Keep the Home Fires Burning
Page 41
‘What’s this?’ Bill said.
‘Sam already has a weekly column in this paper,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s detailing his experiences in the war. They’re illustrated by another patient called Mike Malone. I’ll show you. We’ve kept the papers.’
‘Well, I never,’ Bill said, astounded.
‘So what about it, Mr Whittaker?’
‘Well, Bill?’ asked Marion.
Bill looked at the two young people still clasped together and almost felt the love sparking between them. He knew he was looking at something precious and very beautiful. Sarah was young yet, but had he the right to deny her happiness? If he had been asked, he would have said all he wanted for his children was that they found someone to share their life with that they loved as wholeheartedly as he did his Marion and he knew in Sam Wagstaffe Sarah had found her soul mate.
‘I risk being lynched by this mob if I say no,’ he said to Sam with a smile. ‘So I suppose I must say yes.’ He put out his hand. ‘Welcome to the family, Sam.’
Sam was staying the night, as he had before, and later, when Polly and Pat and their brood had gone home and the house grew quieter, Sam told Bill all about losing his sight because of the shock of the explosion. He showed Bill the columns in the papers and told him how that had all come about. However, Bill was learning much more about Sam by noticing how he was with the other members of his family. Even the children were easy with him, and everyone seemed to like him, which boded well for the future.
Much later and unnoticed, Sam and Sarah slipped out of the house and went for a walk hand in hand.
‘Look at the stars,’ Sarah said, ‘and the half-moon. It’s a rare sight to see such things in Birmingham’s smoky air, though it was even worse when the bombs were falling and incendiaries setting the whole place alight.’
‘At least that’s over,’ Sam said.
‘Yes,’ Sarah agreed. ‘It was a terrible war, and yet if it hadn’t happened we would probably never have met.’
‘Perish the thought,’ Sam said. ‘And I would still be a farm hand.’
‘I wouldn’t have minded being married to a farm hand.’
‘I know. I’m just saying without the war these sorts of opportunities wouldn’t arise.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Sarah conceded. ‘You tend to think nothing comes from war but death, destruction and tragedy.’
‘There is plenty of that too,’ Sam said. ‘But I think that we owe it to those that died to live life the best way we can, and to be honest I think my life would be incomplete if I hadn’t got you in it.’
‘Well you have, don’t worry,’ Sarah said, and in the darkness, with no one to see them, the passionate kiss they shared was the promise of good things to come.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are a great many people that I must also thank for getting this book on to the shelves at all. Those of you who read my website will no doubt be aware of the traumatic year 2009 was, and the start of 2010 was little better. In the spring my lovely husband Denis, who is always such a support to me, developed double pneumonia and pleurisy and was very ill for some time. His illness inevitably greatly affected my life, and therefore my attempts to write a book during this time. I have in the past referred to the team I work with as my security blanket and they reaffirmed that title in their unrelenting concern and sympathy for me as I battled on with the manuscript. And so my heartfelt thanks go to Susan Opie, who virtually took the whole thing apart and then helped me re-assemble it, and to Judith Murdoch my agent who also gave me such staunch support. At HarperCollins, thanks go to my editor, Victoria Hughes-Williams and my publisher, Sarah Ritherdon, both of whom were extremely sympathetic. Thanks to Yvonne who copy-edited the book and Amy Neilson, who will help me promote the finished product. I must also thank Judith Evans who started me off with HarperCollins in the first place and Peter Hawtin who listened to what I had to say and acted on it. Grateful thanks go out to the both of you.
My family, as always has helped me a great deal. My eldest daughter Nikki and her husband Steve have been terrific, and the children too — though officially Briony is a child no longer and even Kynan has reached his teens. My son Simon and his wife Carol are also a great support to me, and so are eleven-year-old Jake and nine-year-old Theo. Beth is still at home and was a big help when her father was so ill, as were Tamsin and Mark, who live locally. You will see that the dedication of this book is to Tamsin’s baby, Catrin Louise, who was born on 28th July 2010. She is truly wonderful and perhaps a new birth is a good omen of better days ahead for us all.
I value all my friends who are always there for me when things got tough; those I have had for years that I see as often as I can, those of you I meet each morning while dog walking, and my writer friends that I try and see once a month.
However, all this would be of no earthly use at all if you, my loyal readers, didn’t buy my books or borrow them from the library, so a sincere and wholehearted thank you for that. And thank you too for the letters and the emails that you send. I read them all and truly appreciate every one of you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I do hope that you enjoy this novel about a family called The Whittakers who lived in Aston, Birmingham during the Second World War. It tells of how an ordinary family dealt with deprivations of war; rationing, blackouts, terrifying raids, the tragedy enacted all around them, and how it all touched their lives. At the end of it all everyone is changed, the children are children no longer and the dynamics, both for them and their relatives the Reillys, have altered. Life will never be the same again, but there is peace at last and they look forward and begin to rebuild themselves.
While researching this book I came across ‘The Birmingham History Forum’ website, which I found a hugely valuable tool. If I was searching for more information about anything, I would post a request on that site; the response was always phenomenal. I received all the answers I could wish for, reams of information sometimes, even accompanied by photographs! Conversations about ‘games we played as kids’, ‘Brummie sayings’, or ‘the kind of sweets we used to eat’ would often jog my memory too. Thank you to all you amazing fellow Brummies who have helped me so much.
I must also mention too some books I found very informative, Catholics in Birmingham by Christine Ward-Penny. Britain at War: Women’s War by Martin Parsons, gave me an insight into the type of work that women undertook during the war. City at War: Birmingham 1939–1945, compiled by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and edited by Phillada Ballard gave an excellent insight into Birmingham’s industries, the raids and the Home Front, interspersed with real life accounts and advertisements from the period. Carl Chinn is a marvelous man, who has been such a help to me over the years. He is a true Brummie, as anyone in Birmingham would probably know, and his reference books are superb. I used two of his books, Homes for People and Brum Undaunted (Birmingham through the Blitz) to aid me with the historical detail. I also checked facts in my old copies of the Birmingham Evening Mail through that period to add authenticity.
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Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010
1
Copyright Anne Bennett 2010
Anne Bennett asserts t
he moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 0 00 735918 9
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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