Gull Island

by Grace Thompson

  ‘Were you scared, Luke?’ Richard asked when he was told about the day he was wounded. Here truth slipped swiftly away and Luke shook his head.

  ‘Too busy to be afraid,’ he told the boy. ‘We had a job to do and we just got on with it.’

  Why couldn’t he admit to being terrified? Why did he have to lie? The fear had been mind-searing although it had quickly subsided once Martine had found him. But when it fled, it left in its place the guilt. The unforgettable truth was that he had panicked and lost all ability to obey orders, or even to hear or understand them. The shame for his weakness he now covered with lies, even to young Richard.

  Perhaps it was the same with others? Guilt making them reply to the inevitable questions with platitudes? He couldn’t believe he had been the only one to show such a lack of strength, but he would never talk about it so would never know.

  The business of secondhand books continued to grow due almost completely to the work of his partner, Jeanie. The shop was becoming known to collectors and other dealers and postal requests were met with increasing success. Jeanie had done a wonderful job. She had remarried during his absence and her husband came into the shop to help on the days he wasn’t working.

  Although Luke spent his days in the shop or travelling to buy stock, he was still unsettled. The shop seemed to run without his help and after a few months, he once more arranged for Jeanie to manage without him and set off again for France. He carried with him the watch he had bought in 1917, a Christmas present for Roy, who had been killed at Verdun.

  To find Roy’s grave had become less important and he doubted if he would bury the watch with his friend as he had once planned. That had been the idea of a silly young man, and after his brief experience of war, that epithet no longer described him. But there wasn’t anything else more important for him to do.

  It took several weeks to find Roy’s grave and when he had done so he still didn’t want to go home. No one missed him while he was away. The business continued to succeed. There wasn’t even anyone who expected him to write, apart from Jeanie so there was no reason for him to go back. He went instead to find the people who had helped him after he had been wounded.

  They hadn’t moved from the house where they had sheltered him and were delighted at his return. To his surprise he felt a flood of real affection at seeing Martine again. Large, untidily dressed and laughing, she ran across the yard to meet him. There was no false formality to leave him in any doubt that she was very pleased to see him again. Her lively, happy face was creased into smiles and her low, throaty laughter filled the air.

  ‘You remembered us?’ she said. ‘Papa. Par ici vite! The English boy, he remember us!’

  She hugged him and there was a sense of ‘coming home’, which he had rarely experienced since early childhood. Having no one who cared about him made her pleasure in his company very valuable and she persuaded him to stay, for a few days, then a week, then longer. Her father was the proud recipient of Roy’s watch.

  Martine was a widow, her husband having been killed during the first months of the war. Although she was in her late thirties, she had no children.

  ‘We owned a café, my ’usband and me,’ she told him on one of their many walks. ‘It is near the beach at Calais and when my ’usband die, I leave the place and come to look after Papa.’ She took his hand and asked pleadingly, ‘The café, you will come with me, yes? To see if perhaps there is something left?’

  Luke went with her one day, travelling by farm carts, buses and for much of the time walking. All around there were remnants of the battles that had taken place. Metal rusting and distorted so they often had difficulty recognizing its original shape or purpose. The fields were no longer green, but surprisingly the disturbance of the earth had encouraged thousands of dormant poppy seeds to germinate and grow. Many thought it was the blood of the thousands who had died there. The buildings left standing were pitted with shell-fire, some still occupied by families with nowhere else to go.

  The beach, once a playground for laughing children, had a sombre mood, echoing with memories of the dead. The devastation was horrifying but after several hours they no longer wept for the tragic losses, they were just numbed by the extent of them. When they reached the part where Martine expected to see the café, there was nothing.

  ‘Where is it?’ she asked, throwing her arms wide in theatrical despair. ‘Once, my little café stood ’ere.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re confused,’ Luke said. ‘Trees uprooted, the streets reduced to rubble, it must all look very different from when you were last here.’ He led the way along the rubble-strewn path along the top of the beach and Martine followed doubtfully.

  But Luke was right. A short distance further on they found the building, battered but still standing. The name, Café de Jacques was still readable on the door. They even found the piano in a back room and joyfully, Martine struck a few chords on it.

  ‘Oh, Luke, we will soon have it open for business again. You will stay with me, will you not?’

  He answered a fervent ‘Yes!’ Here he was needed, there was so much to do. At home, no one waited.

  Their closeness during the week in which she had hidden him had made them friends. On their reunion the feeling had been revived without a moment of hesitation. Martine had been waiting for him. The visit to see if her café was still there had been delayed until he returned and could go with her; he knew that with certainty now, although she had not actually said so.

  Hidden in the attic room of her home as the war began its final stages, they had spent long hours talking and getting to know each other. Now, renewing and building up that companionship, learning about each other, exchanging news of the time between was a delight. They were as natural and honest with each other as if they had been friends for many years, with even their few differences respected and accepted with ease.

  Martine was always able to see the positive side of things; laughter seemed to bubble up in her throat. Her husky voice made light of even the most frustrating problems and she sang constantly. To a depressed spirit like Luke, she was a tonic.

  Her grey-flecked hair, short and cut like a boy, and the casual clothes she wore that also seemed intended for the opposite sex didn’t deter from her feminine attractions. That she was a woman was never in doubt. To Luke she was a perfect companion. Their initial closeness had lasted little more than a week but the briefness of the acquaintance was less important than its intensity.

  Luke even tried to make love to her. He saw nothing but loneliness facing him if he returned to his previous life; days spent in the shop and silent hours on the beach to fill the long and empty weekends. To keep Martine it must surely be necessary to share her bed?

  His attempt at forming a sexual union had been a failure for them both. Fortunately it didn’t seem to matter. Martine found it an excuse for laughter in which he joined with relief.

  ‘Cela ne fait rien, cherie, it does not matter! That you are my friend, that is important. Everything else is nothing.’ She smiled wickedly and added, ‘And now we have the cigarette, yes?’

  They hugged a lot and at first Luke found it embarrassing and tried to pull away but Martine insisted and gradually he relaxed into a partnership in which they could both show their natural need of each other’s friendship. It was a friendship teetering on the kind of love shared by a man and a woman but never quite succeeding in crossing that haphazard line that changes friends into lovers.

  Finding the building less damaged than expected, they both worked to get the café reopened over the next few weeks. Luke began repairs and Martine spent hours at offices gaining the necessary licences and sanctions. Surprisingly, a number of Martine’s old customers returned to celebrate with her on the day they reopened. Sadly, it was mostly the elderly or the sick and wounded. All the young men had gone.

  By word of mouth news of the opening of Café de Jacques had spread. They planned a really good first night and the local people helped by coming in dro
ves. They both played the piano so took it in turns to lead the singing and serve drinks and food. Few customers remembered how they got home.

  If anyone had asked Luke if he were happy he would have been surprised to find the answer was yes. He and Martine ran the café in leisurely contentment, sharing their lives their thoughts and their hopes but not a bed. He played the piano in their little bar each evening and the place attracted a regular clientele that became, for Luke, a substitute family.

  Weeks passed into months, months into years, and with the occasional brief visit to check on the shop, time passed in pleasurable contentment, their days filled with hard work but plenty of talk, music and a great deal of laughter.

  In 1922, the Carey family still lived in the house on the beach but the thrill of the dream come true, a house of their own, so wonderful in that first summer, had changed to despair. The house, seemingly such a safe harbour at the time they had been thrown into the street, was damp and falling apart. Mr and Mrs Carey were both sickly and the children were living half wild. It was only Richard, now ten, who kept them together, and fed.

  He rarely went to school and living so far away from the school he had once occasionally attended, the school inspector never quite caught up with him. The rest of the children went to the small village school much closer to their home but Richard had avoided being added to the register. Neither Mr nor Mrs Carey had made any effort to encourage him to go. They both knew how much they needed Richard and seemed unaware of their selfishness and short-sightedness where their quite remarkable son was concerned. The fact that they were expected to stay at school until fourteen was to his mind ridiculous. He was almost eleven and he had been working in one capacity or another since he was three. Keeping one step ahead of the inspector was a nuisance. Leaving school officially would make things simpler. Roll on September 1926, was his constant sigh.

  In the winter of 1926 disaster struck. The solemn-faced little Blodwen and her younger sister Meriel both became ill with what appeared to be a chesty cold. In days they were coughing and wheezing, struggling to breathe and by the time Mr Carey had persuaded a doctor to call at the house so far from his surgery, they were both seriously ill. Although taken to hospital, they both died.

  Richard was numb with shock but as self-appointed head of the family he couldn’t show it. His amusing little sister, who sat as a silent observer through all their trials and happy moments, was gone. He ached inside and the ache wouldn’t go away, whatever he tried, yet he knew he had to be the strong one and carry on with the daily battle to survive. But he envied Idris, the useless one, being cuddled and comforted by Mam, while he went on scraping together the means to feed them all.

  For weeks Mrs Carey sat in a chair unable to rouse enough enthusiasm to even cook a meal. Like an automaton, Mr Carey delivered his papers but left more and more of the work to Richard. Richard tried to persuade Idris to help but Mrs Carey’s arms would hold her golden boy and, seeing the comfort his mother gained from Idris, he gave up and rose earlier to fit even more tasks into his day.

  They were constantly hungry, yet his mother didn’t seem capable of dealing with the basic cooking. Again it was Richard, aged ten, who coped. Buying chips several times a week, riding the two miles home as fast as he could on a battered old bike, he delivered the slowly congealing food and made them all eat. Soup and baked beans from tins, plus the chips, kept them going, although his parents seemed thinner every time he looked at them. Gradually, through the summer of 1927, things returned to normal although, for Richard, the loss of his much-loved Blodwen was a constant void that nothing would fill.

  He was walking back to the beach pushing his bike one day, carrying packets of chips. As he passed the school, a lady called out to him. Instinctively he wanted to run. She was sure to ask why he wasn’t at school and he didn’t want that problem, but the bike had a puncture and he didn’t want to drop it and run home without it, so he waited while she approached.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Are you one of the children who live on the beach near Gull Island?’

  ‘I’m not a child,’ he replied defensively. ‘I work with my dad, have done these ages!’

  ‘Trouble with the bicycle?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing I can’t fix.’ He began to move away.

  ‘Your chips must be getting cold – I can give you a lift if you like. Come back and collect the bike later?’

  She was right about the chips. ‘OK.’

  She drove to the beach and avoided asking about his school attendance. She was curious about the boy. ‘My name is Miss Bell,’ she said. ‘I live in the cottage next to the school.’

  ‘I’m Richard,’ he told her. ‘We all live on the beach, because we like it,’ he added defiantly. He didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for them.

  She didn’t ask any questions but was horrified when she got out of the car and walked to his door. The place was nothing more than a hovel. How could they survive? The door stood open and a delicious smell of cooking emerged. ‘Mam’s cooking pigeon for pie tomorrow,’ Richard said proudly. ‘Marvellous cook, my mam.’

  Some of the younger children peered at her from the doorway and windows, shy at seeing their teacher there. Miss Bell waved to them and said hello to Mrs Carey, who appeared at the door and waved nervously, then she drove away, followed at a distance by the children.

  Several times over the following weeks she saw Richard and gradually coaxed him to talk. She emphasized his abilities then hinted that, if he were a better reader and had some help with maths, he might become something really clever – a businessman who could care for all his family and allow them to live without so many discomforts. She concentrated on reminders of how hard life was for his mother.

  He began to listen and after a few weeks went into her house, where she lived with her mother, and various lessons were begun. He managed to fit the work, which immediately fascinated him, into his busy days. Miss Bell was impressed by the speed at which he absorbed every new instruction and took great pleasure in his remarkable progress.

  The Careys had had no news of Barbara Jones and little Rosita. Richard thought of them often and wished Barbara hadn’t moved so far away. Mam would have been glad of her and Rosita these past months, he thought. He liked the idea of visiting the farm and pleaded with his father to take him there.

  ‘Too far, boy,’ Mr Carey said with regret. ‘Can’t spare the time. It’ll take a whole day to get there and then see her for only half an hour. Perhaps one day, when we’re rich.’ Being rich was a joke to Mr Carey, but not to Richard.

  ‘How long have we been living on the beach, Dad? It was when Rosita was born. I was wondering how old she is.’

  Mr Carey frowned, his face pale and blue-tinged, in spite of the outdoor life he led. ‘Let’s see, boy. Born in 1917 so she’d be five and going to school. Fancy that. Five years we’ve been here.’

  ‘I hope that farmer Prothero bloke is being good to them,’ Richard muttered.

  ‘Sure to be. They’ll be as happy as anyone’s a right to be, with good home-grown food and not having to worry where the next shilling will come from.’

  ‘But we don’t know, Dad. Please can we visit? I want to go there and see if she’s enjoying being a farmer’s wife. It’s hard work and she isn’t very big, our Barbara. He could be working her too hard.’

  Henry Carey had always doubted Barbara’s wisdom in returning to that farmer but there was nothing he could do about it, was there? That was always his attitude to problems; he wasn’t in the position to disagree with anything people wanted to do. Better to go the way events took you. Besides, fond as he was of her, Barbara wasn’t even family.

  Legally married they were and her old enough to cope with whatever life handed her. Staying with them in the house on the beach hadn’t been much of an alternative to marrying a farmer. Saying she would be happy and well looked after was almost as good as believing it, wasn’t it? A bit of pretence helped a fellow to sleep a
t night. But the niggle of fear for the girl and the baby returned after Richard’s spoken concern. He hadn’t met Graham Prothero but he’d heard unpleasant rumours about how his sickly and overworked first wife had died.

  Richard stepped off the train in the centre of the town and headed for the wholesalers. He had money in his pocket to pay for the week’s papers. It was the first time his father had trusted him with the money and he felt proud of the responsibility. Unconsciously his hand touched the right front of his coat. In an inside pocket the money jiggled in a satisfying way.

  The wholesalers had a counter stretching across the room and behind it, at two cluttered desks, sat two clerks. On one wall there were cubbyholes with numbers on them. He went to the one bearing his father’s number and climbed up to feel about on the wooden surface to see if there were any magazines for him to take back. There were only two, special orders, and he rolled them carefully and put them in his pocket.

  ‘Oi! Can you come and see to me? I’m in a bit of a hurry!’ he said cheekily to one of the clerks.

  ‘Wait a minute. Can’t you see we’re busy?’ one of the clerks said, pointing to the phone she had just picked up.

  ‘Oi to you then,’ he said to the other girl. ‘All I want is for you to take my money. Not too much trouble, is it?’

  He counted out the money when the girl came forward with the cash box and the ledger, and waited while she filled in a receipt. She took the money and then from outside came a squeal of brakes as a car skidded and then crashed into another, trying to negotiate a corner without giving way. Both girls went to the doorway and Richard’s hand slipped into the cash box and came out with a fold of notes.

  Boldly he stood with the two girls, a hand on the shoulders of each, stretching to do so, chatting about the stupidity of drivers who insisted on going too fast, making the girls laugh at his adult expressions, and when they had exhausted the subject and there were three customers waiting at the counter near the cash box, he waved at them, gave a final critical comment on the craze for motoring, and sauntered away. When he felt safe enough to stop and count the money, he had £25. A fortune! His savings were growing at an encouraging rate.