by Anne Bennett
‘And has it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why then, it’s all fair sailing for you.’
‘Yes, yes it is. And now Bob wants me to keep an eye out for suitable houses in the Sutton Coldfield or Erdington area,’ Jenny said.
‘We’ll have to start planning your wedding pretty soon then,’ Peggy said. ‘I should think there’ll be a host of postwar weddings and you might have to get in quick.’
‘If you ask me, there’s altogether too much fuss made of a wedding,’ Gerry put in. ‘And far too much money spent on them.’
‘Will you listen to him?’ Maureen said. ‘Who asked you?’ The laughter swelled around the kitchen as Peggy gave her husband a push.
It was Saturday 30 December and Linda was changing beds and cleaning bedrooms, while Jenny was tackling a big wash in the kitchen. Geraldine came around later on Saturdays, with Linda and Jenny both at home, and Jenny could hardly begrudge her a break. She’d received a letter that morning from Bob and was in the happy mood his letters usually induced, because while she heard from him, she knew he was safe. She really needed to hear from him because since Bob had left after Christmas Day, her mother had gone on and on about a daughter’s duty to her mother and especially an unmarried daughter. Jenny knew what she was going on about and it was hard to take. She was affected by it and guilt had begun to stab at her, though Linda had told her not to be so stupid.
She wondered if she should go up and see Francesca that afternoon with Linda. She seldom went unless Bob was home, and felt bad about it. She’d been sure, at first, that his mother might have someone else in mind for her son, someone more in his social class, but Francesca seemed so genuinely pleased that they’d become engaged and had admired the ring over the tea-table at Christmas Day.
Francesca could have told Jenny she wanted nothing for her children but happiness. She could have told her of the stiff opposition both she and her husband had endured when they expressed a wish to marry. Malcolm’s parents had threatened to cast him out of the family, while Francesca, who’d met Malcolm while visiting England with her parents, had a fiancé back home, chosen for her by her father. The autocratic opposition only stiffened the young people’s resolve and they’d had a long and happy marriage: Francesca wanted the same for her own son and daughter.
But neither Linda nor Jenny did get to Francesca’s that afternoon, nor did Linda get the bedrooms finished, for just as she was tucking in the sheets on Norah’s bed, her eye was taken by the sight of Geraldine running down the road towards them. She was out in the raw winter’s day without a hat or coat on, and she had slippers on her feet. Jamie was in her arms similarly clad and little Rosemarie was galloping along by her side. In Geraldine’s hand was clutched a buff-coloured piece of paper.
Linda wondered if she should run down to the kitchen to warn Jenny, but then, she wondered, how did you prepare anyone for news like that? She knew only too well what the buff paper would say, that Geraldine’s husband Dan was either Killed in Action, or Missing Believed Killed, and when all was said and done, it usually meant the bloody same thing. She left the bedroom and made for the stairs.
Jenny, garbed in a coarse heavy apron, was in the process of hauling the clothes from the boiler into the sink using wooden tongs. The kitchen was full of steam and smelt of damp washing and soap flakes and she was startled when Geraldine pushed her way in through the back door. As soon as she took in her older sister’s dishevelled state and the crumpled telegram in her hand, she cried: ‘Oh, no! Not Dan?’
Geraldine didn’t answer. Jenny realised she probably couldn’t speak, but she ignored Jenny’s outstretched arms and rushed instead into the living room and her mother. Unmindful of her wet arms and damp front, Jenny gathered the frightened tearful children to her, and through the open door she watched her sister sobbing in her mother’s arms. Norah rocked her daughter and chanted, ‘There, my lamb, there, there. Don’t upset yourself like this. There, there.’
Never, Jenny thought, had her mother spoken to her in that soft loving tone, and never had she been held in her arms like that. Even as she comforted Dan’s children she felt an aching loss for her own mother’s love that had been withheld from her since the day of her birth.
She was glad to see Linda come in from the stairs. For a start it stopped her feeling sorry for herself, when really she should be feeling for her sister now without her husband and the children without a father. Dan had been a lovely man, a good husband and a loving father, and he would be sorely missed. Often Jenny had thought his personality was such that he’d prevented Geraldine becoming quite as bad as her mother and grandmother. When Geraldine talked things over with him, using her mother’s opinions, which she adopted as her own, he’d been able to make her see how unreasonable some of them were. Jenny had thought Dan had been very good for her sister and besides that, she’d liked him very much. Sudden hatred for the Germans who had ended Dan’s life rose up in her.
Linda’s eyes met those of Jenny’s above the children’s heads, and she mouthed the question, ‘Dan?’ though she knew it could be nothing else which could cause such distress.
Jenny gave a brief nod and indicating the children said, ‘Will you keep an eye on them? I’ll pop round and see Peter at the surgery. I think Geraldine could do with something to calm her.’ Geraldine’s gasping sobs and heartrending moans were frightening the shocked children, causing them to weep more too. ‘She’ll be ill if she carries on like this.’
‘Go on,’ Linda said. ‘The kids will be all right with me.’
Jenny knew they would because they both adored Linda, but as Jenny hurried along to the surgery, for it shut at twelve o’clock on Saturday, Linda took the children into the garden. It did no good, she thought, for them to witness their mother’s total collapse. Once outside she led them into the shed because the weather was fierce and, not knowing if Geraldine had explained anything to them, she told them gently of their daddy’s death while she held them both tight.
She continued to hold them till their tears were spent and then answered the questions Rosemarie asked. She understood the child’s anger and confusion. ‘We prayed to God every night for Daddy’s safety,’ she said in a tight little voice. ‘Me and Mammy and Jamie all together, and God didn’t even blinking well listen.’
‘It wasn’t God killed your daddy,’ Linda said. ‘It was another German soldier.’
‘It was God let him be killed.’
Linda was sketchy on theology, but she said she didn’t think God could have stopped it. He made people with a free will so that they chose their actions.
Rosemarie, like her cousin Eddie, was nine years old and had been in a Catholic school for four years, so she knew all about free will. ‘I know that,’ she said impatiently and went on, ‘but the priest said God is everywhere and can do anything, even move mountains – so why can’t He stop wars and keep my daddy safe? If He’s not going to listen to prayers, what’s the point of them?’
Linda was in water too deep for her. ‘God Rosemarie, I don’t know the answer to all those questions,’ she said. ‘You must ask your priest.’
But Rosemarie knew she wouldn’t. The priest would be shocked and would probably tell her mother, and then she’d be for it. It was no use asking her mother either; she’d only say Rosemarie should show obedience and not question the Mother Church, like she always did whenever Rosemarie asked her a question she couldn’t answer. She knew it was one of those questions she’d just have to file away to find out about when she was older.
But she knew now that she wouldn’t see her beloved daddy any more and neither would Jamie and he was only six. Normally her little brother drove her mad, but at that moment she felt a wave of tenderness for him and for her mother who cried in her grandmother’s arms as if she were a baby. She straightened her shoulders and said, ‘I think we’d better go back to the house now, Linda. It’s cold in here and I’m worried about Mammy.’
Heavily sedated, Geraldine lay o
n one of the beds in the boys’ old room. Jenny went to tell Maureen O’Leary what had happened and Linda took the children with her to tell Jan the bad news. Everyone was upset over it and wanted to know what they could do. Jan asked if she should have the children, but both Rosemarie and Jamie seemed loath to leave Linda’s side and Linda said it was probably best to leave it for now.
That evening it began to snow; the children were excited by it despite their sadness, but for the grown-ups it was another nuisance to put up with. ‘It probably won’t lie,’ Norah said.
But it did, and by the next morning, there were quite a few inches of firm snow underfoot and it was still coming down. Jenny was tired, she and Linda had talked long into the night and she had no great desire to rise early, but she’d heard Rosemarie and Jamie wake up and she crept into the room they were sharing with their mother. She needn’t have worried; Geraldine still lay sprawled on one bed in a drugged sleep while Rosemarie and Jamie lay whispering on the other.
She took them downstairs for breakfast, closely followed by Linda. They’d decided the previous night not to take the children to Mass; Linda would look after them while Jenny went. The priest had to be told anyway and Masses offered for the repose of Dan’s soul. Jenny kept going at home because of the children, but when she stepped out into the crisp winter’s morning she felt very depressed. It had been six months since the fantastic achievement of D-Day, considered a success despite the thousands killed or seriously injured, and yet they seemed no further forward and the death toll continued to rise.
She felt better when she got to church and let the genuine sympathy of her fellow parishioners wash over her. Geraldine, like her mother and grandmother before her, had not had much to do with the neighbours, but Dan had been friendly enough and everyone who knew him was saddened by his death. The priest promised to pop up and see Geraldine as soon as possible.
Back home the fire was lit and her breakfast almost ready. When Norah had got up, Linda had gone across to Geraldine’s house to fetch more clothes and the children’s Christmas presents, and Jamie lay on the mat before the hearth laying out his lead soldiers, while his sister was reading Black Beauty. The whole scene looked homely and welcoming, Jenny thought as she kicked the snow from her boots.
‘It’s still coming down then?’ Linda said.
‘’Fraid so.’
At her words, Jamie left his soldiers and crossed to the window. The lawn was covered in white and the snow lay thick on the privet hedge like icing on a cake. It covered the house roofs, the roads and pavements, and gilded the bare trees. Little of the snow was churned up, for as yet few people had stirred from their houses into the swirling storm. There was a muffled silence over everything. ‘We could make a snowman,’ Jamie said in a small voice.
‘Of course we can,’ Jenny said, forcing enthusiasm into her voice. ‘As soon as I’ve had breakfast.’
‘Snowman!’ Norah scorned from the chair by the fire. She glared at Jamie and snapped, ‘You talk of snowmen with your father barely cold?’
Jenny glared at her mother and then glanced across at Jamie whose eyes now brimmed with tears. She could have cheerfully strangled Norah, but she ignored her and spoke to Jamie. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I don’t think your daddy would mind at all. We’ll see if we can find a carrot for his nose, shall we?’
Jamie’s bottom lip trembled. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said dully and went back to his soldiers.
Over Jamie’s head Jenny’s eyes met those of Rosemarie as she raised them from her book to listen to the conversation. Jenny wondered what the child was thinking and she smiled at her, but Rosemarie didn’t smile back or say anything. She stared at her for a moment and lowered her head again.
Jenny went into the kitchen without another word and ate the breakfast Linda had ready for her. ‘Have you been up to check on Geraldine?’ she asked.
‘Yes, she’s sort of awake. Still groggy,’ Linda said. ‘I got her to have a cup of tea, but that’s all.’
‘I’ll go up and see her later,’ Jenny promised.
But before she was able to, there was a knock on the door and when she opened it Peter was on the doorstep with his doctor’s bag in his hand. ‘Hello,’ Jenny said, delighted to see him. ‘Did you say you’d call today?’
‘I didn’t know I would be,’ Peter said. ‘But I was called to Phelps’s farm because their land girl, Ruby, had slashed her leg quite badly and I thought I’d pop in and see your sister.’
‘I haven’t seen her since early morning,’ Jenny said. ‘Linda says she’s still pretty dopey.’
‘Good, good. Shall I go on up?’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘There’s no need,’ Peter said. ‘I know the way, but in this weather I could murder a cup of tea.’
‘OK,’ Jenny said, smiling at him. ‘I’ll see to it.’
It was a few minutes later when he joined them in the kitchen having exchanged a few words with Norah and the children as he passed through the living room. Norah had sniffed her disapproval at Jenny making tea for the doctor at all and then to offer it to him in the kitchen, which she said was the height of bad manners, but Jenny ignored her and Peter seemed remarkably at ease as he sat at the kitchen table and Jenny put his tea in front of him.
Actually he was glad to be in the kitchen for he wanted to know how the children were coping. ‘Well, on the whole,’ Jenny said. ‘They’re quiet. I mean, quieter than they once were, but they’re all right.’
‘And they haven’t cried since yesterday,’ Linda said. ‘Not that I’ve seen, any road, but they’ve been very near to it sometimes.’
‘You want to take their minds off it, if you can,’ Peter suggested. ‘The snow’s a nuisance for me, but kids love it. Have a snowball fight, or help them build a snowman.’
‘We would have done that,’ Jenny said bitterly, ‘but Mother said it wasn’t decent. I would have ignored her, but the children were upset.’
‘I might have expected a retort like that,’ Peter said angrily. ‘What good will it do those children to skulk around the house? They’ll have to learn to live without their father like many more, and it’s hard for them both, but they’re still children and all children love snow.’
Peter remembered how, at the Phelps’s farm, Sally and Charlie had been snowball-fighting when he arrived, together with the young German prisoner they seemed so fond of – and the contrast between the happy smiling faces of those children and the youngsters in this house, their pale faces pinched, was marked.
‘Sarah Phelps was asking about you all,’ Peter said at last. ‘She was very upset when I told her about Dan. She was at school with Geraldine, apparently.’
Neither Jenny nor Linda said anything; there was nothing to say. ‘She asked if you’d like to take the youngsters up to the farm today.’ he said. Sarah hadn’t exactly said that, but she did ask the doctor to find out if there was anything she could do to help and she said she’d be happy to look after the children any time.
‘I can’t possibly.’
‘The Phelps’s children tell me they’re going to make the biggest snowman in the world.’
Jenny remembered Jamie’s wistful face at the window. She’d love to take them up to the farm or anywhere out of the house, but it was impossible.
‘I couldn’t, I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I wish I could, but there’s Geraldine to see to now, as well as Mother.’
‘Think about it,’ Peter urged. ‘The snow could be gone by next week and if you could get ready now, I could run you all up.’
Jenny turned to Linda and said, ‘You could go up with them.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, go on – you know how they love you.’ But Linda wasn’t worried about the children, she was worried about a young German who had the power to turn her legs to jelly. She was frightened of being with him for the whole day, even while she longed for it, and she couldn’t understand herself. ‘No, no I couldn’t,’ she stammered.
Jenny’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes you could,’ she said, puzzled. ‘Go on, Linda. Those children need to be got away from Mother at least for today. I would have thought you’d be more sympathetic. After all, you’ve had more than a taste of it.’
There was nothing Linda could say in her defence. Afterwards she often thought that even if she’d blurted out the truth there and then, Jenny would have told her not to be so silly. She gave a sigh and said, ‘I’ll tell the children to wrap up warm,’ and her dejected figure left the room.
‘What’s the matter with Linda?’ Peter asked.
Jenny shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Something’s upset her, but I don’t know what,’ she confessed. ‘But I do know she liked Dan, so she’s maybe missing him too. Perhaps Mother had a go at her when I was at Mass earlier this morning. She didn’t say she had, but then she often doesn’t tell me things like that.’
‘Well, in that case it will do her good to get away for the day too,’ Peter said. ‘Geraldine will carry on sleeping, possibly to mid-afternoon. Try to get something inside her then – soup if she’ll take nothing else – and I’ll be along to see her tomorrow.’
‘Thank you,’ Jenny said. ‘You’re very kind.’
‘And you’re very strong, Jenny.’ Peter leaned across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Which is a good job, for now there’s another one reliant on you.’
And Jenny gave a sigh, knowing he was right.
NINETEEN
‘Have you been sledging before, Linda?’ Sam asked.
‘Hardly, unless you count riding a tin tray on a slope in Pype Hayes Park, and that was only on the couple of times it snowed enough to sledge on at all.’
But this was different. The sledge Max had built for the children from scrap wood was a masterpiece, built to carry two or even three people, if the riders were children. It had a slatted seat raised up from the runners that shone like steel and the sledge went like the wind over the tightly packed icy snow on the incline at the very edge of the farm that led down to the stream.
