by Lilian Harry
‘I had to go in anyway.’ Alison put down the tray. ‘And at least we’re still able to write to each other. I’ve been talking to one of the Polish pilots just lately. He hasn’t heard from any of his family since just after the war started. He’s afraid to write to them, in case the letter brings them trouble. He doesn’t even know if they’re still alive.’
‘Yes, that’s awful.’ Elizabeth accepted a cup of tea. ‘What about that other young pilot you told me about – the one who lost his brother? How’s he getting on?’
‘Ben’s all right.’ Alison wondered whether to tell her mother about May, but decided against it. ‘I don’t think his mother’s getting over it at all, though. He’s gone home for a couple of days. Apparently, his father’s very worried about her.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Elizabeth said. ‘There are so many mothers losing their sons that I’m almost glad I never had one. At least I have a good chance of keeping my daughter, and my grandchildren. You will take care of yourself, won’t you, darling? Don’t work too hard. Let May do the heavy work – she told me she’s quite willing to. And I don’t think you ought to be lifting Hughie up. He’s getting too big and heavy.’
‘I know, but he’s still my baby for the time being. It won’t be long now before the new one’s born, and everyone will be telling him he’s a big boy and has got to look after his sister – or his brother,’ she added with a smile. ‘I keep forgetting we don’t get a choice, and Andrew’s so determined it’s going to be a girl I’ve begun to think so too.’ She sat down on the garden bench.
‘Have you chosen any names yet?’
‘Oh, you know how it is – we keep making lists! I don’t know why we don’t just use the ones we thought of last time, but I can’t remember what they were. At the moment, Andrew wants Morag for a girl and Alistair for a boy – both Scottish, of course. I’d rather have Caroline, myself.’
‘But Andrew’s not Scottish, surely.’
‘His grandmother was. She came from the Highlands. Anyway, by the time it’s born I don’t suppose I’ll care what we call it so long as it’s well and healthy.’ Alison rubbed the small of her back. ‘These last two months are the worst, aren’t they, when you’re getting bigger and heavier every day. I remember with Hughie, they seemed to drag on for ever.’
‘Well, while we’re here you’re not to do any more chores,’ Elizabeth said firmly. ‘Not even making a cup of tea. You’re to have a good rest.’
Alison lay back on the cushions they’d brought out into the garden. It was nice to be fussed over, she thought, provided it didn’t go on for too long. Since marrying and leaving home she had developed a strong streak of independence, needed by any Service wife, but she had to admit that she was very tired these days and a respite would be welcome. It was nice to have the company of her father and mother, too – almost like peacetime. They were lucky not to have lost anyone close to them in this war yet.
A cold finger touched her spine as the last thought drifted across her mind, and she shivered. Don’t tempt Fate, she thought. Don’t think about it at all.
The sound of her father’s deep tones, with Hughie’s chatter like birdsong twittering amongst church bells, sounded from the pathway at the bottom of the garden, and a moment later the gate opened and they came in.
‘I’ve brought you some flowers,’ Hughie said, and dumped a handful of primroses, their stems crushed by his fist, in her lap. The cold finger dropped away from her spine and she leaned forward and kissed him.
They were indeed very lucky.
Olivia Hazelwood didn’t feel at all lucky.
‘She can’t seem to find any bright spots in life at all,’ John told his son when Ben came home on a twenty-four-hour leave pass. ‘I know we’ve lost Peter – I’m as grieved about him as she is – but we do still have you and the other two. But if I say that to her, she simply replies, “But we haven’t got Peter”, and there’s nothing I can say to that. It’s not that he mattered any more than the rest of you – it’s just that he did matter, for himself. I can understand that, of course – I feel just the same. But we have to rise above the loss, and your mother doesn’t seem able to. I don’t know what to do about it.’
He ran his hand over his thick, greying hair and Ben looked at him. He had never seen his father like this, unable to find the right words of comfort, almost in despair. His dread of meeting his mother grew, and with it an unexpected sense of grievance. What was he supposed to do to help these two middle-aged people, when they couldn’t help themselves? He was still only twenty years old – how could he know how to comfort his parents over the loss of his own brother?
‘I can’t stay long,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘You do know that, don’t you? I was lucky to get a leave pass at all, as all leave’s been stopped. I don’t really know how Andrew managed to wangle it for me. I’ve got to be back by two tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Yes, I know. Well, it’ll do her good to see you, even if it’s only for a few hours.’
They were standing in the church as they talked. Ben had gone straight there, hoping to find his father before he met his mother. John’s telegram had sounded desperate, as if Olivia were seriously ill, and although even this shouldn’t have been enough to obtain a leave pass at this tense moment, Andrew had moved heaven and earth to get it for him. Now it seemed as if it was just unhappiness that was making her ill, and Ben couldn’t really understand the urgency.
‘She will get better, won’t she?’ he asked doubtfully. ‘I mean, she will get over it. It’s not as if she’s the only one. Thousands of people—’
‘I know. But I don’t advise you to tell her that.’ John rubbed his face, covering his eyes for a moment. ‘People have their own ways of dealing with this. Some people are stronger than others; some just refuse to believe it and go on expecting their sons or husbands to come home after all. It’s quite common, even when you know that someone has died, even when you’ve been to the funeral and seen the coffin lowered into the grave, to be hardly able to believe it. People dream – they dream that it was all a mistake, that the person who’s died has come back. I’ve done it myself.’ He paused, his face wrinkled with sadness. ‘It can be almost a comfort in itself. A little piece of extra life, given like a gift. But then you wake up …’
Ben was silent. Then he said, ‘What do you want me to do, Dad?’
‘I don’t really know. Perhaps I shouldn’t have telegraphed you, but it was all I could think of. Alexie can’t leave Gosport, with this ten-mile zone and all travelling forbidden, and of course Ian’s in Italy – he was at Monte Cassino, you know. All I knew was that she needed to see one of you, just to be reassured that you hadn’t all died and I was keeping it from her.’ He caught Ben’s indrawn breath and nodded at him. ‘Yes. She’s even accused me of doing that.’
‘Oh, Dad … I don’t know what to say.’
The vicar touched his arm. ‘Perhaps there’s no need to say anything at all. Just be here. Just spend some time with her – tell her things about yourself, good things, happy things if you’ve got any. Try to show her that there is still a life, that there is still hope for the future.’
Hope. The word reminded Ben of Jeanie and her child.
‘Are they still here? Doesn’t having a little one about the place help Mum at all?’
‘Yes, she helps a lot. Dear little girl. But then there are times when even she seems to remind your mother of what she’s lost.’ He shook his head. ‘You know, I think it’s rather like the shellshock men suffered in the last war. She’s been so brave all this time, and worked so hard for the war effort – and now I think she’s just had enough. More than enough; more than she can take. But you can’t say you’ve had enough, can you? You can’t turn your back and walk away, because the war’s there and it’s not going to stop just because you want it to. You’ve got to live through it to the end, whatever the end may be.’
He sighed and passed his hand along the end of a pew. It was worn and
polished smooth by centuries of use. Ben watched him look around his church and knew that he was thinking of all the people who had worshipped here down the years, of their hopes and joys, their sufferings and pains. Gone and forgotten now, most of them, yet they had left their imprint here. You could, if you sat and closed your eyes and emptied your mind, feel their presence. And it was, on the whole, one of harmony and tranquillity, as if whatever they had suffered they had, in the end, found peace.
‘Let’s go over to the house,’ he said quietly. ‘I haven’t got long and I want to make the most of it. And I do have something happy to tell you, so maybe I will be able to make her feel a little bit better after all.’
‘Married?’ Olivia echoed faintly. She put a long, slender hand to her throat. ‘You want to get married?’
Ben looked at her, disconcerted by her reaction. He had waited until after supper, when they were in the drawing room with a tray of tea, to tell them about May, realising that his mother needed time simply to get used to seeing him again. Although she had known he was coming, had even prepared for it by asking Jeanie to put some extra vegetables in the stew (there was, of course, no extra meat even though it was no more than scrag end of lamb) and had seemed pleased to see him, there was a strange kind of vagueness about her manner, as if she were always thinking of something else. And I suppose she is, he’d thought sadly. She’s thinking about Peter.
He had been dismayed by her appearance. The cool elegance had disappeared and her dress looked limp and drab, hanging loosely on a figure that had once been slender but now looked gaunt. Her silvery hair, always drawn back into a smooth knot, now looked grey and wispy, and the porcelain skin was muddy. The calmness in her eyes had given way to a bewildered pain that even Ben’s arrival had not been able to dispel, and he wondered with a sinking heart if she was really ill – and if she would ever get better.
Jeanie wasn’t having supper with them. She had had her tea at the same time as Hope and then gone up to their room to read and listen to the wireless. When Ben had protested, she’d merely smiled and said, ‘Your mother needs you to herself for a bit. Anyway, it’s ITMA tonight – you wouldn’t want me to miss that, would you!’
‘I’ll want to see you tomorrow, though,’ he warned her, putting out a hand to hold her back as she made to go upstairs. ‘No sloping off to the village in the morning. I’ll have to be on my way by ten.’
‘Oh, I shall be around at breakfast-time,’ she assured him. ‘And we can walk to the station with you, if you like. Make sure you’re safely off the premises.’
‘That’s a date, then.’ He’d looked at her, seeing the plump, pretty face as if for the first time. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Jeanie. You’re a real help to my mother. Almost as good as a daughter, in fact.’
Jeanie lowered her eyes. ‘It’s nice of you to say so, but I’ll never be that. I do my best, though. I’ll never forget how kind your mum and dad have been to me, taking me in when my own parents didn’t want to know me. But that’s all past now,’ she finished, looking up at him again. ‘Hope’s really won their hearts, bless her. They dote on her. It’s right, what people say – babies bring their love with them. And Hope brought enough for ten babies, I reckon.’
‘I think so too.’ He’d smiled at her and there was a tiny moment of silence as their eyes met. Then it was broken as his mother came out of the drawing room, and Jeanie turned and went up the stairs.
Now, after their meal of Irish stew and bread pudding, they were in the drawing room and Ben had taken a deep breath and told them about May.
‘I don’t understand,’ Olivia said, staring at him with bewildered eyes. ‘Who is this girl?’
‘She lives near the airfield. Her name’s May Prettyjohn and she helps Andrew Knight’s wife in the house – does a bit of cleaning and looks after their little boy, that sort of thing. I met her at a party they had before Christmas. And then I was out one night – Christmas night, it was, as a matter of fact – I didn’t feel like joining in the shenanigans in the mess and I went for a walk and happened to pass their cottage and she’d just come out to get some logs or something. And we went for a walk across the fields …’
‘On Christmas night? She went out with a strange man on Christmas night, across the fields?’
‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘What’s wrong with that? And I wasn’t “strange”. We’d already met, at Andrew’s house.’
‘But it must have been dark.’
‘There was a good moon. We could see perfectly. And May knows all the footpaths for miles around.’
‘That’s not what—’ She looked at her husband. ‘John …’
‘Let’s just hear what he has to say first, dear,’ the vicar said, his voice calm, though his eyes were wary. He pulled at his pipe and nodded at Ben. ‘Go on.’
‘Well – that’s it, really,’ Ben said lamely. ‘We’ve seen each other quite a bit since then. I go round to the cottage or we go for a walk or to the picture show, that sort of thing. We get on well – we did right from the moment we met. You’d like her, Ma, you really would. She’s pretty and nice, and she’s a marvellous cook. She can do anything in the house and she helps her grandfather in the garden—’
‘Why isn’t she in the Services?’ Olivia asked in a sharp tone, her bewilderment disappearing so suddenly that he was brought up short.
‘Mostly because of her father, I think. He was paralysed in a farm accident and they need her at home. But she does war work in the village – making scrim and collecting sphagnum, all the things you do here, and they all do sewing and knitting, even her father. They all pull their weight.’ He was conscious of a slightly resentful note creeping into his voice, and strove to modify it, although he couldn’t help feeling hurt at the reception of his news.
‘You’d like them all,’ he repeated.
‘I’m sure we would,’ Olivia said without conviction, and turned to her husband again. ‘John, I don’t know what to say. It’s all so sudden.’
John Hazelwood took his pipe from his mouth. ‘Ben, have you really thought about this? Marriage is a serious business, you know. It’s for life. And you’re only twenty. You could be tied to this girl for the next fifty or sixty years …’
‘I know. That’s what I want.’
‘It may be what you want now, but will it still be what you want in ten years’ time? Twenty? Thirty? People change, Ben, and they change most while they’re young. You’ve still got a long time ahead of you.’
‘Well, we don’t actually know that, do we,’ Ben retorted, and bit his lip as his mother made a small sound of distress. ‘Sorry, Ma, I didn’t mean to say that, but it’s true, isn’t it? We’ve got to face up to it. People aren’t going in for long engagements any more. They’re getting married while they have the chance.’
‘And you know what they say.’ John was trying to lighten the tense atmosphere. ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure.’
‘That’s if you’re lucky enough to have the leisure.’ Ben’s lips were set in the stubborn line both his parents recognised. He’d looked like that when he’d told them he meant to join the RAF and become a pilot, instead of waiting for call-up. He’d looked like it all through his childhood whenever he had set his heart on something he thought might be denied him. Usually, when he looked like that, he got his way – but not every time.
However, he was no longer a child. He had come to manhood by a hard, brutal route and they knew that any battles would be all the harder to fight.
‘Ben,’ Olivia said, her voice trembling, ‘tell us the truth. There isn’t any – any reason why you should get married, is there? You haven’t done anything,’ she hesitated, searching for the right word, ‘foolish?’
‘Foolish?’ He stared at her, now truly indignant. ‘No, I haven’t! May’s a decent girl. And I’d have thought you’d know me better!’
‘We do, we do.’ John’s voice was calming again. ‘All the same, it does happen. We all know that.’ There was a pause while ever
ybody thought, but nobody said, Look at Jeanie. ‘And you also know that your mother and I wouldn’t judge anyone it happened to.’ Again, they thought of Jeanie, taken into the vicarage when her own parents had turned her out. ‘You must admit, it’s rather sudden.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Ben said. ‘It seems to me as if I’ve known May all my life.’
There was a short silence. Then Olivia said in a quiet, rather piteous voice that indicated that she was retreating again into her own sorrow, ‘But Ben, you’re so young. And this girl – what is she, seventeen, eighteen? Neither of you have had a chance to grow up yet.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Ben said, ‘May’s twenty-three.’
‘Twenty-three?’ Olivia stared at him, aghast. ‘But that’s three years older than you!’
‘Nearly four, as it happens. I don’t see that that matters.’
‘And what are her family? You talked about a cottage. What does her father do – what did he do, I mean, before he was injured?’
‘He worked on the farm; so did her grandfather. They’re plain, honest country people, Ma, like dozens around here. The sort you always call “salt of the earth”.’
‘I see,’ she said, and his anger flared up again.
‘I hope you’re not going to be a snob about this. May’s a lovely girl. You haven’t given her a chance! You haven’t even seen her but you’re taking against her already. I thought you’d be pleased that I’d found someone so – so good and so nice and so pretty. I never thought—’ He stopped abruptly as his mother began to cry. ‘Oh Lord, I’m sorry, Ma. I’ve done this all wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but – but I had to.’ He waited, looking apologetically at his father, while his mother regained her fragile composure, then said, ‘I had to tell you, because – well, look, we all know something big’s blowing up. We don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it’s on the cards that we’ll be invading France before long. And I’d like to be married before that happens.’ He looked at them both, and this time there was pleading in his eyes. ‘And I need your permission.’