When the Bough Breaks

by Connie Monk

  When, only weeks after she posted her first long epistle to him, German troops marched into Norway and Denmark, the future was lost in a fog of uncertainty. Something had to be done to set a new course. Everyone knew it, yet no one had any power. Then early in May the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, resigned. But who would fill the void? There were plenty in the country who for years had seen Winston Churchill as a warmonger, but when he was appointed Prime Minister of the new National Government it was as if the country let out a great sigh of relief. Here was a man who would never give in to appeasement, who would stir patriotism in the hearts of the people, who would lead from the front until they achieved victory. On the Continent the situation was going from bad to worse as German troops poured into Belgium and the Netherlands and the Dutch queen with her court took refuge in England. One disaster – or triumph, according to whose banner one waved – followed another as the Germans took Holland and Allied troops were pushed back towards the north coast of France. Was Den one of that bedraggled army? England was never beaten; wasn’t that what was taught to every schoolchild?

  But there was nothing victorious in the bedraggled British Expeditionary Force as it was forced towards the channel. Although Dennis had been in the same unit as Stanley Stone and Bert Delbridge, in the retreat they had lost contact with each other. In England, with a new government and a new leader, hope stirred. But it couldn’t last. The lives of the people were coloured by the bulletins they listened to on the wireless, and surely the colours of such hopelessness must be grey or black. Less than three weeks after the advent of the new prime minister came the event that would live in the nation’s memory: the commencement of the evacuation of British troops – and many French too – from France.

  ‘Can’t sort of take it in, can you?’ Claudia spoke in a hushed voice. ‘Imagine being chased away with nowhere to go but the sea. They say naval boats are going to get them off, but it’s too awful to imagine.’

  Kathie shook her head, her mind was in such turmoil she was frightened to think at all. For days the news had been bad but somehow she, like thousands of others, had expected a miracle. In the finality of this latest news her emotions had come back to life, come back to life with force that was almost too much to bear. Den was there, forced towards the sea – but not everyone would be there, there would be those wounded and unable to make the distance, there would be those lying lifeless as their comrades retreated. Den – don’t let him be one of those, bring him home, let him know that nothing has changed for him and me. Bring him home.

  Coming in with a bowl of eggs Beth was aware of the atmosphere and her excited cry of, ‘We got five today and look at this whopper. Bet it’s got two yolks’, died on her lips before it was spoken. Very carefully she took her bowl to the kitchen then came back into the warm room (the too-warm room at that time of year as the fire was kept in for the sake of hot water) and picked up her school satchel. This term she had started to have homework and on that evening she was glad of it.

  ‘Coming near the shore to pick them up, the naval boats will be sitting ducks.’ Kathie turned her head away, frightened to trust her voice to say any more.

  ‘Do you want me to clear off home?’ Claudia asked. ‘Yes, of course you do.’

  ‘No, no, don’t go. Please.’ Then, seeming to notice Beth for the first time, she said to her, ‘Homework time, love?’

  ‘Got two sums, adding up ones. Then I’ve got to read from this piece of paper and answer questions, yes or no sort of answers.’

  The normality of her answer was balm to the chaos in Kathie’s mind.

  ‘When you’ve finished we’ll have a game. How about draughts for a change?’

  Beth seemed to relax, there was relief in her eyes as she promised she’d hurry.

  ‘Don’t rush so fast you can’t add up right,’ Claudia laughed. And if the laugh was forced Beth didn’t notice, which was probably due to Claudia’s years with the repertory company.

  ‘Not one packet, but two!’ Taking her cue from Claudia’s assumed cheerfulness, Kathie dug into her shopping basket and pulled out two packets of cigarettes. ‘Only Woodbines so a couple of puffs and they’re gone, but they’re better than nothing.’ Then, pretence slipping: ‘What a crazy upside-down world we live in. You know the one lesson we ought to learn from all this is never to take anything for granted, not a single day. The trouble with happiness is that it turns into habit and then you don’t realize it’s there.’

  ‘So we’ll take a deep drag on our slim ciggies and appreciate them. But what you say isn’t quite true, Kathie. I did appreciate the time I was happy, I was almost drunk with joy.’

  ‘Do you have any contact with him now? Don’t you write about . . .’ Kathie hesitated, conscious of Beth. ‘His son?’

  ‘No. He’s been advised of my new address through the solicitor. If he wanted to know about anything he could contact me. But he doesn’t. I was just a temporary hiccup, a physical temptation he couldn’t resist. I always knew he thought he’d stooped and picked up nothing when he married me, but in the beginning what we had was more important. I told you what I was like carrying the fruits of our lust – because that’s what it was. I think I always knew it, but I didn’t care. I was even stupid enough to believe we would grow together. Silly, wasn’t it? Gosh, you’re right about these ciggies, three puffs and they’re gone. Shall we check your sums, Beth?’

  Watching them Kathie’s mind was on the beaches of northern France. Perhaps he was already aboard a ship, perhaps they had started back across the channel, perhaps tomorrow or the next day she would hear his familiar tread. If only the door would open and he’d walk in, she could almost smell that revolting disinfectant of his uniform. But would it be like that now or filthy with mud and dirt, just as he would be dirty, unshaven, dishevelled? Den, she begged, Den come home, let’s love each other so that we still share all those wonderful years and the preciousness of Jess. It was easy to forget how through those ‘wonderful years’ when month after month had come disappointment, excitement had given way to habit, the colours of life had dimmed. Once Jess arrived they saw each other afresh, their days had found a new meaning.

  Later, with Beth in bed and Claudia gone home, she sat by the wireless waiting for the late night news. But it was only a repeat of what she’d listened to earlier. Yet for those soldiers on the beaches each hour must be like a lifetime. Would they be shot at as they were trying to escape? Would they be rounded up and taken as prisoners? Would the boats be bombed? How could she go to her comfortable bed and find relief in sleep when she didn’t know where he was, whether he was alive or – no, she wouldn’t even think it. He must be alive. He must come home.

  The next day she heard the appeal for people with seaworthy craft to help with the evacuation. How strange it was that fresh hope could come from such a request when really it must mean that without the help of people volunteering to cross the Channel in boats they had simply used around the coasts at weekends the remains of the Expeditionary Force couldn’t be repatriated. Or did that fresh hope come from the knowledge that the nation was in this together, that other lives would be risked in the rescue operation, civilian lives? This wasn’t a war just for men and women in uniform, it was a fight for every man and woman in the country. They may not all be occupied in making guns or growing food, but they were all united.

  It was announced that the Prime Minister was to make a broadcast. Kathie sat alone to listen, her heart swelling with pride. His words turned defeat into victory. As she listened she imagined those small craft, pleasure steamers, fishing boats, motor boats which had never gone more than a couple of miles off shore, plying backwards and forwards as they brought the men home. Yes, it was a victory, a victory for the invincible courage of an island race. Surely that ought to tell the world that no power on earth was strong enough to break their spirit. ‘We will fight them on the beaches . . . We will never surrender.’ Sitting alone by the wireless, Kathie found the tears running down her f
ace. If the Prime Minister could have looked into that cottage set in its market garden he would surely have been satisfied that his rallying cry had touched the heart and soul of the nation.

  On the other side of the Channel, bedraggled soldiers, hungry, footsore, some needing help, were wading the final few yards towards the boats. Dusk was falling, there was something nightmarishly unreal, made worse by the fact that they hadn’t slept for what seemed like weeks. Dennis had lost track of Stanley and Bert and it worried him. There was no logic in his feeling responsible for them, but he’d known them since they’d first left school twelve years ago and he had a fatherly feeling for them.

  Now he was about to wade into the water and he didn’t know whether they’d gone ahead of him, whether they’d been wounded and had to give themselves up, whether – he tried to close his mind to the other alternative. But as he stepped into the water he took one last look at the country he was leaving, and that’s when he heard his name being shouted and he recognized Bert Delbridge limping towards him.

  ‘Thank God,’ he greeted him, his voice sounding tight and strained to his own ears. ‘Been looking for you. Where’s Stan?’

  Bert opened his mouth to reply, but his mud-stained face was working out of control.

  ‘Copped it . . . couple of miles back. Plane swooped down, fired along the line. Went down like ninepins. Tried to carry him. Couldn’t.’ Passed caring, Bert’s face crumpled as he sobbed.

  Dennis held his arm around the shaking shoulders.

  ‘Bloody war,’ he mumbled. ‘Poor young bugger. Come on, lad, be our turn to be picked up in a minute, better get out to the boats.’ It took him all his strength of will to force even a hint of confidence in his voice. The two boys (for that’s how he still thought of them) had been such a close part of his life, he felt they were almost family. Imagining Stanley lying lifeless as they were rescued he felt physically sick. But how much worse it was for Bert. They had been inseparable since their first day at school, more like brothers than friends. The nightmare of trying to carry the tall figure, realizing he was dead and having to rest him back on the roadside, would surely haunt Bert for the rest of his days. Unable to stop his loud uncontrollable crying, exhausted and trembling, Bert needed Dennis’s help as the walked from the shore to the first ripples of water. Being depended on helped Dennis hang on to what courage was left to him. And so they walked into the water, feeling their boots fill, their thick scratchy trousers cling to their legs, then the water was to their waists, their shoulders, until they had to start swimming. The shock of the cold water helped restore Bert. Overhead a plane swooped, just as one had a couple of miles back. Aiming at the men climbing onto the flotilla of small boats, some of the shots went astray.

  Dennis felt a sharp pain in his back, he tried to kick his legs – heavy legs with water-laden boots and clothes – legs that had no power.

  ‘You go on,’ he tried to say the words, but he didn’t seem to know what was happening. Water over his face, over his head. He was going down. This is it! ‘Kathie! Jess!’ He believed he was shouting their names but how could he be when he couldn’t breathe and his lungs were filling with water. Someone was dragging him – where to? Consciousness finally left him.

  Ambulances were waiting on the quayside. The walking wounded were loaded aboard, as many as could be carried safely in each vehicle. For those who were more fortunate, army lorries were lined up to take them to the station for rail travel by special trains to the base where they would be medically checked, then issued with fresh uniforms heavily impregnated with the hated disinfectant, given ration slips and passes for fourteen days’ leave. As the open-backed lorry drove away from the quayside, the first of the stretchers was being carried ashore. How else could casualties be offloaded, some conscious and thankful to be on home soil, others who had breathed their last as the little boat had chugged its way across the Channel. And still there would be hundreds on the beaches waiting, ducking for cover, praying not to lose the freedom that was so close. With their human cargo all delivered to English soil the little boats refuelled and set out again.

  As each special train travelled, at any vantage point where the railway line ran alongside a road, there were people waiting and watching, men waving their hats, women their hankies and children small Union Jacks. Dirty, exhausted, weak beyond imagination, the troops waved back to the welcome parties. If there were a few who weren’t aware just how near the surface tears threatened, Bert wasn’t one of them.

  Could this be the defeat Hitler broadcast about to his people? Rather, this was a family welcoming home its sons. Pride had never been higher.

  ‘Bert Delbridge came in the pub last night,’ Sarah said a couple of days later. ‘He’d not been hurt, but Mrs H he looked really rotten. Dad said he had to be careful not to push him with questions. But it’s awful, he said Stanley Stone had been shot dead. Stanley! He was here working when they were on leave, remember?’

  Oh yes, Kathie remembered. She remembered all the years he had been one of them. How many times had she heard Den’s heartfelt, ‘bloody war’? Stan not coming home, not going to marry the girl he had got engaged to before he went away. There were no words. How could she say ‘I’m so sorry’, or ‘How dreadful’? She looked at Sarah in silence.

  ‘Did he say anything about Den?’ It took all her courage to ask. Her mouth felt dry and stiff; she had to force the words. ‘I’ve not heard a thing.’

  ‘I thought you would have heard from him by this morning. Bert said he helped get him onto a boat, but it was too full to take anyone else. So Bert got picked up by a different one. But Mr H was definitely on board and the boat got across OK. Bert said he saw that much. But his lot was offloaded first. Mr H had to be lifted aboard because he was wounded, but it can’t be anything too serious or he wouldn’t have been able to swim to the boat. Him being older than Bert, I expect he was exhausted with the swim.’

  Kathie nodded, thankfulness seeming to deprive her of speech. Thank God, Den is safely back in England. Perhaps he wants to surprise me, just arrive like I’ve been dreaming. She leant on her hoe letting her mind run wild while, her news both bad and good told, Sarah went to the shed to fetch her tools ready to set to work.

  Over the last few days, at some stage during each morning Bruce had walked through the wood to the lane, not climbing the gate but using the key and undoing the padlock, then those few steps more and he was at Westways. More often than not Claudia would be there and would see him, hailing him with a wave. The magic of this place never failed. That glamorous and worldly Claudia should have been drawn to it was the biggest surprise of all. He could understand what had attracted Oliver, and certainly Elspeth who would have responded by instinct rather than design, but it seemed to have touched a chord he had never suspected in Claudia.

  That morning, arriving unnoticed, he stopped just inside the gate to take in the scene. There had been rain in the night and even though it had soon dried away, Claudia was wearing the red wellingtons to which she seemed very attached. To protect her hands as she picked broad beans she wore the same gardening gloves he had seen on previous visits. Where did she manage to find these things? They were gauntlets, as red as her boots, not thick heavy gloves as most people wore for gardening (at least, those who wore gloves at all, he thought, a smile tugging the corner of his mouth as he thought of Kathie), but made of strong rubber, with an artificial white rose on the back of each wrist.

  Seeing him she raised one elegantly clad hand in a wave just as she always did. As a rule that drew him to stop and talk to her, but on that day he acknowledged her greeting and walked on down the field to where he could see Kathie checking the progress of the outdoor tomato plants and tying them to the poles as they grew. He watched unseen for a moment as she gave her concentration to examining each plant, pricking out any young shoot that grew in the leaf joints. In those old working trousers of Dennis’s she so often wore – and from the look of her, an old shirt of his too on that morning
– and with a scarf covering her hair and tied like a turban, it was impossible not to find himself comparing her appearance with Claudia’s. His Adam’s apple seemed to fill his throat. At that moment she sensed that someone was watching her and turned around.

  ‘Bruce! How long have you been standing there? I was just finishing checking the tommies. They’re coming on well. What’s that in your hand?’

  ‘I met the post-lady at the gate. She broke the rules and let me have it to give you.’

  The buff envelope looked ominously official. Don’t let it be bad news for her, he begged silently. She hurried towards him with her hand out, but one look at the typed envelope and hope faded.

  ‘I thought it might be from Den.’ She tore the envelope open and took out a single typed sheet

  ‘Wounded,’ she murmured as she read. ‘It’s his spine. Operating . . . until after the operation they won’t know how fully he will recover.’

  He had never seen that lost, frightened look in her eyes before.

  ‘Where is he?’

  Kathie passed him the letter, a letter that told so much and yet so little. At least he was alive – and surely before any operation the medical people had to give that warning. That’s what Bruce tried to make her believe as taking back the sheet of paper she reread the message.

  ‘There’s a telephone number. You must ring them, Kathie, find out if you can see him.’

  Biting hard on her bottom lip, she cast a glance at the field that surrounded them. She felt trapped. The hospital was miles away. She had a child to care for; she had a business to run. The girls worked hard but they only obeyed instructions, she couldn’t possible leave them. Anyway, what about Beth? She felt Bruce’s firm touch on her shoulder.