by Linda Green
‘I’ve probably never told you this before,’ he said, ‘but I’m dead proud of you.’
*
The following morning, Maisie was already downstairs with James when I knocked on the girls’ bedroom door. Ruby was brushing her hair, staring at the reflection of her new self in the mirror.
‘How are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Fine.’
‘Are you sure you’re up to school today?’ She had insisted on going, even when I’d told her I was taking the day off.
‘Yeah.’
‘Look, just so you know, it’ll be on the news again later,’ I said. ‘He’s going to appear in court today to be charged. They won’t mention Grandma’s name, though. So hopefully no one at school will know.’
‘There were a few kids from school in the cinema,’ she said. ‘That’s why I changed my mind about going. What if his photo’s on the news or they show him going into court? They might recognise him.’
‘Just say they’re mistaken. Say it was your grandad. I don’t suppose any of them looked that closely.’
She put the brush down and turned to me. ‘It was their baby, wasn’t it? The one they found in Andrea’s garden. What happened to it?’
‘It’s a very sad story,’ I said.
‘Please tell me.’
‘I’m not sure now’s a good time.’
‘It is,’ she said.
I sighed. ‘After it was born, Great-grandma took the baby from Grandma and gave it to Olive. She was going to give it to her married niece, let her adopt it. People did things like that in those days. Only it all went wrong when Olive realised it was John’s baby. John’s father came home and smothered it with a cushion.’
Ruby sat down on the end of her bed.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.’
Ruby sat there staring at the wall. I wondered if I had said too much.
‘Grandma was only a year older than I am now,’ she said, after a while. ‘She must have been so scared, so upset.’
‘It’s horrible. The only little shred of comfort is the baby wouldn’t have felt anything. She wouldn’t have suffered at all.’
‘Why did Great-grandma take the baby away?’
‘Back in those days, it was a massive thing, love, an unmarried teenage girl getting pregnant. People said it brought shame on the family.’
‘But he raped her. Like that man raped you. It wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t Grandma’s fault.’
I shut my eyes. I hadn’t expected that. My shoulders started to shake. ‘Thank you,’ I said, my head bowed so she wouldn’t see the tears.
She reached out and took my hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘What on earth for?’
‘All that horrible stuff I said about you.’
‘You had every right to be angry.’
‘Not at you, though,’ she said. ‘You’re the last person I should be mad at.’
We sat in silence for a moment or two.
‘Are you going to report him?’ she asked eventually.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s too late for that.’
‘But it’s not too late for Grandma. She’s reported what he did to her.’
‘I know, love. But that’s because she knew his name and where he lived. I don’t know anything about him at all.’
‘Will you tell Grandma?’ she asked.
‘I think so. But not straight away. She’s having to deal with so much right now and I don’t want to throw something else in on top.’
‘What about Maisie?’ Ruby asked.
I shook my head. ‘No, she’s too young and she doesn’t need to know. If you want to tell her one day when she’s older, that’s up to you.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Maybe when she’s much older. I’ll see.’ She fell silent again. ‘You don’t think I’m like him, do you?’ she asked, after a minute or two. ‘What if I’ve got something bad in me? What if I got it from him?’
I turned to face Ruby and put my arms round her. ‘I don’t think you’ve got an ounce of bad in you. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who has more good in them than you do.’
She nodded, seemingly reassured, and picked up her school bag from the floor.
*
I sat in the public gallery; my hair tucked back neatly behind my ears, the collar of my freshly pressed shirt standing to attention. I wanted to show him that he couldn’t break our family. He had hurt us, had taken a sick pleasure in tormenting us and making us suffer, but he was not going to get the satisfaction of thinking he’d broken us because he hadn’t. We were still standing and he would not beat us.
A door opened and he came into the courtroom, escorted by two security guards, although they were hardly going to be needed. He cut a pathetic figure, standing there in his shabby brown jumper, his back stooped, suddenly looking every day of his seventy years.
He listened as the magistrate read out the charges and asked how he pleaded.
‘Not guilty,’ he said, in a shaky voice. His application for bail was refused, due to the seriousness of the charges. The magistrate told him that he would be remanded in custody until the trial. He started walking forlornly back towards the door, the guards at his side. He looked up for only a second as he passed me. It was long enough, though. Long enough to let him know I was there and I would not allow him to destroy my family.
*
Afterwards I drove straight to Grandma’s house. As I pulled up outside I noticed that there was something on her doorstep. My first thought was that it would be bones, that somehow John had left them there before he was arrested. As I got nearer, I could see it wasn’t bones. It was flowers, a bouquet of lilies and freesias. I picked them up. A small envelope was inside the cellophane, addressed to me. I took it out and read the message: ‘To Nicola and family, sending love and thoughts, Andrea and family.’
I glanced over to her house in case she was watching from the window. I should go and knock, really, to say thank you. It was the least I could do with everything they’d been through.
She came to the door quickly and smiled as soon as she saw me standing there, the flowers in my hand. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘They’re much appreciated.’
‘I’m glad you got them safely, I didn’t have your address but hoped you might be over. They’re for all of you.’
I imagined she must have worked out at least part of what had happened. ‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘I was wondering if you’d like the fairy statue from our garden. It doesn’t seem right for us to have it, in the circumstances.’
I was unsure whether Mum would want it, but decided to say yes. ‘Thank you. That’s very kind. Can I pick it up another time, please? I’ve got some things to sort in the house now.’
‘Yes, of course. Whenever you’re ready.’
*
I let myself into Grandma’s house. There was an envelope on the mat. Again, my first thought was that it would be a threatening note of some kind. I opened it, edging the piece of paper from the envelope painfully slowly, until I could be sure there was nothing else inside. I unfolded it and started to read. It was from an elderly man in the village. He said he’d known Betty for years and was sad to hear of her passing. He then went on to ask if we were planning to sell her house, only his daughter and her husband were looking to move to be near him and he wondered if they might be able to have a look around.
I stared at it in disbelief. It was like being handed a get-out-of-jail-free card. This was a way out. Maybe we could still sell our house and find somewhere else in Hebden. Somewhere with three bedrooms and a little garden. Somewhere that wasn’t here. A place we could all be happy.
I put the letter back into the envelope and slipped it inside my bag. I’d ring James later. See what he thought. I went through to
the kitchen. It was exactly as I’d left it on Thursday when Mum had turned up unexpectedly. It was incredible to think that only four days had passed since then. So much had happened. So many secrets had come tumbling out. But there was still one left to be told.
I picked up the biscuit barrel from the floor and went to put it back on the shelf. Something had fallen down and was blocking it. I rummaged behind and felt it straight away: a rusty little tin. I lifted it down. Beneath the rust, it was dark green, with a little white rose on each end. On the lid it said ‘Rowntrees Butterscotch’ and there was a picture of York Minster. At either end there were two royal crests with ‘By appointment to H.M. The King’ written above and below them. I shook the tin gently. Something tinkled inside. I opened it. There was a ring. It looked like an engagement ring with a tiny diamond. I picked it up and held it up to the light. Grandma must have worn this. Grandma had planned to get married to somebody else entirely.
I put the ring back. Beneath it was the pressed head of a white rose. My breath quickened. They were from him, the father of her babies. They had to be. I shut the lid, feeling as if I’d just opened an Egyptian tomb and peered inside. Personal artefacts preserved for future generations to wonder at. I stepped back and looked up at the pantry, wondering if any other treasures were stored there. I fetched the stool from under the kitchen counter, the rickety one I’d always told Grandma wasn’t safe to use. I put it down next to the pantry and climbed up to reach the top shelf. It was covered with what appeared to be a mixture of flour and dust. There were a few half-used packets of flour. Some jars of what looked like homemade jam, preserved in time. And a tin. A bigger one than the first. I reached up and dragged it forward to a point where I could pick it up. The one thing I knew straight away was that I’d never seen it before. That was what interested me most. That, and the fact that it was worn and rusty and had a distinctly wartime feel to it.
I climbed down and sat on the stool to open the lid. There were letters inside. Lots of them. Handwritten on pale blue Royal Canadian Air Force paper. My hands were trembling as I took out the bundle, which had been tied with a piece of blue ribbon. Tied by Betty, I had no doubt. A date was written in the right-hand corner of the top letter: 28 April 1944. I untied them and flicked through quickly to see if they were in order. They were. I started reading the first, immediately transported to a different time and place. I tried to imagine Betty as a shy Land Girl, left blushing by the young airman. It was signed ‘William’. It was him, the father of her babies. It had to be.
I raced through the rest of the letters, struggling to comprehend that this was real, this was my grandmother’s life, not some wartime love story I’d stumbled across in a magazine. I loved how William had stood by her when she got pregnant, loved his pure, boyish optimism about the future. Yet all the time I was reading, I was thinking, How does this end? How can something so beautiful end with two babies buried in a back garden? And then I got to the last letter, the one where he talked of their date at Bettys in York. How they’d etched their names in the mirror there with the diamond engagement ring he’d given her.
The letters appeared to end abruptly when she was sent away to her great-aunt Aggie. William had promised to write. Had he not kept that promise? Or had Aggie destroyed the letters before they’d ever got to Grandma?
I put the last letter down on my lap, frustrated to be left hanging like that. I folded them and tied the ribbon around them. Maybe that was as close to what happened as I was going to get. It was only as I went to put them back into the tin that I noticed the envelope at the bottom. It was addressed to William at Linton-on-Ouse. And it was in Grandma’s handwriting. Stamped on the envelope was ‘Return to Sender’. I picked it up. It had never been opened. I turned it over to find Grandma’s address circled on the back.
I got up and took a knife from Grandma’s cutlery drawer, carefully slitting the top, then taking out the letter and starting to read.
5 March 1945
Dear William,
I am so sorry. I hardly know how to begin this letter. I know I promised to look after your baby but I didn’t, couldn’t, and I’m so dreadfully sorry.
The baby was born sleeping and so was the other one. There were two of them, William. A boy and a girl. I was carrying twins, although I didn’t know it up to the birth. My family had forbidden me to leave the house. I wasn’t allowed to see a doctor or a midwife, so I’d had no idea, no idea at all.
I laboured on my own. Great-aunt Aggie provided hot towels and water but she has never had a child of her own so she didn’t really know what to do.
It was hard, William. The hardest thing I have ever done in my life but I thought of you and everything you have been through in this war and that was how I kept going.
But when he finally came, there was no sound from him, no intake of breath or heart-wrenching cry. He was silent and peaceful. He was perfect in every single way apart from the fact that he was not breathing. I held his little hands and imagined how it would feel to have his fingers grasp mine, and I cried because I knew that would never happen and because I’d broken my promise to you. I hadn’t taken good enough care of our baby.
I was still crying when I felt something else inside me and I realised it wasn’t over yet, that there was another one coming. And as I struggled with the pain, I dared to hope that it would be different, that this would be the baby we had dreamt of. But she wasn’t. She too was born sleeping, although she was perfect in every other way. She had dark hair and rosebud lips and tiny, perfectly formed fingers. She was so very beautiful, William. You would have adored her.
I wanted to keep them and hold them for longer. To be honest, I wanted to keep them to show you when you came. But Great-aunt Aggie said we couldn’t do that. Said we had to bury them right away. She dug the holes in the back garden. She’s very strong, says it’s from working in the mills all her life. And she came back and told me their graves were ready and I cried so hard. I couldn’t bear to be parted from my babies. Great aunt Aggie told me to be quiet. That no one must hear. She said I had to bear my pain in silence and that it was God’s will that my babies had been taken. That it was a blessing and I would now be able to forget all about them and get on with my life.
I screamed at her, William. I told her she was wrong, that God was wrong to have taken our babies and that I would never forget them, or forgive Him, until my dying day.
I wanted to climb into those holes with them and hold them and never let them go. To make up for being such a bad mother by being with them in death. The only thing that stopped me doing that was you. Because it would be too much for one person to bear to lose everything.
So I kissed my babies goodbye and I whispered to them that I loved them and that their daddy loved them and they were to sleep tightly forever until we could be with them again.
I am so sorry to have to write this letter to you, William. I feel awful for having let you down and I pray that you forgive me. All you asked of me was to look after our baby and I couldn’t do it for you. I couldn’t protect either of them.
When you come for me, William, when the war is over, we will lay flowers for them and mark their graves in some way. Until then I will stand watch over them. I will not fail them in death as I did in life.
Yours always,
Betty
24
I finished reading and brought the piece of paper to my face. It even smelt of Grandma. How could that be from so many years ago? I sat there, numb inside, holding the letter. And I whispered to her, in the vain hope that she could somehow hear. Whispered the words that three generations of my family had needed to hear. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
I sat there for some time, rereading the letters, making sure I had taken in every single detail.
I suspected I already knew why Grandma’s letter had been returned to her unopened but I still got my phone out and did a search of Linton-on-Ouse ai
r base in the Second World War anyway. Just to see it for myself. To know for certain. A Wartime Memories Project website came up. They listed all the service personnel killed, who had flown out of the air base during the war. I scrolled through it. There were a lot of names, each one with a story attached to it, no doubt. A story of loss and heartache. I found the entry eventually. William Thomas Harrington (died 5 March 1945). I shut my eyes and held Grandma’s letter tighter to me. He’d never read it because he’d died the day she’d written it. All I could think was that at least she’d had that tiny shred of comfort when the letter had been returned to her. That her William had gone to his death not knowing that she’d lost his baby. Still full of youthful optimism, of the hopes and dreams of the life they would build together when the war was over.
Further down there was a report of that final ill-fated mission. The three Halifax planes from Thunderbird squadron had taken off mid-afternoon for the long haul to Germany. They hadn’t even managed to leave Yorkshire. Within minutes of taking off, they encountered severe icing in the fog. One collided with a plane from Goose Squadron, another came down in a nearby village. The third, the one that listed Flight Lieutenant William Harrington among the dead, broke up under the weight of ice and crashed into houses on the outskirts of York, killing all but one of the crew and several people on the ground.
I sat there, tears running down my cheeks and falling onto Grandma’s letter. When life could be so cruel, perhaps it was no wonder that it could leave someone with a shard of ice in their heart.
*
My phone beeped as I was packing up to go home, the tin containing the bundle of letters tucked safely inside my bag. I got it out. It was from Ruby: I’m on my way home. I’m OK but I got a bit upset earlier. They’ve said to take the afternoon off.
She was getting off the bus at the end of our road as I turned into it. I pulled over and jumped out, running over to her. She let me fold my arms around her. Let me stroke her hair and kiss her.
