An Army of Smiles

by An Army of Smiles (retail) (epub)

  They continued on their way saying very little, just smiling at each other from time to time as though sharing a wonderful secret. Ethel was aware of a feeling of perfect peace. It was like the end of a trying and difficult journey, back in the safety of her true love. From that day she could even remember Duggie without being engulfed in the terrible pain of grief. Duggie and Baba were the dream, a part of the experience of war. Wesley was the reality.

  She looked at him; older, wiser but so comfortable and familiar, and she realized that after all that had happened they belonged together. It wouldn’t be the wild passionate love she had known with Duggie and Baba, where their emotions were heightened by danger, but a more gentle, trusting and long-lasting love.

  It was a discovery that was as surprising as it was exciting. Her happiness made her more and more tearful as her revived love for Wesley grew. She was more weepy these days and wondered whether it was the baby making her so, or whether that was one of Rosie’s Nan’s fanciful stories. Perhaps she was crying for the loss of the friends she had briefly found through the years of the war. There would never be enough tears for the young men she had known, liked and lost.

  With Rosie’s help she found a job in a shop with accommodation above. Helped by an understanding boss, she stayed on even when she was no longer able to work the usual hours, and it was there that the child was born.

  The story she told Wesley was that she was away on Naafi business, travelling a great deal and could be contacted only through Rosie. With their letters passed on by Rosie, Ethel and Wesley made their plans. For a while, until they had both decided what they wanted to do with their lives, they would work alongside Molly and Sid Twomey, helping to run the now thriving market garden. Ethel could also make sure the man she still called father was not treated too unkindly.

  ‘Will you tell Wesley about his child, one day?’ Rosie asked as she admired Ethel’s newly born son.

  ‘No. Confession might be good for the soul, but in this case, as in many others, it’s nothing more than self-indulgence,’ she said emphatically. ‘It might make you feel better, but it’s simply burdening someone else with your troubles.’

  ‘There’s only one thing I would change to make life perfect,’ Rosie said as she held the child in her arms three weeks later and prepared to board the train that would take them home. She blushed as she said, ‘I wish the baby were Baba’s child.’

  ‘He is,’ Ethel told her softly.

  Rosie squealed in delight.

  Going home after giving birth, Ethel was again tearful. She felt bereft. Her arms ached to hold the child she had given up and there were moments when she wanted to rush to Rosie and tell her it had been a terrible mistake. But determination to set her feet on the future path she had chosen overcame the momentary regrets, and she went back to The Dell and Wesley.

  In the nearby town men were returning after years of absence. For some the homecomings were blissfully happy, others found their loved ones had become strangers. There were a few who returned to find wives with children they knew they couldn’t have fathered. Ethel thought it ironic that she was one of the returning ones who, instead of coming back to find problems, had brought the trouble with her.

  She watched Wesley and wondered how he would have reacted to her news and she wondered, even then, whether he should be told. But she settled back into the routine of her mother’s house and said nothing. She visited Rosie often and sometimes Wesley went with her. Showing affection for the baby was understandable and nothing was said to arouse Wesley’s suspicions. That the baby was loved and cared for was clear. He was surrounded with love and would want for nothing. If Ethel grieved for the loss of him and the life with Baba she had once expected, she hid it well.

  * * *

  Sid was regularly meeting a woman who had helped the Twomeys in the house and on the market garden. Wendy was a war widow and she and Sid were planning to marry. He and Wendy visited Rosie and admired the baby, whom they had called Colin, after Ethel’s true father. It was Rosie who was the first to hear about their plans to marry.

  ‘The trouble is,’ Sid told her, ‘if Wendy and I stay at home and run the market garden, there would be enough to keep us occupied, but with Ethel and Wesley working there too, there wouldn’t be enough to support us. We’d have to leave, find something else to do, somewhere else to live, and the garden is what we both want to do.’

  ‘If gardening is what Ethel and Wesley really want, we’ll go,’ Wendy explained. ‘But if they’re only doing it because they think they should, then it will be a pity for us to leave when we really want to stay.’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind helping to look after Sid’s father?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘I’m prepared to take on his family and do whatever is necessary. That’s what marriage is, accepting the whole package.’ She touched Sid’s arm and smiled at him.

  ‘Both Wesley and Ethel worked in catering before the war; perhaps they would prefer to go back but can’t admit it,’ Sid added. ‘The haven’t had much experience of growing things. It can be very tedious at times.’

  Wendy groaned. ‘Pricking out a couple of hundred lettuce plants for example.’

  When Sid and Wendy had left, Rosie gave a big sigh and said, ‘Oh, Nan, why don’t people talk to each other? Half the world’s problems could be forgotten if only people would talk.’

  She was unaware that that was what Ethel was trying to do at that moment.

  Wesley and she were hoeing between rows of winter cabbages, newly emerged broad beans and leeks. They stopped frequently and looked back along the cleared ground then ahead at the weed-covered area still to be done.

  ‘Are you enjoying this, Wesley?’ Ethel asked, throwing down the hoe and leaning on the wheelbarrow.

  ‘I can cope,’ he replied.

  ‘That wasn’t the question. Can you see yourself doing this sort of thing, year after year?’

  ‘What are you saying, Ethel?’

  ‘What do you really want to do with your life? I don’t really know what I want but I know it isn’t this.’

  ‘I always dreamed of being the owner of a grand restaurant, but those dreams have gone. Now I’m not sure. So for the present this will do.’

  ‘I think we should talk to Sid. I think it’s time for some honesty, don’t you?’ She was thinking only of the work they had agreed to do and had no intention of making any confessions about Duggie and Baba or baby Colin.

  They used a horse and cart to collect and deliver their requirements and when they had finished the weeding, they piled the tools on to the flat cart and began to ride home.

  ‘Talking about honesty…’ Wesley began and Ethel stared at him in surprise. Surely he didn’t have terrible secrets too?

  ‘Did you ever wonder what happened to the engagement ring I bought for you?’

  ‘You still have it?’

  They heard a car approaching and from the sound of the engine it was travelling fast. Wesley pulled the horse to the side of the lane and glanced back. ‘I gave it to another woman,’ he said, but before he could say anything more, a low sports car came around the corner, touched the cart and careered off. The driver managed to regain control and the car came to a stop in a gateway further down the lane.

  The horse panicked and pulled them further along the lane but without Wesley’s guiding hands on the reins the cart caught against a tree and spilt them both out.

  The driver of the car got out and looked at them: Ethel holding her face which was bleeding from cuts from branches, and the utterly still figure of Wesley.

  ‘I’ll go for help,’ he said and reversing the car out of the field he sped away.

  Wesley stirred and assured Ethel that he was unharmed. ‘For a moment there I was imagining myself back on active service,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s make sure Dolly is all right.’ They released Dolly from the cart and walked back home, one each side of the horse, which seemed unaffected by the incident.

  Ethel was thinking, no
t of the narrow escape they’d had, but of the woman to whom Wesley had given her engagement ring. Nothing more was said and throughout the night, between uneasy dozing, Ethel thought about the mysterious woman and wondered how much Wesley had been about to confess. Had he made this woman promises – he hadn’t kept? Baba was certainly not the only man to do that. Had they fallen in love? Had they slept together? Had he succumbed to loneliness as desperately as she had? If so, could she tell him about the baby?

  The following day they worked together in the field and he didn’t add to what he had begun to tell her. ‘Perhaps I should help him?’ she said to Rosie that evening, when she went to the house where she felt so much at home. ‘If his war was similar to mine, perhaps I would make him feel less unhappy if I told him about Duggie and even Baba. Then whatever it is he’s trying to tell me won’t seem as terrible.’

  Rosie said nothing.

  ‘I must have been crazy to imagine he didn’t meet women and share moments of comfort. Most men did when they thought death was waiting for them. I didn’t think about it for a moment, but now, I think his guilty memories have been bothering him ever since we met in France. He’s so sensitive and it would explain why he’s so subdued.’

  Rosie didn’t agree or disagree. This was beyond her. All she hoped was that if the truth about the baby emerged, it wouldn’t mean she would lose him. Baby Colin was her life. How would she cope without him?

  Her mind made up, Ethel went back and called to see Wesley. It was a cold November night but she insisted they went for a walk. Wrapping up warmly, they went through the fields towards where the lights of the town glittered on the frosty air.

  ‘Tell me about this woman you gave my ring to, Wesley. I’ll understand. Loneliness and fear had to be dealt with, we all learned that. We all have secrets, specially after being away for years. I know you want to tell me, but you’re afraid I’ll be upset. Well, my secrets are likely to be worse, so tell me. Please.’

  Wesley stopped and in the darkness she couldn’t read his expression. There was no clue in his voice as he said, ‘You first. Nothing held back, mind.’

  ‘All right, I had an affair with a man called Duggie. He… he was killed. His was one of the planes which didn’t return.’

  ‘Serious was it, you and this Duggie?’

  ‘Yes, I thought so. You were gone from my life and I had no family; danger was a constant companion and I needed someone. Then, some time later, there was George Morgan, everyone called him Baba.’

  ‘Baba Morgan? I heard about him. He was carrying on with a woman, and left her with a baby and went home… to… Ethel, please don’t tell me that was you?’

  She hadn’t intended to mention the baby, but now it seemed pointless to deny it. She had forgotten how much gossip was passed between stations, and Wesley had worked on the demolition of obsolete airfields too.

  He took her arm and walked at a fast pace back to her home where he left her without a word. The following day there was a note through the door, explaining about finding the ring in the box of a man who had stolen it while on board a ship. Not bothering to claim it, he had allowed it to be sent to the man’s widow. Such a trivial confession compared with her own.

  Wesley’s mother told her he had gone away and she had no idea where. Ethel was imbued with a calmness that surprised her. Although disappointed at the outcome, she had no regrets about the truth being exposed. If they were to have a future it was better there were no secrets. Rosie would have agreed with that. Secrets never remained hidden for ever. They had a habit of popping up unexpectedly, long after the event, like a time bomb quietly waiting until it could do the most damage.

  As always she went to talk to Rosie.

  ‘What will you do?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘Give him a month, then I’ll go away too. Somewhere I’m not known where I can make a fresh start.’

  ‘Sid will be pleased, I think.’

  ‘Pleased if I go away?’

  ‘Pleased if you don’t want to live at home and work on the gardens. He and Wendy can get married if the place doesn’t have to support you and Wesley.’ She looked at Ethel’s surprised expression and burst out laughing. ‘Why don’t families talk to each other, eh?’

  ‘Because too much talking can destroy them.’

  A month passed, and Ethel made sure that Dai was being looked after properly. Molly’s attitude towards Dai had softened, and the sick man had better care. Ethel felt able to leave. She began to look at advertisements for live-in jobs at hotels. In January, when baby Colin was ten months old she called to see him.

  He was pulling himself up and standing strongly, banging anything he might use as a drum and exploring his world in ever widening circles, to his delight, and to the anxiety of Rosie, her mother and her Nan.

  ‘He’s so strong and busy,’ Rosie told her proudly. ‘And we’re enjoying every moment.’ Ethel was happy to know he was in safe hands. She was leaving but would always stay in touch.

  She was packing when Wesley came to see her. She looked at him coldly, about to say the words she had rehearsed: ‘Running away is your way of dealing with things, isn’t it?’ But the words didn’t come, she was relieved to see him.

  She turned away and said instead, ‘I was just going to tuck Dad up for the night.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he replied.

  He helped her tidy the bedcovers and watched as she gave Dai a drink. Then he sat on a chair and gestured for her to sit opposite him.

  ‘I needed to get away to make a few decisions, Ethel. I’m sorry I walked out on you again, but since I came home my mind has been a constant jangle. Now I have everything clear.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, sarcastically. ‘How nice for you.’

  ‘I’m going to train to become a nurse.’ His words surprised her and she stared at him. ‘Working in the sick bay on board ship made me aware of how much more I could have done with proper training.’

  ‘You’ve never mentioned it,’ she said accusingly.

  ‘I wasn’t sure I could do it, but now I know I can, and should. I have a place in a hospital near London and, if you’re interested, there’s a job in the canteen which could probably be yours. You have to go next week for an interview.’

  ‘You disappear for years, then again vanish for weeks without a word, then casually arrange for me to go to London with you and work in a hospital canteen?’

  ‘We can marry before you go if you wish, or come back later.’

  ‘I think I want to see Rosie.’

  ‘I’ll come with you. It’s time I was properly introduced to your son,’ he said.

  Two weeks later, Sid and Wendy had arranged their wedding and Ethel, still bemused by the strength of Wesley’s decision making, agreed to make it a double ceremony.

  ‘Rosie, what if I’m making a mistake?’ Ethel said to her friend a few days after the announcement. ‘What if I meet someone like Baba and fall for them? What if life with Wesley isn’t enough for me?’

  ‘This isn’t wartime. Everything was topsy-turvy then. Would you have fallen for anyone else if you and Wesley had been married and living around here?’

  Shamefaced, Ethel looked away and said softly, ‘I might have. How do I know?’

  ‘The war threw everything in the air and it landed in a muddle that will take years to sort out. If you love Wesley, marry him, but you have to be sure.’

  ‘That’s the problem, I’m not.’

  She went to see Wesley that evening and sat looking at him, aware of love for him, but it was a love that was tinged with pity. Rosie had been right when she said they would have been happy if they had married and there hadn’t been a war, but too much had happened for them to return to how they were then.

  Over the days that followed she evaded the plans for the double wedding, telling Sid and Wendy she hadn’t made up her mind whenever they asked for a decision or an opinion. Her thoughts wavered between ‘I’ll take a chance’ and ‘This isn’t for me’, until she
was exhausted. While she continued to work on the land, Wesley left to begin his training and she was offered the job in the hospital canteen. The work was what she knew best, but something held her back from accepting.

  On impulse she wrote to the Naafi asking to return. She couldn’t settle for marriage to Wesley. A loving affection just wasn’t enough, either for herself or Wesley. When everything was arranged and she told Wesley her decision, to her relief and with some disappointment, Wesley didn’t argue or try very hard to dissuade her.

  ‘I’ve never felt confident that we’d go back to how we were,’ he told her. ‘When we met in France I saw a stranger. You had changed but I hadn’t.’

  She thought that was fair. Duggie, Baba, baby Colin, there was no way he could compete with all that had happened to her.

  As she stood on the railway station to go to her new posting, she looked around her at the neatly dressed passengers. All civilians, several with a morning paper which they were trying to read. No lively girls with which to share the journey, no parcel of food from Rosie’s Nan to enjoy. She would miss Rosie, and Rosie’s Nan’s parcels, she thought, and smiled a sad smile.

  Then a voice called and she turned to see Rosie, with a struggling Colin in her arms and a carrier bag in her other hand.

  ‘Ethel, wait, Nan sent this.’ Puffing with the exertion of her hasty arrival, Rosie handed her the bag. ‘Cake, biscuits, a bar of Cadbury’s and a pot of Nan’s home-made jam. Nan says a parcel of luxuries is a good way to start making friends.’

  ‘But she’s using her rations,’ Ethel protested.

  ‘Loves you she does and wishes you nothing but happiness.’

  Tearfully, Ethel hugged them both and when the train came she leaned out of the window and waved until the station was out of sight.