Stardust

Kate Myers

Description

From the first time she heard the unforgettable melody her father whistled, Mabel Shields was determined to unlock the lyrics to this haunting tune, a relic of his time in the Great War. A curiosity that led her to meet Paul Conway, manager of Barwell's struggling music shop. Mabel begins to share Paul's interest in cinema as well as appreciate his extensive knowledge of popular music. Odeon matinees together and lyrics as coded love letters chart their growing closeness as the cost of the war bears down more heavily on their lives, living in fear, under ever tighter restrictions, and losing loved ones.And what happened to her, while rushing home through a blustery storm one Christmas eve years later, that brought it allback?

Sujets

• Historical romance

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800467798
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Kate Myers

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN: 978 1800467 798

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
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Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To Bill, Pat, Danny, Meg and David.
A thanksgiving.
And to the Peatling Magna Writers for friendship and constructive criticism.
Author’s Note
Stardust is a love story.

Based around Barwell and Hinckley, Leicestershire, although characters are fictitious, they are placed within the context of actual events, roughly from the outset of the Second World War up until 1970. Events still within living memory, for some; a time considered ancient history by their descendants.

Download their backing track, the music that defined these characters. Sense the mood: melody is a wordless telegraph of emotion. More than a rhythm. Then press playback, focussing on the lyrics.

A small town in the black-out… with a smattering of stardust.

Access melodies and lyrics highlighted (*) through Google or Spotify.
Contents
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1
December 24, 1965
It had been a foul day, no chance of a white Christmas, just freezing rain and an icy wind. By teatime the shops in the village had just about given up any hope of further trade and were counting down to closing time. Front windows in several houses already had switched on their tree lights to cheer up the evening gloom.
Mabel hunkered under her umbrella, braced against the stiff gusts, heading home by the Common. Doctor Hutchinson decided his receptionist needn’t hang on; the waiting room was empty. Folk had better things to do on Christmas Eve.
Her clear, dome-shaped umbrella offered better protection, usually. Mabel thought she saw a glint of bright light up towards the east, but the cloud cover was so thick, surely there’d be no stars out tonight. Was that thunder? It sounded very close. Larger, heavy globs pelted her. Something hard hit her brolly right in front. Not hail. It came straight through, hitting her shoulder.
Whatever it was had burned a hole in the plastic and left a black scorch mark on her coat. She wasn’t hurt, but badly shaken. Mystified. She picked up the stone. Small, blackened, a bit too warm in her gloved hand. It emitted a faint sound. Not ticking, thank God. Music.
Mabel closed her eyes and smiled.
2
November 11, 1947
Mabel stood in the crowd gathered round the war memorial on Malt Mill Bank. The new plaque to those lost in this latest world war had been added to the eighty-seven names that were commemorated from the first. The siblings that died in the Great War still haunt the families of Barwell. Families whose only surviving children became parents of the ‘39-’45 defenders of freedom. Mabel scanned the older list. Her father, William Stanley Shields, was so nearly there, wounded horribly in 1917. Of course, if he hadn’t made a recovery of sorts, she wouldn’t be alive now.
Dad came home with shrapnel wounds. Damage to his left leg left him with a limp. He was advised to use a walking stick, but hated to be dependent on it. He’d lurch around the house without it, scowling when he needed to venture out and had to use it. He hated any reminder of his limitations. The shrapnel still lodged in his chest was more serious, but invisible. Doctors said it was too close to his heart to risk extricating. He learned to live with it, knowing that strenuous activity could aggravate it. At twenty he hadn’t found the thought of a sedentary job very appealing, but after the slaughter in the trenches, coming home to any sort of life had to be seen as a blessing.
Fred Hallam said he was welcome to come back to his greengrocer’s, but both of them knew it was a non-starter. Dad would never be able to hump sacks of potatoes or load up the wagon with crates of veg from market suppliers at the crack of dawn. He didn’t have enough schooling or the right demeanour for a clerical job. A gangly sort, not comfortable in a suit and tie except on a Sunday, a man who was proud to have a hard day’s graft callousing his hands, loving a bit of ground-in grime. His long face usually had a renegade swathe of his light brown hair draped across his forehead, forcing him to look up from under it to converse with anyone. Mabel loved his warm chortling laugh and the way his eyes would light up when he was teasing her. Lovely deep blue eyes. There was such a spark of fun in him, he never could have stood it as a clerk.
William was saved by Alfred Muston. There were a fair number of Mustons in Barwell. Alfred had the most sons though: his namesake, young Alfred, Henry, Bertie, Joseph and Sydney. When the Great War came along, they were just what Lord Kitchener needed. With five sons enlisted, their father expected to lose one or two, given the scale of the casualties. He lost them all. The Leicestershire Regiment swallowed them up and spat back the dreaded telegrams, young Alfred before Christmas in ‘14, Bertie the following August, Henry in March ‘16, then Sydney and Joseph in ‘17.
Alfred senior was a broken man.
He had been the village cobbler for as long as anyone could remember, as his father before him. Barwell may have been known for its boot and shoe factory, but ordinary working folk still needed their footwear repaired. They couldn’t afford to fork out for a new pair. For a wedding maybe, your own, but as a rule, shoes had to last. Alfred expected to pass on the business to one of his sons, but none came back. He saw William limp home and heard about his injuries. Alfred’s job would suit the lad, no heavy lifting, a skilled job but not much strain on the leg. Will was personable, would enjoy chatting to customers. He’d be his own man, earn his own keep, regain his self-respect. He wouldn’t have to sit and beg like some of the wretched veterans that made it back.
As soon as Will learned the ropes, Alfred was free to retire. Mabel had never known a time when her dad wasn’t Barwell’s cobbler. Her mum had waited for her one and only sweetheart and married him in 1920, as soon as the shop was his. It must have felt like everything was finally coming right for them, the future looked rosy. A small sepia image of them on their wedding day still sat on the mantlepiece. Anna became pregnant after only a few months. Mabel imagines the pair of them, so young, younger than she is now, but already the other side of the war and daring to be hopeful. Life couldn’t get any better.

The bugler is playing the Last Post. The vicar must have finally finished waffling on. Mabel’s toes are freezing. Damp is seeping through the soles of her court shoes. Fresh wreaths now line the base of the memorial. The crowd is beginning to break up and head to the church hall for a well-needed cup of tea. Mabel feels consoling pats on her shoulder from a few friends as they move off, nodding their sympathy. She thanks them softly, assuring them she’ll join them in a minute. She needs to approach the memorial, to climb the few steps and touch the new plaque. Trace her fingers across the letters, caress them.

William Stanley Shields, Home Guard, 14/06/1942.

All the other fatalities were young, in their prime. Dad was forty-three. You could argue that he was a casualty of the Great War really, because it was the Kaiser’s chunk of metal that shifted when he was clearing rubble from bomb damage in Hinckley, trying to free a woman trapped beneath it. He should have waited for others to come and help, but he got stuck in straightaway, talking to the lady, Joan, telling her not to be afraid.
“I kept wittering on about my cat,” Joan told Mabel afterwards, “wondering if he was hurt. Your dad kept telling me he’d be fine. They’re canny wee creatures. They know when to scarper and can squeeze through the tiniest gaps. He told me my Tigger would be licking my face any minute once the dust settled.”
It was bittersweet to see Joan again today, come over specially from town to honour her dad and see the plaque. “Damn fool woman,” thought Mabel, “how I’d wished she’d been a silent corpse under that rubble, so Dad wouldn’t have played the lone hero.” She then felt guilty for wishing the daft woman dead, but wishing her a hefty concussion caused her no qualms.
It was Dad’s face Tigger nuzzled after he collapsed. Joan heard his sharp cry of pain and down he fell. He struck his head on some brickwork, which opened a nasty gash, but that wasn’t what killed him. He died ‘doing his bit’. Mabel pointed this out to the committee in charge of updating the war memorial last year. Death while serving in the Home Guard should be honoured equally with all other branches of the military.
There was a hint of snobbishness about war plaques. Men downed in spitfires, riddled with bullets on a beach assault, or drowned by a torpedo were someh