The Girl on the Beach by Mary Nichols Read Free Book Online Page B

and her coming baby, which was due in December, nine months after their idyllic honeymoon. She could not have been happier and she did not want to hear talk of war.
    George Harold Walker was born on 7 th December 1938 weighing just over seven pounds. Because Julie was so small it was a difficult birth and she was in labour a whole day and night, while the midwife sat and knitted and Harry paced the living room, drinking endless cups of tea. When the little one finally arrived, Julie forgot all that in her delight. He was perfect in every way and, according to both Julie and Hilda Walker, who arrived within hours, was the image of his father. He certainly had Harry’s amber eyes, though Julie’s very fair hair. It was an unusual colour combination which, so his mothersaid, meant he was going to be a very unusual man.
    Harry doted on him. He watched Julie breastfeed him with a grin on his face and his eyes shining. He even learnt to change the baby’s nappy and would sing him to sleep if he was at home at his bedtime. Their lives revolved around George and neither wanted to think of anything else, certainly not the clouds gathering on the horizon as 1938 became 1939.
    The trouble was that they could not avoid it because the subject was on everyone’s lips. There were those who, like Julie, believed war had been averted, and those who were convinced it had only been postponed.
    ‘It will come, you see,’ Mrs Golding said. She and her husband were their next-door neighbours and had come to England from Austria ten years before and considered themselves English. Even so, they were hugely unpopular in the neighbourhood because of their origins and the fact that they were Jewish. Julie, who knew what it was like to be an outcast, felt sorry for them and always spoke to Mrs Golding when they were both in their back gardens hanging out washing, or met in the queue at the grocer’s.
    ‘The bombers will come,’ Mrs Golding said, as they both took advantage of a good blow to hang out sheets. ‘They’re building shelters in the Old Kent Road. I saw piles of bricks and men mixing cement and they told me that was what they were doing. And the council is offering everyone a shelter for their garden.’
    ‘I haven’t heard anything about garden shelters.’
    She asked Harry about them when he arrived home. ‘Mrs Golding says the council are issuing everyone who wants one with an air-raid shelter,’ she said, dishing up his evening meal. He was very late home and she had beenkeeping it hot over a pan of boiling water. ‘Is that true?’ ‘Anderson shelters – yes, I believe so.’
    ‘Why? The prime minister said there would be no war.’
    ‘He’s playing for time.’
    ‘Oh, no, Harry, surely not? Hitler got his way over Sudetenland, what more does he want?’ Like many another she had never heard of Sudetenland until it filled the front pages of the newspapers.
    ‘The whole world,’ he said, attacking his food while she sat at the table opposite him watching him eat. She loved cooking for him and he always appreciated her efforts, but it was a pity she never knew what time he was coming home so that she did not have to keep it hot, letting it spoil. He never complained. Nor did he complain when the week’s housekeeping money ran out before the end of the week. ‘I’m not used to managing money,’ she said when she had to ask for more. ‘When you give it to me I think it will last easily and then it seems to disappear all of a sudden. I don’t know why.’
    ‘You must learn to budget, sweetheart. We mustn’t get into debt.’
    So he sat down and went over what she spent the money on and it was usually something frivolous for George, like a new toy because she saw it in the shop window and thought he would like it, or a treat for Harry’s tea, so that when it came to buying the basics, she found herself short. ‘Let’s get some jars and put some in each for the essentials, like rent and groceries and insurance,