by Lilian Harry
May stared from one to the other. Her skin felt suddenly cold.
‘Ben’s mother and father? But – I don’t understand. I didn’t know you were coming. You didn’t say …’
‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘It was all rather sudden, you see. We decided we must come and tell you in person, and—’
‘Tell me what?’ she broke in, and tore one hand away to put it to her cheek. ‘What’s happened? Why have you come?’
Olivia stepped forward. She laid her hand on May’s arm and spoke in a quiet, steady voice.
‘My dear, we’ve had news of Ben.’ Her voice shook suddenly. ‘He’s coming home. He’s all right. May, Ben’s all right.’ Her voice broke and tears began to stream down her cheeks.
John Hazelwood let go of May’s other hand and put his arm round his wife’s shoulders. His own mouth trembled in the depths of his beard, but there was joy in his eyes. He looked from May to Alison and then to Mabel and old Mr Prettyjohn, who had come to the cottage door, and nodded his head.
‘It’s true. We’ve heard from the War Department. He’s back in England already. He was hurt when his plane went down in France and a local farmer found him and took him in. They kept him at the farmhouse and the local doctor attended him. He had a broken leg – the man set it well enough, from what we can gather – but they couldn’t move him for some weeks. Then they brought him through Spain and now he’s in hospital in Cornwall. We’re on our way to see him.’ He looked at May with kind eyes. ‘We couldn’t go without telling you.’
‘Ben,’ she whispered. ‘Ben’s alive? He’s in Cornwall.’ She turned and stared across the fields to the hills over the valley.
‘You can come with us, if you like,’ Olivia told her. ‘Mr Derry’s coming back to collect us in an hour.’ Tears slipped down her cheeks but her eyes remained steady. ‘We want you to come with us.’
Alison glanced towards Mabel Prettyjohn, who stepped forward and held out her hand.
‘Come you indoors,’ she said in her warm voice, as rich as Devonshire cream. The kettle’s boiling and I reckon us could all do with a cup of tea. There’s fresh bread out of the oven, and some good home-made butter and a bit of cheese to go with it, if you’ve got the fancy. I dare say you’ve had hardly a bite past your lips since morning, if you’ve been on the train.’ She glanced at Alison. ‘You too, maid. There’s plenty to go round.’
Alison glanced at the Hazelwoods. ‘Thank you, Mrs Prettyjohn, but I think I ought to go home. This is your family business.’
‘And aren’t you one of the family then, as good as?’ She looked at the Hazelwoods. ‘This is Squadron Leader Knight’s wife, Alison. She knows your Ben well.’
‘He used to come to our house quite a lot,’ Alison explained. ‘But I really think I will go, all the same. I’ll just leave this book for your father, May – you can drop the other one in at any time. And – and let me know if you go to see Ben. I’d like to send him my love.’ She turned away quickly and set off back along the lane, with Hughie trudging beside the pram. The others looked after her and Mabel clucked her tongue in self-reproach.
‘There, if that wasn’t proper thoughtless of me. Her own hubby’s been missing this past week or more,’ she told the Hazelwoods. ‘And the babby not six weeks old – never saw the little mite, he didn’t. Poor Alison, she’s been a brave little maid, but it’s hard for her, and it don’t matter how pleased you might be to hear of someone else’s good fortune, you’m still going to wish ’twas yours.’ She urged them along the path to where old Mr Prettyjohn waited, leaning on his stick. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about that; ’tis you and young Ben we must be thinking of. And May, here. ’Tis wonderful news for her.’
The girl was still standing at the gate, her hand resting on the top bar as she stared across the valley. Her face was as ashen as if she had received bad news rather than good, and her cheeks were wet.
‘I can’t seem to believe it,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t seem to take it in. Ben, still alive, down there in Cornwall. I thought he was dead. I thought I was never going to see him again …’
‘I’d already begun to realise how wrong I was,’ Olivia told them as they ate their simple lunch. ‘I seemed to have lost everything – my two sons, my faith, even my reason. And all I could think of was that I’d sent Ben away unhappy. He’d come to us to tell us he’d found you,’ she looked at May, ‘and we sent him away. I sent him away.’
‘He understood,’ May said quickly. ‘He knew how unhappy you were. He didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘I know. But that made it all the harder, somehow. He – a boy of twenty – understood me, but I wasn’t prepared to understand him. What sort of a mother was I? I had so much guilt to live with. I felt so far away from everything I’d grown up with – my faith, my family, even my husband. I felt as if I were drowning.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ John said quietly. ‘I don’t think I ever realised just how bad it was.’
‘I didn’t want you to. I don’t think I knew it myself. But that morning, I suddenly felt as if I needed to go back to the church. I hadn’t set foot inside it for so long.’ She touched her husband’s hand and he turned it over and gripped her fingers. ‘It wasn’t easy. It was almost like stepping off a cliff over a deep sea. But as soon as I walked through the door, I knew it was the right thing to do. And then, as I sat there trying to find my way back, trying to make my peace, John came in and told me that he had written to you.’ She looked at May again. ‘He told me that he’d heard from you, and that you’d told him you were engaged the night before Ben was lost.’
‘We wouldn’t have got married without—’
‘I know. But that doesn’t matter, not now. What mattered to me most was that my son had been happy. For that last evening, those last few hours, he was happy. I knew then that we must come and see you.’
‘But you didn’t know he was all right.’
‘Not then, no. That news came a few days later. That’s why we’re able to travel, you see – we can go down to Cornwall to see him. And you can come too.’ She withdrew her hand from John’s and held it across the table to May. ‘Will you come, my dear? Will you come with us and see Ben?’
‘Oh, Mrs Hazelwood,’ May said, half laughing and half crying. ‘How can you even ask?’
They went as soon as their meal was over. Nobody had eaten much, so Mabel made sandwiches with the leftover bread and cheese, and wrapped them in greaseproof paper. She was anxious about their journey until the Hazelwoods told her that they could catch the Plymouth train in Yelverton and then change for Penzance. The hospital Ben had been taken to was in Falmouth, and they would be able to put up for the night in a hotel there. They would take a room for May as well, and waved away any offers to pay for her.
‘It’s our invitation,’ John said firmly, ‘and besides, Ben would never forgive us if we didn’t do this.’
It seemed to May incredible to be talking about Ben in this way again. Incredible that he was in England, less than a hundred miles away. Incredible that in a few hours she would be with him, talking to him, able to look at him and touch him again. And not much less incredible that his parents were here, that so much had changed in the space of just a few hours.
She ran upstairs to pack a few things for the night. In a short while, Bob Derry would be back to take them to the station in Yelverton. She remembered that she was supposed to have gone to work that morning, and that someone would have to let her employers know what had happened. They would understand, she knew. And there was Alison, too – Alison, walking home alone to face a bleak future without her husband. Perhaps he’ll come back too, May thought with sudden hope. It would be so wonderful if Alison could know the same joy as she herself was feeling at this moment.
She paused with her hand on the lid of the little suitcase – the only one the family possessed, bought when her father was in hospital after his accident. Yes, it would be wonderful if Andrew were to come home, but she knew that it wasn’t very
likely. And somehow, now that Ben had returned, it seemed even less likely.
You couldn’t have two happy endings.
Chapter Thirty-Five
‘So May’s gone down to Falmouth with Ben’s mother and father,’ Alison told Stefan. ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it? A fairytale ending.’
‘Truly, a fairytale ending,’ he said soberly, and met her eyes.
‘I’m very happy for them,’ she said. ‘I really am.’ Her voice shook a little but she went on determinedly, ‘How could I not be?’
‘Of course you are. I would not expect anything else. But it’s hard for you. Very hard.’
‘I can still hope,’ she said, though her tone was forlorn. ‘Nothing’s changed about that. I’ve still got just as much hope as I had before.’ She looked away from him, out into the garden. Hughie was in bed and Caroline in her cradle. It was late in the evening but twilight had only just began to fall and the air was still alive with the sound of birds. Swallows swooped high and low between the trees, swifts screamed thinly high above; martins twittered at their nests tucked beneath the eaves, and a blackbird sat on top of the washing-line pole, his lungs almost bursting with the force of his song. ‘Andrew’s alive somewhere, I know it. After all, if Ben can come home, so long after everyone had given him up for lost, why not Andrew as well? They’re not the only ones. Others have done it. Some have taken weeks, months, to get through France and find a safe way to Spain.’ She turned and looked at him, her eyes huge. ‘I’ve got to believe it.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Of course you have.’ He looked down at his hands, linked loosely together and hanging between his knees. He seemed about to say something else, and then to change his mind. The silence grew, seeming to envelop them both, and Alison watched him uneasily, half-afraid of what he might say when he did bring himself to speak.
‘You’ve been such a help to me, Stefan,’ she said. ‘All those weeks when Andrew was so busy, and now since he’s been missing … I don’t know what I would have done without you. I was already so upset that he’d never been able to see Caroline and then, when you came to tell me he was lost … I don’t think I managed very well, but I’d have been much worse without you to help me.’
‘Nobody could have been braver,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to be here, to do whatever I could to help.’
An aircraft passed overhead. It was a rare night off for Stefan and he had come early, stayed for supper and was now sitting back in the armchair. Alison was on the sofa and the last rays of the evening sun were casting a warm golden light into the room. The war was still being fought all over the world but the Germans were being pushed through Italy, and the Red Army, thrusting its way through Lithuania, was advancing on Warsaw. It seemed that, at last, the Allies were driving the enemy back on all fronts.
Stefan was following the news about Warsaw with great interest. ‘If there’s a chance of liberation, the Poles will rise up,’ he told Alison. ‘I’m afraid there will be much more bloodshed before this is over, but we won’t be beaten.’
There was great excitement too over the Gloster Meteor, a new aircraft which was powered by turbo-jet. Alison had seen one, flying over Harrowbeer; it had streaked across the sky so fast that she barely had time to catch a glimpse of it, and the sound of its engines seemed to follow it, so that when you heard the noise and looked at the sky, the plane had already passed.
‘Of course, the Germans have one, too,’ Stefan said, when she spoke of it. ‘The Me262. But at least we can fight them on equal terms still.’
‘We don’t have the flying bombs though,’ Alison observed. ‘There’s still such a long way to go before it’s all over.’ She paused, then added, ‘And when it is, you’ll go away. Whether you go back to Poland or stay in England, you’ll move away from here.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, looking at her. ‘Perhaps not. Who knows what any of us will do? It’s going to take a long time before life returns to the way it used to be. If it ever does.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It never will. Things have changed too much.’ The garden was filled with shadows now and the birds were finally falling silent. ‘I still believe that Andrew will come back,’ she said at last, ‘but I know I will have to make plans as though he won’t. I’ve got two children to think of. I suppose, if the war ends and he doesn’t come home, I’ll go back to Lincolnshire. And yet – I’ll be so sorry to leave this place.’ She thought of the first day she had come to Harrowbeer and stepped out of the Morris 8 to gaze out over the rolling moorland. ‘It was so exciting to see hills and valleys. I wanted to explore it. I wanted to go walking and cycling all over the whole of Dartmoor – to go down to the beach, to the little coves and bays. None of that has happened, yet I’ve fallen in love with the place and I don’t want to leave it. I’d like to stay here for ever.’ She turned back to him and smiled a little. ‘That must be difficult for you to understand. You’ve always longed to go home, to Poland.’
Stefan’s face was in half-darkness now and she could not read his expression. But there was a strange tone in his voice as he answered her.
‘I have longed to go home, but mostly I long to see my family again. As to staying there – I’m not so sure. You see, I’ve fallen in love as well. And I don’t want to leave, either.’
‘It was so lovely to see him again,’ May said when she came to have a cup of tea with Alison a few days later. ‘I just couldn’t believe it was true. I wanted to keep touching him to make sure it wasn’t a dream. I even asked Mr Hazelwood to pinch me once!’
Alison laughed. ‘And did he?’
‘No, but he patted my hand and said he felt the same way. And none of us knew whether to laugh or cry, so we did a bit of both. And then, do you know what Ben’s mother and father did? They went out and left me by myself with him. I thought that was so kind of them. In fact, it was kind of them to take me with them at all, and pay my fare and for my room and everything. They’m lovely people, Alison.’
‘I thought that too.’ Alison had met them again when they brought May back to Milton Combe. They had insisted on taking the whole family and herself out for dinner to the Rock Hotel, where they were staying overnight. Even William had gone along, carried in through a back door and settled in a wheelback chair. It was the first time he had been out of the cottage since his accident but he was determined that it should not be the last.
‘I like being in the pub again,’ he remarked as the sixth person to spot him left the table after coming over to talk. ‘I’ll be getting old Bob Derry to bring me over a few more times. Or I could roll down the hill to the Who’d Have Thought It!’
‘Just when I thought I’d got him where I could keep my eye on him, too,’ Mabel said resignedly, and they all laughed.
It had been a happy evening, and Alison had determinedly thrust away all her anxieties about Andrew in order to enjoy it with them. May’s face had been alight with joy, and it was clear that the Hazelwoods had taken her to their hearts. They had invited her to go and stay with them when Ben was released from hospital, which would be quite soon; the RAF doctor at St Mawgan, the station near Newquay, had examined him and pronounced him fit to be sent home on convalescent leave as soon as the plaster was off his leg. He would be back on active service as quickly as possible, but it was decided now that they would be married before that.
‘Where’s the wedding going to be?’ Alison asked now. ‘At Ashford, in their own church?’
May shook her head. ‘’Tis going to be here in Milton Combe, because of Father, mostly. He might have big ideas about going to the pub, but he’ll never be able to travel all that way. And there’s only Ben’s sister who can come anyway, with his other brother still in Italy.’ She gave Alison a shy glance. ‘You’ll be coming, of course?’
‘I’d love to. Are you having bridesmaids?’
‘My cousin’s little girl, it’ll be a treat for her and there’s an old party frock of mine will do for a pretty dress for her. Mother’s going to put some frills
and ribbons on it, and we’ll have plenty of flowers for bouquets. And when I was in Tavistock yesterday I found some lovely muslin in the curtain shop. I thought I could make a wedding dress out of that. Of course, us can’t have no icing on the cake but Ben says he don’t like icing anyway, so that’s all right. And Mrs Hazelwood says I can have her mother’s wedding ring. Isn’t that nice of her?’
‘It’s very nice. I’m really pleased for you, May. You deserve to be very happy. Are you going to stay at home afterwards?’
‘Well, there’s not much else we can do, really, is there? Mother says we can move into her room seeing as there’s the double bed there and Father’s downstairs now, and she’ll move into mine.’ May blushed. ‘I don’t know what we’ll do once the war’s over. Us’ll just have to take that when it comes.’ She got up and took the cups out to the kitchen to wash them. ‘Do you know, if it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t never have met Ben. It was at that party you had before Christmas when us first saw each other. And then on Christmas Day, he came walking down the lane and I invited him in.’
‘You’d probably have done that anyway,’ Alison said. ‘I think you two were meant to meet. You were meant to be married too. Nothing will get in the way now.’
‘I hope not,’ May said, pausing with her hands in the sink. ‘I really do hope not …’
Alison didn’t see Stefan again for over a week. She spent her time as usual, looking after the children and the house, working in the garden and walking in the lanes. She called at the cottage to talk to William Prettyjohn about books and ask Grandpa’s advice on vegetable growing, or to help Mabel with the sewing for the wedding. She was usually at home in the late afternoon, so that any of the pilots who wanted to drop in for tea would find her there, and in the evenings she listened to the wireless or read.
There was plenty to do, and yet there was always that emptiness at the back of her mind; the emptiness of being without Andrew, and the torment of not knowing whether he were alive or dead.
