‘But your foreman –’
‘In the pub.’ Gianni shrugged. ‘If we are not trouble to him, he is not trouble to us.’
Connie moved closer to Seppe, leaned against the warmth coming from his greatcoat. These blokes wouldn’t last a minute on Frank’s watch, that was for sure. But what did that matter right now?
‘So, Christmas, eh? We are talking about what we do for Christmas, it is not so far away now. Me, I go to Mary’s house. And you?’ Gianni stopped, peered pointedly at Connie as if it had anything to do with her. Before she’d had a chance to answer, Seppe jumped in.
‘We’re prisoners, had you forgotten? We’re in camp for Christmas.’
Gianni laughed. ‘The guards don’t care. As long as we are back by the night roll call … More food for the others.’
The talk moved to the camp football team’s victory against Bream that past weekend. Gianni, needless to say, had scored a miracle goal that had saved the day. Mary, rocking Joe by the fire, rolled her eyes at Connie. It was all right, this.
Seppe finished his bacon and stood up, offered his hand to pull her off the log. This time she took it.
The winter sun had found a way through the clouds. Their shadows glided before them through empty trees and their boots crunched in step through frozen leaves. She didn’t know if it was the bacon, or the cheery English girl, or just the chance to chat and not fret about everything all the time, but Connie’s gut had untwisted. She’d find a way through. And she could start by being kinder to Seppe.
‘You could come to us, you know.’
Seppe kept pace with Connie, one of his strides to two of hers.
‘To you?’
‘For Christmas.’
Forty-One
AMOS PUT BILLY’S PICTURE back down on the mantelpiece and looked at Bess, who’d raced across the crowded kitchen. What had she seen? Amos walked over to the kitchen door. The panes were all fogged up, only a uniformed shape shining through, and for a missed breath it was his Billy out there in the garden, found after all and home for Christmas like some dopey story on the wireless.
‘Come on in, lad.’ Amos swallowed down the bitter disappointment and cracked open the door so that Seppe could squeeze in. ‘Chaos in here, it is; still a couple of hours till we’re ready for our dinner, Joyce says.’
As if summoned by her name, Joyce bustled forward. She grabbed the poor lad by the wrist and shut out the hooting of the owl.
‘Don’t leave him standing on the doorstop like that! Merry Christmas, Seppe, love.’
On the range, the pot lid rattled out of time with the wireless and Joyce warbling away to it. Amos still didn’t know why Joyce and Frank had come here for their Christmas dinner, but Connie had insisted, said it would save him from her cooking. She had a point.
Amos fetched Joe. He was sitting up at the table banging a carrot whilst Connie stirred at something in May’s big old mixing bowl with a frown deep enough to swallow up the Severn.
‘Let’s show our Seppe the tree, shall we?’ Connie and Frank had dragged it in one night, giggling like a pair of kids, but Amos hadn’t bothered with them; didn’t need to be worrying about their hijinks, not with his Billy still gone and any last hope he had seeming more and more like the daydreams of a foolish old man.
He looked now at the tree. Joyce had come over to decorate it, and she hadn’t done a bad job, considering. She’d painted eggshells red and green and hung them from the tree’s branches; a string of paper chains wound round the boughs.
‘Amos –’ The lad had followed him in and was shifting from foot to foot like a ewe that needed worming.
‘This is one of those new pines from Parkend. We planted these only in October. It’s part of the quota.’
So that’s what they’d been in cahoots about, Connie and Frank. The things that girl could persuade Frank to do! Proper fond of her, he was.
Joe reached for the nearest paper chain and Amos swung him across to his other arm, away from the tree. He’d have the whole lot over if he grabbed that.
‘You don’t need to be worrying about them quotas today, boy.’
‘But these pines, they were designated by the Home Production Unit. If Frank has uprooted one, the quota is out and this is a criminal offence.’ Seppe was out of breath. Seemed he’d learned nothing about how the forest worked.
‘Calm down, boy, nothing’s going to happen. Been the same every year for as long as I can remember – this war won’t stop Foresters borrowing a tree for Christmas from their own forest. You go up past them new pines on the way home tonight and you’ll see. Gaps big enough to drive one of them Yankee trucks through up there tonight.’
Joe was wriggling away, chirping at something only he could see. Amos set him down at a safe distance from the presents round the base of the tree, wrapped up in old copies of the Mercury.
‘But why are the people not being fined?’
Amos laughed at this despite himself.
‘Who you going to fine, boy? Can’t hardly come down on the whole blessed forest, can ’em? And them pines’ll be back in place day after tomorrow.’
Frank joined them, golden liquid splashing around inside the tankards he carried.
‘You tried our cider yet, lad?’
Seppe accepted the tankard, kept it at a safe distance from Joe. He sniffed at the golden liquid splashing around inside the tankards Frank brought over.
‘No, not yet. Apples?’
Frank laughed. ‘Apples, aye, and a bit of a kick, too. Been making this out back ready for Christmas.’
Amos wasn’t a drinker, never had been, but he always made an exception for Frank’s cider at Christmas. He took a healthy swig and spluttered.
‘Crikey Moses, Frank! What did you put in it this year?’
‘Need to drink it year round, mun; get used to it that way, you will.’
‘The sheep would be needing to sort themselves out if I drank this every night.’ It was good stuff, tart, and packed a punch. Might need another glass after this one. A toast to Billy. Amos shook his head. The cider was making him as mushy as the windfalls that went into it. He caught Billy’s eye in the picture on the mantel.
With an effort he turned back to Frank and Seppe.
‘Don’t they feed you your Christmas dinner up at Wynols Hill, then?’ Frank, suspicious.
‘What? Yes, yes of course. We cook it ourselves. Many festivities in the camp for Christmas. But I wanted to be here today with – with family.’
It lingered. The boy never spoke of his Italian family, though he must have one. Amos caught sight of Connie framed in the doorway, looked from her to his Billy again.
Family.
Amos looked in the boy’s direction. Seppe had one hand in his pocket, staring over at Connie as if he was trying to answer a hard question. Well, they always said you couldn’t choose your family, but this war had upended so much that evidently you could, now. Good luck to them.
Amos nodded at Seppe, raised his tankard. ‘Aye, well here’s a toast – to families.’ He tilted the drink again in Connie’s direction, but she was gone.
‘Well, Joycie girl, that Mr Hitler hasn’t made a scrap of difference to your cooking.’ Frank scraped his chair back from the table. ‘Never knew rabbit to taste so much like turkey.’
‘You’re having me on! Real gamey flavour, that did have. You must have had a plate full of stuffing.’ Joyce winked at Connie, but it wasn’t funny. Connie’s fingers were raw from the hours she’d spent chopping onions and shredding the never-ending parsley. If Frank could taste anything in the stuffing, it was probably bits of her skin where the blade had kept missing.
Frank did the rounds again with the cider, filling up Amos and Seppe’s tankards. Connie’s mouth watered. She could kill for some of that action, especially after that toast of Amos’s. Seppe kept giving her little half-smiles, as if he knew something she didn’t and he couldn’t wait to tell her and it wasn’t sitting easy with her dinner.
&nbs
p; Seppe sneaked up behind Connie at the sink and seized her round the waist, sending the water gushing down her only half-decent dress since she’d ripped up the yellow one.
‘Hey, watch it! Look what a state I’m in now!’
‘You are beautiful anyway.’
‘And you’re full of bull.’
He smiled, and heaved a stack of empty plates into the sink.
‘You had disappeared so I told Joyce I find you, help you with these, give her a rest. Amos is taking care of Joe.’
‘Help me with them? What makes you think I’ve got any intention of doing them?’ She smiled, but she kept her eyes firmly on the plates in the sink, wouldn’t meet his gaze.
‘Next year we will make Christmas over there. It will be a home by then.’ He nodded across the garden to the shack.
She leaned against the sink and closed her eyes. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Connie.’ The shake in his voice sprang her eyes open. Seppe was down on one knee.
‘What have you lost?
‘Not lost. Found.’
Oh, hell.
‘We don’t know how much longer the war will be. But I have seen, you are sad recently. I think maybe it is because life cannot move forward. So I wanted to move forward at least the bit we can.’
He opened his hand.
On his palm lay a thick silvery ring. Her gut twisted and she bent over slightly. He reached for her but she shrugged him away, took the ring and examined it to buy some time. What was she going to do? She felt sick to her stomach.
He was watching her now, holding his breath so tight that there was no air left in the room for her to swallow, let alone speak.
‘It’s – thank you. It’s – it’s a beaut.’ She pushed it onto her fourth finger before it fell down the plug. Her fingers jittered and she clamped her other hand on her arm to stop them. There were gems in it – not real rubies and emeralds, couldn’t be, but it was pretty, she’d give him that. The gems sat at the centre of little carved leaves. It was exactly the ring she could see Seppe making. It must have taken him hours. And what had he bartered or sold to get those gems? She closed her eyes and took a long, juddery breath. All that time he’d spent on this and she couldn’t even be excited. This was just more proof she was a bit wrong in the head.
Seppe was up off his knees now, moving in, but she tensed past him, ducked under his armpit.
‘I’ll be back in a second. Just need to freshen up.’
‘But shall we tell the others first?’
Tell the others? He just assumed she’d say yes.
Her heart was lead; shame licked at the edges. She was soiled goods now, with Joe as proof. When the war ended she’d be on her tod with the baby to feed, no prospects, no house. She could see why he’d think she’d be grateful for the chance.
How dare he! What on earth was she supposed to say to this? On Christmas Day, with a houseful of people?
Seppe was staring at her now, shaking his head as if to stop her line of thought.
She needed something stronger than cider now. Connie pushed through the kitchen, undoing her apron and dropping it on the floor as she fought for air. Seppe followed her, but she couldn’t look at him. She caught Joyce’s eye and as she moved down the corridor, she heard Joyce behind her: ‘Here, Seppe, give us a hand with the rest of these plates, will you? Don’t mind our Con; she’ll be back in a mo.’ Joyce was a peach.
Connie sneaked open the parlour door and made a beeline for the bureau. Where was that bottle of God-knows-what she’d seen before? Her fingers met something hard and she breathed out. The bottle was dusty as hell, even grappling out the cork made her sneeze, but it pulled clean without too much trouble.
Connie lifted the bottle to her lips, sighed as the first cool drops met her mouth. That was better. She wiped her mouth, then the neck of the bottle, and stuffed it back down into the back of the bureau.
She still couldn’t face the music yet, though, not until she knew what she wanted to do with the tune. Joe would be all right in there.
Nobody noticed her grabbing her cigarettes and creeping round into the garden. Through the window she thought she saw Seppe, peering out into the darkness, and she cringed back into the shadow. She was the worst person in the world. Who tried to hide from someone who had just proposed to them, especially when he was one of your only allies?
Seppe’s voice floated out of the front door, worry lacing his words.
‘Connie? Connie, are you out there?’
He must have gone out the front so that the others didn’t notice him looking for her. Her heart tipped a bit, but she couldn’t say anything yet, just couldn’t, in case she said the wrong thing. She closed her eyes.
Forty-Two
CONNIE LIT A FAG and smoked three in a row, lighting one off the other, her hands less jittery each time, despite the cold. The tobacco did its thing and she relaxed into the twilight, head tilted back.
‘Here you are; been looking for you, I have.’ A beam of light shone into the garden as Joyce stepped through the kitchen door, then all was murky again as the door clicked shut.
Connie offered her the fag packet. ‘Want one?’
‘You’re all right, love; I want to hang on to the taste of cider. We’ll get back inside when you’re done with that. It’s about time to open the presents.’
‘Dunno if I can cope with any more presents, not after this.’ She tilted her hand in Joyce’s direction, the ring heavier than the axe ever was.
‘Oh cripes, Connie.’ Joyce had her hand now, was holding it up to inspect the ring in the gloom. ‘And you’re not over the moon?’ The little stones glittered for a second then disappeared as the moon went behind a cloud.
‘It’s a beautiful ring. And to think of him, working on this all alone up there in that camp. He must really want this, Con.’
‘I know. You should have seen his face, Joyce. So hopeful. A normal girl would be happy, wouldn’t she?’
Joyce took a cigarette and didn’t say anything for the length of the smoke. She must think Connie was being a selfish baggage, too.
The wind changed direction and Connie got an eyeful of Joyce’s ash.
‘Ow!’ Her eyes streamed and she blinked hard, the moisture cold on her cheeks.
‘Oh, Connie, love.’ Joyce pulled her in and hugged her, warm and firm, and the shock of it brought the tears for real. When was the last time anyone had hugged her? Seppe didn’t count. She was properly bawling now, as if she were the baby. Poor Joe! She was such a terrible mother and it wasn’t getting any better, and now she’d be trapped here forever, living in that dismal hut and burning dinner every night.
The tears came and came without end.
‘It’s all hopeless. I can’t do any of it, Joyce, I really can’t.’ Connie daubed at her face with a hanky Joyce pulled from her apron.
It would have been quicker if she’d been had by that bomb after all. She was worse than anyone she’d ever mocked back in Coventry, trapped out here with a baby by a one-night stand and a prisoner who wanted a home so badly he’d mistaken her for it.
The hanky Joyce had given her was sopping wet. She looked at it and cried harder.
‘Here, use this.’ Joyce pulled the apron over her neck and gave it to Connie. Connie scrunched it to her face, scrubbing away the tears. The apron smelt of all those meals Joyce had cooked in it, all the cupboards she’d scrubbed and the jumpers she’d knitted, and now it was covered in snot and rouge where Connie’s face had run all over it.
‘Oh Joyce, I’ve ruined your pinny.’
‘What it’s there for, isn’t it? More concerned about what we’re going to do about you, to be honest.’
‘What kind of monster hides and blubs when her feller brings her a ring, Joyce?’
‘Ah now, Connie, you stop that, all right? We’ve been over this before. We both know you’re no monster.’ It was dark out here now, the twist of smoke from the cigarette the only tang of inside. What she wouldn’t do for anothe
r one, but the carton was empty.
Joyce put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You feeling a bit better now?’ Connie nodded. Joyce always made her feel better.
‘That’s my girl. Ready to come on in, then? They’ll start to miss you if you stay out here much longer. I know it’s a shock, but it’s the nice kind of shock.’
‘You’re right, Joyce.’
She was. That’s what made it all so much worse.
Connie risked a smile in Joyce’s direction. Joyce wouldn’t notice her faking it in this dark. ‘You go on in, fill up those glasses. I’ll be right behind you.’
But when Joyce closed the kitchen door, Connie headed in the other direction, out over the stones and into the wood. She didn’t have to go far, just far enough away so that Seppe’s hut wasn’t looming over her. It was pitch black out here, the noises filling in for lack of sight. Six months ago the rustling and shifting of the leaves would have put the frighteners on her but these days they brought her comfort. It’s where she’d had Joe, after all: if nothing bad could come of her in that situation, nothing ever could. The woods wanted nothing of her, just her company.
She sobbed into the gaps between the trees, filling the lacunae with misery. How had her life come so off track? There was nobody here who knew who she’d been for most of her life, who could give her advice based on who she’d always be. She missed them so much, was sick of pretending that everything was OK. Connie yelled out, the anger and pain hitting an echo against a trunk and refracting the solid wall of her despair. Almost a year – a whole year – and her family were still dead. They’d never feel the weight of Joe wriggling in their arms, hadn’t even known he was on the way, couldn’t shine him a copper or spin him a top or give him a Vimto-soaked finger to suck on. They’d stay dead forever, however much she wished it to change. There was nothing, nothing she could do.
All the tears came now. There was no stopping them. The months of heartache, of uncertainty, of having to look after herself. She cried and cried until there was nothing left, then leaned back, panting, against the nearest tree. She cried for the child she’d been, for her sisters who would never grow older; for Mam, cut off before life had had a chance to get easier. She cried for her younger, more optimistic self and for the future she might have had but now never could. This war, this endless war that had stolen her youth, her family, had driven her to reckless mistakes she’d be paying for now for the rest of her life. No proper mother would think of her baby as a mistake, but let’s be honest, there was no better word for it. She’d cocked up everything.
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