‘Thanks for nothing,’ Lucy shouted to the gathered crowd as she pulled her children close and offered her own shoulder for Michael to lean on. ‘Thanks for bloody nowt.’
Later, when she’d got the children safely tucked up in bed she marched straight round to the shop and accused Benny of throwing the brick. He vehemently denied it, saying he might be a bit of a loud mouth but violence wasn’t his style.
‘And what’s that then?’ Lucy mocked, pointing to the bruise on his chin. Benny rubbed it, looking shamefaced and privately thanking his lucky stars that Belinda was in bed.
‘I had a straight and fair fight with someone, but I don’t go in for those sort of tactics. I don’t hit folk behind their backs, or on their head wi’ a brick. What d’you take me for? Anyroad, I’ve enough troubles of my own, without taking on yours as well.’ He looked so hurt by her lack of belief in him and so sincere in his protestations of innocence that Lucy felt half inclined to believe him. But then if Benny hadn’t thrown the brick, who had?
The next day, calmly shredding lettuce in Minnie Hopkin’s kitchen, Lucy rehearsed how she would explain to Michael that they must never see each other alone again, not till she’d got things sorted out. She was thankful that no real hurt had come to him beyond a cut on his head that Minnie’s nursing skills would soon mend, but those stolen moments together in the shelter had made her think.
Lucy made up her mind to write to the army, to ask them if it was true that she had to wait seven years for Tom to be declared officially dead. Seven years sounded like forever. She knew in her heart that no one could hold on that long, not loving each other as much as she and Michael did.
There came a rat-tat on the door knocker. She wiped her hands and went down the hall to find Lily Gantry standing on the clean doorstep with an expression like sour milk on her face.
‘Thee’s to come home at once.’
‘Has something happened? Is it Sarah Jane? Sean?’ There was panic in her voice. Aunt Ida had promised to collect them both from school, now fear flooded through her even as the old woman shook her grizzled head.
‘Nay, nowt like that. But you’re to come quick.’
Minnie appeared, scowling with disapproval at this interruption of the morning’s work, wanting to know what was going on but Lucy was already reaching for her coat. She was quite certain something terrible must have happened and the old besom was trying to break it to her gently.
Minnie interrupted her. ‘Thee can’t run off wi’out a by-your-leave. You’re not done yet. What about dinner? Our Michael’ll be home and wanting his tea in half an hour.’
‘I’ll be back by then,’ Lucy said, wrapping a scarf about her head and, since she could hear rain pattering on the windows, starting a search for an umbrella. If Sean had run off again he’d be wet through by the time she found him. Oh lord, where would he have gone this time? The air-raid shelters where Gran was found? She really must hurry. She half ran along the passage to the front door where Lily Gantry stood watching events with interest. Minnie gave chase and brought her up short.
‘But what if you’re not? What’ll I give ‘im?’
Lucy paused long enough to think and draw breath. ‘Uncle Nobby brought us some fresh vegetables yesterday so I was in the middle of doing a nice salad, and I’ve already made the Californian Meat cakes from the recipe Aunt Ida left me.’
‘Californian Meat cakes?’
‘Yes, I know. Aunt Ida has been as close to California as I’ve been to the Sahara Desert but all they are is corned beef, chopped onion and mashed potato, mixed together with beaten egg and formed into patties. I’ve done all of that, even rolled them in bread crumbs, all you have to do is fry them and prepare the salad. You can manage that surely?’
Minnie was about to remark that with her standard of cooking, they could turn into Lancashire Coal Mine meat cakes but the front door knocker rattled again.
‘What is it this time? If something’s happened to our Sean, I’ll kill him,’ Lucy gasped, rather contrarily. The last thing she needed right now was trouble with her son. Wasn’t it difficult enough hanging on to this job? Pushing passed both Lily Gantry and Minnie, she flew to the door and flung it open.
But it wasn’t young Sean standing in the small front garden, nor Sarah Jane but a stranger, his coat collar turned up almost to the brim of his trilby hat against a brisk wind that had blown up.
‘If you’re wanting Michael,’ Lucy began, irritated by this interruption. ‘I’m afraid he isn’t home from work yet.’
‘Lucy. Don’t you recognise me? Benny told me I’d find you here. Don’t scowl at me lass. All I ask is a friendly welcome,’ and the stranger took off his hat so that she could see him properly. At which point, for the first time in her life, Lucy fainted.
Chapter Fourteen
Minnie had galloped off for Michael the moment she realised who their unexpected visitor was. Now he’d arrived, out of breath and clearly in torment at this stunning realisation of his worst nightmare. He focused on Tom’s lopsided smile and decided instantly that he couldn’t compete.
‘They told me you were dead.’ Lucy sat in the kitchen facing her husband, hands clenched tight in her lap. Michael could see she was shaking, her face ashen as if she were sickening for something. ‘At least,’ she remembered the exact wording of the telegram. ‘Missing, presumed killed in action.’
‘They presumed too much. Here I am, fit and well. Never better.’
She looked at him oddly for a moment, then said a strange thing. ‘I’d forgotten how full of confidence you always were.’
Michael called it arrogance.
He was also tall, admittedly thin but with light brown hair cut close to the head. His shoulders were broad, his skin tanned as if from years in the sun, not at all the yellowish tinge usually seen on POW’s. He had the kind of good looks and easy smile that any woman would fall for. Michael had no difficulty in seeing why Lucy had fallen in love and married him. It was a wonder she saw anything in himself to love at all, after living with such a demigod.
Now she’d fallen silent, seemed struck dumb by events, overwhelmed perhaps by her good fortune at Tom’s return from the dead or too dazed to deal with the reality of it, let alone work out all the implications. It was up to him, Michael decided, to ask the relevant questions about where Tom had been stationed and where he’d been since the war ended, which he proceeded to do, at length. He heard a convoluted story of how Tom had escaped from prisoner-of-war camp some time before the end of the war, crossed the Italian Alps, been sick and nursed back to health by a generous and kind French family.
‘So where, exactly, were you imprisoned and how did you manage to escape?’ Michael persisted, still puzzled. ‘Were you alone? I mean, why didn’t you let Lucy know you were safe?’
Tom seemed to be searching his heads for facts, dragging them out reluctantly, one by one. ‘I had malaria. All sorts of wounds and sores, barely alive for months.’
‘Malaria? How could you catch that in Italy, or France?’
Tom answered sharply, as if with a simmering anger. ‘I was also stationed in Africa and Egypt for a while. Anyway, I was too ill to write.’
‘You could have got someone else to write for you.’
Lucy interrupted, putting out a hand as if she couldn’t bear any more questioning, the appeal in her eyes almost breaking Michael’s heart in two. ‘It’s all right. I’m sure Tom would have let me know, if he could.’
‘Course I would. Later it seemed a better idea to come and surprise you.’
‘You’ve done that all right,’ Michael said, hearing the sour note in his own voice and hating himself for it.
Lucy was actually shaking. ‘It’s been such a sh-shock. I’d best get off home, speak to Mam and Charlie. And find you somewhere to sleep tonight.’
‘I rather thought I’d be sleeping with my wife.’
A small silence in which Lucy put a hand to her head, as if it had suddenly started to ache. Michael fel
t his jaw tense and sweat break out on his brow but managed to address his rival with perfect calm for all there was deep bitterness in his tone. ‘I should think patience is called for here. Can’t you see how stunned she is. Give her time for God’s sake.’
‘When I want advice on my marriage, I’ll ask for it,’ Tom coldly responded, and taking hold of Lucy’s arm, propelled her towards the door. Michael instantly stepped in front of them, blocking the way to speak softly to Lucy. ‘Go home and get a good night’s rest. You look worn out. We’ll talk tomorrow.’ And then to Tom, ‘You can stop here tonight, if you want. We’ve plenty of spare bedrooms - till you’ve time to sort something out.’ He issued the invitation like a challenge which, for one awful moment he thought Tom Shackleton was about to refuse. But then he turned to Lucy with that winning smile.
‘Why not? It has been a shock, I dare say. And there’ll be plenty of time, the rest of our lives after all.’ And he met Michael’s glare with what could only be described as triumph.
After what seemed an endless afternoon of family talk and excitement, Tom did indeed go up the street to number 179 when darkness came, though he made it clear it was only to give Lucy time to make more satisfactory arrangements, insisting he would be back for his breakfast, sharp at eight.
Lucy didn’t sleep a wink. She couldn’t stop shaking as she lay flat on her back in bed, with her children for once cuddled beside her, even though liquid fire seemed to be coursing through her veins. Her brain couldn’t seem to digest all the facts, or work out what she should do about them.
Sean and Sarah Jane had been by turn delirious with delight and oddly shy and bemused. It had taken hours to settle them so that in the end she’d relented and let them into bed with her. Lucy lay with her arms about them, breathing in their sweet fragrance, feeling calmed by the rhythm of their breathing and thinking what it meant to them, to have their dad back home. Sean in particular was beside himself with excitement. All the little boy could talk about was going fishing.
‘Of course I’ll take you,’ Tom had promised, tickling the little boy under his chin and making him giggle. Sarah Jane had hung back, shyly clinging to her mother while Tom had laughed and patted his knee, asking her to come and sit on it.
‘Do I have to?’ she’d softly asked and Lucy had leaned down to kiss her cheek and whisper in her ear that she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to.
But the implications of Tom’s return were far wider ranging than Sean and his fishing. Where would he sleep tomorrow? The idea of having him in bed with her so haunted Lucy that she couldn’t settle either. It seemed a longer, even more agonising night in many ways than the one following the news of his death. Perhaps on that day it hadn’t been quite such a shock as it might have been because it was so long since she’d seen or heard from him. Since then, she’d never, not for one moment, expected him to return. She’d been absolutely certain he was dead.
Not that she was sorry he was alive, how could she be? Once she would have given her life for this man. She’d loved him from being a young girl but her feelings had changed, there was no denying that fact. She loved Michael now, wholly and completely, for all they’d never actually become lovers in the true sense of the word. Oh, but that wasn’t through lack of desire. How she loved him, as if he were a part of her very soul. How could she go back to a marriage she’d thought was over for good?
On the other hand, how could she begin to explain all of this to Tom, poor man, or turn him out on the street? A soldier returned from the front, an escaped POW, her own husband and the father of her children. It was clear that he’d nowhere to go. No job, no home even - since she’d been forced to give that up years ago and move back in with Polly. And more important perhaps, he no longer had a wife. Only when the first cold rays of dawn poked fingers of pale light into the room, did exhaustion finally overwhelm her and she slept.
What seemed only moments later, she opened her eyes to find Polly, clearly delighted by the return of her son-in-law, bringing her a cup of tea in bed as a treat and volunteering to take the children to school for once. Lucy expressed her gratitude. It would give her time to talk to Tom, to explain before the Lily Gantry’s of this world did the job for her, and to make some decisions.
Lucy meant to be firm and she was, though it took more courage than she’d expected. In one way it seemed perfectly normal that they should be sitting together at the kitchen table with a pot of tea between them as once they had done years ago. Yet in another they were like polite strangers, unsure of each other and afraid of saying the wrong thing. She kept to her resolution. ‘As you see, Tom, things have changed. I genuinely believed you to be dead.’
‘So I gather. Didn’t take you long to find compensation, did it? ‘ His voice was hard, caustic and critical, jaw rigid.
‘That’s not fair. If you’d written, I would have known you were all right, wouldn’t I?.
‘So it’s my fault is it?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She got up from the table, disguising her distress by fetching a pan and fresh kippers from the pantry, busying herself preparing breakfast for him as she tried to explain. ‘It’s just that I’ve no wish to deceive you. I feel you have the right to hear the truth.’
He pointed out that she was still his wife, that he had a right to expect her to wait for him and all Lucy could do was keep repeating how she’d thought him dead, how she hadn’t planned on falling in love with Michael, and it had taken them both by surprise.
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, her slender body wrapped in a long white apron with her hair tied up in a turban, she looked like a young girl still. Tom watched her small neat hands flip the kippers over in the frying pan as he listened to her halting tale and asked himself why he had stayed away so long. She was far more attractive, this young wife of his, than he’d remembered. He should have come home months ago. Years. He could have written. Why hadn’t he?
He knew why. She’d become almost a stranger to him during the long years of war, a distant figure whose face he could barely recall. Even his children hadn’t seemed quite real. And there were other reasons, some best not spoken about. He’d found his new life exciting and been reluctant to give it up, might never have done so if things hadn’t got tricky. But what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt either of them, particularly himself.
She was asking him a question. ‘What about you? Didn’t you meet anyone else in all these years you’ve been away? What stopped you from writing? A letter would have eased the shock, Tom. It would have given me hope, something to live for. Why didn’t you?’
He felt the familiar surge of anger. Questions, questions, he was sick of bloody questions. People never left him alone. Everyone he met always had the same questions. Where had he been? Why? When? What? Who was he with? He was mightily sick of it. He certainly wasn’t going to take being interrogated by an unfaithful wife so he dismissed her curiosity with a snort of laughter. ‘What are you accusing me of? Are you implying that I deliberately didn’t write? I’ve told you, I was ill. I’m the injured party here.’
Lucy cringed with shame as she slid a pair of kippers on to his plate. ‘Whatever Michael and I feel for each other and I don’t - can’t - deny that I’m very fond of him, we’ve done nothing about it.’
‘So you say.’
‘It’s true.’ But watching her husband tuck in to his breakfast, for the first time Lucy almost wished that it weren’t.
The newspapers the following day were saying that 50,000 couples were waiting for a divorce. They spoke of too-lengthy separations and too-hasty marriages at the start of the war, of infidelity, and of wives waking up and finding themselves married to a stranger. Lucy knew just how they felt. The Archbishop of Canterbury, however, spoke of the serious lifelong obligations of marriage. Lucy didn’t want obligations. She wanted love.
The next few days were difficult. Lucy made up the alcove bed that Benny had used to sleep in and desperately tried to come to terms with being a
wife again while Tom just wanted to sit in the kitchen or in the front parlour watching the world go by through the window. He had no wish, he said, to step outside the door, or start looking up old friends. Not yet. He certainly wasn’t ready to even think about finding a job. Lucy accepted all of this with a calm equilibrium. What she found harder to accept was the fact that he expected her to stay in too.
‘I can’t stop at home. I’ve a living to earn,’ she told him, but he insisted she owed him a few days of her time at least, so they could get to know each other again.
‘I’m not sure I want you working up at 179, not with that Michael Hopkins around.’
‘Don’t be silly. He isn’t around anyway, only after he’s finished work. Besides, we need the money.’
‘Now I’m back everything must change,’ he pointedly reminded her.
It was a bleak thought for she liked things the way they were. Lucy realised that she had no wish for her life to change, not in this way. But perhaps he had a point. A little time together wouldn’t be a bad thing, so long as he remained in that alcove bed. It might give them time to sort things out in a civilised fashion, without harming the children. Reluctantly she sent word to her clients, including Minnie Hopkins, that she was taking a few days off to spend with her husband.
Polly's War Page 17