Far From Home

by Anne Bennett

  But she wouldn’t, Kate thought, because David hadn’t been near them since they had moved into the house, and when she’d suggested it, he said he wasn’t wasting his precious leave visiting people who had shown him plainly they didn’t give a tuppenny damn about him. She reached the bottom of the stairs and through the open door saw Dora’s eyes raking the room and her mouth turned down in discontent as she went on, ‘Mind you, they’ve done all right for themselves, haven’t they? Fine house like this and everything. They were living in a flat.’

  ‘I had the house first,’ Sally said. ‘It was my fiancé’s mother’s and I lived with her as company when my fiancé was called up. When she died I asked Kate to share with me, because she is my sister, you see.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the first time Kate came to our house she told us about you coming to join her in Birmingham,’ Dora told her, and her eyes roved over the room again before saying: ‘Still, you got to admit, however it was done, they proper fell on their feet with this place, didn’t they?’ Dora didn’t look a bit pleased about it.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sally, a bit irritated that the woman seemed more interested in the house Kate lived in than in any details about the death of her son, and neither of them seemed exactly grief-stricken. But then, she reminded herself, people sometimes act strangely when they are told bad news. It is often the only way they know to deal with it, and so she said gently, ‘I’m sure that you were very upset to hear of your son’s death?’

  ‘Well, course I was,’ Dora answered in quite an aggressive manner. ‘What d’you think? We both were. We’re here, ain’t we? They got Alf out of work, d’aint they?’ she demanded of her husband.

  ‘Yeah, they was very nice about it when they heard, like.’

  ‘Any road, we’ve come to see Kate, our David’s wife.’

  ‘The doctor sedated her,’ Sally said. ‘Shall we have a cup of tea and then I’ll see if Kate wants to get up?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Dora said. ‘We ain’t got all day, you know.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Kate said from the doorway, pushing the door wide. ‘I’m still a bit woozy, but I am up.’

  Sally helped her to an armchair where she faced Dora and Alf sitting on the settee then went to make tea. Alf said, ‘We were right sorry to hear about our David.’

  Were you? was on the tip of Kate’s tongue but she knew no purpose would be gained by annoying David’s parents – and anyway, Dora was already saying, ‘Singapore, that girl told the priest: that’s where he copped it. Don’t know why we had to bother with those foreign parts anyway. I thought we was fighting Germany and I would have thought that was enough to be going on with just now without taking on a load of Nips as well.’

  Sally couldn’t blame Dora for feeling that way because she had thought that way herself initially, but talk like this was hardly helpful to Kate who looked so anguished and upset. David’s parents, though, seemed intent on discussing anything but David’s death. ‘We ain’t taking on a load of Nips,’ Alf said.

  ‘We are,’ Dora contradicted. ‘That’s what lives in Singapore, ain’t it?’

  ‘Dora, I explained all this to you.’

  Kate looked from one to the other as if she couldn’t believe her ears. She felt a roaring in her head and a sense of despair filling her whole body.

  ‘Does any of this matter?’ she burst in roughly, her voice husky in her distress. ‘It doesn’t matter whether he was killed over Germany, Singapore or bloody Timbuktu, the fact is he is dead and none of us will ever see him again, and I am finding that extremely hard to cope with.’

  She tried to prevent the tears falling, but they seeped from beneath her lashes and trickled down her cheeks. Alf coughed nervously and said, ‘Here, don’t take on, old girl.’

  ‘It isn’t something I have that much control over,’ Kate said through gritted teeth, grateful to Sally who came in then with tea for them all. Dora took a sip of the tea and said patronizingly to Sally, ‘You make a good cup of tea, I will say. You will probably make someone a fine wife one day.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Sally said. ‘My fiancé never left the beaches of Dunkirk.’

  There was silence for a few minutes and then Dora gave a nervous little laugh and said to Sally, ‘Yes, but you’re still young and—’

  ‘Don’t even say that I will find somebody else,’ Sally snapped. ‘Because I don’t want anyone else, and anyway, you are not here to discuss me, but the death of your son.’

  ‘Sally!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kate,’ Sally said. ‘It’s just how I feel at the moment.’

  ‘Sally is right in a way,’ Kate said. ‘There are things to talk about. I know there will be no funeral for David, but I want him to have a Commemorative Mass and it doesn’t matter a jot that he isn’t a Catholic. Have you any objection to that?’

  ‘Well, we ain’t churchgoers, as you know,’ Alf said. ‘So it don’t matter one way or the other.’

  ‘Have we got to come, like?’ Dora asked.

  ‘That’s entirely up to you,’ Kate said. ‘I want to do this to say a … say a …’ She swallowed the painful lump in her throat and went on: ‘To say a sort of proper goodbye to David.’

  ‘Right,’ Alf said. ‘Well, we’ll see how we are fixed when we know the date and all.’

  Kate sighed. ‘And Lawrence,’ she said. ‘Would he like to pay his last respects, d’you think?’

  ‘Oh, he might well,’ Dora said angrily. ‘But the decisions aren’t his to make any more.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s been bloody conscripted,’ Dora spat out. ‘Some bloody busybody made it their business to report him, saying that women are doing his job all over the factory so why was he sitting pretty here when others were risking their lives. And apparently she went on to say that she’d never known him to have a bad chest before. Next thing we know, he had another medical, and then is sent to some training camp somewhere and he’s still there.’

  ‘I would have said that that busybody was right,’ Sally said with spirit. ‘Every man is needed and the fact that I have lost my fiancé and Kate her husband means they need more men, not fewer.’

  ‘You have a lot to say for yourself,’ Dora said, getting to her feet. ‘And none of it welcome. Come along, Alf.’

  Kate had no intention of apologizing for her sister or even trying to smooth down ruffled feathers, so she just said, ‘I’ll be in touch about the Mass.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dora snapped, still affronted by Sally’s words. ‘Like Alf said, we’ll have to see how we are fixed.’

  Sally led the way down the corridor to the front door and when she returned to the room it was to see Kate still sitting in the chair. She said to Sally, ‘Did you see the outrage on that woman’s face?’ Then she began to smile and then laugh as she said, ‘Doubt we will see either of them again.’

  ‘That will be no loss then.’

  ‘No,’ said Kate, and her laughter rose higher and higher. Sally wasn’t at all surprised when that hysteria turned to tears and she clung to Kate and they both cried out their deep sorrow and unhappiness.

  The Masons called that evening, shocked by the news but so supportive of Kate. She found it was not a bit stressful like it had been with David’s parents. She knew how much they thought of David and they spoke about the things he had done and said and Susie recalled the places they had gone to and the fun they’d had, and if they shed tears it didn’t matter. Once, Mary put her hand over Kate’s and said, ‘We’re not distressing you, my dear, are we, talking this way?’

  ‘You could never distress me,’ Kate said. ‘I like talking about David. I would never like him forgotten. Anyway,’ she went on, kissing Mary on the cheek, ‘you’re like family to me, and I know David thought of you that way too, for he greatly admired you.’

  ‘Admired us?’ Mary repeated. ‘Oh, no, my dear, the admiration is all the other way. That young man was a hero, as Sally’s Phil was. We owe them all a debt and I am so sorry that David
’s life was cut so short.’

  ‘And I,’ Kate said. ‘And I wish I had his child so I would have something of his now.’

  ‘It might be very difficult to bring up a child by yourself.’

  ‘That wouldn’t matter,’ Kate said. ‘Anyway, do you think I would be on my own? Any child I had would have a doting Aunt Sally, not to mention Susie and you two and two honorary uncles in Martin and Derek.’

  She had used these arguments with David when she had pleaded with him to make her pregnant. ‘I just long to carry your child,’ she’d told him.

  ‘And so you shall, you darling girl, when this war is fought and won and I am at home again. We will bring our child up in a world of peace.’

  ‘But I’m not allowed to practise birth control. So how are you stopping …’

  David had put a finger over her lips. ‘You needn’t concern yourself with how,’ he said. ‘If you know nothing about it, then it can’t be a sin for you. Let me deal with that side of things.’

  And he had, very effectively. She sighed. Susie heard the sigh and said, ‘Are we tiring you?’

  ‘No,’ Kate said, and then added more honestly, ‘I am tired but I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘I’m really glad you have Sally,’ Susie said, but as she went to put her arm around Kate, she moved away. ‘Sorry, Susie,’ she said. ‘I can only hold it together if I’m not given too much sympathy. Then I start blubbing.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘Not for me, it isn’t,’ Kate said. ‘Anyway, I intend to return to work on Monday and the warden post the following week.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Kate. Give yourself more time than that.’

  ‘To do what?’ Kate said. ‘Look at the four walls?’ She shook her head and said, ‘No, I am better off at work – and anyway, this is what David would have wanted me to do. He even spoke about it on his last leave.’

  Susie remembered the conversation she had had with Sally on that very subject, but still she said, ‘You don’t think you might be doing a bit too much too soon?’

  ‘No,’ Kate said. ‘It won’t make me miss David any less, but I will feel that I am doing something useful – and that’s important to me, because I don’t ever want to feel that David died in vain. We have got to win.’

  The following day, Kate went to arrange the special Mass for David. Sally offered to go with her but it was something Kate wanted to do, needed to do. She was surprised as she walked how many neighbours spoke to her and offered their condolences. She wondered how they had all got to know so quickly, but then she remembered Phoebe Jenkins who had been round the previous evening. She’d already been a great help and possessed a good deal of common sense; she commiserated with Kate, knowing what she was going through, and assured her that if she needed any help she just lived next door. She must have spread the word, and, with a small smile, Kate remembered her father once saying there were three ways of passing messages quickly: ‘Telephone, telegraph and tell a woman.’

  She didn’t mind Phoebe telling their neighbours, and in fact their good wishes helped dispel some of the apprehension she felt in talking to a priest, because the last time she had spoken to one she had been very angry. But she needn’t have worried, and was pleasantly surprised at Father Trelawney’s attitude. She had never spoken to him before, although he had officiated at Derek’s wedding and later at Susie’s, but that Friday morning she found him such a nice, understanding man. She told him everything, just as it was, and he patted her agitated hands and said that in wartime things like that happened and never once made her feel as though she had been living in sin with the man she was arranging a Commemorative Mass for. He did ask her if she wanted to make a good confession, and suddenly Kate did, because it meant that she could take communion at the Mass and that was important to her. Father Trelawney didn’t even appear to get embarrassed when she cried in the recounting of things she had done.

  She returned to work on Monday and even Mrs Higgins the supervisor and Mr Tanner expressed their regret. Susie had told them all what had happened on the factory floor and they were all supportive of Kate and noticed that while she did her work well enough she often seemed miles away, and was thinner and paler than ever. They all understood this because she wasn’t the only one there that had lost a loved one and they knew it was just time that could help. Many at the warden post were surprised how composed Kate appeared and how she had returned to her work in the hostel almost eagerly.

  Sally knew that was because she was concerned for the often destitute families she dealt with, and knew the help she often gave to them was invaluable. She felt needed, but that was her public face. Privately, she wasn’t always as composed as she appeared. Since David’s death, Kate ate less than a bird and cried more easily, though Sally sensed she was embarrassed by this and tried to wait until she was alone. Sally would hear her, though, crying in her bed most nights, for all she tried to muffle her tears in the pillow. She never went in, though she often longed to, for she knew Kate wouldn’t want that.

  On Saturday, 20 March, David’s Commemorative Mass was held in St Margaret Mary’s Church, which was packed. The Masons came, some RAF chaps who had been friends of David’s, work colleagues of Kate’s, and neighbours, including Phoebe Jenkins and even John and Rita Taylor, as Sally and Susie had gone to tell them what had happened. The priest was astounded at the turnout. ‘He must have been a very popular man,’ he said to Susie in the porch. ‘One that will be sadly missed.’

  ‘Oh, he will be missed all right,’ Susie said. ‘It’s hard for me to think I will never see him again. Kate is bearing up very well, but inside she is still suffering. You can see it in her eyes. As for being popular, a person would be hard to please all right if they didn’t like David, yet his own parents didn’t seem to have any time for him. They have not come today, though Kate told them the date and the time. They love only David’s elder brother Lawrence.’

  ‘Do they attend any other church?’ Father Trelawney asked. ‘Kate told me David didn’t.’

  ‘No,’ Susie said. ‘That’s not it, Father. Most of these filling the pews today don’t go to church on any sort of a regular basis. They are here today to support Kate. David’s parents obviously could not be bothered.’

  ‘Families,’ the priest said. ‘A long time ago I decided I wasn’t even going to try and understand them. Shall we go in now?’

  Father Trelawney stopped on the way down the aisle and asked Kate if she was all right. She answered him with a tremulous smile and said that she was fine, but thanked him for asking. Sally knew that Kate liked the priest. She was glad, for it might mean that she would go back to church. She would be relieved if she did for Sally was still worried about her sister’s immortal soul.

  But thinking of immortal souls brought her mother to mind, and the reply she had received from her just the other day. She had been so excited when she had seen a letter in her mother’s hand addressed to her on the mat as she came down ready for work. She was, however, apprehensive about what her mother might say and she knew that she needed to open it when she was alone, so she had slipped it into her pocket without a word to Kate about it.

  At dinner time that day, Sally escaped to the washroom, and in one of the cubicles she opened the letter from her mother. Philomena thanked Sally for writing and letting her know about the tragedy of David’s death and said she hoped that she was being a support to her sister. She said she would write to Kate and it would do them both good to go home to Ireland for a good rest. Sally’s heart leapt at that because she said both of them: that must mean that she was partly forgiven. She clutched the pages to her chest and closed her eyes. ‘Oh, thank you, God,’ she whispered, for she had prayed for her mother to forgive her over and over.

  However, her mother’s next sentence shocked her to the core and ensured that Kate would never be able to read this letter, for she said that though Kate was probably upset about this man she called her husband, when she was over it and more
herself, she would probably see it as a blessing in disguise, since the man was a Protestant and mixed marriages never worked.

  Sally held the letter in her hand a moment longer. She had waited many years for her mother to say she could go home again, and she would have liked to have kept that important letter and maybe read it again.

  But then with a sigh she ripped it into little pieces and threw it down the toilet and flushed it away, in case Kate might see it and be upset.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Mammy asks me in every letter when I am going home,’ Kate said to Susie a few months later as they climbed on the tram to go to work.

  ‘Well, why don’t you go?’ Susie said. ‘It would do you good. The bombing is over and done and you always said that you wouldn’t go before because Sally wasn’t invited, but you say she is now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘It happened after David died. She wrote to Mammy, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ Susie said. ‘I addressed the envelope.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s how she got Mammy to open it,’ Kate said. ‘I did wonder.’

  ‘And she started the letter pleading with your mother to read it because it was about you.’

  ‘Well, whatever she said, it worked,’ Kate said. ‘Mind, I don’t think Sally would want to go home just now. She has her head turned with all these Americans flooding into the dance halls these days. She says she’s glad she went to those dance classes. Mind you, the Americans have their own way of dancing.’

  ‘Haven’t they their own way of doing most things?’

  ‘Yeah they have,’ said Kate with a smile. ‘But even Sally was a bit shocked. She says the boys shoot you through their legs and send you into a spin sometimes, held above their head so that your knickers are on show.’

  ‘I say,’ Susie said, and added with a laugh: ‘Wouldn’t do to forget to put them on one night.’

  ‘Oh, I would say definitely not,’ Kate said. ‘I did ask her about it, but she said they are just having fun.’