‘Pay no attention to him. He can hardly mock your wages on what Reg pays him, and I know for a fact he was only on three pounds a week at theCourier.’
‘But it’s still a woman’s job. I’ll never hear the end of it from the lads round here.’
Bobby put an arm around his shoulders. ‘You don’t have to take it.’
‘Of course I have to bloody take it. What else is there?’ He sighed, and gave her arm a squeeze. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t swear. It’s just hard to feel like the head of the family doing a job like that. And then I’m to be grateful for it, and take it as a favour!’
‘It doesn’t have to be for long. You can be keeping an eye out for other jobs.’
‘What other jobs? It’ll be even worse once the war ends and I’m competing with hundreds of demobbed men with two working arms and legs each.’
‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’ She stroked his hair. ‘You’re worth so much more.’
Charlie sat silent, his face dark. Gradually his expression started to lift, however, until he looked up with a smile.
‘I’m being an ungrateful swine again, aren’t I?’ he said softly. ‘Here’s fate, stretching out her hand with the means to provide for my wife and baby, and I’m turning my nose up because it doesn’t satisfy my pride.’
‘It’s understandable, when you’ve got a brain you’re desperate to use. I’ve felt that way all my life. That the world refuses to let me do what I’m capable of.’
‘And I should count myself lucky to be one of the more privileged sex, I know.’ He planted a kiss on her lips. ‘There. Take that as an apology, and consider me duly reprimanded for my ingratitude. I must admit, it’s a relief to know you can leaveThe Tykewithout plunging us into destitution. I couldn’t bear to have you working after what nearly happened today.’
Chapter 21
Bobby was careful to set her clock before bed, now Marmaduke had blotted his copybook as an alarm. Tomorrow was the wedding of Gil Capstick and Mabs Jessop, and she would feel dreadful if anything happened to make them late. However, the baby had returned to form now his dad was home, waking her as ever at half past six.
The first thing Bobby did on waking was disable the alarm so Charlie could sleep on, then she went to get ready for the wedding. The hectic nature of yesterday had left no time to prepare. There was Charlie’s shirt and suit to iron, and she hadn’t had time to adjust her best pale green twinset. After today, when she had come clean to her family, she could stop going to such lengths to hide her blossoming figure, but for the next few hours she needed to keep up the pretence.
Bobby glanced at the letter Charlie had received from the bank as she ironed his suit.
It ought to be a relief to know her husband had a weekly wage packet beckoning. Despite Charlie’s hurt pride, it wasn’t such a terrible salary. It was more than a private in the army received, at least, and the family allowance was a generous addition. Yet Charlie had sounded so unhappy that it worried Bobby how he would settle to the work.
In the early days of their acquaintance, Bobby had felt she and Charlie were too different to ever be more than friends. As she had come to know him better, she had begun to feel it was in their very differences that they suited. She was too fond of work, he of play, and they exercised a healthy moderating influence on one another. That was before the war had taken them, and madethem the people they were now – more solemn and thoughtful, but closer than they had ever been as sweethearts.
But there was one respect in which Bobby and her husband had always been alike, and that was in their craving for stimulating work. This had always been more of a problem for Bobby than Charlie. As a man he’d had a world of employment open to him, whether it was healing animals or flying bombers. No one expected him to give it up to boil napkins and scrub linen. No one pushed him into passive roles that didn’t interest him, like typing or filing.
Whereas Bobby had had to fight all her life to do more than the world deemed appropriate to her sex. She well remembered how dull she had found her typing role on theCourier, longing to do what the male reporters were doing. She remembered, too, how she had defied her commanding officer when the WAAF had tried to condemn her to shorthand typing for the duration, fighting instead to be trained as a plotter.
And now it was Charlie who was compelled to take a job typing while his eager, active brain went to waste. Bobby supposed it was worse for him in some ways. She was a girl from a working-class family, long taught that she ought to consider herself privileged to be doing clerical work rather than earning her crust in the mills. Charlie, as a boy with a private education, had never been set such limits.
It was this, she imagined, that humiliated him as much as the low wage or the fact he was doing a woman’s job. That notion his brain was no longer enough, now the body that went with it was broken. He’d been taught to expect the world, and had seen the opportunities it offered as his by right. Whereas no little girl was taught to see a future beyond her own hearth.
But there wasn’t much Bobby could do about that. All she could hope was that the work wouldn’t push Charlie into a funk he would find it hard to get out of.
She thought of the medal Charlie had finally, reluctantly, decided to accept. He might write to say he’d changed his mind now, since his ultimate aim had been to secure a job. Still, Bobby harboured a hope that Charlie would make his peace with the DFC somehow. It would be such a proud thing for his family.
But it was in Charlie’s hands now. Let him write a refusal if he must. She was done trying to change his mind.
Bobby just had time to adjust her best skirt before the ceremony. She felt like she owed it to her good friend Andy Jessop, the bride’s late grandfather, to show herself up well.
It wouldn’t be long, she supposed, before she would have to abandon her current clothes for maternity items. Bobby had never been a worshipper of fashion the way her twin was, but the idea of those shapeless, sack-like dresses still made her grimace.
Inside the chapel, Charlie joined Gil by the altar to perform his duties as best man. Meanwhile, Bobby slipped into a pew next to her sister.
‘Are you all right?’ Lilian whispered. ‘Tony said you weren’t well at work yesterday. Annie and I called on you but there was no answer.’
Bobby shook her head. ‘I told Tony not to worry you with it.’
‘Well, where were you?’
