Sample:
Even now fifty years later Jenny Chapman has never been able to talk about what happened to her as a young girl in Kent in the summer of 1940. Not even to her dependable, down-to-earth husband Ken, a builder and property developer she met when she moved north to Yorkshire. Jenny has put the past behind her, so she thinks, but one day a letter arrives from a firm of solicitors in Kent inviting her to come and discuss something that might be to her advantage . Her husband jokes she has been left some money by a former lover. Reluctantly Jenny returns to the scenes of her girlhood. There is indeed a legacy. Thirty thousand pounds! Her benefactor is a clergyman in Lincolnshire she has never heard of.
Opening chapter
She was fourteen when her world came to an end. Even after what seemed a lifetime she still wondered what became of David. She never went back to Kent. There would be nothing to find except disturbing, private memories. So half a lifetime later she shut the door on the dangerous wartime years and lived in the safe, comfortable world Ken Chapman had made for her in Yorkshire.
Ken was a small, hard-working builder when they met in middle life. He had more jobs than he could handle when he answered Jenny’s panicky telephone call, but he came round the same day. There was some urgent propping and weatherproofing to be done. He did this himself and afterwards kept looking in when it wasn't really necessary because Gordon, his number two, was coping perfectly well. The work took three weeks and Ken made excuses to see how it was going and then switched Gordon to another job and took over himself.
They got to know each other over cups of tea in her kitchen. She liked his directness. He wasn't handsome but he was strong and had a broad smile, good teeth and nice hair that would be even nicer if he had a woman to show him how to do it. He'd been married, so he said, but his wife had gone off years ago with a commercial traveller from Leeds. Silly woman. They were divorced, he said. No children.
For a big man he was surprisingly gentle. She felt she could trust him. She felt it all the more when the job was finished and he sent her a bill that was way below what he'd estimated The next day he came round to see if she was happy and took her to the local for a celebratory drink. Drinks at the pub turned into lunches, then dinners in town and regular visits to the races.
He was good company in those days, a man whose rugged looks and sheer energy turned women's heads. She couldn't understand what he saw in her. He said she made him laugh and he liked her London accent, her perky face, the way her nose turned up and her tumbling golden curls, but above all her toughness. He admired her independence. But she shouldn’t be on her own, he said. He made it clear he wanted her, not with words but in ways that aroused long-forgotten feelings. It would have been easy to encourage him further, but a vulnerable person like her, at her age, had to be cautious, so she neither led him on nor backed away.
In the long years before she met Ken there were other men who wanted to take her out. Most were non-starters as far as she was concerned. Her friend Millie in the linen department said she was being far too choosy. If she had Jenny's looks and confidence she'd not be spending her evenings sitting at home reading and listening to the wireless. Jenny's view was that, if a man liked the look of her enough to want to take her out, he wouldn't take no for an answer. He'd come back and ask again and again if necessary.
One fellow who asked her twice and was turned down brought her flowers the third time. She agreed to go out for a meal with him. He was well educated and nicely mannered, but too intense. She knew she was wasting her time after spending a whole Sunday with him on a coach trip to Grassington. He looked flattened when she rejected his next invitation but didn't press her any more. She felt mean after all his trouble, but she wanted a man who would make her feel good just by being with him, not a well-mannered escort. And when the time came for a goodnight kiss, she wanted to feel responsive, not obliged.
Through friends at work she met other men, but they were all in a hurry. A couple of slow waltzes and a few barley-wines and they were all over you. A night out at the Palais seemed to carry with it an acceptance of fierce embraces in dark places on the way home and permission to feel your tits. Some were more imaginative, trotting out lines remembered from Hollywood films. Why weren't boys taught the art of pleasing girls? Their mums could have told them, but such things were never spoken of in families. She couldn't imagine her mum ever having felt like she did with David on the river bank. Shakespeare could have put it into beautiful words. He probably had in the sonnets, but she didn't understand the flowery language like David did. She knew girls who must have felt as she did and remained true through long years of separation. Boys weren't like that. A boy could love you, as he would say, and then go off to war and forget you.
By careful housekeeping and cutting down on outings and fripperies, she managed to put aside a few pounds each week. Her responsible attitude was noticed at work and she was put in charge of the linen department on a wage that enabled her, with a reference from her boss, to get a mortgage from the department store’s own bank. She bought a terrace cottage just outside town and felt truly independent for the first time in her life. She was sure her mum was looking down from heaven and feeling proud of her.
But independence was an illusion. When one of the roof trusses in her cottage split and looked like it might give way, she realised the structure of her home wasn’t the only thing that needed support.
Every Christmas a card arrived from Elizabeth Priestland in Kent, with a note hoping she was well and happy. This year there was a letter as well, asking if she’d like to spend her holiday on the farm, as a guest of course. She could come any time during the summer. If she wanted something to do, she could help with the strawberries and cherries in June or the plums later on in September. They would love to see her again.
Suggesting she might help with the fruit harvest seemed like a gentle way of saying she’d be earning her keep. Mrs Priestland knew she didn’t like feeling obliged.
It was a tempting invitation. She never went away. It cost too much to stay anywhere, even in a cheap boarding-house, and she needed every penny for the cottage. But though she’d only have to pay her rail fare to Kent, going back was not a good idea. Mrs Priestland knew David’s mother. She could still be living in her cottage in Hollinghurst. What would happen if David visited his mum while Jenny was staying at the farm? They might meet in the village, in church, anywhere. That would be unbearable. Even going to church - which she would be expected to do while she stayed with the Priestlands - would be disturbing. And then there was the path along the river bank with the trout pool and the grassy bank. How could she resist going there again?
She found it hard to forgive Mrs Priestland for not telling her David had got through the war until too late - the moment she was leaving for the north and the train was moving. They had conspired to keep him from her, both during the war and afterwards. Where was he now? She pictured him married to the pretty girl he brought to the Christmas party at Welconbury. It would have been a posh affair in a smart London church, like the ones she read about in back numbers of The Tatler at the doctor’s surgery, with a reception at the Savoy and a honeymoon somewhere abroad .
Damn David! She’d put him out of her mind all these years, and now he was back again! He’d deceived her, hadn’t he? Pretending to love her. He never meant the pretty things he said. He just saw her as the kind of lower-class girl he could impress and have fun with before he went off to the war. He was brave enough to go to war but not brave enough to be honest with her. He would never have done what he did to her with a girl he wanted to marry, would he?
