The Rainbow Years

by Bradshaw, Rita

  ‘This isn’t about me, not in that way.’ She didn’t know how she was going to tell him. Oh God, let me be doing the right thing. ‘It’s Charles, my . . . my husband.’

  His expression didn’t change but she felt his hand jerk slightly as it held her fingers.

  ‘He’s badly hurt, paralysed.’

  ‘I know.’

  She just had to say it. ‘I can’t leave him now, not now.’

  He didn’t let go of her hand but he leaned back in the chair, his body distancing itself. ‘When then?’

  ‘I’m going back to him, Nick. I have to.’

  ‘The hell you do,’ he said very softly.

  ‘He needs me. He’ll give up if he has nothing to live for.’

  ‘That’s not your problem or mine.’

  ‘It’s not yours, no, but we’re man and wife. We made vows—’

  ‘Don’t give me that.’ Now he did remove his hand from hers, his voice low but intense. ‘This is emotional blackmail, can’t you see that? He’s using the tricks he tried in the past. Bruce told me how you stayed with him, believing things would work out, giving him a second and third and umpteenth chance, but a leopard doesn’t change its spots, Amy.You’ve cut the man off for years, you wanted a divorce, you wanted me. That’s the truth of it. All this is just woolly thinking because of what’s happened.’

  ‘He isn’t using emotional blackmail, just the opposite.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It was me who decided to go back to him, he didn’t expect it.’

  ‘No? He just managed to look suitably pathetic.’

  ‘Nick, I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t really understand myself. I just know I couldn’t live with myself if I don’t do this. We wouldn’t be happy, it would blight everything. ’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘You know I don’t.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Nick, please. Just accept I’ve made up my mind. You . . . you’ll meet—’

  ‘Don’t say it.’ His tone changed swiftly. He said under his breath and with some fury, ‘Don’t you dare say I’ll meet someone else as though it’s that simple. Damn it all, Amy.’ He leaned forward again, taking her hands in a grip that was bruising. ‘I love you. I shall spend the rest of my life loving you. How can you put him before me? Whatever he’s feeling can’t be as bad as the hell you’re consigning me to.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I am.’

  ‘You’re going to send me away?’ Disbelief warred with recognition that she meant what she said. Their eyes held for long moments, his full of incredulous, impotent fury and hers swimming with tears. ‘Then you never really loved me,’ he said heavily, rising to his feet and looking down at her with a coldness she’d never seen before.

  She made no protest, she said nothing at all. In that moment she felt she had died inside.

  He turned and walked away down the ward, pausing at the doors for just a moment before pushing them open and stepping through without looking back.

  Chapter 24

  Nick arrived back at the base early the next morning, just after his squadron had returned to their sleeping quarters after a night mission. On entering his hut he was met by a barrage of friendly insults by the airmen within, but his terse rejoinders warned them all was not well and within moments the talk died down. When Bruce made his way over to his friend, Nick filled him in on what had happened, his voice clipped.

  ‘And you accepted that?’ Bruce was astounded. ‘Are you mad, man? Charles will be a millstone round her neck all his life, whereas you two—’

  ‘There is no us two.’When Bruce went to say more, Nick said,‘Leave it. It’s finished. She’s made up her mind. She insists he didn’t try the bleeding hearts routine and I believe her. Amy is doing what she wants to do.’

  ‘Aw, that’s not fair. She’s doing what she feels she has to do and that’s different. But she’s wrong. Paralysed or not, Charles won’t change.’

  ‘I told her that and it makes no difference. Now, forget it. What’s been happening while I’ve been gone?’

  Bruce stared at his friend and he was deeply troubled. If Nick was right, and there was no reason to doubt him, and Amy had made up her mind to take care of Charles, no one would be able to persuade her otherwise. He had loved her all his life and he knew how stubborn she could be. But she was making a terrible mistake. A mistake which wouldn’t only ruin her life but that of the man standing in front of him now.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Nick touched Bruce’s arm briefly. ‘It wasn’t meant to be, that’s all. Just another wartime romance hitting the dust.’

  He didn’t mean it. Bruce remained silent and embarrassed; he did not know what to say.

  ‘So, like I said, what’s been happening?’ Nick said again.

  Bruce shrugged. ‘You’ve heard we hit the Ruhr valley pretty hard a couple of nights ago? There’s talk of a new bombing campaign now this Sir Arthur Harris has taken over. The lads are already calling him Bomber Harris after he said he means to knock the hell out of Jerry.’

  Nick nodded. ‘Suits me.’

  ‘Oh, and Gertie and I have decided to make a go of it, seriously, you know?’ It wasn’t the best moment to say it, not with Nick raw about Amy, but Bruce knew Nick well enough to know his friend wouldn’t appreciate any pussyfooting about.

  Nick nodded. ‘I thought it was on the cards. Marriage in the air, is it?’

  ‘We’ll just see how things go for now.’

  He didn’t expand on this and Nick wasn’t sufficiently interested to pursue it, not that he would have got anywhere if he had.

  Early that afternoon, Nick and his fellow pilots emerged from the briefing which was sending them on a raid escorting bombers to industrial plants near Béthune. They had been told the RAF had begun a round-the-clock offensive against German arms factories, German-controlled industries in France and German gun emplacements in the Calais area. Hundreds of tons of incendiaries and high explosives would rain down on the targets, overwhelming the German firefighters and Luftwaffe. ‘This is a new strategy, gentlemen, and it will be unrelenting.’The CO had glanced round the room, knowing some of the men had been up most of the night and had had only three or four hours’ sleep. ‘It is going to be busy out there so keep your wits about you.’

  Keep your wits about you. As Nick went through the normal pre-flight procedure, the words of the CO stayed with him. Marie Petit, the French farmer’s daughter, had said the same thing to him the afternoon she had led him through St Omer’s broad cobbled square surrounded by cafés and a hotel full of Germans. The walk had been necessary to reach his guide to the escape route, but it had been risky. When Marie had decided a German soldier sitting outside one of the cafés was looking at them a little oddly, she had reached up and kissed him full on the mouth, ruffling his hair afterwards and calling him a naughty boy. He could taste her now, warm and plump and mellow, like good French wine. Not that he had prolonged the kiss. His mind had been too full of Amy.

  He pressed the starter button and felt and heard his engine roar into life. He taxied swiftly out behind the leading aircraft and then he was tearing down the runway and into the air.

  Once in battle formation, he relaxed. He’d been wondering how he’d feel the first time up in the air after the crash, but in the event it was just another day’s flying. Far better to be up here where he had to concentrate than on the ground where there was time to think.A voice broke the radio silence and announced that lack of oil pressure was sending him home, but there were more than enough Spitfires escorting the bombers. Soon there was just the sky above and the sea below, the mass of aircraft like winged insects intent on reaching a choice feeding ground.

  At first the Luftwaffe appeared like a batch of enemy insects in the top half of his bulletproof windscreen, but things soon changed. It wasn’t long before the sky was criss-crossed with streams of white tracer from shells converging on aircraft and the fight was on to destroy before he was destroyed. The sudden bang and then
the gaping hole in his starboard wing came as a shock.

  ‘Not again.’ He said the words out loud, not quite believing he was going to lose another aircraft so soon after the first when he had come through the rest of the war without a scratch. But then, as the gas tank behind the engine blew up and the cockpit became a blazing inferno, disbelief turned to agonised terror. He was burning and there was nothing he could do about it except try to bale out, but his grilled hands wouldn’t obey him. He felt the skin of his face on fire but through the searing pain some instinct kept his charcoaled fingers groping for the release pin securing the restraining harness. Just when he thought it was all over, he was out of the cockpit and tumbling in cool air, over and over.

  He had to pull the ripcord. He would die if he didn’t pull the ripcord, and contrary to how he had felt during the last twenty-four hours, he suddenly found he didn’t want to die. The trouble was his hands were lumps of raw meat and wouldn’t obey the message his brain was sending them.Three times he tried to pull the chromium ring and on the third attempt there was a jerk and then the silken canopy mushroomed, whole and unburned, above him. He had never seen such a beautiful sight.

  The brief euphoria vanished when the shock of his injuries combined with the cold air at twelve thousand feet above sea level took hold. His violent shivering turned his body into a dangerous pendulum, and the smell of his burned flesh made him nauseous.

  He must have passed out because when he hit the water he went right under the surface before he came to, emerging to find himself tangled in the parachute and in danger of being dragged down to Davy Jones’s locker. Spluttering and splashing and cursing, he fought with the release mechanism. Once free, he inflated his Mae West as they had been drilled to do in training.

  With the life jacket keeping him afloat, he lost consciousness again. The next thing that registered was acute pain, made ten times worse on his face by the sea salt drying on raw flesh.

  The book of rules stated he must float about until rescued, he thought with dark humour. It said nothing about leaving a trail of blood and bits of burned skin in the water, nor of how precisely the rescue would take place before he died of his injuries. The only good thing was that the icy water was numbing the pain in his hands slowly but surely.

  How long he was in the sea before the big old trawler steamed by he had no idea. Life had been reduced to one bob of the waves after another and the monotone in his head which told him he had to stay alive. His eyes were so swollen he couldn’t even be sure it was a ship until he heard voices calling to him.

  As he was lifted aboard by the amazingly gentle, grizzled fishermen he thought of the stories he’d heard where people’s lives flash before them in times of life and death. He hadn’t experienced that. Nor had he thought of anything or anyone whilst in the water; staying alive had consumed every moment. Did that mean he was going to make it? He was in a bad way, he could tell from the men’s faces he looked as bad as he felt, but he could stand anything if he didn’t lose his eyesight. He’d always had a horror of going blind.

  He knew he was passing in and out of consciousness, but the warmth of the ship and the thick blankets which had been tucked round him brought back the feeling in his hands and he welcomed the times when he knew nothing. He was vaguely aware of reaching a harbour, of being transported onto the quay, of questions being asked by a quiet voice and then an ambulance ride after an injection which only took the edge off the unbearable pain. And then there was the hospital and a clean white bed, and this time the injection took the pain somewhere far away. A doctor explained he had to be operated on immediately but such was his exhaustion he could barely reply.

  And then came the surgeon and the anaesthetist and other blurred figures and he realised he was in an operating theatre. Just before he was given the anaesthetic, he remembered Bunny Taylor, a Spitfire pilot who had been in the Battle of Britain with him and who had been badly burned. He had driven to Sussex with several other pilots to see Bunny in hospital. The place had housed apparitions who had featured in his nightmares for weeks, and it was common knowledge Bunny’s marriage had folded because his wife had been revolted by him.

  He was one of them now.The hypodermic syringe pierced the vein in the hollow of his elbow joint. Thank God Amy would never be called upon to pretend the sight of him didn’t make her feel squeamish.

  PART EIGHT

  1950 The Road Back

  Chapter 25

  ‘The funeral was well attended.’ Edward, Charles’s brother, patted Amy’s arm as he spoke.

  She forced herself to smile. ‘Yes, it was. Charles had lots of friends hereabouts.’

  ‘He was extremely happy the last eight years, you know. He told me so on more than one occasion. In fact, strange though it might sound when one considers his infirmity, I think he was the happiest he’d been in the whole of his life. All thanks to you, m’dear.’

  ‘Thank you, Edward.’

  ‘I mean it. It can’t have been easy for you.’

  No, it hadn’t been easy but not really for the reasons Edward probably imagined. Amy knew people pitied her, a young wife tied to a paraplegic with constant major health problems. Problems which meant any breaks away from home were out of the question. But it hadn’t been the hard work involved in caring for Charles that she had minded so much. He’d been so grateful for one thing, pathetically so. And the gruelling routine had actually been a blessing in a strange kind of way; it had helped to numb the pain that was with her day and night, the pain of losing Nick. Never a day went by that she didn’t wonder where he was, who he was with, what might have been.

  She had realised very early on she would go mad if she didn’t get out of the home she shared with Charles for a few hours each day. Her discharge from the WAAFs had come through some weeks after she and Charles had been injured, once the doctors had realised complications with her broken leg had meant it was going to take some months to mend properly. But as soon as she was able, she had arranged the employment of a part-time nurse in the afternoons and taken up voluntary war work in a munitions factory canteen. Later, when the war had ended, she had given her time to the local children’s home. The few hours’ break from the house and the company of ordinary healthy people had been a life-saver and Amy knew it. It was a panacea against those moments when she found herself resenting the position she was in, and then the guilt that followed.

  It had been her dream to adopt several children who had been orphaned by the war but Charles’s doctors had advised against this. They had been worried their frail patient could not cope mentally or physically with the stress and noise which went hand in hand with having children living in the house. Amy could see their reasoning. Charles’s heart never really recovered from the accident and the injuries he had sustained meant he was in almost constant pain, but it had been hard to come to terms with at first.

  All in all, though, the years between 1942 and 1950 had run smoothly in the Callendar household and Amy had seen to it that her husband’s environment was a peaceful and happy one.

  Although she thought of Nick all the time, she had only spoken of him once to Bruce during the last eight years, and that had been in the very early days when Bruce and Gertie had visited her in hospital while her leg was mending. She had asked her cousin then to tell her if Nick was killed and Bruce had promised he would. Even after Bruce and Gertie were married just after the war finished, she resisted the temptation to attend the wedding in case he was there, using Charles as an excuse not to travel down to Sheffield where Bruce and Gertie had settled. To talk about him or try to see him would have been a betrayal of Charles, that was the way she felt, besides which the words he had spoken as he had left her had seared her mind like a branding iron. He thought she didn’t love him, when in fact she loved him so much it was a physical ache in her chest at times. In her good moments, when she was feeling strong, she told herself it was probably all for the best he thought this way. It would have freed him to carry on with life, m
eet someone, settle down and have a family. In her bad times these same thoughts tortured her and she had to confess she wanted him to love her for ever, selfish though that was, and to know that she loved him.

  Amy glanced across at Bruce and Gertie who were chatting to Betsy and Ruth and their husbands. The twins, along with Bruce and Eva, were the only members of Amy’s family to survive the war, but Eva had gone off to America after marrying a GI and no one had heard from her since. May and her parents, Harriet and little Milly had been killed in May 1943 during what turned out to be the last bombing raid on Sunderland. A parachute mine had devastated their house when Harriet was home on leave from the Land Army; the twins had been in Sunderland infirmary with scarlet fever and so had escaped the carnage.

  Perce had met a different end. According to the Echo, he had been killed by a hit-and-run car in the blackout one night. There had been whispers that one of the ne’er-do-wells Perce associated with had decided Perce was cheating him and had taken his revenge. No one was brought to task for the crime, however, and the incident soon faded from people’s minds.