Pack Up Your Troubles Read Online Free PDF

that in doggie years. She watched him turn around and walk ahead of her to the front door where he waited. When she got to him, Connie reached down and patted his side before ringing the doorbell. ‘Silly old dog,’ she said softly.
    As the door opened and her mother stood on the step, Pip came to life, panting and jumping in the small porchway like a thing demented. ‘Connie!’ Gwen laughed as Pip’s joyful barks obviously delighted her. ‘What a wonderful homecoming Pip is giving you.’
    ‘Warm welcome my eye,’ Connie laughed. ‘He hasn’t even come to my call. He’s doing all that jumping about for your benefit.’
    Her mother smiled uncertainly. ‘Well, come on in, darling, let me look at you. I like your new hair.’
    ‘They’re called Victory curls,’ said Connie patting the back of her head. ‘I have to curl them up with Kirby grips every night and wear a scarf in bed but I think it looks quite nice.’
    ‘It certainly does,’ her mother enthused.
    Gwen Craig was small with high cheekbones and an oval face. Her hair was still dark but Connie could see a few grey hairs and she had tired eyes. It alarmed her to see that her mother had lost weight. Her clothes positively hung on her. Gwen had married Connie’s father Jim Dixon in 1919 when she was only eighteen and bore him two children, Kenneth, now twenty-three, and Connie aged twenty-one. 1936 was an eventful year. First she’d had Pip, then soon after their father had died after a long illness, and Kenneth had left home abruptly. Her father’s illness had sapped them of all their money and because they were living in a tithed cottage, Gwen and Connie would have been homeless if Ga hadn’t come to the rescue. In exchange for housework, Gwen and Connie moved in with her in her small cottage in the same village. A couple of years later, and much to Connie’s surprise, Gwen had married Clifford Craig, a man she had thought was only a nodding acquaintance. Their union had produced Mandy now aged six and the exact image of her mother. Gwen held out her arms and, dropping her case on the mat, Connie went to her.
    Behind her, a commanding voice boomed out of the sitting room. ‘Gwen? Is that Constance?’
    Connie grinned and ignoring her great aunt’s calls, she deliberately stayed in her mother’s warm embrace for several more minutes. ‘It’s sooo good to see you, Mum.’
    ‘And you too,’ said Gwen. ‘Where’s Emmett? I half expected him to be with you.’
    Connie shook her head. ‘I’m not with him anymore, Mum.’
    Her mother looked concerned.
    ‘It’s all right,’ Connie said quickly. ‘It wasn’t very serious and we lost touch soon after VE Day.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Gwen shaking her head sadly. ‘I thought he seemed like a good man.’
    Connie couldn’t argue with that. She had wanted Emmett to get in touch again but it never happened. She had eventually written to his last known address only to have her letter returned to her unopened. Someone had written in the top left-hand corner, ‘Unknown at this address’. Connie had been upset, of course, but what could she do? She had cried. She had gone over and over their last date in her mind, Saturday night at the pictures followed by a fish and chip supper on a park bench, but there was nothing to say why he hadn’t contacted her again. Maybe his mother had taken a turn for the worse, or, perish the thought, maybe she had died. Connie had no idea where she lived so there was little point in fretting about it. ‘Well, it’s all over now,’ she said again.
    ‘If that’s you, Constance,’ Ga called imperiously, ‘come in here where I can see you.’
    Gwen kissed her daughter and let her go, the two of them rolling their eyes in sympathetic unison.
    ‘Come on,’ her mother smiled, ‘or we’ll never hear the last of it.’
    Connie advanced but her mother caught her arm. ‘Shoes.’
    Connie bent to unlace her shoes. Pip watched her and Connie patted his side