by Katie Flynn
Snowy sat in the train on Christmas Eve and gazed out through the rain-flecked window. He thought he had never seen country so green and beautiful, though he guessed that probably there were few on the train who felt as he did. He had travelled by troop ship and army lorry to the depot where he had been given a rail warrant and become a civilian once more, and now he was on his way home, not just home to good old Blighty, but home to the particular part of it where he had been born and brought up. The man next to him was also a returning soldier and presently he dug an elbow into Snowy’s ribs. ‘Ain’t it just grand to see rain drippin’ off the trees?’ he said as the train emerged from a tunnel and began to pick up speed through densely wooded country. ‘I reckon you’ve been in Malaya, same as me. Am I right?’
Snowy nodded ruefully. ‘The tan’s a dead giveaway,’ he remarked. ‘And I still can’t get used to long trousers after years of jungle fatigues.’ He ran a finger around the rather too tight collar which had fitted him at twenty-one, but was not so good at twenty-three. ‘And this perishin’ shirt is a deal too small round the neck.’
‘Aye, but it’s free,’ the man observed. Snowy grinned at him and the other grinned back, a gleam of white teeth in his deeply tanned face. ‘You goin’ all the way to Lime Street?’
‘That’s right,’ Snowy said. ‘I’ve not told a soul when I’ll be back because I wanted it to be a surprise.’ He glanced up at his kitbag lying on the string rack above his head. ‘I’ve got presents for everyone in there – the sort of thing you get in the bazaar – but right now I’d swap the lot for a drink. Is there a buffet car on the train? If so we might go along and get ourselves a beer.’
The other man shook his head. ‘No buffet car. I walked along the platform checking before I got aboard,’ he said. ‘But this perishin’ train stops at every little station; next time one of us can nip down and buy a bevvy while the other keeps our seats.’ He grinned again, a trifle self-consciously. ‘Only it’ll have to be you what gets the beer because of me leg.’ He pointed, and for the first time Snowy realised that his new friend’s left leg was encased in plaster to the knee.
‘Suits me,’ Snowy said just as the engine announced its approach with a shrill whistle and the train drew up alongside a small country platform. He stood up, then pointed at the plaster cast. ‘Where did you get that lot then?’
‘I’d like to say I got it on jungle patrol – I probably shall say that when I get back to me girlfriend’s anxious embrace – but in fact I were hospitalised with a bout of jungle fever, and on my way to the canteen one day I slipped at the head of a flight of stairs, took ’em in one graceful swoop and ended up wi’ this.’ He tapped the cast just as the train ground to a stop, a porter began shouting the name of the station, and Snowy departed on his mission.
During the rest of the journey, Snowy and his new friend, Tappy Arbuthnot, told each other their life histories. Tappy described his girl in glowing terms and then asked, ‘Well, what’s your girl like? Bet she’s a corker!’
Snowy smiled and nodded. ‘Blonde, curvy . . .’ He stopped short, shocked at himself, but fortunately Tappy simply nodded understandingly.
Having finished the beer and sympathised with Tappy over his fears that his glamorous girlfriend might have given him the go-by in his absence, Snowy leaned back in his seat and began to think seriously of his homecoming. His parents would be over the moon, his friends would greet him raucously and drag him over to the nearest pub for a celebratory drink, and Tess, he supposed, would start talking about engagement rings and marriage plans. That would please his parents, who thought her a real little lady, intelligent, bright and humorous. But hard though he might try to dismiss Marilyn from his mind she would keep pushing in, all blonde curls, enticing bosom and pink and white complexion. Not a bit like Tess, who was skinny, sallow and far too ladylike to leap into his arms and take him home to bed, he thought, horrified, but also thrilled. In his mind his hand plunged down the front of Marilyn’s showy white blouse and felt the satisfying weight of her rounded, pink-tipped breast in his palm. The slow burn in his stomach made him gasp with remembered pleasure – and pleasure anticipated. He realised, ruefully, that he was haunted by a deep inner conviction that he and Marilyn were somehow linked, as a couple. It was madness, of course. She had written to him, and though the letters were not illiterate, exactly, they did not compare with Tess’s lively epistles. Yet he kept each one, and threw Tess’s missives away once they were answered. His mother referred to Marilyn as ‘that little blonde shop girl’ and made no secret of the fact that she was glad Snowy’s fancy for her had not stood the test of time, that their schoolday friendship had been just that, something unfortunate which he had ‘got over’, as though it had been a bad head cold or an attack of measles.
The train jerked to a stop once more and Tappy got to his feet and let down the window. The rain had become first sleet and now snow, and the unheated train felt freezing to men newly returned from the tropics. Snowy jerked Tappy’s elbow. ‘Where are we?’ he said. ‘This isn’t a station, judging by what I can see of it. Shove over, Tappy, and let the dog see the rabbit.’
He had barely stopped speaking when a porter came along the corridor, announcing that due to unforeseen circumstances the train would have to pause for a while and would therefore be late in arriving at its ultimate destination, Liverpool Lime Street.
Tappy and Snowy groaned in unison, put up the window and returned to their seats. ‘I thought it were unusually slow and awful jerky when we stopped at the last station,’ Tappy said, staring out miserably at the whirling snow. ‘Oh, Gawd, I wish I’d not told Angie that I’d be on this train. She’ll be mad as fire, blame me for what I couldn’t possibly help and very likely storm off home, leavin’ me to foller like a pet dog.’
Snowy chuckled. ‘You just described her as being sweet, willing and good-natured,’ he said reprovingly. ‘If she’s all of those things then she’s unlikely to throw a fit just because you’re ten or fifteen minutes late.’
Tappy snorted. ‘Ten or fifteen minutes late?’ he said scornfully. ‘More like a couple of hours. If there’s something seriously wrong with the engine they’ll have to send for another and that can take hours, as I know. It’s all very well for you, you didn’t tell anyone you were coming. Must be the wisdom of the ancient . . . So why are you older than me?’
‘Deferred,’ Snowy said briefly. He had learned not to say ‘deferred whilst taking my degree’, because if he did so the fellers were apt to think him conceited.
But Tappy merely nodded. ‘Oh well, at least I gorrit over early,’ he observed. ‘I guess the pair of us will be searchin’ for a job, but I’m not too worried. When I joined I was pretty wet behind the lug’oles. I couldn’t drive, hadn’t read a book since I left school and didn’t know a spark plug from a dipstick, but now I’m a fully trained motor mechanic, and I reckon there’ll always be a place for one of them, don’t you think?’
Snowy agreed, and the rest of the journey was enlivened by a discussion of the various jobs which might or might not be on offer to a motor mechanic who could also drive any vehicle from the largest to the smallest. But as they neared their destination they both fell silent and Snowy realised, with a stab of dismay, that when he thought about Tess, a teaching post, marriage and, later, children, the picture of Tess had become so faint that it was almost unrecognisable. The fact that he had thought Lyana was like her was a case in point. At the very beginning of their friendship, he recalled now, he had been attracted by her resemblance to Tess; but was she really like Tess or was it just his imagination? He knew their characters were totally dissimilar . . . but then he realised he could not even say that. He had been seeing Lyana for a few weeks and he had not seen Tess for two years. Why should he assume that she had not changed when he was well aware of the changes in himself? He told himself that he was looking forward to seeing Tess again and was just trying to remember which of the presents carefully packed away in his kit bag were for he
r when his companion spoke. ‘Tell you what, mate, I’m not sure I want to get hitched to young Angie after all. Wish I were as certain she were the only girl for me as you are about your Tess. But Angie’s been writing to me ever since I was sent out to Malaya. She’s not been with another feller . . .’
‘How do you know? You’ve only got her word for it,’ Snowy said, but Tappy shook his head.
‘That horse won’t run,’ he said half regretfully. ‘She’s been ever so good to my old mam, has Angie. Visiting once a week, sometimes more, givin’ the old gal some nice fruit or a few chocolates every so often, takin’ her shoppin’ or to the flicks . . .’ He grinned ruefully. ‘Me mam thinks a great deal of Angie; she’d go mad if I telled her I’d changed my mind.’
Snowy had a brief vision of his own mother’s face if he presented her with Marilyn as a prospective daughter-in-law. To be sure the girl was a beauty, but Snowy could not imagine either of his parents regarding his liaison with a shop girl, no matter how beautiful, with complaisance. He opened his mouth to share his thoughts with Tappy, then closed it again. Whatever was he thinking of? He had no intention of changing his plans, of substituting Marilyn for Tess. Snowy sighed, then got to his feet as the train drew in at a brightly lit station and a porter hurried along the train, opening doors. They were at Lime Street station at last. The two young men gathered their possessions and climbed down on to the platform. They fought their way across the platform, which was crowded with would-be passengers as well as those descending from the train, handed their tickets in at the barrier, then stood their kit bags down and shook hands. ‘Well, it looks like we made it . . .’ Snowy said.
‘Of course, if you really beg me, I suppose I could put off returning to Norfolk until after Christmas,’ Jonty had said thoughtfully earlier that afternoon, eyeing the preparations for high tea which Edie and Tess had just completed. ‘Still, as I said, two’s company and three’s a crowd, so I’d best say goodbye, Mrs Williams, and thanks for your generous hospitality over the past couple of days.’
‘Thank you – and your parents – for all the good things which have made my Christmas catering so much easier,’ Edie had said. She had pinched Jonty’s cheek. ‘People change; you’ve grown up a lot in the last few years, young man. Let’s not say goodbye, however, but au revoir.’ She had glanced shrewdly from Tess’s determined smile to Jonty’s bland expression. ‘Something tells me we’ll be seeing more of you in the New Year, and very welcome you’ll be. After all, you’ve scarcely seen Janine or the baby, and since Janine says she wants you and Tess to be godparents you’ll have to come back for the christening, if nothing else.’
‘I say, that’s a real honour. I’ve never been a godparent before,’ Jonty said. He turned to Tess. ‘Did you hear that, my woman? We’re going to be godparents.’
Tess heaved a sigh, ‘Yes, I know; Gran told me earlier,’ she said. ‘Look, we’ve already missed two trains and if you’re to catch the next one we need to get a move on. Have you got everything? Right, then off we go.’
‘I really ought to go round to Mr Payne’s and thank him again . . .’ Jonty began, but at this Tess’s patience snapped.
‘You’ve said you’re grateful a dozen times to my knowledge,’ she said crossly. ‘Do get a move on, Jonty. If you miss this train you won’t be home till midnight. And I shan’t wait with you, so there.’
Heyworth Street was crowded, for there were always people who left everything until the last minute – apparently Jonty was one of them – and at three o’clock on Christmas Eve prices tended to drop, so shoppers were many. Tess was carrying Jonty’s lightest bag whilst he struggled along with his suitcase, and she reflected sourly that though she was now certain she loved Jonty she was more and more sure that he did not love her. Earlier, she had led him by stalls sporting bunches of mistletoe; she had turned up her face hopefully when he went off to sleep at the tobacconist’s, thinking he was sure to give her a goodnight kiss; she had snuggled up to him in the cinema, but apart from looking a little red around the gills he had not seemed to notice such overtures.
They reached the station. A train was just pulling in and the porter was shouting. ‘That’ll be yours, Jonty,’ Tess said, ‘so we’d best say our goodbyes now. She moved closer to him, whereupon Jonty took a step backwards.
‘Tess, I – I’ve been meaning to ask you . . .’ he began, but Tess had had enough of shilly-shallying. She snatched his big case away from him and slammed it down on the platform. Then she flung both her arms round him and cuddled her cheek into the hollow of his neck. Jonty made an inarticulate sound and suddenly he was clutching and kissing her, mumbling into her ear that he loved her more than anyone else he had known in all of his life. Then he pulled back from her a little. ‘I’ve longed and longed to do that, oh, for weeks . . . months . . . years!’ he said. ‘But I’m an awkward sort of chap, wouldn’t know a fancy speech if it bit me on the nose. And that Snowy, he’s smooth as ice and handsome as a film star. Oh, Tess, can you possibly love me as much as you love him?’
Tess threw her arms about him again, but just then the engine’s whistle sounded and she bundled Jonty’s various possessions on to the train. ‘As much? I love you far more; I don’t believe I ever did love Snowy,’ she assured him just as the porter came along the train, slamming the doors and warning the passengers to stand clear. Tess held on to the nearest door handle and pushed Jonty aboard. The porter waved his green flag, the engine whistled . . . and Jonty grabbed Tess round the waist and pulled her into the carriage just as the train began to move, whilst the porter yelled at them and other passengers stared.
Inside the train, Jonty plonked her down in a vacant seat, took the one beside her and gripped her hands tightly. ‘I’m not letting you go back to Liverpool until you’re wearing my ring on your finger,’ he announced, much to the interest of the other people in the compartment. ‘Oh, Tess, my love, will you – can you bear to marry a farmer, and leave your pet shop, and your gran, and all your friends behind?’
‘Oh, hush, everyone’s listening,’ Tess whispered. ‘And I shall love being a farmer’s wife, provided you’re the farmer in question.’
Jonty leaned back in his seat and blew out his cheeks in a relieved whistle. ‘Phew! Then that’s settled,’ he said. But Tess had jumped to her feet and was staring out at the passing scene.
‘Jonty, the train’s moving and no one knows where I am, not Gran or Albert, not even Mitch. Whatever will they think? Oh, God, and what about Snowy? He thinks we’re still together. How on earth can I explain, admit that it was all a horrible misunderstanding?’
‘Don’t care; don’t matter,’ said Jonty, his face wreathed in a blissful smile. ‘If they don’t guess then we’ll ring them the first time we have to change. Oh, darling Tess, you’re going to spend Christmas with me after all, and I promise you it will be a Christmas to remember!’
Snowy looked up at the clock, then hefted his kitbag. ‘Well, it looks like we made it in good time for our families to buy a few extra spuds and so on, since it’s only three in the afternoon,’ he said. ‘Have a grand day tomorrow and don’t grab all the turkey for yourself. Times are pretty hard, I’m told, but I reckon just being home will make up for all this austerity we’ve heard about. Don’t forget, you’re going to come round to the pet shop on Heyworth Street and ask for me as soon as the festivities are over. We’ll have a good jangle and a bevvy.’
‘I shan’t forget,’ Tappy said. Festooned with bags and bundles they stood for a moment, watching a train come in, seeing the disembarking passengers, mostly uniformed men, all smiling, all heading for home. They were still watching, suddenly reluctant to move away, when the crowd of arrivals began to thin and would-be leavers surged towards the barrier. Tickets were clipped and folk began to climb aboard, mostly well wrapped up and armed with parcels and packages. Snowy frowned; one of the chaps looked familiar. He watched, puzzled. Had the fellow been at school with him? But he wasn’t in uniform: he wore a fawn mackinto
sh and a cap on the back of his head; and even as he watched, Snowy realised that the man was not alone. He was with a small girl wearing a navy overcoat and carrying an umbrella, which she suddenly cast down on the platform in order to wrap both arms round the bloke’s neck and kiss him passionately, indifferent to those around her.
Tess! It was Tess Williams, the girl who had waited for him for the past two years, had written to him every week, had talked of marriage! Yet here she was, wrapped in the arms of some feller . . . and then, abruptly, he recognised the other man. It was that ploughboy, Jonty or whatever his name was, and Jonty was making love to Snowy’s girl right under his very nose!
‘Snowy?’ Tappy’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. ‘What’s up? Ain’t you comin’? I thought we could share a taxi, ’cos of all our luggage . . .’
Snowy could not wrench his eyes away from what was happening on the platform, but even as he watched, Tess – if it really was Tess – picked up the suitcase that Jonty – if it really was Jonty – had been carrying, and threw it into the train. The porter was waving his green flag, there was a great slamming of doors . . . Fascinated, Snowy continued to stare. Tess – if it was Tess – pushed Jonty – it was definitely Jonty – aboard the train, and just as the engine was about to move off, having announced its intention with a shrill whistle, Jonty appeared again, hauled Tess aboard and slammed the door. The porter shouted and began to remonstrate, but he was too late. The train was on its way with the sandy-haired young man and the dark-haired girl aboard.
‘Snowy? Wharrever are you thinkin’ of? Ain’t you comin’ out to join the taxi queue? Only if we doesn’t get a move on . . .’
Snowy pulled himself together. He knew, now, that the couple embracing on the platform had indeed been Tess and Jonty, and with the knowledge came, astonishingly, wave after wave of relief. It was all right! He knew now that he had never really loved Tess, knew also that had he not seen for himself that Tess and Jonty were in love he would have been most uncomfortably situated. Tess had been true to him for two whole years and to turn round now and repudiate her love, admit to everyone that he had made a terrible mistake, would have been so difficult that his mind shied away from the very thought of it. But darling Tess and darling Jonty had made him a present of guiltlessness. Why, Tess had gone away with Jonty regardless of the fact that he, Snowy, was due to come home within the next two or three days. Nothing mattered to her but Jonty, and nothing mattered to Jonty but Tess.