Broken Rainbows

by Catrin Collier

  She wrapped her arms around him and held him close. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered softly, desperately wanting to believe it.

  He took her hand. ‘Then let’s lock the doors and go to bed.’

  An excerpt from

  SPOILS OF WAR

  Book Eight in the Hearts of Gold series

  by

  CATRIN COLLIER

  Chapter One

  ‘Tightening the belt on your trousers only makes them look worse. Just clip on the braces.’ Charlie Raschenko glanced up and saw the reflection of his wife, Alma, staring back at him in the dressing-table mirror.

  ‘I look enough of a clown without wearing baggy trousers,’ he growled in his guttural Russian accent.

  ‘You don’t look like a clown,’ Alma countered, elated by the first non-monosyllabic reply she’d extracted from him in two days. ‘You’ve put on some weight …’

  ‘Not enough to stop people staring.’

  ‘You heard Andrew the same as me. If you rested more …’

  ‘I would stop breathing.’

  Anxious to avoid an argument that would result in Charlie retreating even further into the private world that she had failed to penetrate since his return from the war, Alma gritted her teeth and lifted his suit jacket from the bed. ‘No one will notice how loose your trousers are once you put this on.’

  ‘Only because they’ll be too busy looking at my beautiful wife.’

  Knowing the compliment was the closest she would get to an apology for snapping at her, Alma managed a smile as she helped him into the jacket. It was even worse than his trousers, hanging hopelessly loose on his emaciated frame.

  ‘I had my old green velvet evening dress cut down,’ she continued, conscious that she was talking too fast and too loud in an attempt to divert his attention from the pre-war suit that looked as though it had been measured for a man twice his size. ‘You don’t think it’s too much for a wedding?’

  ‘It’s not too much,’ he echoed dully.

  A preoccupied, faraway look stole into his eyes. It was a look Alma had come to know well. Three years in Hitler’s forced labour camps had drained Charlie of more than his health. Feeling powerless to help him and suddenly afraid, she shivered involuntarily as she touched his arm.

  ‘You’re cold?’ Even his voice was distant.

  ‘No. I’m fine. Let me look at you.’ Brushing imaginary specks from his jacket, she stood back and straightened his loose collar and tie. Anything other than meet his chill, dead expression. ‘I’m glad Megan and Dino decided to marry on a Saturday. With all the staff in, it’s easier to leave the shops and it will be good to have a party and see everyone …’ she faltered as Charlie gripped her hand.

  ‘Alma – I …’

  His eyes were no longer cold and lifeless. They were frightened, confused – those of a panic-stricken child who had witnessed unimaginable horrors.

  She opened her arms and held him close. But she couldn’t bring herself to hug him as fiercely as she would have in the old days before war had disrupted their lives and almost destroyed him. Careful to keep her touch light, gentle, she steeled herself to meet his fragility without flinching. Not even the suit could disguise that his skin stretched tissue-thin over bones that carried wasted muscles and not an ounce of spare flesh. Eight months hadn’t been enough to accustom her to the frail being who had returned in place of her healthy, powerful, beloved husband. And moments of intimacy like this only served to highlight the difference between the old and present Charlie. His hair was as thick, even if it had changed from white blond to silver grey; his cologne smelled the same, his voice and features, albeit cracked and prematurely aged, were recognisable – but she was beginning to relinquish all hope that this invalid would ever again be the man she had married.

  ‘Mary says if I put my coat on we can go to the park …’

  Their four-year-old son, Theo, thundered up the stairs and rushed down the passage, only to freeze, wide-eyed and apprehensive outside their bedroom door.

  Alma forced yet another reassuring smile as she swallowed her tears. She wasn’t the only one having difficulty adjusting to Charlie’s return. Charlie’s homecoming was the first Theo had seen of his father and since then there had been so many changes for the small boy to adjust to. His banishment from her bedroom to one he shared with Mary, the young girl she had hired to take care of him. The advent of an invalid into their lives who was too tired to do any more than read him the occasional story – a very different being from the long-promised Daddy who would play with him and teach him rough boys’ games. The constant commands to keep his voice down ‘because Daddy is resting’ whereas before he had been allowed to make as much noise as he liked.

  ‘You know Daddy and I are going out, Theo?’ Alma asked.

  He nodded, taking courage from her smile. ‘Mary says Auntie Megan and Uncle Dino are getting married.’

  Drained by the simple effort of standing, Charlie sank down on to the bed. Seeing Theo looking at him, he stretched out his arm and patted his son’s cheek, wishing he could toss him high in the air and tickle him as his own father had done when he’d been Theo’s age. But aside from his weakness he sensed a reserve in the boy that he was unsure how to overcome. A reserve that to his dismay occasionally appeared to border on fear.

  ‘Can I get my coat?’

  ‘I’ll help you find it.’ Alma took Theo’s small hand in hers. ‘Kiss Daddy goodbye.’ Theo stood his ground.

  Sensing the boy’s reluctance, Charlie kissed his finger and planted it on Theo’s forehead.

  Clearly relieved, Theo ran out ahead of Alma. ‘Bye. Can Mary buy me an ice cream in the café, Mam?’

  ‘It’s freezing out there.’

  ‘But it’s not freezing in my tummy,’ Theo countered with unarguable logic. ‘Mary says …’

  Light-headed, Charlie slumped forward, listening to Theo’s prattling. Alma and Theo were his family – all he had in the world – and he loved them with every fibre of his being, but somehow that wasn’t enough. He didn’t know how to touch them and make them understand why he was the way he was and how deep his feelings for them ran …

  ‘Charlie? Are you all right?’

  Alma was beside him, an anxious frown creasing her forehead.

  ‘Fine.’ He rose slowly to his feet.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t lie to me.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he reiterated testily.

  ‘Your shoelaces are undone, let me …’

  ‘No.’

  Alma stood back; forced to watch, while he struggled to fulfil a simple task she could have completed in seconds. His face was almost blue, as heaving for breath, he finally sat back on the bed.

  ‘I’ll get the present from the living room.’

  She’d placed the silver coffee pot she’d found in a Cardiff jeweller’s in layers of tissue paper in a brown cardboard box. She would have preferred to have bought Megan and Dino something more practical, but lack of coupons, rationing and empty shops had put paid to that idea. As she picked up the box, Charlie appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Your buttonhole is slipping.’

  Charlie took the box from her as she adjusted the pin behind the flower she’d fastened to his lapel. The parcel was heavy but for once Alma didn’t argue. At Megan’s insistence only five people had been invited to witness her second marriage, her daughter and daughter-in-law, Diana Ronconi and Tina Powell, both of whom were waiting for their husbands to be demobbed, her brother, Huw, and his wife, Myrtle, and Dino’s old colonel and fellow American, David Ford. The reception – to which they’d invited practically everyone they knew – was being held across the road in Ronconi’s restaurant, and Alma had spotted her closest friend, Bethan John, the ex-district nurse, walking in with her husband, Andrew, the local doctor. If Charlie should collapse under the weight of the silver at least he’d be assured of prompt medical attention.

  ‘It seems odd to go to a wedding reception without attending the ceremo
ny,’ Andrew commented as he held the restaurant door open for his wife.

  ‘I can understand why Megan didn’t want a lot of people there. Ever since I can remember she’s always insisted that one husband was quite enough for her, even though they were together for only three years. And, as my father reminded me this morning, his brother did marry Megan in the same chapel.’

  ‘She must have cared for him a great deal to have remained a widow for twenty-eight years.’ He took two glasses of sherry from the tray the waitress offered them as they reached the top of the stairs and handed Bethan one.

  ‘The Great War messed up a lot of lives.’

  ‘This war hasn’t done too badly either.’

  Taking Andrew’s comment as a reference to the problems they’d been having since he’d come home, Bethan turned her back on him, pushed the door open and stepped into the second-floor dining room. ‘Good grief!’

  ‘‘‘Good grief!” indeed!’ Tina Powell, née Ronconi, who managed the restaurant echoed. ‘I’m not going to tell you how much Dino paid the florist to decorate this room or how much food and drink he smuggled in here in boxes marked “PROPERTY OF US ARMY” because he’s paying us about the same amount to keep our mouths shut.’

  ‘Big brother Ronnie might be mopping up after the war in Italy but I see you’re working hard to keep the Ronconi business spirit alive and flourishing,’ Andrew observed wryly.

  ‘He’d sack the lot of us when he gets back if we didn’t.’ Tina offered them a plate of canapés. ‘Try one. It’s real tinned salmon, not dyed snook.’

  ‘How did the wedding go?’ Bethan asked.

  ‘Wonderful, Megan looked regal, Dino proud, Diana, Myrtle and I cried, Huw sniffed as he gave the bride away and David Ford dropped the ring, fortunately it didn’t roll too far.’

  ‘Any sign of Will being demobbed?’ Bethan asked. Her cousin William Powell had married Tina during the war but since then he had managed only two leaves, the last over three years before.

  ‘Not that I’ve heard. I haven’t had a letter in weeks and Diana hasn’t heard a word from Ronnie either. If those two are living it up in Italy, drinking wine, chasing women and generally carrying on the way we think they are, Diana and I are agreed, we’ll make them pay for it when they do finally get around to coming home.’

  ‘Will and Ronnie have never been the best of correspondents.’

  ‘They have been fighting a war, Bethan,’ Andrew interposed, feeling he ought to say something in defence of the absent men.

  ‘You sent enough letters to Bethan. I saw them. They filled a whole drawer.’

  ‘Prisoners of war have nothing to do except write letters.’ He noted the number of tables laid out with the Ronconis’ best white linen and silverware. ‘Has Dino invited the entire remaining American contingent?’

  ‘He asked us to cater for sixty but there’s not that many Americans coming. Since Dino’s the bridegroom, demobbed and settling here, I don’t think you can count him as American any more. There’s the colonel, of course – Beth, have you heard? He’s given Dino a job – well arranged for the army to give him one. The colonel’s been ordered to pick up where the major left off, in trying to track down the tons of American supplies that disappeared in Wales and Dino’s helping him on a civilian basis. Not that either of them stand a snowball in hell’s chance of finding a thing. I told Dino yesterday: it’s all gone. The edible into people’s mouths, the rest, hidden away until the last Yank sails home.’

  ‘I look forward to meeting Colonel Ford after hearing so much about him.’ Andrew’s voice was casual but Bethan could sense his resentment. David Ford and four other American officers had been billeted in her house for almost a year before D-Day. She knew Andrew had heard rumours of a liaison between them even before his homecoming eight months before but what she didn’t know was how much – if any – of the gossip he believed.

  ‘I think there are a couple of other American servicemen coming but Dino wasn’t sure how many. According to him they’re shipping the bachelors home as fast as they can in the hope of saving a few for American girls.’

  ‘Beth!’ Abandoning her sherry on the nearest table, Alma embraced her as soon as she walked in.

  Andrew studied Charlie with a professional eye as he shook his hand. ‘Why don’t we find a table?’

  ‘You and Charlie find one. I need to comb my hair.’

  ‘You’ve only walked across the road, Alma,’ Andrew protested.

  ‘It needs combing. The hairdresser made a mess of cutting the back.’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’ Bethan followed Alma downstairs to the Ladies’ Room behind the ground-floor restaurant.

  ‘Charlie still the same?’ she asked as soon as they were alone.

  ‘As you see.’ Alma opened her handbag and rummaged for cigarettes. Finding her case, she opened it, offering them to Bethan before taking one herself. ‘And please don’t tell me he’ll be fine given time.’ She bent her head to the flame as Bethan flicked her lighter. ‘If I had a pound for every platitude that I’ve heard along those lines since he’s been home, I’d be a millionaire.’ Drawing the smoke deep into her lungs she leaned against the sink and looked Bethan in the eye. ‘Tell me the truth, will he ever recover?’

  ‘Physically, Andrew’s promised you he will, but that’s not what you’re asking, is it?’

  ‘When he first came home I thought we’d be all right. But then he used to touch me, even kiss me occasionally when no one else was around. I don’t know what happened or when, but some time after those first few weeks he changed. You know Charlie, he never did say much, now he hardly says a word. Half the time, I feel as though I’m living with a stranger, and the other half that even the stranger isn’t really there. That all I have is an empty husk. If the soul and personality can be poured out of a person, that’s what’s happened to Charlie, Beth. There’s no spark, no feeling – nothing – and it’s driving me mad. I want him back but I’m beginning to wonder if he even exists to get back.’

  ‘As Andrew told you, no one’s ever experienced what the survivors of Hitler’s death camps have before. There’s no medical precedents, no textbooks to guide the doctors. You saw the films.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve tried to talk to Charlie about them but every time I mention the word “camp” he walks away. I can understand him not wanting to relive what he went through but I can’t just stand back and watch him disintegrate without lifting a finger either. So, I end up trying to imagine what it must have been like for him and I’ve no idea whether I’m close to the truth, or if it was even worse than I picture it. Whatever happened, Beth, it’s eating him alive and I can’t do a thing to stop it.’

  ‘But you do talk to him about other things?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she grimaced. ‘The weather – rationing shortages of raw materials for the shops – Theo’s drawings – what he’d like for tea – not that he eats a tenth of what I cook, which is why he still looks like a walking skeleton.’

  ‘Nothing important?’

  ‘No.’ Alma turned to the mirror. ‘I’ve tried everything you suggested – romantic dinners, soft music, I even dragged him to the White Palace to see Frenchman’s Creek from the back row. As a last resort I went for the more direct approach …’ She bit her bottom lip to stop it from trembling.

  ‘And?’ Bethan pressed.

  ‘He pretended to be asleep and when I tried to discuss it in the morning, he shut himself in the kitchen with the account books.’

  ‘Andrew sees him a couple of times a week. I could ask him -’

  ‘No.’ Alma was adamant. ‘I don’t want Charlie to know I’ve talked about this to anyone. Not even you.’

  ‘I want to help.’

  ‘You have, by listening. If I didn’t have you to confide in, I probably would have resorted to rolling round the floor and screaming like a demented two-year-old by now.’

  ‘That approach might even work.’

  Alma smiled in spite of herself as she r
eached into her bag for her make-up. ‘For the time being I think I’ll persevere with subtlety.’

  ‘You never know, given the amount of drink Dino’s stockpiled, tonight could be the night.’

  Alma pushed up a stick of lipstick that was barely a quarter of an inch high and applied it sparingly. ‘What worries me is that they could have done something to him in that camp. I’ve read about the medical experiments the Nazis carried out. Since Charlie’s come home, I haven’t even seen him naked. He used to walk round half the time with nothing on, now he even wears pyjamas in bed.’

  ‘Before the war he was a fit, healthy man and you didn’t have Theo or Mary living with you.’

  ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘And Andrew has examined him, several times.’

  ‘He hasn’t said -’

  ‘He wouldn’t,’ Bethan interrupted. ‘Not to me,’ but he would to you if there was anything seriously wrong.’

  ‘So, I’m letting my imagination run away with me.’

  ‘On that point.’ Bethan automatically checked her reflection in the mirror. Her nose needed powdering and her lipstick was smudged but, preoccupied with Alma’s problems, she didn’t notice.

  ‘I’m sorry, I keep dumping all my troubles on you and it must be just as difficult for you and Andrew to adjust. I’m so wrapped up in Charlie I tend to forget that Andrew was away for even longer.’

  ‘Things could be better,’ Bethan conceded. ‘Like you, I feel as though I’m living with a stranger. The main problem is Andrew wants everything to be perfect, especially with the children. It’s worked reasonably well with the Clark girls. After being evacuated, orphaned and adopted by us in the space of two years they appreciate having a settled home and a father – even a new one – and they’re prepared to meet Andrew more than halfway. It’s Rachel and Eddie.’