Stevie wrote regularly and often, trying to allay his family’s fears. Roland wrote spasmodically now and Polly wondered at the change. When he’d first been sent abroad the letters had arrived frequently. Micky – as might be expected – only managed a pre-printed postcard every so often. Violet still went out in the evenings, but now she was careful never to give anyone cause to spread gossip about her. Polly was surprised; she’d thought her rebellious sister wouldn’t have cared. Whether Violet was wary of her father or of her father-in-law – perhaps both – Polly didn’t know, but she hoped it was because Vi genuinely didn’t want to hurt Micky. Whatever the reason, Polly began to relax a little where Violet was concerned.
‘I’ll keep me eye on her, duck,’ Nelly promised when she visited Polly on a Sunday. ‘Don’t be too hard on her. She’s young and it’s difficult for the lasses with their menfolk away.’
So Polly tried to immerse herself in the life of the school. Surrounded by the children, whose resilience to all the bad news they must be aware of even at their tender ages she admired, she fought to put her own worries to the back of her mind.
But even at school the war kept intruding. The teachers were always alert to any sign of distress in the children, realizing at once when bad news had arrived at their home. One morning in June Polly came to school to find Nancy sitting at the teacher’s desk in her classroom with swollen eyes and a stricken look on her face.
‘Oh, Nancy, what is it?’ Polly put her arm around Nancy’s shoulders.
Hoarsely, the young woman whispered, ‘It’s Bob.’
Polly was mystified. ‘Bob? Who’s Bob?’
‘A – a soldier I – I know. I’d been writing to him. He lived up-hill. With his parents.’ The explanation was halting and painful. ‘He was with the Second Battalion. He’d joined the army before the war. You know, like your brother.’
Perhaps not for the same reason, Polly thought, but she said nothing.
‘I’ve known him for years. I met him when I was at the college, but just recently it’d – it’d become – more.’
‘Has he been killed?’
Nancy nodded. ‘His parents had a telegram yesterday. His father came round to tell us last night. Oh, Polly, he’s their only son – their only child. They’re heartbroken.’
Polly hugged her tightly and then said, ‘You should go home – just for today,’ she added swiftly as Nancy began to protest. ‘I’ll go and find Miss Broughton.’
So, before the children could see their teacher, Polly sought permission for Nancy to go home and, for the rest of the day, she took charge of the class with one or two visits from the head teacher to see that she was coping.
But Polly was in her element. This was what she wanted to do with her life, but she knew she must not get too hopeful; when the war was over things might change. If Roland came home – and she prayed that he would – she would have to go back to being a housewife and mother. But for the moment, she would enjoy the brief freedom to follow her dreams.
During the August school holidays Polly took the opportunity to clean her house from top to bottom. Jacob, now four, helped her, sweeping and dusting and shaking the rugs. He was more of a hindrance, but Polly enjoyed the time with him and felt a flash of guilt that perhaps she had put her own ambitions before the needs of her son. But he was a merry little boy, happy, it seemed, with either his mother or Selina.
And it was good for him, Polly told herself, to have a man’s presence in his life. Albie Thorpe was a stand-in for the father whom Jacob could not remember.
One hot evening Polly had put her son to bed, had bathed and washed her hair and was drying it in front of the fire in the range that always burned, winter and summer, when a soft knock sounded at the front door.
When Polly opened it, she felt as if she’d been dealt a blow in her midriff that had knocked the breath out of her. She stood and stared at the man standing there. He was tall, but now he stooped a little, leaning heavily on a stick. His face was gaunt and his eyes haunted, with the same expression she’d seen in the soldiers walking the city streets – soldiers who’d survived the trenches but whose lives had been scarred forever by the horrors they had witnessed and the wounds they bore. He was still in his uniform, his jacket hanging loosely on his thin frame.
They stared at each other for what seemed like an age until at last she whispered his name, like the answer to a prayer. ‘Leo. Oh, Leo.’
His lips moved but no sound came out. He just stood there, staring at her, drinking in the sight of her like a thirsting man in the desert who comes to an oasis.
Polly gathered her scattered wits. ‘What am I thinking? Come in, come in.’
Leo found his voice at last. ‘No, no, I’ll not intrude.’
Gently, she said, ‘You’re not intruding. There’s no one here but me and Jacob. And he’s in bed.’
At the mention of her son’s name, Leo’s expression softened a little and some of the horror left his eyes.
They sat on either side of the table and looked at each other again. Tentatively, Leo stretched out his hand, palm upwards and, without a second’s hesitation, Polly put hers into his warm, strong grasp.
‘Now I’m really home and safe,’ he whispered hoarsely.
‘Oh, Leo, Leo,’ she murmured. It was all she could say. Her heart was overflowing with gratitude that, though he was obviously wounded, his life had been spared. They sat in silence for a long time. Words were not needed; at least, not at the moment. There was so much to say, so much that had to be said, but not just now. Not in the moment when he’d come back from hell – when he’d come back to her.
‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked at last. ‘Why have we heard nothing from you or even about you?’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘I don’t really know myself what happened. When I was wounded – I think we were being shelled, but I can’t remember clearly – I was taken to a first aid post then to a field hospital. At least, that’s what I’ve been told since, but I was out cold. For a while they thought I was dead.’ He smiled wryly. ‘In fact, one of the orderlies in the field hospital told me that they’d put me with the dead and it was only because a sharp-eyed orderly heard me groan that I was found.’
‘Oh, Leo!’
‘Anyway,’ Leo went on, trying to make light of it, ‘when I eventually came to my senses, I was being transported to a hospital back at the coast. By this time all my belongings had gone and I’d no identification on me.’
‘What? Stolen, you mean?’
‘No, no,’ Leo sought to reassure her hastily. ‘At least, I don’t think so. I think everything had been lost when – when we were blown up.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, my head was injured.’ He touched his right temple just above the faint scar that he still bore from the injury her father had inflicted upon him. ‘And – for a while – I couldn’t remember a thing. Not even my name. So, for several weeks, months actually, no one knew who I was – including me.’
‘But it’s been two years, Leo.’
‘As soon as I got my memory back, I wrote home, but it seems Mam never got my letters. I’ve been writing ever since of course, even though I’ve been back at the Front.’
‘The Front?’ Polly’s voice was a high-pitched squeak of indignation. ‘They sent you back to the Front? But your leg? How could you fight with an injured leg.’
‘I didn’t – I mean, that injury wasn’t caused then. This is just recently. At Amiens. By the way, I saw Stevie briefly.’
‘Oh, Leo, is he all right. Is he in danger?’
‘Polly, darling, I can’t lie to you. Of course, he’s in danger, but he was fine when I saw him. And he’s in very good spirits. In fact, his sergeant told me that Stevie’s the one who keeps everyone’s spirits up, even though he’s so young.’
‘He shouldn’t be there. He was only eighteen in April just gone. He shouldn’t even be out there yet.’
‘I know, I know.’
She gazed at him, still hardly able to believe he was actually sitting in front of her, safe if not completely sound.
‘And this injury?’
Now he smiled broadly. ‘This is a Blighty wound. I’ll be taking no more part in the war, Poll.’
‘Thank God,’ she breathed and lifted his hand to her lips to kiss it gently.
Sixty-Two
‘Poll – is it too late for us?’
They’d been sitting together for hours as the darkness closed in around them. It was late now, but Leo made no attempt to leave.
She stared at him. ‘What – what d’you mean?’
His grasp tightened on her hand. ‘I want us to be together.’
‘But – but I can’t. There’s Roland. I – I can’t leave him, Leo.’
‘Yes, you can. It’s happened to a lot of the fellers I was with. They got letters from home telling them their wives or sweethearts had found someone else.’
‘And you’re asking me to do that to Roland?’ she whispered hoarsely.
‘One thing I’ve learnt out of this lot,’ he said grimly, ‘is to grab your happiness wherever and whenever you can. Life’s too short, Poll.’
She gazed at him, seeing a different side, a new side to the man she’d always loved and still did. But this war had changed him; he was harder, more selfish and seemed to have totally abandoned his own principle of always trying to do what was right.
She held his hand between hers. ‘Roland is a good, kind man. I couldn’t do that to him, Leo.’
‘But you don’t love him. You never have,’ he said harshly. ‘You love me.’
‘I – I can’t deny that,’ she said sadly. ‘And worse still, I think Roland has always known that too. I do love him, but in a very different way from the way I love you.’
Now he reached out with his other hand too and gripped both of hers in a surprisingly strong hold considering his weakened state. ‘Then just let me love you, Poll. Let me make love to you. Roland need never know. No one will ever know. Poll, I need you so desperately. I need your arms around me. I need to know I’m alive.’
For a moment she wavered. Her heart overflowed with love and pity for him. Leo, whom she’d always loved with all her heart and still did, was asking her – begging her – to go upstairs with him. Into the bed she’d shared with Roland, the bed where Jacob had been conceived and where she’d given birth to him.
She felt as if her heart was breaking; it was a physical pain she would not have believed possible. She tried to pull away, but he held her fast.
‘He’d never know. I swear I’d be careful. I – I wouldn’t let you get pregnant.’
Pregnant! With Leo’s child. The longing threatened to overwhelm her. To feel his hands caressing her; to know he loved her, needed her and then to plant his seed within her. To bear him a child. It was what she’d always dreamed of; it was still what she dreamed of in the darkness of the long, lonely nights.
Yet, somehow, very gently and with great sorrow, she found the strength to pull her hands from his grasp. ‘I – can’t, Leo. I can’t betray my husband in such a way.’
Whilst she struggled with her own desire, she was shocked at the change in Leo. The Leo she knew and loved would never have asked such a thing of her. How this dreadful war had changed them all. Some, like Micky Fowler, had proved he had a better side to his disreputable character and even Roland, diffident and shy, had found the bravery to enlist and do his duty. But the man sitting before her, who’d always put duty above everything else, had left his high principles buried in the mud of Flanders.
He sat slumped in the chair, broken and defeated. He looked so forlorn, so utterly without hope, that Polly almost relented. Her arms ached to hold him. Her breath quickened as she imagined the feel of his arms about her, the touch of his lips on hers, searching, demanding and then . . .
She closed her mind to what that would, inevitably, lead to. She couldn’t let it happen; she wouldn’t let it happen. She would never forgive herself.
Leo raised unhappy eyes to gaze at her. ‘I – I’d better go,’ he said heavily. ‘If your father got to hear I’d been here . . .’
‘It’s all right. He’s over all that now.’
Leo frowned. ‘Over what?’
‘The – the trouble.’
He blinked, as if that dreadful time now seemed a million years ago, obliterated by the vast horror of the war. ‘Oh yes, that.’
There was a long silence until he asked softly, ‘But are you, Poll?’
‘Am I what?’
‘Over it?’
Polly sighed, releasing all the long-held resentment, letting go of all the bitterness. It was a sigh of forgiveness.
‘It’s taken a war – this war – to make us realize just how futile fighting is. Dad thought he was doing right, standing up for what he believed in. But nothing’s worth men losing their lives over. And lives were lost back then and they shouldn’t have been. No more than all the thousands that have been lost and are still being lost every day.’
‘We have to defend ourselves, Poll? As a nation, we have to.’
‘I know that – but we shouldn’t start the trouble.’
‘We didn’t – well, not with the war, I mean.’
She frowned. ‘I’m not quite sure how – or why – the war started, Leo. I never understood it at the time and I still don’t. All I know is that a generation of fine young men has been wiped out and a generation of young women has been left to remain spinsters the whole of their lives. They’ll never be wives and mothers. They’ll never know the joy of holding their babies. We’ve not lost one generation but the next and the next and so on. No, this war has taught me a lot, Leo. And Dad too. He’s mellowed. He’s not the fiery, quick-tempered man he was.’
A smile, so long unused, quivered on his mouth. ‘You haven’t changed, my lovely Polly. You’re still as feisty as ever.’
She put her head on one side, her eyes twinkled and she smiled, really smiled for the first time in a long time. ‘Oh yes, every bit. When it comes to defending those I – I love, I most certainly am. But – ’ the smile faded and she became very serious again – ‘I have learned, finally, to forgive. My father’s been given a second chance. They were short-handed on the railway because of the war and they took him back.’
‘So it was only because of the shortage of workers?’
‘At first, yes, but he’s behaving himself because he knows that if he causes trouble again he’ll be out, and out for good next time. Of course, they all know what he did. Folks don’t always forget, but they do seem to have forgiven him. Even his employers – and that’s really something. He always was a good worker – no one has ever said otherwise. And now his boss has made his job permanent. He’s promised Dad that even when the war ends, there’ll still be a job for him.’
Leo’s face clouded. ‘If it ever ends.’
‘It must,’ Polly said simply. ‘It has to.’
‘But how many more lives are going to be lost before it does?’
To that Polly had no answer.
Sixty-Three
With Fate’s cruel irony, on the last day in September when news came that the Allies had broken through enemy lines and were ‘sweeping all before them along the whole Western Front’, the national newspapers also reported that Spanish flu had spread into Europe and even to America. China and India had been hit badly by the disease, with millions reported dead, and now it was said that more US servicemen had died of the flu than had been killed in the war. Civilians, weakened by the privations of war, were succumbing to it in their thousands.
By mid-October, the flu was rife throughout Britain. Reading the news, Polly shuddered. Another dreadful disease was about to hit their city.
On the last Friday morning of the month, a solemn-faced Nancy met Polly as she arrived at the school. Polly’s heart leapt in fear. There had been a quiet rejoicing amongst the staff at the school the previous day, with news that the war could soon be over. The chil
dren were caught up in the fever of excitement that had rippled through the classrooms, so much so that it had been difficult to maintain discipline, a most unusual occurrence in Celia Broughton’s school.
‘What is it? What’s happened? It’s not your brother, is it?’ Polly whispered so as not to be heard by the children clattering into the classroom. Nancy’s younger brother had been called up a few months earlier and had been sent abroad recently.
Nancy shook her head. ‘No, no, he’s fine. As far as we know. Mother had a letter last week. Of course . . .’ Her voice faded away, but Polly knew what she meant. Even though the arrival of a letter heartened and reassured the families that their loved one had been safe and well at the time of writing, no one could be sure that in the days since, something hadn’t happened to them. Relief was always tempered by a renewed fear of what might be happening now, at this very minute.
‘It’s not that,’ Nancy was saying. ‘Miss Broughton has received notice to close the school until at least a week on Tuesday because of the influenza. It might be for even longer than that. Another teacher has sent word this morning that she’s ill, and fewer and fewer children are coming each day. It’s getting worse, Polly.’
Nancy’s eyes met Polly’s. The two young women were of a similar age and could both remember the typhoid epidemic. Although this was a different cause, the fear sweeping through the city was the same.
Polly sighed. ‘I suppose they’re right. What’s going to happen?’
‘Miss Broughton is dismissing everyone this morning.’
Polly nodded. She would miss her work at the school, but she knew the decision was the right one.
But despite such precautions, the disease spread and reached their own streets, and once again Leo’s mother, Bertha, was in great demand, going from house to house helping to nurse the sick without regard for her own health.
‘I can’t stop her,’ Leo told Polly. He’d taken to calling round and Polly hadn’t the heart nor, if she were truthful, the desire to stop him. Let the neighbours gossip, she told herself. She had nothing to be ashamed of and she would tell Roland herself if he came home.
Forgive and Forget Page 34
