Coming Home

by Jim Eldridge

  “I didn’t know if the letter would get here before me,” I told her. Then I put my arms around her again and pulled her to me. “I’m sorry I went off the way I did.”

  She took a deep, steadying breath.

  “You’re home again, that’s the main thing,” she said.

  As I held her tight, I asked, “Have you heard anything about Dad?”

  “He’s here,” she said. And she called out, “Walter! Joe’s home!”

  I let her go and turned to look towards the back kitchen. Dad was standing in the doorway.

  But this was a different Dad from the one who’d gone away to war last. He was bent over and thin, leaning heavily on a walking stick. He didn’t move, he just stood there, glaring at me.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  I shivered when I heard the anger in his voice.

  “I’ve come home,” I said.

  Dad leaned on his stick and scowled. The silence seemed to go on and on.

  “I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to show your face here,” he said eventually.

  I could tell from the way his fists were clenched that it was as much as he could do to stop himself from going for me. In fact, I felt that if he hadn’t been leaning so heavily on his walking stick, he would have.

  “But … but, Dad…” I protested.

  I thought he’d be glad to see me back home, and alive.

  “It was bad enough that your mother didn’t have me at home to look after her and the children. But I had to go and fight, you chose to abandon them. You ran away.”

  “I went to fight to help get you home!” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “You’re not welcome here,” he said. “You ran away. Well, you can keep running.”

  He turned and limped back into the back kitchen.

  “Walter!” Mam called after him. “He’s our son! And he’s back, and alive!”

  My heart went out to her as I saw the torment she was in, torn between being glad to see me, and needing to be loyal to Dad.

  She turned to me. “He’s just upset, Joe. He doesn’t mean it. I’ll have a word with him. You take Tim and Ann into the parlour.” She went to go after Dad, then stopped. “But don’t make a mess in there. Take those boots off first.”

  She disappeared into the back kitchen.

  Tim and Ann looked at me, as puzzled as I was at Dad’s anger. I unlaced my big heavy boots and put them by the front door.

  “Come on,” I said. “We’ll do what Mam says.”

  The parlour was shiny clean, as always. It was a room we hardly ever used. It was kept for special occasions, like Christmas, or if someone important came to call – which happened very rarely. But, just in case, it was kept dusted and the small table and sideboard polished. A pair of tiny dogs made of plaster sat next to a small music box on the sideboard, and on the wall hung small framed photos of my nan and grandpa, and Mam and Dad on their wedding day, next to a painting of the Cumbrian countryside.

  Tim and Ann sat together on one of the armchairs. I remained standing up; I didn’t want to make anything dirty with my uniform. We could just hear Mam and Dad talking in the back kitchen. Mam was doing most of the talking in a low voice, and Dad barked out a couple of angry words every now and then.

  “How have you been?” I asked my brother.

  “All right,” said Tim. “I’m in Mrs Potter’s class at school now.”

  I nodded.

  “She’s a good teacher,” I said. “She was my teacher when I was at Long Street.”

  “I can do my numbers up to twenty and most of my letters.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  Ann didn’t say anything, she just sat squashed up next to Tim and looked at me as if she’d never seen me before. In a way she hadn’t. She’d never seen me in uniform before, and it was about six months since I’d last been here. For a four-year-old, that’s a long time.

  “Did you get wounded?” asked Tim. “In the war?”

  “Not really,” said. “I got hurt a few times, but just cuts and bruises nothing bad.”

  “Dad got wounded,” said Tim. “In the leg.”

  “Yes, so I see,” I said.

  “He can’t walk very well,” added Tim.

  Mam came in. I looked at her enquiringly, but she ignored me. I guessed Dad was still in the same bad mood.

  “Let’s get you settled back in,” she said. “Take your stuff up to your room. Your bed’s made up same as always.”

  “I’ve been sleeping in it while you’ve been away,” said Tim.

  “Ann’s been ill quite a lot,” said Mam. “She gets restless and kicks, and she kept waking Tim up.”

  “What’s been up with her?” I asked.

  Mam hesitated, then said, “Kiddie illnesses mostly. But she had a bad touch of bronchitis a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I had a fever,” said Ann, looking at me, still slightly awed and overcome.

  “Are you better now?” I asked.

  Ann nodded, but then she gave a cough, a deep-down bronchitis cough that made her bend over double and I thought she was going to fall off the chair.

  Mam produced a handkerchief and held it to her mouth.

  “Spit it up, love,” she said.

  Ann coughed again, and this time she spat some phlegm into the handkerchief.

  “Good girl,” said Mam. She forced a smile at me. “She’s getting better,” she said.

  Whether she was saying it to reassure me or Ann, I wasn’t sure.

  “Tim can keep the bed,” I said. “I’ll sleep on the floor. I’ve slept on worse while I was at the war.”

  Mam shook her head. “It’s your bed, and I told Tim he could only sleep in it until you came home. I knew you’d come home, despite what your dad says.”

  “I went to try and get the war won so Dad could come home quicker,” I said again.

  “I know.” Mam nodded. “But … it was the way you did it that upset your dad. Going off without a word. Lying about your age.”

  “I had to lie about my age otherwise the army wouldn’t have let me join,” I said. “Lots of others did the same.”

  “The thing is, you’re back,” said Mam, smiling.

  “And I’m happy on the mattress, honestly. Let Tim keep the bed, he’s a big lad now.” I ruffled my little brother’s hair and he grinned at me.

  “What happened to Dad’s leg?” I asked, glancing up at Mam.

  Mam hesitated, an unhappy look on her face, and I kicked myself for asking, because I realised it upset her to talk about it.

  “They said he was lucky,” she said. “It was a machine gun. They thought he’d lose his leg, but he didn’t. Others did. Ted Payne in Edward Street lost both of his, poor man. He pushes himself around the streets now on a kid’s pram.”

  She hesitated, then added, “He came back in September. He was in hospital for six weeks before they let him come home.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “About Dad getting wounded, and for going off the way I did. But I did it for good reasons.” It seemed a bit silly now, to think that I had believed I could make a difference to how quickly the war ended.

  “I know you did, Joe. But it’ll take a while before your dad sees it that way.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  I took my kitbag upstairs to my room – mine and Tim’s room, now – and dropped it down beside the bed, my mind in a whirl. My homecoming was so different from how I thought it would be like. All the time I’d been away, I’d been thinking about Dad and wondering where he was. I had prayed that he’d survive the war and that I would see him again. Now I had seen him, and he wasn’t too keen on seeing me.

  Dad had always been a big, strong man. He could pick me up with one arm and Tim with the other, even when I was getting big. He’d looked bad when he came home from the war that first time, after being gassed, but he was still in fairly good shape when he went back. But now … now he looked like an old man.
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  I heard a knock at the front door, and voices, and then Mam called up to me.

  “Joe, it’s Arthur come to see you.”

  Arthur! I hoped my best pal would be glad to see me back at least. I hurried downstairs and saw Arthur grinning at me.

  “Hello, Joe!” he said.

  “Hang on while I put my boots on,” I said.

  “Aren’t you going to change out of your army stuff?” asked Mam.

  “Later,” I said. “I don’t know if my old clothes will still fit me.”

  Even though I had more muscles, I’d lost weight because of the limited rations. Besides, Arthur’s arrival had given me a good opportunity to escape from the house and Dad’s bad mood.

  I laced up my boots and joined Arthur out in the street.

  “Let’s go to the park,” I said. “Things are a bit topsy-turvy indoors.”

  “Your dad, eh?” said Arthur.

  “You know?” I said.

  “He’s been ranting about you since he got back from hospital,” said Arthur. “He was pretty upset when he found out you’d gone off the way you did.”

  “He still is,” I said.

  We headed for Victoria Park just a few streets away in the city centre.

  “Are you still working for the Parks Department?” I asked.

  Arthur nodded. “Yes.”

  All of us – except the rich – left school at thirteen and went to work. Because I’d been in my last year of school before I went off to war, I hadn’t got any kind of job fixed up for when I left.

  “Any chance of me getting a job with you?” I asked. “Now I’m back I’ve got to find some work.”

  “I doubt it,” replied Arthur. “It’s the wrong time of year for planting flowers. Mostly we’re doing work on old trees.”

  “I can do that,” I said. “We sawed down a lot of trees in Flanders. We used ’em as props in the trenches, and to get fires going.”

  He shook his head.

  “They’re cutting back on the number of people they take on,” he said. “There’s not enough money to pay people after the war.”

  We reached Victoria Park and he gestured at the empty flower beds. “Spring’ll be the next big planting.”

  We sat down on one of the benches.

  “What about the railway? There’s always lots of work there, track-laying and such,” Arthur suggested. “What about being a track layer, like your dad was before the war? Maybe he could get you in.”

  I shook my head.

  “Dad isn’t talking to me, so I’m pretty sure he won’t give me any help that way.”

  “He’ll settle down now you’re back,” said Arthur. “You’ll see.”

  We were quiet for a moment, just watching the people wandering around the park. I felt like I wasn’t quite there, like I might wake up any minute and be back in the trenches.

  “What was it like?” asked Arthur.

  “Horrible,” I said.

  “After you left, I tried to join up as well,” said Arthur. “I did what you did, I went to the Lonsdales and told them I was eighteen, and they signed me up and sent me to the training camp.” He sighed. “Trouble was, Mam turned up with my birth certificate and showed it to the officer in charge, and when he saw that I was fourteen he sent me home.” He shuddered. “Being brought home by my mam like a naughty schoolboy – I’ve never been so embarrassed. I’ve been ashamed of it ever since.”

  “Don’t blame your mam,” I said. “She was only doing what she thought was right, to save you.”

  “Yes, but you went!” said Arthur. “And you came home!”

  “I was one of the lucky ones,” I told him. “Most of the underage lads who went never made it back. A lot of them went to pieces when they found out what it was really like going into battle, with real bullets being fired at you and the blokes around you getting shot to bits and dying. And some of them were too much the other way, so set on proving they were tough they ran straight into the bullets.”

  “How did you survive?” asked Arthur.

  “Luck. And we had a good officer leading us who did his best not to take chances. He followed orders all right when we had to go over the top, but he showed us how to zigzag and keep low to stop the Hun from getting a good aim at us.” I sighed. “Not that it did him much good. He got shot dead in the last battle we were in.”

  I suddenly noticed an elderly woman a few yards away, watching me. I didn’t recognize her. I was just wondering if she was the gran of one of my friends at school when she came towards our bench. My heart began to beat a little faster, and I straightened up. If I was expected to recognize her, and didn’t, it was bound to get back to Mam and Dad.

  “Soldier?” she said.

  I immediately stood up, as did Arthur.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, very respectful.

  “You’re back from the war, then?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Just got back today.”

  She nodded.

  “You did a brave thing,” she said. She hesitated, wringing her hands together. “Your family are lucky you came home. My two sons and their sons all died out there in Flanders, all four of them.” She nodded again, her eyes glistening. “This country should be grateful to you. And them.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

  I didn’t know what else to say. She turned and shuffled away.

  “See,” said Arthur as I sat back down. “You’re a hero.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  Despite what Arthur said, Dad didn’t settle down. He glared at me when I came into the back kitchen and things didn’t get better over the next few days,

  He sat by the coal-fired range, day in, day out, in his high-backed wooden armchair, reading and re-reading his newspaper, and ignoring me except for a grim glare when I tried to make conversation with him.

  It was worst during the day because there was just me and him in the house. Mam had recently got herself a part-time job at Mrs Wilson’s drapery shop, after being laid off from the munitions factory. Tim was at school, and Ann went to Mrs Carson’s four doors down the street, who looked after her while Mam was at work. Ann had first started going to Mrs Carson’s when Mam got the job at the munitions place during the war. Mrs Carson had two kids of her own and took in other kids during the day so their mothers could work. It cost Mam a couple of shillings a week, but she said it was worth it.

  “It means I can still bring in money, although not as much as I did at the munitions factory,” Mam told me, two days after I’d got back. “I know it upsets your dad that I go out to work, but that’s the way it is. We have to do what we have to do.”

  She and I were walking through the town centre. Mam had gone out to do some shopping, and I offered to carry the bags for her. The truth is, it gave me an excuse to get out of the house.

  “Why did you decide to leave the munitions place?” I asked.

  “I didn’t decide to leave it,” said Mam. “When the war ended they said they weren’t going to need that many bombs and bullets any more, so they laid us off. The twelve thousand women who were working there, that is. Most of the five thousand men stayed on.”

  “The trouble is, with the men back from the war they don’t want us women doing what they think of as men’s work any more. They needed us because the men were away, but now…” She shook her head. “Still, in a way it’s better. The money was good, but it meant getting the train to Eastriggs. At least I’m here for picking up Ann, so she doesn’t have to stay so long at Mrs Carson’s.”

  “Dad’s still not talking to me,” I told her gloomily. “I try and talk to him, but he just grunts.”

  “He’s upset because he can’t find work,” said Mam. “He went for jobs, but they saw him limping the way he does and told him they hadn’t got anything for him.”

  “What about the railway?” I suggested. “Surely they’ll take him back.”

  “That was the first place he tried when he came out of the infirmary,�
�� said Mam. “They told him he couldn’t be a track layer any more, not with his leg. He told them he wasn’t suffering and insisted he was as strong as ever, but they said no, they needed men who were fully fit.” She sighed. “It was the same story wherever he tried.”

  “How about office work?” I said. “Dad can read and write.”

  She shook her head.

  “He couldn’t stand being in an office,” she said. “He likes being outside.”

  “Well, he’s not outside now,” I said. “He’s stuck in the back kitchen every day.”

  “He’ll come up with something,” she said. “He’s worried, you see, about us being turned out of the house if we can’t pay the rent. I tell him that my money from Mrs Wilson’s will take care of it.”

  “And I’ll get a job, Mam,” I assured her. “I promise you. I’m out every day looking.”

  “I know you are, Joe,” said Mam.

  I’d called at several places around the town, from shops to timber yards, asking if they needed any help, although it was as much to get me out of the house during the day. So far I’d had no luck – there just didn’t seem to be enough work. But on the third day of looking, my luck changed. They were mending the main road that goes from Carlisle to Newcastle, and they needed labourers to break up the old damaged bits of road before they could put the new road surface down. Even better, they wanted me to start straight away.

  The next morning, I arrived at the site, met the other blokes and quickly got to grips with the work. It was hard going, but I’d got used to it digging trenches in Flanders. It felt good to be doing something again.

  The evening of my first day at work, Mam made a special supper of lamb with roast potatoes. It was meant to be a celebration, but Dad’s silence sagged over us. The happiness I felt about my job started to ebb away.

  “So how was it today, Joe?” Mam asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Good. I started work on the Newcastle road, at the Carlisle end,” I said. “We’re breaking up the old cobbles so they can put down a new road surface.”

  “I’m so pleased they took you on,” said Mam. “Isn’t it good, Walter?”

  Dad just gave a kind of grunt and carried on eating his supper.