We'll Meet Again

Book 2: The Bluebird Girls

by Rosie Archer

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

Gosport, 1941. The Bluebird Girls - Rainey Bird, Bea Herron and Ivy Sparrow - are on their way to stardom. From working men's clubs to the glamour of the Savoy Hotel, fame and fortune beckon as the south coast's favourite singing trio work their way into the hearts of the nation. But the war rages on, and reaching the top of their game will not be easy. Bea is still dealing with the fallout of a traumatic encounter last winter. Rainey is struggling with the whirlwind of life in show business. And Ivy, usually so self-possessed, is hopelessly in love... As bombs rain down, can the girls keep their dream alive?

Release date: June 13, 2019

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 241

Sample

Chapter One

January 1941

‘This war’s spoiling everything!’

Jo looked around at scowling eighteen-year-old Bea perched on the edge of the car’s rear seat. ‘If the wind changes, your face’ll stay like that.’

Bea’s big blue eyes, fringed with long lashes, stared at her. It was inconceivable, thought Jo, that the girl could ever look anything less than beautiful, especially with her blonde hair tumbling about her shoulders as it was now.

Beside Bea, Jo’s daughter Rainey, and Ivy, the third of the Bluebird Girls, were cuddled together among the gas masks, asleep. ‘I don’t see how you can say anything’s spoiled,’ Jo continued. ‘You three received a standing ovation tonight at the King’s Theatre.’ Her thoughts returned to the whistles, stamping feet and shouts of ‘Encore!’ from the patrons.

‘If it hadn’t been for Moaning Minnie,’ Bea persisted, ‘we’d be in a restaurant now.’

Jo sighed. Sometimes Bea could be a pain in the neck, she thought. Through the windscreen, the January night’s frost had created a fairyland, almost hiding the bomb damage.

Blackie Wilson, driving, slid his gaze briefly from the icy road to Jo. In desperation he raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘I’m sorry, Bea. Jo and I are trying to save your life by getting you away from the bombing in Portsmouth and home to Gosport.’ His crumpled black suit, creased white shirt, tired face and clipped voice reflected the effort involved in leaving the flaming city behind them. ‘I happen to think that you three have a great future ahead of you and I want you to be famous, not dead!’

‘Humph!’ was Bea’s response.

Blackie took a hand from the steering wheel of the Ford Model Y and brushed his dark hair off his forehead. Not that that did any good, Jo noticed, because the glossy curls immediately bounced back to where they had been.

‘We could have gone in the surface shelter the police and ARP wardens were directing us to,’ insisted Bea.

She was like a dog with a bone when she wanted to prove a point, Jo thought.

‘Not likely,’ said Blackie. ‘You wouldn’t get me in one of those death traps. I’ve seen them being built. Brick walls and a concrete roof that’s ready to crush the life out of you when it gets hit. I wanted you lot out of Portsmouth.’

‘And I agreed because Blackie might be your manager but I’m your chaperone. It’s my job to see you three girls are looked after.’ Jo had promised Ivy and Bea’s mothers that she would make sure no harm came to them while they were in her care.

She had hardly got the words out before she felt her daughter’s knees push against the rear of her seat. She turned again to see Rainey smooth back her auburn hair and extricate herself from Ivy, who was still asleep.

‘Wassamatter?’ Rainey asked groggily.

‘You two fell asleep in this tin-can car,’ said Bea. ‘We’re just about to cross over Portsdown Hill and I’m starving.’

‘You’re always hungry,’ Rainey said. ‘I think you’ve got worms.’

‘I wish you two would stop bickering,’ came Ivy’s husky voice. ‘Anyone would think today’d been the worst day of our lives instead of the best.’ She gave Jo a dazzling smile that lit up her brown eyes.

‘Wasn’t it wonderful?’ agreed Bea. ‘Fancy us singing in front of that huge audience.’

Blackie shook his head helplessly.

Bea’s moods were mercurial. There were times, Jo knew, when he and she could have strangled the girl. And now she needed to have a word with Bea.

Before going onstage the girl had been sick. That, combined with the weight she’d put on, meant Jo feared that the drunken episode with a sailor in the courtyard of the Fox public house three months ago had resulted in more than first-night nerves for Bea. But surely, she thought, Maud, Bea’s mother, would have suspected something was amiss and said something. Perhaps Bea was unaware she might be pregnant. If she was, the neighbours’ tongues would soon be wagging: unmarried mothers were the scum of the earth. And how would Bea cope when her stage career, just starting, was snatched away from her? A baby would complicate everything. As soon as she could, Jo would get Bea on her own and talk to her.

Blackie wound down the window, letting in a freezing blast of cold air, and signalled with his hand, then turned onto the single-track road that would eventually lead them to Gosport. Jo marvelled that he could drive well in the blackout, with the car’s headlights so dim they hardly lit the lonely road.

As if reading her mind Blackie said, ‘I’m pulling over for a while.’

He stopped at a passing place on the summit of the chalk hill and turned off the engine. Jo shuddered at the panoramic view of burning Portsmouth set in the waters of the Solent. The acrid smell of cordite and dust drifted up to her.

She heard Blackie murmur, ‘Bloody war.’

It was a different, quieter world up here, Jo thought. Deserted white fields and frosted trees. The girls were immersed in their thoughts now. Blackie was listening at the open window.

‘My plane spotting’s not as good as it might be,’ he said. ‘Listen.’

A sound familiar to Jo was filling the air. It was coming south again, towards the harbour and the Allied ships berthed in Portsmouth Dockyard, towards the munitions yards and the airfields.

She could make out the planes now, a swarm of aircraft, too many to count. The smaller ones were fighter planes, she supposed. They reminded her of the silverfish that inhabited her terraced house.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Blackie said, staring at her. ‘More German planes, and so many of them. How in God’s name did they get through?’

In the dim light Jo looked into his odd-coloured eyes. She thought of them as his ghost eyes. Some people called them lucky. She moved closer to him. If she had been alone witnessing this enemy aircraft attack she would have been even more terrified than she was. Of course she was frightened, especially for the three girls in the back of the car, but Blackie had survived Dunkirk by good judgement and luck and she felt safer when he was at her side.

The low, pulsing drone grew ever louder. The first black dots began falling from the planes in the sky to the water and the earth below the hill. Then came the whump of explosions, smoke billowing afresh from the region of the dockyard. This raid seemed bigger than any of the others Jo had witnessed since the war had started sixteen months ago. She felt for Blackie’s hand and was reassured by the squeeze of his fingers.

Rainey gave a cry as a deafening noise broke out from somewhere behind them.

‘That’s our anti-aircraft guns,’ Blackie said. ‘See the searchlights?’

Beams of light criss-crossed the sky and Jo could make out still more smoke rising from new fires burning orange and yellow. Oh, how she hated the sound of the screaming bombs. She was certain she could feel the hill shake as enemy missiles ripped apart the workplaces and living quarters of the city people below.

‘You all right, girls?’ she managed. She knew they were frightened: their silence confirmed that.

The roar of the planes began to recede, to be replaced by the clanging of fire engines and police vehicles. The blessed all-clear had sounded.

‘Thank Christ they’re now on their way home,’ said Blackie.

Bea was crying and Ivy was comforting her. You could always depend on Ivy to do the right thing at the right time, thought Jo, her heart thumping nineteen to the dozen. She smiled at the seventeen-year-old, who looked more like an Egyptian princess than a Gosport girl.

‘I’m glad we weren’t down there in that lot,’ said Bea, the tears on her cheeks glistening. There was a momentary silence as Blackie’s eyes caught Jo’s.

‘Can we leave now?’ Rainey asked, in a small voice.

Blackie let go Jo’s hand and started the engine. ‘I think so,’ he said.

Chapter Two

‘Jo, do you mind if we go straight to your house? I’d like to give Ivy and Bea’s parents time to arrive home. That raid was particularly brutal and there might be transport delays, especially across the harbour,’ said Blackie.

‘Of course,’ said Jo. Petrol was rationed, so most people used the ferry boats to get to and from Portsmouth.

The car had reached Gosport after skirting around fresh piles of smoking rubble that had once been shops and houses lining the main road. Normally on a Saturday night people would be in the streets, going in and out of the pubs, having a good time, but not tonight. Jo gasped as Blackie swerved to avoid a requisitioned taxi, hauling a water pump in a trailer.

Blackie swore. ‘There’s more accidents because of the blackout than casualties from bombs,’ he said.

Jo didn’t think that could be possible but she wasn’t going to argue with him. The stink of soot and brick dust from the demolished buildings seeped into the car. She, too, thought it a good idea for them to stay together until they were certain the girls’ parents and homes were safe, but she didn’t say so.

Ivy said, ‘I’ve got a key . . .’

‘I’d rather you weren’t above the café on your own,’ Blackie said.

Bert, who owned the Central Café where Della, Ivy’s mum, and Ivy lodged, had closed it tonight to see the Bluebird Girls at the King’s Theatre.

Bea said, ‘I could do with a cup of tea.’

‘Couldn’t we all,’ agreed Jo. ‘I’ll put the kettle on as soon as we get home.’

‘If we’ve got a home,’ said Rainey.

Jo glared at her daughter, then tried to make light of the situation. ‘O ye of little faith,’ she said. Nevertheless she crossed her fingers.

Bea had naturally accepted she would stay with Jo. Maud would know where to find her daughter: the girls practically lived in each other’s houses.

Bea, Rainey and Ivy had worked hard to create the singing group the Bluebird Girls, with the help of Alice Wilkes, who ran the school choir where the girls had first met. Blackie had introduced them to Madame Nellie Walker, the Portsmouth impresario, who now funded, advised and booked concerts for them. She wanted three Bluebird Girls, and if Bea was pregnant, everything they had worked for would be as nothing.

Blackie drove past the Criterion Picture House, mercifully undamaged, where The Old Maid, starring Bette Davis, was advertised. She wouldn’t mind seeing that, Jo thought. Uppermost in her mind, though, was her home. Had it been hit by a bomb?

‘Thank God!’ Jo was relieved to discover her terraced house was still standing when Blackie pulled up outside it in Albert Street. She said a little prayer of thanks beneath her breath before she carefully stepped from the car to the icy pavement. ‘Blackie, please will you bring the costumes in from the boot?’

Her heart had practically split with pride as she’d watched the girls from the wings at the King’s Theatre. She’d thought how grown-up they’d looked dressed in air-force uniforms, and when they’d changed into glittery blue evening dresses. They’d moved to small dance steps that Blackie had devised, and their voices were totally in harmony as they’d sung their last song, ‘Over The Rainbow’, to tumultuous applause. Afterwards they had expected to be taken to a restaurant to celebrate, but Moaning Minnie had decided otherwise.

After they’d thrown their coats at the pegs behind the front door, it wasn’t long before the small kitchen, warmed by the black-leaded range, was filled with chattering voices.

Jo noted that the electricity still worked. Rainey had gone straight through to the scullery and she heard the pop of the gas, thank goodness, as her daughter put on the kettle.

‘Glad to be home?’ Blackie stood beside her and she could smell his cologne mixed with fresh sweat; it was both comforting and intoxicating to her. Without waiting for her answer he asked, ‘Where do you want these?’ In his arms were the stage costumes.

‘Front room, I think.’ Jo waved towards the passage. ‘I’ll look them over later for stains and tears before I put them away for next time . . . There will be a next time, won’t there?’

‘You think a Saturday matinee and a single evening show is the end of the Bluebird Girls?’ Blackie leaned towards her. ‘The Portsmouth Evening News and the daily papers will be singing their praises in next week’s press.’ He gave her one of his devastating smiles. ‘And I’ve a few irons in the fire I gathered while we were at the theatre today.’

Jo hoped he might say more but he simply winked at her and set off along the passage to put away the costumes.

Ivy was kneeling on the clippie mat in front of the range, poking the fire. ‘I’ve put a log on,’ she said, ‘I hope that’s all right.’

‘Course it is, love,’ Jo replied. ‘We need to be warm.’ She made a mental note to pop upstairs and check the bedrooms for broken windows and bomb damage. Ivy’s mother and Bert had no transport so Blackie would take Ivy home when he’d heard the café was still standing. Meanwhile she needed to feed them all. ‘I expect you’re all hungry. I’ll see what I’ve got.’

In the larder there was a loaf with the crust taken off, margarine and some lard. A tin of corned beef sat on the shelf next to the condensed milk. There was a tiny piece of cheese that was looking very sorry for itself. Jo had been so busy with the girls she’d neglected shopping. Rationing had been introduced the previous year and she hated the queues: when it was her turn to be served the shop had invariably sold out of everything. Then she remembered the bag of potatoes in the scullery.

‘Chips,’ she said, picking up her apron from the back of a kitchen chair and tying it around her waist. ‘I can do you chip butties or condensed milk on bread.’ She mentioned the corned beef but Rainey poked her head around the scullery door and grimaced.

‘Chips and a condensed-milk butty,’ sang out Bea.

Rainey put the tea tray on the kitchen table just as Blackie returned to the kitchen. ‘Did I hear chip butties mentioned?’ he asked.

‘You did, and you can help with peeling the potatoes,’ Jo said. ‘And don’t peel the skins too thick!’

It wasn’t long before the small scullery was full of activity. Blackie, his white shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows, was peeling dirt-encrusted potatoes in the butler sink, helped by Ivy. Bea sliced the loaf and Jo stood at the stove with a frying pan containing lard and chips.

‘Cut them thinner,’ said Jo, using a flat wooden spatula to move them about.

Blackie said, ‘I’ve never done this before.’

She glanced at him and then at the very oddly shaped chips. ‘I can see that!’ she said. His lovely eyes were sparkling and his smile was a mile wide. ‘You were in the services, weren’t you?’ she teased.

‘I didn’t do any cooking,’ he said.

The girls were laughing and chattering. Jo stepped back and opened the oven door to take out the dish piled high with chips keeping warm. ‘Have you finished cutting the bread, Bea? These need eating.’

Later, Blackie sat in an armchair by the range, his long legs out straight. ‘The girls seem to have forgotten how tired they were earlier.’

Rainey sat at the table shaking more vinegar on her chips. Ivy was perched on the stool in front of the range, watching the flames behind the bars. Her empty plate was beside her.

‘Looking at the fairies in the fire?’ Jo asked her, though she guessed the girl was thinking about Eddie, Bea’s elder brother. Ivy seemed to have developed a bit of a crush on the young builder.

‘Just hoping everyone gets back safe,’ Ivy whispered.

Eddie was a few years older than Bea. Broad-shouldered and blond, he was every bit as handsome as Bea was vivacious. More than his share of girls fancied him, and a few married women, too, by all accounts. Still, you couldn’t help who you fell in love with, thought Jo, and once or twice she’d noticed Eddie’s eyes linger on Ivy just a little longer than was necessary.

‘Can I have a condensed-milk sandwich?’ asked Bea.

‘I don’t know where you put it all,’ moaned Ivy.

Jo remembered she wanted to talk to Bea. ‘Will you come into the front room, Bea, just for a moment?’ She turned to Rainey. ‘Can you make her a sandwich? I think there’s enough bread left.’ She rose, leaving her greasy plate on the table, and turned towards the passage. Bea hoisted herself up from the armchair beneath the window, a questioning look on her face. Jo smiled, trying to put her at her ease.

‘Have I done anything wrong, Jo?’ Bea’s big blue eyes sought hers.

Jo was at the front-room door, her hand on the brass knob.

‘No, love, I just want a word—’

And that was as far as Jo got before her front-door knocker was practically banged off its hinge.

Chapter Three

‘It’s Eddie! I can hear his voice!’ Bea flicked up the latch on Jo’s front door and there stood her brother with a small blonde girl Jo had never set eyes on before. Bea threw herself at him.

‘Am I glad to see you back safely!’ he said. He stepped away from Bea and gave Jo a hug, let her go, then gathered up his sister again. ‘You were bloody terrific up there on that stage tonight!’

‘Wasn’t I just?’ answered Bea, striking a pose with her hand on her hip. ‘Who’s this?’ She stared at the girl.

Bea was excited and Jo could see she’d forgotten they’d been about to have a chat. Jo couldn’t blame her. They’d all been worrying about whether their families had made it back to Gosport after the vicious bombing. ‘Come on in out of the cold,’ she said. Eddie’s builder’s van was hugging the pavement.

‘This is Sunshine,’ he said, throwing an arm about the girl’s shoulders. She looked about twenty, thought Jo, with a smile that lit up her pixie face, like a field of daisies. Her clothes were colourful and obviously home-made. Around her neck and almost trailing on the icy pavement was a multi-coloured patchwork scarf. Her name suited her.

‘Hello,’ said Jo, warmly, ‘I’m Jo.’ She ushered the pair of them and Bea into the kitchen. ‘We’ve got visitors. This is Sunshine,’ she announced.

Blackie was still sitting by the fire. His eyes were closed but he opened them, gave a sleepy smile and murmured a welcome to the newcomers. Jo could hear the sound of plates being washed in the scullery. Bless Ivy and Rainey, she thought. It was one chore she wouldn’t have to do.

‘Where’s your mum?’ Jo asked Eddie.

‘I’ve taken her home and dropped off Della and Bert at the café. Plenty of room in the van, see? Thank God our homes are still standing.’ His blue eyes grew dark. ‘There’s lots in the town that aren’t.’

‘Are you going to introduce us properly, then?’ She was trying to take his mind off the damaged homes he’d seen.

Eddie gave the girl at his side a quick smile. ‘Sunshine works in the place where Granddad lives at Bridgemary. She’s a cleaner there.’ He shook his head and his blond hair fell across his forehead. ‘I didn’t know her until we got talking during the interval at the King’s. When the siren went I could see she was scared so I told her to come along with me and Mum.’ He nodded at Blackie, then explained to Sunshine, ‘Blackie’s their manager.’

Rainey looked in from the scullery door, a tea-towel in her hand. ‘I thought it was you,’ she said to Eddie. ‘I’m Rainey,’ she added, for Sunshine’s benefit.

‘You were fantastic tonight,’ Eddie told her.

Rainey grinned. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘I suppose you’re going to whisk your sister off now,’ Blackie said. ‘I was quite happy to deliver her and Ivy home in my car.’

Ivy poked her head around the door. Immediately her gaze fell on Sunshine, with Eddie’s arm still protectively slung round her shoulders. Her ready smile slipped and Jo noticed the warmth leave her eyes. Oh, my goodness, she thought. Ivy’s jealous.

‘Hel. . .