My Beloved Son

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘He had a fight with his so-called friend,’ she said; ‘a man called Mick Smith. Apparently the reason he was anxious to go to that party was to see this fellow’s sister, Carrie.’ She raised her eyes and looked at Lizzie as she said slowly, ‘He’s in love with her and, from what I can gather, always has been. They were brought up together, this Smith family and him. There’s another sister called Janet. She’s a bitch of the first water, a common slut, everything that’s cheap. Joe must have got on the wrong side of her when she was likely making a pass at him…Anyway, she spilled the beans about—’ She stopped speaking and bit on her lip and lowered her head again, and Lizzie said, ‘Well, about what?’

  ‘She said that the brother and sister, this girl Carrie and Joe’s friend, had…well, been at it for years, ever since they were young.’

  ‘At it?’ Lizzie’s lips seemed to have sprung away from her teeth. ‘You mean…’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I mean. And the shock was too much for Joe. He went outside and this Mick Smith followed him. There was a commotion and when I got into the garden they were rolling on the ground and the other men were trying to separate them. But it didn’t seem to be the brother that knocked the stuffing out of Joe; it was one of the other fellows. He went punch-drunk, I mean Joe did, and when he hit this man, naturally the fellow went for him.’

  ‘Well, well!’ Lizzie lowered herself onto a stool by the side of the table. ‘Poor Joe,’ she said. ‘But these things happen; it isn’t unheard of.’

  Maggie glanced at her aunt, for her attitude seemed now to be different from what it had been a moment ago when she had first given her the news, and the reason for it was in her next words: ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that should clear his mind of anything transpiring in that direction. I always knew there was something worrying him, and this has been it.’

  ‘Not quite, Aunt Lizzie.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, not quite. The other bit of news I’ve got for you is even more startling. Our Corporal Joe Jebeau isn’t just Corporal Joe Jebeau, he happens to be Sir Joseph Jebeau.’

  There followed a long pause before Lizzie said, ‘What?’

  ‘You heard what I said: Sir Joseph Jebeau.’

  Lizzie now scrutinised Maggie through a narrowed gaze and when she was about to speak Maggie put in, ‘And don’t say, you’re joking or, who are you kidding, or, have you been drinking? He’s a Sir and this Smith family were workers on his estate, or that of his cousin before he died. He was shot, apparently, just after the war began, at the same time as this Smith family’s father, who was the groom or gamekeeper or such. It’s all very vague. There was another heir to the title but he died when he was young, I understand; and their father before them was killed in an accident.’

  ‘Dear God!’ The words were soft like the amen at the end of a prayer. Then Lizzie turned and looked towards the door leading into the sitting room and when she again faced Maggie she said, ‘He’s got nobody, then?’

  ‘Oh yes. I asked Mr Smith, during the evening, about his mother, who apparently had brought him to this estate in Northumberland when her husband died. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it, but what I did get from him was that she is alive, and still living there; and Mr Smith’s sister, the eldest one, looks after her.’

  ‘His mother alive and he never goes near her…never goes near the place? There’s something fishy there.’

  ‘Yes, I should say there is. But it isn’t any of our business.’

  ‘I don’t know so much.’

  ‘Aunt Lizzie—’ Maggie looked straight into the faded blue eyes and she said quietly, ‘stop hoping, stop planning, because whereas before the gulf might have been jumped by friendship or compassion, not even love could get him across it now. You follow me, Aunt Lizzie?’

  Lizzie drew her chin into her neck before she said, ‘I hear you, girl, but I don’t follow you.’

  Ten

  Len Forbister leant over the counter towards Maggie and, his voice low, he said, ‘He’s settled, and not afore time. My God! You could die in this bloody place afore they’d let a doctor come to you.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Maggie’s face looked blank as she asked the question.

  ‘Well, as far as I can gather he’s got concussion, his shoulder’s out, and a couple of ribs are broken. How he ever managed to get down from your place on his bike I’ll never know. And I didn’t know there was anything seriously wrong with him till this morning, when I couldn’t waken him. I got a shock, I can tell you.

  ‘When I brought the WO and we got him round the only thing he would say was he fell off his bike. Some bloody fall, that, if you ask me. And another funny thing: when I went to tell that Sergeant Smith what had happened to Joe—I understand he was a lifelong pal of his—the fellow just stared at me, and out of one eye because the other one’s bunged up. And his lip was split into the bargain. When Jack Bisley quipped him about it the fellow looked at him as if he could kill him. But he answered me quite civilly, said he was sorry, but that was all. Then he turned round and got on with the job.

  ‘Look, Lemon’—Len bent still further towards her—‘you know more about this than meets the eye. Bernstein tells me he rode out of the camp with him on Christmas Eve and he was making for your place. But what I understood before I went on leave was that he was going with Sergeant Smith for a kind of family reunion. He didn’t say exactly that; you know Joe, a clam is wide open compared with him. But that’s the sort of impression I got, because this Sergeant Smith and him seemed to have known each other for years.’

  Maggie was saved from having to answer immediately by the demands to be served of other men further along the counter, and as there was only Peggy on duty with her she went about her business for the next five minutes. But when at last she returned to where Len was still standing with a cup of tea in his hand, she looked across at him and said briefly, ‘It’s as he says, he fell off his bike.’

  ‘Oh, Lemon.’

  ‘Oh, Corporal.’ She mimicked him.

  Then laughing, Len said, ‘All right, have it your own way. You know something?’ He poked his head towards her and in a low voice muttered, ‘I wouldn’t mind having you beside me in a tight corner.’

  He turned and left the counter, and she called softly after him, ‘Corporal.’ And when he turned back to her she said, ‘Let me know how he is. And see if I may pop in, will you?’

  ‘Will do.’ He nodded at her, then said again, ‘Will do.’

  For the first three days Joe slept a lot. His mind was hazy and every time he attempted to think clearly his headache increased. Some part of him was glad to be lying at rest away from the bustle of the camp, away from the labs. Oh yes, away from the labs, for as the MO had done, so would they have said, ‘How did you come by this lot?’

  And he would have answered, ‘I fell off my bike.’

  The words sounded inane even to himself and they seemed to be the only ones he had spoken for days. He didn’t want to talk because talking was the outcome of thinking and, oh God, he didn’t want to think!

  But after the third day the more he tried to suppress his thinking the more it rose to the surface of his mind, and again, as if looking at a film, incidents from the past followed one another in front of his closed lids. The actors in the film were always the same two people, and at night-time they assumed life-size proportions and faced him from the bottom of the bed, even talking at him, as last night when Carrie had said, ‘I tried to tell you, I tried to make you understand,’ and Mick said, ‘You had plenty of warnings of how things stood but, being you, you would never face up to reality; you still believed in Santa Claus.’

  That last was Mick’s voice from the past. It surged up from the Christmas Eve of his fifteenth birthday when Mick had ruffled his hair and said, ‘You’re a funny one. You know, I think you still believe in Santa Claus.’

  What had elicited that remark he didn’t know; he only knew now that he was sick. The sickness
didn’t only appertain to his bruised body, it was in his heart, but more so in his mind, because he had the strong desire to retreat into the silence that he had been introduced to when he inherited the title.

  He lay for two weeks in the sick bay. Maggie visited whenever she could, and no-one in the bay or in the NAAFI chipped her about her attention to him. But towards the end of the second week, the nursing orderly stopped her as she was leaving the ward. ‘I notice he speaks to you, miss,’ he said, ‘but we can hardly get a word out of him. It’s a nod or a shake of the head most times. He seems to have difficulty in answering the MO. Has he always been like this?’

  She could have replied, ‘He’s a quiet sort of fellow, reticent,’ but what she said was, ‘I think it’s the effect of the accident.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. Anyway, he’s for out next week and sick leave, after, likely…’

  The following afternoon, after having struggled up to the cottage in a blizzard, Maggie had hardly got through the door before she said to Lizzie, ‘He’s due for sick leave; will you have him here?’

  ‘Why do you ask such a damn silly question? Of course I’ll have him here. Where else would he go, by the sound of things? Anyway, how is he? And get those things off, you’re wringing.’

  ‘Better, I should say, at least in one way. But he hardly opens his mouth. It’s yes or no, or I’m all right, but he’s never volunteered a word on his own since he went in there.’

  A short time later as they both sat before the fire drinking bowls of broth, Lizzie suddenly asked, ‘What do you expect to get out of this, girl?’

  When Maggie didn’t immediately answer, Lizzie went on, ‘You said the other night the gulf was so wide that it couldn’t be breached, and in your own mind you’ve made yourself sure of this. So I ask you again, what do you expect to get out of it?’

  ‘The pleasure of his company.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Lizzie spluttered on a spoonful of broth; then wiping her mouth, she said almost angrily, ‘That isn’t like you. When we’ve done some plain speaking, as we have on many occasions, you’ve always given the impression there’ll be no half loaves for you. If you couldn’t have the real thing, then there’d be no substitute; you’d faced up to the fact that men, being what they are, rarely look below the skin.’ She paused and sighed, then ended, ‘It’s strange; I’ve never seen you like this before.’

  ‘I’ve never been in love before.’

  Lizzie slowly put her bowl down on the side table and looked at the young woman sitting opposite her. She was fat, but not as fat as she had been; the way she wore her hair did nothing to enhance her, nor did her uniform; but the quiet sadness that was expressed on her countenance seemed at this moment to make her beautiful. Lizzie leaned forward and put her hand gently on her knee, saying, ‘I’m sorry, lass.’

  ‘I know you are, Aunt Lizzie’—Maggie covered the blue-veined one with her own hand—‘but there’s no need to worry about me; I’ve…I’ve known from the beginning it can come to nothing. I’m not one for deluding myself, you know that. There hasn’t been much chance, has there?’ She laughed and although the sound was without bitterness it caused Lizzie to close her eyes. And Maggie went on, ‘I know a form of happiness when I’m with him; just to be near him is enough. I can’t explain it to myself, the feelings he arouses in me; I only know I’d be quite content to go on as we are for the rest of my life. But that has as much chance of happening as of Hitler following Hess and telling us he’s sorry for all the trouble he’s caused…He’s an attractive fellow, Aunt Lizzie, and he’s not going to escape; he’ll get over this last affair, or his first one—I don’t know which it was—but somebody else’ll come on the horizon and they’ll have advantages that I haven’t got.’ She moved her head slowly. ‘And that’ll be that. Anyway, I think if the war were to end tomorrow he’d just walk off. You see, Aunt Lizzie, I’ve faced up to these things; I’m past the time when I thought miracles could happen and ugly ducklings could turn into swans.’

  ‘You’re not ugly.’ Lizzie’s voice was rough, and Maggie smiled at her faintly as she said, ‘Well, that’s some consolation. But you know, I would rather be ugly, Aunt Lizzie, than just plain. There’s a WAAF down in the camp, she’s got a face almost like a gargoyle, yet she makes it with the fellows because she happens to be about five feet seven, with a figure like nobody’s business. You can get away with murder if you’re slim.’ Her smile widened.

  ‘Well, it’s up to you, isn’t it? You should diet more.’

  Maggie got to her feet, saying, ‘I’ll tell you something, Aunt Lizzie. If I eat less than I’ve been doing these past few months I’m going to lose the use of my legs.’

  ‘That’s daft; there’s limits.’

  ‘Well, you can’t have it all ways; either you have me delicate and slim, or healthy and fat. The reverse is generally the case, but I’m an obstinate cuss.’

  ‘You can say that again. Anyway, to get back to the point; you can tell him his bed’s ready for him. I’ll put him in your room.’

  ‘Thanks, Aunt Lizzie. But there’s one thing more I would ask of you and that is, don’t talk about me to him…because it won’t do any good.’

  They looked at each other and Lizzie sighed, but she said nothing.

  Eleven

  ‘Look, lad, why don’t you talk any more?’

  ‘I don’t seem to have anything to say, Mrs Robson.’

  ‘Call me Lizzie; it’s easier, and you don’t need to have anything important to say in order to talk, to have a bit of a chat. Is there something on your mind?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t want to tell me about it?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Well, fair enough. But that still leaves the weather and what’s on the wireless, and the war.’ She made a sound like a giggle now as she ended, ‘All W’s.’

  Joe smiled faintly and as he looked at her there stirred in him a desire, a faint desire to do as she asked and to talk, talk about what was on his mind and what was under his mind, deep in the dark recesses where his mother lay staring at him; and about…the other thing. And if he could talk to anyone, he knew it was to this woman. He couldn’t have talked to Maggie about it; no, not to Maggie. And now he was carrying another burden, forever. While doing his square-bashing and ramming a bayonet into a bag of straw, he had experienced no murderous desire, but now he knew what it was to feel the overpowering urge to kill, for that urge had been in the forefront of his mind when his hands had gone round Mick Smith’s throat.

  Lying in the little bedroom upstairs, the camp seeming to be a thousand miles away and war taking place on another planet, he wished fervently that he was anywhere else but in this quiet backwater. London, Coventry, any other place in the country where the bombs were playing havoc, or on some front facing an enemy, someone he could shoot at and who could shoot at him. That in the end was more important, that someone could shoot at him, because death seemed to be the only means of escape from his thinking. Except the quiet. If he could go right into the quiet he would find peace, because in there, there was no need to talk and no need to listen.

  Once or twice during the past week he had almost escaped into it, but when you were living with someone like Lizzie, you couldn’t entirely ignore them, because it appeared to be the height of bad manners, if not of ingratitude. He didn’t have the same feeling concerning Maggie, because in a way he wanted to escape from Maggie, too; she knew too much about him now, for she had met Carrie and witnessed his humiliation.

  There was another thing beginning to trouble him, and it was so alien to what his attitude had been over the past two years. Now, he failed to understand why the desire was strong in him to go home, back to the house. When he thought about the house he didn’t see his mother in it; he only saw himself walking up the drive and in through the front door and Mary, Mary Smith greeting him. It was a troublesome thought for he knew it was the last thing he would ever do.

  He had been back in the labs two
days when the thin wire that kept his mind from sinking into the silence snapped.

  His sense of relief had been almost overwhelming when he found out that Mick was no longer on the station and had returned to Cranwell. He had got over the first day of teaching pretty well, and the second day went smoothly too. In the evening there was to be another camp concert. It was being put on by a local group from the town. Len had tried to persuade him to come along, but he declined, saying he was going to read up some new stuff for tomorrow’s lessons.

  He was sitting on the side of his bed, a notebook on his knee, endeavouring to concentrate, but his mind kept jumping from one thing to the other. One of the lab sergeants had said to him earlier in the day, ‘I don’t know why you don’t take up Morse; you can do it in your spare time and you would get promotion that way, out of this lot.’ He didn’t want promotion but he would like to get away from this lot. Yes, yes, he would, away to some place quiet.

  There were half a dozen of his room-mates sitting round the stove. Their chatter and occasional bursts of laughter irritated him and the room became suffocatingly hot, fuggy. He’d be better sitting in the corporals’ room off the NAAFI. He rarely made use of the room because it was usually packed, but he reasoned that tonight most of them would likely be at the concert.

  He gathered up some loose sheets of paper from the bed, put them in his notebook, then put on his uniform jacket and greatcoat and went out. He had to pass the men at the stove, and although they turned and looked at him, no-one spoke; they had given up trying to make conversation with him. All except Len.

  Outside, the air was sharp and caught at his throat. He looked up into the sky. It was patterned with stars. He thought a silly thought: I could walk to you; if I kept on I could walk to you, and once among you I would write star-spangled poetry. When his shoulders gave a sudden jerk he almost stumbled.