A Wing and a Prayer Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Margaret Thornton from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Recent Titles by Margaret Thornton from Severn House

  CAST THE FIRST STONE

  FAMILIES AND FRIENDSHIPS

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS

  LOVE AND MARRIAGE

  OLD FRIENDS, NEW FRIENDS

  ONE WEEK IN AUGUST

  PASTURES NEW

  A WING AND A PRAYER

  A WING AND A PRAYER

  Margaret Thornton

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2019 by Margaret Thornton.

  The right of Margaret Thornton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8948-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-616-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0233-8 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  1990

  The phone rang just as Helen was putting on her jacket, ready to dash out to the car and drive to the pub where she worked a few evenings each week. She was often last minute; a few more seconds and she would have gone. She was tempted to ignore it, but it might be important. It might even be Alex … but that was very unlikely.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, somewhat impatiently, as she picked up the phone from the small table in the hall.

  ‘Hello, Helen … It’s Mum.’

  ‘I’m just on my way to work, Mum, and I’m running late. What is it? Can’t it wait?’

  ‘I’m sorry, love. I knew you’d be dashing off about this time, but I’m afraid I have some bad news.’

  Helen felt the blood drain from her face. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Aunt Alice. She’s had a heart attack. I’m sorry, love … I’m afraid she’s gone. It was so very sudden.’

  Helen felt her eyes fill with tears, and she sat down on the chair at the side of the table. ‘Oh, no! How dreadful! But she wasn’t ill. She was perfectly all right the last time I saw her, about ten days ago. Does Gran know?’

  ‘Yes, it was your gran who phoned to tell me. Alice’s next-door neighbour was concerned because there were two bottles of milk on the doorstep and Trixie was miaowing outside. The back door was open so Nora was able to get in … and she found her; in the fireside chair, just as though she was asleep.’

  Helen felt the tears running down her cheeks. ‘Oh … how very sad. I can’t believe it. You say she’d had a heart attack?’

  ‘Yes, apparently so, but there will have to be a post-mortem. She hadn’t been ill – well, not ill enough to go to the doctor. Nora rang for the doctor at once, of course, and that was what he diagnosed: a sudden massive heart attack. He called for an ambulance, and it’s all under control. But your gran and I will be going over there tomorrow. Your gran’s her next of kin – she’s her only sister – so we’ll have to go and see to things; the funeral and everything, you know.’

  ‘She wasn’t very old, was she?’

  ‘No, only seventy-one. Not old by today’s standards. Your gran’s seven years older than Alice, and still hale and hearty, but you just never know … Anyway, I’m sorry to give you such bad news. You were always Alice’s favourite, you know. And, of course, she never had any children of her own.’

  ‘Never even got married, did she? I often wondered why that was, Mum?’

  ‘Oh, lots of reasons I suppose, love. Your gran would never say much about her. There was something of a rift between them after Aunt Alice went back to live in Yorkshire. But, like I say, she’s her next of kin.’

  ‘Would you like me to drive you over there, Mum? I could get some time off work.’

  ‘No thanks, love. I’m quite a capable driver, and I’m my own boss; I don’t have to ask for time off work. And your dad will be fine on his own for a few days.’

  ‘Look, Mum, I’d better go,’ Helen said. ‘I’m late already. Ring me when you get to Yorkshire and let me know what’s happening. I can’t take it in yet about Aunt Alice … I shall miss her so much.’

  ‘We all will, love, but I know how close you were to her. Bye for now. Drive carefully … or might it be better if you didn’t go to the pub tonight?’

  ‘No, I’ll have to go. Don’t worry; I’ll be careful. Bye, Mum, and take care of Gran.’

  ‘Will do. Bye, love …’

  Helen brushed the tears from her cheeks, picked up her car keys and went out to where her red Volkswagen was parked outside her ground-floor flat. Not a new car, but not very old either. It was a 1987 model, three years old, that she had bought a few months ago when she'd received a pay rise. She was saving up for a deposit to buy a flat of her own, but she felt that the car was a small luxury that she deserved. She would have her own place all in good time, and she was quite happy where she was at the moment, in a tree-lined avenue near Stanley Park. It wasn’t too far from the estate agency where she worked during the day, on Whitegate Drive, one of the main roads leading out of Blackpool.

  Helen Burnside was thirty-three years old, unmarried – although she had not been short of boyfriends, one or two of whom she had thought might even be ‘the one’. She was on her own again now, having parted from Alex Barker two weeks previously. It had not been working out, and they had decided to call it a day. Helen was now having slight regrets, but she was damned if she was going to admit it. He must make the first move if he was so inclined. If not, then she would move forward. In the paraphrased words of a song from one of her favourite musicals, Oklahoma!, many a new day would dawn before she looked back at the romance behind her.

  It was only a few minutes’ drive to the Wayside Inn in nearby Marton, where she worked three nights a week and occasional weekends, to supplement her savings towards a home of her own.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she called after parking her car in the car park, which was not too busy early in the evening. ‘Mum rang just as I was coming out. It was bad news, actually, so I had to stop and talk to her for a few minutes.’ She was talking to Betty Ainsworth as she was taking off her jacket in the family room behind the bar.

  ‘Don’t rush,’ said Betty. ‘I can see you’re upset, and we’re not busy at the moment. Sit down and tell me about it. Has … has someone died?’

  Helen sat down on the settee and Betty sat beside her. ‘Yes,’ answered Helen. ‘My Aunt Alice has died, very suddenly; it was a heart attack. She’s my great-aunt, actually, my mother’s aunt, but I’ve been very close to her, especially these last few years. She had a hip replacement about three years ago, and I went over to Yorkshire to look after her for a while. I was between jobs at the time, and it seemed to be the obvious solution for me to go and stay there. She insisted that she should pay me, because she would have needed a carer otherwise. And it worked very well. I was sorry, in a way, to leave Yorkshire to come back home, but we’ve been in close contact ever since.’

  ‘You say this happened suddenly? She hadn’t been ill?’

  ‘Apparently not. She recovered well after the hip operation. She lived on her own, but she was very independent and very fit, so it’s a tremendous shock.’

  ‘Whereabouts in Yorkshire did she live? I know it’s a very big county.’

  ‘She lives … lived … in a little village called Thornbeck, on the road betwe
en Pickering and Scarborough. She’d lived in Yorkshire since the early fifties, a few years before I was born. It was a bit of a mystery why she left Blackpool. No one seems to want to talk about it. My mother never says much, but maybe she doesn’t know much about it. Aunt Alice made a life for herself over there. She had her own little cottage that she rented at first and then managed to buy …’

  Helen’s reminiscences were cut short when Jeff Ainsworth, the landlord, put his head round the door. ‘We’re getting busy out here. We could do with a hand when you two have finished your nattering,’ he said, but with a grin on his face.

  ‘Oh … I’m sorry, Jeff,’ said Helen, jumping up at once.

  ‘Helen has suffered a bereavement,’ said Betty quietly. ‘An aunt she was very fond of.’

  ‘I didn’t realize,’ said Jeff. ‘Take your time, of course, Helen. Betty and I can cope; Bob’s gone down to the cellar but he won’t be long. Just come when you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ said Helen. ‘Really I am. Anyway, I’ll be better keeping busy tonight instead of sitting around and moping.’

  And, indeed, she was busy throughout the evening, serving drinks and simple bar snacks – crisps, sandwiches, meat pies and sausage rolls. No cooked meals here; it was a small, homely place, popular mainly with the locals, and didn’t try to compete with the larger establishments that were opening up in the area.

  Helen’s memories of her great-aunt returned, however, after she had driven home at eleven o’clock that blustery March evening.

  She parked her car in its usual spot on the road outside the house. The occupants of the upstairs flat, who had been in residence there longer, had the use of the garage. Helen didn’t mind; it was easier for a quick getaway in the mornings.

  Her flat was, for the moment, all she could wish for, comprising a living room that was quite spacious, a bedroom, small kitchen and bathroom. It was fully furnished, albeit in a mish-mash of styles, some dating from the thirties and others in the so-called ‘contemporary’ style that had been popular in the fifties, when the whole idea of furnishing was changing drastically after the stringencies of the wartime period. Helen had added her own personal touches – bright cushions and rugs and covers, pictures and photos, her CD player and the piano from home, as she was the only one who played.

  Her accommodation was very desirable compared with many of the flats that were on offer. The rent was not cheap but she was doing well in the career that she had not exactly chosen, but in which she had found herself. She was quite careful, though not miserly with money, and the extra she was earning with her evening job was being put to one side for the time when she found a place of her own to buy.

  Helen made a cup of Horlicks, which she usually found helped her get to sleep. She sat up in bed to drink it and to read the latest Inspector Wexford book by Ruth Rendell. But this time the intricacies of the plot failed to wholly engage her mind. She put it to one side and switched off the bedside lamp, then tried to compose herself for sleep.

  She was trying to accept that Aunt Alice was no longer there, but it was hard to believe that such a lively and young-looking person could so suddenly be gone. Memories of her were poignant. A busy and active little lady, no more than five foot two in height, with hair that had once been golden, faded to an attractive ash blonde, and bright blue eyes that had lost none of their sparkle.

  Helen knew that the Fletcher family had once lived in Yorkshire, in the mill city of Bradford, but had moved to Blackpool in 1921. It remained a mystery as to why Alice had returned there in the early fifties …

  Alice was the younger daughter of Albert and Ada Fletcher. Her sister Elizabeth, always known as Lizzie, was Helen’s grandmother. Albert had served in the trenches in the First World War and, to Ada’s relief and some surprise, had returned. Alice was born in 1919, but Albert had suffered as a result of poison gas and had died in 1920, a victim of the Spanish flu epidemic that was sweeping through the country. Ada was left a widow with one-year-old Alice, and Lizzie, who was then eight years old.

  Ada was not rich, but she was not poverty-stricken either. She and Albert had both worked for several years in one of the many woollen mills and had not married until they were in their mid-twenties. With the help of her parents, and with the money she had managed to save, Ada had decided to start a new life for herself and her daughters.

  Blackpool was becoming known as the leading seaside resort in the north of England. Ada remembered the happy holidays she had spent there as a child, and so she decided to try her hand as a seaside landlady, as many more women were doing at the time.

  She scraped together enough for a deposit on a three-storey house in the part of Blackpool known as North Shore. She worked hard, putting in long hours at the boarding house, and she expected her daughters to do the same. When they left school at fourteen, Lizzie in 1926 and Alice in 1933, they both worked alongside their mother, helping with the cooking and cleaning, and serving at the dining tables. As it was a family concern there was no need, in Ada’s opinion, to employ extra staff, except on rare occasions. Each year, before the start of the holiday season, around Easter time, the house would be given a good spring clean, from top to bottom, and at that time Ada would agree to employ a woman to help with the heavier duties of scrubbing and polishing and washing the paintwork.

  Ada did not consider that her girls might want to pursue a career – or at least an occupation – outside of the boarding house as some of their school friends, whose parents were not in the holiday business, were able to do. It was true, though, that many young women found themselves in the same position as Lizzie and Alice, working for a small wage that amounted to scarcely more than pocket money. After all, they had their bed and board, and it was Ada’s view that that was sufficient.

  Helen’s memories of Ada, her great-grandmother, were very vague. She had died in 1961 at the age of seventy-five, when Helen was four years old. She had seemed, in hindsight, to be a very old lady compared with Helen’s grandmother, Lizzie, who was now seventy-eight, a spry and energetic woman. But Grandma Ada, of course, had been born in the last century when Queen Victoria was on the throne, and the ideas and opinions of that generation had remained with her.

  She had apparently ruled her two daughters with a rod of iron. She had been unable, however, to prevent Lizzie from marrying in 1933 when she was twenty-one. She had ‘come of age’ and no longer needed parental permission. Lizzie had married Norman Weaver, a local lad who attended the church where the Fletcher family occasionally worshipped. It was understood, though, that Lizzie would continue to work for her mother, and she and Norman would have their own private rooms in the boarding house. It was convenient, also, that Lizzie’s new husband was such a handyman. He was a painter and decorator by trade, and he soon found himself painting and wallpapering the boarding house bedrooms during the winter. But Ada, parsimonious though she could be, had to agree that he should receive the appropriate payment.

  It was in one of the newly decorated bedrooms that Megan, Helen’s mother, was born in 1934. They all lived there throughout the Second World War; then in 1946 Ada finally decided that she had been a seaside landlady for long enough. She had not bargained for the houseful of RAF recruits that had been billeted there during the war years, and she did not have the heart to build up the holiday trade again. Her decision was a great relief to Lizzie as well. She was still subject to her mother’s demands and ideas, although Norman made sure that his mother-in-law did not always get her own way.

  They were all in agreement, though, about the house that they bought in Bispham, in a residential area, a few miles further north of their present home. The semi-detached house was only a few minutes’ walk from the sea, something that Ada had insisted on. She had lived close to the sea all the time she had been in Blackpool but had hardly ever had time to walk along the promenade. She took a stroll there, along the cliffs when it was not too breezy, every day until she died in 1961 following an attack of flu and bronchitis.

  And so Lizzie and Norman were on their own at last. Megan was now married to Arthur Burnside and they had their own semi-detached house in the same area; not too far away but, on the other hand, not too near, as Arthur remarked to Megan.