by Annie Murray
19
This time, instead of knocking and walking straight in, she waited with Ted on the step outside Joan and Norm’s house. She felt humble and full of gratitude, wanting to treat her sister with politeness. And Norm, who might be at home today, had not seen Ted since Ted had knocked him to the floor.
Joan came to the door, Davey peering out behind her. When she saw who was there, her face became very solemn.
‘Oh – hello,’ she said cautiously.
‘Can we come in?’ Grace said.
Joan stood back, giving Grace a questioning look as she passed her.
‘I’ve told Ted,’ Grace said hurriedly. They were all crowded into the narrow hall. ‘And he . . .’ She reached for Ted’s hand. ‘He wants to meet Barbara. Wants to be a father to her.’
She saw her sister’s face relax. Joan looked at her brother-in-law, her face breaking into a wondering smile. Wordlessly, she enfolded Ted in her arms for a moment. Releasing him, she said, ‘Come on – Her Majesty’s in here.’
Ronnie and Joe, Joan and Norm’s older sons, were sitting at the kitchen table and Grace said hello to them. Barbara was lying on a piece of blanket close to where Davey had evidently been playing on the floor with his toys. Grace went and scooped her up.
‘Hello, darlin’,’ she whispered.
Turning to Ted, tears in her eyes, she said, ‘Here she is – come and meet your dada, babby.’
Ted looked nervous as Grace carried the little girl over to him.
‘This is Barbara,’ she told him. ‘I don’t really know why – I just liked it. Barbara Rose.’
Ted gazed at her. Grace could see he was moved and after a moment he reached out a finger and stroked Barbara’s plump baby cheek.
‘Hello, Barbara,’ he said, so sweetly that Grace could not prevent the tears running down her cheeks.
Barbara took him in, seriously, with her wide blue eyes, then chortled with pleasure, bouncing in Grace’s arms, and they all laughed.
‘She’s pleased to see yer,’ Joan said, and Ted gave an uncertain smile. ‘She’s a lovely babby, Ted.’
Ted nodded, seeming on the verge of tears himself. ‘She is.’
There was a movement at the back and they realized that Norm was standing in the doorway, unsure quite what he had walked into in his own kitchen.
‘It’s all right, come in, Norm,’ Joan said. ‘Don’t stand there dithering.’
‘All right, Ted, Grace,’ Norm said, coming forward with a nervous smile as he took in the apparently harmonious scene in front of him.
Ted turned to him. ‘Bit of a cracker, ain’t ’er, our little Barbara?’ he said. He went to Norm and held out his hand. ‘Sorry, mate – for what happened before.’
‘Oh, yer all right, Ted,’ Norm said in his good-natured way. ‘I should never’ve said what I said. Out of line, that was – sorry.’
Grace was amazed to hear Ted say, ‘Seems everything’s been a bit out of line, what with the war . . . But t’aint this one’s fault, is it?’ He nodded towards Barbara. ‘And ’er’s family now, so we’re all going to make the best of it.’
Ronnie and Joe were watching all this with wondering expressions.
‘Oh, Ted,’ Joan said, her voice full of emotion. ‘I’m so glad. For both of yer.’
‘So,’ Grace said uncertainly, ‘I think we can take her back home now?’ She looked at Ted, who nodded.
‘Back home where she belongs,’ he said. ‘With her mother and father.’
In a state of wonder and amazement, Grace walked back to Inkerman Street with her husband beside her and her little girl in her arms. Ted walked tall, seeming quietly defiant, proud almost, as if to say, I don’t care what anyone else in the world thinks about this because they don’t matter a jot. This is my wife and our child. We are a family – and that’s that.
They spent all day together, in the house. Larry came round later to see about the pigeon coop, but Ted said they’d give it a miss for the day. Larry was introduced to Barbara and didn’t bat an eyelid or seem to notice this was the first he had known of any baby.
‘I don’t think he’s worked it out,’ Ted said when Larry had gone. He grinned. ‘Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, our Larry.’
He held Barbara and began to get to know her. When Grace breastfed her, he watched with silent awe for a few moments, then gently he said, ‘Suits yer, wench. Born to be a mother, you were. You look like a Madonna doing that.’
‘Oh, Ted . . .’ Grace looked back at him tearfully, overwhelmed with love and gratitude.
Previously, Grace had always had Barbara in bed with her, but now her daughter was used to sleeping on her own. She made up a little bed on the floor in the back bedroom where Nora had slept, and the little girl soon settled.
Before getting into bed with Ted that night, Grace checked on Barbara. Ted came and stood in the doorway beside her.
‘I never . . .’ Grace started to whisper, then stopped abruptly, realizing that what she was about to say to Ted sounded like a criticism.
‘I know,’ he whispered back. ‘You never expected to see this day – us here, with her – a family.’ He sounded quite emotional. ‘Nor me, wench. Nor me.’
They made love that night, before lying with their arms around each other, talking gently. It was blissful lying there together, close and warm. It felt like a miracle – the whole day had been a miracle. Grace told him something of how it had been for those of them at home, about the nights of bombing, the dark, stifling nights, and her loneliness, despite having Nora lodging with her. About the sense that it would never end, that life would just go on like this forever.
Ted said he didn’t want to talk about his time in the camps – Stalag XXA then XXB, in northern Poland. But she asked again about his shoulder, and he told her it had happened on the way, when they were captured.
‘I don’t want to waste any more time on it than I have already,’ he said. ‘I want to hear about you – about how it’s been here.’
When they had caught up a little on the years, she said almost shyly, laying a hand against his chest in the darkness, ‘Love – tell me about your drawings. I know I shouldn’t have been looking. But they’re beautiful. I never knew you could draw so well.’
‘I never knew myself,’ he said. She could feel the vibration of his voice against her hand. And she could hear that he was pleased to be asked. ‘I was hopeless at school – at everything. We never had the chance, anyway. But there, it just started off as summat to do. There were these birds round the camp. Don’t even know the names of most of ’em now.’ He paused for a moment. ‘That’s summat I’ll do while I’m here. Go to the library and see if I can look them up. One or two of the lads knew some of the names. Kenneth, for a start. It was just summat to get through the days at first, and then . . .’
He paused. ‘If I make it back . . .’
A chill gripped her heart. ‘Oh, Ted. What?’
‘Well – maybe life might be different.’
‘You could go to the art school,’ she said. ‘You’re that good – like Kenneth said.’
Ted laughed. ‘Art school – what, me?’
‘Well, why not?’
He was quiet for a moment. ‘I’d never’ve thought. D’you think . . . ?’
‘Yes – why not give it a try?’ she said. Before the war she would never have said that, she realized. It wouldn’t have seemed practical. Now, it was being alive that mattered.
Ted stopped the conversation, as if he did not want to give himself hope.
‘Let’s just see what happens.’ He kissed her cheek, and she could feel his warmth close to her in the dark. ‘Enough surprises for one day.’
Grace tightened her arms around him. ‘You’re an amazing man, my love,’ she said. ‘And you really are full of surprises.’
20
‘We’ll have to get us a pram,’ Ted said as they set off that afternoon.
Grace, with Barbara in her arms, smiled up at him in wonde
ring adoration. It was true, she had not managed to acquire anything much for Barbara except a few cast-offs of Davey’s that Joan had given her and some little matinee coats she had knitted herself. Barbara’s bed had been her bed and when they went out, she had simply carried her.
But Ted seemed to be embracing both Barbara and the idea that they were now a family at a speed that delighted her. She was amazed at the change in her husband over the past few days. His nights were not much better: he was still very restless, talked and sometimes shouted in his sleep. He was still as thin as a rake and hollow-eyed. But in himself he had changed.
When they were holding each other in bed last night, he had suddenly said something else that moved her to tears. She had been thanking him – again – for being so good about Barbara. She could still hardly believe how he had been about it, so kind and forgiving.
‘I never expected that,’ she said, holding him close. ‘I thought you’d . . . Well, I don’t know what I thought. That you’d throw me out, I suppose.’
‘I can’t say I daint think about it – just for a minute,’ he admitted. ‘But then I thought about my life without you, Gracie, and it was the worst thing I could imagine. Even so, it’s a terrible thing to say . . .’ He hesitated.
She stroked his arm encouragingly. ‘What, love?’
‘Well, when I come back here, to Blighty, it felt as if I had nothing to, well, live for . . . Even you – I daint feel I was right for you. I was such a mess. And there was you, hanging on all this time and what comes back is me – this wreck of a husband who can’t even give yer a babby. That’s what I was thinking. I’d’ve been better off if I’d never made it back out of Germany.’
‘Oh, Ted . . .’ She cuddled him.
‘I was a sick man then – it drags yer down in yerself. But seeing you, seeing her . . . Beautiful little thing, she is. And there’s kids all over Europe, running in the streets, some of ’em – no mothers or fathers, no homes to call their own. All they need now is someone. And she won’t know her real father, but I’ll be a father to her, bless her little heart. And the best thing is, half of her’s you, Gracie. And you make a beautiful mother, as if you was born to it . . . And now I’ve got both of yer – you and her.’
Grace was weeping quietly beside him now. The only shadow on the horizon was that Ted had to go back into the army, and a gigantic shadow it was. But in that moment, lying here under the same roof as her family, she had been completely happy.
It was a happiness she carried with her everywhere, feeling as if she was aglow with it. And now she and Ted were going for a little outing with Barbara – just round the block, to see Larry’s birds.
It was a serene Sunday afternoon, warmed by the July sun, the sky a hazy eggshell blue. The three of them set off along Inkerman Street, calling a hello to some of the neighbours. Grace was so proud and happy, she didn’t care who saw them now. Along the street, she caught sight of a face peering out of a front door – wide and pink in the warmth, eyes narrowed in vindictive interest. Seeing Grace staring hard back at her, she withdrew.
‘Aft’noon, Mrs Fitzgerald!’ Grace called to her. But Madge Fitzgerald stayed hidden in her doorway and didn’t say a word. Grace could feel her eyes following them down the street. ‘The old bitch’ll be dying to say summat to you,’ she told Ted.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘There’s nowt ’er can say’ll be any surprise to me, is there? Unless there’s more you ain’t telling me about, Gracie.’
‘No,’ she said, beaming up at him and linking her spare arm through his. ‘Not a thing, Ted. No secrets.’
Larry Stubbs lived on a back yard a couple of streets away and Grace had never had reason to visit his house before. As they all went down the entry off the street, Grace could feel the cold coming off the damp walls bringing up her arms in goose pimples. The yard was half in sunlight, lighting up a pot with a red geranium in it outside one of the doors. The other half was in blue shade, and Grace could just see a tap on the wall of the yard, dripping steadily. A line of washing drooped across the middle. There were five houses on this yard, two of which backed onto the two facing the street outside, the other three at right angles to them, backing onto three houses in the neighbouring yard. Beyond the washing line, at the end was the brew house or wash house, and the shared lavatories, a whiff of which caught her nose even from this end.
‘Brings it back, doesn’t it?’ Grace said. She had lived on just such a yard in Auntie Rose’s house when they were children, and Ted had grown up on a yard as well. ‘You won’t have to live in one of these, Barbara,’ she said. The baby was taking everything in, as usual, with her big blue eyes. Ted’s thin face creased into a smile.
‘Not if I can help it,’ he said.
‘Hey – Ted!’ Larry appeared suddenly out of one of the houses at the side, apparently still putting on his trousers. He hoicked them more comfortably around his waist and stood before them, grinning.
‘The missus’s just gone up to ’er mom’s with the nippers or ’er’dd’ve made us a cuppa. D’yer want one?’
‘No, we’re all right,’ Ted said.
‘’Ello, babby!’ Larry was already besotted with Barbara, although he had two girls of his own. He came up close and Barbara stuck a hand out and biffed him on the nose.
‘Ow!’ He pretended it hurt and reeled back. Barbara looked shocked. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, chucking her cheek. ‘You come to see my birdies, ’ave yer? Come on, then, I’ll show yer.’
Ducking under a sagging pair of trousers on the line, he led them to the dusty far end of the yard, round by the ash cans. Along the blackened lavatory wall was a wooden cage, low to the ground, wired at the front.
‘Here we are,’ Larry said proudly. ‘My lovelies, in here – my pride and joy, these are. And when ’e’s ready,’ Larry said to Grace, nodding his head at Ted, ‘we’ll be able to set ’im up with some.’
Grace’s eyes met Ted’s. If I ever come back, his look said, and hers burned with love and concern.
‘Right – let’s get my little princess out,’ Larry said, squatting down. Grace could see the feathers of several birds in the coop – about half a dozen, she thought.
Larry unfastened the door of the coop and reached inside. Grace saw a gentle smile come over Ted’s face. The pigeon Larry brought out was a milky chocolate brown except for its white head and tail. It sat with a posing dignity in Larry’s hands.
‘Look, Barbara – can you see the birdie?’ Grace said. The little girl stared at the pigeon with a solemn expression.
‘This is a very clever lady, this bird,’ Larry said to her. ‘D’yer want to see what ’er can do?’
Grace would never forget this moment. Later, when Ted was back at home, when he had gone back to the army in August and within less than a week the US air force dropped first one, then another of the catastrophically damaging H-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, ending a war which had extended all around the world; after he had finished building his own coop in Inkerman Street and had his own pigeons; when he had signed up for classes in the evenings at the art school and set about changing the course of his life . . . this was the moment that seemed, looking back, to have kissed their lives with possibility.
‘There you go, my lovely,’ Larry said, his face turned upwards as he released his precious pigeon into the balmy air. They all watched as she spread her wings and flapped up, up into the blue, ascending like any other bird until she found her moment. She seemed to halt in the air, to flex her wings like an athlete until she flipped backwards, tipping into a roll, over and over, falling and rotating in the air until she caught herself and launched upwards again, as if drunk on space and freedom.
Grace saw her daughter’s clear eyes fixed, absorbed, on the sky as the bird lifted and wheeled and tumbled and all of them gasped. And Ted clasped her hand in his and whispered in awe, ‘Look at that. Beautiful. So beautiful.’
Praise for Annie Murray
‘Classy historical fi
ction – heart-warming and full of adventure’
Newswatch UK
‘A tale of passion and empathy which will keep you hooked’
Woman’s Own
‘Annie Murray puts the heart into heart-warming’
Mature Times
‘A tender romance with a warm heart, an authentic sense of time and place and a gritty streak of realism . . . guaranteed to delight Murray’s ever-growing army of fans’
Lancashire Evening Post
‘Annie Murray’s superbly drawn characters will live with you long after you’ve finished reading’
Margaret Dickinson
A Wartime Secret
Annie Murray was born in Berkshire and read English at St John’s College, Oxford. Her first ‘Birmingham’ story, Birmingham Rose, hit the Sunday Times bestseller list when it was published in 1995. She has subsequently written many other successful novels, including the bestselling Chocolate Girls and War Babies. Annie has four children and lives near Reading.
If you enjoyed reading A Wartime Secret, you’ll love Annie Murray’s full-length novel The Doorstep Child. Read on for an extract . . .
One
August 1953
‘Let me in!’
Evie’s hands slapped against the cracked green paint of the front door until they stung. ‘I wanna come in! Rita! Shirl! Let me in!’
She heard spiteful giggles from behind the front door – her older sisters, united as usual against her.
Defeated, Evie stopped and leaned to rest the top of her head against the rotten planks.
‘Go on, ask us nicely. You gotta say “please”, Evie.’ This was Rita, the elder of her sisters, her voice wheedling and spiteful. ‘“Pretty please.”’
Evie sank down on the step, her back to the door. The usual bleak sense of aloneness swept through her. Shut out. Always on the outside. No one ever wanted her – not Mom, Dad . . . certainly not her sisters. However hard she tried.
