A Winter Love Song

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘Good gracious, no. But for them as do, it’s no picnic. A cousin of mine, nice girl, quiet, refined, drowned herself in the Thames after her doctor told her there was nothing wrong with her except in her mind and if she didn’t make an effort she’d end up in an asylum. Her little girl was three months old when she did herself in. And they wouldn’t give her a proper funeral because she was a suicide. Wicked, I call it. Her husband had been as bad as the doctor, she told me that herself before she died, but after she’d gone he got all the sympathy you could wish for.’

  Annie sighed, finishing her cocoa before she said, ‘There’s them that keep on about how the war’s changing how women are, what with them going out and doing men’s jobs and drinking in pubs and the rest of it, but I tell you, Bonnie, I’m all for it.

  ‘If women are good enough to be called up by the government in this war, then they’re good enough for equal pay and the rest of it, but I can’t see that happening and it’s a crying shame. I can remember the fight for the vote and the day Emily Davison was buried after she fell under the King’s horse at the Derby.

  ‘Huge procession across London there was. I went with me mum and sisters, and everyone was saying that terrible though her sacrifice was, it would cause change. And it has to some extent, but not enough. No, not enough.’

  ‘I never knew you were a suffragette, Annie.’ Bonnie was amazed.

  ‘I don’t suppose I was, not a proper one anyway, but I believed in what they were fighting for. It was like in the First War when the government appealed for women to sign up for work in trade and industry and agriculture and making shells in the factories. All of a sudden the government was saying that women were capable of being employed in any capacity of physical or intellectual work, where a few years before they were claiming our minds didn’t work as well as men’s and our bodies were weak and we couldn’t be trusted with the vote. That made me, and not just me – thousands of women – think long and hard, I tell you. They couldn’t have it both ways. And look at you, going out to Burma and coping with goodness knows what as well as any man, better than some, I dare say. No, we’re not weak, and this baby-blues thing is a definite affliction, not something imagined by a woman’s “inferior” mind as that doctor told my poor cousin.’

  They talked some more, and once Annie had gone up to bed Bonnie sat for a while longer thinking about their conversation. She had never really thought about equal pay for men and women or some of the other things Annie had brought up, but one thing was for sure, she had known plenty of strong women in her life. Nelly, Betty, Hilda, Selina, not to mention Annie herself. And her grandma had been strong too. She hadn’t liked her grandma – she’d been a wicked woman, truth be told – but no one could have accused Margarita of being weak. She had led her life the way she had wanted to, the same as she – her granddaughter – was doing now.

  It was a new thought that she had something in common with her grandmother, and not altogether a welcome one, but the more she considered it, the more Bonnie came to the conclusion that it was their similarities in certain respects that had made her and her grandmother clash so violently from when she was a little girl. One of her first memories was of herself standing outside her father’s wagon while her grandmother yelled at her, and of herself yelling back. She could even picture the little red dress she’d been wearing – she couldn’t have been more than four or five years old – and the way her grandmother had towered over her, her face red with temper.

  Oh, dear. Bonnie shook her head at herself. This was awful. She didn’t want to be like her grandma. But everyone had said how gentle and sweet and pliable her mother had been, so her fiery side didn’t come from her. There was her da, of course, but the fire that ran in her genes couldn’t altogether be put down to him.

  For a little while Bonnie didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. It was one thing to be proud of her Spanish heritage – and she was, she always had been, the same as she was proud of being northern – but quite another to recognize characteristics in herself that could be attributed to her grandmother. The more she thought about it, however, the more she told herself that the things that had come from Margarita – strength, determination, passion and intensity of spirit – were good in themselves, they’d just got twisted and distorted in her grandmother. She would never know quite why Margarita had been the way she was, but there was no reason for her to be the same. Bitterness had wrapped her grandmother around like a shroud; she had chosen to become the woman she had been. Just as she’d chosen to marry Franco, and to hate her only daughter’s husband with a hate that had burned her up and which had destroyed any possible relationship with her daughter’s daughter, chosen to make her son-in-law’s life so impossible that he had risked everything in a bid to leave the fair.

  It was sad, it was actually sad to waste your life in such a way, Bonnie told herself, and but for the fact that her grandmother had hurt so many people along the way, she would feel sorry for her right now. Perhaps she did a little, even so. She had forgiven Franco for what he had done to her, but then he had asked for forgiveness in his letter and shown remorse. Her grandmother never would have done that, it hadn’t been in her to do so. But did she forgive her?

  She sat with her arms crossed round her waist as though she was hugging herself, rocking gently as a child rocks itself in a cot when in need of comfort. And into her mind came a picture of her father lying desperately ill and in pain so far away from home.

  She stopped rocking and her chin lifted. She knew the answer. Maybe one day she would find it in herself to forgive her grandmother for her part in ruining her father’s life, for all the years that she and her father had lost, but not now. No, not now. Her grandmother had been a spiteful, cruel and manipulative woman and she hated her, and she was glad that she was dead. And if that meant that her grandmother didn’t have the monopoly on bitterness, then so be it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Bonnie arrived outside Nelly’s house in Manchester at four o’clock in the afternoon. Although the street had suffered no bomb damage, unlike some in the surrounding area, the consequences of war were apparent in the absence of the iron railings which had previously separated the few yards of front garden from the pavement. Nelly’s lovely profusion of sweet-smelling flowers had gone too, and now the small plot of earth held vegetables around which a home-made-looking picket fence had been cobbled together.

  As Bonnie looked around, she saw that most of Nelly’s neighbours had done the same sort of thing. Clearly the Ministry of Food’s exhortation for folk to make the most of even the tiniest bit of earth had been well heeded. The terraced houses only had a very small yard at the rear of each, barely enough to swing a cat, but if she wasn’t mistaken there was parsley and mint in Nelly’s window boxes too.

  Bonnie knew Nelly probably wouldn’t be home from her job in a munitions factory yet, and sure enough there was no answer to her knock on the blue front door. She walked along the street and turned into the back lane that ran between the terraces. It was dusty and dry underfoot with clumps of yellowing grass here and there. Some of the houses still had functioning outside lavatories in the backyards, and Bonnie caught a whiff to confirm this as she passed one gate. Others, like Nelly’s house, had been modernized with indoor plumbing and the outside lavatory had become redundant, often being turned into a storage area for coal.

  The high brick walls either side of the lane made it something of a sun trap on a hot summer’s day such as this one, and as Bonnie counted off the houses before she came to Nelly’s backyard gate, she found herself thinking that you would barely know there was a war on in this quiet little oasis. A group of children were playing some game or other further down the lane; a big tabby cat sat cleaning itself on top of a wall, and through one open gate, Bonnie caught a glimpse of two grey-haired matrons chatting over a cup of tea while three or four toddlers – presumably their grandchildren – played in an old tin bath full of water.

  The timelessne
ss of it all gripped Bonnie and brought a lump into her throat. After all the devastation of the last few years, the bombed-out buildings and mountains of rubble and terrible loss of life, and Burma, where man’s inhumanity to man had been ever present, this peaceful back lane was so different. This was how life should be lived.

  She lifted her face up to the blue sky in which the odd cotton-wool cloud floated and shut her eyes for a moment so that the sun beat orange against her closed lids. She had almost forgotten that the sky could be something other than an expanse in which enemy aircraft travelled, bent on destruction. But it had been a benign and beautiful thing in the past and it would be so again, she believed that. The Allies would win the war, they had to, and Art would come back to her. They would have a family together, fat little babies who would grow up in a world that had been made safe again. She had to hold on to that. And please God, let my father come home . . .

  It was a minute or two before she walked on and reached Nelly’s gate. The small paved backyard was neat and clean, a row of pots holding tomato plants along one wall and a big wooden trough made from what looked like planks of wood and filled with earth along the other side. This was full of potato plants if she wasn’t mistaken.

  Nelly’s back door was locked, but Bonnie had no sooner sat down on the step to wait than the gate opened and Thomas walked into the yard. Thomas was now fifteen years old and somewhat lanky, his golden-brown curly hair and dark eyes ensuring that the girls were after him already, according to Nelly. And Bonnie could see why. It wasn’t just Thomas’s good looks that were charming but his whole manner. It was the first time she had seen him for some months, and she noticed straight away that he looked even more like his father. She wondered why it didn’t make her feel a little odd, but it didn’t. Perhaps it was because in nature Thomas was very much his mother’s son, and his innate gentleness and kindness shone out of his face.

  He grinned at her now, his hug almost lifting her off her feet as he said, ‘Auntie Bonnie, what a great surprise. Does Mother know you’re coming? How was Burma? My school friends were well impressed when I told them what you were doing. They all have your records, you know. I get a lot of reflected glory, having a famous auntie.’

  ‘Go on with you.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘You and your soft soap.’

  ‘It’s true.’ He was opening the back door as he spoke, and when he stood aside for her to enter before him and Bonnie walked into Nelly’s bright, welcoming kitchen, she reflected not for the first time that her friend had given Thomas a wonderful home in which to grow up. He had only known love and security in spite of not having a father in his life.

  Thomas put the kettle on for a cup of tea and Bonnie told him all about her trip, leaving out the part about finding her father, as they sat at the kitchen table drinking and eating a slice of the eggless sponge in Nelly’s cake tin. It was during a pause in the conversation that Thomas asked a question that caused Bonnie to nearly choke on her cake. ‘Did you know my father, Auntie Bonnie?’ he asked very quietly.

  Thomas had never mentioned his father before, not to her. Nelly had told her that Thomas had asked about him a few times, and she had parried his questions as best she could. She had stuck to her story that Thomas’s father, her husband, had been killed in a motor-car accident not long after Thomas was born, and had made excuses about the lack of any photographs by saying that there had been a fire and that documents and photographs had been lost. Thomas knew his mother had travelled with the fair with her performing dogs and that was where she had met Bonnie, but Nelly had told him that was after her parents had died and before she had met Thomas’s father. An interlude in her life, was how she had described it.

  Bonnie was thinking about all this as she looked at Thomas and wondered how to reply. That was the trouble with lies, you could trip yourself up so easily.

  But before she could say anything, Thomas added, ‘I found my birth certificate the other day, you see, the one that was supposed to have been destroyed along with my mother’s marriage certificate and so on. And I confess I didn’t stumble across it by accident, I went looking for it – or at least for something to explain the mystery I feel surrounds my birth and my mother’s life before she had me.’

  Bonnie stared at him. She didn’t ask what the birth certificate had said – she could guess from the look on his face. Gently, she reached across the table and placed her hand on his. ‘Have you spoken to your mother about this?’

  ‘I want to but . . .’ He shook his head. ‘She gets so upset if I ever mention my father. When I was younger I used to think it was because she loved him so much and had lost him so early in their marriage, so I tried not to ask questions. But now . . .’

  ‘Now you don’t think that?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ He looked at her, a straight look, and in that moment Bonnie realized that some time during the last months the boy had become a man. ‘And I want to know the truth.’

  Softly she said, ‘You have to talk to your mother, Thomas. Tell her that you’ve seen your birth certificate. You can’t pretend everything is the same when it’s not and I know she wouldn’t want that. Anything your mother has said or done, she has done for your sake, I do know that. From the moment you were conceived you’ve been her whole life and she would sacrifice anything or anyone for you. You do understand?’

  ‘It’s all right, Auntie Bonnie.’ He put his other hand over the one she’d placed on his. And now he confirmed what she had thought earlier, when he said, ‘I’m not a child and I’ve got a pretty good idea of what happened, but I need to know the facts, the details, you know? It won’t make me love Mother any the less but I won’t be lied to any longer.’ And when Bonnie would have protested, he said, ‘I know, I know, she did it for my own good, that’s what you’re going to say, aren’t you? The world can be cruel with its labels, I’m aware of that. But sooner or later the truth will out and I’m not ashamed of who I am.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ said Bonnie, somewhat helplessly. He was clearly upset but trying not to show it, and her heart went out to him.

  ‘So, I come back to my original question. Did you know my father?’

  She removed her hand from his and stood up. ‘Thomas, I’ll tell you anything I can but only after you have spoken to your mother. I’m going to go for a walk now as she’ll be home soon, and you need to speak of this together without anyone else present. Tell her I’ll buy myself a meal somewhere and be back before dark, all right?’

  Thomas looked disconcerted. ‘No, you don’t have to do that. You’ve only just got here.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine and I’ll see you later. Just be honest with her. Tell her about the birth certificate and why you looked for it and she will understand it’s time for you to know. Your mother only ever has your best interests at heart.’

  He nodded, looking as though he was going to cry for a moment before making a visible effort to pull himself together. ‘Things have been a bit strained lately,’ he admitted as he walked with her out of the kitchen and into the hall. As Bonnie opened the front door, he added, ‘Sometimes I’ve felt so angry and yet I still couldn’t bring myself to say anything because I knew it would upset her, but you’re right, we can’t carry on like this.’ He squared his bony shoulders that looked too wide for his thin, gangling frame. ‘I don’t want us to end up hating each other.’

  ‘That would never happen.’ She stepped down into the street that was hot after Nelly’s cool kitchen, and turned to look up at him and say, ‘See you later,’ before walking purposefully along the pavement without any idea where she was going. And as she walked, she went over their conversation in her mind, worrying at it like a dog with a bone until she was panic-stricken she had done the wrong thing in encouraging Thomas to have it out with his mother. But then what else could she have done? she asked herself miserably, passing a huge bombsite that took in half a street and in which children were playing in the rubble. Thomas had seen his birth certificate and h
e had made it plain he needed some answers. The longer he left talking to Nelly, the longer things would fester.

  Eventually she found a little café that was open and bought a cup of tea and a sticky bun, sitting at a table by the window and moving her chair so that her back was to the rest of the room. She sat fretting about what was happening back at Nelly’s, and half listening to a conversation between two lorry drivers about the recent assassination attempt on Hitler at his Wolf’s Lair HQ in East Prussia. The suitcase bomb under the conference table had apparently been planted by one of his own officers, but although three men had died, Hitler had escaped with only minor burns and cuts.

  ‘I tell you, Harry,’ one of the men was saying, ‘the Devil looks after his own. Old Hitler’s saying that Providence was preserving him to continue his life’s work. Old Nick, more like. Wicked so-an’-so.’

  ‘Aye, but don’t forget what this really means,’ the man called Harry answered. ‘Hitler’s own officers are turning against him. There’s been rumours before but this is living proof. Nazi Germany’s nearing collapse, all the papers are saying so, and once we finish them off it’ll be time to do the same to the Japanese in the Far East. They’re as bad as the Nazis any day, to my mind.’

  ‘I agree with you there, Harry. Aye, I do. My poor old Phyllis is worried to death about her brother if the Japs know they’ve lost the war and I can’t say I blame her. I reckon they’ll do for our lads in their POW camps and then top themselves rather than surrender. Mind, poor old Joe might be six foot under already, she hasn’t heard from him in months.’

  The two men talked on but Bonnie wasn’t listening any more, fear for her father spiralling through her. These men were right and they had voiced the fear that continued to haunt her day and night. She finished her tea, her hand trembling so that it slopped in the saucer.

  One day at a time. It was a resolution she’d made at the beginning of the war because to look into the future was weakening. She couldn’t help her father, not today, but she could be here for Nelly, and this was going to be a difficult day for her friend, however it went with Thomas.