The War Widows Read Free Page A

ailments and fits of misery since he had gone. She blamed his early death on the Great War and his time in the trenches. He was one of the few of the Grimbleton Pals Brigade to make it home in one piece.
    ‘It weakened him, took the stuffing out of him. Not that he would ever say a word about it, mind,’ she sighed. No one talked about the Great War much. She was glad he hadn’t known both his sons went into another war so quickly after the last.
    He had his own theory how to keep world peace. ‘If only we could play life fair by the football rules,’ hewould say. ‘There’d be no more war. We’d just get on that pitch and give each other hell until full time. Sort it out clean and proper.’
    Not that he practised what he preached, for standing next to him at a match was a revelation. He would yell and rant and cuss and swear. ‘Get them off, the pair of sissies! Hang up yer boots, lad, yer shot was a twopenny bus ride from the goal!’
    If only the Zion minister could have heard his trusty steward letting rip at the goalie, Lily smiled.
    Theirs was a special bond built on his delight in having a girl in the house. ‘This one’s the sharpest blade in the knife box.’ He would point to her with pride. ‘Not the fanciest to look at but she does it right first time, my Lily of Laguna. If you want owt doing, she’s your gal!’
    He would be proud that, like the famous Windmill Theatre Revues, they never closed for the entire duration of the war. Together with Esme, Lily had kept the stall going against the odds when all the rules and restrictions came into force. Many herbal stores were forced to close but they decided to open half the stall as a temperance bar, serving juices, hot cordials and a good line of medicinal sweets and herbal homemade cough candy, dispensing what little stock they could.
    It was a tough time, fire-watching in the evening, keeping the Brownie pack alive with badge work and salvage drives, but nothing to what her brothers had to go through in Burma and on the Continent.
    She was looking at her wristwatch, surprised that itwas mid-morning already, when a welcome figure tapped her shoulder.
    ‘Time for our cuppa?’ Walter towered over her in his brown dust coat, pointing to the café opposite. She could sit down and keep her eye on the stall at the same time.
    ‘You bet,’ she smiled, pecking him on the cheek. ‘Where were you yesterday at the Armistice parade? I missed you at the cenotaph.’
    ‘I was there with Mam but you know it gets her all upset. We went home early.’ You couldn’t fault a man who was kind to his mother, but Lily had been hoping to invite him back for tea.
    ‘Hey, you missed a cracking match on Saturday, two nil to the Grasshoppers. They’re on a roll this season.’
    ‘Yes, I’ve been hearing reports all morning,’ she sighed. ‘I had to stand in for Levi again.’
    ‘I saw him in the directors’ box with all the toffs, lucky beggar.’
    ‘I just wish he’d give me a Saturday off, once in a blue moon. When did you and I last get to watch a match together?’
    ‘It was the best game this season.’
    ‘So everyone keeps saying, so shut up,’ she snapped.
    ‘The lads were on form, Wagstaff dribbling the ball down the outside right, passing to Walshie and he spins it straight in the net, brilliant!’
    ‘Walter Platt, don’t torment me.’ She tugged his sleeve but he was oblivious.
    ‘The second goal came just before half-time. I reckoned we finished them off there and then.’
    She missed the crowds gathering, the noise and cheering, a chance to let off steam. Redvers had taken them all as a treat and left them at home as a punishment. There were chips in newspaper on the way home, which no one was to tell Esme about, for it was too common for a Winstanley to eat in the street.
    ‘When we’re married we’ll bring all our kiddies to see the game,’ Lily sighed, imagining a five-a-side of gleaming faces.
    ‘Oh, no, love, it’s not a place to