A Distant Dream Read online

  A DISTANT DREAM

  Pam Evans

  Copyright © 2013 Pamela Evans

  The right of Pamela Evans to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP in 2013

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 0 7553 9431 9

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also By

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  About the Author

  Pamela Evans was born and brought up in West London. After living in Wales for many years, she has recently moved back to England and is now settled in Surrey close to her two sons and five beautiful grandchildren.

  By Pamela Evans and available from Headline

  A Barrow in the Broadway

  Lamplight on the Thames

  Maggie of Moss Street

  Star Quality

  Diamonds in Danby Walk

  A Fashionable Address

  Tea-Blender’s Daughter

  The Willow Girls

  Part of the Family

  Town Belles

  Yesterday’s Friends

  Near and Dear

  A Song in Your Heart

  The Carousel Keeps Turning

  A Smile for All Seasons

  Where We Belong

  Close to Home

  Always There

  The Pride of Park Street

  Second Chance of Sunshine

  The Sparrows of Sycamore Road

  In the Dark Street Shining

  When the Boys Come Home

  Under an Amber Sky

  The Tideway Girls

  Harvest Nights

  The Other Side of Happiness

  Whispers in the Town

  A Distant Dream

  About the Book

  It’s 1936 in West London, and fifteen-year-old May Stubbs and her family have endured the worst of The Depression. Looking forward to a more prosperous future, they take on a derelict cricket pavilion, convert it into a café and general store, and find it quickly becomes the hub of the community.

  Then, May contracts tuberculosis and the way ahead looks less certain. Leaving her best friend, Betty Lane, and lifelong soul mate, George Bailey, behind, she is sent away to fight off the illness. But on her return to London, she finds things have changed. And when war is declared, it is clear that serious complications and heartache lie in store for them all.

  To my dear friend Alma Cassell for her warm-hearted

  interest in and enthusiasm for my career

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Clare Foss, my lovely editor, who has returned to me after a long gap, and all the team at Headline, including the designers who come up with such stunning jackets year after year. Thanks also to my agent Barbara Levy.

  Chapter One

  Errand boy George Bailey swung off his delivery bike, propped it up in the kerb and bounded in to the Green Street Pavilion, a white-painted shack adjacent to a children’s playground in the back streets of Ealing in west London.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Stubbs,’ he greeted the woman behind the counter, a jolly blonde of middle years who was wearing a floral pinafore over a summer frock. ‘Lovely day.’

  She nodded towards the sunshine outside. ‘It certainly is. What can I do for you, George?’

  ‘The usual, please.’

  ‘A cup of tea and a currant bun coming up,’ said Flo Stubbs, who had blue eyes and a beaming smile that was genuine now after years of pretence when times were hard. ‘As long as you’re not behind with your delivery rounds. I don’t want your boss coming round here and giving me an earful for encouraging you to skive.’

  ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my stopping for a breather so long as I keep on top of things,’ he suggested. ‘I’m a fast worker. I don’t hang about.’

  ‘What the eye doesn’t see, eh?’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, winking at her.

  She lifted a large cream-coloured enamel teapot with green edging, poured the tea into the cup through a strainer and added a generous helping of milk from a jug, then took a sticky bun from under the glass cover and put it on a plate.

  ‘Ta very much,’ said George, helping himself to sugar from a bowl on the counter and handing her a ha’penny.

  ‘You put your money away, boy,’ she urged him. ‘Have this one on us.’

  George hesitated. He preferred to pay his way, especially with decent people like the Stubbses, who hadn’t had things easy in the past. ‘It’s generous of you to offer,’ he began, hoping not to cause offence by seeming ungrateful, ‘but you don’t want to be giving stuff away, not here at the shop anyway.’

  ‘And we don’t as a rule, but I’m in a good mood today and I think we can afford to treat our daughter’s pal every now and again,’ responded Flo, thinking what a handsome lad George was growing up to be, with his shandy-coloured eyes, curly chestnut hair and cap worn at a jaunty angle. He was the image of his father, God rest him. The boy’s cheery demeanour gave no hint of the trauma he’d been through or how tough things had been for him at home these past couple of years. The Stubbs family knew him well because their daughter May had been friendly with him since they’d started school together aged five. Now both fifteen, they were still close friends and George was a regular visitor at the house. Sweethearts? Not as far as Flo knew, but they were far too young for that sort of thing anyway. They both needed to grow up and spread their wings a bit first. ‘It won’t happen often, so make the most of it and enjoy.’

  He thanked her warmly and sat down at a table in the sunshine on the roomy veranda. He was soon joined by other errand boys, to whom this little café and general store was a magnet as a stopping place on their rounds. Having served the lads with tea, Tizer, cheese rolls and seed cake, Flo worked her way through the queue of women wanting sundry provisions they’d run out of or forgotten to get at the Co-op. That was the service they provided here at the Pavilion; people could get things cheaper in the shopping parade, but they came here for convenience and a chat with the locals.

  The café was a big attraction, being in a heavily populated residential area and the only one of its kind close at hand. Their menu was limited to light refreshments – sandwiches, cakes and a variety of hot and cold drinks – but they did very well, especially with their seasonal favourites: home-made ice cream in summer and toffee apples in the autumn when the fruit was ple
ntiful.

  A trip to the playground next door with the children was less of a chore for adults now that there was somewhere they could enjoy a snack while the children played. Crowds of fearless infants clambered on to the witch’s hat roundabout and the see-saw, some hurtling head first down the slide and hanging on for dear life to the ends of the swinging horse as it creaked from side to side. On fine weekends the Pavilion was packed out.

  Glancing around in a quiet moment at the potted geraniums and pansies on the veranda, a splash of bright colour embellishing the white-painted wooden structure, Flo thanked God for this place, which had come to them unexpectedly four years ago. Not only had it rescued the Stubbs family from abject poverty, it had also given Flo a new sense of purpose and had later helped her to cope with the grief that haunted her even now, though it was three years since they’d lost their beloved ten-year-old son Geoffrey to diphtheria.

  It had been a gamble taking on a derelict cricket pavilion that had been empty since the cricket club moved away several years before, especially as neither Flo nor her husband had any experience of shopkeeping or catering. But when one of the gentlemen Flo cleaned for surprised her with a modest sum in his will in recognition of her hard work and kindness, she’d seen an opportunity to get Dick off the dole and herself out of charring, and to build some sort of security for their family.

  She had long thought that a commercial venture was what this back-street area next to the recreation ground needed. Fortunately there was plenty of space inside the pavilion, and room on the veranda to add a few tables, while water and electricity had been installed by the previous owners.

  Being in such a state of disrepair and a long time on the market, the shack had been going at a rock-bottom price and there had been just enough money left over from the purchase to do it up and stock it. After a slow start, the place had soon gathered momentum, and Flo believed that it was now a real asset to the community. It didn’t earn them a fortune, but it did give them a decent living, and now that May had left school and was working as well, the deprived days were behind them; for good, she hoped.

  In theory, Flo and Dick ran the business together, but it was actually Flo who was in charge. Dick was an asset serving behind the counter, being such a popular and gregarious soul, but he had no initiative for shopkeeping and was happy to leave the management to her. His skills lay elsewhere. A qualified metalworker, he’d lost his job during the worst of the depression and had been on the dole for several years before their change in fortune.

  Now, in the summer of 1936, things were still very hard for people in parts of the north of England and Wales, but here in the south-east there had been an improvement for some areas these last few years, mostly due to the new industries and an increase in housebuilding, especially in the London suburbs. Factories producing such things as aircraft and electrical goods had opened in nearby areas and were flourishing and keeping unemployment down. So it had proved to be a good time to start a business.

  Dick appeared from the stockroom wearing a brown overall and carrying a carton of tinned peas, which he began stacking on to the shelves. He was a tall, jovial man with greying dark hair, his liking for a sociable pint or two manifest in a sizeable beer belly.

  ‘Can you look after things here, Dick, while I pop home and do a bit indoors?’ asked Flo. ‘I need to go to the butcher’s as well to get something for dinner.’

  ‘Righto, love,’ he agreed affably.

  She left the Pavilion and walked briskly past the playground and through the serried ranks of red-brick terraced houses with their privet hedges and tiny low-walled front gardens. She was home within minutes. It was very convenient living so close to the job, she thought, as she turned the key in the lock, noticing that the red doorstep needed some polish and deciding that she would deal with that before she tackled the rest of the housework.

  Flo was an energetic woman and an avid housekeeper, occupation was her salvation, and with a home and a business to look after, she didn’t have time to mope. That wouldn’t be fair to her husband or her beautiful daughter May, whose endless exuberance filled the house with light. May and her father had both suffered the loss of Geoffrey too, and Flo made sure she didn’t forget that by being self-indulgent in her attitude towards her own grief.

  Oh well, let’s get cracking, she said to herself as she stepped into the narrow hall, itching to take the broom and floor polish to the lino.

  Dick Stubbs cleared some empty tables and stopped for a chat with two elderly men who came to the café every morning for a newspaper and a cup of tea.

  ‘How’s your luck, me old mate?’ said one of the men, who was wearing a trilby hat and a dark suit despite the warm weather.

  ‘Not so bad,’ Dick replied.

  ‘It’s a bit better than that, I reckon,’ joshed the man. ‘This place must be a little gold mine.’

  ‘Hardly that,’ said Dick, ‘but it keeps the wolf from the door so I’m not complaining.’

  ‘It was a good idea of yours to open up a café here,’ remarked the man. ‘It’s somewhere for us to go out of the way while the missus is cleaning.’

  ‘Not half,’ agreed his friend.

  ‘It was my wife’s idea actually,’ Dick explained.

  ‘Good for her,’ the man enthused. ‘We don’t know what we’d do without it now.’

  ‘Glad you’re pleased.’

  ‘Will we see you in the local tonight?’ asked the man in the trilby.

  Dick nodded, smiling. ‘I expect I shall come in for a quick one,’ he said, moving away as he saw someone approach the counter. ‘I’ll see you boys later.’

  When he’d finished serving, he fell into reflective mood. All of this, the shop, the café, the satisfied clientele and the fact that he and his family were no longer on the breadline was almost entirely down to Flo. She made everything run like clockwork and it was her kindly nature that had enabled it to happen in the first place. She’d been astonished to receive a legacy from the old man she cleaned for, but knowing her as he did, Dick guessed she’d put more than just housework into the job. As well as extra favours like shopping and changing his library books she would have taken the trouble to listen if he wanted to chat, no matter how busy she was. Flo had the ability to hide her true feelings from the outside world. She could seem to be cheerful when her life was actually falling apart. Only he knew how much she had suffered when they lost young Geoffrey. Even May had been protected to some degree from her mother’s grief because Flo had considered it her duty to be strong for their daughter. Dick was well aware that he was married to a very special woman.

  Their standard of living was better than it had been for years and working here was a pleasant enough way of life. But although he would never say as much to Flo after all her efforts, there was something missing for him. His trade! He was good with his hands and missed the satisfaction his work had given him as well as the atmosphere of the workshop and the male company. It had been hard graft compared to this but it was what he’d been trained for and he’d been proud to call himself a tradesman. Most of the time working here didn’t feel like work at all, except perhaps when it was his turn to get up at the crack of dawn to sort the newspapers for the rounds.

  Still, he was a very lucky man in all other respects and he had no intention of complaining.

  ‘We have something new in that you might like to consider, madam,’ said May Stubbs to a customer at Bright Brothers Department Store where she worked as a junior in the lingerie department. A blond girl with the look of her mother about her, she opened one of the wooden-framed glass-fronted drawers behind the polished mahogany counter, took out a pair of pink satin French knickers with lace edging and spread them out on the counter. ‘We have them in white and blue as well. Beautiful, aren’t they?’

  ‘Indeed they are,’ agreed the customer, who was middle aged, attractive and well dressed though in matronly style like many women of her age. ‘But I’m not quite sure if they are right for
me.’

  ‘For a special occasion perhaps?’ suggested May.

  A sharp poke in the back startled her and she turned round quickly to see her superior, Miss Matt, glaring at her.

  ‘The customer has plain white knickers of the larger, comfortable variety,’ whispered the older woman. She’d been serving someone with a winceyette nightdress but had left that to flex her senior status muscles over May. ‘She’s been shopping here for years and that’s what she has.’

  ‘But these are so pretty, and new in, so I thought perhaps . . .’ began May.

  ‘Plain white interlock cotton with elasticated legs,’ hissed Miss Matt. ‘You should know that’s what older ladies prefer.’

  May turned back to the customer. ‘I can see that you are doubtful about them, madam,’ she said tactfully. ‘Perhaps something a little plainer might be more to your taste.’

  ‘These are very nice, though,’ remarked the customer, fingering the lace lovingly.

  ‘My assistant is young,’ interrupted Miss Matt dismissively. ‘She’s still learning the job. You can trust us here at Bright Brothers to look after your best interests as always.’

  ‘The French ones are ever so pretty,’ began the customer, enthusiasm growing.

  ‘We have something much more appropriate,’ Miss Matt cut in speedily. ‘Get them, please, Miss Stubbs, and quick about it. You’ve kept the customer waiting for long enough already.’

  May did as she was bid and laid a pair of huge cotton interlock bloomers on the counter, putting the others to one side.

  ‘Mm,’ murmured the customer. ‘They do seem a little . . . er, heavy in comparison. May I see the others again? The white ones as well, please.’

  ‘Certainly, madam,’ said May, leaning down to the drawer, feeling the full blast of Miss Matt’s disapproval and crushing her own urge to giggle.

  ‘But the lady purchased several pairs of each type of knickers,’ said May defensively, having had a thorough trouncing from Miss Matt as soon as the customer had made her way out of the store, which was all dim lighting and dark polished wood. ‘That must be good for business, surely.’