by Lilian Harry
‘I hope you are,’ he said, and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. ‘And you’re right – something has changed.’ He paused, weighing it up in his mind. Once he had told her, there would be no going back; they would have to discuss the whole thing. And he didn’t know if Olivia were yet strong enough. Then he saw her face and knew that he had already gone too far to draw back. He took a deep breath and said quietly, ‘I wrote to May Prettyjohn.’
There was a brief silence. She looked away from him, towards the altar and its gleaming vase of roses. She lifted her chin a little and stared up at the stained glass of the window with its image of Jesus with a small white lamb carried over His shoulder. Then she turned back.
‘The girl Ben told us about?’
‘Yes. She wrote to me, you know. I didn’t show you the letter – I didn’t wish to upset you. She wanted us to know that she was thinking of us, and to tell us how upset she was. And there was something else.’
Olivia prompted him to go on. ‘What else, John? What did you think might upset me so much?’
‘She told me they were engaged,’ he said. ‘Ben asked her father the night before he was killed. They were going to buy the ring the next day.’
In the dim light, he could see the colour drain from her face. She swayed a little and he tightened his arm around her. ‘Engaged!’ she breathed.
‘Yes. They weren’t going to get married yet, though. Not until you were happy about it. She made that very clear. They wanted everyone to know that they planned to marry, that they belonged to each other, but that was all. They were going to wait for you – for us.’
‘And suppose I never agreed?’ she asked. ‘Would they have waited for ever?’
‘I think, in time, you would have come round,’ he said gently. ‘You’ve always wanted our children to be happy. And perhaps once we’d met her …’
Olivia interrupted him. ‘There wasn’t any reason why they should have married, was there, John? They hadn’t done anything foolish?’
‘I’m sure they hadn’t. And the girl isn’t in any kind of trouble, I’m convinced of that. Just sorrowing and grieving, and wanting to share it with us. She seems a very nice girl, Olivia. And Ben loved her.’
His wife sat silently for a while, then she said, ‘I always hoped that he and Jeanie …’
‘I know, my dear. And I think Jeanie hoped that a little, too. But there’s a wise head on those young shoulders. She made me realise that I was wrong not to write back to May, and—’
‘Jeanie did? You talked about it with Jeanie?’
‘She came to me. She confessed that she’d come across May’s letter in my cassock pocket, when she was mending the hem, and had read it. She offered to write back herself, or even go to see her once the travel restrictions were lifted. I knew then that I had no choice. We can’t ignore this poor girl, my dear. She would have been our daughter-in-law. She would have been mother to Ben’s children. We can’t pretend that she doesn’t exist.’
‘No, we can’t.’ Olivia was quiet again, then she said, ‘I’d like to be on my own again for a while now, John, if you don’t mind. I hadn’t quite finished what I was doing here.’
He paused, his hand on her shoulder, then got slowly to his feet. He had no idea now why he had come to the church; perhaps it was simply to ask for guidance for himself. In any case, he had found far more than he had been searching for, and his heart swelled with gratitude and relief. After a moment, he turned and walked slowly out of the church, leaving his wife with her head bowed again in the darkness.
Outside, the brightness and the heat came almost as a shock. He stood for a moment or two feeling the warmth of the sunshine on his face, and then he went back to the house.
When the letter arrived at the Prettyjohns’ cottage, May took it out into the garden to read.
She didn’t open it at once. She sat on the old bench her grandfather had made, hidden from the house by the raspberry canes, and turned it over and over between her fingers. It was in a white envelope and felt thick and bulky, as if it contained several sheets of paper. She knew that it must be from John Hazelwood, although she hadn’t expected to hear from him again. She felt half afraid to open it, sure that once she had done so, her life would change in some way, with no going back.
You’m being daft, May Prettyjohn, she admonished herself, and put her thumb under the corner of the flap.
Half an hour later, she came back into the cottage. Her mother, who was sitting at the kitchen table polishing the brass candlesticks that she’d inherited from her grand-mother, glanced at her.
‘Be you all right, maid? You look upset.’
‘I’m all right.’ May sat down on the wide windowsill and leaned her head against the thick wall. ‘I’ve had a letter from Ben’s father.’
‘Ah. I thought that might be it. And what do he have to say, my flower?’
‘Oh, he’s been very nice. He says he’s glad that Ben was happy during his last few weeks and that he’d found someone to love and who loved him as much as I did.’ May’s voice shook a little and a tear crept down her cheek. ‘He says he’s sorry he didn’t answer properly when I wrote to him, but he was worried about Ben’s mother. I knew that, of course. Ben told me all about her and I didn’t want to upset the poor lady any more than she had been already. But now Mr Hazelwood says that he felt he had to write. He says it was wrong of him not to do it before.’ She shook her head a little wonderingly. ‘He’m a vicar, Mother, and he says he was wrong! And he says that the girl they’ve got living there, the one Ben told us about – Jeanie – she wanted to write to me herself. He’s put a note in from her.’ She took a separate sheet of paper from the envelope and looked down at it. ‘It’s a nice little note, too. I think I’d like Jeanie.’
Her face crumpled and the tears began to flow in earnest. Mabel Prettyjohn left her polishing, wiped her hands on a damp rag, and came over to put her arms around her daughter.
‘There, there, my pretty. You have your cry now, it’ll do you good. Let it out, let it out.’ Gently, she removed the letter from May’s fingers, where tears were already beginning to blur the ink, and laid it on the table.
‘I shouldn’t keep on like this,’ May sobbed, trying to stem the flow. ‘It’s weeks now – I should be getting over it. I keep trying to pull myself together, but every now and then it all comes over me again. And when I read this letter … It’s such a nice letter, Mother. And I shan’t ever know them now, not properly, like I would have if Ben – if Ben …’
Mabel patted her shoulder and rocked her in her arms. ‘And it hasn’t helped, knowing that Alison’s lost her man as well, has it? Made it all the worse.’
‘There’s been so many of them,’ she wept. ‘Ever since the airfield opened. So many pilots have come to Harrowbeer and been killed, and they’m all so young, too. Just boys.’
‘I know. It’s war. ’Tis always the same in war.’
‘Well, why can’t they stop it?’ she cried with sudden anger. ‘Why can’t they find another way to sort out their arguments? ’Tis nothing to do with us ordinary people – none of us wanted it. They didn’t ask us if us wanted to go to war, they just told us. But we’m the ones getting killed, not they politicians. It’s us – people like Ben and his brother, and Andrew, and all they other brave men. It isn’t fair!’
‘Life isn’t fair whoever you are,’ came William’s voice from the other room. ‘You don’t have to be at war to know that.’
The two women looked at each other and May wiped her face and went through the door to where her father sat propped in his chair, his useless legs on a stool in front of him. ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ she said quietly. ‘You’m right. I should be ashamed.’
‘No, maid, there’s no need for that. I didn’t mean you to take it that way. I just wanted to say that it don’t matter who or what you are, you can’t expect things to go the way you want them. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t, and all us can do is carry on as best us can
. You have your cry out, maid, like your mother says, but after that you just got to pick yourself up and get on with things. There’s no other way.’
‘I know.’ She sat on the edge of the bed, now in its daytime guise of sofa, and took his hand. ‘I know, and I’m trying. It was just getting this letter that started me off again. It’s so nice. And it all seems so sad. Such a waste.’
‘Ah, I won’t argue with that, maid.’ He patted her hand. ‘All I can say is, ’tis not for us to fathom why things are as they are. Nobody’s ever worked that out, as far as I can see. All us can do is keep smiling.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’re right.’ And proved it by giving him a tremulous and still slightly tearful smile. ‘I’ll go and help Mother with the dinner. We’m having pasties and I promised to make the pastry.’
She went back to the kitchen and picked up her letter. Later on, she would take it up to her bedroom and, perhaps, read it again. After that, she would put it away in her little box of treasures, with the snap Ben had given her of himself standing on the wing of his aeroplane.
She didn’t think she was likely to hear from the Hazelwoods again.
‘I suppose you’ll go back to Lincolnshire,’ Stefan said. He was in his usual chair, a cup of tea beside him and Hughie on the rug at his feet. Apart from Caroline, asleep in her cradle, it was as if nothing had changed since those winter afternoons when he had called to talk to her about his life in Poland. Yet everything had changed. Nothing would be the same again.
Alison stirred. The fine weather had disappeared and the thick, misty drizzle that so often hung around the high ground of Harrowbeer was falling outside. It was too warm and muggy to light a fire, yet the brightness of a few flames would have cheered the dismal afternoon. It wouldn’t have warmed her heart though, she thought sadly. There was a chill there now that would never thaw.
‘Not yet,’ she answered. ‘I couldn’t let Andrew come back and find me not here.’
Her mother had written to her as soon as Alison had let her know that Andrew was missing, begging her to come home if only for a week or two. She would come to Devon as soon as she could, she said, but for now wouldn’t it be better for Alison to be at home, where there were plenty of people to look after her and the children? But Alison had made the same reply: she could not leave Harrowbeer until she knew for certain what had happened. She could not let Andrew come home – as she still prayed he would – to an empty house.
The Group Captain had come to see her again after that first day and they had discussed all the possibilities. Men had been apparently lost before and then returned. Some had managed to get back from France, brought across the Channel at great risk by fishermen and landed on some dark, lonely beach. But the beaches were now mined, wired off and guarded, and anyone landing along the south coast would risk being blown up or shot.
There were other ways of getting back. If you could reach a safe house, you might be passed along, like a particularly dangerous parcel, until you reached Spain where you would be out of the reach of the Germans and could be brought more safely across the Channel. Alison herself had known two men who had returned this way. One had told her how, with several other men, he had been hidden for three weeks in the home of a notary in Marseilles, not allowed to look out of the windows in case he might be seen, not allowed to flush the lavatory in case he might be heard. Eventually, he had been taken to another house, and then another, and then on a long trudge across the Pyrenees and into Spain. When he finally reached England, he was given a few days’ leave and then returned to duty.
‘You believe he will come back,’ Stefan said, half in question, half statement, and she nodded.
‘I have to.’ Until we know for certain, we must never give up, the Group Captain had told her. ‘It may sound silly, but I feel that as long as I keep my hope alive, I might somehow help to keep Andrew alive too. If I let it go, I’ll be taking away whatever chance he might have.’
Stefan glanced down at Hughie and rested his hand on the fair hair. ‘I know just what you mean,’ he said quietly. ‘I, too, must keep on hoping for my own family. But it’s very hard, when you know all too well what might be happening.’ There was a moment’s silence, then he said more strongly, ‘But for Andrew, I believe there is much hope. Nobody saw him go down. And if he did die, it would have been as a hero. He has been a great flyer, Alison. You will always be able to tell your children that, whatever happens.’
They were silent for a few minutes and then she asked, ‘What will you do when it’s all over, Stefan? Will you go back to Poland? Some of the others have been saying they’d rather stay here.’
‘Who knows? Some are afraid to go back, for fear of what they may find. And if the Russians have control – well, we know them of old. They are no better masters than the Germans. If we could bring our families here – if we still have families …’ He paused, his face shuttered. ‘And then there are those who have found a different life in this country. Those who have married, or want to marry English girls. I don’t think they will want to take their wives to Poland, not as it must be now.’
‘What would you do?’ she asked. ‘You’re a musician. Will there be any orchestras?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, I think my music will now be for my pleasure alone. The world will have other things to consider as it sets itself to rights after the catastrophes of the past five years. We will all find ourselves living very different lives from those we expected to live. This war has changed everything.’ He looked at his hands, at the long, sensitive fingers. ‘I shall probably find myself laying bricks to help rebuild this poor broken world, but whether that will be here or in Poland, or in some quite different country, I have no idea.’
‘Oh, Stefan,’ she said, looking down at the castle Hughie was building. ‘It’s all so sad.’
He nodded. ‘But I know that you say every cloud has a silver lining. If it had not been for this war, I would never have come to this place.’ He hesitated. ‘I would never have met you.’
Startled, she looked up and met his eyes. They were very dark, with just a rim of pale, glittering silver. She felt her heart twist a little and then she looked away.
‘Play the piano for me,’ she said. ‘Play something strong and powerful, something that makes me think about winning wars. Something that will make me feel that it will all come out right in the end, and Andrew will come back, and you can go home to Poland and find your family again.’
He got up and went to the piano. Lifting its lid, he sat down and let his fingers stray over the keys. Hughie scrambled to his feet and went to stand beside him, watching his hands intently. Then the music began.
As the notes of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 4 filled the room, she lay back in her chair and thought of Andrew, soaring high in his plane; and seemed to see, through his eyes, the destruction that lay below.
Chapter Thirty-Four
By the middle of June, London and the south-east of England were under attack once more and people were having to take to the air-raid shelters they had thought would no longer be needed. The flying bomb had arrived.
The first few had been mentioned briefly in the news as ‘gas explosions’. But as more and more occurred, it was impossible to dismiss them and soon everyone knew about the stubby-winged pilotless ‘aircraft’ that had been seen flying from the direction of Calais.
‘They say you can tell the sound of their engine from any other sort of plane,’ May said when she came to clean through for Alison one morning. ‘But it’s when the engine stops that you need to take cover. They just come straight down then, and if you’re underneath you don’t stand a chance. And they’re big, too – big bombs, I mean.’
‘I know,’ Alison shivered. ‘One of the pilots told me they carry a ton of explosive. And they’ve got a new sort of engine, too. That’s why it sounds different – he called it a buzz-bomb.’
‘Well, they can buzz off as soon as they like,’ May said, polishing the piano. �
�I thought we were doing all right, what with the Invasion and everything, but now we’m right back to the Blitz. I tell you what, I sometimes wonder if it’ll ever be over.’
She went out to the wash-house at the back of the kitchen, where Caroline’s nappies were boiling in the old copper. With a pair of large wooden tongs, she fished them out and dumped them in an enamel pail to take back to the kitchen and rinse, dropping another pile in to take their turn. By the time they were all done, there was a row of snowy nappies fluttering on the washing line, and Alison called her in for a cup of tea.
‘It’s time we had a break,’ she said. While May had been washing and cleaning, she had been baking rock cakes and preparing vegetables for her and Hughie’s dinner. ‘When we’ve had this, I’ll walk back with you. I’ve got a book for your father.’
‘Oh, he’ll be pleased with that. He was saying last night he didn’t have nothing to read. He liked that last one you brought him from the library.’
They walked along the road, pushing Caroline in her pram while Hughie stumped alongside. Bob Derry’s taxi passed them, with two people inside, and they stood back against the hedge as it went by. To their surprise, it stopped at the gate of the Prettyjohns’ cottage.
‘Whoever can that be?’ May asked. ‘Us don’t know many people rich enough to pay for taxis.’
She quickened her steps as the car doors opened and the strangers got out. Bob Derry got out too and they stood talking for a moment while he was paid; then he drove back towards the airfield, giving May and Alison a cheerful wave as he went. The man and woman turned to greet them.
‘Good morning,’ the man said. ‘You must be May Prettyjohn.’ He came forward, holding out both hands, and May took them uncertainly. ‘I’m so glad to see you, my dear. My name’s John Hazelwood. And this,’ he indicated the tall, silver-haired woman standing at his side, ‘is my wife Olivia. We’re Ben’s mother and father.’