Keep the Home Fires Burning

by Anne Bennett

  ‘We could write to her,’ Magda said. ‘I’m going to write tonight.’

  ‘Course we could,’ Peggy said. ‘As long as it’s cheerful, positive stuff.’

  The result of this was that Marion had a bundle of letters to deliver from the twins and Peggy and Violet when she and Polly went to the hospital the following day.

  ‘Everyone all right?’ Marion asked as the two of them boarded the tram.

  ‘Never better,’ Polly said. ‘The hospital doctor thinks Pat may always walk with a limp, but that won’t kill him, will it? Anyroad, he isn’t going into munitions again, and the girls have no desire to go back either. They were proper shook up, and they lost friends too, and that takes some getting over. Most of the building is still unusable, in any case.’

  ‘And do the girls like the new jobs Orla got them? GEC, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, in Electric Avenue in Witton,’ Polly said. ‘As you know, Orla’s been there since she left school and she was just waiting, she said, till she was sixteen to follow her sisters into the munitions, though she’s gone right off that now. Anyroad, luckily they got taken on together and all three are now working in the winding shop.’

  ‘Do they miss the money?

  ‘I suppose they do, but money ain’t everything, is it?’ Polly said. ‘Anyroad, the pay ain’t bad, and it’s a damned sight safer place to work. Added to that, these are jobs they can probably hold on to even when this bloody war is over and the men come back. Pat’s going to look for a job there, or somewhere similar, he says, as soon as they sign him off. Tell you the truth, I’ll be glad when they do. I’m used to him going to work now and it gets right on my nerves him being in the house all day.’

  ‘I bet,’ said Marion. ‘You can get nothing done with men lounging about the place. Come on, this is our stop. Let’s go and see if we can cheer Sarah up.’

  Sarah first skin graft operation was scheduled for Tuesday 6 June, and Marion and Polly visited her the evening before. They wouldn’t be able to see her on the day of the operation. Her head was no longer bandaged – although her face still had dressings over it – and the long vivid scar right across her head was red and angry-looking. The stubble on her head did nothing to hide it.

  ‘Does it look awful?’ Sarah asked anxiously. ‘The doctor wouldn’t let me see yet.’

  Marion’s heart ached for her daughter and she fought to answer her without showing her own distress. ‘Well, whatever it was that hit you did a good job of it. It was a wonder your skull wasn’t fractured.’

  ‘I can feel the ridge all the way along,’ Sarah said, feeling gingerly with her fingertips.

  ‘It’s probably a bit swollen now,’ Polly said. ‘You know, after they messed with it taking the stitches out and that. Anyroad, your hair will cover any scar that’s left when it all settles down. You’ll probably have to have your hair cut in a shorter style to sort of match the hair that grows over the gash on your head.’

  ‘I’ve always had long hair,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s hard to think of it short.’

  ‘Oh, it might make a new woman of you,’ Polly said airily. ‘Sam will fall in love with you all over again.’

  ‘Aunt Polly, what are you saying? Sam Wagstaffe has never fallen in love with me, and I don’t think he would care whether my hair was long or short.’

  ‘Oh, I think he would care very much about anything that concerns you,’ Polly said.

  Sarah stared at her aunt and her heart began hammering against her rib cage. She wondered if Polly meant what she had said or if she was joking.

  But it appeared that she was only having a bit of fun because Marion, seeing her daughter’s slight agitation, said, ‘Show me a man that hasn’t got a viewpoint about anything and everything, because he would be a fairly rare specimen. So rare, in fact, that I have never actually met one myself.’

  They laughed together and Sarah was able to relax because no one mentioned Sam again, though they talked of all and sundry, which Sarah knew was in an effort to cheer her up and keep her mind off what she had to face in the morning. She was grateful, because whenever she thought of the ordeal ahead, panic threatened to engulf her.

  It was late when Marion got home, and she was having a drink before bed and telling the family how Sarah was when there was the distinct sound of planes in the air and she was thrown into panic.

  ‘Dear God,’ she cried. ‘After all this time. I have nothing prepared, and there’s not even water in the kettle. Peggy, will you carry the blankets down to the cellar? God, it’s bound to be damp after not being used for so long, and I doubt I have any paraffin for the stove, and—‘

  ‘Marion, they’re not German planes,’ Violet said, crossing to the window.

  ‘Not German …’

  ‘She’s right,’ Peggy said. ‘German planes have a distinctive sort of intermittent sound. God, we should know. We’ve heard enough of them.’

  ‘And there have been no explosions,’ Violet said, easing the blackout curtain from the window slightly. ‘But there are hundreds of planes, all right.’

  ‘And you are sure they’re not German?’

  ‘Come and see for yourself,’ Violet said.

  ‘I will,’ Marion said. ‘But I’m going into the garden to see properly.’

  ‘We’ll come with you,’ said Peggy.

  They were not the only ones outside. Many of the neighbours were standing watching as squadron after squadron flew over them, the drone reverberating in the night air. Deidre Whitehead’s father, who’d lived with his daughter since he had been bombed out the previous year, called over the fence, ‘This is it, I reckon. They’re emptying the airfields and the only reason for doing that is so they can protect the invasion fleet.’

  Marion felt tendrils of fear trickle down her spine because she knew the old man was right. There could be no other reason for all the Allied planes to be filling the skies.

  When the last planes were away in the distance, they returned to the house, but Marion took a long time to sleep. She knew this was it, the make-or-break that everyone was talking about, and she was mortally afraid for all of them.

  The following morning Marion still had the wireless on when Polly came in. Marion was not surprised to see her sister.

  ‘Thought there might be an announcement or summat,’ she said to Polly, ‘though there was nowt on the news.’

  ‘I know,’ Polly said. ‘I listened too, but, God, all them planes must mean summat’s afoot.’

  ‘Deidre’s Whitehead’s dad said they were emptying the airfields so the planes could protect the invasion.’

  ‘Pat said summat similar.’

  Suddenly, there was a break in the programme and then the announcer came on air, apologised and said that the BBC had received an official communiqué from Reuters News Agency which stated that, under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied Naval Forces had begun landing Allied Armies that morning on the northern coast of France.

  ‘That’s it then,’ Polly said. ‘Can’t say that I’m that surprised.’

  ‘Nor me,’ Marion said. ‘God be with them all.’

  Sarah was in a great deal of pain when she came round after the operation, a raw and excruciating pain that she had never felt the like of before. In the end, the doctor administered morphine. To all intents and purposes, though, the operation had been a complete success, as Dr Lancaster told Polly and Marion the following day. The burned areas were covered with gauze, and Sarah’s eyes were glazed over, for the morphine only blurred the edges of the pain.

  Marion, who had seen what Sarah had looked like as she lay in the hole before she was rescued, wasn’t completely surprised, but Polly was shocked to the core. She had been told about the battering Sarah’s face had taken and that it had been burned in places, but it was one thing being told and quite another seeing it for herself. She realised that she had assumed that when the bandages were off, Sarah’s face would more or less be returned to normal.

  She was so shaken that
she wanted to weep for the young girl so tragically disfigured, but instead of giving way to that she knew she must help her sister dredge up incidents from the family to entertain her. She wasn’t entirely successful, and was glad that Sarah was too drowsy to notice her reticence, and she was ashamed of the relief she felt when Sarah’s eyes fluttered shut.

  ‘She’s asleep, Marion, God love her,’ Polly said.

  Marion leaned over and gave Sarah a kiss, and the two women tiptoed from the room.

  It wasn’t only the grafts that were painful for Sarah, but the stinging behind both ears where the skin had been removed, and the smarting saline solution that was applied to both areas, which the doctor explained would help with healing. Sarah hoped that she was right because the skin behind her ears was beginning to feel quite raw, and the grafts often pulled as they tightened.

  Every few days more grafts took place, but all were done by the very end of June, though Sarah’s face was still protected from infection by gauze pads. Twice a day the whole area was lubricated with special oils that the doctor said would make the grafts bed in better. Dr Lancaster also examined her pelvis and Sarah was very pleased when she said that she could sit up.

  ‘The next thing is walking, I suppose,’ Sarah said, ‘and then I can go home.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘We’ll start physio next week when your skin should be feeling a lot less tender.’

  ‘Can I see what I look like?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the doctor said. ‘Some of the latest skin grafts are very raw still. You have to have a little more patience.’

  All right for her to say that, Sarah thought when she’d gone. It’s not her face. She ran her finger over it gently and then she swung her legs out of bed. The room swum when she tried to stand and she hung on the bed until it stopped. Her legs felt very weak, though, and wobbled alarmingly as she made her way across the room. She knew if any of the nurses on the main ward spotted her they would send her back to bed and so she opened the door cautiously. She was in luck, for the nurses were busy at the other end of the ward, and she slipped through the door.

  Sarah had no idea where the bathrooms were and as she stood wondering what to do a nurse came out of a room further down the corridor, carrying a bedpan. Fortunately she turned the other way and didn’t see Sarah pressed against the wall. Sarah made for that room as quickly as she could, knowing that there would probably be mirrors and she would see what she really looked like.

  Moments later she stood in front of the mirror, gently removed her dressings and looked at herself, only she could scarcely believe that the person looking back at her was herself at all. She didn’t know this ugly, grotesque creature, and she touched her face tentatively, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes. All her imagining what her face looked like had not come anywhere near the reality.

  She gave a cry of pure distress and she watched her mouth drop open and her eyes widen as she felt the ridge of the deep cut that had been gouged in her head, which was still visible because her hair was only just starting to grow back. But it was her face that mattered most. Two bright red scars had been scored across her face and the burns on either side of her nose were like a pitted and crazy zigzag mosaic of bright pink skin and normal-coloured skin. The effect was so utterly hideous she could barely look at herself, so she could just imagine how others would react. Suddenly it was too much for her. Her legs gave way and she collapsed on the floor.

  She must have lost consciousness because when she came round she was back in her own room, fresh dressings were covering her face and Dr Lancaster’s concerned eyes were looking down at her.

  ‘How are you feeling now, Sarah?’ she asked.

  ‘How do you expect me to feel?’ Sarah snapped. ‘You have turned me into some sort of ogre! A freak!’

  The tears came then, not any sort of controlled weeping but a paroxysm of grief that shook Sarah’s whole body, and Dr Lancaster forgot her professional status and gathered Sarah into her arms.

  Even as she held her, though, and tried to give comfort, the doctor knew that the one thing Sarah had to realise was that her face would never look the same as it had before the accident. The damage had been too great. But Dr Lancaster did have a lot of experience – the war had seen to that – and she was convinced that the new skin would weather and the pitting would even out, even disappear. When this war eventually drew to a close and cosmetics were back in the shops, Sarah would be able to do a great deal to cover the scars on her face. However, she knew Sarah wasn’t really ready to hear this now because first she had to grieve for the pretty girl she once had been.

  Much later Sarah sat in her room and remembered the monstrous face that had looked back at her through the glass. No one would want to know anyone with a face like that, she decided; she would be an embarrassment to be seen with. What she needed to do was get out of hospital as quickly as possible and hide away at home where she didn’t have to see anyone she didn’t want to see.

  As for Sam … She felt the pang of loss as she realised that he too had been a part of her earlier life and she couldn’t drag him into this one. He didn’t deserve that. She wouldn’t be able to bear the revulsion in his eyes if he saw what she looked like now.

  Dr Lancaster was waiting for Marion and Polly when they entered the hospital, and she told them what had transpired, and Sarah’s reaction to it. Neither was surprised at Sarah’s shock as they had expected her to be upset, but when they saw her she was strangely calm, though her eyes looked strangely empty.

  ‘Like the essence of her had gone,’ Marion said to Peggy and Violet later after the twins had gone to bed.

  Peggy and Violet knew exactly what Marion meant.

  ‘I mean, I tried telling her that her face would look better in time, but she was having none of it. She said under her dressings she looked like some sort of gruesome gargoyle and she could never live and work among normal-looking people again. It was heartbreaking to listen to, because she meant every word, and the hopeless sort of bleak look in her eyes made me want to weep. What Sarah is looking at is the end of her life, and at not quite nineteen years old that is unbearably sad. I don’t know what I can do, what any of us can do, to make things any better for her.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Visiting Sarah was a trial after that. She didn’t seem to care if Marion and Polly were there or not, and they could talk about very little, for she showed no interest in the progress of the invasion or the family either.

  ‘They all inhabit a world I will never be part of ever again,’ she told her mother, and neither Marion or Polly could find an answer to that.

  She worked hard at the physio because her greatest desire was to recover enough to go home, where she imagined she would be safe, and by the very end of July she was physically ready to leave the hospital. Dr Lancaster was concerned about her emotional state, but there was nothing she could do about it. Anyway, she reasoned, familiar surroundings and her family around her could work wonders, and she arranged the transport to take Sarah home.

  When the ambulance arrived in Albert Road, Marion was so pleased that she lived in a community like that. All the neighbours had been shocked when they’d heard about Sarah, particularly when Marion had told them about her burns. They had asked about her often and knew she was coming home that day. Marion knew more than a few would be watching, but discreetly from behind net curtains, as they had when Bill had arrived home with his crocked-up leg in 1940.

  Polly, who had travelled with Marion in the ambulance, was surprised there was no one out on the streets to welcome them home, or shouting encouraging words from their doorsteps. Marion knew that Sarah would have hated everybody gawping at her like that, but Polly saw it as lack of concern.

  ‘We don’t live in each other’s pockets,’ Marion said in defence of her neighbours, ‘but they’re there if you need anything. Deidre next door is having the twins till we get Sarah settled in, and they’ll all be along later to ask about her.’

 
‘Hope they don’t expect to see her then,’ Polly said, because when they’d arrived home Sarah had said she was tired and had gone straight to her room.

  ‘Well, she did look worn out,’ Marion said. ‘It was probably a bit emotional for her, and they will understand that, I’m sure.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Polly said. ‘Or it might be just plain rudeness.’

  Marion sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I admit I was embarrassed earlier when she walked past the nurses that had cared for her, and the doctor that had performed delicate surgery on her, without a word to any of them.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Polly agreed. ‘I mean, me and you did all the thanking and the shaking of hands and that. Sarah got into that ambulance without a backward glance.’

  ‘I think maybe she didn’t want anyone to catch sight of her,’ Marion said. ‘You know what she’s like.’

  ‘I know what she’s like now,’ Polly said. ‘The children and your lodgers will get a shock, and not just over her face and that. I suppose you have prepared them?’

  ‘Course I have. I told them at the beginning how scarred she was and about the painful skin grafts, and how upset and touchy she was about the way she looked. I told Deidre as well, and that’s why she offered a hand with the twins.’

  ‘Shall I knock the door as I pass then?’ Polly said. ‘They’re probably champing at the bit to see Sarah.’

  ‘Oh, would you?’ said Marion. ‘They’re ever so excited she’s coming home.’

  Although the twins had taken on board what their mother had said, and had even, at her suggestion, removed the large mirror that had stood on the dressing table, it was a tremendous shock to them to see how different Sarah was. It wasn’t just her face, which Sarah kept semi-covered anyway with the gauze dressings, it was her attitude.

  She had always been so kind and gentle with them as they were growing up, and because of that the two girls had often asked her things or confided things that they would hate their mother to hear about, and she had never told on them. She had been a really smashing big sister, Magda and Missie were agreed on that, and they loved her very much. However, the Sarah who returned from hospital seemed completely disinterested in anything they said to her and often didn’t say anything at all. And when they lay beside her in bed, it was like sharing it with a plank of wood. It was very strange and unnerving for them because they had no idea what to do about it.