A Winter Love Song Read online

  RITA BRADSHAW

  A Winter Love Song

  PAN BOOKS

  This book is in memory of my wonderful, sweet, comical, beautiful and utterly loving furry baby, Meg. Seven and a half years weren’t nearly long enough, precious little girl, and they’ve left me heartbroken, but they were perfection, and your devotion to me was so unique and so special it can never be replaced. You were so much more than a dog in your capacity for immense love and understanding, and that waggy little tail had a language all of its own. Muffin misses you, Dad misses you, and I physically ache all the time for you. You are loved beyond words, and you are more precious than silver and gold, as I told you every day of your life.

  Contents

  Preface

  PART ONE

  John, 1928

  PART TWO

  Friendship, 1933

  PART THREE

  Nelly, 1936

  PART FOUR

  Art, 1938

  PART FIVE

  Bombs, Backbone and Burma, 1943

  Epilogue 1950

  Dancing in the Moonlight

  Beyond the Veil of Tears

  The Colours of Love

  Snowflakes in the Wind

  Preface

  He wasn’t going to be able to fight his way out of this. He could read in their eyes that he was a goner, but he was damned if he’d make it easy for them. He didn’t want to die, but if the price of staying alive meant beating that young lad to a pulp it was too high.

  He watched them as they edged up the stairs, and strangely the crippling fear that had gripped him all night was gone. He’d brought this on himself, there was no one else to blame. He’d been such a fool.

  It was the thought of leaving his little lass that was crucifying as he waited for them to make their move. He hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye, to tell her he loved her and that she was his sun, moon and stars, and now it was too late. What would she think, what would she do . . . ?

  And then they were on him and he could hear Mrs Walton in the background screaming and wailing like a banshee.

  PART ONE

  John

  1928

  Chapter One

  ‘Now, Bonnie, I’m going to ask you something and I think you know what I’m going to say. Did you kick your grandma like she said?’

  The small black-haired girl standing in front of the big thickset man whose upper arms were the width of her waist eyed him without fear. ‘Aye, Da.’

  John Lindsay closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Why, hinny? Why did you do that?’

  ‘Because she’s cruel. She kicked one of Miss Nelly’s dogs, the new one she’s still training, just because it cocked its leg up the wagon steps. So I kicked her. It yelped, the poor thing, and it was limping when it ran off. Me grandma deserved it and I hate her.’

  It wasn’t the first time the child had expressed such sentiments. John crouched down in front of his daughter and if he had spoken what was in his heart he would have said he agreed with the child’s summing-up of the woman who was the bane of his life. Instead he gently said, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right, lass. You know that, don’t you? And she’s got a big bruise on her shin.’

  Bonnie stared at her father. She wanted to say that she was glad about the bruise but she knew that would upset her da. But she didn’t understand why he always stuck up for her grandma. Well, not always, she corrected herself. But a lot of the time. And yet her da didn’t like her grandma any more than she did. She knew this to be true even though her da had never said such a thing, the same way as she knew her grandma hated her da even when she was being civil to him.

  ‘I think you ought to go and say you’re sorry, hinny, don’t you?’

  As soon as the words had left his lips John knew he should have put it differently rather than inviting her opinion.

  Sure enough, Bonnie glared at him. ‘No, I don’t. She’s nasty, spiteful, and she only kicked the dog because she’d had a barney with Franco earlier. I heard them when I got there but they stopped when they saw me. She was saying he’d stayed out half the night and she wasn’t having him carrying on any more. What did she mean, carrying on?’

  John stood up. He had a good idea what Margarita had been in a lather about. Franco had a roving eye and some of the silly young lassies who came to the fair didn’t have the sense they were born with. ‘That’s not our business, Bonnie.’

  ‘Well, that’s why she kicked Miss Nelly’s dog anyway.’

  ‘Be that as it may, you can’t go round kicking folk because they might behave differently to how you think they should. You’re nearly ten years old, you’re not a babby who doesn’t know any better.’

  ‘I don’t kick everyone. I’ve only kicked me grandma.’ Violet-blue eyes that were dark with righteous indignation declared more eloquently than words that Bonnie felt hard done by.

  Realizing that he needed to take a different tack if some semblance of peace was going to be restored between the child and her grandmother, John scooped his daughter up into his arms. ‘Say sorry to her for me, lass, all right? Your grandma’s all upset and it’ll make things better. I know you don’t want to but do it for your old da, eh, hinny?’

  Bonnie’s body was as stiff as a board for another moment and then she relaxed, thin arms winding round his neck. Her voice soft against his bristled cheek, she whispered, ‘All right, Da, but she’s not upset, not like you mean. She’s just angry that she got a taste of her own medicine for once.’

  It was so on the ball that John had to bite his lip to stop from smiling. Cute as a cartload of monkeys, his bairn was, and with a way of cutting through all the flannel. ‘That’s a good lass.’ He held her close for a moment before bending down and setting her on her feet. ‘Go on, do it now. Better to get it over with.’

  Bonnie gave him a wan smile. They were standing in a field that held the big tent with the platform inside for the acrobats, jugglers and other acts, and this was surrounded by booths and stalls and smaller tents. A second field a short distance away was dotted with the wooden living wagons of the fairground community, smoke rising into the warm May air from a number of campfires and buzzing with the sounds of women talking, laughing and sometimes arguing; children playing, dogs barking, babies crying and horses whinnying. She began to make her way towards the wagons but had only gone a few steps when her father called after her, ‘And say it like you mean it, mind.’

  She stopped for a moment, her thin shoulders slumping, and then straightened and walked on, but not before a long and heartfelt sigh had caused her small chest to rise and fall.

  Margarita Fellario watched her granddaughter coming towards her. She had seen her son-in-law pick the child up and then the way Bonnie had hugged her father, and it had done nothing to dampen her fury.

  At fifty-four years of age Margarita looked much older, but then all the fair women did. It was a hard life. Besides looking after their children, doing all the washing by hand with water heated on open fires and emptied into big wooden barrels, cooking meals, gathering anything edible from the hedgerows and fields along with skinning and jointing any rabbits or game their menfolk trapped, and dragging supplies home from village shops, they were expected to make and sell baskets, wooden pegs and other items, mind the fairground stalls and turn their hand to anything and everything when the need arose.

  Not that the menfolk weren’t equally resilient in their efforts to make a living and feed their families, but always with the exception of bonding themselves to another in a job. Travellers had to be their own masters. To a man they had nothing but contempt for those who entered into a contract engaging themselves to an employer. Besides being showmen they were horse-dealers, and also adept at a number of rural crafts. Industry, cunning and
thrift meant their pockets were rarely empty.

  From spring to late autumn there was no life for Margarita and the fair community except that of the roads, and although the north-eastern winters meant they had to rest up for weeks at a time, no one was idle. Living wagons, swings, sideshows, stalls, carousels and other rides would be repainted, wheels checked and axles greased, and general maintenance carried out. Nevertheless, being anchored to one spot was irksome, and the winter they’d recently endured had been a particularly long and harsh one. Tempers had grown short and there had been several fights among the men, and a couple between the women too. Bonnie had suffered numerous lashings from Margarita’s tongue as her grandmother had vented her frustration on the child, and their already thorny relationship had deteriorated further. It had been impossible for the fair to get on the road and secure their normal spot on Sunderland’s town moor before Christmas, as freezing blizzards scoured the country. The north had been cut off for weeks on end, and food supplies had been air-dropped into some villages buried in snow. Floods and gales had followed through January and February, only for the temperature to plummet again in March when more blizzards had racked Britain. Money had grown short, food had been rationed and but for the travellers’ expertise in poaching – which was never talked about, along with the acquisition of a sheep or two that ‘lost its way’ into the camp – the community would have been in dire straits.

  But now it was a lovely warm May, summer was just round the corner and everyone was happy again – everyone but her grandma, Bonnie thought bitterly as she approached the tall straight figure.

  Her hands on her hips, Margarita waited until the child was standing in front of her before raising her black eyebrows. ‘Well?’ she said coldly. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’

  Bonnie knew what was required of her but in spite of wanting to please her da, the words stuck in her throat. Not for the first time she asked herself how someone as nice as her mam had been – and everyone said she’d been beautiful and kind with never a cross word – could have come from the woman in front of her. Stammering slightly, not from fear but from resentment at what she’d been made to do, she said, ‘I – I’m sorry for kicking you.’

  ‘You look it.’

  Bonnie’s chin shot up. She knew what her grandma was about, oh aye. She wanted to get her into more trouble. Miss Nelly had been talking to her da the other day and she’d said Margarita Fellario could make a saint swear. They hadn’t known she was listening but she had thought then that Miss Nelly was right. Oh, how she hated her grandma.

  Swallowing hard against the hot retort hovering on her tongue, Bonnie lowered her head so she didn’t have to look at her grandma. ‘Ignore her when she starts,’ her da had said to Miss Nelly, but that was easier said than done.

  ‘You’re every inch your father’s daughter, aren’t you?’ Margarita would have liked nothing more than to shake her granddaughter till her teeth rattled. ‘You’ll come to a bad end, m’girl – and look at me when I’m talking to you.’

  There was a movement in the wagon behind and when a man’s voice said, ‘Let the child alone, Marge,’ Bonnie looked up and saw Franco standing at the top of the wooden steps; his white shirt was unbuttoned to the waist showing his curly black chest hair and a gold medallion hanging from a chain round his neck.

  Franco was the fair’s fire-eater but he wasn’t her granda. Her da had told her that her real granda had died before she was born, and her grandma had married Franco a little while later. He was her grandma’s cousin, but most of the travellers were interrelated and in their particular community a good number had Spanish blood. Bonnie knew that her Spanish great-grandparents, along with several other families, had come to England in the middle of the last century, travelling up and down the north-east with their brightly painted, horse-drawn wagons, stalls and sideshows. She also knew it was because her own da was a Sunderland lad born and bred who had no travelling links that her grandma didn’t like him. Miss Nelly had told her on the quiet that her grandma had wanted her mam to marry one of her Spanish relations, but her mam wouldn’t have any of it once she’d met her da.

  Franco now caught her eye and inclined his head towards the roughly hewn table at the bottom of the steps. ‘You help your grandma with them baskets, girl, and work hard. You’ve gallivanted enough for one day.’

  Franco knew she hadn’t been gallivanting, Bonnie thought angrily. He’d seen what had happened with Miss Nelly’s dog earlier and why she had kicked her grandma and then run off. But again, she said nothing, merely sitting down on the little stool next to her grandmother’s chair.

  ‘And that’s it?’ Margarita’s voice was a low hiss. ‘After what she’s done to my leg? She wants a good whipping.’

  ‘You know full well John wouldn’t tolerate that, so let it lie, woman.’

  ‘Let it lie! You’re as bad as him. She’s riding to hell in a handcart and neither of you can see it.’

  Now the tone of Franco’s voice changed, carrying a warning when he repeated softly, ‘I said let it lie, so let it lie. I’ve had enough for one day, Marge. I mean it.’

  Bonnie wondered if her grandmother was going to say more but after a moment Margarita flung herself down into her chair, her face stony, and Franco disappeared back into the wagon.

  Reluctantly, Bonnie continued with the task she had left so abruptly earlier after the incident with the dog. She was making small round baskets, the size customers usually bought for their children, with short heathland rushes she had collected a few days before. They grew no more than a foot high and were perfect for the job. Her grandmother used the taller bullrushes for bigger containers that could be woven with the least amount of joining, and then there were the willows with their sallower wands for sturdier baskets. Margarita concocted colouring dyes for the baskets from the natural bounty in the countryside – blue from dogwood berries, yellow from peat or heather, brown from brambles, green from nettles or privet berries, and bright red from a plant she called ladies’ bedstraw. Bonnie always thought her grandma looked like a witch when she was stirring her brews which often stank to high heaven, her face grim as she bent over her cauldron fixed above the fire.

  She sighed silently. The sky was high and blue and the sunshine was warm on her face, and in the distance she could see a group of her friends sitting in a circle busy painting the wooden dolls and little boats and other toys the menfolk carved for the stalls. She wished she was with them but her grandma rarely allowed it. She sighed again. She didn’t enjoy weaving the baskets – the rushes made her fingers sore and a couple of the dyes irritated her skin – but it was one of the many tasks she was expected to do and she did it without complaint. What she really loved were the times when she sang and danced in the big tent. She always got lots of coins in the box where visitors to the fair could show their appreciation, but although her grandma was all for it, her da didn’t like her ‘performing for her supper’ as she had heard him put it.

  But she loved singing – she’d sing every day if only she could, she thought longingly. Up on the platform she felt like a different person and she would have expected her da to understand this because he had a lovely singing voice too. He was billed as the fair’s singing boxer, and his voice was as good as his boxing. None of the men who got in the ring with her da hoping to win the fight and the prize money ever succeeded, and when their time was up, her da would always act daft and serenade them out of the enclosure; everyone would laugh, even the men who walked away with a bloody nose.

  ‘Stop your daydreaming, Bonita.’

  Bonnie’s reverie was interrupted by her grandmother’s tight voice and she realized her hands were idle. Without a word she picked up the basket she was working on, but wished, with silent urgency, that something catastrophic would befall her grandma. Even calling her Bonita was meant to rile her – her grandma knew she didn’t like the name and everyone else called her Bonnie.

  John waited until he saw Bonnie sit down befo
re he made his way over the field to where he’d promised to help Ferdinand, one of Louisa’s uncles, mend a couple of the horses on the steam roundabout. They had got damaged the day before on the journey from Boldon to their present site in Washington. This location held fond memories for him. In the early days of his marriage to Louisa, Bonnie’s mother, he had persuaded her to take a day off with him when the fair had stopped at Washington for a while. She had left her stall and he’d closed his boxing tent and they’d absconded with nothing more on their minds than enjoying a day in each other’s company away from the close-knit fair community. He’d known he’d get some stick from Margarita for skiving off, as she’d no doubt put it, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t do anything right in his mother-in-law’s eyes anyway.

  John stopped and raised his eyes to the high blue sky, drinking in the heady scent of the May blossom which clothed the trees bordering the field.

  That had been a grand day. They’d wandered along hand in hand on the north bank of the river, laughing and talking and so in love it hurt. Before they had retraced their steps in the evening they’d taken afternoon tea at Girdle Cake Cottage. The beautifully picturesque cottage was a popular place for refreshments and they had sat and watched the folk travelling upstream from Sunderland by boat to have their tea and then returning on the tide. He’d told Louisa this was their honeymoon and she had laughed and kissed him full on the lips, her dark brown eyes alight with love.

  Louisa, oh, Louisa. For a moment the pain of her passing was as acute as on the day she had died, just nine months after Bonnie was born. She had been as right as rain one day, complaining of an excruciating pain in her stomach the next, and gone within seventy-two hours. Burst appendix, the doctor he had fetched to the site in the early hours had stated. It happened suddenly like that sometimes.

  John shook his head at the memory of that nightmarish time. All he’d known was that he had lost his wife, his darling, his rock, and but for their daughter he would have walked down to the river and ended it there and then. But Bonnie had needed him. His Bonnie, bonny by name and bonny in appearance but a handful, oh, aye. John smiled to himself. Strong-willed and headstrong to a fault at times, but with a capacity for compassion and affection that covered a multitude of sins. He was fully aware that the stubborn and what Margarita labelled wilful side of his daughter’s nature came from him, but he made no apology for being glad about how she was.