Keep the Home Fires Burning

by S Block

  Teresa stood up and gathered her clothes.

  ‘Annie’s a good friend of yours. She’s been a guest in my house. On the few occasions I’ve met her I have seen why you like her so much. If her family can’t be with her at this time then we should be.’

  Nick looked at Teresa with immense fondness.

  ‘And that is precisely why I’ve never doubted for a moment why I married you.’

  While Nick drove as fast as he dared along the dark country lane in heavy wind and rain, Teresa stared out of the car window.

  Tears began to gather in her eyes. In daylight she would have brushed them quickly away so that Nick wouldn’t see. But the only light came from the car’s headlights, and Nick was focused on the road.

  If Annie were to die tonight . . . ?

  Teresa couldn’t bring herself to finish the question, let alone begin to frame an answer. The very thought of Annie dying sent her mind reeling.

  The car suddenly slowed, distracting Teresa from the dread that was spreading from the pit of her stomach. She turned and looked through the windscreen to see what had prompted the change in speed, and saw the cottage hospital emerge from the darkness.

  Inside the hospital, they were told Annie was in the operating theatre. She had suffered multiple fractures and significant internal bleeding that the surgeon was trying to stop. The nursing sister didn’t sugar the pill.

  ‘Her injuries are life-threatening.’ While she waited for Nick and Teresa to absorb this information, she continued, ‘May I ask what blood groups you are? We’re somewhat short of Miss Carter’s type, and she is likely to need transfusions both during and after surgery.’

  ‘I’m AB,’ said Nick.

  ‘Thank you, but no use, I’m afraid. Annie is type A.’

  Much more usefully, Teresa was blood group O, which brought a momentary smile to the sister’s face. The sister asked if Teresa would mind giving some.

  ‘Of course not. Take as much as you need.’

  ‘We can’t take too much or you’ll need some of it back,’ said the sister gently.

  ‘Of course. I meant—’

  ‘I know what you meant,’ said the sister with a smile. ‘Please follow me and we’ll take it right away.’

  Nick took Teresa by the arm.

  ‘Will you be all right to stay here? Only I have to get back to Tabley Wood and assess the damage to the Hurricane. If it’s beyond repair I’ll need to request an immediate replacement.’

  ‘Of course. I’m only too glad to be able to do something useful, even if it’s just having a needle stuck in my arm.’

  ‘Don’t minimise it. What you give could turn out to be the difference between life and death. I’ve seen it. A single pint can make the difference.’

  The sister nodded in agreement.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Nick kissed Teresa and hurried away. Teresa heard the screech of his tyres on the tarmac outside, and was then taken through to a side room and prepped to give blood.

  As her arm was cleaned, and strapped up to raise a vein, Teresa imagined Annie lying unconscious, her life hanging in the balance. A lump of emotion formed in her throat, prompting tears to well in her eyes. She blinked them back and forced herself to watch the thin, red stream of blood pass out of her arm and into the blood bag.

  What if, even with my contribution, they still don’t have enough to save Annie? She took several deep breaths, closed her eyes, composed her thoughts for several moments, and addressed God.

  You haven’t heard much from me since Connie died. I won’t apologise. I’m sure the number of times you hear from my mother makes up for my relative silence. But I’m speaking to you now. Not on my behalf, but for a friend. I won’t waste your time. Just save Annie. Everyone’s doing what they can here, but you might have more sway. Just save her. Not for my benefit. Because you should.

  ‘Amen.’

  Teresa hadn’t meant to say the word out loud, but old Catholic habits die hard. She glanced up at the nurse taking her blood, and saw she wore a silver crucifix around her neck on a thin chain. The nurse smiled at Teresa knowingly, and rechecked the blood flow. Teresa felt suddenly self-conscious, as if the nurse could have divined the exact nature and context of her prayer. She rested her head back and closed her eyes once more.

  Why take her now? What purpose would it serve? Don’t do this. Not this. Anything but this.

  Chapter 59

  Erica, Kate and Laura had been sitting with Will for several hours. They had read to him for a time, and then helped him get comfortable for sleep, and watched him drift off. They then sat and quietly shared memories about him until he was prompted from unconsciousness and watched them, smiling, before eventually rolling back into sleep for another brief period. Such was the cycle as Will’s life approached its end. He’d been home from the hospital for two weeks but now seemed to be slipping quickly away.

  Will had been asleep when they heard a loud bang nearby, causing the women to turn towards the window.

  ‘Did the noise wake you?’ asked Erica.

  Will blinked slowly at her.

  ‘A car backfired outside, darling.’

  Will looked at them for a brief moment and slowly closed his eyes once more.

  ‘Do you think he understood what you said?’ asked Laura quietly. ‘I no longer know what he understands and what he doesn’t. Do you think he even understands what a car backfiring means anymore?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Erica. ‘I assume he does.’

  ‘I assume he understands everything we say,’ said Kate. ‘But it’s difficult. He says so little now. And it’s not always connected to what we may have said to him, so I don’t know if he thinks he’s having a conversation, or just saying whatever’s in his mind.’

  They watched Will as he drew heavily on the oxygen pouring into his airway through his face mask. Almost as if he sensed his wife and daughters looking at him, Will opened his eyes. They took a moment to focus on the space around him, a moment for him to recognise where he was, and who these three faces looking at him belonged to. Finally, his lips slowly curled into the rough shape of his once-dazzling smile.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ said Erica warmly. ‘Welcome back.’

  Will blinked slowly, and with some effort extended his arm so that his hand touched Erica’s. She instantly placed her hand in his and waited for him to slowly wrap his fingers around it. But this time he did not. Erica looked down and watched as his fingers flexed feebly without managing to encapsulate Erica’s hand. After a few moments, Will’s muscles gave up and Erica’s hand lay on Will’s open palm. She gripped his hand instead, and looked at his face, sensing the fight to remain alive was draining from him. His eyes looked intently at her, the dark brown irises devoid of their customary gloss. After a moment, his mouth started to open and then close. Kate sensed he wanted to speak and reached forward and carefully pulled the oxygen mask to one side. Will followed her movements with his eyes and took a long, deep breath. He looked at Laura, then Kate, and finally Erica. She moved closer, putting her ear to his mouth.

  ‘I think . . . it’s time to . . . let someone . . . else have a go . . .’ he croaked, almost inaudibly, in the hoarse whisper that had replaced his voice. All of them heard his words, and immediately understood what he meant.

  Laura felt her throat tighten. Erica clasped Will’s hand tight. Kate’s vision became cloudy with tears.

  ‘My three beautiful . . . girls . . .’ he whispered as he exhaled.

  Will looked at them and tried to smile once more. Kate reached forward to replace the oxygen mask across his face. He rested the back of his head against his pillow and closed his eyes. His chest took an age to rise again, and another age to fall.

  ‘Mum . . . ?’ Laura’s voice was low and fearful.

  Erica turned to her youngest daughter and looked at her with a steadfast gaze. She could feel that the corners of her mouth were involuntarily turned downwards with sadness, but fought the overwhelming
urge to fall apart.

  ‘We have to let him leave, darling. We can’t insist that he stay on like this. Because he will try, you know that. He will try his utmost for us, as he always has. And it isn’t fair.’

  Erica managed to make her voice sound soft yet firm and in control. It reminded her daughters of how she used to speak to them when they were small children.

  Kate placed her hand gently on Laura’s shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze. Erica leaned forward so that her mouth was against Will’s right ear.

  ‘Go, my darling,’ she whispered. ‘I have never loved you more, and I shall never stop loving you. But you can go free now. You don’t have to stay for us. We’ll be fine. Because of you.’

  Erica rested her head on his shoulder and calmly stroked Will’s head with her right hand. A single tear slipped out of her eye and slid slowly down her cheek as she closed her eyes and listened to his chest slowly fill with air like a ruptured bellows, before slowly emptying once again. She stayed in that position for what felt like hours, soothed by the sound of his chest slowly reinflating after each exhale, according to its lifelong rhythm. Until, suddenly, it did not.

  He’s gone.

  Erica lifted her head and looked at Will’s face. His eyes were closed and his mouth slightly ajar. But his breathing had ceased. She could feel the last of his warmth through her fingertips. Everything in the room became suddenly still. Specks of dust gliding lazily across beams of late afternoon sunlight seemed to momentarily halt in their passage through the air.

  Laura looked at her father’s face. It seemed more relaxed than she had seen it since the Spitfire crash. She thought she had prepared herself for this, yet realised she wasn’t remotely prepared for it. She heard her sister begin to sob beside her and took Kate in her arms, holding on to her tightly.

  Erica lay against her husband as Laura gently rocked Kate back and forth, none of them resisting the tears that started to freely flow. Eventually, Erica forced herself to sit up. She gathered her daughters to her, and held them close.

  They remained this way long into the night.

  Chapter 60

  Pat was standing behind the trestle table in St Mark’s, ladling soup into a refugee’s bowl, when she heard what sounded like a door being loudly slammed near by. Everyone looked round. Pat wondered if the wind had slammed the church door closed, but when she looked she saw it was still open, and people were still wandering in out of the rain.

  Her thoughts swiftly returned to Marek’s letter, and to how he might respond to her own. Though the arrival of Marek’s first letter two weeks earlier had been an immense moment of happiness, Pat was eager to establish a reliable line of communication so as to deepen their relationship and seriously discuss the future. She had hoped Marek might reply to her own letter by return of post, but when it failed to materialise she hoped a new letter from him would be no more than a week away. It was now almost two, and nothing had come. She understood he would be busy with the new training he’d alluded to, but the longer Pat had to wait before hearing from him, the more difficult it was to keep doubts, old and new, from creeping into her mind.

  She tried to persuade herself she was being over-anxious. Yet the line of contact now connecting her to Marek felt so fragile and vulnerable that she was unable to feel confident that it would be sustained. She had written as much to Marek.

  I have no wish to write this, but you could be consumed by the war and I would never learn why or where. If there is a list of loved ones you can ask to be informed in the event of your death, please, please include me. I have lived in hope of hearing from you since your departure from Great Paxford, and almost gave up. Not knowing where you were, or how you felt, was the most desolate feeling in the world. It all but shattered my nerves. I have grown used to living with unhappiness living with Bob. But uncertainty eats away at a person from the inside out. Write back quickly, my love . . .

  But he hadn’t.

  Perhaps his letter’s been waylaid. If the Germans are targeting the railways it could be stuck in a sack in a siding. Will he write again if he doesn’t hear from me soon? Should I write again in lieu of hearing back from him? Has he decided not to write again? Did I write something, some line, that pushed him away somehow?

  Pat kept checking the door to see if Erica might walk through, hopefully with a letter for her. But she didn’t.

  I hope everything is all right with Will.

  She noticed more refugees in St Mark’s on this night than on the previous nights she had been here.

  The weather’s enough to drive a fox indoors.

  News of Great Paxford WI’s initiative had clearly spread, and more and more people were being drawn to the church by the seasonally inclement weather and dropping temperature.

  The queue for food snaked around several pews. Pat served as fast as she could to meet demand. She found it helped distract her from negative thoughts about Marek’s failure to reply. She barely looked up as she ladled soup from cauldron to bowl, cauldron to bowl, as the refugees nodded their thanks before walking on, keeping the queue moving at a brisk pace. On previous nights, Pat had heard one of Mrs Talbot’s friends complain that the trekkers seldom voiced their thanks for the food and shelter, calling them ‘ungrateful’. Pat felt their sincere nods of appreciation communicated thanks enough.

  Basic decency doesn’t require a slap on the back. It should be the norm.

  As soup was dispensed from the cauldron more was added to it from the stove in the vestry. Pat continued to fill bowls with soup until the queue eventually began to dwindle. With her attention focused on the remaining refugees, she failed to notice a stocky-looking man wearing a cap low over his brow saunter into the church alone, look briefly around, then join the end of the soup queue. Had the church been full of paranoid local villagers and not folk from out of the area, someone might have nudged the person next to them to whisper, ‘Is that him? The Nazi pilot? What do you think? Don’t look! Out of the corner of your eye. Well? Go and find a policeman!’

  The man took a bowl from the stack, shuffled forward, and patiently held out his bowl when it was his turn. He watched as Pat expertly poured the soup from the ladle into the bowl. When she had finished he said in a soft voice, ‘Thank you, Patricia.’

  For the briefest of moments Pat failed to question how the refugee standing before her knew her name. She looked at him, puzzled. Had they spoken on a previous night? There was something familiar about him. His height, and breadth across the shoulders. His hands. It was then that he lifted his head and Pat saw Marek smiling at her from under his cap, his pale blue eyes fixed on her. Pat’s eyes widened in shock, the ladle slipping out of her fingers and clattering against the side of the cauldron before disappearing into the soup.

  ‘Marek . . . !’ she said so quietly that she barely heard it herself.

  ‘Hello, my love,’ he whispered back. ‘I had to come . . .’

  Chapter 61

  Teresa had been dozing at Annie’s bedside for a couple of hours when she was woken by a loud noise that sounded like a car door being banged shut on the drive outside. She had been determined to be present when Annie woke from the anaesthetic, but the consequences of having her night’s sleep interrupted sixteen hours earlier had gradually snuck up on her as morning passed into afternoon and then into early evening. She had grabbed a bite to eat along the way, and Nick had popped back from Tabley Wood around three o’clock to check on Annie’s progress. The surgery to repair a torn artery in her leg and reset several broken bones had been extensive. He would have liked to have stayed at Annie’s bedside with Teresa, but couldn’t afford the time.

  ‘I wish I didn’t have to, but I do have to get back,’ he said.

  ‘She’ll perfectly understand,’ said Teresa. ‘I’ll stay.’

  ‘She wouldn’t expect you to,’ said Nick.

  ‘Everyone should wake up from a serious operation to a friendly face. Have you contacted her family?’

  Nick nodd
ed.

  ‘They all live in Africa. I’ve sent telegrams advising them of the situation, and promising further information as it arises. I’ve written too many telegrams of that ilk since taking over from Bowers. Never imagined for a moment I’d be writing one about Annie.’

  ‘Is there a boyfriend in England you could contact?’ Teresa asked, concluding the expected line of query, though she knew the answer.

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  Nick looked at Teresa for a moment, weighing up how to respond. He took a deep breath. Evidently, there were certain areas where Teresa was not as worldly as he believed. After a moment he said, ‘Annie doesn’t have boyfriends, darling. There’s something you may as well know about Annie. Should she pull through, it may allay future misunderstanding.’

  Nick had adopted a conspiratorial tone.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Teresa. ‘Misunderstanding about what?’

  ‘You’re not to mention this to anyone . . .’

  ‘Mention what?’

  ‘What I’m about to tell you.’

  Nick glanced up and down the ward then moved his head closer to Teresa.

  ‘Annie doesn’t have boyfriends because she prefers . . . female companionship.’

  Teresa looked at Nick and blinked a few times, struggling to digest that Nick knew about Annie, had known all along.

  ‘Female companionship?’ she said.

  ‘She prefers the company of other women,’ said Nick, very much hoping this would be as explicit as he needed to be. He placed his forefinger over his mouth. ‘Mum is very much the word.’

  Teresa saw an opportunity to glean more information about Annie.

  ‘How do you know this?’ she asked.

  ‘Annie always has a lot of chaps buzzing around her in the mess. I noticed she never went farther than drinks with any of them. And never mentioned a chap she was seeing. On one occasion, one of the boys with too much beer inside him tried his luck and Annie politely declined his offer. He persisted and Annie told him in no uncertain terms she wasn’t interested. He accused her of being a lesbian – or a word to that effect – and Annie threw her drink in his face and walked out. But . . . I hadn’t been drinking that night, and I could see he’d struck a chord.’