There is a Season

by There is a Season (retail) (epu

  ‘Still enjoying life,’ Cathy said. ‘Mick was born under a lucky star.’

  ‘Like our Terry,’ said Mrs Fitzgerald. ‘I’m glad he’s a prisoner and out of the fighting, but his luckiest day was when he met Sarah.’ She put her hand on the girl’s and smiled at her.

  ‘Like our John when he met Anne,’ Cathy said. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased we all are to have her in the family. She’s a lovely girl and our John’s lucky – and he knows it.’

  While they talked Sarah sat with her hands tightly clasped and her head bent, feeling a hypocrite and wondering how they would all react if they knew how she felt about Joe.

  Suddenly she heard his name. ‘Our Joe’s at Dover now. Tony told me they think Hitler’s going to invade down there, but he says the Air Force is beating them to a frazzle. I don’t know how he knows it all. Your lad isn’t down there, is he?’

  ‘Mick. No, he’s still training,’ Cathy said. She smiled. ‘He wrote to John who showed me the letter. He said they’re in this school, used to be a girls’ boarding school, and there’s a bell on the wall with a notice: “Ring for a mistress”.’

  Sarah looked rather nervously at Mrs Fitzgerald, knowing how pious she was, but she was smiling, ‘They’d have a good laugh out of that.’

  ‘He got more than a laugh,’ Cathy said. ‘They were ringing it and fooling round generally, and the end of it was they got put on “Jankers”, shovelling coke. It seems Jankers means fatigues, but that wouldn’t worry Mick. He’d only get a laugh out of it.’

  Mrs Fitzgerald looked slightly better when they left, but Cathy said sadly as they walked home, ‘Poor woman, she’s not long for this world, Sarah. I could break my heart for that poor lad, a prisoner, not able to get home and see her.’

  ‘Depends if the war’s over in time,’ said Sarah.

  ‘But it won’t be, will it? I don’t think she’ll live more than a few months, if that, and Churchill reckons we’ve still a long way to go.’

  She looked at Sarah’s downcast face and said more cheerfully, ‘Still, who knows, love? It could finish next week for all we know. Hitler seems to have bitten off more than he can chew anyway.’ Sarah nodded, aware that her chief concern was the grief facing Joe if his mother died.

  Greg had attended to all the details for Josh’s funeral, according to instructions he had left with Sally together with the money. He also gave the name of the solicitor who had drawn up his will, and Greg contacted him.

  Cathy and Greg were angry when the will was proved to find that Josh had left all he possessed to Kate, and not even mentioned Sally or her kindness to him. ‘There’s no fool like an old fool,’ said Cathy. ‘All Mam’s done for him all these years, and to leave everything to Kate!’

  ‘Nearly a thousand pounds,’ Greg said. ‘I know what Railway wages are, even for a senior clerk, and he couldn’t have saved so much if Mam hadn’t taken next to nothing from him for his rent and keep.’

  ‘I’m disgusted, after all you’ve done for him,’ Cathy said indignantly to her mother.

  Sally smiled. More than you know, she thought, remembering the past few months, but she said calmly, ‘I don’t want his money, love, I’ve got all I need, but I hope it won’t be the ruin of Kate.’

  ‘I’ll see that it isn’t,’ Cathy said grimly.

  Kate was delighted with the news, and asked for some of the money to buy the clothes she craved for. Cathy went with her to town, determined that the spending would be kept within bounds as she and Greg had explained to Kate that most of the money would be invested for her.

  In spite of her determination, Cathy had to admit when she came home that Kate had bought all that she wanted.

  ‘I should have asked Mam to take her,’ she said. ‘I’m too soft.’ But as Kate often reminded them after clothes rationing was introduced the following June, her spending spree had been a wise investment.

  Cathy was pleased that Kate also asked that Sarah should have some new clothes, and that all the family should have some treat from her money. She went to show her new clothes to her grandmother. Sally’s only comment was, ‘Very nice,’ but later she said to Cathy, ‘Kate pays for dressing. She’s growing a lovely-looking girl.’

  ‘She looks a lot older than her age,’ Cathy said. ‘You’d never think she won’t be fifteen until March.’

  ‘Our Mary was the same,’ Sally said. ‘Some girls mature quicker than others. That reminds me – there’s another letter from her. She’s really worried about London.’

  Cathy was puzzled by her mother’s tone until she read the letter. Mary had written that everyone in her community had been shocked and desperately upset when they heard that the City of Benares and the Empress of Britain had been sunk while carrying children to Canada. “What sort of monsters will kill little children?” she wrote. “And poor London. We hear all about the dreadful devastation there and the lives lost, and my heart bleeds for them.”

  The rest of the letter was filled with the usual details about her dog and her social life. Cathy handed it back with a wry expression on her face.

  The air raids on Liverpool had been increasing in intensity and length. Now they usually lasted most of the night, sometimes in one long raid and sometimes with warnings at intervals throughout the night. ‘We’re up and down to the shelter like bloody yo-yo’s,’ one woman complained to Cathy. ‘You just get to sleep and the warning goes. When you get back upstairs and get your head down, it goes again.’

  The previous night, November the twenty-eighth, had been a particularly bad one. The raid started soon after seven o’clock and lasted for nearly eight hours. Incendiaries, high explosive and parachute mines had fallen in various parts of the city. A parachute mine had made a direct hit on a large shelter beneath a school and it was impossible to estimate the number killed as it had been packed with the passengers from two tram-cars, and people from a shelter that had already been bombed as well as the regulars.

  A tram conductor told Cathy that Garston Gas Works had been hit, and although the area round Egremont Street had escaped damage everyone had been awake all night as bombs crashed down and enemy planes droned overhead, and the sky was lit with the glare of incendiaries and burning buildings.

  ‘I wonder what she thinks we’re doing, just reading the papers?’ Cathy said.

  ‘Mind you, it’s our own fault,’ her mother told her. ‘We’ve hidden all this from her in case it worried her.’

  ‘Sam should know,’ Cathy said. ‘He’s got business contacts here. But I suppose he’s kept quiet for the same reason, in case she’s worried.’

  Cathy had much to worry her at this time, with her sons away from home and Greg on duty with a First Aid team most nights and Sarah firewatching, but she felt surprisingly cheerful. I suppose it’s because everyone’s in it together, she thought, and everyone wants to put the best side out.

  Life was surprisingly normal, too, in many ways. She still went out on catering jobs and usually managed to enjoy them. She and Greg had stopped going to the Grafton dances, as they were thronged now with soldiers, sailors and airmen in every conceivable uniform, and the girls who came to dance with them. Cathy and Greg felt that they were the wrong generation for the dance, but they always had at least one night out at the cinema and supper afterwards.

  Kate was an avid filmgoer, and she and her friend Daisy spent nearly every night at one of the cinemas. Her parents were unaware that they were usually accompanied by foreign servicemen.

  Sarah and Anne went more often to the cinema than to dances now. Anne summed up their position one night when they had been to a dance in Eberle Street, organized by the department Sarah worked for. They had danced together for most of the evening, only occasionally with the few men who were present, and Anne said as they walked to the tramstop: ‘Dances don’t seem the same now, do they? We always enjoyed the dancing but I suppose without realizing it we were enjoying the flirting too, and looking out for possible boyfriends. We’re a pair of grass widows no
w, aren’t we?’

  ‘Neither fish, fowl nor good red herring, as my gran would say,’ Sarah agreed.

  ‘I don’t mind though, do you?’ Anne said. ‘After all, we’ve found the men we want, and the war can’t last forever.’

  Sarah was silent. It was true she had found the man she loved, but it was Joe not Terry who made her uninterested in other men. Sometimes her secret seemed too hard to bear and for a moment she was tempted to confide in Anne. What would she think? But a tram clanged to a halt beside them and the moment passed.

  Maureen Fitzgerald had recovered and been discharged from hospital, and Eileen came home on Christmas leave. Mrs Fitzgerald seemed to rally, and for several weeks after Christmas the progress of the disease seemed to be halted. Stephen also came home from Newcastle for Christmas, and the family held a conference, with Sarah included, to decide how much to tell Terry about his mother’s health.

  Tony Fitzgerald turned to Sarah. ‘What do you think? Should Terry have some warning? We don’t want him to be worrying while he can’t get to see her, but would it be too much of a shock if we only told him if something happened to Mum?’

  Everyone looked at her and she said hastily, ‘I don’t know. You know him better than I do.’

  A blush swept over her face as they all looked surprised, but Helen said firmly, ‘Yes, it’s not fair to put this decision on Sarah. I think we should vote on it, and ask Joe for his opinion too before we decide.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, Helen,’ Anne said.

  And Maureen added in her quiet voice, ‘I would vote not to tell Terry yet. Mum doesn’t seem much worse to me than when I went into hospital, and some of the nurses I talked to there told me that often there’s what they called remission in Mum’s disease. People have spells of months, even years, when they’re not cured but they don’t get any worse.’

  ‘In that case I vote with Maureen,’ Helen said, and all the others agreed, including Sarah.

  ‘I was going to vote that way anyway,’ Anne said, ‘because our Terry would close his eyes to it if we warned him, and it would still come as a shock to him.’

  Sarah told her father about the discussion when she was at home but her mother was out. Greg worked in a team of four First Aid men who were called to incidents to give medical aid and decide whether the casualties should go to hospital or to a rest centre, and he had come in covered in dust, with his hands and face scratched and cut.

  He went into the yard to take off his clothes and shake the dust from them, while Sarah made supper for him. When he had washed and come back into the kitchen, she asked where he had been.

  ‘Sawney Street, a pretty bad one,’ he said. ‘I got into a cellar to put a tourniquet on a chap who was half buried there, and a priest came in after me to give him absolution. The stuff above us was a bit rocky and the rescue man was going mad. He was saying, “Come ed, Father,” and then to me, “Hurry up, lad. One of yiz come out, for God’s sake.”

  ‘He thought we’d bring it down, shuffling round each other, and sure enough we got the lad out, then the priest, then he just pulled me out like a baby as it all came down.’

  Greg laughed. ‘He was so indignant! John trained for that work. We could do with him here now.’

  ‘He’s happy where he is though,’ Sarah said. She told her father about the discussion at the Fitzgeralds’ while he ate his supper, then he gave her a cigarette, lit one for himself and sat down beside her by the fire.

  ‘I see you had a letter from Terry this morning.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said listlessly. ‘No news though, of course.’

  ‘Does it depress you to get them, Sass?’

  ‘Oh, no, it means he’s all right,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Of course, but Joe’s letters are more interesting,’ he said. Sarah glanced at him, her face flaming, but he was smoking and gazing into the fire. She said nothing. They sat for a while in silence while thoughts tumbled about in her mind. Then Greg threw his cigarette into the fire and put his hand on hers.

  ‘You’re not happy, love, are you?’ he said gently. Sudden tears filled Sarah’s eyes and a sob escaped her. Her father’s arms went round her and she buried her head in his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, Dada, what can I do?’ she wept. ‘I’ve made such a terrible mistake.’

  ‘You’re not the first to do that, love,’ he said. ‘Do you want to tell me?’ She nodded and wiped her eyes, then said, ‘I was stupid. It was all a joke at first, Terry pretending to be my boyfriend and singing daft songs, and then with the war everybody seemed to pair us off. When he was on leave everyone was working shifts except me so we went about together, then he came to say goodbye to Mum and saw my photo and asked for it.’

  ‘It all seems to have been very haphazard,’ Greg said.

  ‘It was,’ Sarah said. ‘At the station Anne went off and left us together, and everyone was sort of emotional, and we just sort of got carried away, I suppose. Terry wanted to have a girl to write to and have a photo like the other fellows, and I suppose I liked the idea of a boyfriend,’ she said honestly. ‘It wouldn’t have lasted though, Dad. I knew really that I didn’t love him and he didn’t love me, and then I realized how I felt about Joe.’

  ‘And what about him?’ Greg asked.

  ‘He feels the same way, I know he does,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘Although we can’t say anything. We couldn’t do a dirty trick on Terry while he’s stuck there, and I am fond of him, like a brother.’

  ‘So you and Joe have said nothing to each other?’ Greg said, and when Sarah shook her head, continued, ‘You’ve both behaved very honourably then.’

  ‘Yes, but sometimes I feel I’ll burst if I don’t talk about it!’ she exclaimed. ‘I saw Joe when he came on leave but only so he could tell me about Terry, and then when he came again we knew when we looked at each other but we didn’t say anything and no one noticed. Except Mick. He didn’t see us then, but when he was home he just said casually he thought Joe was more my sort than Terry.’

  ‘Not much escapes Mick,’ Greg said. ‘I think he’s right, love, but you’re right too. You can’t tell Terry while he’s away, so you’ll just have to mark time until the war’s over. It won’t be easy, love, but you’d never forgive yourself if you did anything else.’

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ she blurted. She gave a sob which she tried to turn into a cough. ‘Joe comes on leave in a fortnight, and I don’t know how I’ll bear to see him and say nothing. I nearly told Anne one night.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Greg said quickly. ‘Talk to Joe. There’s only one decision you can make, but make it together. You’ll feel better when you’ve got things straight between you, but say nothing to anyone else. I won’t even tell Mum.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘She’ll never forgive me if she ever finds out, but this is one secret it’s best for everyone to keep between the three of us. If you feel you have to talk about it when Joe’s gone, talk to me, love. I’ll always be ready to listen.’

  Sarah sat up and smiled faintly. ‘I feel much happier now, Dad, just to have talked about it. I know it won’t be easy, but if we know…’

  ‘You can sort it all out when Terry comes home,’ Greg said. ‘He may have thought on the same lines himself, that you were both a bit impulsive.’

  ‘He’ll have had plenty of time to think,’ she said.

  ‘There’ll be a lot of adjustments to make when this is all over,’ Greg said thoughtfully. ‘Youngsters who’ve gone away as boys and come back men. People who marry in haste before men go abroad, then grow up and grow away from each other. You won’t have that problem, anyway, love.’

  ‘No thank goodness,’ she said. ‘We’ll just have to take things as they come, and if Joe and I know about each other I can stand it.’

  ‘And be discreet,’ he said.

  ‘Like Grandma says, keep a still tongue.’ She kissed her father gratefully. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Cathy was relieved to see that her mot
her looked better in spite of the disturbed nights. She worried about her living alone but Sally insisted that she was quite happy and would prefer not to let her parlour again. She and Peggy spent a lot of time together, and she also visited Cathy and the family frequently.

  Her remedies were still in demand and she was often called on to comfort or counsel her neighbours. ‘You’re a one woman ARP service, Grandma,’ Sarah said to her, laughing.

  ‘I like to keep busy,’ Sally said placidly.

  Cathy was also pleased to see Sarah looking less strained. She’s accepted the fact of Terry’s being a prisoner, Cathy decided. All her children were happy now: Kate because of her legacy, and Mick and John because they were leading the life they wanted, with the added bonus for John that he was engaged to the girl he loved.

  Mick’s examination results were impressive, and a master from the school came to see his parents and told them that he would have been able to go to Cambridge if the war had not broken out. ‘Still, education is never wasted,’ he said. ‘He will have these results to open doors for him after the war, and I’m sure he will be very successful in life.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ Cathy said, suppressing a smile. She had suddenly thought of her mother’s comment that if Mick fell down the lavatory he would come up with a gold chain round his neck.

  Joe came home on leave in January, and Sarah wondered how she was going to see him alone. She was hurrying out of the building at six o’clock when the messenger called her. ‘Miss Redmond, a soldier gave me this note for you.’

  Sarah felt as though her legs had turned to jelly but managed to say coolly, ‘Thanks, Norman. It’ll be from my brother.’ She walked away, opening the note.

  Joe had written: “I must see you, Sarah. I’m waiting to the right of the door, holding a torch.”

  Sarah turned right. A little way along the front of the building she could see the slightly darker bulk of Joe with a dimmed torch shining down on his glossy boots.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know how I’d see you in the blackout.’