by Anne Bennett
‘Hush, Beth,’ Carmel said.
Beth turned to her mother, her face full of distress, tears trickling down her cheeks as she cried, ‘Make him go away, Mommy. He is horrible and we don’t want him here.’
Carmel lifted Beth onto her knee and said to her, ‘He belongs here, Beth. Paul is your real daddy.’
Beth looked at the old man with the lined face and white hair beside her, and remembered the picture beside her bed. She loved that picture, and the Paul in it had been happy and smiling and young and wearing uniform—and as unlike the man beside her as it was possible to be. So she said, ‘No, he’s not.’
Paul had almost forgotten about the child. Because she hadn’t been born when he left, she had faded from his memory and when he had thought of home he had thought only of Carmel, but he remembered now that he had a daughter too. He tried to smile at her, but it came out like a grimace and Beth was repelled and snuggled further into her mother as Paul said, ‘Oh yes, I am your real father.’
‘Well, I don’t want you to be, so there.’
‘That will do, Beth!’ Carmel snapped out and then to Paul, she said, ‘All of us, Beth included, have a right to know where you have been for five and a half years and what has happened to turn you from a fit, vibrant young man into…’
‘A shambling old one,’ Paul finished for her.
He lifted the cup of tea and drained it as Carmel went on, ‘I mean, I got the telegram and all, and then Chris said he saw you killed and tipped into a ditch.’
‘And he would have been right if I hadn’t been found by a French farmer and, I was to find out later, one of the Resistance,’ Paul said. ‘At great risk to himself and his family, he took me in and tended me. He said for weeks I hovered between life and death. When I recovered, there were plans to get me back to England and I had already got my false papers when the Gestapo swooped.
‘If I would have spoken, given my name, rank and serial number, I still might not have survived,’ Paul went on and added. ‘The Gestapo record on taking prisoners is not good, but no one else would have survived either. Every man, woman, child and anyone else working on the farm would have been killed. But some mightn’t be killed straight away. The Gestapo would know that I had to have help to get false papers and that would mean there was an active Resistance cell in the area. People would be tortured until they told what they knew; even I might have had the thumb screws applied.’ Paul glanced at Carmel cuddling her daughter before he continued, ‘And they would get the information, for if the men won’t talk, they torture the children till the women speak, so I was told.’
Carmel instinctively held Beth tighter as she said, ‘So you kept quiet.’
‘Yes,’ Paul told her. ‘There was no choice. You know my French has always been good and it improved further in the three or four months I was at the farmhouse; was good enough, anyway, to fool the Germans. I was marched away with all the fit man of the area to one of the German labour camps and there was no way I could get word to you either then or later.
‘Anyway, to tell you I was alive and well would have been a lie. Barely alive would have been more like it. We were set to rebuild roads and bridges and essential buildings the Allies had destroyed in bombing and so we worked in blistering heat, freezing cold and in pounding rain, and we were given just enough food to keep us alive. If you took a rest at any time you were whipped, the second time you were shot and any too sick to leave their beds received the same treatment.’
Paul’s eyes were so full of pain as his story unfolded that Carmel’s heart constricted in pity. She reminded herself that once she had loved this man more than life itself, and she longed to reach out and touch him, to cover his agitated hands with her own, but she was constrained with Terry there, who she could see clearly was suffering too. She knew whatever happened after this, someone was going to be so terribly hurt and she knew that would have to be her beloved Terry. How then could she comfort Paul in front of the man who was going to lose everything all over again?
Inside, Terry felt as if he was dying. Although he was moved by Paul’s tale—and who wouldn’t have been?—he saw the life he had built up, the second chance he had been given, crumbling away like so much dust before his eyes and he wanted to howl at the unfairness of life.
And so did Carmel, who felt as if she was being rent in two. ‘I am so sorry, Paul, for all you have had to endure,’ she said at last after the silence had stretched out uncomfortably between them.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he burst out almost savagely. ‘You looked out just for yourself there. We would be marching for days, sometimes in unrelenting heat on subsistence rations and a scant amount of water, and men would drop before you and you had to step over them and go on. The guards would pull them out of line and put a bullet through their heads and any who helped them, as they had in the beginning, were similarly dealt with. No one there could afford to have human emotions. We were treated like animals and in time behaved like them. I have seen men fight to the death over a slice of bread one has stolen from the other. Jesus Christ, it was hell on earth.’
‘It’s over now,’ Carmel said soothingly, and then as Paul began to cry great gulping sobs of sadness, she put Beth down and put her arms around him. Her own eyes met those of Terry and she recognised the despair and helplessness she saw there.
‘Is there no way around this?’ he asked desperately.
‘What do you suggest?’ Paul asked sarcastically, turning his ravaged and red-rimmed eyes on Terry. ‘That we share my wife—is that it? Maybe you should have her Monday, Wednesday and Friday and then my turn would be Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and Sunday could be turn and turn about. How would that suit?’
‘Oh God, you know that isn’t what I meant,’ Terry cried brokenly. ‘Almighty Christ, I don’t know how to cope with this.’ He looked across at Carmel, her hands still on Paul’s shoulders and saw her pain and knew her heart was being ripped in two, as his was. And if he stayed talking from now till doomsday, the end result would be the same, would have to be the same, and he would further upset Carmel and little Beth.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and said, ‘There is no point prolonging this. I’ll start collecting my things together.’
Carmel just watched him leave the room. She couldn’t speak. What she wanted to do was hold him tight and beg him not to go and leave her with this stranger that she was almost afraid of, but she knew she could do or say none of those things and she sank onto the chair beside Paul and put her head in her hands. Beth stood sucking at the thumb she hadn’t needed the comfort of for some time, her dress gathered into a bunch by her restless hands because everything had gone way past her understanding.
Terry could barely see for the tears falling from his eyes as he emptied drawers and his side of the wardrobe into his suitcases. He ached with pain and loss, and wanted to cry out with the injustice of it, but there was nothing that he or Carmel could do to fight against this. In the end the pain would be less for everyone else if he was just to walk away, and as quickly as possible.
Beth didn’t see it that way at all and when he appeared in the doorway with his cases, she threw herself at him with a cry of anguish. ‘Daddy, don’t go!’ she begged tearfully. ‘Please don’t.’
‘Beth, I must,’ Terry said, and he put the cases on the floor and put his arms around the distressed child.
Paul lifted his head and growled out, ‘Don’t call that man Daddy. I am your daddy.’
‘Paul, Beth didn’t know you were alive till today,’ Carmel chided gently. ‘She is bound to take time to adjust.’
‘She is being openly defiant,’ Paul said, and he pulled her out of Terry’s arms and nearer to him so suddenly neither could do a thing about it. Then he held on to her so she couldn’t pull away.
‘Paul…’ Carmel said nervously, but Paul wasn’t in the mood to listen to Carmel.
‘If you call that man Daddy again, or refer to him as daddy when he has left her
e, you will make me very angry,’ Paul said to Beth, and gave her a shake. ‘Do you want to make me angry?’
Beth was very frightened and yet she found herself saying, ‘I don’t care about making you angry, because I don’t like you and I wish you hadn’t come back.’
The sharp smack across Beth’s legs took them all by surprise and it would have been followed by more if Terry hadn’t stepped forward and grasped the man’s upraised hand as Beth’s cries of outrage rent the air.
‘Keep out of this,’ Paul said to Terry. ‘It really is none of your business how I chastise my own daughter.’
‘It’s mine, though,’ Carmel said angrily, pulling Beth into her arms. ‘And I have never found the need to smack Beth.’
‘And this is the result,’ Paul countered. ‘A badly behaved and insolent child and one too used to getting her own way. I see I will have to instil some discipline here.’ He cocked an eye at Terry and said, ‘You still here?’
‘I am just on my way,’ said Terry miserably. He added to Carmel, ‘If you want me, I will probably lodge at my boss’s for a bit again. I’ll give you the address.’
Carmel nodded, knowing that it would be untenable for him to stay with Ruby now, but Paul said, ‘You will do no such thing. It is highly unlikely that my wife will need to call on you for anything. In fact, once you leave, I do not expect to see you ever again.’
‘He must,’ Carmel protested. ‘There’s Sam, for a start.’
‘He will take his bastard with him.’
‘Oh no he will not,’ Carmel cried, bouncing in front of Paul angrily. ‘And don’t you dare call my son a bastard. Terry and I married in all good faith and he never laid a hand on me, in that way, until we were married.’
‘Very laudable, but I still don’t want the evidence of your infidelity, whether intentional or otherwise, before my face every day.’
‘Paul, Terry can’t look after a baby and I am the child’s mother,’ Carmel said. ‘You can’t do this.’
‘Oh yes I can.’
‘Please, Paul,’ Carmel pleaded, putting a hand on his arm. ‘This really isn’t like you.’
Paul shook Carmel’s hand off and growled, ‘That Paul is dead and gone. This is the Paul you have to deal with now, but you are still my wife and what I say goes.’
‘No,’ Carmel said. ‘Not in this. I gave birth to Sam and he is my child as much as Beth. If you will not allow him to stay here, then I will leave you and take the child with me, and Beth too.’
‘Not Beth,’ Paul said. ‘I would fight you through the courts for Beth.’
He wouldn’t win though, Carmel told herself. But could she take that risk? She turned stricken eyes on Terry.
‘I am not having that man coming here ostensibly to see his son and really to see you,’ Paul went on. ‘And that is my final word on the subject.’
Then Terry knew what he had to do, for all it would break his heart. He had hoped at the end of all this he would be still able to see his son, be a father to the boy, take joy in his growing up, but all this he would have to give up for Carmel’s sake.
‘If I relinquish all ties with my son,’ he said, though he was having trouble forming the words, ‘will you allow him to stay with Carmel?’
‘Ah no, Terry,’ said Carmel, who knew what it had cost Terry to say that. She almost explained it to Paul, but she knew that this man who’d returned to her would have no sympathy for Terry under any circumstances.
Terry shook his head helplessly and said to Paul, ‘Well, will you?’
‘And you will have no contact with my wife for any reason?’
‘None,’ Terry said. ‘You have my word.’
‘Then yes, he can stay,’ Paul said.
Carmel sighed with relief, for she knew it would tear the heart out of her to lose Terry and she didn’t think she could bear to lose Sam as well.
In fact, when she watched Terry walk dejectedly away that day, she felt as if her heart had shattered into a million pieces. She was glad that Sam chose that moment to begin complaining and she was able to hide her tears from Paul, who wouldn’t understand them and might become angry. She couldn’t linger in the baby’s room long, though, for she heard Paul shouting at Beth again.
Ruby had been unaware of the drama being played just the other side of her wall. It was Beth who told her in the end. Fed up with being shouted at, and frightened of the atmosphere presiding in the house, she took herself outside and sat on the swing Terry had made for her, swaying backwards and forwards, and letting the tears trickle down her cheeks unheeded.
Ruby, going out to her bin, heard the child crying and popped her head over the fence. ‘What’s up, bab?’
‘Oh, Auntie Ruby…’ Beth cried, relieved to see a familiar and safe face.
Ruby had seldom seen the child so downcast. ‘Come on, bab, can’t be that bad.’
‘It can, Auntie Ruby,’ Beth said. ‘My real daddy is back and he is old and horrid and has made Terry go away.’
Whatever Ruby expected Beth to say, it was not that. At first she could barely take it in and stared at the child in stupefaction for a second or two before saying, ‘Your real daddy, Beth? Are you sure that was what your mom said?’
Beth nodded. ‘It’s what she said. But he don’t look nothing like the picture what Mom gave me.’
Ruby decided she had to find out what was what. ‘How would you like to come round here and have a cup of cocoa?’ she asked. ‘You must be cold without your coat, and I’m sure I have some chocolate biscuits in the tin.’
‘Chocolate biscuits,’ Beth repeated. Now that Ruby mentioned it, she was cold, and cocoa and chocolate biscuits in a familiar house where no one was shouting was suddenly a much more attractive prospect than going back inside her own home. ‘OK,’ she said.
Ruby only waited till she had the child settled before she set off for Carmel’s, only instead of nipping in the back, this time she went up to the front door and knocked. She hoped the child had got it wrong. She had nothing against Paul, but the man was dead and gone—or everyone thought he was—and Carmel had been that happy with Terry and her little family.
When Carmel opened the door, Ruby had only to look into her deadened and yet heartbreakingly painful eyes to know that Beth might be right after all.
Before either was able to speak, a haggard, white-haired man appeared by Carmel’s side and snarled out while Ruby was coping with the shock of his appearance, ‘Hello, Ruby. I wondered how long it would take you to come snooping around here.’
Carmel turned and looked at Paul, but said nothing.
Ruby, annoyed at the way he had spoken to her, said, ‘I am not snooping. I came to tell you that Beth is in my house and she told us that you had arrived home, Paul, and I came round to see for myself as any concerned friend would.’
‘Of course they would,’ Carmel said in a voice thick with unshed tears. ‘Come in, Ruby, and we will tell you all about it…’
Later Ruby said to George, ‘The man has suffered, that much is certain, but he is changed and I don’t mean appearance alone. He seems angry all the time and is that nasty to Carmel. Anyway, I’m going to listen out for the nippers tonight while they go and see the old man. Carmel wanted to go on her own, prepare him like, but Paul wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘And Terry?’
Ruby shrugged and sighed sadly, before saying, ‘He had to go, didn’t he? And Carmel is going round like she is encased in misery.’
Carmel wished Paul had been agreeable to her preparing Jeff. She thought he was going to collapse when he opened the door to them both. Like Carmel, he hadn’t at first recognised the son, but then he was completely bowled over by the news. He put his arms around Paul’s emaciated body and hugged him tight while tears rained down his face.
‘Praise be!’ he cried. ‘Oh, thanks be to God! Come in, come in.’
Carmel stepped into the hall. She had been here just once before and she noted the house bore no resemblance to the last time she
had seen it. Now it had an air almost of faded grandeur. Jeff led them to a small room he called his ‘snug’ and he explained he spent a lot of his time in there.
‘Most of the house is shut up now,’ he said. ‘Emma is probably turning in her grave, but there you are.’
She could indeed be turning in her grave, because she had died in the spring when Sam had been only a few months old. If Emma had still been alive, Carmel knew she wouldn’t have walked down the path, let alone gone inside. She knew Jeff had never liked the place and told her he considered it too ostentatious for his tastes and that he had not chosen it.
‘I sometimes look back on my life,’ he’d said, ‘and see what I have achieved. Through working myself into the ground I now have a beautiful mansion, a top-of-the-range Rolls-Royce and an extravagant way of living. I also have two sons I hardly know, a wife who can’t bear me near her and a house that never has been and never will be a home.’
She had felt so sad and sorry for him when he’d said that, and now she looked across at him almost drinking in the sight of Paul, whom he thought he would never see again. She couldn’t expect Jeff to share in her heartache at her losing Terry, for all he liked the man, and as he called to the cook to fetch champagne he poured himself and his son each a large Scotch and Carmel a sweet sherry, ‘to be going on with’.
Jeff wanted to know, as Carmel had, what had happened to Paul, where he had been. Carmel let Paul’s words wash over her and remembered Emma’s awful funeral, which Jeff had inveigled her into attending.
‘It wouldn’t be right, Jeff.’
‘Please, my dear?’ Jeff had pleaded. ‘I need someone on my side to cope with this, and Matthew can’t get leave, or says he can’t, which amounts to the same thing. It isn’t as if she can hurt you any more.’
‘Oh, Jeff…’
‘It would mean so much to me if you would come.’
What could she say to that? She thought of the very many ways that Jeff had helped her and her family, and much against her better judgement she agreed to go.
Lois had been staying with her parents for a few days before the funeral so hadn’t known that Carmel was going to attend until they got out of the cars at the church. Carmel saw Lois’s eyes widen and then she felt herself begin to shake as she saw they were unloading a wheelchair and realised that Lois’s mother was also going to be there.