Read Online Polly's War by Freda Lightfoot - Free Book Online Page B

permitted. Belinda recalled diving into the toilets on Victoria Station, attracted by the faint blue light over the door when a doodlebug had been about to drop.
    ‘Trouble was, it was the gents. Fortunately it wasn’t in use at the time,’ and they both fell about laughing. People turned and smiled, entranced by the lovely girl who sounded so happy with her young man.
    Then they moved on to dreams and ambitions, what they might do now that hostilities were over. She told him of the difficulties she was encountering at home, how her father was attempting to organise her life, her mother wanting to turn her into something she wasn’t. ‘And my brother Ron is no help at all. If Pops says jump, he jumps.’
    ‘Nobody makes me jump if I don’t want to,’ Benny bragged. Eager to impress he told her how he meant to have his own business. ‘I’d start out modest to begin with, just to test the market,’ he explained, as if finance were not a serious consideration. He became so carried away by the intentness of her cornflower blue gaze that when she enquired what he might sell in his shop and from where he would find his supplies, he found himself claiming skills he didn’t possess. ‘I’ve always been good at making things. This utility stuff won’t last. Folk will want summat better, so if I can’t find the right stuff, I’ll make it meself.’  
    It was all pure fantasy, born of hopes and dreams and the need to impress a beautiful woman. Belinda took it all in with flattering attention.
    ‘I’m me own man,’ he declared, rather grandly and somewhat inaccurately.
    In view of how well they got on, it seemed natural for Benny to ask to see her again. He’d always been a bit shy around girls, the way they giggled behind their hands, and were only keen on spending his hard earned brass. But this one seemed different, this one wasn’t daft and silly like the rest. She wasn’t some tart on the make. She showed style, had class and probably had smart young officers queuing up to take her out. What if he had embroidered his ambitions a bit, and let his dreams run wild? Wasn’t that the only way to get noticed by a smart lass like Belinda Clarke? He certainly wasn’t going to admit he’d only been offered a job of cleaning mucky old carpets. When she agreed to see him again, he couldn’t believe his luck.
    ‘When? Tomorrow?’
    Her eyes were dancing up at him and Benny felt the blood race through his veins. Yet again he was filled with worry. Was she laughing at him, or did those wonderful peepers naturally behave in that lively fashion, out of sheer happiness. Benny did hope so. He felt dazed, dazzled by the perfect loveliness of her face in exciting and startling contrast to the mischievous rebel he glimpsed beneath.
    He walked her to Piccadilly bus station, watched her climb aboard the red and white corporation bus, still bemused by his good fortune. Only as it pulled away did he smack the palm of his hand to his forehead and start to run after it, shouting to her as she clung to the rail on the platform that he didn’t know her address, or even her last name. And they’d arranged no time for their next meeting. ‘Meet me in Heaton Park by the band stand,’ he shouted above the roar of the engine. It was the only decent place he could think of, on the spur of the moment.
    She was still laughing as the bus swung round the corner, and when he finally stopped to draw breath, Benny became acutely aware he was standing like a great cart horse in the middle of Portland Street, running the grave risk of being ploughed down by a passing tram who’s driver clanged its bell furiously at him.
    And he hadn’t the first idea whether she’d heard him or not.
    He turned smartly on his heel and started to walk home. So captivated was he by her, so bemused by his own good fortune at meeting this lovely girl, and so concerned over whether she’d turn up for their date that he quite forgot parking an old woman on an old