So did Jenny, who kissed him on each cheek and took hold of his hands. ‘Oh, your poor hands.’
‘Not to worry. They’re going to do something about them. I’ll be as good as new.’
‘You’ll come home for Sunday lunch, won’t you?’ Kathy added, seating herself on a sofa and pulling him down beside her while William and Jenny found seats. ‘Laura says it will be all right. I’d have you all the time but she says it’s not a good idea at the moment.’
‘I’m not fit to be seen.’
‘Of course you are. Who cares about a few scars? They’re not nearly as bad as you imagine, you know. Hardly noticeable. Say you’ll come.’
‘I hope you haven’t invited the whole village.’
‘No, of course I haven’t. I want you all to myself. There’ll be Gran, of course, and the twins, and Meg and Daphne. Couldn’t send them away, could I?’ She paused when she saw the consternation in his eyes. ‘I will, if you insist—’
He pulled himself together. ‘No, of course not. It’s their home. Besides, I’d like Laura and Aunt Helen to come with me.’
She looked startled, wondering if he thought he needed to surround himself with allies, people who would protect him from his own family. Laura would be welcome, was always welcome after what she had done to help. But Helen? She couldn’t leave her out, could she? ‘Of course. Robby too.’
Laura arrived pushing a tea trolley. ‘Thought you might appreciate a cuppa,’ she said. ‘Then I’m afraid Steve will have to rest. He might look strong and healthy, especially in that uniform, but it’s all a con.’
‘We were discussing Sunday lunch,’ Kathy said.
Laura, dispensing tea, looked swiftly at Steve, hoping he had not refused to go. He was smiling. It was a strange lopsided smile but she recognised it for what it was: a rueful admission that he was being good. ‘I am sure Steve is looking forward to it,’ she said.
‘We want you and Helen to come too,’ Steve put in.
‘I’ll be on duty.’
‘Not all day, surely? Can’t you come for tea? Bring Robby.’ He laughed. ‘You could make sure I was behaving myself and get me back to bed in reasonable time.’
He was covering himself, Kathy realised, a little resentfully. She wanted to nurture him, to do everything for him, feed him up, make a fuss of him. Laura had warned her against it, but surely a little spoiling would do him no harm?
Robby, used to seeing disfigured airmen, didn’t think there was anything at all strange about the new arrival, except that he had a feeling he knew him. And he wandered about the part of the house where the other men did not venture, like today when he came into the sitting room Mummy and Auntie Helen used when they had time to sit down. The newcomer called Auntie Helen ‘Auntie’ too, so he must, the young mind decided, be family. And being family, demands could be made. He tugged on his hand and offered him a wooden brick. Steve tried to take it and promptly dropped it. ‘Bu’er finners,’ the little one said, picking it up and offering it again.
Steve laughed and this time he did manage to grasp it. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’
Robby went on his knees below the table and brought out a truck loaded with bricks. Steve squatted down and added the brick to the pile and then Robby turned the whole thing up and spilt them all out and began building a tower. Steve watched until Robby gave him another brick. Steve’s clumsiness in adding it to the tower made him knock the whole lot over. He couldn’t even play with a child without upsetting everything. But Robby was giggling. He built a new pile and deliberately knocked it over. It seemed to be what the game was all about: building towers and knocking them down again. Steve joined in and they were noisily engrossed when Laura came in. They didn’t notice her at first and she stood watching them, a smile playing about her lips. Perhaps a child could achieve what adults could not.
Steve saw her and scrambled to his feet. ‘He’s talking now,’ he said.
‘Yes. His favourite words are “no”, “play” and “I want”. He says “Mummy” and “Auntie”. We shall have to teach him to say “Steve”.’ She picked him up and held him though he squirmed to be put down again. ‘Do you know who this is?’ she asked him, pointing at Steve.
‘Daddy.’
‘Good God!’ Steve said. ‘Why did he say that?’
‘He’s never said it before,’ Laura said, almost as shocked as he was. ‘I suppose it’s the uniform. I show him his father’s picture sometimes and tell him it’s his daddy.’
‘Why pick on me? There are dozens of men in uniform here.’
‘I don’t know. I suppose he realises you are special.’
‘Am I?’
‘You know very well you are. I’m going to take him for a walk. Are you coming?’
‘Where to?’ It was said guardedly.
‘Over the common, through the woods and back home.’
He thought it was safe to say yes. They were unlikely to meet anyone and any time alone with Laura was precious.
He’d forgotten the schools had broken up for the Easter holiday, until they were crossing the common and Boy raced up to him, barking an excited greeting. He bent and hugged the dog, who licked his face. ‘Where have you sprung from?’ he demanded.
His answer came in the shape of the twins racing to join them. ‘Uncle Steve!’
He stood up to face them and waited for the expression of horror to appear, but nothing happened. Lenny looked at him, his head on one side. ‘Aunty Kathy said you’d bin shot down.’
‘Yes, but it’s nothing to boast about.’
‘It is so!’ Donny said. ‘Are they going to give you a medal?’
He smiled. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘Well, I think they should. Did you come to meet us? Are you coming home with us now?’
‘No, I have to stay at the Hall, but I’m coming home for the day tomorrow.’
‘Good. Is Mrs Drummond going to make you better, like she does the others?’
He smiled at Laura. ‘I hope so.’
He was woken the next morning by the sound of church bells and for a moment he thought he was back in his own bed. His mother would come in a minute and tell him if he didn’t get a move on he would be late for church. He would get up grumbling, foregoing his breakfast in order to go with the family to church. Gran’s husband had been a parson and they never missed morning service. He was sitting up with his legs over the side of the bed before he realised where he was. It brought a wry smile to his lips. He looked up as the door opened and Laura put her head round it.
‘Did the bells wake you?’
‘I suppose they must have. What’s it in aid of, another victory?’
‘The ban has been lifted for Sundays and special occasions. It must mean things are looking up, don’t you think? Perhaps the war will soon be over.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Who can tell? We can only hope.’
Steve walked to Bridge Farm and arrived just as the family were returning from church. They all hugged him and he was ushered into the familiar kitchen. It was filled with the smell of roasting chicken. He sat down at the table and watched as his mother took off her hat and coat and then sat opposite him, reaching out to take his hands and looking closely into his face. ‘All right, son?’
‘Yes. Don’t fuss.’
‘I’m not.’ She withdrew her hands, looking hurt, making him feel a heel. ‘It was only a simple question, but perhaps a silly one. Of course you’re all right, or you soon will be. Shall you sit in the other room with the others while I finish getting lunch?’
‘No, I’ll stay here and talk to you. You can tell me all the news.’
‘Not much to tell. We muddle along. What about you? Laura has been a brick, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, she has.’ He knew she was probing. ‘What else is new?’
‘Let me see. Josh says it’s about time he retired. We never thought he would! He’s ninety-three, you know, and as cantankerous as ever.’
&nb
sp; ‘He’ll have a pension?’
‘Yes, a small one, and Dad says he can stay in the cottage as long as he likes.’
‘He’ll be up here working, retired or not,’ Steve said, glad of the change of subject. ‘He won’t be able to keep away.’
‘No, I don’t suppose he will. Have you heard that, when the war is over, no one will have to work into old age just to make ends meet? There’s going to be two pounds a week retirement pension, unemployment benefit, family allowances and a national health service for when you’re ill.’
‘It’ll have to be paid for.’
‘Weekly contributions out of wages, so we’re told.’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ His father had come into the kitchen from outside and sat down in his Windsor chair to take off his boots. ‘After the last lot we were promised a land fit for heroes and what did we get? Depression and unemployment, farms going downhill, land going to waste. Places like Beckbridge Hall being auctioned off to pay taxes. I’m surprised Helen hung on to it.’
‘Steve doesn’t want to know about that,’ his mother put in. ‘Let’s be more cheerful. Pour everyone a glass of wine while I dish up.’
The wine was good and the lunch that followed excellent. Steve had trouble with his knife and fork and Kathy simply could not bear to see him struggling. She took his cutlery to cut up his food for him. ‘I’ve got to learn to manage, Mum,’ he said.
‘I know you have, but not today. Today I want to spoil you.’
Laura, Helen and Robby arrived in the middle of the afternoon and stayed for a tea such as no one had seen since the beginning of the war. There was ham and salad, scotch eggs, cold pork and chicken, homemade bread – not that grey-looking National Loaf – as well as three different cakes oozing cream. How his mother did it, Steve did not know, but she must have scoured the shops for the ingredients.
The conversation was kept light and uncontroversial; he felt they were all treading on eggs, trying not to upset him. He was relieved when Laura adopted her nurse-in-charge role and said he had had enough excitement for one day and she proposed taking him back to the Hall and his bed.
‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ she asked him, as they sat enjoying a cup of cocoa, one on each side of the table in the sitting room. Helen had taken Robby, protesting loudly, off to his bed.
‘No, I suppose not, but no one was acting naturally, were they?’
‘Were you?’
‘How could I?’
‘I remember a Steve with a sense of humour, who told jokes and laughed, a Steve who was interested in other people’s problems.’
‘You mean yours?’
‘No, I do not. I meant your parents, who are struggling on the farm, and Daphne, whose got a husband on the North Atlantic convoys. And Joyce worrying about Ken—’
‘You’re a terrible nag, you know that, don’t you?’
‘I don’t mean to be. I just want the old Steve back.’
‘How? I’ll never be the old Steve. Just look at me. No, on second thoughts, don’t look at me.’
‘Why not?’ She looked into his face; there was no revulsion there, nor yet pity, that he could see. ‘It’s not nearly as bad as you imagine it to be, you know, and you are still Steve Wainright, still my rock…’ She stopped suddenly.
‘You said you needed your rock. What for?’
‘Nothing specific.’
‘You’re a poor liar. I know there’s something on your mind. If it’s wondering how to tell me you don’t want to marry me, forget it. I withdraw the proposal.’
‘Thank you very much,’ she said tartly. ‘You certainly know how to make a girl feel wanted.’
‘Oh, Christ, I didn’t mean it like that!’ He reached out to take her hand, but it wasn’t easy and he ended up putting his hand over hers and imprisoning it on the table. ‘I’m not myself and that proves it. You’re better off without me.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
‘So?’
‘So, marriage is the last thing on my mind.’
‘Not to anyone? Not even the handsome Canadian?’
‘No one. Least of all him.’
His heart lifted and then fell again like a stone. What did it matter? He couldn’t marry her. ‘Are you going to tell me why?’
‘I’ve got too much to do to think of getting married, I told you that before.’
‘So you did. But we weren’t talking about Wayne Donovan when you said it.’
‘Same thing applies.’
‘Are you going round and round Will’s mother’s all night or are you going to come to the point?’
‘Do you really want to hear it?’
‘Laura Drummond, you are the most exasperating woman I have ever come across. You just said I ought to think about other people’s problems and when I ask you to tell me yours, you clam up. Is it something to do with me? With my injuries? If you want to keep me at arm’s length, that’s fine by me.’
‘No, of course I don’t. Don’t be so touchy.’ She stood up and collected their empty mugs, defeat in every line of her body. He had enough on his plate without hearing her problems and, besides, he had withdrawn his offer of marriage, so it didn’t matter any more. ‘I think I’ll have an early night. Get yourself off to bed. If you need any help, ask one of the nurses.’
He watched her leave the room, aching to comfort her, but afraid of his own emotions, afraid to let go because if he did, he would howl like a baby.
She just managed to reach the sanctuary of her room before she gave way to tears. She flung herself face down on her bed and wept: for herself; for Steve, who was busy trying to deny his feelings; for her own love which had to be denied, not because of his injuries, which meant nothing to her, but because of her past; for misunderstandings and untruths. She cried for Kathy and Helen, and little Robby, even for Wayne, who had been just as hurt as she was, though for different reasons. She wept for the mother she had known and loved and for the dad who was not her dad. In the end she didn’t know why she was crying; it was like a dam bursting and she didn’t know how to stop the flood.
Steve went back to East Grinstead in May on the day after the great dams of Möhne and Eder were breached and millions of gallons of water flooded the German countryside, wrecking roads and railways, bridges and homes in its path. He read about it in a newspaper he purchased from the bookstall on Attlesham Station. The Lancasters had set off from his old station at Scampton and the raid was made at extremely low level using a newly developed bomb which bounced on water. It made him wish he was back in harness, doing his bit. He would get back, he decided; he’d put up with whatever the medics did to him and he would go back.
What the medics proposed to do sounded like torture. The day after he arrived, Mr McIndoe explained what would happen, not hiding the fact that it was going to be painful. The thick leather-like scar tissue would be stripped off the back of his hand and replaced with a thin layer of skin taken from his thigh. Dozens of stitches would hold the graft in place but that would not be enough to make it ‘take’. A dry sponge would be cut to shape and laid over the graft and some of the long ends of the stitches brought over it and tied. Then the sponge would be wetted and it would swell up, pressing down onto the graft helping it to weld. The whole thing would then be bandaged into place. The pressure, Steve was told, would be uncomfortable until the time came to release it and take out the stitches. Only then would they know if the operation had been a success.
Uncomfortable was not the word Steve would have used for the excruciating agony he suffered in the days after the operation. He was back where he started, needing copious doses of morphine to dull the pain and not being able to use that hand at all. He lost all track of time as he lay in his bed with his hand resting on a special pillow, which felt more like an anvil than a pillow, while an invisible blacksmith hammered his tortured flesh into it. After what seemed an eternity but could only have been a few days, the bandage covering it was removed and the sti
tches cut to release the pressure. He looked at his hand, expecting he knew not what, but unprepared for the gory mess he saw lying on the pillow. It made him feel sick.
‘Good,’ Mr McIndoe said. ‘It’s taken well.’
Steve had to believe him, but he was back to the torture of daily dressings. The following week, Laura, fetching another patient for Beckbridge Hall, came to see him. She was cheerful and optimistic and brought news of the village, but she was somehow detached, a professional nurse speaking to a patient. There was no kind of intimacy, no sharing of personal thoughts, no sign that she needed her rock, or indeed had ever needed him. For the first time ever, her visit did not cheer him up.
A week later, he left his bed and wandered about the hospital, talking to other patients, joining in teasing the staff except when they came to do his dressing, when his language would have done justice to a navvy. He was offered the chance of going to Beckbridge to recover before they tackled the left hand, but turned it down. The sooner it was done, the sooner he could get back to the business of winning the war.
Sicily, small though it was, was a mountainous country, but on the lower slopes vines and tomato plants grew in neat rows. There were also orange and lemon trees and from almost every vantage point Mount Etna could be seen, smoking gently on the skyline. Wayne was sitting beside his driver on the road to Andrano, munching on a handful of grapes. The campaign had been nothing like that ill-fated raid on Dieppe; the invasion of Sicily had been well-planned, well-resourced, part of the overall strategy to force Italy out of the war. He supposed the Germans had all along intended to evacuate the island but they were making it as difficult as possible for the invaders, who had to fight almost literally from one craggy outcrop to the next.
After kicking their heels in the UK with nothing much to do, the Canadian First Infantry Division and the First Armoured Brigade had been sent to Scotland for assault training, not knowing where they would be going but eager to get on with the war. No one was more glad than Wayne to be doing something positive at last. It might stop him dwelling on the bombshell Laura had dropped the last time he had been in Beckbridge. Ever since then he had been searching his childhood memory for something, anything, that could tell him whether it was the truth or not. He didn’t want to believe it, wouldn’t believe it. His first reaction had been to write to his father and demand that he deny it, but he knew his parents shared their letters and if Pop tried to keep one from Mom, she would want to know why. He could not risk it and would have to wait until they came face to face, and by that time it would be too late; Laura would almost certainly have found someone else. And, after all, it might be true. Strange things happened in wartime, the last conflict had been no different to this.
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