There is a Season

by There is a Season (retail) (epu

  She dashed home for her mother and together they hurried over. Josie had stopped screaming and was sobbing. The policeman welcomed them thankfully. ‘She’s had a shock, missus,’ he said to Cathy, who went and put her arms round Josie.

  ‘It’s our poor Mary,’ she sobbed.

  The policeman added, ‘She was knocked down by a lorry. He didn’t have no chance, with the blackout like, and her in dark clothes.’

  ‘She was killed, Cath, right away.’

  ‘She wouldn’t suffer, Jose,’ Cathy said. She looked meaningfully at the policeman over Josie’s bent head, and said, ‘She wouldn’t know anything about it, would she?’

  ‘No, big heavy lorry,’ he said hastily. ‘She was dead the minute it touched her.’ He replaced his helmet and moved towards the door. ‘I’ll leave her with you, then, missus. Send down to the station later for – you know.’

  Sarah went to the door with him and thanked him. ‘It’s a rotten job for you,’ she said.

  He sighed. ‘Aye, and I’ve got to do it often. This little circle of light they allow from the headlamps doesn’t give a driver a chance, especially if people are wearing dark clothes.’

  Josie sincerely grieved for her sister. ‘She had a rotten life,’ she said to Cathy. ‘She was only eighteen when she married that swine, and what he put her through twisted her mind. That arrest – it seemed to give her such a shock she just went very quiet like after it. I reckon the time she was here with us was the happiest she’d had since she was a girl at home.’

  ‘Be thankful she had that then, Jose,’ said Cathy. ‘And a quick and merciful death.’ And her friend seemed comforted.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Men were arriving home on leave who had been evacuated with the BEF and the operation seemed complete, but still there was no word from Terry. Sarah was filled with foreboding. If all the men were home, what could have happened to him?

  ‘We’re storming heaven for him. God will keep him in his care,’ Terry’s mother told her. Mrs Fitzgerald and Maureen spent every possible moment in church, praying for his safety, and Anne told Sarah that she envied them their trust in God.

  ‘I pray for him too, and my faith’s a consolation to me, but I can’t feel complete trust like Maureen and Mum, especially when I look round at what’s happening in the world.’

  A few days later Sarah was finishing her day’s work and preparing to cover her machine when a note was brought to her desk. She recognized Joe Fitzgerald’s handwriting and tore it open eagerly.

  Dear Sarah,

  We have not had word from Terry but I’ve been asking around the chaps who were with him at Boulogne, and it seems hopeful to me.

  Can I walk home with you and tell you? I am waiting outside by the.

  Love, Joe

  Sarah dashed to the window. It was criss-crossed with tape but she peeped between the strips and with a lift of her heart saw Joe outside.

  She hurried through her work and soon she was able to go out and meet him. He smiled at her and gave her a brotherly kiss before taking her elbow as they crossed the road.

  ‘Was it all right to send that note in?’ he asked. ‘I thought you might think it was Terry waiting when you saw the uniform.’

  ‘It was thoughtful of you,’ she said shyly.

  ‘I’ve talked to a lot of chaps who were with him. I don’t want to raise false hopes, Sarah,’ Joe said, ‘but from what I heard, I think he may have been captured. The wounded were taken off, you see, and men who were killed – well, mostly their bodies were seen or fellows saw them get it, but no one I talked to saw Terry.’

  ‘But how could he be captured?’ she said. ‘I thought the Germans fired from a distance.’

  ‘Some long range,’ Joe said, ‘but there were tanks and machine guns, and hundreds of Germans with rifles. Our fellows were covering the evacuation but were outnumbered in every way and had to draw back to be taken off by the Navy. There’d be pockets of men cut off and captured, and I think that’s what happened to Terry. We’ll just hope now we hear from him soon.’

  ‘Would he be able to write if he was a prisoner?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Joe said. ‘He’d be well treated – he’d have to be because of the Geneva Convention.’

  ‘You must think I’m very ignorant,’ she said apologetically, ‘Dad never talked about the last war, and I haven’t read much about it, and this war seems to be such a muddle. You hear different things every day and different versions in the papers or on the wireless.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you’re ignorant, Sarah,’ he said quietly.

  They walked along in silence for a few minutes, then Sarah said, ‘How’s your mum, Joe?’

  ‘Not very well,’ he said. ‘But she’s not as worried as I expected about Terry.’

  ‘She’ll be glad to have you home.’

  They had reached Egremont Street and she asked him to come in and see her mother. Cathy was pleased to see him and asked how long he was home. ‘Only two more days,’ he said. ‘I had a job to wangle this.’

  ‘It’ll be a help to your poor mother to see you,’ Cathy said. ‘How is she?’

  Joe glanced at Sarah, and told Cathy what he had told her and also about his grounds for hoping that Terry was a prisoner.

  Sarah saw him again briefly outside church. He was seen off at the station by his brothers and she did not accompany them.

  A week later, as Sarah was leaving for work, Anne came running down the street, waving an official-looking paper.

  ‘He’s a prisoner of war,’ she shouted as soon as she drew near. ‘This came. Terry’s in a Stalag.’ She flung her arms round Sarah. Cathy came out of the house and Sally from across the road, followed by several neighbours, so that the girls were a centre of a jubilant crowd.

  ‘I’ll have to go,’ Sarah said finally, and Anne said that she must go back to her family.

  ‘Stay off,’ she urged Sarah. ‘Come back with me.’ But Sarah refused.

  ‘No, it’s your celebration,’ she said. ‘And, anyway, I’m in the middle of a document that’s wanted urgently.’ Anne looked surprised but hurried back to her family and Sarah set off for work.

  She was not only confused about the war, but also about her own feelings. She was happy and relieved that Terry was safe but thought that she would have felt the same if it had been Stephen or Tony in the same situation. If it had been Joe – but she turned her mind quickly from the thought. Joe had always thought of her only as Terry’s girl, she told herself, and felt ashamed that she could feel like this at such a time.

  Resolutely she turned her thoughts from Joe and towards Terry, a prisoner-of-war, far from home, but she felt a hypocrite when people rejoiced for her, and unable to show the jubilation friends expected.

  ‘You take it quietly,’ one of the girls in the office said. ‘If it was Peter found alive when I thought he was dead, I’d be turning handsprings.’

  This is Sarah’s way,’ another girl said. ‘We’re all different.’

  France had surrendered and signed an Armistice with Germany, but the mood of dismay and bewilderment in Britain after Dunkirk had speedily altered to belligerence after a speech by Churchill in which he said, ‘We shall fight them on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.’

  On the day that France surrendered Cathy and Josie were working on a Rotary Lunch with Cissie. She announced that she was glad to hear the news. ‘Foreigners!’ she said with contempt. ‘They’re all the same. I’m sorry for them, like, but we’re better off on our own. We’ve got our lads back and we know where we are now.’

  There was a large photograph of Churchill on the wall with his cigar at a jaunty angle, and his feet planted wide apart. Cissie went over to it. ‘Look at him, God love him,’ she said. ‘Like a bloody little bulldog. He’s a match for any Jerry.’

  Even Sarah had to admit that she felt safer with Churchill in charge. The two letters she
had sent to France were returned to her by the Post Office, and a week later a letter card came from Terry from the Stalag. He had tried to make his writing smaller and neater, but all he could say on the card was that he was well and in good spirits, and looking forward to letters. He sent his regards to Sarah’s family and signed it “Your loving Terry”. Sarah and John and Cathy wrote to him immediately.

  John was growing more and more frustrated and angry that he was not allowed to fight for his country, and he found a receptive listener in Anne. ‘Why won’t they have me?’ he said. ‘I’m an Englishman. I love my country, yet they won’t let me fight for it. Everywhere I try I’m refused, just because I fought in Spain.’

  ‘It’s stupid,’ she agreed.

  ‘And what really makes me mad,’ he said bitterly, ‘is that some of the Varsity men who were in Spain are in the Foreign Office or the Intelligence Service. Of course they could pull strings through their families or old schoolfriends, yet I’m still treated like a traitor.’

  ‘I should think people in Intelligence or the Foreign Office could do more harm if they were traitors than an ordinary soldier,’ Anne said.

  ‘Exactly,’ he agreed. ‘I know some fellows who don’t want to fight. They say it’s a Capitalist war, fought for money. I don’t believe in war myself, I think there are better ways of solving problems, especially when you think of what happened last time, but now we are at war I’m keen to do my bit for England and they could use my experience.’

  ‘Pity you can’t pull strings. It’s the class system again, isn’t it? A man at work says the class system here is as bad as the caste system in India.’

  ‘And at the moment I’m an Untouchable,’ John said ruefully.

  He envied Mick who had his future so clearly mapped out. The examinations for the Higher School Certificate were taking place, and when Mick had finished them he intended to go right into the Royal Air Force. He was eighteen years old in June and intended to register without waiting for the results of the examination. Early in July he was called for a medical examination.

  ‘I suppose that’s because I’ve been pestering them,’ he said cheerfully. He was sent to Padgate near Warrington for the medical examination and inoculations, and issued with uniform and kit. Within a week he was sent to Morecambe and billeted in a guest house with five other men, not very far from Norah’s place.

  Cathy was delighted to hear that he was near enough to visit her friend, and received a letter from Norah inviting her to come for a few days and see Mick.

  “I’ve got airmen billeted here,” Norah wrote, “but Minnie and I have our own bedrooms, both with double beds, and if you and Greg would like to come, I could go in with Minnie and you could have my room.”

  Cathy accepted gratefully, and Greg came with her but had to return the same night, after seeing Mick drilling beside the road and talking to him at Norah’s house. But Cathy stayed overnight and saw her son again before leaving. He seemed happy, had already made many friends and enjoyed drilling, even though they had only very old rifles with the firing pin filed down because they were too worn to be fired safely.

  Now that Mick had gone away, Cathy found that she was not nearly as worried as when she was anticipating the departure. This was partly because she had so many other things to occupy her mind. The war news was bad. German planes were attacking shipping in the Channel and U-boats were taking a toll of shipping on the high seas.

  Later, when queuing was a way of life, Cathy looked back on these days as almost a time of plenty, but when shortages were a new factor, life seemed very complicated.

  She was worried about John’s frustration and Sarah’s situation with Terry away until the end of the war, and also about Greg whom she felt was overworking. Stan had never resumed all his responsibilities in the firm and Cathy was annoyed about the amount of work that was left to Greg.

  ‘It’s all very well, Stan looking after his health, but what about yours?’ she demanded. ‘I’ll bet he’s not doing any Civil Defence either.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Greg said. ‘I enjoy it.’ But Cathy was still vexed.

  ‘You look tired out,’ she said. ‘And then sitting up talking to John till all hours… I wish you’d learn sense.’

  The news that Hitler was planning to invade England brought a mixed reaction. July the eighteenth was considered a likely date. On that morning Mrs Gunter was scrubbing her step when Sally came out to do her shopping.

  ‘Did’ya hear the quare fella thinks he’s invading us tonight?’ Mrs Gunter called across to her.

  ‘I hope it keeps fine for him,’ Sally said.

  ‘Let any dirty German put his foot on my step!’ Mrs Gunter shouted. ‘I’d give him a clout he’d never be the better of, and then I’d put me bucket over his head.’

  Her next-door neighbour, a mouse-like little woman named Chandler, came out on her step. ‘I’ve put a carving knife ready on the hatstand,’ she said. ‘My feller says anywhere I could reach up to to stab a German’d ruin him for life.’

  Sally went off down the street, wishing that her lodger could take the same attitude as the women. Josh seemed to have completely lost his nerve. Street shelters had been provided but most people believed that they would be safer sheltering under the stairs, and Sally had cleared out the cupboard which ran back under hers.

  She had put cushions in there, and blankets, and a tin of biscuits and jerrycan of water. The first air raid warning sounded soon after midnight on June the twenty-fifth and as Sally came downstairs she was amazed to see Josh rush from the parlour and through to the kitchen. By the time she reached it he had dived under the stairs and was cowering at the extreme end of the cupboard with his arms cradling his head.

  Sarah was on a fire-watching rota, but she was off that night and came over to see Sally.

  ‘Are you all right, Grandma?’ she called. Sally stepped quickly out of the cupboard and came to meet her. ‘Don’t come out,’ said Sarah. ‘Where’s Josh?’

  ‘He’s in there,’ Sally said, ushering her towards the door. ‘Go back home, love.’

  Sarah looked puzzled but obeyed. The drone of planes could be heard and searchlights criss-crossed the sky, but nothing happened and the All Clear was soon sounded.

  Sally said goodnight curtly to Josh and went to bed. And she presumed that he had soon returned to his room. Sally said nothing about the incident, but every time the warning sounded Josh bolted like a rabbit to take refuge under the stairs.

  The same thing happened each air raid warning, but Sally never discussed it with Josh or told anyone else.

  On the night of August the seventeenth, when the air aid warning sounded just after midnight, Cathy brought Kate over to Sally. ‘Can she stay with you, Mam?’ she asked. ‘We’re all on duty.’

  Josh was already cowering under the stairs but it was impossible for Sally to refuse so she talked loudly to Kate so that he would be warned. He was sitting on one of the stools Sally had provided when Kate crept in, and managed to talk normally to her for a while. Sally pulled closed the door which shut them off from the kitchen, to try to minimize the heavy drone of the bombers and the rattle of the anti-aircraft guns, and prayed that the raid would be over before Josh betrayed his cowardice to Kate.

  Suddenly there were loud crumps as high explosive bombs fell on the docks. Inside the house, crockery fell from shelves and pictures from the walls.

  Kate flung herself into Sally’s arms, and her grandmother held her close. ‘All right, love,’ she said. ‘It’ll soon be over.’

  An unpleasant and unmistakable smell filled the air and Kate raised her head and wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘Josh has been to the lavatory,’ she whispered, but Sally hushed her.

  ‘It’s with the house being disturbed,’ she said firmly. ‘Something to do with sewage.’

  She spoke in a low voice and Kate gave her a sardonic glance but soon the All Clear sounded and Sally told she could go as her mother would soon be home.

  J
osh remained under the stairs. Sally put a jug of warm water on the washstand which was behind a curtain in the parlour, then she went to the understairs cupboard.

  ‘I’ve put some water in your room, Josh,’ she said. ‘Leave your clothes outside the door and I’ll attend to them. I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’

  He made no reply but later Sally heard him moving about for some time before she fell asleep. There were no clothes outside his door, but later when Sally went to the midden she discovered newspaper-wrapped parcels which must have contained the soiled clothes. She reflected that it was the best solution as Josh had plenty of clothes, and far less embarrassing for both of them. Now nothing need be said. And if Kate opens her mouth, she thought grimly, I’ll soon close it for her.

  She swept up the broken crockery and made breakfast, then called Josh. ‘Only a pudding basin and two cups went,’ she said cheerfully as he shuffled into the kitchen. ‘I’ll leave the pictures down, I think.’

  Cathy arrived as they sat down to breakfast. ‘Are you all right, Mam?’ she asked. ‘Kate said some crockery was broken. I told her she should have swept it up for you.’

  ‘I sent her to bed,’ Sally said. ‘She needed the rest for work this morning, and it didn’t take me five minutes.’

  Cathy had simply said good morning to Josh, and he had barely raised his head, but now she told them about trying to catch a budgie which was flying around. Sally laughed but Josh made no response. When her mother went to the door with her, Cathy whispered, ‘Doesn’t Josh look ill?’ She had been shocked at the change in him. His once ruddy face was grey, his cheeks were sunken and his shoulders bowed.

  ‘He’s not well,’ Sally agreed.

  ‘I haven’t seen him for a week,’ Cathy said, ‘I can’t get over such a change. And you’re a bit upset too, Mam. It’s Sunday today, you know. No work for Kate.’

  ‘Of course. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going,’ Sally said, and Cathy kissed her impulsively.

  ‘Sarah’s not fire-watching tonight and I’m not on duty either so we’ll be here if anything starts,’ she said. ‘We’ll all go in together, either under your stairs or ours. Greg thinks we should go in the street shelter, you know.’ But Sally shook her head decisively.