by Anne Bennett
‘It gets to be a way of life in the end,’ Kate said. ‘It showed me that a person can get used to anything in time.’
James gave a sudden yawn and Philomena said, ‘Time for bed, young man.’
‘Oh, Mammy.’
‘Don’t “oh, Mammy” me,’ Philomena said. ‘You were up at the crack of dawn helping your daddy now that it’s a holiday from school and you were like a cat on hot bricks all day about your sisters coming. Now they are not going to disappear and will be here when you wake up, but if you don’t go to bed now you’ll be in no fit state to enjoy their company.’
Grumbling and disgruntled, James bade them all goodnight and the three women hid their smiles at the look on his face. He was tired, that was plain to see and they knew he would be asleep in no time. As soon as he left, they quickly set about clearing away from the meal and they were settled around the table ready to talk when Jim said, ‘Padraic needs to hear this. It concerns him too.’
Philomena nodded, for it did of course, and while Jim went to fetch him, she got up to make tea. As she was bringing it to the table on the tray, Padraic came in the door with his wife, Bridget, carrying a bottle of Irish whiskey.
‘You two know each other?’ Padraic asked in surprise, looking from Helen to Kate and back again.
‘We have just met, by chance,’ Helen answered.
‘Yes, and I have done Helen a grave disservice by denying her access to her daughter all her life,’ Philomena said.
‘That wasn’t how it was,’ Helen protested. ‘Let me tell the whole thing.’ And Helen told it, holding nothing back, and there wasn’t one person around that table who wasn’t moved by the end of it.
Then Padraic said, ‘I still say that we are responsible because it was only chance that Michael didn’t rape you, and he certainly did attack you violently.’
‘But I was with child and unmarried, and I purposely misled you all.’
Bridget leaned forward and said earnestly, ‘There is not one woman around this table tonight, or indeed in the whole of Ireland, who would not do the same in a similar position.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Kate. ‘You were not the great sinner here.’
‘No, you weren’t,’ Philomena said with a sigh. ‘And I made you feel you were. I was judge and jury and it was wrong.’
‘You did what you thought best.’
‘No,’ Philomena said. ‘You have been so honest, and so must I be. I failed you from the beginning. After our parents and siblings died, there was just us two, and I was many years older than you, and yet I allowed the priest to send you away into service, knowing that I would never be able to see you again, even before you went to Birmingham. You must have felt so lost and alone at times.’
‘This is years ago; it doesn’t matter now.’
‘It does to me,’ Philomena said. ‘It shows a flaw in my nature. When you came because you were pregnant, all I could think about was getting my hands on that baby, and so I did you a disservice as well, Kate.’
‘No, I can’t have that,’ Kate said. ‘Whatever reason you did it for, you were good parents to me. None could have been better.’
‘You should have got to know your natural mother as well.’
‘That would have been nice,’ Kate conceded, smiling across at Helen. ‘Yes, I would have liked that, but to all intents and purposes I’ve had a damned good upbringing.’
‘I agree with that,’ Helen said. ‘Kate is a daughter to be proud of.’
‘You don’t think I was too harsh on you?’ Philomena asked Kate anxiously.
‘No, not really,’ Kate said.
‘If I was, it was because I was aware that I had to bring you up well for Helen too,’ Philomena said. ‘That’s why I reacted so when you told me about the marriage you had with the Protestant pilot, one that wasn’t recognized in the Church. I wouldn’t have wanted your mother to feel ashamed of you.’
‘There is nothing Kate could do that would make me ashamed of her,’ Helen said. ‘For a person to have love in their life is a great gift and, as far as I’m concerned, religion doesn’t come into it. All I would ever have wanted is Kate’s happiness.’
‘Oh, Helen,’ Philomena cried, ‘I truly didn’t realize how I had broken your heart until I gave birth to Sally. Something happens to you when you give birth to a child, and the thought of giving Sally away … well, if that had happened, I couldn’t have gone on.’
‘I didn’t know that Philomena had sort of banished you,’ Jim said. ‘I thought it odd that you never came to see the child, and then, when Sally was born, Philomena told me what she had laid on you. She was so upset and filled with guilt and regret, and I too felt it keenly. Padraic and Bridget were told, and Padraic and I tried to find you, but it was hard without letting other people into the know, and we dared not do that. In the meantime, you had stuck rigidly to the agreement and vanished into thin air.’
‘And yet Kate found her after all,’ Padraic said. ‘How did that come about?’
‘That was a complete fluke,’ Kate said. ‘I didn’t go looking for Helen because I didn’t even know that she existed.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Helen said. ‘The dressing on Kate’s forehead is there to cover the scar from the stitches she had removed yesterday, and she got that injury when she was knocked clean out by a falling roof beam while trying to rescue me and others from buildings that had collapsed due to the bombing. Both her and Sally are very brave girls.’ Helen went on: ‘During the most ferocious bombing raids, they were out on the street, helping people find shelter, fighting fires, rescuing people from burning buildings, digging people out who’d been buried under masonry rubble and treating the injured.’
‘Oh, my goodness,’ Philomena said, looking at her two daughters. ‘I had no idea of the dangerous work you were engaged in.’
‘We couldn’t tell you, Mammy,’ Kate said. ‘The censor would have cut every reference out. We weren’t the only ones: Susie is doing it too.’
‘Good heavens, Philomena, you wouldn’t know the place,’ Helen said. ‘Women drive buses and lorries and trams, and work in the most dangerous industries, too. In fact, there isn’t anything they don’t seem to be able to turn their hands to, and then in the evenings they volunteer as ARP wardens or do fire-watching, or work as part of the WVS. Every person seems to be doing something to help Britain win this war.’
‘Well, I’m as proud as punch of both of you,’ Jim said, beaming approval at both girls.
‘Hear hear,’ said Padraic heartily.
‘I am proud too,’ Philomena said. ‘Astounded and proud. But go on with your tale, Helen.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Helen said, and told her sister how the staff at the hospital they were both taken to remarked on their likeness, and that led to a chain of events culminating in Kate eventually making contact with her mother.
‘And all the time I wished you would get in touch,’ Philomena said. ‘But I had been so rigid, just as I was with Sally when she ran away from home. I was hurt and upset, I don’t deny that, but people get over these things, and I didn’t, not even when she wrote letter after letter saying how sorry she was.’
‘Mammy,’ Sally said, catching up her mother’s hand. ‘We can’t reclaim lost years. We need to put them to one side and look forward.’
‘Well said, Sally,’ Jim said. ‘And I think there has been enough confessing for one night. The morning comes soon enough, especially for a farmer. So I think I must seek my bed.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Only two hours after the three women had left the house in Birmingham, a telegraph boy pulled up outside the gate on his little motorbike, walked up the path and pounded on the door. Phoebe Jenkins – her heart in her mouth, for telegrams seldom convey good news – came out of her door and said, ‘No good you knocking there because there’s nobody in. I mean, they won’t be in for a week or more because they’ve gone on holiday.’
‘Oh,’ the telegraph boy said. ‘The man said it was re
al important they get this.’
Phoebe thought for a minute and then said, ‘Well, they have gone to visit their people in a place called Donegal and that’s in Ireland. I don’t have the address, but Susie Mason probably has and she only lives on Marsh Hill, number sixty. If you get it from her, they can probably redirect the telegram.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ the boy said. ‘That’s a good idea. If I get the address they can do what they want then.’
Phoebe watched him go down the path, mount his bike and roar off. She bit her lip as she went into the house and prayed the two young women she had grown so fond of were not going to get more bad news, because in her opinion they had coped with more than enough already.
The next morning, very early, Jim was in the byre going over in his mind the revelations of the night before, when a car drove down the lane and into the yard. Jim knew who it belonged to, a Shaun Dempsey, and his car doubled as a taxi if anyone needed one, but it had never come down their lane before. Curiosity drew him to the door of the byre and he saw a respectably dressed man get out of the taxi, pay the fare and stride up to the door. Kate was passing the door when the rap came on it; she was surprised because it was strange for someone to knock and she’d not noticed the taxi, but when she opened the door, she staggered for the shock was so great.
‘David,’ she cried. ‘Oh, dear God, David.’ She felt blackness overwhelm her and, before David could catch hold of her, she had sunk to the floor in a dead faint.
When she came to, she was in the bedroom, and David, a real, live, living and breathing David, was sitting beside her. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Let me touch your face, your eyes. I keep thinking that this is some dream and I’ll wake up in a minute.’
David gave a chuckle, the sort of laugh that caused Kate’s stomach to go into spasms. ‘Maybe this will convince you,’ he said, and their lips met in the sweetest kiss imaginable.
‘Oh, my, darling love,’ David said, holding her close.
‘David,’ Kate said, savouring the name on her tongue. ‘For months I thought you dead and gone.’
‘I know you did,’ David said. ‘And I couldn’t let you know otherwise.’
‘But …? How …?’
David put his finger to Kate’s lips. ‘Ssh,’ he said. ‘I can tell you nothing yet. Your family are waiting downstairs and though I have introduced myself I would not tell them anything else until you were up to hearing it too.’
‘My family,’ Kate repeated blankly.
‘Yes, they are waiting for you downstairs.’
‘Do you know …?’
‘I know that the cut on your head was caused by you trying to rescue people trapped under masonry and one of those was a very beautiful lady by the name of Helen, and she says she is your biological mother.’
‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘I have only recently found this out myself. But I don’t know my father, so do you know what it makes me?’
‘Yeah, I know,’ David said. ‘You are Kate Burton, the same as you were before you uttered that last sentence, and I don’t give a tuppenny damn that you don’t know your father.’
‘You don’t?’
‘Not one jot,’ David assured her. ‘Does it bother you?’
‘Not much,’ Kate admitted. ‘And I can’t really mourn a man I never knew. Anyway, Jim was just about the best father anyone could have.’
‘Stick with that then,’ David said, ‘For I have a natural father who is bugger-all use to me, and he has been the same since as long as I can remember.’
‘But there’s more,’ Kate protested.
‘I’m sure there is, but it can be gone into another time,’ David said. ‘Because what really matters is you and me.’ And so saying, David stripped back the bedclothes, and scooped Kate up in his arms.
‘Hey,’ Kate protested. ‘I am not an invalid.’
‘Let me be the judge of that,’ David said. ‘Anyway, didn’t you promise to obey me in a special ceremony a little while ago?’
‘Oh, you.’
They were all assembled around the table downstairs and, though everyone was concerned for her, Kate saw the naked envy on Sally’s face and fully understood it. ‘I haven’t really come to terms with this yet,’ she said to them all. ‘My head isn’t really taking it in, but this is my husband, David, and for months I have thought him dead.’
‘We got that far,’ Padraic said. ‘But he would tell us no more until you were here too.’
‘Well, I’d like to say that it was all due to my heroism,’ David said. ‘But really it was all down to the bravery of the people of Sumatra.’
‘Sit down and take the weight off your feet,’ Jim said.
‘Aye, and put that lassie down,’ Padraic said with a wink at David. ‘For she’s a dead weight.’
‘You cheeky devil!’ Kate cried, but she didn’t object when David sat her down on the settee and then sat beside her, with an arm draped over her shoulder. Philomena pushed tea into both their hands and Padraic said, ‘Now go on, David; the people of Sumatra, you said.’
‘Well, it was a boy saved me really,’ David said. ‘I would say just a little older than you, James.’
‘Golly, what did he do?’
‘Well, we retreated after the fall of Singapore,’ David said, glancing round at them all. ‘And we were pursued by Jap Zero planes and heavily outnumbered. My Spit was hit a number of times and eventually caught fire. I bailed out and was shot to pieces on the way down and lost consciousness as I landed. I was bleeding heavily, so I was told later. This boy took off his shirt and ripped it into strips to bind my wounds, cut through the ropes tying me to the parachute, rolled me into this ditch, covered me over with leaves and left me. I was drifting in and out of consciousness and semi-delirious, but I knew when the Japanese came searching. They stuck bayonets in the ditches and missed my face by tenths of an inch, but they weren’t searching as diligently as they might, thank God, because they didn’t know where exactly I had landed. I thank God too that they had no dogs, for they would have found me in no time.’
‘What about the boy?’ James asked.
‘Oh, I didn’t see him till much later, and then I thanked him for saving my life.’
‘Did he understand you?’
‘Well, no, he didn’t,’ David said. ‘But some time later that night I was taken to this woman’s house in the middle of the jungle on a sort of litter they had got together. It was so painful that I was jerked awake and bit my lip till it bled to try and stop myself yelling out. I wasn’t aware of much for about twenty-four hours, or that’s what she said, anyway, and when I came round a bit I was surprised to find she was so young – early twenties, I’d say, and she was British.’
‘What in God’s name was she doing there?’ Jim asked.
‘Her parents were missionaries,’ David explained. ‘They’d been expelled from China and had fled to Malaya, but the Japs arrived before they could be rescued and they had kept going to Sumatra. The Japs caught up with them there and bayoneted this woman’s parents and her two sisters, and would have done the same to her, but she was behind the others and able to hide. Her name was Julia Greenwood.’
‘Terrible thing for anyone, but maybe especially a young girl, to see her parents and sisters killed that way.’
‘I agree,’ David said. ‘They are butchering bastards, because Julia said her sisters were only youngsters. She was the eldest, and the youngest hadn’t even reached her teens. She said she didn’t have time to grieve much, though, because it was all about survival – and not just her survival but that of the villagers, who would suffer if she was found. So they made her this shelter in the centre of the jungle and they bring her whatever food they have to spare – no one has much – and she tries to cure them when they are sick because she knows a great deal about natural remedies.’
‘And she told you about the boy?’
‘Yeah, but not straightaway because I was very ill when I arrived. She said I often hovered between life
and death and she hadn’t been sure I would make it.’
‘Oh, I am so glad you did,’ Kate said, giving his arm a squeeze.
‘And me, darling,’ David said. ‘Your face used to float before me and I would often wonder if I would ever see you again. Julia got me right in the end, though, and told me how I had managed to survive, and then she summoned the boy and conveyed my thanks to him. She also asked him on my behalf what he had done with the parachute, because if any trace of it had been found in the village, everyone would have been killed and many tortured before they died. They took an immense risk in hiding me.’
‘So what did he do with it?’
‘He tied a big boulder inside it and tipped it into the sea. It sank without trace.’
‘So, did the Japs give up looking for you in the end?’ Jim asked.
‘More or less,’ David said. ‘Though there were regular patrols, and then Julia and I would be hidden in the fields. From those who understood a smattering of Japanese, apparently they thought I had landed in the sea and drowned, because no trace of the parachute was ever found.’
‘Golly, that’s a real exciting story,’ James said, greatly impressed. ‘And it’s even better than that because it’s true.’
‘Well, I agree with James,’ Padraic said. ‘That’s a truly amazing story, and I would be pleased to welcome you into the family.’
‘And I would,’ James said decidedly. ‘Oh, boy, that would be grand.’
They all laughed and James said, ‘Is there any more?’
‘Not enough drama for you, is that it?’ David said with a grin. ‘Well, that’s about the end of it now, James, except to say it was a few months before I was well enough to be moved, and then weeks before they could arrange to get me off as safely as possible for all concerned. Julia wouldn’t come with me. She said there is nothing for her in England now and the people of Sumatra need her. Now that’s what I call real courage.’
‘Oh, I’ll say,’ Kate said. ‘Poor girl, though I can see what she means, with all her family wiped out. At least she feels needed there. But if the Japanese ever found her … Oh, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Just the thought of them terrifies me.’