The Way Ahead

by Mary Jane Staples

  Chapter Five

  MRS POLLY ADAMS WAS still living in Dorset, but her husband, Boots, had departed over a year ago for North Africa with the corps formerly under the command of General Sir Henry Simms, Polly’s father. Sir Henry had been forced to relinquish that command because of ill-health, but incorrigible in his persistence once he’d recovered, he secured an appointment in an advisory role at the War Office. It was a desk job, but he was listened to on occasions. He grumbled, of course. Lady Simms, as energetic as ever in her work for the Red Cross, patted him, soothed him, and sometimes drove him to Dorset to see Polly and her twins, his grandchildren. He missed the daily contact he’d enjoyed with Boots, his logistics expert, and he missed the man. So did Polly.

  The corps under the command of Lieutenant-General Montrose had played its part in the Tunisian campaign, which ended in the complete defeat of the Axis armies, and was marked by a victory parade through the streets of the Tunisian capital. In a letter to Polly, Boots referred to a well-attended fête at which bands played rousingly but couldn’t quite make up for the absence of Women’s Institute stalls selling homemade jams and marmalade. Polly guessed what he meant by a well-attended fête, and that told her exactly where he was at the time.

  Hitler was furious with the German surrender. It did not accord with his uncompromising demand that in any losing situation, German soldiers should fight until the last man was dead. Mussolini didn’t make such demands of his Italian troops, who surrendered happily. The Allies subsequently used their battle-hardened North African armies to invade and conquer Sicily. This was followed by an invasion of Italy itself, when the Italian Government immediately made peace with the Allies and gave Mussolini the order of the boot. Incensed by this treatment of his portly Italian partner, Hitler sent hordes of German troops into Italy to occupy it and to defend it against the invaders. They were unable to prevent the Allies securing a foothold, however, and since then the fighting had been bitter.

  The corps in which Boots was serving as a staff officer was now part of the British Eighth Army in Italy. His letters, arriving at very irregular intervals, never said much about what was happening. However, Polly knew from wireless broadcasts that the Americans, British, Poles, Canadians and Free French forces were presently locked in titanic battles with the Germans who, to give them their due, were always the toughest of soldiers.

  She endured nail-biting moments thinking of Boots all too close to the costly fighting around Monte Cassino, never mind that he was a staff officer. His last letter, as usual, gave no details of military events. He kept mainly to personal and family matters, most of which related to his attachment to her, the twins and home. The twins, Gemma and James, were now two and a half years old, and children of delight to Polly. Sometimes she could still not believe they were hers, that in her forty-eighth year she was actually the mother of two bundles of fun and mischief. She spoke constantly to them of their father, for she was determined they would not see him as a stranger when he eventually turned up.

  Her erstwhile help and companion, Kate Trimble, was now in the WAAF. Kate’s young man, Boots’s nephew David, was working on a farm in Devon prior to his own call-up, and he intended to opt for the RAF. All Kate’s visionary wartime heroes were RAF pilots, and David had promised he’d do his best to fill such a role. He hoped, he said in a letter to her, that German pilots would help him achieve that status by not shooting at him. Kate wrote back to say she quite liked him as he was, that he didn’t have to be heroic as long as he looked the part.

  Polly made light of being without her. She never allowed the twins to be an encumbrance instead of a blessing. She was more than a match for their childish tricks and tantrums. She had lived through the country’s most difficult years, the years of the decimating Great War, the years of economic depression and demoralizing unemployment, the rebellious years of the wild Twenties, and the years of this war against Hitler. There were also her years of frustrated longing for a man whose marriage kept him apart from her until Goering’s bombers robbed him of his wife, his Emily.

  As Boots’s second wife, all her frustrations vanished. The scourge of London bobbies in the wild Twenties, she became almost soppy with happiness, and such an uncritical wife that his mother told her it didn’t do for any woman to put her husband on a pedestal. It was bound to make him believe he was her lord and master, which was never what God had in mind. Polly said she’d never had it in mind herself, but somehow it happened. His mother, registering shock, said she’d never brought her only oldest son up to be any woman’s lord and master, and something ought to be done about it. Polly said she was doing her level best to get on equal terms, but everything bounced off him, as one might expect with lords and masters. Chinese Lady, as his mother was called, registered more shock. Well, I don’t want to interfere, she said, but I’m going to have to talk to him. Which she did, with Polly eavesdropping.

  ‘Now just look here, Boots, I won’t have you treating Polly like you were the Lord of the earth, which she says happens every day.’

  ‘Come again, old girl?’ said Boots.

  ‘Don’t call me old girl, it’s airy-fairy and disrespectful,’ said Chinese Lady. ‘Polly’s a very nice woman and a good wife to you, especially considering her worries about the war. Now I know she thinks highly of you, but I won’t have you taking advantage of that to make her bow down to you.’

  ‘Come again, old girl?’ repeated Boots.

  ‘Don’t keep saying that,’ said Chinese Lady, ‘you know what I’m talking about. Of course, it’s not my place to interfere, but some things have to be said. Polly says she didn’t think you’d act like her lord and master, but it happened somehow, she said. She told me she’s trying to change you, but that you don’t take a blind bit of notice.’

  ‘Old lady, I’m lost for words,’ said Boots.

  ‘H’m, that’ll be the day,’ sniffed Chinese Lady.

  ‘I’ll talk to Polly,’ said Boots, and did so at a suitable moment. The only response he received came in the form of shrieks of laughter. There was no way any lord and master could get the better of hysterical glee by mere dialogue. So, in a manner of speaking, he dragged the lady up the winding stairs to the bedroom. Polly liked that.

  ‘What happens next?’ she asked when they arrived at the bedside.

  ‘Something heavy’s going to drop on you from a great height,’ said Boots.

  ‘Oh, yes please, m’lord, thank you, m’lord, carry on, m’lord,’ said Polly.

  Today, she was motoring back to her wartime home in the village of Corfe Castle after spending three days with her parents in Dulwich, London now being free of air raids. On no account would Polly have taken her precious twins to the Empire’s battered capital if there was still a threat from the skies. Her main family visits were to Rosie and Felicity, who weren’t all that far from her.

  The car wasn’t short of petrol. Her versatile brother-in-law, Sammy, kept her supplied with coupons without disclosing how he acquired them. Polly always expressed thanks, but asked no questions, knowing that among Sammy’s useful wartime connections were a spiv or two. Polly was far too sophisticated to feel guilty.

  Gemma and James were sitting together on the passenger seat, where she could keep an eye on the little darlings. While they were inseparable, they weren’t identical. Gemma was fair-haired, hazel-eyed and round-faced. James had the dark brown hair, grey eyes and leaner features of his father. They were arguing about who was the first to see the squirrel that had crossed the road a little way back. Arguments alternated with agreements in their existence as twins.

  A few miles from Corfe Castle, Polly approached a cross-roads and came to a stop. Passing by was a long line of trudging American Army troops. Dorset and Devon had been swarming with men of the American divisions for a year and more. Thousands of GIs had conducted regular countryside manoeuvres, bestowing on the land a host of muddy footprints, gouged earth and large dents, and leaving chalked messages such as ‘Kilroy was here,
OK?’ Lately, however, Polly’s impression was that they were thinning out, that an exodus from the West Country was taking place for some reason or another, and she made her guesses about that.

  She sat there in Boots’s old Riley, its hood down on this bright day, and the foot-slogging GIs eyed her as they went by, rifles slung, packs on their backs.

  ‘Room there for me, lady?’

  Polly smiled.

  ‘Here, kids.’ One man, diving a hand into his fatigues, brought out a wrapped candy bar and tossed it into the car. Gemma and James fought for its possession. Polly thanked the GI with a smile and a little hand gesture. He slowed as if he had it in mind to ask her for a date.

  ‘Move it, Private Brewster!’ bawled a sergeant, and the GI picked up his feet and went on. It didn’t prevent another man from trying his luck.

  ‘Could I meet ya somewheres, lady?’ he asked, giving Polly a wink. Polly was only a few months short of forty-eight, but with every assistance from herself, the passing years had been kind to her. She still looked very much like Colleen Moore, piquant-faced Hollywood film star of the Thirties. Her natural elegance and her Mayfair accent intrigued Americans with whom she had come into contact. They cast her as a typically fascinating upper-crust Englishwoman by no means middle-aged. Wearing a light brown hat and dark brown costume, she watched the American soldiers trudging by. It made her think of how she had watched British Tommies going up the line to the trenches of the ’14–18 war. Even now, those memories were quick to come back. There was, thank God, no trench warfare in this present conflict, although death from mighty machines was no less hideous.

  The rearguard passed. An officer gave her a friendly salute.

  ‘Thanks, ma’am,’ he said in appreciation of her patience. She had made no attempt to disrupt the column.

  ‘Goodbye, mister,’ called little Gemma.

  ‘Goodbye,’ echoed young James.

  Polly crossed then, and the twins began to argue again over the candy bar. Gemma glanced at her mother. So did James. Polly took no notice. She rarely took any notice of arguments, yells and friction, and that seemed to shorten their duration. She always gave attention to the twins’ sweeter moods, which let them know that that was how she liked them best. She sometimes wondered if her life had become the humdrum one of conventional motherhood and routine domesticity. But then she’d look at the twins, feel the sense of wonder that they were hers, and follow that by thinking of their father, the man who had helped in the creation of the miracle.

  God, she really did miss him, she thought, as a battered old taxi, coming from Corfe Castle village, passed her with a rattle and a wheeze.

  Reaching her wartime home on the outskirts of the village, the cottage Boots was renting for the duration, she turned in, brought the car to a stop in the short drive, switched off the engine, and alighted. She went round, opened the passenger door, and out scrambled perpetual motion in the form of Gemma and James. They were still rabbiting on about ownership of the candy, tightly clutched in Gemma’s hand.

  ‘If I confiscated it,’ said Polly, ‘would that settle the matter?’

  ‘But, Mummy, it’s ours,’ protested James.

  ‘Oh, you’ve finally settled it yourselves, have you?’ said Polly. ‘It’s yours and Gemma’s?’

  ‘Well, it’s mine really,’ said Gemma, ‘but I’d best share it with James.’

  ‘Hooray,’ said Polly, and opened the front door with her key. In rushed the small boy and girl. There were three letters on the hallstand. Odd, how did they get there from the mat? Had Mrs Clowes, her domestic help, been in? She must have. The top letter was a blue airmail missive. Polly, picking it up, recognized her husband’s handwriting. She slit it with a quick fingernail.

  James called from the living-room.

  ‘Mummy, Daddy’s here.’

  ‘What? What did you say, James?’

  Gemma answered.

  ‘He’s down the garden, Mummy.’

  Polly ran into the living-room. Through the open French windows the garden showed clear and green, the borders colourful with spring bulbs. An Army officer turned at the bottom of the garden and began to stroll back to the cottage. Out through the French windows scampered the twins.

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Daddy!’

  It had been a year since they had last seen him, but they hadn’t forgotten him, young though they were. They pelted up to him. Boots stooped and put an arm around each of them.

  ‘Hello, little poppets, I think you’ve both grown a bit,’ he said.

  ‘Daddy, we been to Mummy’s home to see Granny and Grandpa,’ said James.

  ‘We just come back,’ said Gemma.

  ‘So have I,’ said Boots, ‘but not from your grandparents.’ He sat down on the garden bench and brought the twins up on the seat with him, Gemma on his left, James on his right. He planted a kiss on James’s cheek and one on Gemma’s nose. Gemma giggled and chattered. James used his own tongue. Both children knew without question who their father was, even if he had been away for ages.

  Polly, out on the patio, stood quite still, watching the exuberant reunion. Emotion coursed through her. Boots saw her.

  ‘Hello, Polly.’

  ‘Hello, darling.’ Polly’s response was slightly husky.

  ‘Be with you in a tick,’ said Boots.

  ‘Don’t hurry, give them a fussing,’ said Polly, and waited while he talked to the twins, hugged them, and listened to piping voices delivering words that tumbled over each other. It pleased Polly immensely that during his absence she had succeeded in keeping his image alive in their young minds. She noted his demonstrations of affection, of delight in his twins. It touched her emotions. Eventually, Boots sent the boy and girl into the cottage to play the game of standing guard over his valise, which he’d left in the kitchen. Polly took her turn then for a reunion. She sat down beside him. Boots put an arm around her and kissed her with warmth and feeling, which helped her to make an admission. ‘Do you realize, you old darling, that I’m close to needing a hankie?’ she said.

  ‘I realize your nose is slightly pink,’ said Boots. ‘I liked your neutral one best, but I can live with the pink. Um, is there a good reason for needing a hankie?’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ said Polly. ‘You’re the one man I’ve been aching to see, but the last one I expected. How did you manage it, have you been given home leave? If so, for how long, and why didn’t you let us know you were coming?’

  ‘How many questions is that?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Never mind how many, you can roll them all into one,’ said Polly. ‘Just tell me – oh, ye gods, what are you doing?’

  Boots had opened up her jacket and placed a hand on her blouse, where a firmly defined curve was a tribute to her well-preserved figure.

  ‘I’m delighted to find you all present and correct, Mrs Adams,’ he said.

  ‘Boots, you old warhorse, if you’re delighted, I’m delirious,’ she said. ‘You’re here, you’re home.’ There he was, his familiar smile all for her, his years sitting so easily on him. His face was tanned, his impaired left eye a little more deeply grey than the right. Close to him, Polly experienced that which he so often aroused in her, the incredible feeling of being young again. She had fallen in love with him years ago, on the day she first met him in Sammy’s grotty Army surplus shop, and had never been able to cure herself of her intense attachment to him. ‘Speak to me.’

  ‘First,’ said Boots, ‘I arrived in Southampton from Gibraltar this morning, where I was able to catch a train and finish up at Wareham. I phoned you from there, hoping you’d be able to come and pick me up. No answer. Well, according to our cherubs, it seems you were on your way back from Dulwich, but I simply thought you were out in the village with them. So I convinced an old bloke with an ancient taxi that he’d do the Army a favour if he’d drive me here.’

  ‘I think the old rattler passed us a little while ago,’ said Polly.

  ‘Well, it helped me to beat you
to the door by about ten minutes,’ said Boots.

  ‘So it was you who picked the letters up from the mat,’ said Polly. ‘Boots, I want to hear how long you’re going to be with us, how much leave you’ve got, why you were in Gibraltar, and yes, what you think of the twins after a year away from them.’

  ‘I’m still in wonder that those two treasures should be ours, Polly,’ said Boots.

  ‘Darling, is that how you feel about them?’ said Polly. ‘So do I. Sometimes I simply can’t believe they belong to us. What happened to make us so privileged?’

  ‘A little extra togetherness on a certain night,’ said Boots and kissed her again. Polly, melting, asked herself if it was absurd that, when they were both nearing the frightful age of fifty, they should be as heady as young lovers. If it was absurd, if it is, then I like absurdity. ‘As to answers to your other questions,’ said Boots, ‘it’s a long story. Is there any chance first of a cup of tea?’

  Polly laughed out of sheer happiness.

  ‘Tea,’ she said, ‘tea. Is there anything you and your mother, and the rest of your family, like more than a teapot?’

  ‘In my case, several things,’ said Boots, ‘including watching you put your stockings on.’

  ‘At my age, that’s a pleasure to you, you old ratbag?’ said Polly.

  ‘You can believe me,’ said Boots. ‘Which reminds me, there are six pairs of fully-fashioned stockings for you in my valise, with the compliments of an American major.’

  ‘How can I thank him?’ asked Polly.

  ‘We’ll invite him for a weekend sometime after Hitler’s dead and buried,’ said Boots. ‘Meanwhile, I’d still like a cup of home-brewed tea.’

  ‘Dear man, you can have anything I’m able to give you,’ said Polly. ‘Only ask and you shall receive.’

  ‘Then put the kettle on while I talk to Gemma and James again,’ said Boots. ‘But not until this evening, when they’re in bed, will I tell you what’s brought me home.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Polly, getting up.

  ‘Just one answer to that, Polly,’ said Boots. ‘Not in front of the children.’