Polly's War Read Free

to know each other all over again.  
    If she was honest Lucy was a bit nervous about this part of her fantasy. Would he still fancy her? Would she still fancy him? She wasn’t the giddy young girl she’d been when he went away. She’d become a responsible mother to her two children, though Polly would mind them sometimes so she could enjoy a bit of fun, like going to a dance or the Gaumont with her pals, shouting ‘Put a Penny in’ at the projectionist whenever the film broke down which was a frequent occurrence.
    She’d held down several different jobs during the long war, had money in her purse, run her own life exactly as she pleased. Lucy knew that she’d changed. Perhaps Tom had too. He’d once seemed so strong, so forceful, sweeping her off her feet and arranging for them to be married in a hurry at the local registry office, for all Tom had known that Lucy had longed for a white wedding in the Catholic Church. They’d been hard up and far too young, had two children far too quickly, each following one of Tom’s leaves home. Only this time he would be home for good. Filled suddenly with a mixture of apprehension and longing, she didn’t at first hear the slam of the door behind her.
    ‘What the hangment are you up to, dilly-dallying in the gutter? I don’t pay you for day dreaming.’ Startled by the sound of the sharp voice so close to her ear, Lucy dropped the bucket, which rolled noisily away.
    Minnie Hopkins stood arms akimbo, brows beetled, small mouth sucked into empty gums. Her false teeth, kept largely for best, would be reposing in a glass on the bamboo table by her high brass bedstead. She’d slip them in later, when she deigned to put in an appearance at the street party, for all she’d stick chiefly to the jellies. In honour of the occasion she was wearing her best brown chenille frock with a marquisette clasp at the vee of the collar. Above this was tucked a lace front, that hid the scrawny neck as high as the chin. She looked like a miniature Victorian schoolmistress, holding a broom handle in lieu of a cane. Minnie Hopkins was famous for her battles with her yard brush. It was said that she’d chased away every likely suitor with it, which was why at well into her sixties, she was still unwed.
    You don’t pay me at all, your nephew does, you bad tempered old goat, Lucy longed to say as she gave chase to the bucket which seemed set on rolling all the way to the bottom of Pansy street. Moments later, marching down the narrow lobby into the back kitchen, she deposited brushes, bucket and cleaning materials under the sink wondering, not for the first time, how the old bat’s nephew could tolerate her as well as he did. He must be hard up, to manage to stop on with an aunt as mad as this one. Or else he had a patience born either of long practice or budding sainthood.
    ‘I’ve done now. How about that cuppa?’
    ‘I don’t pay thee for idling over pots of tea neither.’
    ‘I thought it was you what wanted one.’ Cut her own nose off to spite her face, Lucy thought. Aloud she said, ‘I’ve plenty other jobs waiting for me when I get done here, so if you don’t want anything more, I’m off.’
    ‘Meaning yer doing me a favour by finding time to come at all, is that it?’
    ‘It’s always good to be appreciated,’ Lucy drily remarked, smiling politely and not quite meeting the sour gaze in case the old woman should interpret the merry glint in her hazel eyes as insolence and sack her on the spot. This had been threatened so often, that there were moments when Lucy almost wished she’d carry out the threat.
    Coming twice a week to clean this big draughty house with its seven high- ceilinged bedrooms and heavy Victorian furniture was no joy, and with more criticism than thanks at the end of it. But then Lucy would think of Sarah Jane and Sean, the rent and gas and other bills that had to be paid, war or no war and, as now, she’d bite her lip, placate and calm the quick-tempered