Broken Rainbows

by Catrin Collier

‘Everything and nothing.’ Alexander stared at his sandwiches.

  ‘My daughter-in-law giving you grief again?’

  ‘I love her. I’ve asked her to marry me more times than I can remember.’

  ‘And she’s still leading you a merry dance?’

  ‘It never feels right to be talking about Jenny to you.’

  ‘I often wonder what she would be like if Eddie hadn’t been killed. They should never have married. They were far too young, but Eddie always was reckless as well as hot-tempered. On his last leave they both seemed happy, although it’s impossible to predict if things would have stayed that way. You can’t build a lifetime of marriage on one two-day leave. And looking back, that’s all they ever really had.’

  Alexander struggled to decipher the expression on Evan’s face; it proved impossible given that the only lighting came from the lamps attached to their helmets.

  ‘I thought they were married for a year before he was killed?’

  ‘They spent precious little of that time together. Hasn’t Jenny told you?’

  ‘She never talks about Eddie.’

  ‘That’s not a good sign.’ Evan bit into his sandwich and his teeth crunched on a sliver of coal that had fallen from the roof. Turning away from Alexander he spat it out.

  ‘I thought Eddie lived in the flat above the shop with her?’ Alexander hated pressing Evan for information, but he couldn’t think of anyone else he could ask about Jenny’s marriage to Eddie, as she had consistently refused to answer his questions.

  ‘He took her back there after their honeymoon night in the New Inn. Her mother was alive then. He didn’t stay. A couple of days later he enlisted. He only came home on leave once after that, as I said for two days.’

  ‘So she was hardly married at all,’ Alexander mused more to himself than Evan.

  ‘I told her not to blame herself. Eddie always was headstrong.’

  ‘He was a good-looking boy.’

  ‘Of course, you met him on his last leave. Yes, he was good-looking, but as I’ve already said, on the wild side, and given Jenny’s personality that made for an interesting combination. I think she feels guilty about his death, although I’ve no idea why. It was hardly her fault that he fell in with a bunch of murderous SS.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me. It explains a lot.’

  ‘If it’s any help, Alexander, I think that if you can get her to marry you, you might make her happy. She needs stability.’

  ‘It’s good to have your blessing, even if I don’t have hers.’

  Alexander rose to his feet as the whistle blew again. Pushing his uneaten sandwich back into his box, he stretched his cramped limbs. He would visit Jenny tonight. Talk to her, tell her that no one could live in the past, but above all he would make her understand just how deeply he did feel about her…

  ‘I wish I’d read as much as you.’

  ‘Don’t you belong to a library?’

  ‘Now.’ Jane looked down at Peter’s left eye, all that was visible between the bandages that covered his face and head. ‘But given my shifts in the munitions factory and looking after my daughter, there’s not much time for reading other than children’s books to her.’

  ‘I loved Robert Louis Stevenson …’

  ‘Treasure Island and Kidnapped, but my favourite has to be Captain Marryat’s Children of the New Forest.’

  ‘I always wanted to be Humphrey.’

  ‘The farmer, not the soldier?’

  ‘I admired the way he could turn his hand to anything. Whatever they needed, he built. Traps for game, a cow shed …’

  ‘… fencing for extra fields.’

  ‘Then Humphrey was your favourite too?’

  ‘I liked the idea of living in a cottage and producing everything I needed to survive. Growing my own food, selling the surplus to buy clothes and essentials, cleaning, cooking, washing, sewing …’

  ‘You actually like housework?’

  ‘I loved it when I had a place of my own in London.’

  ‘You’ll go back there after the war.’

  ‘It was bombed,’ she said quietly, remembering what Tomas had told her about Peter’s parents.

  He turned away from her. ‘That’s rotten luck.’

  ‘I have a good roof over my head now, even if it isn’t my own. We’re staying with my father-in-law. His house is very comfortable.’

  ‘And you work in munitions?’

  ‘I think a lot of people are doing things they never dreamed of before the war.’

  ‘I wanted to be an engineer. Build bridges, carry roads and railway tracks across impossible places, like ravines and mountains in Africa and Australia.’

  ‘You can still do that.’

  ‘With a freak’s face?’

  ‘You don’t build bridges with your face.’

  He stared at her through his one good eye, amazed that she hadn’t responded with the platitude that once his operations were over everything would be fine. ‘No one will want to work with a monstrosity.’

  ‘I grew up in an orphanage. We had to wear awful, grey-striped dresses. I used to stand behind the others and hope that no one would notice me. I was so ashamed of being a charity case and a burden on the parish.’

  ‘It was hardly your fault that you were an orphan.’

  ‘I wish that some of the people who looked after us had seen it that way. It took me a long time to learn to stand up for myself, and trust people enough to show them who I really was.’

  ‘A very pretty girl.’

  She recognised the bitterness in his voice. ‘When this war is over there’ll be lots of people with scars.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to be proud of them.’

  ‘You could try not letting them get in the way.’

  ‘My girl wouldn’t see it that way.’

  ‘She told you?’

  ‘She wrote me a “Dear John” letter before we flew that last mission. There’s some bloody Yank… sorry, I don’t usually swear.’

  ‘If she left you for an American she’s not worth having.’

  ‘Oh, she was worth having all right.’

  ‘Have you tried writing to her since?’

  ‘So she can see me like this and offer me her pity? No bloody fear.’

  ‘Language,’ a male voice shouted from lower down the ward.

  ‘Sorry,’ he murmured contritely. ‘But just look at this place – nothing but Yanks.’

  ‘Who’ve left their families to fight for us. They’re not all after other men’s girlfriends.’

  ‘No? You’re married, you’ve got a daughter, yet you came in with that Yank doctor.’

  ‘He lodges with my sister-in-law.’

  ‘So you’re just good friends?’ he sneered.

  ‘Not even good ones, we’ve only met twice.’

  ‘But you will see him again?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘And your husband’s at the front?’

  Jane sat back wishing she could get Peter to talk about himself instead of asking questions about her. ‘Haydn doesn’t like being separated from our daughter, Anne, and me, any more than we like being away from him. But that’s the war for you. He’s a singer, with ENSA.’

  ‘Every night something awful.’

  ‘So everyone tells me.’

  ‘I’m not being fair, they put on some pretty good shows back at base camp.’

  ‘That’s the first kind word I’ve heard a serviceman say about ENSA.’

  ‘Haydn … Powell, your husband is Haydn Powell?’

  ‘You’ve heard of him?’

  ‘Who hasn’t? Do you see him often?’

  ‘Not for the last ten months.’

  ‘This war is messing up everyone’s life.’

  ‘It’ll be over some day,’ she declared briskly before he could become maudlin again. ‘You said you wanted to build bridges in faraway places. Have you ever travelled?’

  ‘No, but I had an uncle, my father’s brother, who lived in Africa. He
went out there to farm just before I was born. I never met him, but he used to send us photographs and letters, and parcels at birthdays and Christmas full of strange things like wood carvings, and peculiar dried fruits. I always wanted to see the places he described. The jungles, the plantations, his bungalow, the native villages, the animals …’

  Jane sat back enthralled as he told her about Africa as seen through his uncle’s eyes. All she knew about the dark continent had been gleaned from an ancient Blackwell’s reader in the Homes and a Tarzan film. Immersed in his stories, she forgot where she was and why she’d come. Together, they painted mental pictures of the jungle, stocked it with exotic animals and plants, submerged themselves in the romance of ancient and alien cultures, and wandered every track and byway around his uncle’s farm.

  ‘Short stint today, D’Este. You’ve been working round the clock for the last week, so why don’t you knock off early?’ the senior RAF surgeon suggested as Tomas dumped his surgical suit in the linen bin in the changing room.

  ‘Thanks, I intend to.’

  ‘You look happy. Dare I suggest you have a girl tucked away somewhere?’

  ‘When have I had time to meet a girl?’

  ‘Good point. God, what would I give for a social life that included women.’

  ‘And you a married man.’

  ‘Far from home.’

  ‘Your home is in London, sir, not three thousand miles away,’ Tomas chided him.

  ‘It may as well be three thousand miles away for all that I see of my wife,’ he grumbled.

  Tomas opened his locker and reached for his clothes. Slipping his shorts on, he pushed his dog tags aside and pulled his vest over his head. As he picked up his shirt, he realised the senior surgeon was right: he was happier than he’d been since he’d left home. And all because he had something to look forward to.

  Jane was still sitting beside Peter’s bed. Tomas glanced at his watch as he stood back, watched and listened. She must have been there for the best part of three hours. Peter’s pronunciation was difficult to understand, the result of burns that had affected his larynx and vocal cords, but there was more animation in his hoarse and cracked voice than he had heard before.

  Jane looked up as Tomas walked towards them.

  ‘Not come to take her away have you, Doc?’ a boy called out from a bed on the opposite side of the ward.

  ‘It’s time Mrs Powell went home.’

  ‘Can’t we keep her? She looks pretty sitting there, and she gives us something other than the walls to look at.’

  ‘Bloody doctors get all the luck,’ a flight lieutenant grumbled as Jane picked up her coat and hat from the foot of Peter’s bed and joined Tomas.

  ‘You will come and see me next week?’

  Jane smiled at Peter, ‘I promise, but as I warned you, I don’t know what day it will be.’

  ‘And you won’t forget, any magazines, books …’

  ‘I won’t forget and I’ll see if I can persuade some of the other girls to come from the factory.’

  ‘Great, get them to bring some beer and we’ll have a party.’

  ‘That’s all you ever think about, Eric,’ Peter protested.

  ‘Looks like you made a lot of friends,’ Tomas said as he opened the door for her.

  ‘You were right. They’re a lot of nice boys, who just need someone to talk to.’

  ‘I’ve finished for the day.’ He thrust his arms through the sleeves of his overcoat as they walked into the foyer. ‘So, you can ride back to town in the charabanc, or risk the pillion of my motorbike.’

  ‘I’ve never ridden on a motorbike,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘It’s no different to a pedal bike, only faster. You’ll need to pull your hat down, and button up your coat.’ He stepped outside. The rain that had threatened all afternoon was finally falling, a steady, cold drizzle that clung to their coats and eyelashes. ‘Do you have to go straight home?’

  ‘I promised I’d be back in time for Phyllis and Evan to go out.’

  ‘Your father-in-law and his wife?’

  ‘They’re going to visit Alma Raschenko. I think you met her at the party?’

  ‘It’s only four o’clock, what time are they going?’

  ‘Half-past seven.’

  ‘We could go for tea. A small celebration in view of your success, no expense spared. Do you know, I’ve never had afternoon tea. Does the New Inn do it?’

  ‘At a price,’ she warned.

  ‘I feel extravagant.’

  ‘It will be less extravagant if I pay my share.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hear of it. I invited you.’

  ‘Dutch, or I won’t go.’

  ‘Dutch?’

  ‘I pay my whack, you pay yours.’

  ‘Stubborn creature, aren’t you?’

  Her eyes glowed as he climbed on to his bike. ‘You have no idea how much, Captain D’Este.’

  Chapter Nine

  A queasy feeling rose from the pit of Haydn Powell’s stomach as the edge of the long platform of Pontypridd station came into view. Uncrossing his arms, he pushed his hat back from his face and rose to his feet to lift his kitbag from the string rack above his head. It slipped as he brought it down, almost hitting a young WAAC sitting opposite. She glanced up, and as recognition dawned, her eyes widened in amazement. Haydn had seen the same incredulous look on other faces. Most of them female.

  ‘Haydn Powell?’ she gasped.

  The sick feeling escalated into full-blown nausea, but he managed a nod.

  ‘And to think I’ve sat in the same carriage as you all the way from Cardiff. I wish I’d known. I love …’

  The train groaned and shuddered to a halt. He opened the door and threw out his kitbag.

  ‘… I don’t suppose I could have your autograph?’

  ‘I’d be delighted.’ He gave her the full benefit of his well-rehearsed theatrical smile.

  ‘We – me and the girls that is – listen to your show on the radio every week.’ Her hands shook as she rummaged in her bag. ‘Oh, thank goodness… I have it with me.’ She handed him an autograph book. ‘You’ll be the first famous person to sign it. Please, use my fountain pen. It’s got an ink reservoir.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Hastily scribbling his name and a cliché about the prettiest girl in the carriage, he handed them back to her before stepping outside.

  ‘You can’t be staying in Pontypridd?’ she cried as he held the door open for her. ‘What I mean is, people like you don’t. Not in a town like this. I thought you only went to exciting places like London.’

  ‘I live here. Or at least I used to.’

  ‘My brother always said you were from around here, but I never believed him. Not a star like you.’

  He tipped his hat. ‘Thank you for the compliments, miss, but I’m not in the least important. Do you need help with that case?’

  ‘I don’t believe it … you’re actually offering to help me!’

  Heaving her luggage from the floor of the carriage he walked on ahead. There was only so much sycophantic adoration he could tolerate. Since the propaganda department had begun releasing photographs of him touring the fronts to every Sunday and most of the weekly papers, he had been unable to call his life his own. Simple things like buying a packet of cigarettes had become at best a marathon of autograph signing, at worst a riot that called for police presence. A casual visit to a pub was impossible: he was mobbed wherever he went; and he soon discovered that adulation was no substitute for friendship. Life was easier when he was touring with showbusiness people who had some understanding and sympathy for what he was going through. After being set upon twice in London by men who’d resented their girlfriends fawning over him, he’d taken to seeking out the company of older thespians who constantly bemoaned the fact that fame was a transitory state, and one he’d long for when it was no longer his. A platitude he didn’t entirely believe but could take comfort in.

  Dropping the WAAC’s case at the foot of the steps, he loo
ked around for a taxi. There wasn’t a car or van in sight. Shouldering his bag, he walked across the road to Ronconi’s café.

  ‘Oh my God, look what the wind’s blown in. I can’t believe it, a big star …’

  ‘Carry on like that, Tina, and I won’t give you the parcel William sent.’

  ‘Will!’ She dropped the tea towel she was holding. ‘You saw Will! Where … when … how was he? Is he all right?’

  ‘One question at a time.’ Trying to ignore the stares of the bus crews who were taking their break, he untied the string that fastened his kitbag and extracted a small, square package wrapped in greasy brown paper. ‘There’s a letter in there.’

  ‘Is he all right?’ she repeated, grasping the package with both hands.

  ‘Missing you.’

  ‘He really is all right?’

  ‘Read his letter.’

  ‘Something’s happened to him, hasn’t it?’ Her voice rose precariously. ‘I just knew it … he hasn’t written in weeks. He’s been wounded …’

  ‘Let’s go in the back.’

  ‘Haydn!’

  He opened the counter, took Tina’s arm and gently propelled her through the door that led into the kitchen. The cook looked up in surprise.

  ‘Could you go out front for ten minutes to cover for Mrs Powell?’

  ‘Haydn -’

  ‘Sit down.’ He pushed Tina on to a stool. ‘As you seem so determined not to open that package, I’ll tell you. He has been wounded.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ She covered her mouth with her hands.

  ‘But it’s not even bad enough for him to be sent home. The last I saw, he was sitting in a chair, sipping brandy and lapping up the attention of the nurses.’

  ‘Nurses!’ Her dark eyes flashed with jealousy.

  ‘Male nurses, before you crush whatever’s in that parcel to smithereens. The bullet went through his arm. It didn’t even stay there. He’s probably back with his unit by now.’

  ‘Getting shot at again?’

  ‘It was a fluke, Tina. Someone tripped on night patrol, their gun went off …’

  ‘Are you saying he was shot by our side?’

  ‘Open your parcel and read your letter, that way you’ll hear it all from him.’

  She tore at the paper then suddenly stopped. ‘I’m sorry. You must be starved. I didn’t even ask …’