The Road Back

by Liz Harris

  ‘She’s only seven, George. I’ve put a small dressing on James’s head. It’s only a little cut – nothing to cause alarm. He’s vomited and he’s now sleeping peacefully.’

  ‘Every hurt that he suffers is a cause for alarm, Enid.’ The Major’s pale grey eyes didn’t leave Patricia’s face. ‘Our focus at all times must be on helping him to get better. Patricia is old enough to understand that.’

  He turned abruptly and walked towards the door. ‘Follow me, Patricia,’ he ordered without looking back. His footsteps echoed on the hard lino as he made his way along the corridor to the front room.

  She burst into tears.

  Her mother bent over and hugged her. ‘Don’t cry, darling. You know it only makes him worse. Just do as he says and go after him.’

  ‘But it wasn’t my fault, Mummy.’ She clung tightly to her mother.

  ‘I know that, sweetheart, and deep down so does Daddy. But you’d better go to him now, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘You go to him.’ She clawed at her mother’s arm, her face wet with tears. ‘Tell him I’ll be very good in future. I’ll watch James all the time, I really will. I’ll never read my books when I’m with him. Tell him, Mummy. Please.’

  Enid pulled Patricia’s hands away from her arms and stepped back. ‘I have to get the tea ready, my dear. Go to your father or you’ll make things worse for both of us. Go on now.’ Tucking some stray strands of grey-flecked brown hair into the loose bun at the nape of her neck, she turned away and hurried out of the room.

  Patricia gripped the sides of the seat with her hands, her knuckles white.

  ‘Patricia!’ she heard her father call. ‘I’m counting.’

  She gave a sharp intake of breath, slipped off the chair and ran towards the front room. The door was open and the Major stood waiting, a wooden ruler in his hand.

  Enid perched on the edge of the bed, her eyes on her daughter’s sobbing back.

  ‘I wish I could have done something to help you, Patsy darling,’ she said, pulling the blanket up over her daughter’s shoulders. ‘I did try, but you know what Daddy’s like when he’s angry. Please stop crying now. You’ll make yourself ill.’

  Patricia pulled the blanket over her head and cried more loudly.

  Leaning forward, Enid gently uncovered her daughter’s face. ‘If you turn over, darling, you’ll see I’ve brought you your tea, and I’ve given you our last piece of chocolate. You can have tea in bed as a treat, if you like. Then get some sleep.’

  Her sobs slowing down, Patricia rolled over on to her back. She stared up at her mother with red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘He hates me. Daddy hates me. He’s always hated me.’

  ‘Nonsense, darling. He loves you.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. He loves James and he hates me. It’s because he didn’t see me when I was a baby. He saw James when he was a baby, but not me. That’s why he doesn’t like me.’

  Enid stroked Patricia’s long, blonde hair. ‘You’re wrong, Patsy – he does love you. He’s just not good at showing it. It doesn’t matter that he wasn’t here when you were born. He’s had the past five years to get to know you, and he knows what a lovely little girl you are.’

  ‘Does he hate me because James is ill?’

  Enid ran her finger down Patricia’s cheek. ‘He doesn’t hate you, sweetheart.’ She gave her a bright smile and took her hand. ‘James being ill is very difficult for Daddy. It’s hard for all of us, I know, but it’s particularly hard for your father. He’s used to being able to handle every situation, so he feels that he ought to be able to make James better. But he keeps on being told that there’s nothing else that can be done for him. He won’t let himself accept defeat, and he’s taking his frustration out on you.’

  She paused and looked anxiously at Patricia. ‘That’s a very grown-up thing to say to you, Patsy. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? Just because Daddy’s very strict, perhaps a little too strict at times, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love you. He does.’

  Patricia disentangled her hand from her mother’s. ‘No, he doesn’t. He wishes I was ill and James was well.’

  ‘You must never say that, darling. It isn’t true. Daddy would be just as devastated if you were the one who was ill. You must believe that.’ She leaned over and kissed Patricia on the forehead.

  ‘No, he wouldn’t.’ She pushed her mother away, turned on her side and faced the wall. ‘He hates me. And it’s not fair.’

  ‘I don’t know what else I can say to convince you, darling,’ Enid said helplessly, getting to her feet and looking down at Patricia. ‘Eat your tea, then get some sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.’ She hesitated a moment, then left the room.

  Patricia heard the door click shut. She didn’t move. If only Daddy had been at home when Mummy had gone into hospital for her to be born, but he hadn’t been.

  From the time that Patricia could talk, she regularly used to ask her mother to tell her the story about when she was born, and her mother would tell it to her again and again. Before long, she knew the story by heart.

  She’d been born in Hampstead in June 1944. James was already two-and-a-half. Daddy had lived with them in London when James was little because he was recovering from a wound, but he’d been sent back to his regiment in North India two months before she was born. After the war had ended, he’d had to stay on in India as there were important things to do there, and he didn’t come home until she was two.

  Just after Daddy had gone to India, a bomb had hit their house. Mummy and James had been in the deep underground shelter at the time so they were safe, but it had been very frightening for Mummy, no longer having a house to live in and with another baby coming.

  She had been very happy when a lady she knew, called Mary Shaw, had said that she and James could share her basement flat in Glenloch Road. Mummy had met Mary in the shelter. They used to lie on bunk beds next to each other, and try to pretend that the smell of wee wee in the air was really nice perfume.

  Patricia had been in a great hurry to arrive, Mummy used to say with a smile. Three weeks before they’d thought she was going to arrive, Mummy had felt a pain and she knew that she would have to go into the hospital early. She’d been very worried about what to do with James, but Mary was kind and said she would look after him. James liked Mary and he could stay in a flat that he already knew. It had seemed perfect.

  But things had gone wrong.

  Mummy had had to stay in hospital for four weeks after she was born. During that time, doodlebug bombs started landing on London. They flew very low, Mummy explained, and they didn’t have a pilot. They ran on fuel, and when the fuel ran out, the engine went very quiet, and a few seconds later the doodlebug fell out of the sky. Wherever they landed, they exploded with a big bang. Mummy said that the silence before they hit the ground was terrifying and people were very frightened of them.

  The day that her mummy finally left the hospital was grey and unpleasant. The streets were empty, and all she could hear was the sound of the guns that were trying to stop the doodlebugs. She’d left the hospital and walked quickly down the hill, carrying baby Patricia in her arms, very excited at the thought of seeing James again.

  It had been a whole month since she’d seen him. When she’d gone into the hospital, she’d told Mary not to come and see her because it would be too dangerous. And it would have been difficult to push the heavy pram up the steep hill to the hospital. But when she’d said that, she’d expected to be in the hospital for only a few days. As the days had turned into weeks, she’d begun to long to hear from her friend.

  As she’d walked, her feet had crunched on bits of slate and broken glass that had been scattered across the pavement after a doodlebug attack. The air was thick with plaster and brick dust, and she’d tried not to breathe it in as she hurried past heaps of rubble that smelt of gas and burnt timber, praying that James was safe.

  The closer she came to Mary’s flat, the more excited she was. As soon a
s she’d seen the flat in the distance, she’d started to run and she hadn’t stopped until she stood in front of the door. Her face a smile, she’d knocked on the door, but there’d been no answer: Mary and James were out. She’d taken her key from her pocket, unlocked the door and gone into the flat.

  When she’d put baby Patricia into the large black pram in the corner of the room, she’d sat on the arm of a chair and started pushing the pram backwards and forwards, glancing around the room as she did so. That’s funny, Mummy had thought, the picture of Mary’s parents wasn’t on the mantelshelf where it used to be, and Mary’s collection of antique silver spoons had gone.

  She’d stopped rocking the pram and stood up. Her heart thumping fast, she’d run into the bedroom and looked inside Mary’s wardrobe. It was empty.

  Mummy had hardly been able to breathe at that moment. She’d run back into the living room and stood there, her hand covering her mouth. Mary had disappeared and James had disappeared with her.

  ‘What did you do next, Mummy?’ she’d always ask at that point in the story.

  ‘I picked you up and ran out of the flat. I’m not sure I even closed the door behind me. I asked everyone I saw if they knew anything about Mary and James. I asked the other people in the house – we shared a stove on the landing so we’d met each other – I asked the wardens and people in the air-raid shelter. Day after day, I stopped strangers in the street, went everywhere I could, asked everyone I met – but no one had seen them.’

  ‘Poor Mummy.’

  ‘I never saw Mary again. Eventually I heard that she’d been killed by a doodlebug. I imagine she’d been trying to take James out of London to safety. I assumed that he’d been killed, too. But a miracle happened, didn’t it, darling?’

  And Mummy would tell her how, six weeks after she’d left the hospital, James had been found by a nice air-raid warden. He’d been walking across the site of a bombed house a few streets away and had come across a little boy sitting on a pile of bricks. Even though he was filthy dirty and much thinner than the last time the warden had seen him, he recognised James and brought him back to Mummy.

  ‘I was a very happy mummy when I had him back again, safe and not hurt,’ Mummy used to say, sounding very sad. ‘At least, I thought he wasn’t hurt. But I was wrong, wasn’t I, Patsy? He had been hurt. We just couldn’t see it.’

  Less than two weeks after James had been found, he’d fallen on to the floor, unconscious. His body had gone stiff, and he’d made a shape like an arch and had kept on jerking. At last, his body had relaxed and gone soft. He’d been sick and had then fallen asleep. Mummy said that she’d sat on the end of his bed all night, watching him while he slept.

  She’d watched him closely the next day, and the day after that, and the following day, but carefully looking after Patricia at the same time, she’d assure her. The days passed and Mummy relaxed. Then, three weeks later, James fell down again. This time Mummy took him to the doctor. He said that it was too soon to know what to do and that Mummy should write down every detail about what happened when he fell, so that when the war was over, they would know how to help him.

  When Mummy had returned home, she’d sat down to write a letter to Daddy to tell him about James being ill, but she’d changed her mind. James would probably get better, she’d thought, and she didn’t want to worry Daddy if she didn’t have to as he was very busy with the war.

  But James hadn’t got better; he’d got worse. Daddy had come home again when she was two. By then, James was four-and-a-half, and he was having a fit every week.

  On the day that Daddy got home, James was so excited about seeing him that he had a very big fit and fell to the floor in front of Daddy. When Mummy had tucked him up in bed, she sat down with Daddy and told him how he’d got ill. Daddy didn’t move or speak; he just sat there listening to her, staring at the spot where James had fallen.

  The next week, he began to take James to see the best doctors in London.

  All the doctors said that he must have been damaged by the bombs while he was lost, and they said that everyone in the family should be prepared for his fits to get worse and for it to be harder and harder to look after him by themselves.

  Some of the doctors even suggested that they put James in a special home, but Daddy said no: James was going to get better and he was going to join Daddy’s regiment.

  By the time that she was seven, she knew exactly what to do when James had a fit.

  She knew that her mummy and daddy relied on her to take care of him, and she was proud that she was a big girl and could help them. She didn’t mind having to look after him – she loved him very much and she knew that he loved her – but she wanted her daddy to love her just like he loved James.

  But he didn’t. No matter how hard she tried to be a good girl, he only ever smiled at James. He never seemed to see her.

  Her pillow damp beneath her cheek, she lay in her bed and stared at the wall.

  Chapter Two

  Ladakh, west of Tibet and north of the Himalayas, November 1951: Kalden, aged 8

  Kalden locked his hands behind his head and stared at the wall of white on the opposite side of the ravine. The sense of misery deep within him slowly drained away as he lost himself in the frozen slopes that faced him.

  The longer he looked, the more his eyes became accustomed to the glare of the icy expanse and the more easily he could make out the myriad of shadowy indentations that broke up the snow-covered face of the rock. He moved his head from side to side, and fantastical shapes grew out of the snow and ice.

  He took a step closer to the edge of the plateau. His father’s features stared back at him, rough-hewn on the face of a distant crag. Smiling to himself, he traced the line of his father’s brow in the rock, his heavy lids that hooded his eyes, the high cheekbones, his nose, his broad smile, and the curve of his chin and his throat, which went down, down into the strip of ice-green water that was cutting its way through the narrow valley.

  Lowering his gaze, he followed the cluster of small ice-floes that clung to the tips of the white-crested water below, bobbing up and down on the backs of the waves. Mesmerised, he watched them until they’d rounded the bend in the river and were lost from sight. Then he raised his eyes to the shadowy peaks that towered above him, dusted with virgin snow. The hard light of the morning sun bounced off the sheer slopes and he squinted against its blinding reflection.

  He sighed deeply. If only it were summer. How he loved the summer!

  In the summer, he’d slide down the secret tracks buried in the steep slopes and he’d play at the water’s edge. Sometimes he’d cross the river, stepping from one large stone to another, and then back again. Sometimes he’d run across the wooden bridge, making it sway precariously above the water that rushed beneath it. He was good at that and it was such fun.

  And sometimes he’d get off the bridge on the other side of the river and clamber up the steep-sided, rocky paths to the high mountain pasture where he’d find his three brothers. He’d stay with his brothers, helping them round up the sheep and goats and putting them into the pens where the wolves couldn’t get at them, or searching with them for the dzo and the yaks that had climbed the steep mountain slopes to graze at the edge of the glaciers.

  When his mother and grandmother were at the high pasture, he was occasionally allowed to help them make the butter and cheese, although he was only eight.

  When the day’s work was done, he’d sit with Tenzin, Anil and Rinchen, watching the sun set over the mountain peaks, its golden glow lingering in the darkening sky and only fading away when the stars began to appear. Then they’d all go into the small, smoky room at the heart of the stone hut, and although they could hardly see each other in the flickering light of the wick lamp, they’d sing and tell stories. At night, he’d sleep alongside his brothers in the stone hut.

  Summer was definitely the best time of all.

  But it was a long way from summer now. It was going to be many months before t
he thaw would begin – months during which the mountain trails would be glazed over with layers of ice, and the wooden bridge would be buried beneath a solid bank of snow; months in which he would be unable to escape the village and lose himself in the vast emptiness surrounding it.

  Once he’d tried to get across the river in the winter. The bridge had been completely hidden beneath a thick white coat, so he’d slid down the track to the water’s edge, taken off his yak-hair shoes and started to cross the ice-cold water at the narrowest part, clutching his shoes by their pointed tips.

  But the earth and stones on the river bed had stuck to his feet. They’d hurt so much that he’d had to turn round almost at once and wade back. He’d had to sit on a lump of cold rock at the water’s edge and struggle hard to pull the pebbles from his feet before he could begin to make his way back up the frozen track.

  It had been much more difficult going back up the slope than it had been coming down. By the time he’d reached the top and had limped back to his house, his feet had been raw and he’d been in a lot of pain. His mother had been very upset at the thought of the hurt he could have done to himself, and she’d made him promise that he would never again try to cross the river in winter.

  A shadow slid across the frozen rock and stayed there. He glanced at the sky. The sun was starting to fall behind the peaks – Tenzin’s wedding was about to begin. It would begin the moment that the sun sank behind the high mountain.

  He sighed again. He must get back to the village now, even though he didn’t want to. Everyone at the wedding would be happy; he would be the only person who was sad, and he’d have to pretend that he wasn’t. If only he could remain where he was, hidden in the white void, but he knew that he couldn’t.

  He loved Tenzin, and in his heart he knew that he should have stayed at the house and helped his other two brothers entertain the wedding guests who’d been arriving for the past two days. Instead, he’d disappeared and left Anil and Rinchen to fill the visitors’ cups with chang, when he should have been standing alongside them and pouring the barley beer as the guests reached their house.