. ‘Why can’t she be like other mothers and do the things they do like shopping and ironing our clothes? Why do I have to go to the butcher’s before I go to school every morning and do the household jobs when I get home?’

‘It doesn’t hurt you to help out,’ said George.

‘Help out, I’ll be doing the bloody lot before long,’ declared Sheila, who was similar in colouring to George and had brown hair worn in long plaits. ‘All she does is mope about the house all day.’

‘That’s enough of that sort of language,’ admonished George.

‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’ she shouted. ‘You’re not my father.’

‘No, but seeing as he isn’t here, I’m standing in for him,’ he said. ‘Mum’s had a bad time, so go easy on her and treat her with respect.’

‘That’s right, take her side like you always do.’

‘She’s our mother,’ he reminded her sternly.

‘Huh. I thought mothers were supposed to look after their kids,’ retorted Sheila.

‘She does her best,’ said George.

‘For what it’s worth.’

‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Sheila,’ he told her. ‘You didn’t used to behave like this when Dad was alive.’

‘She used to be a proper mum then, didn’t she?’ she said, her face suffused with red blotches and eyes brimming with angry tears. ‘Now all she does is feel sorry for herself.’ She looked at her mother, who was standing in the doorway crying silently. ‘There she goes, booing her eyes out again. She’s not the only one who suffered. We lost our dad.’ Sheila’s voice broke. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I just can’t stand it, coming home from school every day to your miserable face. Why don’t you try to cheer up and give us all a break?’

With that she ran from the room sobbing.

George went over to his mother and put an affectionate arm around her. ‘She doesn’t mean it, Mum,’ he said. ‘She’s growing up and getting stroppy with it.’

‘I try, George, but I can’t shake it off,’ she said thickly. ‘This terrible despair.’

‘I know,’ he said kindly, holding her close. ‘But maybe if you were to keep busy it might help somehow. It’s two years since Dad died. You’ve done enough grieving.’

‘He didn’t just die, he was murdered,’ she reminded him.

Hearing it was like a physical blow, but he didn’t want her to know how much it hurt because she was in no state to take on anyone else’s problems. She needed him to be strong and supportive. ‘Yes, I know, Mum,’ he said. ‘But it’s all over now and Dad’s murderer has been hanged. It’s time for you to start livin. . .