Brave Faces

by Mary Arden

  ‘Those are called gas mantles and you just turn the gas on with the tap beside each set of lights and use a match,’ the agent explained.

  Grandpa John was just about to strike a match from his own box, when the agent stopped him, ‘Please be careful sir, if you touch the mantles by mistake they disintegrate at once. May I suggest that you use a spill, which is far longer than a match, so you can light the mantle without the danger of touching it. The mantles are quite expensive to replace and only one ironmonger stocks them in the town, as most houses are connected to the electricity mains now.’

  ‘Where is the telephone?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh there isn’t one I’m afraid, they don’t work on gas!’ I gave Duncan a look that showed him that, like Queen Victoria, I was not amused.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling, there is a public telephone box down the road, so you can use that like you did when you were in the Wrens,’ Duncan suggested.

  ‘But I didn’t have a baby when I was in the Wrens,’ I said, ‘so what am I supposed to do with Charlotte, when I am on the phone in the middle of winter, take her with me?’

  ‘Well… ’ Duncan started to reply but I cut him off.

  ‘And how am I supposed to do the ironing without an electric iron?’ I queried, ‘Are there gas ones?’

  ‘Well actually no… well sort of,’ the agent replied, as we walked through to the kitchen where he showed me two different sized flat irons. ‘All you have to do is heat them up on the gas stove and they work very well, or so I have been told… I am sure you’ll soon get the hang of them, Mrs Ogilvie,’ the agent said looking at the floor. I now knew why the rent was so low. The housewife would be living in the eighteen hundreds not the nineteenth century!

  ‘It’s a very economical house to run, once you get the hang of everything,’ the agent told us cheerfully.

  Grandpa John realising that I wasn’t too happy about living in a house without electricity, offered to move in with us for a few days, so that he could show us how to manage the fires and the gas mantles, ‘I remember as a wee boy that my grandmother’s house was just like this,’ he said trying to reassure me. ‘I am sure that it will be lovely and cosy once you have the fire on and closed the curtains.’

  I was still feeling a little unhappy about not having any electricity, but knew that, as we didn’t have much money, I should just be grateful that we could finally have our own home together, so turned to the agent and asked, ‘When can we move in?’

  When we returned to Duncan’s parents house, we went into our bedroom to get changed and I automatically turned on the light. Duncan immediately switched it off again and said, ‘we’d better get used to living in the dark ages darling!’ We both laughed and then as we sat down on the bed in the dark for a few minutes to see what it felt like, the reality suddenly hit me. This was how it was going to be from now on.

  That night we risked the squeaky bed waking the rest of the household and joyfully made love. It was the first time since Duncan’s amputation and he must have wanted to make up for lost time, as with each kiss he whispered, ‘this is for the flat irons… this is for the gas mantles… this is for the hundred and one buckets of coal you’ll have to fill each day!’

  The following week we left Duncan’s parents house and when I said goodbye and thank you to Granny Bumble she said, ‘The house will seem so empty without you and with Celia and Christopher leaving for her new school in two weeks time too, what am I going to do with myself all day?’

  ‘Have a much needed rest,’ I said, ‘and then come and stay with us for a long weekend.’ She stood on the doorstep crying and waving as we drove away.

  Grandpa John came with us for a few days to help us settle into our new home. He taught us how to back the range up at night or clean it out and get it going again when we pushed the wrong dampers by mistake. The shed was filled with fuel and more could be ordered on a month-to-month basis and logs could be delivered too. As for the gas mantles, I bought a dozen spares from the ironmonger, who told me to treat them like butterfly wings. I stored them carefully on the larder shelf next to piles of matches and spills and spare torch batteries.

  The estate agent soon found us a wonderful daily help called Jenny, who wasn’t much older than me and who insisted on doing all the housework, including scrubbing the floors. She was also willing to babysit Charlotte, so I took advantage of having her there and took some driving lessons. After I had mastered a three-point turn, done several emergency stops and reverse parked his car without bumping into a lamppost the instructor said, ‘You are a natural Mrs Ogilvie, you’ll pass all right.’

  Duncan was so impressed that he said he’d buy a second hand car the moment I passed my test. But as it turned out I failed.

  The driving test examiner said I was a good driver, but that I hadn’t looked in the driving mirror to check if there were any cars behind me once, ‘not even to tidy your hair!’ He obviously thought this was funny but I burst into tears explaining that it was essential for me to pass, so that I could drive Duncan back and forth to Edinburgh to attend University. When we got back to our house, I invited him in for a cup of tea and when he saw Duncan hobbling around on crutches with one trouser leg pinned up behind the knee, he promised, after two cups of tea and a huge slice of my apple fruit cake, to ask for special permission for me to be allowed to re-sit the test in a month’s time instead of the usual three.

  ‘Just practise looking in the mirror, Mrs Ogilvie, and you’ll pass I am sure’ the instructor said, as he left.

  After he had gone Duncan grinned at me and said, ‘That’s odd darling, you don’t usually have a problem looking at yourself in the mirror!’ I threw a cushion at him, which he fended off with one of his crutches.

  The next week Duncan bought an old Austin and after putting two ‘L’ plates on the car, we started going for a drive everyday. He made a harness in the back of the car, so that Charlotte was safe. She seemed to think these drives were far more fun than being pushed around in her pram and clapped her hands with glee. Thankfully, I passed my re-test a week before Duncan was due to return to University. I wondered how he would manage having been away for so long.

  Two elderly women, both called Miss Hibson, lived in the house next to us, and they absolutely adored Charlotte and cooed at her when she was sitting in her pram. Miss Hibson Number One told me that her name was Angela and that she was the older of the two by a year and that her sister, Miss Hibson Number Two, was called Daphne. When I met her younger sibling, I noticed that she had rather lovely violet eyes. I told the two Miss Hibsons that from time to time I would be calling Duncan from the phone box at the end of our street, so if they saw Charlotte sitting in the car on her own while I was on the phone not to worry, as she could see me through the window.

  ‘We wouldn’t hear of you doing such a thing dear,’ Angela said, ‘would we Daphne?’

  ‘Certainly not Angela! You can make use of our telephone,’ Daphne offered. ‘After all we hardly ever use it do we?’ So before I took Duncan to Edinburgh we made a plan that he would ring me at the Miss Hibsons house after six thirty twice a week, when Charlotte would be asleep in her cot, and then one of ‘The Hibbies’, as we decided to nickname them, would come over and babysit for me until I returned.

  Jenny, our daily who now came three times a week, taught me how to make homemade steak and kidney pudding, cottage pie with carrots and onions, to make it go further, and also spotted dick and ginger sponge pudding. This made Duncan very happy, as they were all his favourites.

  The day before I was to drive Duncan to Edinburgh, the Hibbies suggested that I leave Charlotte with them and offered to feed her for me. As she was now eating mashed food, rather than finely sieved meals, I thought this was an excellent idea, so the following morning we waited until Charlotte was asleep in her pram and then I pushed her around to our kind neighbour’s house. When we drove off, I felt so awful leaving her behind that I nearly turned the car around to go back and fetch her, but a
s I knew that Duncan really needed my help moving in, and also needed my moral support, I held back the tears and took my brave wounded husband ‘back to school’.

  When we arrived at the hotel, I helped him unpack and then we had a quick lunch together. When it was time for me to go home, I could see Duncan balancing on one leg and using one of his crutches to wave goodbye. I wondered how he would cope on his own getting to and from his daily classes and whether he would find it hard with everyone else there being half his age. I hoped he would be all right.

  When I got home both the Hibbies looked exhausted, but Charlotte looked as happy as a lark. She had put all her toys plus their cushions, button boxes, wooden spoons and precious ornaments on the sitting room floor and made a lovely mess.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I said hugging them both with gratitude, ‘I’d never have managed having her with me today.’

  ‘We loved every minute, didn’t we dear?’ Angela said smiling at me, but I didn’t hear Daphne’s reply.

  When I went to bed that night, I lay awake for hours worrying about how Duncan would manage on his first day back at University, and hoped that the younger students would look after him.

  A letter arrived the next day from Celia, telling me about her new job and that the Headmistress at her school had been very understanding of her situation, and that Christopher was doing fine. She didn’t say anything about being lonely, so I thought that if she can manage so can I.

  Duncan called me one night sounding really happy, and a little drunk. ‘It’s a bloody miracle darling! Do you remember I told you about my two best friends at University before the war, George, the Canadian and Alastair, the Irishman? Well they are both very much alive, thank God, and guess what?’ he asked. ‘They are both going to be studying with me here in Edinburgh, just like we did before the war!’

  Duncan then told me that Alastair had been captured by the Japanese and was forced to work on the Burma Railway, which my brother Peter had told me about, so I knew that he must have been through hell.

  ‘He’s so thin that he looks as if he hasn’t eaten since I last saw him,’ Duncan sighed. ‘His experiences as a prisoner of war were extremely humiliating for him and on top of everything else, he became very sick. First he had malaria, then he got dysentery and after all that, he then had to have his appendix removed in appalling conditions by a semi-trained surgeon using a penknife.’

  ‘Oh my goodness, the poor man,’ I gasped.

  ‘And as for George, he was captured by the Italians but managed to escape with the help of the local Resistance. He then fought with them before being caught by the Gestapo.’ Duncan took a deep breath and then added, ‘Incredibly he managed to escape again and make his way to Switzerland.’

  ‘What a story!’ I said astonished.

  ‘That’s not the end of it Mary,’ Duncan continued, ‘although he was now safe he accepted another assignment and went back to help the Italian Resistance in their final push but he got captured by the Gestapo again and this time they tortured him. They took him out night after night and shot him with blanks, and each time that happened he thought that was it, his number was up. The man is a real hero, darling, and I am so proud to be his friend.’

  ‘I am looking forward to meeting your friends,’ I said sincerely. ‘Tell me, are they wounded?’

  ‘In a way, but it’s more mental than physical,’ Duncan told me, ‘as their experiences were far worse than mine and have left them war weary.’

  Duncan asked me if I would mind if we had his friends to stay at the weekends and said that as George had a car, he would be able to drive all three of them to Peebles and back, which would solve the problem of me having to drive.

  When I heard a car horn hoot in front of our house on Friday evening, I picked Charlotte up, and then balancing her on one hip, I went outside to welcome my husband’s friends.

  I was shocked to see how desperately thin Alastair was, but surprisingly he managed to lift his luggage out of the back seat without too much difficulty. When I then looked at George, the first thing I noticed was how fit and well he looked in comparison to the other two men. He looked formidable, so I could see why he had been asked to lead the Resistance fighters. I found it hard to believe what they had both been through, as seeing them now, they looked and behaved like pre-war University students, laughing noisily and teasing one another unmercifully.

  When Duncan introduced his friends to me, George smiled and said, ‘Good God old boy, you’ve got yourself a beautiful wife!’ and before I knew it he was standing next to me kissing me on both cheeks. He then looked down at Charlotte and smiled at her. I wasn’t the only one hypnotized by this good-looking giant, as Charlotte just put out her arms for him to pick her up and said, ‘Dada’, which was not what I had expected at all. I thought she’d be shy but instead when he lifted her up high above his head she cooed with joy. She then saw her real Daddy and squealed ‘Dada’ again. Two Dadas then became three when Alastair gave her a huge but hideous cuddly toy, that he said he’d won as a prize at a fair, ‘Ah Dada ah da ma ta da,’ Charlotte said chatting away merrily, which I translated for the men as ‘Thank you very much for my toy and would you like to come in for a cup of tea?’ This made them all laugh and broke the ice.

  ‘It’s up to you as to who has which room,’ I said when I took Duncan’s friends upstairs.

  ‘Which room has the longest bed?’ George asked as he lay down on the double bed trying it out for size. As his feet were hanging over the board at the end of the bed, Alastair said, ‘I’d better take that one!’

  I then showed George the room with the single bed in it, which he said would suit him better as it had no board at the end of it.

  ‘I can always put a chair at the end of the bed, so that I have something to rest my feet on!’ he said laughing.

  I left the men to unpack and went downstairs to find Charlotte, who was now sitting on the lap of her real Dada, patting his face and smiling at him.

  ‘I think we’d better teach her to say George and Alastair,’ I giggled after giving Duncan a real welcome home kiss, ‘she can’t have three Dadas!’

  ‘Geooooorge,’ Duncan said slowly.

  ‘Oorge,’ Charlotte mimicked.

  ‘My goodness, our daughter is a genius!’ Duncan said proudly.

  ‘Alll… aas… tair,’ Duncan said even more slowly.

  ‘Oorge,’ she said again

  ‘Oh well, maybe not,’ he conceded.

  We were still trying to get her to say their names when the two men came downstairs to join us. Getting my rather over excited baby to sleep that night was not easy. She was in heaven having been spoilt all evening with so much attention from her three Dadas.

  After supper that night there was a row of empty beer and wine bottles by our dustbin. The Hibbies must have thought an army of alcoholics had moved in with us.

  When George and Alastair drove off to play golf after breakfast the next day, it gave Duncan and me a chance to be together on our own for a while, so I told him that I had noticed that Alastair had put two lumps of sugar and an apple in his pocket at breakfast and had then asked me if I could wrap up a couple of biscuits for him to take with him that morning. ‘I just thought it was a bit odd, as he seems to have a very small appetite. In fact he ate less than I did at dinner last night.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, I should have warned you,’ Duncan said. ‘As Alastair has had to live on a handful of rice or whatever they were given for several years, his stomach has shrunk and the doctors have told him to eat little and often, so that eventually he will be able to eat a full meal again.’ From then on I made sure that Alastair knew where we kept the biscuit tin and where the larder was and I told him that if he felt peckish just to help himself.

  The following Friday evening was much quieter, as the men had to do their homework. As all three men were tired, we went to bed early but at about two in the morning I was woken up suddenly by a loud thump followed by the sound of somebod
y whimpering. Thinking that Charlotte must have fallen out of her cot and was crying, I quickly got up, found my torch, and hurried to her room to check that she was all right. When I pointed my torch at her I could see that she was sound asleep, so I wondered what on earth could have woken me up with such a start. I then heard the whimpering sound again and realised that it was coming from the single bedroom. Suddenly there was a loud scream. Alastair came running out of his room and went straight into George’s room. I then heard him say in a calm voice, ‘It’s all right old man, it’s just one of your nightmares. The war is over, you are safe now.’

  I lit the gas light on the landing, so that I could see better and then waited for Alastair to come back out. A few minutes later he came to the door and asked, ‘Mary, do you have any spare sheets?’

  ‘Yes… yes we do,’ I replied, ‘why?’

  ‘You see, when George has on of his nightmares, he drips with sweat and well the sheets get soaked through, I’m afraid,’ Alastair explained.

  Having heard the commotion, my husband hobbled out of our room on his crutches to see what was amiss. After Alastair filled him in, Duncan then turned to me and said, ‘Darling, I think it would be better if Alastair and I remade the bed, as it would be better if George thinks you didn’t hear him.’ So after giving Alastair some fresh bed linen and checking that Charlotte was still asleep, I went back to bed. When Duncan came back to bed, he told me that poor George often had nightmares about being tortured by the Gestapo, even though it was now almost a whole year since he had last escaped.

  ‘Just imagine being taken out of your cell and then made to stand in front of a firing squad,’ Duncan said quietly. ‘You then hear the gunshots but nothing happens, and you realise that you are still alive. Obviously you must feel a huge sense of relief. However, when the bastards come back the next night, and the next, and do the same thing, telling you this time it’s the real thing, it must make you go mad, so I’m not surprised he still has nightmares.’