She knew that her audience was listening to her with such rapt attention that there wasn’t a sound in the hall. Even the echo had changed. ‘Thass made us different people to the ones we were before,’ she said. ‘Different people with different ideas. We don’t want to go back to the old way, the way things were. We want our children to grow up in a fairer world, where people hain’t afraid to be unemployed or take sick or grow old, where we all work together to protect one another. Thass what this election has been about. A fairer world. Thass what this new government you’ve just elected will start to create. My aunt would like to thank you for choosin’ her to be a part of it.’
At which Sis waved again and their supporters cheered and waved back. And Barbara knew she’d made her first political speech and that it had been a good one.
Oh, she thought, standing on the platform, looking down at all the happy faces below her, if only Steve could have been here. He’d have loved all this, seeing his aunt elected and the Labour Party winning. And she looked across the packed heads to the back of the room and suddenly there he was, tall and auburn haired, with his tunic unbuttoned and his cap on his shoulder, standing there, looking straight ahead of him as if he didn’t see her. She was caught between shock and disbelief and overwhelming happiness. I’m seein’ things, she thought. Thass all the excitement. My eyes are playing tricks on me.
And then he took a cigarette packet from his tunic pocket and lit up. And the movement of his hands was so familiar that she jumped from the platform, calling his name, ‘Steve! Steve!’ and ran, plunging through the crowd, all memory and all instinct, with nothing in her mind but the need to reach him. Steve! My dear, dear, darling Steve! She was in his arms before he had time to look up, covering his face with kisses, her cheeks flushed and her green eyes bright as the sea in sunshine. Oh Steve!
The impact of her body was so powerful that it took away his power of speech. It was as if she’d knocked him over, as if he was falling through space, as if he were waking from a long, long sleep, stunned and unsteady. He put his arms round her, leaning back so that he could see her face. ‘Hello,’ he said, huskily.
And at that she burst into tears. And he found his old easy tenderness again, and put his arms round her, and kissed her forehead, and smoothed her tousled hair and brushed away her tears – such hot, passionate tears – with trembling fingers.
‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ she wept.
‘I know. I know.’ How could he have waited so long? How could he have been so foolish?
The rest of the family were crowding in on them, reaching up to kiss him and pat him, questioning and clamouring. ‘Where’ve you sprung from?’ ‘Were you here for the count?’ ‘We’re winning! We’re gonna have a Labour government. Ain’t it wonderful, our Steve?’ And he stood with one arm round Barbara’s waist and her head on his shoulder and agreed that yes, it was. But what was really wonderful was that he was home and loved and aware that there was good in the world after all. After being stuck in indecision for so long it felt like a miracle.
Presently he saw that his mother was in the crowd too, but standing apart from the others, her face wrinkled with anxiety. With Barbara still held closely to his side, he walked across to kiss her. But he didn’t pick her up in his old loving way, as she was quick and pained to notice, and once the kiss was given he stood back and looked at her in a most disconcerting way.
She took refuge in scolding. ‘Why didn’t you say you were coming?’
‘Snap decision,’ he told her. ‘I didn’t know myself till last night.’ And he went on looking at her.
His scrutiny made her feel anxious. He looked so much older, so much the soldier, tough and shrewd with all that lovely boyish innocence of his quite gone. And his look was a question that had to be answered. ‘Did you get my letter?’ she faltered.
Now I shall hear the truth of it, he thought. But did he want to hear the truth of it? ‘Which one?’ he asked her, stern-faced. ‘I haven’t had any letters from you or Dad since we crossed the Rhine. No. Tell a lie. One. You wrote me one.’ And he made a joke of it to help her, because she was looking so distressed. ‘I was beginning to think you’d left the country. Which letter are you talking about?’
She was confused and more anxious than ever. If only she’d written to him and explained. Bob was right. She should have written. ‘The letter I wrote when … I mean, my last letter … The one … No, I suppose not. I suppose some of your letters must’ve gone astray, what with one thing and another.’
‘You’d be surprised how well they got the mail through,’ he told her. ‘They knew how important it was to us.’ And he repeated his question. ‘Which letter are you talking about?’
She certainly couldn’t answer such a direct challenge. Not here, in front of Barbara and all the others. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ducking her head and looking away from him. ‘It’s not important. It was only a letter. I mean, there was nothing in it.’
He looked straight into her eyes, daring her. ‘Then it wasn’t worth writing, was it?’
I’ve lost him, Heather thought. He’s not my boy any more. He’s a grown man and I’ve hurt him and now he’s angry with me and I’ve only got myself to blame. ‘No. It wasn’t,’ she admitted and came as near to an apology as she could in such a public place. ‘Trouble is, you say silly things sometimes.’
‘And then regret them?’ he asked, his voice insistent but more gentle.
The gentleness made her want to weep. ‘Yes,’ she told him, miserably. ‘And then regret them.’
He smiled at her, but it was an odd, sad smile. Forgiveness? Understanding? She couldn’t tell.
‘Then we don’t need to worry about it, do we?’ he said. He was aware that Barbara had grown tense during their exchange and he turned to look at her again, caught the query on her face and answered it with a kiss, full on the lips, public and committed. ‘I love you,’ he said.
To be kissed in such a way in such a public place made her blush. Luckily Sis moved in to rescue her. She’d been talking to Mr Craxton and Pauline and had missed most of the conversation but she’d caught the gathering atmosphere and knew she had to deal with it.
‘I reckon this calls for a celebration,’ she said, beaming round at them all. ‘What say we go down to the Goat an’ Compasses? They got a garden for the kids. Be nice out in the sun.’
General agreement, a rush of movement towards the door, Heather and Mabel leading the way, Sis turning to ask her nephew, ‘You coming?’
He stood where he was with his arm round his wife. ‘We’ll follow you,’ he called and added quietly to Barbara, ‘slowly.’
So they walked out of the hall together, their arms about each other, and strolled along the affluent, crowd-filled streets of Sis’s new constituency, stopping to kiss whenever they felt like it, which was more and more frequently. And there, away from the eyes of their relations, alone in that euphoric crowd, it was as if they’d never been apart. They were older, wiser, sadder, but love was pulling them together with every step, binding them close, closer, breathlessly together. He looked down at her face, drinking in the sight of her, relearning her, aching with the old love for her.
‘Will I do?’ she teased, smiling into his eyes.
‘Oh, I think so,’ he teased back. And then grew serious. ‘You’ve changed though.’
‘Thass been a long time,’ she said. ‘A lot’s happened.’
‘That’s what it is,’ he agreed. ‘We’ve grown older. You have to grow up fast in a war. You don’t have any option. Anyway, it suits you. You’re very, very beautiful. And that was a terrific speech you made.’
‘You’ve changed too,’ she said. Now that they were out in the sunlight she could see how much. There was no boyishness about him at all and the open innocence of his face was gone. Grown older, she thought, and wise in the ways of a very cruel world. His hair was cropped short, there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there the last time she saw him
and his eyes had a weariness about them that made her yearn with pity for what he must have seen and endured. ‘Was it very bad?’
He gave her an honest answer. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it some time. But not now.’ Now it was enough to be getting back to normal, holding her close, breathing in the familiar smell of her skin, recognising that flowered blouse and the green skirt she’d worn a lifetime ago, that day in the haystack, that week in the hopfields. ‘Oh my dear, darling girl! You do still love me?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, yes,’ she said, kissing him with every word. ‘’Course I do. More than ever.’
The crowd parted to pass them and two schoolboys gave them a wolf whistle.
‘I suppose we ought to join the others,’ he said.
So they walked on, talking of victory and victories. ‘Why didn’t you get leave before?’ she asked. ‘As soon as the war was over. You could’ve done, couldn’t you?’
He gave her another honest answer. ‘I couldn’t face it I suppose.’
They were so easy with one another now that she could ask, ‘Why not?’
‘All sorts of reasons,’ he said. ‘I was afraid of disappointment, scared of the changes I’d find. I think I needed the army routine. I was trying to work things out.’ He shrugged, growing impatient with his inability to tell her how it had been. ‘Oh I don’t know. I don’t understand it myself.’
He wasn’t making much sense to her but she was full of tenderness towards him. Whatever it was that was troubling him it needed careful handling. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him again, holding his face between her hands. She knew instinctively that this had something to do with his mother, that it was the reason why he’d treated her so sternly back in the hall, but she knew she couldn’t ask him about it yet.
He was still struggling to explain why he’d hesitated for so long, as much to himself as to her. ‘They offered me leave,’ he told her. ‘You mustn’t think they kept me there. They offered but I just sort of said no, put it off. And then it was hard to say yes.’
‘But you said yes in the end.’
‘Fortunately.’
She could be curious about that. ‘Why?’
‘It was your snapshot,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been keeping a sort of diary, since Belsen, and I took it out and your snapshot was caught between the leaves. And when I turned it over … You’d written on the back of it, do you remember?’
‘No,’ she had to admit. ‘I don’t. Thass a long time ago.’
‘You said, “Just in case you’ve forgot what I look like!”’
She smiled at that. ‘And thass what made you come home?’
‘It made me think of home,’ he said, ‘think of you. I suppose thinking made me want to be here with you. It seemed the right thing.’
‘Does it still?’ It was a serious question and he answered it equally seriously.
‘Oh yes. I might not be sure of many things these days, but I’m sure of that.’
They were nearly at the pub. ‘How much leave have you got?’ she asked.
‘Ten days,’ he said, suddenly realising how happy he felt. ‘And more to come. I tell you what, how would you like to go back to the bungalow? I’ll bet I could arrange it.’
She smiled into his eyes. ‘If there’s one thing this war’s taught me,’ she said, ‘thass you can’t go back. Only forward.’
He stopped to kiss her again. One last kiss before they went in and joined the celebration. They were both changed but he was home, they were together, love was possible. ‘Then that’s where we’ll go,’ he said.
A Note on the Author
Beryl Kingston was born in Tooting in 1931. She was eight when the war began and spent the early years of her education in many different schools, depending on her latest evacuation. As an undergraduate she attended King’s College London, where she read English.
She married her childhood sweetheart when she was 19, with whom she has three children. Kingston was an English teacher before embarking on a career as a full-time writer in 1980.
Discover books by Beryl Kingston published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/BerylKingston
A Time to Love
Fourpenny Flyer
Gemma’s Journey
Maggie’s Boy
Sixpenny Stalls
Tuppenny Times
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book.
The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Arrow
Copyright © 1999 Beryl Kingston
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
eISBN: 9781448214723
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