Read Online The Way Ahead by Mary Jane Staples - Free Book Online Page A

giggle.
    ‘And another thing,’ said Paula, a young lady with a tongue, ‘Mummy says to remind you that Emma and Jonathan will be here in five minutes.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Sammy. ‘Emma and Jonathan, right,’ he said. ‘Teeth, Phoebe. Jump about.’
    ‘Daddy, I already done my teeth,’ said Phoebe.
    ‘Have you?’ said Sammy.
    ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear,’ said Paula, ‘I think you’re a bit wobbly from making a racket, Daddy. Never mind, you’ll be better later.’
    Only a little later, in fact, when the girls were in bed, Sammy was well enough to answer the door to Emma and Jonathan himself. It was the last full day of the young couple’s week at home, and Sammy had asked them to drop in.
    ‘Here we are, Uncle Sammy,’ said Emma, fresh as a bird at morning’s first light, despite spending the whole afternoon in and around the Denmark Hill area. She and Jonathan had been trying to decide on the kind of house in which they would like to begin their post-war life. It was a prolonged outing embracing ideas, visions, hopes and optimism.
    ‘Glad to see you,’ said Sammy, and gave his likeable niece a hug and a smacker before shaking Jonathan’s hand. ‘Jonathan, forgot to ask you about your tin knee when me and Susie saw you at the beginning of your leave. How’s it doing?’
    ‘Rattling a bit,’ said Emma.
    ‘I call it operative,’ said Jonathan who, like all the younger relatives, thought Sammy an eternal live wire. ‘So, I’m grateful to it, fond of it, and hanging on to it.’
    ‘I’m fond of it too,’ said Emma. ‘We’re a proud trio, Mum and Rosie and me, we all fly the flag for our husbands’ brave legs.’ She spoke light-heartedly, then made a little face. ‘Considering everything else, Uncle Sammy, we’re lucky.’
    ‘We’re all lucky, Emma, all of us who are still alive,’ said Sammy, remembering the months of the sustained blitz on London, and the night when he, Susie and Paula, in their air raid shelter, had heard the shattering roar of the exploding bomb that had razed their house. ‘And I’ll say this much, Jonathan looks as if he could climb trees all day, and you look as if you’d never be far behind.’
    ‘Yes, him Tarzan, me Jane,’ said Emma. ‘Oh, hello, Aunt Susie, love your dress.’
    Susie, coming through the hall, was wearing a jersey wool dress of royal blue, a blue that always did so much for her fair looks. She was thirty-nine and the thought of being forty in August didn’t exactly exhilarate her. Every year seemed to fly, even in wartime. She could hardly believe the country had been involved in an utterly vicious conflict with Hitler’s Germany for well over four years, and against Japan for more than two. Susie could sense the country being drained of its best men and its strength. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and yes, merchant seamen too. Time after time the news referred to the loss of merchant shipping and the drowning of the crews. The German U-boats were the wolves of the Atlantic and the North Sea, hunting in packs, although the Royal Navy and the American Navy, with the help of long-ranging Sunderland flying-boats, were gradually getting the upper hand. And no U-boats could touch those fast-running troopships and armament carriers, the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth , in their voyages to and from New York.
    Susie still put her faith in Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a bulldog turned lion. She was still sure he could outmatch Hitler, especially as his American allies were proving awesomely powerful. And their GIs were proving irresistibly fraternal. Shy girls shrieked and ran home to their mothers when they saw them coming. Most girls did no such thing. They liked the breezy, extrovert gum-chewing Americans.
    Susie greeted Emma and Jonathan affectionately, exchanging kisses with them.
    ‘Lovely to see you again,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk in the parlour, shall we? Sammy has something to say to you. We won’t keep you long as it’s your last