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When the Bough Breaks

Page 6

by Connie Monk


  She didn’t look convinced. Every pound they had managed to save had been cause for pride and now they were expected to throw it all away when she had a perfectly good bed at home. Anyway she wanted to look after the baby herself.

  ‘It’s silly for me to lie here doing nothing while you have to do your own cooking and washing.’

  ‘Remember, woman,’ he said with an almost boyish grin, ‘before you swept into my life I catered for myself most efficiently and so I am again. And when you come home don’t think you’re going to rule the roost, you’ll do as I tell you. And that means rest.’

  Kathie wriggled deeper into her pillows. With her baby nuzzling at her nipple and with Den looking at her in a way she hadn’t seen for years, she felt she would burst with happiness. She wouldn’t let herself consider the chance that the biopsy result would be anything but perfect.

  Dennis couldn’t let his thoughts go beyond the point when they would have the result from the analyst. To take it for granted that the tumour had been non-malignant would be akin to tempting fate. But today was special and precious to both of them, the first time they had been together as a proper family.

  ‘Can I hold her?’ He moved the conversation away from their meagre savings. The operation would make a huge hole in them, but none of it mattered as long as she and the baby were well. As he took the tiny form in his arms again his vision misted. ‘So little,’ he muttered. ‘Oh Kathie, she’s a miracle.’

  Kathie nodded, knowing just how he was feeling for it had been the same for her the first time she had held the little bundle in her arms. ‘She’s tiny now,’ she said, ‘but she’ll soon start to grow. Before I had her more than anything I worried that I wouldn’t be able to feed her. I had almost no bosom – you remember. But now –’ she stuck out her chest with pride – ‘if all that gets full of milk she’s going to grow in no time.’

  He couldn’t keep the smile off his face. Bosom or no, what a child she sounded.

  ‘We can’t keep calling her she. Which is it to be? Jessica or Miranda?’ These were the two names they had selected if the baby turned out to be a girl. But in their hearts they had both been sure it would have been a boy, Conrad James.

  Now they concentrated on the mite, still too young for them even to imagine what her features would be.

  ‘She doesn’t look to me like a Miranda,’ Kathie said. ‘She’d better be Jessica.’

  ‘Doesn’t look much like a Jessica either at the moment. We’ll just call her Jess, Jessie Hawthorne.’

  It was one of life’s special moments.

  Kathie stayed in hospital for three more weeks, two of them after they had been told the result they had longed to hear. The tumour had been large and fast-growing but it hadn’t been malignant. Now all she had to do was get strong so that she would be ready to look after Jess. That year Christmas passed them almost unnoticed and yet had there ever been one when their hearts had been so full of thankfulness? After that afternoon halfway through December when she had been taken into hospital, Dennis was constantly aware of her appearance and he marvelled how different she looked after these weeks of rest. The years they’d been together had transformed her from a girl to a woman, a radiant woman.

  Once home she obeyed instructions and rested for two hours each afternoon, choosing her time according to when Jess, having slurped her way through her two o’clock feed, was asleep. That was in the beginning, but with each week as Jess grew bigger and Kathie grew stronger, gradually the routine changed. There was always help needed outside so with the pram close by, Kathie undertook the lighter jobs. At that stage, Stanley made himself responsible for Bertram.

  By the time Kathie was once more keeper of the pigsty, Bertram had given place to Hector and Jess was taking her first staggering steps. If a Good Fairy had appeared and said she could hold time still for them, Kathie and Dennis were so aware of all they had that they might have been tempted, except for one thing: each day Jess learnt something new, each day she became more precious. And so with confidence they would have dismissed the Good Fairy’s offer

  1939–1945

  Three

  Holding it by its two handles, Kathie picked up her basketwork container and started towards the shed. The peas had cropped well and this was her third full load that day. Glancing at her watch, she decided this must be her last. The hard work they put into Westways had ensured that it brought them a comfortable living doing what they loved best. About three years ago they had been able to afford to have electricity brought into the house and more recently a telephone too. And Kathie’s natural flair had turned it into a home that radiated warmth and comfort.

  ‘I’m going in now,’ she called to Dennis. ‘Only a few minutes and Jess will be home from school.’

  ‘Right-o. I’ll just finish this row of broad beans and I’ll get loaded up. Kathie, get us something to eat pretty soon so that it’s ready when I get back from delivering, then this evening I’ll get a few more hours out here. No Terriers this evening, so I want to make the most of the long day with the weather like this.’

  Dennis never missed the chance of an evening with the Territorial Army (or the Terriers as they were known). He had joined when they had started recruiting in Sedgewood about a year after Jess had been born and, although more recently a lot of volunteers years his junior had enlisted – including Stanley Stone and Bert Delbridge who, by that time, had worked for him so long that they had almost become part of the family – he enjoyed the male companionship and the half hour they spent in the Stag and Beetle after their evening sessions.

  ‘All right, love,’ Kathie answered, ‘say half an hour from now. Will that do?’

  ‘I reckon I’ll last out that long. What have we got?’

  ‘A lot of eggs. They’re laying so well. We’ll have cheese omelettes and I’ve cut you a good gammon steak to go with yours.’

  ‘Good girl. That and a hunk of crusty bread’ll do me fine.’ Then he looked up from his picking, his gaze holding hers. ‘Here a minute.’

  How easy it had become to slip back into that easy companionship that had temporarily been lost when he’d come so close to losing her. He looked at her, remembering the nightmare of those days. There was nothing grey and drawn about her face now. She looked a picture of health, her hair glinting chestnut in the sunshine, her figure as slim as a girl’s. He consciously forced himself to think that way and not face the truth that whereas when he’d first known her she had been attractively slim, now she was painfully thin. He remembered how when she had been nursing Jess she had been so proud of her shapely bosom. All that was changed; now her breasts were shrunk and shapeless beyond recognition. But she was just as full of energy as when he’d married her and, if her complexion had lost the bloom of youth, nothing altered her ready smile or the way her brown eyes looked at him carrying their own message of affection. Perhaps to the outside world Kathie wasn’t seen as a beauty, but to Dennis those wide dark eyes, her short, snub nose and overlarge mouth, fitted perfectly into the woman she was.

  Putting down her loaded basket she came along between the rows of broad beans.

  ‘Yes? Do you want to show me something?’

  ‘I was thinking – about us, Kathie. We’re so damned lucky. Can it last? Not just for us, for everyone? When storm clouds build they don’t just go away.’

  ‘Hitler and all his nonsense, you mean? We must hang on to what Mr Chamberlain told us last year. Hitler has spread his wings as far as he intends.’ Then with a laugh, a laugh that in truth was more bravado than mirth, ‘Your trouble is that you and those chaps you march around with want to flex your muscles and frighten him. But surely everyone has too much sense to let that happen – us and the German people too.’

  ‘Please God you’re right. You know something Kathie Hawthorne? If everyone had your trust and wisdom the world would be a better place.’

  ‘Chump.’ And this time there was nothing forced in her laugh. ‘Like you say, Den, we are lucky, so let’s jus
t appreciate what we have. Hark, I hear footsteps, Jess is running along the lane and here am I, still garden grimy.’

  ‘Send her out to give me a hand. She likes picking.’

  ‘She prefers peas; she can eat those as she goes. I’ll go and say hello to her and tell her you want some help with the beans.’

  ‘Leave your basket, I’ll take it to the shed. Then when I’ve weighed it all up I’ll run the stuff along to the shop. Jess can ride with me.’

  So she left him and went towards the house where Jess was going from room to room looking for her.

  ‘Hello love, I heard you running up the lane. I’ve been helping your dad with the picking. He said to tell you he could do with an extra pair of hands now that I have to start getting some food ready. Better take off your school dress first. Just your knicks will do out there; the sun is lovely.’

  ‘I came home with Ben Williams, Mum – well, till I got to our lane I did. You know what, Mum? He skips better than I do. Isn’t that funny – better than I do – cross hands, bumps, all of it he can do and he hasn’t even got a rope of his own. I let him take mine if he promised to bring it to school in the morning.’

  ‘That was a good idea, Jess. Arms up, while I pull off your dress and vest. There you are. Off you run.’

  Yes, she thought, watching Jess dart across the small patch of lawn to the field beyond, Den’s right, it’s almost frightening how lucky we are. Further than that she wouldn’t let her thoughts go, for surely it was nonsense to think Hitler’s screaming speeches and the wonderful displays of marching youths whose pictures were so often in the newspaper would lead to war. How could they, after all the trouble Mr Chamberlain had gone to less than a year ago? If we could understand what he is shouting about it might not be so scary.

  There were plenty of better off people in Sedgewood village, but it wouldn’t have been surprising if some of them envied the Hawthornes’ independent way of living. But of course that would have been seeing the picture through rose-tinted spectacles, for many a night when Dennis and Kathie went to bed they knew the sort of tiredness never experienced by those who worked regular hours.

  The last of the asparagus was no more than a memory, green peas and broad beans came to an end, the crop of marrows swelled with the promise of a bumper year, the runner beans grew long and succulent. This year was no different from any other as the land brought forth its bounty. Kathie suspected there was defiance in the cheerfulness of people she met when she went shopping in the village; or did she imagine it, simply because she knew it to be the truth for herself? There were evenings when she twiddled with the tuning knob on the wireless and the screaming voice of Adolf Hitler filled the sitting room making her blood run cold. If Den had been there with her, her imagination might not have carried her into such unknown regions of horror, but by August most of his evenings were spent with the Terriers.

  There was the day when Kathie and Jess went to the Old National School in the village and queued to collect their gas masks. With each breath they made a noise like a pig grunting. One little boy was crying and didn’t want to put his on, but Jessie was determined to look grown up, even though hers was made to look like Mickey Mouse. She wasn’t going to let anyone guess that she had a horrid pinching sort of feeling in her tummy and wished they were at home and none of this was happening.

  ‘Remember Fred Dawkins?’ Dennis greeted Kathie when, on their return, she found him picking runner beans. ‘Calls himself the billeting officer apparently. He came to see what space we have. It seems they’re expecting a load of London kids and are fixing up where they can be housed. Not here, I told him. Having only two bedrooms lets us off the hook.’

  ‘Poor little souls! Imagine if it were the other way round and children from here were being sent to strangers. They’ve got to make plans – the same as with those horrid gas masks. But it won’t happen. It won’t, will it, Den?’ In her heart she knew the answer as well as he did. If it didn’t happen this autumn it would be next spring, next autumn, sometime. The situation was like a festering wound; it would throb and throb with no chance of healing until it was lanced. He knew she wasn’t expecting an answer. ‘But, if it does –’ just to say it seemed like tempting fate – ‘it mustn’t, but Den, if it did and you had to go off with the Terriers, Jess and I wouldn’t need a dining room. We’d eat on the little table in the “warm room”. So we could always put a camp bed in there – and try and make it pretty – then we’d have room.’

  ‘What rubbish the woman talks! If the chaps and I go marching off for King and Country, then you’ll have more than enough to do here without taking other people’s kids to look after. Anyway, if I have to go, I want to know that nothing is changed back here at home.’

  A cold hand of fear seemed to grip her. All thought of the evacuees was forgotten.

  By the first Sunday in September there was no way of hiding from the truth. England was at war. Jessie came indoors from playing with her ball against the side of the house to find her parents standing with their arms around each other, something so unusual that for a second or two she hesitated before she rushed at them and clasped them both around the legs.

  ‘How long will you have?’ Kathie asked as Den stooped to pick up the little girl. That was something else that set the moment apart, for Jessie’s independent spirit usually kept her firmly on her own two feet. She snuggled her face against his neck instinctively knowing these seconds were special.

  ‘No time at all, I imagine. Chaps with as much training as we have had will be wanted. Oh Christ, Kathie, that’s me and the boys too. What the hell will happen to the place?’

  ‘If you think Mr Hitler’s going to get the better of this gal you can think again. If Daddy and the boys have to go away for a little while, you and I will do the work here won’t we Jess?’

  It had been arranged that, Sunday or no, the Terriers would meet that same evening. When they arrived at the hall they were all given their joining instructions which the captain in charge had had locked in the draw in readiness. The following afternoon they were unceremoniously conveyed in an army lorry to a base in Wiltshire to be turned into bona fide soldiers.

  With Jessie sitting at her side, Kathie took the vegetables to the village, thankful that she had a full tank of petrol. For days there had been talk of rationing, rationing of petrol and of food too. There would be no allocation of fuel for pleasure, so plenty of people would have to lay up their cars and take to their bicycles. She hoped her work would be looked on as essential and she would at least be able to make the daily delivery to Jack Hopkins, the greengrocer. How strange that with Den being taken further away from them with every minute she should be planning running the market garden. When war had been no more than a fear at the back of her mind, she had imagined Den going and she left alone, broken and weeping; yet now that it was actually happening none of it seemed real, it was like sleepwalking through the hours; she felt removed from everything that was normal and familiar, even the unchanging village street became remote. This time last week, even though they had known trouble was building and couldn’t be held off for long, she hadn’t let herself imagine a future when Den wouldn’t be with them.

  Back from delivering the vegetables, that feeling of unreality lingered. The sound of the water filling the kettle, the sight of her neat rows of preserves on the shelf, all these things were so much part of her everyday life that as a rule she wasn’t consciously aware of them, yet on that Monday afternoon, the 4th of September, she seemed to see it all anew.

  ‘You know what Dad said to me?’ Jessie’s voice cut through Kathie’s thoughts as she put the filled kettle onto the range.

  She suspected Jessie was feeling as strange as she was herself – although at not yet six years old she would have no appreciation of the emptiness of the time ahead.

  ‘What was that then, Jess?’

  ‘When he gave me that huge hug he whispered that you and me would be fine, cos we would look after each other till
he came back.’

  ‘He said something like that to me too. And so we will.’ There was no hint of the effort her bright and reassuring smile cost her.

  ‘Course we will,’ Jess agreed, clearly giving their responsibilities all her thought. ‘Golly! Fancy just us having to look after all the veg and stuff. Then there’s Heston,’ (the latest resident pig) ‘and the chickens. I’d better go and get the eggs. OK?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve put the bowl ready. Make sure you latch the gate of the run carefully.’

  ‘Course I will. And what about Heston?’

  ‘I’ve done Heston. He’s used to me. Even your dad never goes into the sty.’ Goes? Should it have been ‘went’? The question came uninvited and was immediately rejected. How strange it was that Jess appeared to find nothing different about her, while she felt she was only half alive. Where was he now? Where were they taking him. War – her memories of the last one were vague, one or two of her school friends had had brothers in the army, but it had been a war for men in the services; people with no one caught up in it hadn’t been affected as they would be this time. Children sent away from London and from coastal ports and industrial cities to be kept safe in the country; boys – and men like Den – who had joined the Terriers already taken into the army; heavy dark curtains closed before dark so that not a chink of light showed in case Hitler sent aeroplanes to drop bombs. Ordinary people like Den and her, their lives pulled up by the roots. What had any of them done to deserve it?

  ‘Got five eggs, Mum. While Dad’s away we’ll have to eat lots of eggs. Still, I don’t mind, I like them.’

  ‘Good. It’ll be eggs for tea.’

  ‘Tell you what! Laying the table can be my job, my ’sponsibility.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, Jess. Much better if we do regular jobs.’ At her mother’s words, Jess seemed visibly to puff out her chest. ‘We’ll manage so well your dad will be proud of us. Tomorrow I must put a notice in the paper shop asking for help to replace Stan and Bert. By Wednesday you will be back at school.’

 

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