I'll Be Seeing You

by Rosie Archer

Genres: World War II; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

1943. After the heartache of the previous year, Connie Baxter now appears to have everything a girl could want. There is Ace, a man who loves her. She enjoys an enviable lifestyle despite the deprivations of war. She has friends and a job she adores as an usherette at the Criterion cinema. But appearances can be deceptive and Connie is struggling in more ways than one. Then, to compound Connie's problems, her nemesis, Cousin Marlene, returns home. Secrets come to light, revealing jealousies that could shatter Connie's world once more, and Connie realises that Ace isn't the man she thought he was.

Release date: August 5, 2021

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One

Gosport, April 1943

‘Is there a doctor in the house?

Please present yourself at the Criterion’s foyer immediately.’

 

Connie Baxter looked at the enormous mound of her friend Queenie’s stomach, uncovered so that Gertie, hopefully, could detect progress in the imminent birth. ‘The message is on the screen, now, love,’ she said.

She stepped neatly back into the soundproofed staffroom of the picture house, removed her maroon head usherette’s uniform jacket, and threw it across the back of a chair. Trust Queenie’s waters to break while she and Gertie were at the pictures to see the new Bette Davis film. ‘And your husband’s coming down from the projection room,’ Connie added, trying hard not to let panic show in her voice for she was sure Queenie’s baby was not due yet. ‘Len says young Gary can cope with the end of the film and the national anthem.’

Queenie, on the carpeted floor, groaned. ‘I don’t want Len to see me like this. He’s not even the father . . .’ Her voice tailed off as another spasm gripped her and, automatically, she began to pant, sweat pouring from her face, heightening the scent of the Californian Poppy perfume she perpetually drenched herself with.

‘Maybe not but he’s a better man than the Yank that filled your belly. And he’s put a wedding ring on your finger, hasn’t he?’ snapped grey-haired Gertie, who sat on the floor tenderly wiping Queenie’s face with a damp cloth. She then asked calmly, ‘How many patrons are still watching the film?’

Connie knew she really meant: what were the chances of a doctor actually coming forward? ‘Only a few,’ she mumbled. ‘Most of them left when the siren went and the usual notice broke into the big film telling them they could stay or leave for the public shelters.’

The first bomb blast had hit seconds after Moaning Minnie began to wail and the explosion that followed caused the picture house to shudder on its foundations. Anything that wasn’t nailed down had moved precariously. Gosport and the south of England were taking yet another battering from Hitler’s bombs.

The film Now, Voyager, thought Connie, had enticed a full house, which had thinned out the moment danger became imminent.

‘So even Bette Davis and Paul Henreid couldn’t persuade picture-goers to stay in an air raid.’ Gertie leant closer to Queenie and said softly, ‘Never you mind, love. You got me and Connie.’ She plucked at Queenie’s flowered maternity smock, drawing it down over her body for modesty’s sake.

Exhausted, Queenie cried, ‘I can’t do this no more!’ Her bleached blonde hair clung wetly to her scalp and her face was grey with tiredness.

‘Yes, you can,’ said Gertie, firmly, as she stared into Queenie’s blue eyes.

Queenie threw her head from side to side, took in another deep breath and paused, as if holding it could stop the torture of the approaching contraction.

What, thought Connie, if something goes wrong?

Early on in the pregnancy Queenie had allowed herself to be butchered in an attempted abortion. What if she bled to death now, as she nearly had then? What if the baby was born deformed?

Connie’s panic was interrupted by the staffroom door clattering open. A small round woman, a whiff of disinfectant preceding her, called, with authority, ‘What’s going on here, then?’

‘Edith!’ cried Gertie, rising to her feet.

A tall, worried-looking curly-haired man in a yellow waistcoat followed Edith. After kicking the door closed he dropped to the floor beside Queenie. ‘Oh, my love . . .’ was all he managed, taking one of her hands just as a strangled scream left his wife’s lips.

Edith’s apple-cheeked face broke into a knowing smile at seeing Queenie. ‘Stop all that racket,’ she said. ‘Else the patrons remaining might be listening more to you than Bette Davis!’ She placed her capacious handbag on the table next to a pile of the Portsmouth Evening News and wriggled out of her coat, thrusting it towards Connie. At Edith’s arrival, Connie breathed a huge sigh of relief and hung the coat on one of the hooks near the lockers.

From her handbag the woman produced an elongated eggcup-shaped object. She looked about her, miming washing her palms. Connie nodded towards the sink, where a bar of Wright’s Coal Tar soap sat in a saucer on the draining board. Unhurriedly, Edith cleansed the item and her hands.

‘Thank you, God, for sending us a midwife!’ said Gertie, dramatically looking heavenwards.

‘It’s going to be all right, my love,’ Len said. ‘Edith’s here.’ He moved to allow Edith access to Queenie.

Queenie, in the throes of a splitting contraction, seemed oblivious to his words. Len’s face was wreathed in anxiety.

‘How did you find Edith?’ Connie asked.

‘I remembered her saying she wanted to see Now, Voyager tonight. Miraculously, as I broke into the film to put the request for a doctor on the screen, I saw her get up from her seat.’

Edith Stimson, a neighbour of Len’s, had looked after Queenie when she’d been found doubled up in pain on the pavement near Old Road after her visit to the abortionist.

‘I need to examine you, love,’ Edith said to Queenie now. ‘Let’s have a bit of quiet, everyone,’ she added.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Gertie whispered, staring at Connie before she slid away, muttering, ‘I need a fag.’

Connie saw Queenie was doing her best to keep still while Edith pushed up her smock, bent over and listened to Queenie’s belly through the little wooden contraption. A sort of hush had fallen over the room as Edith moved the object across Queenie’s taut skin.

Connie, unable to bear the silence any longer and watching Queenie’s face as it screwed up with the onset of another wave of pain, asked softly, ‘Is everything all right?’

Edith removed the device and smiled up at her. ‘Three strong heartbeats,’ she said, leaning back. ‘Queenie’s doing fine and so are the twins.’

Gertie spluttered smoke into the air. ‘Twins?’

A stunned silence fell over the room.

‘Twins?’ Len’s face was like parchment.

‘Twins?’ echoed Connie.

‘Wasn’t she told at the hospital?’ Edith had moved along to peer between Queenie’s raised knees.

‘She never went to no hospital.’ Gertie’s voice was shaking as was her hand, which was trying to strike the Swan Vestas match to light the gas beneath the kettle on the stove. The Woodbine stuck to her lip quivered.

Connie thought about Ace Gallagher, the club owner she was engaged to. He’d said he would provide a good doctor for Queenie, but his assurance to her friend was like his promises to her: meant in the moment and easily forgotten.

‘Are you sure?’ The projectionist had found his voice. He was once more down on the floor beside his wife and Queenie was clutching his hand. Connie saw the moon-shaped dents in Len’s hand fill with blood as Queenie’s nails dug into his palm.

Sharply Edith said, ‘My hearing and Pinard stethoscope never lie.’ Dropping her voice, she added, ‘We’re coming along nicely, Queenie, love.’ To Connie, she barked, ‘Get some towels, and I’ll have those newspapers.’

The soundproofed staffroom wasn’t equipped for the delivery of babies but it had been the safest place to take Queenie when her waters had broken while she and Gertie had been watching the film. Connie yanked at the lightly soiled towel above the sink, immediately breaking the roller so it dropped from the wall. There were clean tea-towels in the cupboard below. She showed Edith her meagre offerings. Edith’s face was inscrutable.

A series of gunfire strikes ricocheted across the crenellated roof of the picture house. Connie drew a sharp breath. Flakes of white paint, mottled brown by years of cigarette smoke, fell from the ceiling, like dirty snow, and she used the hand that wasn’t holding tea-towels to brush the bits off her face.

Another tremendous blast wrenched open locker doors, revealing their lack of towelling. Instead she saw an umbrella, shoes, an empty brown carrier bag with string handles, and a bundle of candles. In one a first-aid box sat on a shelf. She wrenched it open to discover only a bandage and a couple of safety pins. Connie doubted the manager’s office in the foyer contained anything more useful for a woman giving birth.

She tried to push away thoughts of the scenes outside the picture house where probably an inferno raged. There’d be craters where buildings had stood. Halves of houses with gaping bedrooms and furniture hanging precariously from broken flooring.

And that awful stink of cordite and burning . . .

An unearthly screech from Queenie brought Connie’s thoughts back to reality.

Then Len was at her side. ‘It’s not going right! She’s bleeding. Edith says she needs the hospital.’

‘Ambulances won’t come out for women in labour,’ snapped Connie.

‘Not with that lot going on outside.’ She saw the fear in Len’s eyes and knew that he, too, was remembering the botched abortion.

‘I can’t lose her,’ he said. He looked like all the life had been leached from him.

‘Nor can I,’ Connie murmured, and she turned away. The last strains of ‘God Save The King’ were playing and the house lights were up as Connie pushed past patrons who had sat through the film until the end.

In his dark red uniform with the gold trimmings and fringed epaulettes, Commissionaire Thomas Doyle was shepherding people out of the main door, telling them to keep safe on their homeward journeys. Earlier Connie had asked him to oversee the last of the usherettes going home. Normally this was the job of their new young manager, Gilbert Willard, but he wasn’t in today.

‘How is . . .’ Doyle called. Everyone called him by his surname.

Connie left his question unanswered but she shook her head to let him know that all wasn’t well. She pushed open the office door, grateful for Doyle’s loyalty in caring about the correct running of the Criterion.

She grabbed the black telephone from the desk, dialled and put it to her ear.

Dead.

Slamming down the receiver, Connie ran from the office, squeezing beneath Doyle’s raised arm as he was about to lock the door. ‘Don’t lock up. Queenie needs help,’ was all she said, as she ran out into the night.

Chapter Two

I wonder if Mum still leaves the key on a string. Marlene Mullins unlocked the Alma Street door, then pushed the key back through the letterbox into its usual place.

Inside the terraced house she dumped her battered cardboard suitcase tied with string onto the lino in the passage and threw her gas mask down beside it. She breathed in the aroma of polished furniture, cooking, the warmth coming from the black-leaded range in the kitchen, all overlaid with the stale smell of Woodbines, the familiar scent of home. Marlene took off her coat and hung it over the back of a kitchen chair, then went to the window and pulled the blackout curtains across. Only then did she switch on the electric light so the single bulb dangling from its cable in the centre of the ceiling lit up the room and showed her how little had changed in the time she’d been away.

She looked at the range. ‘Not like you to let the fire get so low, Mum,’ she surmised. ‘You’ve been gone some time.’

Marlene used the metal lever to lift the top off the hob so she could drop in a couple of small logs from the filled scuttle. She nodded with satisfaction as bright sparks and flames welcomed the offerings.

In the scullery, having drawn the curtains on their wires across the window, she shook the kettle, making sure there was water enough for tea, then lit the gas.

She paused by the mirror hanging near the sink to smooth her blonde hair and check her make-up hadn’t suffered too much in the damp air during her walk from the bus stop to the house. On the Provincial bus, when she’d powdered her nose, her compact mirror had told her she looked good, very good indeed.

Marlene yawned. She was tired.

It was less than twelve miles from Shedfield to Gosport but the inefficiency of wartime transport meant she’d spent a long time waiting for vehicles that were late or had never materialized.

It seemed funny being alone in the house. These past months in the country she’d hardly been alone at all. Alex Huggins had glued himself to her, like a verruca to a foot. She’d thought when she’d volunteered to help the young teacher look after the evacuees from the National Children’s Home at Alverstoke that she’d see a bit of life. Well, she’d thought wrong, hadn’t she? Shedfield didn’t even possess a shop! Wickham, a nearby village, boasted a post office, a bakery, a general store, a meeting place and not much more.

Entertainment was one measly dance in the tin-hut parish hall every fortnight and was the highlight of her life there, accompanied by Alex, of course. He didn’t think it seemly for her to attend alone. The lively social gathering was for the benefit of the American servicemen stationed at a nearby airbase. But now the Americans had been moved to Lee-on-the-Solent at Gosport so the dances had been abandoned.

Initially Marlene had thought to better herself by eventually becoming a teacher’s wife – Alex earned good money. After meeting a few American servicemen, though, she didn’t want to be anyone’s wife: she wanted to have fun and Alex bored her. He’d irritated her with the constant clearing of his throat. She’d found she was on edge waiting for him to cough. It also grated on her nerves that he hesitated, then stuttered, before practically every sentence – ‘Er . . . Er . . .’

Sharing a bedroom at the rectory where they had been billeted had been out of the question: the housekeeper had seen to that.

In the beginning Marlene had thought she could use her substantial charms to persuade Alex to propose marriage. She soon realized what a fool she was to have considered tying herself to a man who bored her rigid. All he cared about was making sure the children were happy in their new surroundings. Last night he’d said that today they would take the children on a ramble. That meant ploughing through brambles and mud looking at wild flowers and birds. Marlene had decided she’d rather stick pins in her eyes. Enough was enough.

She’d woken early after packing her belongings into her suitcase the night before. She’d already taken cash from Alex’s savings, which were tied in a sock in a box at the back of his wardrobe – he really was far too trusting, she’d thought.

Before even the housekeeper was awake, she’d walked away from the rectory in search of new experiences. Marlene wasn’t particularly worried about Alex coming after her because he’d have to find her first, wouldn’t he? He’d never suspect she’d return to Gosport after pleading with him to take her away from the place, would he?

Marlene perched on a kitchen chair to drink her tea.

The cruet set and an ashtray full of dog ends sat, as usual, in the middle of the table, with half a bottle of milk and a glass bowl containing a spoon encrusted with tea-stained sugar granules. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Next to it was a photograph of her mother with her arm around a young woman who looked uncannily like herself but was, in fact, Connie, her cousin. The background seemed to be here in Alma Street. Marlene recognised the honeysuckle bush that draped itself over the lavatory wall at the bottom of the garden next to the Anderson shelter. Connie and her mother looked contented – no, more than that, happy together. A spike of jealousy drove itself through Marlene’s heart. Admittedly, though, her mother was a sucker for taking in waifs and strays, wasn’t she?

Where on earth could Gertie be at eight in the evening? Had she changed her working hours at the Criterion picture house? Marlene smiled to herself. She couldn’t see her mother as a torch-wielding usherette: she’d never aspire to higher things because she was a cleaner through and through. Obviously she had got herself caught up in something she considered important – she’d never normally forget to feed the fire. April was still a cold month.

In the cupboard she found half a loaf of bread. After cutting herself a chunky slice and spreading it thickly with condensed milk, she poured herself another cup of tea. Before she sat down again, she switched on the wireless. Vera Lynn was singing ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’. Marlene hoped that didn’t apply to her and Alex.

Did Gertie still have her other lodger? The bloke from that club in town? Marlene had never met him. She remembered her mother telling her in a letter that Ace was opening another club in Portsmouth. She didn’t always read Gertie’s letters properly – the only interesting things about them were the postal orders or the occasional ten-bob notes her mum enclosed.

She supposed Connie was still living here. Where else would she be after her mother had got herself blown up in Portsmouth? Marlene remembered Connie as a pathetic child who wouldn’t stick up for herself. Marlene would give her Chinese burns and pinch her, knowing she was too frightened to tell on her.

She took a bite of the bread’s sweetness. The way to find out who was lodging here would be to check the bedrooms. Marlene sipped her tea then yawned again. It had been a long day and the food, drink and warmth were making her sleepy.

It really was too bad of her mum not to be here to welcome her home.

Leaving the bread, condensed milk and her used crockery on the kitchen table, she walked along the hallway to inspect the sleeping arrangements. After pulling across the blackout curtains and switching on the light, Marlene saw Connie had made the front room her own domain.

A photograph of Jean, Connie’s mum, sat on a small table next to the bed. Marlene remembered it being on the mantelpiece in the kitchen. Gertie would have placed it there to comfort Connie. Again, the spear of resentment cut through her heart. A folded fan-shaped newspaper in the grate told her the fire was never lit. The bed was made, and on the dressing-table there were items of make-up, a hairbrush and comb, nothing of any importance except a bottle of Evening in Paris perfume. Marlene shook the bottle and dabbed a little on her wrists, wondering who had bought it for Connie. She couldn’t see her cousin paying for anything this glamorous and expensive in these days of austerity.

Clothing hung along the dado rail on hangers. Dowdy dresses that had been remade to look different. Make do and mend was definitely on Connie’s agenda, Marlene thought. She recognized a couple she’d thrown out before she’d left home. Marlene fingered a woollen frock, definitely one of her cast-offs that now looked quite wearable, with its pleated front, knee-length skirt and sweetheart neckline.

She remembered her mother saying that after the bomb had decimated Auntie Jean’s house, Connie had been taken in by her employers with only what she had in her handbag. She had been at work in the Sailor’s Return pub when the bomb dropped.

A well-worn flowered winceyette nightdress was draped across the bed. Marlene recognized it as belonging to her mother. She picked it up and smelt Connie’s fragrance on it. She crumpled the material in her fist, then threw it back on the bed.

Marlene clattered the door shut and went upstairs.

Her mother’s room was just as she remembered it. Iron-framed bed, dressing-table, chest of drawers and the smell of fags hanging over everything.

The back bedroom was more interesting, once she’d drawn the blackout curtains and switched on the light. A good-quality suit hung on the back of the door. A silk shirt dangled from a hanger on the dado rail. A new bar of Imperial Leather soap lay on a clean towel on top of the washstand. She opened the jar of Brylcreem on the chest of drawers and noticed it was missing some scoops. She sniffed the scented white cream.

Pulling back the quilt and blankets, she saw pristine white sheets and pillow-cases, in readiness for use but as yet unslept in. Everything in the room was tidy and clean. Despite the scent of lemon cologne hanging in the air the room looked unlived-in, unused.

Marlene yawned again. She kicked off her high heels, undid the button on her tight black skirt and let it drop to the rag rug covering the lino. She pulled her fluffy pink jumper over her head, climbed onto the bed, hauled up the covers, closed her eyes and slept.

Chapter Three

‘Where’re you off to? It’s early yet.’

Ace. . .