Love Me Tender
A heartrending tale of love and tragedy during The Birmingham Blitz. Perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Annie Groves.For Kathy O’Malley, life has not been easy with her husband, Barry, out of work and with two children to feed. Then when war breaks out in 1939, many of the local men enlist, including Barry, leaving the women to cope as best they can.The years that follow are full of hardship: rationing, nightly air raids and endless shifts working at the local munitions factory all take their toll on Kathy who longs to feel the strong arms of her husband around her once more.When she meets Doug, a handsome American GI, she is drawn immediately drawn to him but determined to honour her marriage vows. But after she receives a telegram informing that her husband is missing, presumed dead, she makes a decision that will have consequences, not just for herself, but for the lives of all those she loves too…
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Anne Bennett 1999
First published in 1999 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover photographs © Gordon Crabb (woman); Colin Thomas (girl); Mirrorpix (mirrorpix)
Anne Bennett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007547784
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007547791
Version: 2017-10-18
To my lovely husband, Denis, with all my love.
Mary Sullivan heard the dragging feet in the entry and swung the door wide to see her eldest daughter Kathy just about to push it open. The dejected sag of Kathy’s shoulders told its own tale as Mary drew her inside. ‘Wait, pet,’ she said. ‘I’ll brew us both a drop of tea.’
‘No, Mammy, I can’t stay,’ Kathy said. ‘I’ve left Barry minding the weans.’ She shook her head angrily. ‘Oh God, it’s no job for a man.’ She looked at her mother, her deep brown eyes sombre, and said, ‘D’you know, he was over at Northfield today, after a job on the building he’d heard about. Course, it was gone by the time he got there and then he walked back to save the tram fare. But the thing is, his boots are falling off his feet and I don’t know whether it wouldn’t have been better to pay the fare and save his boot leather.’
‘Ah, girl, I’m heart-sore for you,’ Mary said.
‘I couldn’t stand the look on his face, Mammy,’ Kathy cried. ‘I took the few coppers he’d saved and went down the Bull Ring. I got some bones and vegetables cheap, you know how they sell them off at this time of night. At least I’ll make a nourishing meal with it tomorrow.’
Mary looked at her daughter sadly. ‘Wait,’ she said, and went out of the room, coming back a minute later with a loaf wrapped in a cloth.
‘Ah no, Mammy, you do enough,’ Kathy protested.
‘We have plenty,’ Mary said. ‘Sure everyone in the house is working now but Carmel, and she’s turned twelve, she’ll be left school in a couple of years. Take it.’
‘I will,’ Kathy said. ‘For the weans, at least. Barry said they must have the best food first. He’s terrified something will happen to them that they won’t be well nourished enough to fight. I can understand it; after all, his two young brothers were taken with TB and his da was out of work at the time. Barry said there was little money for food and none at all for doctors, or medicines, and the youngsters were too weak to fight it on their own.’
‘He’s a good man you have, Kathy, and a good father,’ Mary said. ‘Things could be worse. Maybe in the new year Barry’s luck will change. God’s good.’
Kathy sighed. She had no hopes for the new year, for Barry had been out of work for four long years and she dreaded Christmas, with nothing for the weans at all. She was beset by worries. Her daughter Lizzie needed new boots – the ones she had pinched her feet and Kathy’d had to line them with cardboard to keep her feet dry – and Danny only had one jumper that fitted him now, and that was ragged and all over holes. She couldn’t lay all this at her mother’s door and so she kissed her goodbye.
There was another worry pressing on Kathy’s head, but it was nothing she could share with her mother either, or anyone else for that matter. Barry never made love to her any more. They slept side by side in the same bed and could well have been strangers. Often Kathy would long for Barry’s arms around her, or his lips on hers – not of course that she could say that to him, but still she missed the closeness they used to share. She knew he wanted no more children till he got a job, but still…
