War Babies

by Annie Murray

  ‘I hear your old man’s coming back,’ Irene said to Rachel as they passed outside in the drizzle. ‘I hope he don’t leave you, once ’e’s seen the way that lad of yours is – some men’re like that, you know.’

  ‘You mean your bloke’s like that – not mine!’ Rachel fumed back at her. ‘You silly sod,’ she added under her breath. God, Irene was the pits – what a thing to say! Her Danny wasn’t like that, like that sleazy Ray Sutton. He went sloping off having his way wherever he liked and Irene always took him back, even though she lived in a brooding storm of resentment.

  But what really caught Rachel on the raw was that, deep down, she was afraid that what Irene said might come true.

  When the time came, he paused at the threshold as if afraid to come in. It was already dark outside and no one had seen him come into the yard. As the door opened, Rachel and Gladys were with the children at the table, about to have tea. For a couple of seconds they all stopped as if turned to stone. In the doorway stood a very thin man in a brown suit, double-breasted with wide lapels, a bag slung over one shoulder. His cropped hair, his gaunt, tanned face and that suit all made him a stranger.

  ‘Auntie? Rach?’ He spoke very quietly, as if unsure.

  ‘Danny . . .’ Rachel put down the pan she had been carrying to the table. Slowly she went to him. ‘Oh, Danny . . .’

  For a few seconds they stood taking each other in. Rachel searched his face, trying to find the Danny she knew. She was too busy absorbing the sight of him to notice the shock that flared in his eyes when he looked at her.

  All of it welled up in her, the relief, the worry and struggle, the sheer joy. As they walked into each other’s arms, she was already weeping and she heard him make a sound as his arms came around her, a long, sobbing sigh. For a few moments they stood with their cheeks pressed together, then leaned back again to look at each other. They could not seem to speak. She touched his face, his hair, his neck, as his blue eyes drank her in. Then she held that tall, thin body close again.

  Gladys stood watching. Melly and Tommy sat in absolute silence, even Tommy seeming to take in the awesome importance of this moment. As they were at last able to stand apart, Gladys walked over.

  ‘Welcome home, son,’ she said, and took him in her arms. ‘You’re all skin and bone,’ she said as she drew back.

  ‘You don’t run to fat in India,’ Danny said.

  He was looking over at his children. In a wondering tone he said, ‘Melanie? Tommy?’

  ‘Melly?’ Rachel said. ‘Come and say hello to your dad.’

  As Melly got down, Rachel could already see Danny taking in the chair in which his little son was sitting. It was something Mo had rigged up for them. He had made a lovely job of it, really trying to understand what Tommy needed. He had got a wooden chair, padded the seat and back and attached wooden arms and a sloping leg rest. He had also altered it so that it had two wheels at the back. You could tip it slightly and push it along. It was rough, but it worked. Once Tommy was strapped in between the chair’s arms, he was quite safe and comfortable.

  Melly went solemnly to her father. She was heading towards her fifth birthday, a rather grown-up little thing, her brown hair snipped into a bob round her ears.

  ‘Hello, babby,’ Danny said, sounding shy and tender at once. He squatted down. Melly looked apprehensive. Perhaps she had expected that she would remember this father who vanished from her life four years ago, but she did not. She murmured ‘Hello’ very quietly.

  ‘You got a kiss for me?’ Danny said.

  With almost formal politeness, Melly stood on her tiptoes and pecked a quick kiss on his cheek, before scuttling back to her chair again.

  ‘She’ll get used to you,’ Gladys said, seeing Danny’s injured expression. ‘It’s been a long time, lad.’

  ‘And Tommy.’ He went over and Rachel saw his expression as he took in the state of his little boy. He knew. Of course he knew: she had written and told him of Tommy’s problems, of some of her struggles. But he had not seen. Perhaps it had all seemed very distant and not real over there. Danny made no reaction.

  ‘Hello, son.’ He gave Tommy a pat on the head and seemed at a loss as to what to do next.

  ‘Put that bag over there, Danny, and take your coat off,’ Gladys said. ‘We’ll have our tea in a minute. You came just in time.’

  ‘You mean he sleeps in our bed – with you?’

  There was no mistaking the hostility in Danny’s voice as Rachel started on the evening task of getting the children to bed.

  ‘Oh, not now you’re back,’ Rachel said, trying to keep her tone light. ‘They can sleep down in the other room. Only it’s been easier to settle Tommy.’

  Now, at night, as well as changing his napkins there were the dreaded leg braces, contraptions of metal and leather straps. Tommy howled every time they were put on.

  ‘Will they make him walk?’ she asked, and the doctor said he did not know. He doubted it, but they would help to keep his legs from deforming further.

  ‘I’ll get them to bed – it won’t take long,’ she said, feeling close to tears as she took the children upstairs. Had she expected that Danny would rush to help her? She carried Tommy in her arms, Melanie following obediently behind. Melanie had learned early to be a good girl, not to make a fuss, and she usually went off like a lamb. But tonight even she was unsettled.

  ‘Am I sleeping with Tommy?’ she asked. Ever since Tommy was born, he had been in the bed in the attic with Rachel. Melanie slept on a single mattress on the floor. They had prepared for this. A returning husband needed to be with his wife and Gladys had bought another bed for the children to share. The neighbours had helped them haul it up through the window.

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘Now your dad’s home he’ll need his bed back. And you’ll be a good girl and keep an eye on Tommy, won’t you?’ But she was heavy with guilt, as if she had just handed Tommy’s care over to her little girl.

  She began getting Tommy ready for bed, strapping on the braces which tugged at the tight muscles in his legs, making him cry with the pain of it. It astonished her still, the force with which the muscles in his legs pulled against her when she tried to straighten them. All the time she was pacifying him, trying to settle the two of them down, a terrible tension was knotting her up inside. Here she was with her little ones, who she had cared for all these years, who were used to her and needed her. And now here was Danny, who barely seemed interested in them, who was like a sad stranger at their table. He had not said much during the meal. He did not seem very well, in fact. Rachel was torn to anguish by the conflict inside her. She found herself almost wishing he would go away again so that she could long for him as before. At the same time she wanted urgently to get the children quiet, to be with him alone, to hold and soothe him in the way that she knew he needed, that only she knew.

  Tommy was a long time settling, his wails of distress carrying through the house, and by the time Rachel got downstairs again to where Gladys and Danny were sitting by the fire, she felt tearful and wrung out with emotion. They both looked up at her. Danny’s expression seemed closed, as if she was someone he barely knew. He was sitting forward, tensed, a cigarette in his hand. Gladys’s eyes were troubled.

  ‘Tommy gone off now?’ she asked, pouring Rachel a cup of tea.

  Rachel nodded and sat down silently with them. Her head ached and she felt drained and full of anguish. She had been here all this time, waiting. Now it felt as if it was he who should move towards her and come back to her.

  ‘I was just saying to Danny,’ Gladys said, with her hands still around her empty cup as if for warmth. ‘We’ll have to go out and see Jess and Amy again as soon as we can. They seem to have settled out there and Nancy’s been ever so kind to them.’

  Danny nodded faintly. He seemed detached from everything. They asked him a few questions but it was as if the subject of four years away was too big to begin on and they ended by talking about small recent things: his train journey to
Birmingham, the fact that rationing was going on just as if the war was still on.

  Eventually Danny turned to Rachel, though he seemed to be finding it hard to look her in the eye. He spoke hesitantly, as if they had only just met. ‘Shall us go up now, eh?’

  Thirty-Nine

  As soon as they closed the door to the attic, Danny pulled her to him. He made love to her with a frantic, urgent force, not even fully undressed. It happened so fast, without any closeness or gentleness, that Rachel was left far behind, her thoughts distracted. She found herself praying that Tommy would not wake so that she would have to break away and go down. She could already feel that Danny did not understand the amount of time and care that Tommy took from her.

  Danny came in her with a convulsion that passed through his whole body and she held him close. She had barely had the time to feel desire herself. Instead she felt protective and bereft, as if he was still somewhere far off and they could not find each other. She held him close as his breathing steadied, feeling how very thin he was. Her fingertips played along the prominent bones of his spine and ribs.

  ‘Danny?’ She spoke almost to check he was still there, even though his slight weight was still resting on top of her.

  He raised his head and looked down at her in the light from the oil lamp. They looked into each other’s eyes, almost as if meeting for the first time. Rachel felt a surge of loss, of anger for all they had missed of each other, so that they were left like this, like strangers.

  ‘You’re so thin,’ she murmured.

  Danny stroked her shoulder. ‘So’re you. Where’ve you gone? You look . . .’ He stopped, sounding upset.

  She had barely noticed, even though people commented on how much weight she had lost. Very occasionally she glanced in the little mirror downstairs and saw a hollow-eyed face which she hardly recognized staring back at her. She reached up and stroked Danny’s cheek. ‘You’re alive. We’re both alive – not like some. That’s the main thing.’

  Danny gave a harsh laugh. He pulled away and lay beside her on his back. She turned to cuddle up to him, not wanting him to move away from her. ‘Yes – I’m alive,’ he said.

  ‘What was it like?’ she said. ‘Out there?’

  He rolled his eyes to look up at the ceiling. He seemed weary, even at the thought of talking about it.

  ‘Oh – I was hardly right most of the time out there. Does your innards in – the dirt, the bad water. What a hole.’ His voice was heavy with disgust. ‘Filth, shit – the whole place stinks. It’s just dust and flies and beggars. All this war going on and we spent three years in that cesspit. Ten days in Burma and that was . . .’ He trailed off, shaking his head. ‘A cowing disaster, that was.’

  ‘I don’t really see why . . .’ She realized how ignorant she was, how caught up she had been in other things. ‘The war wasn’t really in India, was it?’

  ‘Oh – they were worried about the Japs, the little yellow bastards. But we spent most of the time on “internal security” as they called it. All the last year we was in a flyblown hole called Bihar. They want us out, see – “Independence now! British out!” They’re always having these marches and shouting about it. Christ knows why we don’t just let ’em have it – what do we want with a dump like that? Our job was to keep them down – stop them rising up and slinging us out. It wasn’t really war but it felt like it. Worse – it was their country. All I wanted to say was, You can have the place and all your spit and shit and bloody temples – just let me go home. To my wife,’ he added, glancing round at her.

  She squeezed him. ‘You seemed so far away. I wanted you back – all the time.’

  ‘That’s my girl.’ He seemed closer now, just a little. He rolled onto her and they made love again, more slowly this time, and he seemed a fraction closer to her, her body now coming to life with feeling for him, allowing her release that left her weeping, clinging tightly to him.

  ‘It’s been so hard,’ she sobbed. ‘With Tommy and everything.’

  Danny held her silently. At last he said, ‘He’ll get better, won’t he? Better than he is now?’

  She felt a stab of worry as he said it. Did he really think Tommy could just be cured?

  ‘He’ll get bigger,’ she said. ‘Like any other little boy. But that’s all I know. He won’t walk, they say – or talk quite right. That’s how it is.’

  Danny took this in silently. Rachel felt she had lost him again, just as they had drawn closer.

  ‘What about Jack and Patch?’ she said, appealing to the little boy she had known and loved. ‘Did you do more drawings?’

  ‘We had to cross this river,’ he said. ‘In Burma. It was in my pocket – I never remembered ’til it was too late. When I took it out, all the pages were stuck together. It was ruined.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ She hugged him. ‘Have you still got it?’

  ‘Nah,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘When I saw the state of it I chucked it out into the bloody jungle for the ants to eat. They’ll eat anything.’

  ‘We’ll get another one and you can start again,’ she said. ‘You can show the kids. Melly would love your drawings.’ It seemed vitally important suddenly that he did this, as if it was a precious link with the past.

  ‘Huh,’ was all Danny said.

  Danny stayed in bed late the next morning. It was Saturday and horribly wet. Everyone had to stay in, Tommy in his chair and Melanie playing at the table with some little wooden puzzles Gladys had brought her from the market. Danny came down yawning fit to crack his jaws.

  ‘By the look of you, you need to sleep for a week,’ Gladys said. Just for once, today she was going to stay home, not go to the market.

  Rachel felt a smile spread across her face. It was so strange him being here after all this time. Like a dream almost. But he was home – for good now! She felt like treating him like a prince.

  ‘Come and sit here –’ She got up. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Ta,’ Danny said. He sat beside Melanie who looked up at him guardedly, then smiled. Rachel saw Danny smile back and the sight made her very happy. She had dressed in the nicest clothes she had, a swinging black skirt and a blouse and sky-blue cardigan, and she bustled about, almost vying with Gladys to wait on Danny and get his breakfast.

  ‘Are you my daddy?’ she heard Melly say in her usual solemn, direct way.

  Rachel watched as the two of them looked at each other with the same blue eyes.

  ‘Yeah – I am,’ he said.

  ‘You could hardly miss the fact,’ Gladys said, ‘looking at you!’

  Danny looked at Tommy then. ‘He’s his mother’s boy, all right,’ he said.

  Rachel felt a niggle of disquiet inside. It was true that Tommy did look like her, but she wondered if Danny meant something else. Was he in some way saying that Tommy was not his? Or that he did not want him to be? But she tried to tell herself she was being silly. They all had a lot of getting used to each other to do.

  ‘Can you do my puzzle?’ Melly asked.

  Danny bent over the puzzle with her and was helping to put a piece in when Melly said, ‘Where have you been? In Germany?’

  ‘No!’ Danny laughed. ‘I wasn’t in Germany. Ta,’ he added, as Rachel laid a dish of porridge in front of him. ‘No – I was a soldier. In India.’

  Melly solemnly took this in. Then she said, ‘You should have stayed here, not gone there.’

  He gave a shy laugh again. ‘Yes – I should.’

  ‘You’re a big girl now, Melly,’ Rachel said. ‘When your dad left you were only a babby.’

  ‘Was Tommy a babby?’

  ‘Tommy wasn’t born then.’

  Hearing his name mentioned, Tommy was making little excited noises. Danny looked at him, and Rachel saw his eyes cloud with confusion.

  ‘Does he know what we’re saying?’

  ‘He does,’ Gladys said, bringing some bread to the table. On her way back she bent over Tommy. ‘You know what we’re saying, don’t you, Tommy lad?
’ She prodded his tummy and the boy squirmed and chuckled, his tongue pushing out of his mouth so that a trail of saliva swam down his chin.

  ‘He’s all there, Danny,’ Rachel said quietly. ‘I know he is – whatever they say about him. And he loves other children – Melly and Cissy, and my friend Netta’s kids. He’s just got some trouble with his body – his legs.’

  Danny nodded, staring warily at his son. He put his head down and ate his porridge.

  The rain cleared by the afternoon and everyone emerged. Danny was the toast of the yard that day. Dolly hugged him and patted his head like one of her own. Even Ma and Pa Jackman seemed pleased to see him and Lil Gittins exclaimed loudly over him as if he was a pet lamb.

  ‘Your feller’s back then?’ Irene said, sidling up to Rachel as she stood behind Tommy’s chair which she had wheeled into the yard. Tommy was well wrapped up and he liked to be with everyone.

  Irene, with her bleach-blonde hair and very tight, low-cut blue dress with a belt that more than showed off her curves, seemed to dress every day like a seductress. Pity she doesn’t spare a bit of time for her kids instead of preening, Rachel thought sourly. Then she thought, God, I’m turning into one of those moaning old bags. But she didn’t have much time for Irene these days.

  ‘Yes, he’s been fighting for his country – in India and Burma,’ she announced, adding caustically, ‘not like some.’

  Irene, who she guessed had no idea where either of those countries was, said, ‘Fancy.’ Rachel saw her eyes taking Danny in. Although he was very thin, his shoulders were much broader and stronger than when he left and his tanned face and short hair made him look even more handsome. Compared with Ray Sutton who, despite his film-star appearance, now had a drinker’s belly and a dissipated look to his face, Rachel thought her Danny was far more fit and good-looking. She felt a swell of pride.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He’s been right round the world. Seen all sorts. He’s a proper man,’ she said, as if to emphasize her view of Ray Sutton as a pygmy in comparison.