Lime Street Blues Read Free

drawing room of The Limes to make final arrangements for the fête. There was a perfectly good Women’s Institute hall between the school and the Oak Tree that would have been far more convenient, but the chairman preferred the committee came to her house. Rose wasn’t the only person Mrs Corbett bossed around.
    The butchers threw open its doors, followed by the bakers. Soon, all five shops were open, but Rose didn’t move from the bench. She was watching two girls of about her own age, both vaguely familiar, walking along the path that encircled the green, arms linked companionably.
    ‘Oh, look,’ one remarked as they drew nearer. ‘The door’s open, which means I’m late. Mrs Harker will havemy guts for garters.’ She abandoned her companion and began to run. ‘See you tonight at quarter to six by the station,’ she shouted. ‘I’m really looking forward to that Clark Gable picture.’
    ‘Me too.’ The other girl sauntered into Beryl’s Fashions and Rose recognised her as Heather, Beryl’s assistant. Beryl mustn’t mind her being late.
    Rose would have liked to work in a shop and quite fancied going to the pictures, but what she would have liked most of all was to have a friend, someone to link arms with. She rarely met anyone her own age except in the shops. If, say, she went into Beryl’s and bought the brassiere she obviously needed and Heather invited her to the pictures – a most unlikely event – she couldn’t possibly go. At quarter to six, she would be setting the table for dinner, which would be served at precisely six o’clock. It would be well past seven when her duties were finished. By then, she would be too weary to walk as far as the station. Anyway, the picture would be half over by the time she got there.
    She jumped to her feet, bought a whole half pound of dolly mixtures, and ate them on the way back to The Limes.
    Music was coming from the barn that Colonel Max’s father had turned into a games room for his sons – the colonel’s elder brother had been killed in the Great War. It had a billiard table, a dart board, and a badminton court. The music was jazz, which the colonel only played out of earshot of his mother, who couldn’t stand it. Rose loved any sort of music. She danced a few steps on the gravel path, but stopped immediately, embarrassed, when she saw Tom Flowers regarding her with amusement from the rose garden.
    ‘You look happy,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, I am,’ she said, but only because it seemed churlish to say that she wasn’t.
    She went through the laundry room into the kitchen, which should have been empty as Mrs Denning went home as soon as lunch was over and didn’t return until half four to make dinner. Rose was surprised to find a cross Mrs Corbett waiting for her, demanding to know why she hadn’t answered the bell she’d been ringing for ages.
    ‘It was my time off, madam. I’ve been for a walk,’ Rose stammered.
    ‘Oh!’ Mrs Corbett looked slightly nonplussed. ‘Well, you’re late back. I’m having a bridge party this afternoon. I want you in uniform immediately. My guests will be arriving very soon.’
    In fact, Rose was five minutes early, but Mrs Corbett would only have got crosser if she’d pointed it out.
    A week later, the colonel’s leave ended and he left for France. Lots of people telephoned or called personally to wish him luck, which had never happened before.
    ‘Look after yourself, Max, old boy.’
    ‘Take care, Colonel. Keep your head down, if only for your mother’s sake.’
    War between Great Britain and Germany was imminent. Once it started, the colonel’s regiment would be on the front line. Mrs Corbett, who’d lost one son in the ‘war to end all wars’, retired to her room after Colonel Max had gone, and stayed there all morning, emerging as steely-eyed as ever at lunchtime and complaining bitterly that the lamb was tough.
    War, when it came, made little difference to Rose’s life. It just became busier. Mrs Corbett