ON THE HOME FRONT TRILOGY BOOK 2

Her Heart's Choice

Chapter 1

Itchy Feet

Woodicombe House, Devon June 1940

‘I’m sorry, love, but no, I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.’

‘But Dad—’

‘I wasn’t convinced last time you suggested it, and I’m minded no differently now.’

Dragging her forefinger through the dust on her father’s workbench, Lou Channer sighed with frustration. It was always the same. Every time she mentioned getting a job, Dad came up with a dozen or more reasons why she shouldn’t. To make matters worse, his objections weren’t even genuine; he was just being old-fashioned.

Well, this time, she wasn’t going to be deterred. This time she was going to remain calm, stick to the approach she had spent hours rehearsing in her head and remind herself not to start whining about things being unfair. Whining was guaranteed to make him cross.

With that thought uppermost, she wandered across to his sawing horse, brushed the wood shavings from the top and perched on the end.

‘But why not?’ she asked. ‘What was the point you paying for me to do that secretarial course if you were never going to let me go out and get a job?’

Setting down his chisel and wiping his hands down the front of his overalls, Luke Channer gave a weary shake of his head. ‘Things are different now, love. There’s a war on—’

‘Even more reason for me to do something to help out then, wouldn’t you say?’

‘—and with the way things are headed, almost anywhere could be a target. But at least here, with us being so far from anywhere important, we’ll be safer than most.’

‘But last time there was a war on,’ Lou said, already struggling to keep her tone respectful, ‘Mum left Woodicombe to go and work for Aunt Naomi, right in the middle of London. And the two of you were already married. And things back then were far harder and more frowned-upon than they are nowadays – or so you’re forever telling us – but you never told her she couldn’t do it.’

‘I didn’t, no, but only because last time around, the idea that the Germans could come over and drop bombs on London was unthinkable. Had I known—’

‘You would have forbidden her?’

‘’Course I would have.’

‘Like you’re forbidding me?’

In response to her challenge, Luke sighed. ‘Look, love, you know I can’t forbid you to do anything any more – not since you turned twenty-one. But that doesn’t mean I can’t say I’d prefer you stayed at home, where I can see to it that you don’t come to harm. Besides, what’s the rush? Isn’t there enough to keep you busy here, helping Mum and Nanny Edith? And what happened to that idea you had to help out Mrs Foster and Miss Nurse with the evacuees? I thought you liked littl’uns.’

‘Actually,’ Lou said, picturing the dozen grubby and lice-ridden children who’d been evacuated from St Ursula’s in Paddington, to the vicarage at Woodicombe Cross, ‘I’ve since discovered that I don’t like them. I certainly don’t like those at Mrs Foster’s. They snatch everything… and they’re greedy and foul-mouthed. And they refuse to do as they’re told.’

When her father grinned, and his eyes creased up at the corners, she couldn’t help smiling back.

‘Good practice for when you have children of your own, I should have thought.’

‘Happen I don’t want children of my own.’ Now she was just being silly. Act like a child and she would never win him over.

‘Anyway,’ he ignored her remark to continue, ‘you’ve got a job, keeping the books for Browns. It’s why I made you that desk and got you that typewriter you kept on about – so you could type up their invoices, do their accounts and what-not.’

‘I know,’ Lou said, her exasperation perilously close to boiling over. ‘But the work is dull. And because Mr Brown brings the books here each week, it doesn’t feel like proper work at all. Worse still, since the whole lot only takes me a couple of hours, the amount I get paid is barely enough to keep me in kirby grips.’

‘Well, if it’s money you need—’

‘No, Dad, can’t you see?’ By her sides, her frustration was curling her hands into fists. ‘This isn’t about money. It’s about—’

‘Look, love,’ her father interjected, ‘what’s brought all this on again, eh? Is it that business with young Esme? Is that what’s got you so restless?’

She sighed. Poor Esme. There she was, just two days from marrying the rather lovely Richard Trevannion, son of a Member of Parliament and who had a job doing something hush-hush in the War Office, when wallop! Out of the blue, Aunt Naomi had broken the news that she and Captain Colborne were not Esme’s real parents: Esme, it turned out, was actually the daughter of an East End railway labourer and his illegitimately born wife, Bertha, the latter a half-sister to Naomi through her serially philandering father, Hugh Russell. Hardly surprising then, that after that bombshell, not only had her poor cousin felt unable to go ahead with the wedding, she had decided to run off and make a fresh start where no one knew anything about her. Of course, with the way things were working out here, she, Lou, now regretted not going with her. Now that it was too late, she could see that Esme had been right: together, they could have gone anywhere, done anything. At the moment of Esme suggesting it, though, all she had been able to see were the risks. And on that score Dad was right: the upset had left her feeling unsettled. But admitting that would only give him more ammunition to use against her. And he had enough of that already.

‘No, Dad,’ she said, looking up to find him watching her. ‘It’s not that. I’d be lying to say what happened to Esme didn’t make me stop and think. But that’s not why I want to do this. I want to feel useful. Hopeful, even. I want to get out and make new friends, see new things.’

And it was true. For some long time now she’d been wanting to strike out and make something of herself. And while she might have missed the opportunity to start afresh with Esme, it didn’t mean she couldn’t pull herself together and do something with her life. Thanks to this war, women were taking on all sorts of jobs. No longer was a woman’s only choice to stay at home, waiting to be married and start a family: women these days were earning their own money, contributing to the war effort by filling the jobs vacated by their serving menfolk. And, if the recruitment adverts plastered everywhere were to be believed, they were having fun doing it. And fun was something she craved almost more than a bit of independence and some money in her pocket.

‘Well,’ Luke Channer picked up again, ‘if your mind’s set on getting a job, then all I can do is prevail upon you to be sensible and pick something out of harm’s way.’

‘But Dad—’ Wait… he was giving in? He was going to cease raising objections and let her go out to work? Because, if he was, she should act before he changed his mind. ‘I will,’ she said quickly, avoiding looking at him directly. ‘You have my word. I won’t do nothing foolish.’

With a rueful shake of his head, her father pushed himself away from his workbench and came limping towards her. When he then reached to give her a hug, her nostrils filled with the smell of sawdust and Brylcreem – aromas that triggered memories of being hoisted high upon his shoulders while he lolloped about the garden pretending to be a wild horse. The only difference now was that those curly locks to which she had once clung for dear life, screaming with a mixture of terror and delight, were turning from the russet and bronze of youth to the silver and ash of middle age.

‘Something tells me you and your mother have already talked about this anyway,’ he said, his hand on her shoulder, his expression one of resignation.

‘Actually,’ she replied, still astonished by the fact that he had relented, ‘I came to talk to you first.’

‘So, for once, the two of you didn’t gang up on me?’

She grinned. ‘Me and Mum? Gang up on you, Dad? Never.’

‘Serious, though, Lou. Please have a care not to go upsetting your mother. That business up in London with young Esme has really knocked her for six, especially coming on the back of your brother Vic joining up… and now young Arthur saying he’s minded to do the same.’

‘’Course,’ she said, leaning across to kiss his cheek and then turn promptly for the door. ‘I always try not to upset anyone. I know better than to burn my bridges.’

‘I should hope you do,’ he called after her, ‘because the timber and the nails to repair them is hard come by these days. And there’s only so much magic I can work to mend the things you children keep breaking…’

Stepping outside into the warm June sunshine, Lou couldn’t stop grinning. Dear Dad. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected him to be so quick to concede. But, now that he had, she mustn’t waste time: she must go straight in and ask Mum for help. Best to strike while—

‘Back safe from London, then.’

With a start, she looked up. Scrunching across the gravel towards her was Freddie Paddon. Bother. She did hope he hadn’t come to ask her to go out with him, because all of a sudden she had a lot on her plate: thoughts to get straight in her head; ideas to come up with; Mum to ask for help in actually finding a job.

‘Yes,’ she nevertheless answered him brightly. ‘We got back Sunday teatime.’

Waiting until she drew level, he turned about and fell into step beside her. ‘I knocked at the kitchen porch first. Your ma said you were out here.’

She smiled back at him. With his wispy fair hair, pale blue-grey eyes, and the sunlight picking out the line of freckles across the bridge of his nose, he didn’t look a day older than when they used to sit next to each other at school.

‘I was in the workshop talking to Dad.’ She saw no reason to explain why – not until she was more certain of how the business of finding a job would work out.

‘Bet you’re glad to be out of London.’

Again, she smiled. ‘You know what they say – no place like home.’

Just lately, though, it couldn’t feel less true. After the vibrancy of Clarence Square, Woodicombe felt drab and lifeless and so horribly old-fashioned. According to Mum, in the days before the last war, the Russells used to come and stay here for the whole of the summer, Grandmamma Pamela filling the house with guests, and hosting magnificent parties with music and dancing and entertainments and feasts. Looking about at the neglected state of the place these days, it was hard to imagine.

‘Good weddin’?’ Freddie went on to enquire.

Unable to face raking over the details yet again, she nodded. ‘Fine, thank you.’

‘Good.’

‘So, what brings you up here this bright morning?’ Something about his manner told her he’d come to do more than just pass the time of day.

‘I’ve got something to tell you. Something real important.’

Poor Freddie. He was a nice enough lad – clean, polite, not one to take liberties. Not so long ago she might even have settled for marrying him – better the devil you knew and all that – but, just lately, the prospect had lost any glimmer of appeal. Mrs Frederick Paddon: the name alone conjured aprons and headscarves, a washing line pegged with nappies, a pram clogging up the hallway, and the real Mrs Paddon constantly popping in with unsolicited advice about everything from whooping cough and nappy rash to sore nipples. Lou Paddon. Hardly a name to cause someone to mistake her for a film star, no matter the care she took with her appearance. Bad enough that she had her mother’s dull brown hair and ordinary features but add to that the name Mrs Freddie Paddon and no one would be in the least surprised to learn she was the wife of a man who worked as a joiner in his father’s cabinet-making business. Paddon & Son as Freddie always took great pains to stress, as though the prospect of him one day taking over from his father would make her swoon. No, while she’d hate to be accused of snobbery, she really was hoping for something more.

Feeling the sun starting to burn her arms, and anxious to get back inside to talk to her mother, she glanced to his face. ‘Important, you say?’

Waiting for him to reply, she folded her arms. Then, realising how the resulting stance made her look like the housewife she was desperate not to become, she lowered them to her sides.

‘I’ve joined up.’

He’d joined up? He was going away? In a bid to conceal a mixture of surprise and relief, she smiled. ‘Well done!’

‘Royal Navy, ’course.’

‘’Course,’ she said, nodding encouragingly.

‘Well… I were a Sea Scout, weren’t I?’

With a vague recollection of him turning up one summer in a uniform of navy-blue jersey and matching shorts, she continued to nod. ‘But didn’t you tell me you were in a reserved occupation – that being a carpenter and joiner meant you wouldn’t have to serve?’

‘It’s true. I don’t have to. But I want to. I want to do my bit, like Pa did in the last war.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course you do.’ Doing the right thing was Freddie through and through. ‘So, when do you go and… start… or whatever?’

Pushing a hand inside his jacket, he pulled out an envelope, from within which he extracted a piece of paper and held it up for her to see. Across the top were printed the words National Service Acts. Enlistment Notice. Handwritten in the box underneath were his name and address.

Turning it back, he read aloud.

‘Dear Sir,

In accordance with the National Service Acts, you are called upon for service in the Royal Navy and are required to present yourself on Monday 10th June between 9am and twelve noon at—’

Monday the tenth of June? He would be going as soon as Monday? ‘Golly,’ she said. ‘That’s awful quick.’

Refolding the document carefully along its crease, Freddie slid it back into the envelope and then pushed the whole thing back into his pocket. ‘It is. But I’m ready. Well, almost.’

Behind her ribs, a gentle ache set in. Freddie was going in the navy, and she was surprised by how much she suddenly minded. ‘So…’

‘Any road,’ he said, his expression straightening as he took a step towards her. ‘Since I am going, and since there ain’t much time afore I do, I thought to come up and see you to… well, to ask if you’d…’ Swallowing down a gulp, Lou fought to conceal a sudden panic at Freddie’s words. ‘…wait for me…’

Oh, dear. Just as she’d feared.

‘Um…’

‘I know we’ve not been courting proper… the blame for which rests entirely with me for never quite managing to pluck up the courage to ask you… but we have walked out a time or two. And if it weren’t for me joining up, then some day now I’d be setting that situation to rights. In fact, I suppose that’s what I’m doing now, asking you to stay true to me until I can come back and court you in the manner you deserve.’

When, flushed of face, he tailed off and stood staring back at her, all she could think was that her mouth suddenly felt as dry as sandpaper. What on earth did she say? Here she was, viewing his imminent departure as an opportunity to distance herself from him and yet what he wanted was precisely the opposite: he wanted her to wait for him.

Feeling her face burning, she stared down at her feet. ‘Gosh,’ she said, still floundering for a response. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

‘See, once I’m away at sea,’ he went on, ‘doing my duty and whatnot, I shan’t want to be a-worrying about things back home. So, although I’m not a forward sort – well, you seen that well enough – and I shouldn’t want to push you, I should prefer to go off knowing we’ve come to an understanding… so that I can be out there, doing my bit, with something to look forward to when I get back.’

Clearly, Lou reflected, the poor lad had been stewing over this for some time; his declaration almost certainly the longest speech he’d ever made. So, what did she do? Did she suggest that they wait and see how they both felt when he came back? Did she say that, given the uncertainty of war, might it not be better that he didn’t feel bound to her – the chance of girls in foreign ports and all that? Did she announce that she had plans of her own and couldn’t possibly know where she would even be when he came back? Or did she just say that she’d never really thought of him as a sweetheart, thus bringing to an end the chance of his misunderstanding persisting? Surely, all things considered, that would be the fairest.

‘Freddie—’

‘Heck, Lou. I’ve gone about this all wrong, haven’t I? I’ve put you on the spot, thought only about what Iwant.’

Meeting his look, she gave a light shake of her head. ‘No, Freddie, it’s not that. I can quite see why you would ask. Joining up is a big step. A brave step.’ Careful not to overdo it.

‘I don’t feel brave. Truth be told, Lou, I’m more than a bit scared, you know, of all that might happen. But that’s no reason not to go an’ do my bit, is it? But what would help is knowing that you’re… well, that you’ll be here when I get back…’

Oh dear. What on earth did she say?

‘If you’d like me to write to you while you’re away… keep our friendship going along…’

Instantly, his expression relaxed. ‘Would you do that? Would you write to me? Oh, Lou, you’re the best. You won’t believe how long I’ve sweated over asking you. Wish I’d thought to bring my Brownie now, then I could have took your picture and had it to carry with me. Happen you could get Mr Channer to take one. Then you could send it to me. There’s an address for writing to ships at sea, you know.’

Rueing that she had failed to make herself clear, Lou did her best to smile. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Oh, thanks ever so, Lou. You wouldn’t believe the relief I feel to know this is settled. Thank you. Thank you!’

When he then lunged towards her and wrapped her in a bear hug of an embrace, her smile finally slipped. ‘No,’ she said softly, it being far too late now to clarify what she had actually meant by keep their friendship going. ‘I daresay I can’t.’

***

copyright Rosie Meddon 2021