by Anne Bennett
They paid for their purchases and made their way to the Masons’ house where Mary insisted on seeing both girls in their wedding outfits. When she saw them she suppressed a sigh of relief. At least she thought Susie would look respectable. It wasn’t the wedding she planned for her, but Susie was happy and, as Frank had said, they couldn’t run Susie’s life for her. The world was a scary place, and maybe that was the very time you needed a loved one beside you.
‘The outfits are so very pretty,’ she told the two girls. ‘Don’t they look a treat, Frank?’
‘They do indeed,’ Frank said. ‘That man at work who loaned me his Box Brownie for Derek and Gillian’s wedding is prepared to do the same again, because I certainly would like a picture of them dressed in their finery.’
‘Maybe we should buy a camera of our own?’ Mary mused.
‘Maybe we should,’ Frank said with a smile. ‘And if you find a shop selling them, I will buy one quick enough.’
‘I bet you won’t though, Mom.’ Susie said. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ And they all burst out laughing.
Kate was like a cat on hot bricks waiting for David to arrive home. She knew he had arranged a lift and so she was watching through the window when the army truck pulled to a stop just outside and David climbed out, dragging his kit bag after him. He immediately looked up at the window, guessing that Kate would be there, and he waved his hand and smiled. Kate, feeling as if her whole body was on fire, ran out of the flat to see him, leaping down the stairs two at a time. Then she was in his arms with a squeal, wondering if it was possible to die from happiness because she felt as if her heart had stopped beating.
David kicked the flat door shut with his foot. ‘Oh, my beautiful darling,’ he murmured, kissing Kate’s hair and neck and throat and finally her lips. ‘How I have longed for this moment. It’s thoughts of you keep me going. And yet,’ he added, ‘this time it nearly didn’t happen.’
His words brought Kate’s head up sharply. ‘Oh, that would have been dreadful.’
‘I’ll say,’ David said.
‘But how could they stop you coming home just like that?’
‘They can because they are the RAF and so a law unto themselves,’ David said. ‘But this was the fellows’ own fault. See, we had a bit of a bachelor do for Nick last night. Some of the lads set out at the start of the night to get Nick paralytic drunk and they had succeeded, so as best man it was up to me to look after him. I knew I had to keep my wits about me, because as the beer flowed, more and more bizarre things were being suggested that mainly centred on stripping him and leaving him tied up in various places on the air base. Anyway, before this could be attempted, tempers got frayed and a fight broke out – windows were broken and chairs and tables were smashed. The barman took refuge behind the counter as they continued to trash the Mess Room and then some of the men started helping themselves to booze. Anyway, the alarm was raised and the officers took a very dim view of it and cancelled all leave.’
‘I don’t blame them, in all fairness,’ Kate said. ‘So how come you’re here?’
‘Ah, well, that came about because of deviousness on our part,’ David said. ‘Nick went in and pleaded to be allowed home because he was going to marry his fiancée and had to marry her because she was pregnant.’
‘Goodness!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘She isn’t though, is she? She would have told me if she was.’
‘Course she isn’t,’ David said. ‘And if she was, according to Nick, it would be another immaculate conception because he hasn’t been able to get near her, not in that way.’
‘Well, I didn’t let you near me before we got married.’
‘Made up for it since, though, my little sex bomb,’ David said lustfully, giving Kate a squeeze.
‘Less of that,’ she said, slapping his hands away playfully. ‘Go on with the tale.’
David shrugged. ‘Not much more to tell,’ he said. ‘Nick got a right earful, of course, and he was called a bloody fool and much worse. But then the commanding officer said he didn’t want any irate fathers up at the camp causing mayhem because one of his pilots couldn’t keep it in his trousers, and he had better do his duty by the girl and I was let go with him as his best man.’
‘What a good job he said that.’
‘I’ll say,’ David agreed, ‘otherwise Susie would have been left high and dry at the altar. Our CO knew we weren’t involved in the fracas anyway, because as soon as I saw it was getting ugly, I got Nick out of there fast, though I had to near carry him. But luckily the officer saw us leaving.’
Kate thought of all that the next morning as she walked behind Susie and her father towards the altar, thinking that she had never seen anyone happier than her friend.
Much later, with the food almost gone and the bride and groom toasted, Kate went up to Susie’s room to help her pack. As she put the fancy lace nightie and negligee bought especially for that night into the case, she looked at Kate and said, ‘I’m ever so nervous. Were you?’
Kate nodded. ‘I think everyone is.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘A bit, but honestly you’ll hardly notice.’
‘I probably will. You know what a baby I am about pain?’
Kate nodded. ‘Tell Nick to go easy,’ she said. ‘There’s no good going at it like a bull at a gate. Take your time and you’ll be grand.’ And then, as Susie still looked doubtful, she gripped her arm and said, ‘Honestly. Trust me, I wouldn’t tell you a lie – and it can’t be too bad, because there are plenty at it.’
Susie laughed. ‘There is that,’ she said as she heaved the case off the bed. ‘Come on, Dad has a taxi ordered to take us to New Street Station and it should be here soon.’
‘Do you know where you are going yet?’ Kate asked, because she knew Frank had refused to tell them where he had booked.
‘Yeah,’ Susie said. ‘He had to tell us in the end, didn’t he? Anyway, he told me just before I came up to change. It’s in the countryside, outside a little market town called Hampton-in-Arden, and the train takes you right into the town.’
‘Convenient, anyway.’
‘Very,’ Susie said, and added determinedly, ‘And though we have only two days, we intend to make the most of them.’
And so do I, thought Kate, but she kept the thought to herself. She had taken some of her holidays due and she had no intention of wasting them.
David, she found, was of the same mind. The weather was kind to them and they spent the time together enjoying one another’s company. Kate didn’t even care where they went, though they did go to Sutton Park on Thursday as it held a special significance for Kate because David had proposed to her there. And they saw Gone With the Wind, which Kate had wanted to see for ages because all the girls at work had been on about it. They said she would cry and she did, and David gently teased her about it all the way home. But what she liked best was sitting by their own fireside, where she could snuggle up beside David to her heart’s content and look forward to a time when he would never have to leave her again.
FIFTEEN
After Nick and David returned, Kate made a decision to see more of her sister and be more of a support to her, and so after Mass on Sunday, Sally came back to the flat and they ate breakfast together. Kate felt immeasurably sorry for her, being separated from Phil for so long, and she had seen the longing in her eyes when she told her about the few days that she and David had spent together. ‘You are so lucky,’ Sally said. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to conjure up Phil’s face at all. Course,’ she went on, ‘I can say none of this in front of Ruby, because it would probably upset her. Honest to God, Kate, everything seems to upset her just now.’
‘She’s probably worried sick about Phil – bound to be, I’d say.’
‘I’m worried sick about Phil too,’ Sally said. ‘I think about him nearly every minute of the day and I have like a knot of fear that stays inside me all the time.’
‘I know,’ Kate said. ‘I feel like that too.’
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‘And it does no good going on about it all the time,’ Sally said. ‘But Ruby …’
Her voice tailed off and Kate felt her heart turn over in sympathy. ‘Do you find her hard going?’ she said. ‘Because you could come back to live with me again if you want to. God knows when David will make it home again. He’s warned us it may be ages and you could always bunk on the settee if he does manage to get any leave. It will only be for a day or two at the most.’
‘No, thanks all the same,’ Sally said. ‘I think Ruby might go out of her mind altogether if I left her now, though Phoebe Jenkins is very good, and she and Ruby get on well.’
‘Phoebe Jenkins?’
‘Yeah, she lives next door,’ Sally said. ‘She was left with seven children when her husband was killed in the Great War and then she lost two daughters to influenza in 1919, so she can really appreciate what Ruby is going through now. Course she rattles round in the house now, like Ruby did before I moved in. She says that before the war the family were always on about her moving to some smaller place, but she’s like Ruby and never wants to move because, as they both say, their memories are all wrapped up in that house.’
‘I can see that though, can’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, I can see that all right,’ Sally said. ‘And I think when you have lost people dear to you, then maybe you need to hold on to something permanent, like a house where you were so happy once.’
‘So, you and Ruby are staying put?’
‘You bet we are,’ Sally said. ‘Waiting till Phil comes home again.’
Just over a week later, German troops attacked Denmark and invaded Norway. ‘Germany’s like some sort of creeping monster, devouring all before it,’ Susie said as they made their way to work. ‘And our Martin was telling me that if Norway falls, Germany will have a naval base for all military craft, including the U-boats that are doing such a good job of sinking our merchant ships already.’
‘Oh, it’s bad enough now,’ Kate said. ‘Your father might be right about having no food to put on the table.’
‘He just might be,’ Susie commented wryly. ‘I mean, Hitler hasn’t invaded these countries just for the fun of it.’
‘No,’ Kate agreed with a sigh. ‘Sally will be worried to death at the latest news.’
‘I bet,’ Susie said. ‘Mind you, the man on the wireless last night said that Belgium has this underground fort that is said to be impregnable. And it protects three strategic bridges, and without these bridges the Germens couldn’t get men and machines into Belgium, because the other way, the border with France has the Maginot Line, which runs all the way to the Ardennes Forest and that is also impregnable.’
‘So even if Norway is defeated, the German armies could be stopped at the borders of Belgium?’
‘That’s what he seemed to be saying.’
‘I really hope he’s right.’
‘So do I,’ Kate said. ‘’Cos if he’s wrong, then we are sunk.’
As the fighting went on, the women coped the best way they could. Derek finished his basic training and came home on embarkation leave, Martin was called up, and Kate arrived home one evening in late April to find Father Patterson waiting for her, sitting on the settee in her living room.
She gazed at him, completely astounded. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘Your landlady let me in,’ he said calmly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Kate could hardly believe her ears. ‘She let you into my flat?’ she said. ‘She had no right to do that and you, Father … I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have taken advantage of that.’
‘What she should have done and I should not have done hardly matters,’ said the priest. ‘I told her I had come to see you and you weren’t home, and Mrs Donovan – being a good God-fearing woman, and also a member of my flock – said that, as I was your parish priest, she was sure that you wouldn’t mind my waiting inside the flat.’
‘But you see, I do mind,’ Kate cried. ‘I mind a great deal that you are calmly sitting in my own personal living room that I pay rent for and I shall make that fact clear to my landlady at the earliest opportunity.’
The priest stood up and faced her, his dark grey eyes like steel chips in his heavily lined, mournful-looking face with the beaked nose and thin lips. ‘That is a very belligerent way to speak to anyone, Kate, and especially your parish priest.’
Kate supposed it was. She certainly had never spoken to any priest in such a manner before, but then none had inveigled their way into her flat when she wasn’t there. Oh, Dolly would hear of this. Meanwhile, however, she had the priest to deal with, and suddenly she was furious. ‘Belligerent!’ she exploded. ‘I am not only belligerent, Father, I am angry, bloody angry. You had no right to come in uninvited. You knew I would be at work. You did this on purpose and then talked Dolly into letting you in.’
‘Maybe she was more concerned about your immortal soul than you appear to be.’
‘I don’t know what you are on about,’ Kate said.
‘So, you have no idea why I have come?’ the priest snapped out, and Kate heard the peremptory tone in his voice and saw the look in those penetrating eyes and knew full well why the priest had come, but she was not going to make it easy for him. ‘No, I don’t,’ she said.
‘I have had a very distressing letter from your parish priest in Donegal,’ the priest said, looking with reproach at Kate. ‘Apparently, your mother told him that you had entered some sort of marriage with a serviceman and were living with him as his wife.’
White-hot fury coursed through Kate’s veins as she spat out, ‘I have not entered into “some form of marriage” with anyone. I married David Burton according to the law of the land. And when the RAF allows, I live with him as his legally wedded wife, because that is who I am.’
‘You are not married in the eyes of the Church.’
‘I am aware of that,’ Kate said. ‘But we hadn’t time. We wanted to get married before David was called up.’
‘That is neither here nor there,’ the priest snapped out. ‘Every time you lie with this man you are committing adultery and any children you bear will be illegitimate, bastards.’
Kate had had enough. She crossed to the door and held it open. ‘Get out,’ she said, ‘you sanctimonious prig, and don’t even try coming back. And you won’t be seeing me at St Mary and St John’s any more, so if I were you I would say daily prayers for my soul, which is surely as black as pitch.’
‘Kate—’
‘Get out!’ Kate screamed. ‘Just get out before I kick you out.’
Hugely affronted, the priest swept out. ‘Your mother will hear of this appalling behaviour,’ he said as he passed her.
‘Good!’ Kate said, and shut the door with such suddenness and such power that the priest had to jump out of the way.
She leant against the door, temporarily spent, for never had she behaved so or spoken in such a way to a priest. She knew her mother would get to hear of it and be scandalized. But suddenly that ceased to matter when compared to what was happening in Europe. She began to laugh, but there was a touch of hysteria mixed with it, and when the laughter turned to tears she wasn’t surprised.
Dolly came up later that evening. ‘Oh, Lord, I’m that sorry, Kate,’ she said when Kate opened the door. She was puffing like a steam train, but she went on: ‘George was that mad with me letting the priest in here before you had got home from work. He said he doesn’t know what I was thinking of. Oh, I tell you I’ve had it in the neck from him right and proper, but see, I’ve never said no to a priest.’
Dolly’s eyes looked troubled and Kate watched as tears seeped from them and ran down her rosy cheeks; she felt suddenly sorry for her because she knew just how some priests behaved and this kindly woman would be no match for them. ‘Don’t get upset,’ she said, opening the door wider. ‘Come in.’
Dolly gave a sigh of relief and went into the flat and Kate pressed her into a chair in the kitchen as she went on. ‘He
was that insistent, you see,’ Dolly said as Kate busied herself with the kettle. ‘I said he could wait for you in my place, but he said that it was imperative he saw you as soon as possible. It was a matter of grave importance. I did think something might have happened to those in Ireland, or even young Sally.’
‘No,’ Kate said, ‘it was nothing like that.’
She knew Dolly was very anxious to find out what the priest had come about, but she wasn’t going to ask and Kate was a little nervous of telling her because what if she also thought that she was living in sin with David? She might even ask her to leave. ‘Any road,’ Dolly said with a sniff, ‘George said it don’t matter what he wanted and who he was, I had no right to let him in to your private place. I really am sorry about it, Kate, and I promise I will never do anything like that again.’
Kate placed a cup of tea in front of Dolly and said with a wry smile, ‘I doubt very much it will happen again, for I sent him away with a flea in his ear. I’ve never spoken to a priest like that before – I called him a sanctimonious prig.’
Dolly had a hand wrapped around her mouth in shock. ‘You never did, Kate?’
‘Oh, I did,’ Kate said. ‘And then I threw him out and told him not to dare try to come back.’
‘Oh, Lord, what would I have given to be a fly on the wall then,’ Dolly spluttered. She began to laugh and her laughter overtook her whole body so that her three chins began to wobble and then her stomach and she laughed and laughed. It was such an infectious laugh that Kate joined in too, and the tears that ran from Dolly’s eyes were tears of hilarity.
When they were quieter and Dolly had wiped her eyes and taken a sip of her tea, Kate said, ‘I think Father Patterson wanted to get in here to poke about. It makes me sick to think of him touching any of my things. He told me you just opened the door to him.’