by Annie Groves
‘He could have been called out on a UXB call, and that’s why he isn’t here,’ Sam felt bound to point out.
May gave her a surprised look. ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear you defending him, not after the way you were with him the last time we were here.’
‘I’m not, I’m just saying that he could have been called out.’
‘Mmm, well, Lynsey won’t take too kindly to coming second place to some bomb, and she won’t take too kindly either to you perhaps knowing more about what he’s doing than she does, so if you want my advice you’ll keep mum about him and his bombs.’
Sam opened her mouth to tell May that she didn’t need her warning and then closed it again as she saw her brother leading Hazel onto the dance floor, and not for an energetic dance either but for a romantic slow number. May had obviously seen it too because she gave Sam a meaningful nudge in the ribs.
‘Well, it certainly looked like you enjoyed your birthday, Hazel,’ Alice teased their corporal later than evening when they were all in the dormitory getting ready for bed. ‘Only I hope that if you and Sam’s brother become an item you don’t start showing her favours,’ she added with a grin.
Sam didn’t know which of them looked more embarrassed, herself or Hazel, but Alice refused to take pity on them continuing chirpily, ‘Going to write to you, is he?’
‘Alice …’ May objected
‘I was only asking. No harm in that, is there?’
‘Russell did ask me if he could keep in touch,’ Hazel confided to Sam a bit later in a quiet whisper. ‘I told him all about my navy chap and we agreed that we’d both enjoyed each other’s company, so I said there was no harm in us being chums.’
‘I can’t wait to write and tell Mum.’
‘No. Promise me you won’t do that,’ Hazel begged her, looking alarmed. ‘At least not yet. It’s too soon … I mean, we’ve both agreed that we’re just going to be friends.’ She was almost falling over herself in her desperation to prove there was nothing between them but Sam wasn’t in the least bit deceived.
‘It looked like Russell had more than friendship in mind when I saw him kissing you good night,’ Sam told her mischievously.
‘You saw that? Don’t you dare go telling the others. I really liked him, Sam,’ she added huskily, ‘but it is too soon …’
‘He’s a fly boy,’ Sam reminded her, ‘and they don’t like wasting time.’ Her expression clouded as she remembered what Russell had told her about the deaths of his friends.
As though she guessed what was going through her mind, Hazel squeezed her hand comfortingly.
‘He’s going to write and let me know when he’s next got leave and we’re going to try to meet up somewhere – away from Liverpool.’
‘I hope it does work out,’ Sam told her, and meant it.
EIGHTEEN
‘So you’re not coming to church this morning then, Sally?’
Sally shook her head.
‘It would do you and the kiddies good,’ Doris tried to persuade her.
Still Sally said nothing. She hadn’t spoken in anything other than monosyllables since Frank had come back on Friday evening to tell them that it was true and that Ronnie was dead.
Doris had wanted to stay with her that night but Sally had refused.
‘Sally, I know how much the news has upset you, but sitting here isn’t going to help. When did you last have something to eat?’
Sally didn’t want to eat or sleep or talk to anyone; if she didn’t then maybe she wouldn’t have to accept the news in the telegram. And maybe just so long as she refused to accept it then somehow Ronnie could be alive.
‘Come on, you know how you love to sing. It will do you good.’
Sally’s mouth twisted with pain. Ronnie had loved to hear her sing, he had often said so. How could she ever sing again now?
Doris was saying something but Sally had stopped listening, and it was a relief when her neighbour finally left.
The fire was almost out but stoking it up wouldn’t warm the icy cold out of her body and her heart. She looked over to where her sons were playing together: Tommy, who didn’t understand yet that he would never see his father again; Harry, the son Ronnie had never seen. Poor little Harry, who didn’t properly know what a father was, and never would know now.
She had no idea how long she had been sitting here in the kitchen, or how long it had been since Doris had come and then gone away again. She hadn’t gone to bed last night, nor the night before either, knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep and unable to face the room and the bed she and Ronnie had shared. Had he known he was going to die? How had it happened? Had he been drowned like those men in the ship, or had he been hacked to pieces like she had heard other men had been?
When Ronnie had first been taken POW she had tried not to read the papers with their awful stories about the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore from those wretchedly few people who had somehow miraculously escaped, but somehow she had been driven by a compulsion to do so. Until now she had blotted out the horror of what she had read, burying it deep inside herself, but now it was as though a locked door had burst open, spilling out all the fears and horror she had tried to push away. All she could hear inside her head was the screams of dying men; all she could see when she closed her eyes was the torture of human flesh. A sound – something between a groan and a sob – bubbled up inside her throat, but she swallowed it back. The boys mustn’t see her fear, they must never, ever see or hear inside their heads what she could see and hear inside hers. She must keep them safe from those horrors.
Doris had picked up some letters from the hallway and put them on the table. The top envelope just had her name scrawled across it. She knew what it was, and shivered. There would be no sympathy for her from the debt collector or the woman who employed him, just a demand for the money she still owed them. Money Ronnie had borrowed and would never now be able to give back. He had at least escaped from that worry and fear, which was more than she could ever do.
She could hear someone now, knocking on the back door, and was surprised to see that it was almost dinnertime. It felt like only a few minutes since Doris had left. How had so much time slipped by without her noticing? She wasn’t going to answer the door, though. If she stayed here, small and quiet with her sons, and didn’t let anyone in, then she could keep out all those things she didn’t want to know, just as if she didn’t go to bed and sleep she wouldn’t be tormented by those nightmare visions of Ronnie that kept on trying to creep into her mind.
The key turned in the lock, and the back door opened.
‘Dr Ross.’
He was holding her door key in his hand.
‘Mrs Brookes has told me about your husband. I’m very sorry.’
‘Doris told you about Ronnie?’ She must have given him her key as well.
‘It’s my doctor.’ Excitedly Tommy raced towards the visitor, whilst Sally looked past him and then said stiffly, ‘It’s a mistake. Ronnie won’t be dead. I know he won’t be.’
‘Mrs Walker …’
‘He can’t be dead,’ she protested as the doctor came towards her. ‘The War Office have got it wrong. I know what the Japs do to them – they kill – but that can’t have happened to my Ronnie …’
Tears had started to flood her eyes and pour down her face. Harry, sensing her grief, starting crying loudly whilst Tommy clung to the doctor’s leg, trying to be grown up and brave.
‘You’ve had a nasty shock.’ The doctor’s voice was calm and matter of fact. ‘But life has to go on, and your late husband would be the first to tell you that, I’m sure. You have two children to look after. When did you last have something to eat?’
Sally looked at him blankly. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Have the boys eaten?’
Now his words penetrated the wall she had tried to build round herself to numb the pain, immediately arousing her maternal instincts. Was he trying to accuse her of neglecting her boys?
‘Of co
urse they have.’
‘What did you have for breakfast, Tommy?’ he asked, ignoring her.
‘Porridge,’ Tommy told him.
Sally had stood up when he had started to question Tommy and now she was shaking with fury and bitterness.
‘You’d love to prove that I’m neglecting them, wouldn’t you? Well, I’m not.’ She bent down and picked up Harry, soothing him and kissing his forehead. ‘That’s why you’ve come here, isn’t it? Because you won’t rest until you’ve taken them away from me.’
‘I came round because Mrs Brookes told me about your husband and said that she was worried about you. She said you’d refused to go to church.’
‘Go to church? I should think I have refused to go, and have all them like Daisy asking me questions about my Ronnie, whilst her husband’s safe and sound. They’d all be talking about me behind my back. Besides, what have I got to give thanks for? It doesn’t bear thinking about what might have happened to my Ronnie … what he might have had to go through … and all for what? So that someone like you can take his sons away from their mother. And what does she mean by giving you my door key? She had no right.’
‘Your husband was a professional soldier, a brave man, loyal to his country and his friends, a man who chose to serve his country … a man his sons can be proud of. Do you think he would want to see you like this, or to hear such words? Isn’t it the truth that it would hurt and upset him? Wouldn’t he be relying on you to carry on as though he were still here, for the sake of his sons? They need you more than ever now. They need you to care for them and love them, and they need you to keep the memory of their father alive for them so that they can grow up knowing and loving him through you. You owe him that much surely, a man who has laid down his life for his country – you owe it to him and to his sons. You, his wife, the mother of his children – don’t you think he would expect—’
‘You can’t tell me what my Ronnie would think or want. You didn’t even know him.’
‘I know that he was a brave and a good man. I know that he went to war because he believed in certain things, in certain freedoms, and that he laid down his life for those things. I know too that all of us, every single one of us, owe it to him and to all those others like him, who have paid the ultimate price for those beliefs, to be as brave in spirit and deed as he was.’ The quiet voice rang with authority and conviction.
Sally looked at him, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘Why does he have to be dead?’ she wept. ‘Why? I can’t bear it …’
‘Yes you can, and you must for your boys’ sake. The human spirit has an infinite capacity to endure, no matter how much we may be called upon to suffer.’
Something in his voice broke through Sally’s grief, reminding her that he had lost not just his wife but his sons as well.
‘I couldn’t bear that,’ she told him as though she’d already spoken her thoughts to him. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose my sons as well.’
‘Why don’t I put the kettle on and make us both a cup of tea?’
Sally’s eyed widened at the thought of the doctor performing such a humble task, and in her kitchen when he must be used to so much better.
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she told him roundly. ‘I’ll do it.’
She was filling the kettle when she heard him saying quietly, ‘My boys would have been five and three now. Your Tommy reminds me a bit of Euan.’
‘I heard that it was a bomb,’ Sally said uncertainly, not sure whether she should make any response.
‘Yes. A direct hit on the house in London where my wife and children were living.’
‘London? But …?’
‘My wife was from London. I met her when I was working in a hospital down there. I’d made arrangements for her and the children to be evacuated to the country, but she hated living there. Without telling me beforehand she went to live in London with her cousin. They’d always been close, and she said that he needed someone to run the house for him – he was an artist. It took a direct hit two weeks after she’d moved in. They … Andrea and her cousin were killed outright, and Euan too. Niall …’ His voice caught betrayingly. ‘It was for the best that he was taken too. His injuries … Sometimes life seems very cruel in the way that she doesn’t spare us the pain of knowing what our loved ones have suffered, and I know that that is how you are feeling now, but believe me, it won’t always be like that. I was on my way to see Fleur when the bomb hit, so I was able to see Niall in the hospital. The poor little chap was so badly injured but he still recognised me. I felt he’d been waiting for me to get there before he could go. He died in my arms.’
Sally gave a small sob, unable to endure hearing any more. And if she couldn’t bear to hear it, then how must this man who had been that child’s father feel?
‘How do you bear it?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t … I can’t … Sometimes my work allows me to escape from it.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You’re asking me questions that no one else has asked, and compelling me to answer them with the kind of honesty I find it hard to face. The truth is that … The truth is that I don’t think I shall ever be able to bear the pain and the guilt of not being able to protect my children. All I can do is hope to be able to live with it.’
‘Why must such dreadful things happen?’ Sally asked him emotionally.
‘I wish I knew. I wish too that I knew how to stop them from happening, but what I do not wish is that I knew how to stop us from hurting when they do happen, because that is how we know we are human and that we care.’
Sally digested what he had said. ‘It’s not just that Ronnie’s dead. It’s thinking about what they might have done to him,’ she explained.
‘I know.’
‘I can’t bear to think of him … suffering … after all that he’d already been through. And I keep on thinking about those poor men in that ship, knowing they was going to drown and then them that escaped being shot in cold blood.’
‘War is a cruel and bloody business.’
They looked at one another in mutual silence, and Sally felt as though something tight and hard and icy cold inside her was somehow relaxing its numbing grip on her, allowing life to seep back into her, slowly, painfully, but at the same time bringing with it a tentative recognition of a fellow sufferer and the realisation that she was not after all alone.
‘Sally, it’s only me, Doris …’
Sally’s head snapped round as both of them turned towards the door. ‘Oh, you’re still here, Dr Ross. I didn’t expect …’
Why, when it was Doris who was responsible for him being here, did she feel so guilty, as though somehow she was involved in something wrong and illicit, Sally wondered.
‘I was just about to leave, Mrs Brookes.’
‘Yes … thank you for taking the trouble to come round, Dr Ross.’
Sally couldn’t look at him, the feeling that they were co-conspirators, in something secret that they needed to protect, refusing to go away.
She could hear Doris talking to him as she escorted him to the front door, the boys were playing together once again, the fire burning, everything on the surface just as it had been before he had arrived, and yet Sally knew that the reality was that deep down within herself something vitally important had changed irreversibly and for ever.
‘Feeling a bit better now, are you, love?’ Doris asked solicitously when she came back into the room. ‘That’s the spirit. Why don’t you and the boys come up and have a bit of dinner with us? I’ve got Molly and Frank, and her dad and the kiddies coming round, and I’ve got a good-sized chicken cooking. Molly’s auntie sent it up from the farm at Nantwich, so there’ll be plenty to go round.’
Sally nodded. She wasn’t hungry; the very thought of food blocked her throat and made her feel sick, but the boys needed to eat, and something told her that it would be safer for her to be with others instead of alone with her own thoughts.
NINETEEN
It was funny how it took only one thing t
o change, for others not really related to it to change as well, Sam reflected tiredly but happily as she made her way past the stores – until recently the cause and the scene of so much anger for her, and so much misery for poor Mouse. It seemed almost impossible to imagine now that such a very short time ago she had been on the point of requesting a transfer, so convinced had she been that she did not fit in and that she could not make a decent contribution to the war here in this posting. It was true that she would never be able to forget – or to forgive – the cruelty that had led to Mouse taking her own life, nor to regret that she had not been able to do something to prevent that tragedy and waste, but her alienation from the other girls, and the bleakness and despair she had felt had all miraculously been dissolved by her involvement in her new duties. Whoever it was who had put her forward for those duties – and she had a pretty shrewd idea she knew who that was now, the corporal having semi let the cat out of the bag by telling her that he had heard that ‘someone’ who had seen her at work and had felt she would be perfect for the job, had urged the major to give her a chance – had done her the best kind of favour.
There wasn’t a morning now when she didn’t wake up looking forward to the day ahead, and the challenges she knew it would bring. She and the Bentley had acknowledged a grudging respect for one another, and she was beginning to be able to interpret the meaning of at least some of the major’s absorbed silences as he studied various bomb sites, and to understand how proud he was of the men under his command for their record not just of bomb disposal but also for their calmness and discipline under pressure.
