Home Sweet Home

by Lizzie Lane

  She and Declan had finally married between him coming back from Europe and being posted to the Pacific. In between times, they had also created another child. After she’d got over the surprise – Daisy was still not yet two – Frances was adamant it would be another girl. There was no doubt the child would be born in the United States. Arrangements were in hand for her to sail across in the Queen Mary to New York, where they would start a new life together.

  Daisy was asleep and Frances was talking to her bump.

  ‘I bet you’re hungry. How about we eat the rest of the scones your auntie Ruby made yesterday?’ She cocked her head sideways as though listening for the baby’s reply. ‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and we’ll finish them up.’

  ‘Are you talking to yourself again?’

  Her uncle Stan brought the smell of earth in from the garden, even though he’d left his wellington boots outside. Charlie tagged behind his grandfather as he always did, the toes of his socks – unpicked from a cardigan and knitted to fit him – were wet so made a slapping noise with each step he took.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Frances said loftily. ‘I’m talking to Vivien.’

  Her uncle raised his eyebrows in disbelief. ‘I take it that will be the name of the new baby.’

  ‘That’s right.’ She took the scones from the tin they’d been stored in and placed them on a plate. The plate had a large chip, but it was pretty and by far her favourite.

  The whole family knew that Frances was into the habit of talking to the unborn child. ‘She hears everything I say,’ Frances stated.

  They also knew that she’d named the child after Vivien Leigh, the actress who had played Scarlett O’Hara in the film Gone with the Wind.

  Frances had been so struck with the film that she’d gone to see it three times, each time awestruck by everything about it.

  Ruby had questioned why not name the baby Scarlett. Frances had laughed out loud and shook her head as though Ruby just wasn’t thinking straight.

  ‘I can’t call her that! It’s not a real name. It’s made up.’

  Ruby had also pointed out that the baby might be a boy. ‘I presume that if it is a boy, you’re more likely to call him Clark rather than Rhett.’

  Frances had wrinkled her nose. ‘No. I don’t like either of those. I think if it is a boy I will call him Ashley. I quite like that name. But there, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a girl. I know it’s another girl.’

  Charlie’s fingers gripped the edge of the table. His brown eyes followed each scone as it travelled from the tin to the plate. ‘Charlie have cake?’

  Once all the scones were on the plate, his eyes never strayed from them.

  Frances smiled at him. ‘Would Charlie like a cake after I’ve cut it in half and spread it with butter and jam?’

  A wide smile spread across the little boy’s face when he nodded.

  ‘Then you shall have one!’

  Uncle Stan pulled out a chair and sat down, beaming with pleasure at his grandson. The little lad was growing fast, chatting nineteen to the dozen and trotting along behind his granddad no matter where he went. He often wondered how things would have been if the war had never happened, if Hitler had not risen to power in Europe and everyone had stayed in the place they knew as home. Charlie, his son, young Charlie’s father, would never have met Charlie’s mother. There would have been no young Charlie, unless his son had married in the village, then perhaps he would have had a host of grandchildren. Michael, Mary’s husband, a pilot in the Canadian Air Force, would never have been transferred to the Royal Air Force. They too would never have met. As for Frances, well, it was unfortunate that Declan O’Malley had been posted to the Pacific, though he assured her he was on his way home.

  Up until the Japanese surrender, Frances had feared for his life. But all that was over now, and even though she hadn’t heard from him in a while, she refused to believe that he’d been in many battles and would die now – right at the end of the war.

  Frances was glad to be reconciled with her uncle. Of her mother there was no trace.

  ‘Never mind, love. You’ve got your own family now,’ Stan had said to her.

  At one time, he would have run her down, constantly referring to her chasing after anything in trousers. Frances wondered at his calmer behaviour. She was not to know that Mildred had been in contact, asking after Frances.

  She’d telephoned from a public telephone box, the pennies dropping into the box with a metallic noise as she outlined her rights.

  Once Stan had told her that Frances would be unable to work because she was expecting, the telephone was put down. Mildred hadn’t wanted her daughter when she was a child, and she certainly didn’t want the burden of a grandchild!

  ‘I know you of old and you’re unchanged,’ he’d said to the woman who now called herself Mrs Baxter.

  Now, Stan noticed the smug expression on Frances’s face and felt instant apprehension.

  ‘Do you mind telling me what you’re smiling about?’ he asked.

  Frances’s thick eyelashes swept down over her eyes. He’d always been of the opinion that she only did that when she had a secret that pleased her greatly and that she had no intention of sharing.

  ‘It’s a secret.’

  Stan sighed. ‘I should have known.’

  ‘I’ll tell you as soon as Ruby gets home. I think she’ll be pleased.’ A sudden thought seemed to strike the smile from her face. ‘Well, I think she will, though not when she first gets home. I expect she’ll be tired and probably annoyed.’

  ‘I expect she will,’ said Stan as he reached for his cup of tea.

  There was no doubt in Stan’s mind that his daughter would be dog tired. Johnnie would be too, poor sod, after all those years of privation.

  His thoughts went back to his daughter. All the way to Southampton to meet a man she hadn’t seen for three years. He wondered where they would go once they’d met up. No doubt they’d make arrangements to meet again, unless Johnnie came back here. They’d put him up somewhere, even over at Bettina’s.

  ‘I think Ruby will miss working for the Ministry of Food,’ Frances declared suddenly.

  Alarmed by the comment, in case Ruby might reconsider moving out of the village, Stan told Frances in no uncertain terms that she hadn’t been laid off from her war work just yet.

  ‘And then we’ve got a Christmas party to arrange. Never mind the big cities having street parties; the whole village will be along to have a Christmas party, what with everyone being demobbed.’

  ‘We’ve already had a village party.’

  It was true. The whole village had gone as wild as the rest of the country when Germany then Japan had finally surrendered. It was all over at long last. People couldn’t stop celebrating, such was their sense of relief. Declan had been freed and paid a flying visit, enough time to get married and make her pregnant again.

  She looked up at the clock. ‘Ruby should be home soon. I think I fancy a walk to the station to greet the pair of them,’ said Frances. ‘Can you keep an eye on Daisy, please, Uncle Stan?’

  Busily slicing another scone and smothering it with jam and cream for his grandson, Stan raised no objection.

  The night air was sharp with the promise of frost, but Frances had wrapped up warm and sang to herself and her unborn child as she tramped up the road towards the humpbacked bridge and down the steps leading down to the station platform.

  Frost was beginning to spangle in tiny crystals all over the platform. During the blackout they wouldn’t have been noticeable, but the lights had been switched back on. It didn’t matter that the station was poorly lit; there was enough to mirror the star-laden sky.

  Seeing as there was nobody else around, Frances resumed talking to the bump that would shortly be gone once the baby was born.

  ‘Vivien, I do hope you’ll like your name. I wish you could say that you do out loud, but of course that’s not possible. I mentioned it to your sister, Daisy.
She thinks it’s a lovely name. So does your father.’

  Not for the first time, she felt a movement beneath the touch of her hand, a small hand or foot, or perhaps something else, rearranging itself.

  Frances smiled. ‘Yes. I think you do like it, don’t you?’

  The train station was like a lighthouse in their midst, the place where everyone set out from and everyone returned to. The smell of coal dust mixed with steam made the air smell different here and stayed in the nostrils.

  Ruby emerged from the cloud of steam, an indistinct figure that gradually solidified, as though she’d been formed from the steam itself.

  Frances looked for Johnnie. There was no one. Her cousin was alone. ‘Where is he?’ she shouted.

  Ruby shrugged her shoulders. ‘Not with me.’

  Her manner was such that Frances took the hint that she did not wish to discuss Johnnie any further.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, head down and striding resolutely up the gradient to the main road. ‘Let’s get home.’

  They walked in silence. Frances was desperate to know what had happened, but didn’t dare ask. Ruby was brooding on something. Perhaps in time she might tell what that something was.

  A single streetlight on the opposite side of the road to the bakery glimmered uncertainly. All the same its glow represented the end of war and the beginning of peace. It was the first time it had been lit since 1939.

  At first it seemed like an apparition, a greyish form parked outside the bakery, the streetlight picking out the single white star on its side. An empty Jeep. Nobody in it.

  Frances’s pace quickened. ‘Declan! He’s here! And I thought he meant we’d meet up in America!’

  Ruby urged caution, hugging her cousin’s arm to prevent her from racing off and being disappointed. ‘You don’t know for sure.’

  Frances’s response was swift and sharp, though she knew what Ruby was insinuating: that somebody had come to tell her he wasn’t coming back. But she knew he was. She refused to believe any differently.

  ‘Yes it is! It’s him!’

  Giving the shop door a good push, Frances flew in, the doorbell clanging as though it hung on a fire engine and the house was on fire.

  ‘Declan!’

  He was leaner, his face more lined and browner, but it was him. He was back and holding Daisy with one arm as though she were no weight at all.

  Frances threw herself into his free arm.

  ‘You said … what are you doing here …?’

  ‘I said I would come home for good before very long.’

  ‘But you said …’

  ‘This has always been your home, and if it’s your home it’s also mine. We won’t leave it entirely behind. Ever! I had to pay my respects to your uncle and the rest of your family. I’m not a callous man.’ Declan kissed the top of her head.

  Stan Sweet turned to face the fire and Ruby swiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

  ‘I’m off again shortly, but we won’t be apart for long. There’s a ship leaving Southampton in two weeks. You’re on it. My oldest friend will be waiting for you at the other end. But first we’ve got a wedding to go to. I think I’ve got the job of best man. Am I right?’

  A man with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes sat silently in one of the armchairs, his hands folded listlessly in his lap.

  Johnnie Smith was home.

  ‘Where’s Ruby?’ Declan said.

  ‘Gone to see how Mrs Powell is coping. She’s given up the shop, not so much out of forgiveness for her daughter, more out of shame. She feels she can no longer hold her head up in the village. I think Ruby’s words of comfort will be ungratefully received.’

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Frances, when Declan frowned questioningly.

  On her return, Ruby uttered a small cry, standing in the doorway too shocked to move.

  Although her driver had never been a big man, there was far less of him now. He had a haunted look in his eyes which for all that stared brightly from a sunburned face, the skin taut across his cheekbones, his hair kissed to lemon brightness by the hot Asian sun.

  His body was overly lean, far more so than when he had left for Singapore before he’d been starved, before he’d been beaten and left to wander around in rags.

  He smiled at her. ‘I’m sorry about my teeth.’

  At first she didn’t understand what he meant, not until he smiled a little wider and she saw the gaps in his gums, luckily mostly his molars, his front teeth having miraculously survived.

  She stood there unmoving, feeling incredibly empty, as though all her blood along with her emotions had flowed out of her.

  ‘They told me your wife had fetched you. I thought … I thought …’

  She couldn’t go on.

  He shook his head. ‘I told you before. I’ve got nobody. But John Smith is a pretty common name. I recall somebody telling me there were three John Smith’s on board, but that one of them had been taken ill at the last minute. Malaria, I think he said.’ He shook his head again. ‘That’s one thing you can get plenty of in the Far East.’ He held up a package. ‘I brought you silk.’

  Pushing his hands down on the chair arms, he got to his feet. He smiled weakly, as though it took all his strength as indeed it did. Then he picked up the parcel again and held it out.

  Ruby took the package, her hands trembling as she did so. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I brought back sacks of food too. Tinned stuff mostly. We were given a pick of it at the American base. They shipped it in as fast as they could before any more of us dropped dead. They dropped supplies too during those last months. I don’t know what we would have done if they hadn’t … we couldn’t have taken …’

  Suddenly his knees crumpled.

  ‘Johnnie!’

  With Declan’s help, Stan Sweet was able to get Johnnie upstairs to bed. Light as a feather, he thought to himself, and felt a terrible sadness that a young man should have gone through such torture.

  For a while, he and Declan stood at the foot of the bed, watching Johnnie’s head twitch against the pillows.

  ‘Like carrying a child,’ murmured Stan.

  ‘No weight at all,’ agreed Declan.

  Stan turned round to see Ruby and Frances standing by the door. Ruby came into the room and stood between them. Frances hung on to Declan’s arm.

  ‘He’s been through hell,’ Stan said softly.

  Ruby nodded.

  ‘So,’ he said, eyeing his daughter with one eyebrow lifted, the quizzical look that he always adopted before asking a typically awkward question. ‘Are you going to stand by him, or dash off to pastures new?’

  Ruby knew her father wanted an answer as much for himself as for Johnnie. ‘Home is where the heart is, Dad. Johnnie deserves to be looked after and I’m glad I waited for him.’

  ‘And I’ve got a secret,’ said Frances, smiling in the way she had when she was a child.

  Stan laughed softly. ‘What? Another one?’

  ‘Mary telephoned to say that Michael’s been offered a position as an engineer at the aircraft works in Filton.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Stan nodding without stopping. ‘That’s very good.’

  ‘But I’ll still be going to America,’ she added.

  Stan glanced at Declan then at her. ‘That’s good too. I think you’re in good hands.’

  The following morning, Stan walked down to the churchyard, his grandson’s small fist clenched in his much larger one.

  The first mists of November 1945 were curling around the naked branches of the trees and misting the outlines of the gravestones and the church itself.

  Charlie had brought his own small trowel with him and began digging around the edge of his grandmother’s grave.

  Stan leaned on the tombstone with one hand, reluctant to take up his usual kneeling position.

  ‘My knees aren’t so good today,’ he said out loud. ‘But there, Sarah, I’m not so young as I used to be, though I still remember how I was, how we were.
’

  He smiled at the memories before his thoughts turned serious again.

  ‘Another war over. At long last. It looks as though it’s our Frances who’ll be moving overseas with that American of hers. Mary’s husband did consider going back to Canada but has decided otherwise. I know it’s selfish, but I’m hoping they’ll come back here to the village. Michael has a great affection for Bettina Hicks. He’s like a son to her, far more so than her own son, who’s failed to put in an appearance for the duration. Bettina adores him. Understandable, I suppose. He’s unaware that his real father was Bettina’s husband. You know how it was. Dangerfield was injured and unable to father a child, and Bettina gave her blessing for her own husband to save the day.’ He shook his head forlornly. ‘Such is the nature of war. As for our Ruby, well …’ He took a deep breath, which helped restrain the sigh that heaved his broad chest. ‘Johnnie has come home. She’s adamant she won’t leave him. I’ve no doubt they’re going to get married, though it could take a while before Johnnie is fully recovered. He was talking to me about opening up a garage in the village or over in Longwell Green. He reckons the demand for cars and for repairing them is bound to grow. He could be right. Anyway, I wish him all the best. I trust you do too. In the meantime, it’s good to have everybody home.’

  He found himself breathing slowly, as though both he and the whole world had taken a step backwards into a peaceful past. He thought about all the people over the centuries laid to rest in the churchyard and how they too had had their problems, their losses, their children and their wars.

  For just a moment, it felt as though the years since Sarah died had never happened. He was back there again, invigorated and full of joy and also great peace. He hadn’t felt like that for a very long time.

  The breeze and mist seemed suddenly to combine to send the branches of the oak trees creaking as though speaking in a low crackly voice. Just for a second, he thought they were words, not the trees speaking, but Sarah’s words. Home Sweet Home. He smiled. The world was at peace and his family were home.