Page 128 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
‘Do you think there’s a real chance ENSA will get sent there?’ Adela asked.
‘Not if we’re all as squeamish as Helen,’ Josey said in derision.
‘Would you sign up for it if you could?’ Tommy asked her.
Adela didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes. What about you?’
Tommy looked unsure.
Prue said, ‘I’ll go if Adela does. Come on, Tommy, we’re The Simla Songsters. We have to stick together.’
Tommy gave a wry smile. ‘I’d much rather stay in Blighty and see out the war here. But if you insist on making me sail dangerous seas to perform in a country on the point of being invaded, then I suppose I must.’
‘You’re such a drama queen, Villiers,’ snorted Josey. ‘I might just have to come too.’
By November Adela, Prue, Tommy and Josey had signed up for a nine-month contract to the Middle East and India. Blonde Helen resolutely refused to go, so they replaced her with an older dancer called Mavis, who claimed she’d once been a Bluebell Girl in Paris.
‘The Bluebell Inn at Pontefract more likely,’ Tommy muttered to Adela.
‘Her dancing is okay and she’s got a blonde wig,’ Adela replied, ‘so let’s take her.’
The only other one from their review who was prepared to go all the way to India was the accordionist, a middle-aged Scot simply known as Mack. Tommy complained at the paucity of talent going with them.
‘An impressionist who can’t do anyone famous, a juggler who drops everything and an alcoholic magician. Oh, and not one butthreeukulele players. I can’t stand the ukulele.’
‘Well, the boys will love them,’ said Josey.
‘We’ll be laughed off stage.’
‘Laughter is better than booing.’ Adela smiled. ‘And you will look after them all like a mother hen, just like you do us.’
With passports and nine inoculations in order, costumes made and scripts and routines practised, Adela and Josey managed to get away to Tyneside for a final week of leave before embarkation. Taking a night train, Josey found no difficulty in falling asleep on a prickly seat, but Adela’s nervous excitement kept her awake. She hadn’t been back to Newcastle for over a year. Since then George had come back from flight training long enough to marry Joan, which had lifted Olive’s spirits, according to a letter from Jane, who was working in Yorkshire, helping operate searchlights and an anti-aircraft gun. Her letter sounded happy, and she got home every few weeks, but had missed her brother’s snap wedding in July.
A small do– registry office and tea at Number 10. Lexy made a cake. Joan’s moved in with Mam and Father.
That had really surprised Adela. She wondered how Joan would cope with being at Olive’s beck and call. But perhaps Joan’s placid nature would be good for Olive, and Adela was glad Jack had someone who could share the burden of keeping Olive’s melancholia at bay.
Tilly was as busy as ever with her WVS duties and still had one of the Polish refugees lodging with her. Libby had left school at seventeen and for a while had returned to Newcastle to volunteer at the services canteen again. The last letter from Tilly had said that Libby, now eighteen, had enlisted and been drafted into the Land Army. She was working on a farm near Morpeth in Northumberland, and Tilly complained she hardly saw her now. Lexy never wrote; she just waited for Adela to turn up and resume their friendship. The thought of seeing her soon brought a wide smile to Adela’s lips.
Rattling over the High Level Bridge as the dawn broke over a smoke-hazed Newcastle, Adela leant out and breathed in the acrid smell of coal fires and felt a pang of affection for her adopted home. The women went straight to Herbert’s Café for breakfast and received an ecstatic welcome from Lexy.
‘Why didn’t you say you were coming, lass? I’d have got something special baked.’
‘Didn’t know till the last minute. We’ve brought you jam, coffee and American chocolate bars,’ Adela said and grinned. ‘Been saving them from our trip to a US airbase.’
Adela was astonished to find Maggie working in the café kitchen and living with Lexy.
‘Old Ina died in October,’ Maggie explained. ‘She didn’t suffer, but she’d had enough. Hated all them sirens and that. Thought I was her daughter at the end.’
‘Dear Ina,’ Adela said, her eyes prickling with emotion to think of her weeks of refuge in the old lady’s house nearly five years ago. Ina had given her sanctuary when her own aunt had not. It all seemed a lifetime ago.
Over a meal of scrambled powdered egg, thin rashers of bacon and fried bread, Adela caught up on all the news. The most startling was that George’s new bride, Joan, had given birth to a baby the previous month.
‘A baby?’ Adela exclaimed. ‘But—’
‘Aye,’ said Lexy, ‘three months after the weddin’. We can all do the sums. It’s a lass. Joan’s called her Bonnie after that bairn inGone with the Wind.’
Adela felt her insides clench. She tried to hide how flustered the sudden news made her. ‘Well, she always did like going to the pictures,’ Adela joked.
