by Maggie Hope
Cath sank down on the hall chair, suddenly short of breath. Henry was the only one to notice.
‘Are you all right, girl?’ he asked.
‘Yes, just a bit tired. The storm kept me awake.’
‘Well, let’s go into the sitting room where it’s warm,’ said Sadie. ‘I’m really pleased for you, Henry. That he’s coming home, that is.’
‘How badly is he injured?’ Mark asked the question Cath was afraid to ask.
‘He didn’t say exactly but it can’t be too bad or he wouldn’t have been able to write the letter, would he?’
Cath’s mind was running through the worst possible injuries as she followed the others into the sitting room. She still clutched his letter in her hand and now she thrust it deep into the pocket of her slacks. Mark, watching her, was the only one who had any idea of her feelings and he felt a surge of jealousy. But we’re brother and sister, he reminded himself bleakly.
‘What have you done to your head?’ Henry asked. ‘Looks like you had a fall. You didn’t skid in the car, did you?’
‘No, I fell here, hit my head on the fender,’ said Mark glancing at Cath. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘We had to keep him overnight, Henry,’ said Sadie. ‘Then we couldn’t let anyone know because the telephone line was down.’
‘I’ll ring my parents now,’ said Mark and went out to the hall.
Cath had lost the thread of the conversation by this time; all she could think of was Jack and how seriously he might be injured. It must be quite bad if he was coming home. The war was still going on, after all. She slipped out after Mark. He was talking into the telephone but she hurried past him and ran up the stairs to her room. It smelled faintly of him and she opened the window to let in fresh air, despite the biting wind that made the curtains billow out into the room.
She stripped the bed and bundled the washing out on to the landing then made it up again with clean sheets. Her thoughts were agonised; she should have trusted Jack. Why hadn’t she trusted him? She worked furiously, cleaning the room until every sign of Mark was removed. Then at last she closed the window and sat down by the dressing table and brought Jack’s letter out of her pocket and read it again and again.
By evening the weather had changed for the better. The temperature went up and water dripped from the eaves and the surrounding trees. Every now and then patches of snow slid from the roof with a whoosh and melted into puddles on the grass and paths. The road was clear.
‘Cath, Mark’s going now, come on down and say goodbye,’ Sadie shouted up the stairs. Cath put down the letter she had just read for the hundredth time and reluctantly did as she was bid.
‘I could give you a lift back to Durham,’ said Mark as she walked out with him to the car. He glanced at her and looked away quickly. Her face was white and set.
‘No thanks, I’d rather get the bus tomorrow,’ Cath replied. On the opposite side of the road the sodden trees looked as though they were weeping. Just as I am on the inside, Cath thought dismally.
‘We could still be friends,’ said Mark. ‘I think a lot of you, Cath.’
‘You’re a selfish pig, Mark,’ said Cath. ‘If I don’t see you again it will be too soon. Give my regards to your mother.’
He climbed into the car and pressed the ignition button and after a few false starts the engine roared into life. He went off down the drive without looking back. She heard him turn at the bottom and then the sound of the engine faded into nothing.
Cath went back inside slowly. Henry and her mother were in the sitting room. ‘When are you expecting Jack home, exactly?’ she asked him. He looked surprised at her interest.
‘I don’t know, really. It will depend on when the doctors let him out. It won’t be so long, though. He said it was just a flesh wound. By the end of this month with a bit of luck. He’ll be home for the wedding, at any rate.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Cath.
At a US army hospital in South Korea, Jack lay back against his pillows. One side of his face was swathed in bandages and beneath them the flesh throbbed and ached and itched at the same time and occasionally searing pain flashed across his cheek. The flashes didn’t last long and the pain was not so bad as it had been, for he was under sedation, but nevertheless his endurance was stretched to breaking point. He looked at the doorway, longing for the medical officer to arrive.
His thoughts returned to home and Catherine. At first, when she hadn’t replied to his letter, he had been full of anger towards her. She must have known he loved her, she must have, he told himself. It was just like the old story of her mother though, wasn’t it? Sadie Raine had been the talk of the pit villages around the time her man went off to the war in the Middle Eastern desert for a couple of years. The men had sniggered about her, made snide remarks about her inability to do without a man. Like mother, like daughter, they said. And so it had proved.
Jack had even written to Mark to make sure he had given her the letter asking her to wait for him. ‘Of course I did,’ Mark had replied. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
Now Jack had received a letter from Mark saying he and Cath were keeping company. Well, it was not the first time that they had been rivals for a girl. When he got home he would fight for Cath. Though he was handicapped now, with his injured face. A slight limp such as the one Mark had from his injury, and which he sometimes exaggerated for sympathy, was an attraction. A scarred face was not. His Catherine was not so shallow, though, surely?
The doors to the ward opened and the medical officer came in, accompanied by an American army nurse. Jack was filled with hope. At least there might be more pain relief coming his way.
‘It’s like this,’ Captain Seton, the medical officer said. ‘We can do an interim operation to clean out the wound properly and then send you back to your own command for them to repatriate you to England. I’m afraid it was badly neglected in your time as a prisoner and repairing your face is not so straightforward as it should be. Or we can deal with it in our own hospital in Japan. This would be quicker—’
‘I’ll go back home, thank you,’ said Jack.
‘Very well. We’ll send you back to your own command immediately, for you can’t afford to waste any more time. I’ll have to sedate you further for the journey.’
‘I will be home soon,’ Jack wrote to his father. It was two months after his release from his Chinese captors by the Americans and he was now feeling a great deal better. They had dealt with the infection in his facial wound and at least now the pain was bearable. He had only hazy memories of the journey, or at least the beginnings of it, for he was under sedation most of the time. What he could remember were the vivid dreams of a Chinese captain screaming propaganda at him and his fellow British soldiers. It went on and on until it became part of the pain. The Chinese were determined to turn them into communists. He would wake up in a sweat of agony and fear until he realised he was safe; the Americans had saved them.
‘The surgeons have made a good job of my wounds,’ Jack wrote. He paused. The infection had been stopped and the wounds cleaned out. It was true also that the flesh was healing well. Still, he avoided looking at himself in the mirror. The sight of the ugly scar brought him up short. One minute he would be dreaming about getting home and seeing his father, and most especially Catherine. He didn’t care about anything but winning her back. He had had plenty of time to think about it and he knew he wanted her no matter what had happened between her and Mark. And then he would see his reflection in the mirror when he shaved. He had to study the scar to shave round it properly.
He tried growing a beard but the scar extended above it and in any case, hair wouldn’t grow on the new skin so that a wide line of puckered pink showed in the middle of his cheek.
‘The medics are sending me to a hospital in England next week,’ he wrote to his father.
Jack paused and bit his lip. Would Catherine want him when she saw how ugly he was now or would she be repulsed? And there was always the question: would she
fall in love with Mark and marry him before he got home?
Jack had written a letter to her; in fact, he had written several and torn them up. But this morning he took it together with the one for his father and put it in the post. He had actually got as far as the postbox in the main corridor of the hospital, hesitated only once then slipped them through the opening.
Cath had had trouble getting the address of Jack’s hospital in England from Henry.
‘Why should you want it?’ Henry had asked.
‘We are friends,’ Cath replied.
‘Friends? And this is the first time you’ve wanted to write to him?’ Henry was sceptical.
‘We had an argument,’ Cath said weakly. ‘Please, Henry.’
‘I don’t know.’
Henry had mellowed since he had decided to marry Sadie. He had begun to realise also that the world had changed since the war: class barriers were not so high as they had been. And he had grown to like the girl, Sadie’s daughter. Not that he thought there was anything between Cath and his son, of course there wasn’t. He regarded Cath critically. She was a lovely girl, with her dark hair and large brown eyes, her soft white skin. Maybe she was just what Jack needed to take his mind off recent horrors.
‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll give you the address. Though I think he’ll be moving again soon. Nearer to home, most probably. They are going to do some sort of plastic surgery on his face. Well, give me a pen and paper, then.’
Cath winced; she couldn’t bear to think of what he had been through. She handed him her address book and pen and he wrote it down. She lost no time in going to the privacy of her room and starting a letter to him:
Dear Jack,
I hope you don’t mind your father giving me your present address. I’m afraid I pestered him for it. I’m so glad you’re coming home, though sorry for the reason for it. How do you feel? I hope you are not in too much pain.
Cath paused. It sounded so stilted. A maiden aunt could have written it. It did not convey anything of what she truly felt. She began again:
Dearest Jack,
I am sorry for what happened. Mark didn’t give me your letter but I suppose you know that, he said he had told you. I thought you had deserted me, I thought you were glad of the opportunity to get away from me. I was lost and hurt.
She paused again and read through what she had written. It was all about her and how she felt, and she should be asking about him. It was Jack who was hurt, not her. What a selfish pig she was!
Chapter Twenty-nine
‘What do you think? There’s been a little girl murdered down your way,’ Hilda said as Cath let herself in through the front door.
‘A little girl?’ Cath echoed, aghast.
‘It’s on the news at the minute, come through and see,’ said Hilda. Cath followed her into the sitting room. As usual, Pete and Hilda had been sitting with their chairs turned to the corner where the fourteen-inch television set flickered black-and-white images rather than to the fireplace, which had been the former focus of the room.
‘The body of a girl aged between eleven and twelve was found in the Bishop’s park in Bishop Auckland. It was hidden in a patch of undergrowth on the hillside above the River Gaunless,’ the newscaster said. ‘The girl’s name has not been released as yet until her family have been informed. It appears she was a pupil at Bishop Auckland Girls’ County School, for she was wearing a bottle-green Burberry rainproof coat, and a school hat was found lying nearby.’
Cath listened, hardly able to believe what she heard. Her first thought was, thank goodness it couldn’t be Annie. But neither could the murderer be Ronnie Robson, for he was still an inmate in Winterton mental hospital. So there was a monster at large. She was lost in her own thoughts and fears, and at first she didn’t hear what Hilda was saying.
‘Cath?’ the older woman asked. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Sorry, sorry, yes, of course. What did you say?’
‘I was just saying how terrible it is. Whoever she is, she’s some mother’s bairn, isn’t she? What’s the world coming to if you can’t let your girl out on her own?’
‘I wonder who she is, where she’s from?’ said Cath. She had an awful feeling the girl would turn out to be from one of the colliery villages around the town. Since the 1944 Education Act more and more children from the villages had won scholarships to the grammar schools in the town, both boys and girls. And whereas before the war few of the miners could afford for their children to go to such schools, they were making good money now.
The Northern Echo had the story the next morning, blazoned across the front page. The girl was Carol White, aged eleven and a half, and she was from Coundon.
Carol had slung her schoolbag a little higher on her shoulder as she walked up Kingsway in the town. She had to walk home because she had lost her ticket and she had no money in her pocket at all. She had had threepence that morning when she set out but she had bought a quarter of bull’s eyes at the newsagents in Coundon as she waited for the bus to school. She would share them with the girls in her class and then maybe they would be friends with her. She had eaten only two of the sweets herself and then passed them round, and for this she had got a rollicking telling-off from Miss Macrae, her form mistress.
But none of the girls wanted to play with her when she went out to the playing fields after dinner. She was one of the last girls out and the ones from her old school, Penny and Margaret, had already disappeared down the far field. Not that they had been her particular friends when she was at junior school but she still hadn’t got to know the others really. A wintry sun shone today and it was fairly warm for February.
Some of the girls were turning somersaults on the grass beside the tennis courts. Gwyneth was there; she was a nice friendly girl.
‘Do you know where Penny and Margaret went?’ she asked her. Gwyneth shook her head.
‘You can play with us if you like,’ she offered.
‘No, she can’t,’ said Marjorie White. ‘Go and find your own friends. My dad said I hadn’t to play with pitmen’s children.’
‘It’s all right, I’m looking for my friends,’ Carol said to Gwyneth and walked on. When she found Penny and Margaret at the end of the far field they were with their new friends and didn’t really want her, she could tell. Perhaps they had been trying to get away from her by going so far.
Carol had got to the end of Kingsway and crossed the road. The tall wrought-iron gates of the park were still open so, instead of following Durham Road to Coundon, she decided to go by the path through the park. She felt sad; she wanted to be on her own. She and her mam and dad had been so excited about her winning the scholarship to the grammar school, and now she was without a real friend. Well, she would just have to get used to being on her own.
The gravel crunched beneath her feet and she hitched her schoolbag higher on her shoulder. It had a strap for both shoulders but she soon realised that the other girls wouldn’t be seen dead with both straps in use. It was heavy – she had her French textbook and English and geography ones too. Tonight they had two hours’ homework.
‘Some girls are skimping their homework,’ Miss Dixon, the French mistress, had said. ‘You should allow forty minutes for translation. I can tell if you try to do it any faster.’
Carol went through the cowcatcher gate, having to hoist her schoolbag over. She looked back when she thought she heard the gravel crunching behind her but she couldn’t see anyone. She quickened her pace and had got quite a long way into the park, past the deer house, down the hill to the wooden bridge over the Gaunless and so far up the other side, when she heard footsteps behind her. There was someone about. A man was there. In the failing light she saw, as he got close, that it was a man she knew, a workmate of her father’s from Winton Colliery.
‘Hello, Carol,’ he said. ‘Walking home, are you?’
He was a big man with pale blue eyes and a bristly chin. He slowed his pace to match hers. She began to hurry, anxiou
s to get to the other end of the path where the main road ran to Durham and a side road ran off to Coundon.
‘Wait a minute,’ said the man. ‘I know where there is a badger sett. I’ll show you if you like.’
‘It’s getting dark, I’ll be late and Mam will be angry,’ said Carol but she slowed. She had never seen a badger, not close up, at least.
‘It won’t take a minute,’ said the man. ‘See that clump of bushes? It’s just behind there.’
It was only a few yards off the path and the man was a friend of her dad’s. She was probably being silly. She might not get another chance to see a badger.
‘Badgers come out about this time, when it’s nearly dark,’ he said. ‘Howay then.’
Carol looked up the path; it wasn’t far to the road and she could see streetlights had come on and were twinkling through the trees. That would be Coundon Gate. He was right, it wouldn’t take a minute. She was being silly.
It was a woman from Coundon Gate who had found the little body, or rather, it was her dog. She had crossed the road to the park, letting Gyp off his lead. He rushed about demented before suddenly forgetting what he was there to do and putting his nose to the ground and following it blindly. It led him to an overgrown coppice only a few yards from the path. There he stood, barking and barking and refusing to come to heel as his owned demanded. In the end she had to go and get him.
‘You bad dog, Gyp!’ she said. ‘Now I’ve got my feet all wet from the grass – what’s that?’
It looked like a bundle of dark green clothes, and beside it was a leather satchel bulging with books.
‘Whatever is the world coming to?’ Sadie asked. ‘It’s not safe out on your own any more.’ Cath had rung her to tell her she was coming home this weekend and naturally they had begun to talk about the murder of Carol White. ‘They say schools don’t allow girls to walk home on their own any more. They have to be in pairs at least. And the girls’ grammar school, well, they have started escorting them to and from the school buses.’