Applause (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 2) by Madalyn Morgan (best authors to read txt) 📕

‘What are they for?’ Bill asked, taking the bottle from her and turning it over in his hand. ‘There’s no label.’

‘They’re to help me sleep.’

‘Sleeping pills?’

‘No! They take away the pain in my ankle so I can sleep. I’ll go to my own doctor now I’m back, but tonight a couple of these will do. So please,’ she sighed, holding out her hand, ‘give me the bottle and go and entertain your house guest.’ Margot unscrewed the top, shook two pills into her hand and then threw them into the back of her mouth, before washing them down with half a glass of water. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. Lying down, she turned her back on Bill.

Bill left the room, closing the door quietly and Margot buried her head in the pillow and sobbed. She felt guilty, angry and confused, and she wished she hadn’t come home.

As the bus approached The Cut, Waterloo, posters of Sybil Thorndike and Ann Casson caught her eye. Standing ten feet tall alongside Bernard Miles and Frank Petley, they advertised a tour of The Old Vic’s production of Medea. The theatre had been damaged in an air raid in May of that year, but it was soon to reopen.

The bus turned at Elephant and Castle and trundled up through Borough. Once over Tower Bridge Margot could see the devastation the Luftwaffe had wrought on the East End. Row after row of blitzed and burned out buildings. Shops that once served a close-knit community, proud to be born within the sound of Bow Bells, had been gutted. Businesses stood empty and homes derelict. A single wall of a wet fish shop stood erect among buildings that had been reduced to rubble. On its facia, covered in brick and plaster dust, a sign said “Whitechapel Fish”. Beneath it, “Closed until further notice”.

She couldn’t remember exactly where Jenny said she lived. She wasn’t interested and consequently hadn’t listened. She wished now that she had. When they worked together as usherettes, Jenny had lived near Margot in Hampstead. She moved to Whitechapel when Margot and Bill moved to Oxford Mews. She said she wanted to be near her sister, whose husband had been called up. Margot wasn’t sure now if that was the reason. Jenny had made a joke about King Henry VIII, but that wasn’t what the avenue was called. Margot consulted the A to Z and found Tudor and Wolsey Avenue.

‘Tudor Avenue!’ the bus conductor shouted.

Margot took her handbag, gas mask and stick from the seat next to her and, with the help of the conductor, left the bus.

Tudor Avenue wasn’t tree-lined, like the avenues in North West London, but from the little that was still standing, she could see it had once been a pleasant place to live. Houses at the beginning of the avenue were inhabited – curtains twitched as she passed and washing hung on stretched clothes lines. Further down the avenue houses that were still in one piece had some of their windows boarded up. Further down still, solitary walls stood amid rubble and beyond that was wasteland.

Margot walked the length of the avenue. The houses that were unsafe through bomb damage looked as if they’d been like it for some time. She walked along Wolsey Avenue and, like Tudor, the houses that were severely damaged had been damaged months before, not days.

‘Excuse me?’ Margot called to a couple of boys playing football on the wasteland. ‘Do you live around here?’

The boys stopped kicking their ball. One picked it up and the other came towards her.

‘We ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong Missus. It’s me bruvver Alf’s ball.’

‘I know you’re not,’ Margot said, smiling. ‘I just want to ask you something. If you live around here you might be able to help me. If you don’t--’

‘We do. Go on Missus, what do you want to know?’

‘A friend of mine used to live here, but she lost her home this week in an air raid. Do you know which houses were bombed?’

‘That’s easy. None of ‘em. We ain’t bin bombed this week. It were too foggy at the weekend.’ The boy put his dirty finger to his mouth and frowned thoughtfully. ‘Gerry was Stepney way last night, Dulwich the night before, Bethnal Green one night this week and the docks the other. We don’t know the exact places ‘cause we ain’t bin to ‘em, but we know near enough where the bombs was fallin’, which direction like.’

‘And you’re sure?’

‘Wot?’

‘That this area hasn’t been bombed for a week?’

‘Ye-ah!’ The boy looked shocked that Margot could doubt him. ‘Me and our Alf ‘ave got all the places and times of the bombin’s written down in a book wot a Yank give us. The aeroplanes too. Do you want ‘im to fetch it, so as you can see for yaself?’

‘There’s no need, I believe you. Thank you for your help. Here are two sixpences,’ she said, placing two small silver coins into the boy’s grubby hand. ‘One for you and one for Alf.’

‘Thank you, Missus.’ The boy held out his hand to show Alf the bounty. ‘Reckon Gerry ain’t gunna waste bombs on somewhere what’s already bin flattened.’ With that the boy ran off to join his brother, who was still holding the football.

Leaving the bus at Lancaster Place, Margot crossed the Strand and walked down to the theatre. The windows in the doors and the glass in the poster cabinets were smeared with a fine film of grease. Dust had settled in the corners like snowdrifts and the sills were thick with what looked to Margot like ash. With so much traffic going up and down the Strand there was bound to be dirt. And if there was no one to clean them… Apart from being laced in a film of London grime, the theatre