by Karen White
“Not at all,” answered Susan. “It’s all for the war effort, isn’t it.”
She asked him whether we could buy some oranges.
“Oranges? Sure, I can get you a couple of oranges. And tell me, over on your farm, do you have chickens?”
Susan looked confused. All farms had chickens.
“We’ve got lots,” I said. I liked this tall American and his soft way of smiling.
“We only get powdered eggs,” he told us. “I figured some of these farms round here must have hens.”
“Do you want fresh eggs?” I asked, eager to please. “My mother looks after our chickens and they lay all year round. We can get you eggs.”
We arranged that I would take him a dozen every other day. He told us to wait outside a corrugated iron hut and he came out a minute later with a brown paper bag filled with oranges. I wanted to jump up and down with glee. Mother loved fruit and we had so little during the war. I imagined sharing an orange with her, the happiness it might bring her, its sweetness delighting us both.
“And you won’t forget about the eggs? You bring them to the building over there, you see? Ask for me, Major Jack Williamson.”
“We’ll do that,” said Susan.
“That’s great. So, are you two sisters?”
“We’re cousins,” said Susan. She held out her hand. “Miss Susan Marks. Pleased to meet you.”
“Delighted to make your acquaintance, miss. And what’s your name, kiddo?”
I saluted him. “Molly Marks,” I said. He laughed and saluted me back. I thought of him as a friend after that.
“And how about you, Major Molly Marks? Does your father farm round here, too?”
I blushed and looked at Susan. Everybody in the village knew about Father. I had never had to tell anybody what had happened. I didn’t know what to say.
“We should go now,” said Susan. “Thank you for the oranges.” She grasped my hand, leading me away.
“Don’t forget the eggs,” Jack called after us.
—
All summer either Mother or I took eggs to the officers. I liked the Americans. They gave us wonderful things; dried fruits and oranges, chewing gum, parachute silk, ice cream and fruitcakes. Everybody liked the Americans. Even grumpy Uncle Roger. Some of the men had farming backgrounds and discussed tractors and combine harvesters with him. By then he’d sold our farm horses and had a tractor bought on lend-lease, sent all the way from Pennsylvania. It arrived at Ipswich docks in pieces, and his airmen friends helped him put it together.
When Jack Williamson called at the farm to offer Susan an invitation to a dance on the airfield, Aunt Marion got out the best china and we had tea in the dining room.
“Oh no,” said my mother, smiling, when Jack suggested she come to the dance, too. My heart seemed to slow, she was so beautiful then. I wished Father could have seen her. She put an arm around my shoulders and said she could not go dancing, thank you.
Uncle Roger refused to let Susan go to a dance unaccompanied. Aunt Marion and Grandma cajoled him. Jack Williamson was an officer. Top brass, really. In civilian life he was a New York lawyer. A gentleman. When Mother agreed to chaperone Susan, my uncle relented. Mother invited Clarkie to make up the foursome and I was pleased. I didn’t like to think of her sitting alone while Susan danced all night with American airmen.
Mother kissed me good-night before she and Susan left to walk over to Tin Town. She wore the pearls Father had given her as a gift when I was born. She put her arms around me and said she had let me down by falling into her own sadness these past few years. “But I love you very much, darling. More than you know. I’m better now. We’re going to be happy again, you’ll see.”
I had managed to mend her broken heart by being a loyal daughter. By following her around and refusing to let her turn completely to stone. I was proud of saving Mother, bringing her back to us.
On the landing upstairs was a sash window and a tall-backed chair where Grandma liked to sit. That night I climbed on the chair and watched Tin Town across the fields. The sound of jazz music floated in the summer night. There were voices, too, sudden bursts of laughter and the occasional noise of jeeps and motorbikes. I imagined Susan dancing with Jack. I hoped she would marry him and that Mother and Clarkie would get married, too, so we could live in his cottage and be happy.
When I called at Clarkie’s cottage that summer, there were often American servicemen sitting in the cramped little parlour. Jack Williamson and his friends, smoking and chatting, Clarkie sharing his homemade blackberry wine with them. Mother and Susan, who was suddenly very grown up and had lost interest in doing jigsaws with me, sometimes spent the afternoons with them.
Susan took to wearing trousers and men’s shirts tied tight at the waist. She put her hair up in victory rolls and bought herself a red lipstick.
“Jack Williamson was engaged to a girl in New York but he’s broken it off,” she whispered to me one night. “He’s fallen in love, Molly. Head over heels, drunk on love. It’s crazy and romantic and I can barely breathe because I think I am in love, too. Promise not to tell anybody, won’t you?”
I crossed my heart and swore an oath, feeling giddy with excitement, promising I would not breathe a word, not even to Mother.
In July I won a prize at school for best composition. I wrote a story about a family who had lived in the ruined cottage by the stream. The vicar published it in the parish news and Jack and Clarkie took Susan, Mother, and me to visit Ely Cathedral to celebrate. Grandma knitted me a lacy yellow cardigan as a gift. I was ten years old, and Mother and I had just started being able to talk about Father again, sharing memories of him.
We sat on the grass, eating sandwiches in the shade of the cathedral.
“Do you remember the picnics we had at the ruined cottage?” I asked her. “And the Christmas roses Daddy used to pick there for you?”
“Those were good times,” she said, her cheek against mine. “Such good times. We’re going to be happy like that again, I promise you.”
—
I wasn’t the only person who stood waiting at the station clock. People were forever meeting and going away in merry groups. There was a soldier with only one leg, shifting his weight back and forth on his crutches. He had been waiting as long as I had. There was also an old woman who wore no hat or gloves and held a handkerchief in her hands that she twisted over and over. She had wide black eyes, dark as a well and full of emptiness.
When trains arrived at the different platforms in the station, the main concourse filled up with people. They poured forwards like factory workers heading homewards, filling the hall with the sound of their marching feet, the chatter of their voices, all of them with somewhere to go, hurrying to get there. I saw how the old woman and the wounded soldier looked around then, as if they expected to see somebody they knew. If Jack came at such a moment, it would be very easy to hide. I could step into the flow and be lost. I opened the bag of pretzels. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was. I had eaten almost all of them when I saw a girl in a yellow dress. It was the same yellow as my favourite cardigan, and the colour filled me with thoughts of the farm. A porter in a red cap brushed past her, and the girl stumbled, dropping her suitcase. It sprang open and she blushed hotly as she bent to retrieve her things. I felt sorry for her. I would be mortified if I dropped our suitcase and all our belongings were spread out for strangers to stare at. She was older than me but still young. She wore a hat with a circle of flowers and looked like she might be from the country, though I wasn’t sure why I thought that. Maybe it was her hair that reminded me of ripe barley fields, or perhaps I recognised the bewildered look in her eyes. As if she, too, knew what it was like to be far from home. I dusted crumbs off my coat, straightened my Sunday-best beret, and went towards her. As I did so, I saw an airman in uniform standing under the clock. I didn’t need to look at the photograph Mrs
. Lewis had given me. It was Jimmy. I wasn’t sure whether to go to him or run back to Mother. The girl by then was being helped by the same porter. I ran to the waiting rooms.
“He’s here!” I cried when I saw Mother. “Jimmy’s here!”
Mrs. Lewis stood up, swaying as if she had a fever, as if she might faint.
“I can’t go. I don’t want to see him.”
“Of course you do,” said Mother. “He’s waiting.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re expecting a baby . . .” Mother began saying. “He’s your husband . . .”
Mrs. Lewis began to cry. She was mumbling about babies and fathers and the night she had gone dancing because she’d been lonely just after Jimmy had been posted abroad. I didn’t know why she was saying any of it. Jimmy was there, waiting for her. Mother asked if she loved him, and Mrs. Lewis said she’d come halfway across the world for him and would do it all over again if she had to.
“Well then, go to him,” Mother urged her.
“Hurry!” I blurted out, grabbing her hand. “He’s waiting for you with a Mickey Mouse doll and a bunch of flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“Roses,” I volunteered. “Yellow ones.”
“Go to him,” said Mother again.
Mrs. Lewis dried her eyes and said she had better smarten herself up a bit first. She re-applied her lipstick and mascara and powdered her nose. Then we walked to where Jimmy stood, waiting. Mrs. Lewis saw Jimmy and her face lifted into a smile. I knew she was forgetting everything that had gone before. Us, her home back in bombed-out London town. We were all gone into the past already. She gave a small cry as Jimmy bent to kiss her on the lips. Her ginger hair untidily fanned her face, and he moved it away tenderly with his fingers. I realised she was not plain at all. Standing beside her Jimmy, Mrs. Lewis was unexpectedly beautiful.
—
“I was sixteen when I had you,” said Mother. We stood staring after the Lewises, as if we could still see them walking away. “Just a child myself. Your father and I enjoyed life. Picnicking and ice-skating, swimming in the lake. We rode our bicycles all over the county. At village dances people used to love to watch us together. Your father would have wanted us to be happy again. When Jack comes we’ll be all right, you’ll see.”
“I want to go home,” I told Mother. But I knew what I wanted was already gone. I wanted home as it was before the war, when Father stood on the backs of horses and the farm was the centre of our world.
“We can’t go back,” sighed Mother, and she turned her head away. I was sure she was thinking of Father. Of what happened and how we lost him.
We were skating on the lake on a winter’s afternoon. Clarkie was there. He and Father were racing around the edge of the lake. Mother and I were turning small circles, holding hands. There were patterns in the ice, curling leaves and feathers that bloomed under our feet. Winter’s magic, Mother called them. We heard a yell and on the far bank Clarkie went through the ice. The water was shallow. It was only out in the centre that it became deep and black. He stood, knee deep, swearing and cursing. My father hauled him out and the two of them were laughing by the time they reached us.
Mother insisted we get home before Clarkie caught a chill. It was getting dark and he realised he’d dropped his hat. Father went back for it. Clarkie told him not to bother. It was a worn-out old hat. Father laughed. Worn-out or not, he’d get it back. He made it sound like a quest. A lark. A dare. He skated straight across the lake in fine style, my fearless father, a lovely inky figure against the turquoise sky. Out he went, out to the deep waters where the ice was too thin.
Mother rubbed her forehead as if she, too, were remembering. “Endings hurt,” she said. “But they give us new beginnings.”
“Everything changes,” she added softly. She dug in her handbag for her address book and told me to stay by the clock. She was going to phone Jack’s office to see if he was on his way.
I knew it would break her heart if he didn’t come. She walked away, promising she would be back in the wink of an eye, an expression Clarkie liked to use.
I had really believed Mother might marry Clarkie. Just before Christmas in 1944 I told him so. Jack’s squadron had been flying a dangerous mission. All night we’d heard the planes going over, and the next morning Mother and Susan went to church and prayed for the airmen to return safely. I called to see Clarkie. There’d been a deep snowfall and I trudged across white fields, the air glittering with frost.
We sat in his living room and he made me a cup of cocoa and toasted bread in front of the fire. We talked about the mission the Americans were flying over the French coast. Clarkie said my father would have admired them for their bravery.
“He would have liked Jack Williamson. Do you like him, Molly?”
“He’s very nice,” I said. I was bursting to tell Clarkie that Susan loved Jack. I considered his cottage, the oily green wallpaper and dark cupboards. The cooking range in the kitchen covered in grease and used pans. I imagined Mother and me cleaning the place up.
“And would you ever want to get married?” I asked.
“Goodness, Molly, you ask some funny questions. Marry who?”
“Mother. She likes you, I know she does. She says you’re our best friend.”
Clarkie buttered some toast for me, handing it to me on a plate.
“Any man worth his salt would want to marry Irene,” he said. “When your father first brought her home I admit I’d never felt so jealous in all my life. But it wouldn’t be me. Not me.” He poked the fire in the grate. “I did everything I could trying to save your father. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do. We could live here with you, Clarkie. I’d like that.”
“People have to be in love to get married. Do you understand that, Molly? You can’t choose who to love. You’ll understand that when you’re older. Irene should marry again. You’re right. She deserves to be happy. You both do.”
When I got home Mother and Susan were full of smiles. Jack’s squadron had come back safely. I felt sorry Clarkie was going to stay a bachelor. He thought he wasn’t good enough for Mother, but I’d make him realise he was.
On Boxing Day, I got up early and went out, trudging through snowy lanes and along the footpath to the ruined cottage where bloodred holly berries sparkled in hoarfrost, and the stream that ran under them was frozen grey. I picked Christmas roses to take to Clarkie. I thought he could offer them to Mother as a gift. I was crouched down, picking the white flowers, when I heard voices. A man and a woman stood in the shelter of the cottage walls. I crept up on them, startled to find people in my secret place. It was Mother and Jack. Mother had his flying jacket around her shoulders.
“When you come,” Jack was saying, “I’ll show you Times Square and we’ll eat strawberry shortcake at Toffenetti’s.”
He bent and put his arms around her, kissing her on the lips.
Afterwards I heard her laugh. She sounded happy. Her happiness was not to do with me. I crouched in the snow and knew it had been Jack, not me, who had mended her broken heart.
I dropped the Christmas roses and followed the frozen stream to where it ran into the lake. I had not been there since Father died, but this was the quickest way to Clarkie’s. I ran down the side of a beet field and stopped outside his cottage. The blackout curtains were drawn and smoke curled from the chimney. I slammed the front door open. Clarkie sat on the hearthrug in front of the coal fire. Susan sat between his legs, her back leaning against his chest. He had his arms around her. They didn’t move when they saw me. Susan told me to come in and warm myself.
I found Uncle Roger in the barn. He stood with an oil can and a rag in his hand. A hurricane lamp hung from a beam, flaring yellow light across the tractor’s engine box. He listened to me, and when I’d finished, he wiped his hands on the rag.
“Susan’s there no
w, you say?”
“She’s lying on the rug with him,” I said, still breathless from running. “In front of the fire.”
I was glad to hear him say he hated Clarkie. Glad to see he believed we had been betrayed by my mother and Susan.
Uncle Roger went to Clarkie’s cottage and threatened him with a shotgun. Susan stood between them, so Clarkie told me afterwards. Uncle Roger said Susan should get on home or consider herself disowned.
Susan never did go home. She and Clarkie married in town. Mother and Jack announced they were getting married, too, and Jack’s mother sent a blue wool coat over from America for me to wear to the wedding. It arrived along with a letter, saying she was looking forward to meeting us when the war was over. At Mother and Jack’s wedding I made my face hard and pulled petals off the silk violets I carried. In the pub gardens afterwards, Jack told me grown-ups were hard to understand sometimes. He said there was nothing wrong with crying. That I didn’t need to be tough all the time.
“I’m not crying,” I insisted, wiping my nose with my sleeve.
“Of course you’re not,” he said and handed me his handkerchief.
When Susan had her son she named him Robert. My uncle refused to see him. Mother was preparing to go to America. Grandma had finally given Mother and Jack her blessing. She’d decided there would be opportunities in America for a smart girl like me.
A week before we left, Susan brought Robert over to the farm for the first time. Grandma, Mother, Aunt Marion, and Susan’s brothers all took turns holding him. I was allowed to bottle-feed him, and he drank like a hungry lamb, bubbling milk down his chin.
“An absolute darling!” exclaimed Grandma.
Grandma said Susan and Clarkie should have a big family, and Aunt Marion said she thought Susan had enough to be going on with for the time being.
“Clarkie’s a good man,” Susan told them. “He’s a good father.”
Aunt Marion and Grandma agreed, as if they had both forgotten they were meant to be angry.
When we heard Uncle Roger drive his tractor into the yard, a defiant look came into Susan’s eyes.
