by Anne Bennett
‘Don’t know why you’re all at sixes and sevens about it, anyroad,’ Polly said. ‘In your heart of hearts, this is the outcome that you wanted.’
Marion didn’t deny it. ‘All right, maybe I did deep down, but I just didn’t think our Sarah would be so upset.’
‘Why on earth not?’ Polly said. ‘She loved Sam, wanted to marry him, despite his disability. She told you that much. What did you expect her to do, go and dance a jig up the High Street?’
‘No, but … oh, I don’t know. Course she thinks her disfigured face put him off.’
‘Why would it?’ Polly said. ‘I mean, quite apart from anything else, he can’t see what she looks like.’
‘I know, but she told Peggy that first day when she came round, like, that the men sharing his ward had been describing her face to Sam, taking the mickey and that, and it put him off. Peggy said, though, she couldn’t see that ever happening. There are so many badly wounded and damaged servicemen there, no one would mock anyone else. They’d probably know that Sarah’s injuries were due to some explosion or other.’
‘So why did he finish it?’
Marion spread her hands helplessly. ‘Peggy told me that it was her parents, who I suppose thought as I did, and told Sam that he would tie her down, that she would be throwing her life away, you know, the sort of things I said to you. The truth is that, probably for the best intentions, Sam’s parents succeeded in tearing apart Sam and Sarah and I don’t know that Sarah will ever get over it. I daren’t even speak the man’s name, and she is so cold with Peggy. Now she never speaks to her unless it’s absolutely necessary. I suppose it’s because Peggy is a link to Sam, who she is trying to rub out of her life, but it makes the atmosphere difficult at home.’
The only one Peggy could speak to about her brother was Violet, so Violet knew although Sam was improving physically, emotionally he was suffering just as much as Sarah. On Good Friday, as the forge was closed for Easter, Peggy had fitted in an extra visit to Sam and found him very despondent.
‘I mean, all the shrapnel is out now, and to all intents and purposes he is recovering,’ she told Violet, ‘but the flashbacks and nightmares I told you about have got steadily worse, and he has even done a bit of sleepwalking. After Mom and Dad visited last Sunday he had to be moved into a private room to avoid disturbing the other patients, and where he could be watched more closely.’
‘Ah, Peg, I’m really sorry for you.’
‘He told me today he thinks his life is over,’ Peggy said. ‘He said he can’t see the point of going on. Tell you the truth, I’m dreading going to see him again tomorrow.’
‘D’you want me to come with you?’
‘I would welcome it, Vi, but I never know how Sam is going to be, so better not.’
So Peggy went alone to see her brother. She had just entered the hospital when the doctor called her into the office.
‘Your brother’s fellow patients told one of the nurses the other day about words your brother had with a young lady just before the nightmares began again. Was it that she couldn’t go on with the relationship because he is blind?’
‘It was almost the exact opposite to that,’ Peggy said. ‘Sarah would have had no trouble accepting Sam’s blindness, but my parents thought that he should release her to find someone else and convinced him it was the right thing to do.’
‘And did she want to be released?’
Peggy gave a definite shake of her head. ‘She is broken-hearted. And you say Sam is …’
‘Without putting too fine a point on it, my dear, your brother’s mental balance is beginning to worry me,’ the doctor said. ‘Of course it must be the decision of the young people themselves, but I would say that he needs that young lady more than ever.’
Peggy soon saw how ill Sam had become. He would start a sentence and lose the thread of it, lose concentration as he jumped from one subject to another, and his agitated manner worried her greatly. Peggy was angry with her parents for coercing Sam into finishing with Sarah. All the way home she thought of her beloved brother and the sadness that seemed to surround him, and Sarah, who was filled with heartache, and decided that enough was enough.
‘D’you think I should talk to her, tell her how he is?’ she asked Violet.
‘Course I do,’ Violet said. ‘Don’t know why you let it get to this stage in the first place.’ And then she added, ‘Tell you what, if it was Richard I’d do whatever it took.’
Peggy stared at her. ‘You and Richard? I thought you were just friends?
‘We were when we started writing to one another but I like him even more now I’ve been writing for a while, of course, I haven’t seen him for ages. After the war we’ll see … But Sam and Sarah are made for each other. It’s as plain on the nose on your face.’
‘So you think I should talk to Sarah?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Violet said. ‘The sooner the better. And it has to be up to Sarah because Sam can hardly come tripping down to see her.’
So immediately, before she got cold feet, Peggy sought Sarah out. She was in the kitchen helping her mother prepare the evening meal and when Peggy asked if she could talk to her, she saw the wary look flood across her face.
‘Talk away,’ she said.
‘I mean in private,’ Peggy said, and her eyes sought Marion’s over Sarah’s bent head.
So when Sarah said, ‘I must help my mother,’ Marion said, ‘It’s virtually done now, just needs to be put in the oven. Go and see what Peggy wants.’
There was nowhere private but the room Sarah shared with the twins, and Sarah followed Peggy up there reluctantly and, once inside, with the door shut, said ungraciously, ‘What do you want anyroad?’
‘I wanted to ask you how much you love my brother?’
Sarah said stiffly, ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘You must, because both you and Sam are pining for one another.’
‘Sam is?’
‘I’ll say he is.’
‘Then why …?’
‘He thought that he was giving you your freedom to look for another, and my parents helped him reach that decision.’
‘It isn’t to do with the way I look?’
‘Of course not, nothing at all to do with your face.’
Peggy saw Sarah give a deep sigh. ‘Peggy, I don’t want anyone else.’
‘I know.’
‘But that hardly matters because he finished with me, so what’s the point of all this?’
‘Well, if I loved a man like you so obviously love Sam, I would fight for him.’
‘And how do you suggest I do that?’
‘You could start with a letter telling him exactly how you feel about him.’
‘After what he said to me you expect me to—‘
‘Sarah, he’s ill,’ Peggy said. ‘He doesn’t know how much he wants you, but he does need you and the doctor has said that himself.’
‘What do you mean, he’s ill?’
‘He is having flashbacks about the war and nightmares, and now he has begun sleepwalking.’
Sarah remembered her father having that awful nightmare that woke her and the twins not long after he came home from the hospital, and that Mom said he was helped by talking it over with their uncle Pat. She said, ‘He doesn’t need me, but he will probably be helped by talking it over with someone.’
‘Yeah, like you.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘The doctor said he needs you,’ Peggy said, ‘and I would say that he knows what he’s talking about.’
‘A letter, you said,’ Sarah said grudgingly. ‘And what good is a letter to a blind man?’
‘One of the nurses will read it to him,’ Peggy said assuredly. ‘I’ve seen them do that for other patients.’
‘That cuts out our writing really personal stuff, like about feelings and that.’
‘Will you just write the letter? If you post it today, even with the Easter Holiday it should reach him by Tuesday.’
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br /> ‘I’ll write it,’ said Sarah. ‘But I don’t hold out much hope it will make any difference.’
She began that evening before the twins were sent to bed, and though she hadn’t intended the letter to be too intimate and personal because a nurse would be reading it to Sam, once she began the words flowed out like a stream.
She told him of the way her stomach contracted when she just spoke his name, and of the butterflies in her stomach when she’d read his letters, and how the endearments he used often caused the breath to stop in her throat. She told him that she remembered every minute of the first visit he had made to their house and, despite being so young, she believed she had loved him from the first moment she had seen him. That love had deepened when she’d met him again when she was sixteen, and then the letters he wrote just made her love him even more.
She went on to say that when she saw him in the hospital bed, even knowing he was blind made no difference to the way that she felt about him. She would always love him, heart, body and soul till the breath left her body. In fact, she said, she didn’t think she could live without him.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The nurses were surprised when Sam received a letter.
‘Maybe from someone who doesn’t know he’s blind,’ one suggested.
‘Maybe,’ another said. ‘Anyroad, whoever it’s from he’ll have to know about it and one of us will probably have to read it to him.’
‘I’ll do that if you like,’ said the first nurse. ‘I feel quite sorry for him, to tell the truth.’
‘Who’s it from?’ Sam asked later as the nurse told him he had had a letter delivered that morning.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t opened it yet. Do you want me to do that and read it to you?’
‘Please.’
The nurse slit the envelope and withdrew the letter. ‘It’s from someone called Sarah.’
Sam stiffened on the bed and said through tightened lips, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
However, the nurse had scanned the letter and she said to Sam, ‘Oh, Mr Wagstaffe, I really think you should hear what she has to say.’
Sam clenched his hands into fists and, through tightened lips and with tremendous trepidation, said, ‘Go on then.’
The nurse began tentatively and then grew in confidence. The love that that girl had for Sam Wagstaffe could be lifted off the pages. The words tore into Sam’s heart and even the nurse began to cry. When she finished, she crushed the letter to her heart as she said brokenly, ‘If I was you, Mr Wagstaffe, I wouldn’t let that girl go, because a love like that only comes once in a lifetime.’
For a moment Sam couldn’t speak. He struggled to control his shuddering sobs and was aware of tears seeping from his eyes and soaking the dressings covering them. In the end, the nurse, against all regulations, put her arms around him, and when he was calmer and able to speak he said, ‘I need to send a telegram.’
‘I’ll see to it,’ the nurse promised.
Later that day a telegraph boy knocked on the Whittakers’ door. Only Marion and Sarah were at home, and Marion gave a cry of distress and her hand flew to her mouth when she opened the door and saw the boy there. Sarah, alerted by her mother’s cry, had followed her into the hall, her face blanched with fear as her mother took the telegram with trembling fingers.
‘It’s for you, Sarah,’ she said, and Sarah, greatly puzzled, ripped it open. There were only four words: ‘PLEASE COME. LOVE SAM.’
Sarah’s face was a beam of happiness as the telegraph boy said, ‘Is there any reply?’
‘No, no reply,’ Sarah said, and she shut the door and leaned against it with a sigh of happiness.
‘I must go to him,’ she said to her mother as she led the way to the living room. ‘You must see that?’
‘Of course I see,’ Marion said. ‘I’m not a monster, Sarah. The only reservation I had was because I didn’t want you to saddle yourself with a blind man, but I would rather you be with someone of your choosing, whatever his disability, than someone you didn’t care for.’
‘I would never marry a man I didn’t care for,’ Sarah said. ‘And without Sam my life is meaningless.’
‘Then your place is with him.’
‘But I won’t be able to see him until tomorrow because visiting will be over for today,’ Sarah said. ‘Oh, Mom, how will I manage waiting until then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Marion said. ‘Except by reminding yourself that you have the rest of your lives in front of you.’
‘Maybe,’ Sarah said. ‘I wrote to him, you know?’
‘Did you?’
‘Peggy sort of asked me to after she went to see Sam last Saturday,’ Sarah said. ‘She said that he has begun having nightmares and flashbacks and even started sleepwalking. Peggy suggested that I write and tell him how I really feel about him.’
‘Ah, these men sometimes suffer far too much,’ Marion said with sympathy. ‘I remember your father when he came home to convalesce.’
‘So do I,’ Sarah said. ‘Anyroad, I’ll go and see how things are between us, but until then I’d like to keep this telegram a secret, just till tomorrow.’
Marion looked at her anxious daughter, biting her bottom lip in consternation, and with a smile she said, ‘What telegram was that, then?’
Sarah was full of trepidation as she made her way to the hospital the next day. She had told no one and so Peggy had not been able to prepare her for what Sam looked like now that all the poking about in his body for shrapnel had been done. His face in particular was pitted and scarred, and his unseeing eyes, now uncovered, were a little unnerving.
When Sarah went through the gates of the hospital she saw that some of the inmates had taken advantage of the good weather and were in the grounds, and she tried to hide her shock at the terrible injuries many men were sporting. There were plenty dis figured in some way, and others with missing limbs walking with crutches, or in wheelchairs, being wheeled in the sunshine by nurses. She also saw a blind servicemen being led outside by a less damaged companion, but there was no sign of Sam.
Peggy had told her how to get to Sam’s room and she saw he was aware of her as soon as she stepped inside and he turned his head.
‘Sarah?’
She looked at him sitting on the chair beside his bed and saw the number of red, angry-looking pockmarks and blemishes marring his lovely face.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked into the silence.
‘Studying your face,’ Sarah said truthfully, as she crossed the room to sit in the chair placed ready beside him.
‘Is it hideous?’ Sam asked almost fearfully.
Sarah heard the tone and understood it and so she answered nonchalantly. ‘No, it’s not bad at all. Looks sore, though.’
‘It is a bit, though it’s better that they’re all out,’ Sam said. ‘They say I’ll look better than this when the scars are all fully healed and start to weather in.’
‘Hospitals love those words “weather in”, ‘ Sarah said, and let her eyes meet Sam’s. It was hard to believe that he could see nothing, for those dark brown eyes looked just as she remembered them. She felt so sorry for him that never again would he see the world around him, nor would his eyes sparkle as they used when he laughed or smiled. But she kept those sad remembrances to herself. What she said instead was, ‘Mind you, they sometimes get it right. My face definitely looks better than it did.’
Sam fumbled for Sarah’s hand and, when she grasped it, he said hoarsely, ‘I prayed you would come.’
‘Of course I would come when you asked me to,’ she said with a smile. ‘Even if your manner of summons did almost send my mother into an apoplectic fit.’
Sam gave a rueful smile because he could well understand why the sight of the telegraph boy would strike fear into a person’s heart. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of any other way of contacting you quickly. I needed to know if you meant all those things you wrote in that letter.’
‘Every word.’
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‘I don’t know what the future holds for me.’
‘None of us knows what the future holds,’ Sarah said. ‘And maybe it’s as well. But whatever the future, isn’t it better to face it together?’
‘Are you sure? Absolutely sure?’
‘Yes I am. Of course I am.’
Sam’s voice was still full of doubt. ‘You’re very young. My parents pointed that out to me as well.’
‘Does that mean that I feel any less?’
‘No,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t mean that, but I am many years older than you. I’m twenty-seven.’
‘Well, neither of us can help that.’
‘No, I know.’
‘Sam, will you stop fretting?’ Sarah said. She leaned forward and gently touched his lips with hers before saying, ‘Old or young, blind or not, none of this matters. What does matter is the love I have for you that is unshakeable. You talk of the future – well, mine is meaningless without you in it. If I lost you, as I thought I had, I didn’t really care what happened to me then. I didn’t really want to go on.’
‘Neither did I,’ Sam admitted. ‘I felt that I was doing the right thing for you. But when you were gone from me my life seemed futile and I began to wonder why I’d been spared in that explosion. I was the only one, you know.’
‘Were you?’ Sarah’s voice was sympathetic. ‘That must have been hard to take.’
‘It was hard to cope with the fact that they were dead at all,’ Sam said. ‘I know that all soldiers are at risk, but we had been through so much and we were a tight group, just six of us and such good mates. Do you remember the roses I sent you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, they came from one of those men. See, all my mates felt sorry for me when I explained what had happened to you. One of them was having a pleasant little dalliance with a florist in Dover, and when he told her about us and what had happened to you he asked her if she could help and she donated ten red roses from her private stock.’
‘How kind of her,’ Sarah said. ‘They were the most beautiful roses. And how lovely of him to think to ask her.’