To Have and to Hold

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Maybe this is what Chris meant,’ Lois said.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, he said he heard a rumour there was something big planned for the summer,’ Lois said. ‘Didn’t know what, of course.’

  ‘It’ll be this, all right,’ Ruby said from across the fence. ‘A woman was telling me two days ago about how the South Coast is out of bounds to civilians, like. I didn’t right believe it, ’cos she’s a dozy cow and has got things wrong afore.’

  ‘Got it right this time anyroad, I’d say,’ said the man the other side of Ruby. ‘Here we go agen, another bleeding Dunkirk.’

  Even in the half-light Carmel saw Lois’s face blanch. ‘It won’t be like Dunkirk,’ she said. ‘They are better prepared.’

  ‘Don’t you think the Germans are too? Do you think they will stand on the beaches and hand out calling cards?’

  ‘You don’t even know Chris has gone this time,’ Carmel said, putting her hand on Lois’s arm. And then she was gently peeled from Lois as strong arms encircled her, for Terry had arrived home and Carmel leaned against him and sighed.

  ‘I wanted to be here with you two tonight,’ Terry said, his other arm encircling Lois. ‘This is history being made. Soon we will know whether we are going to win this war, or fall under Nazi dominance.’

  ‘I hope to God we win then,’ Carmel said fiercely. ‘Then Paul and thousands like him won’t have given their lives in vain.’

  The next day they kept the wireless news on after The Kitchen Front, and many houses and workplaces did the same thing, knowing eventually they would be told officially what had happened. When the news flash came it was from Reuters News Agency and just said that earlier that morning Allied armies began landing on the coast of France. Everyone knew that the next few days would determine whether this would be a massive defeat or the beginning of the end.

  In the papers Carmel began to read avidly, she saw the scale of the invasion now known as D-Day or Operation Overlord, and she learned that while the Allies fought their way from the south, liberating besieged towns and villages, the Red Army were doing the same in the north. It was they that found the first of the death or concentration camps, many being in Poland.

  The pictures and accounts of those places like Treblinka and Maidenek beggared belief, and the pictures of the bald and naked survivors, many like skeletons, and the mounds where thousands had been tipped into mass graves Carmel found almost too distressing to read about.

  She had cheering news of her own, though. Just a few days after D-Day she too took herself off to the doctor’s, but she said nothing to Terry until they were snuggled up in bed together that night and she left the lamp on as she wanted to see his face.

  ‘I went to the doctor’s today,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, anything wrong?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  Terry looked at her shining eyes. He hardly dared hope. ‘You mean…?’ he began tentatively.

  ‘I mean that your shenanigans just after we were married have borne fruit, darling,’ Carmel said, her smile nearly cutting her face in two. ‘I am carrying our child and he or she will be a Christmas baby.’

  For a few moments Terry was stunned. Those were the words than once he had thought he would never hear again, and then exhilaration surged through him and could not be contained. ‘You bloody terrific lady, you!’ he cried out. ‘Having a baby! Oh God! Oh, what bloody marvellous news!’ And he hugged Carmel tightly in sheer delight.

  Samuel Terence Martin was born at three o’clock on 24 December at home and with no great drama. The midwife was in attendance and it soon became apparent that there was nothing remotely wrong with the child’s lungs. Terry, pacing the floor outside, was allowed to see his wife an hour later, when the midwife declared her fit to be seen. As Terry entered the room, the midwife left it, knowing the two would want to be alone. Carmel looking thoroughly pleased with herself had the baby, his son, suckling at her breast.

  The sight affected Terry so much, he felt his knees begin to tremble and he kneeled by the side of the bed and gazed into her eyes as he said earnestly, ‘I can’t tell you what this means to me.’

  Carmel smiled at him. ‘You don’t have to,’ she said. ‘Your whole face says it all, and I feel the same, for I wanted this child so much—your child because I love you so very much.’

  ‘Ah, Carmel.’

  ‘Here,’ Carmel said, removing the baby from her breast and wrapping the shawl more securely around him. ‘Hold your son.’

  Terry took him in his arms tenderly, overwhelmed by the power of his love for the little baby.

  ‘You have given me the greatest gift of all, a Christmas baby.’

  Carmel laughed gently. ‘You might be thrilled by the thought of a Christmas baby, but young Sam could well feel that he is cheated as regards presents and all.’

  ‘I never thought about that.’

  ‘I bet he will when he is old enough.’

  ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t miss out, don’t worry.’

  ‘Well, Beth has a heap of toys she has grown out of, courtesy of Jeff, which he can start on,’ Carmel said. ‘She looks like she’ll get no more, though, for we seem to be out of favour altogether.’

  ‘It is odd when he was such a regular visitor before.’

  ‘Are you sure he was all right when you discussed with him about the money?’ Carmel said. ‘It’s all I can think of.’

  ‘Yes, I told you.’

  ‘Well, the whole thing is stupid and the man is too important to me, and young Beth as well, to just let things dwindle on like this,’ Carmel said. ‘In the new year, I intend to go and see him, not at the house where that woman, ill or not, is in residence. I will go and see him in the office.’

  Suddenly, there was a terrific pounding on the door. ‘Wonder who that is?’ Terry said.

  ‘Whoever it is, Lois will deal with it,’ Carmel said, and then just moments later there was the sound of thumping feet on the stairs and then a rather timid knock on the door.

  With a questioning look at Carmel, Terry crossed to open it, holding the baby against his shoulder. ‘Jeff!’

  ‘Lois has just told me about the baby,’ Jeff said, twisting his hat nervously in his hands. ‘Can I…would it be all right…?’

  ‘Come in, Jeff,’ Carmel called from the bed where she had pulled herself into a sitting position and raised her arms in welcome as he came in. As he took hold of her hands she pulled him onto the bed and said, ‘You are a sight for sore eyes.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Yes, truly.’

  ‘I have been a fool,’ Jeff said miserably. ‘Stiff-necked, nearly as bad as my wife. I took umbrage when Terry said about the money. I know now how unreasonable I was being. Can you forgive me?’

  ‘Jeff, there is nothing to forgive,’ Carmel said, and her eyes shone with tears of thankfulness. ‘I am just glad you are part of our lives once more.’

  ‘I am glad you feel that way,’ Jeff said, ‘though I hardly deserve it. I have a tricycle for young Beth in the car, a big one with a bread basket on the back for Santa to deliver tomorrow. It’s old because it was Paul’s and then Matthew’s, but I had it done up and painted, and a new bell fitted, and it’s like new now.’

  ‘She will be thrilled,’ Carmel said. ‘But just as important as the things you give her is the time you spend with her. She has missed you sorely. In fact, in the new year I was going to seek you out.’

  ‘You might be a bit of a granddad to the new edition too, if you like,’ Terry said, lifting the child who had gone to sleep against his shoulder so that Jeff could see him. Jeff traced one finger gently around the baby’s face and said, ‘You are a lucky man, Terry.’

  ‘I know it,’ Terry said softly as he laid the sleeping baby in the cradle.

  The war was over. Hitler shot himself in a bunker in Berlin on 30 April and his body was found by the Red Army who entered the city first on 2 May. Germany surrendered officially on 7 May a
nd the following day was a national holiday.

  Church bells pealed out the good news and street parties were hastily organised. No one mentioned bedtime and the children ran about in the streets till all hours, Beth along with the others. Carmel knew it was pointless trying to put her to bed as she would never be able to sleep.

  Carmel couldn’t blame the people for their slight hysteria. The war had been long and arduous, and many had suffered tragedy and trauma. Yet she knew whatever the cost in human life, war couldn’t have been averted and, once undertaken, it had to be won, for the evil Nazi regime had to be stopped. She saw the relief on Lois’s face that Chris had survived it all and would soon be home again where he belonged.

  Each morning, when Carmel woke, she would be filled with contentment and she enjoyed the first summer of peace. Each fine Sunday, they would all travel to Sutton Park, Lois and Colin too. Petrol rationing was too restrictive yet to make a car a viable proposition, but Carmel at any rate loved the little steam train that took them nearly to the entrance.

  The first time they had done this, she remembered her first experience of the park when Paul took her there the day they had become engaged. She had almost expected a pang of nostalgia, but there was none, just a warm memory that made her smile.

  ‘What’s up?’ Terry asked with a quizzical look at her.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well then, why are you grinning like the Cheshire Cat?’

  ‘I’m not, and anyway,’ said Carmel archly, ‘it’s my business.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? What about the obey bit in the wedding ceremony?’

  ‘Doesn’t say that you own me body and soul,’ Carmel replied. ‘And my thoughts are my own, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.’

  ‘Why you!’ Suddenly Terry reached out and caught Carmel up in his arms.

  Lois was smiling at the pair of them and Beth caught her eye and then cast her own upwards as if to say ‘they are at it again’, for she was well used to the way her mother and father went on.

  ‘Are you happy, Mrs Martin?’ Terry asked, as he held Carmel close.

  ‘Ecstatically so, Mr Martin,’ Carmel replied.

  ‘That is all the answer I need,’ Terry said. ‘And I will do all in my power to make sure that is always the case.’

  Carmel knew he would, he had, and she thanked God nightly for giving her a second chance with this very special and wonderful man. She knew she had much to be thankful for and the only thing she had any concern about at all was that everyone would have Sam spoiled to death. Even Colin, little more than a baby himself, seemed to adore Sam, while Beth was his willing slave when she wasn’t at school for she had started at the Abbey Infants in January.

  In fact, everyone ran round for Sam—Ruby, George, Jeff, even Lois—and as for Terry, there was sometimes no reasoning with him where Sam was concerned. Only the other day Carmel had put her foot down about Terry buying Sam a train set for Christmas. Not that she thought he would be able to lay his hands on one. Precious few toys had reached the shops yet and this first Christmas of peacetime would be a lean one for many children, Carmel guessed.

  It was Saturday, 13 October. Lois and Colin had gone away for a few days to stay with Chris’s parents. Terry and Beth, who had been in the garden, had come in for a warm drink. Carmel had Sam in the highchair, feeding him, when there was a knock at the door. Leaving Terry to finish with Sam, Carmel went to open it.

  The man was slightly stooped, his hair was pure white and he had deep score lines scarring his face. Yet Carmel had the feeling that he wasn’t old and he was also familiar. Then the man spoke.

  ‘Do you not know me, Carmel?’

  Carmel felt her mouth go dry, while her heart hammered against her ribs and the scene swam before her, for though the man’s voice was cracked and husky she would have known it anywhere.

  ‘Paul?’ she said, but hesitantly, and as if it were a question—as if she couldn’t believe it and didn’t want to believe it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ Paul said. ‘And I know I’m no oil painting, but you should see the poor buggers who didn’t make it.’

  Suddenly there flashed through his mind the doctor in the military hospital he had been taken to in the British sector of Berlin, who had said he wasn’t yet in any fit state to leave the hospital. ‘Come now, Mr Connolly, you are a medical man yourself and you know that we haven’t even had the results back of the tests we have run on you yet. My concern is about your lungs—;’

  ‘I’m sick of bloody tests,’ Paul had said angrily. ‘That’s all you sodding well do. As for being a medical man, that was in a past life. All I have done for the past five years is try to survive, and the only reason I did that was the thought of my wife waiting for me back home.’

  ‘Of course, we all understand that,’ the doctor had said in the soothing, patronising tones he might have used to a half-wit. ‘We will, of course, contact your wife as soon as you give us some more details.’

  ‘Don’t you understand anything?’ Paul had roared in frustration. ‘Haven’t you listened to a word I have said, you moron? I will never be well until I hold my wife in my arms.’

  Excuses were made for Paul’s outburst in the hospital, for they knew what he had gone through and they’d thought to treat his anger alongside trying to get him as well as he ever could be, considering how much he was damaged, which they would know more about when the results of the tests were in. The doctor certainly didn’t want him to return as he was. He was nowhere near ready and he seemed to think his wife was in some sort of time warp, that things hadn’t moved on for her too.

  ‘Write to her,’ the doctor persisted. ‘Prepare her a little?’

  ‘I don’t want to write. I need to see her. What is there to prepare about a woman welcoming her husband home?’

  He had left the hospital without their knowledge and, using someone else’s clothes—for the ones he had been wearing when he was brought in were only fit for the incinerator and all they left him with was a hospital gown—he had taken five days to cross war-ravaged Europe. Always in his mind had been the picture of Carmel the day he had left her. He had thought that when she put her arms around him he would be at peace and healed by her love for him, but it had all gone wrong somehow.

  Carmel was looking at him as if he was a ghost, and a very unwelcome ghost at that, and Paul knew that scenario being acted out at the door was the very thing the doctor had been worried about when he had advised him to write and prepare his wife. But, for God’s sake, this was his home.

  ‘Am I to be asked in then?’ It was meant to come out in a fairly jocular way, but he had lost the art of doing that and, like most comments he made these days, it sounded aggressive.

  ‘Of…of course,’ Carmel said, opening the door wider.

  And then, as Paul stepped into the hall, he saw the man behind Carmel. He had a baby in his arms and a little girl danced by his side as he said, ‘His lordship is finished. Is he to have anything else?’

  ‘Who is this man?’ Paul asked Carmel, his voice unnaturally and unnervingly calm.

  Carmel swallowed deeply. ‘You must understand, Paul, we thought you were dead.’

  Now it was the man’s turn to look alarmed and astonished. ‘Paul!’ he repeated.

  Carmel, perilously close to tears, cried, ‘Oh, come in. None of this can or should be discussed on the doorstep.’

  At first, it was little better in the breakfast room, for Carmel and Paul faced each other like two combatants. Terry took one look at them and disappeared into the kitchen, taking Sam with him. Beth gazed at each of them, feeling the tension but not understanding it.

  Suddenly Carmel felt guilty. However she felt personally and whatever the outcome of this, it was a poor homecoming.

  ‘I’m sorry, Paul,’ she said, crossing the room. ‘I was taken totally by surprise. It was the last thing that I expected.’

  She would have put her arms around him then, but he stepped
out of her reach and said again, ‘Who is that man?’

  ‘Paul, please…’

  Paul slammed the table with the flat of his hand and Beth jumped and looked with sudden fear at the man who was bellowing at her mother. ‘Tell me who he is, damn you.’

  Carmel looked at the red face and eyes bulging with temper and the cruel twist of the mouth, and saw this man was not the gentle peace-loving Paul she knew.

  Terry came in, still carrying Sam, and said to Paul, though his own heart was as heavy as lead, ‘There is no need for any of this.’ Then he turned to Carmel and said, ‘There is a tray of tea in the kitchen. If you bring it in, I will put Sam to bed. There is some talking to be done.’

  Carmel nodded and then she said to Beth, ‘Do you want to go to Ruby’s for a bit?’

  Beth shook her head. What she wanted was to roll her life back by just a few minutes to the happy time before this strange man came to the door, upsetting everyone and shouting. But now he had come, she was being shunted nowhere until she understood why and who he was.

  Carmel brought in the tray and sat at the head of the table. When Terry came back into the room he sat opposite Paul as Carmel said gently, ‘This is going to be hard for you, Paul. God knows, it is going to be hard for all of us but Terry Martin is the man I married in 1943, after I thought you had been dead three years.’

  Paul gave a sudden jerk in the chair. He wondered why. He had known in his heart of hearts what she would say, but the actual words caused his innards to twist so painfully that he almost cried out against it. What he did instead was glare at Terry as he ground out, ‘Don’t matter what you both thought, I am not dead and as a woman can only have one husband, I suggest you sling your hook, mate.’

  Before Terry had a chance to speak, Beth flew to Terry’s side and said heatedly, ‘Don’t you tell my daddy to go away. It’s you needs to go away.’