by Pam Weaver
‘We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …’
The clods of earth fell with a thump on the top of the coffin. Faint and sick to her stomach, Frankie threw a red rose into the hole. ‘Goodnight sweetheart,’ she whispered as she turned away. Her lovely husband was gone. Gone forever.
At the wake held in the Duke of Wellington, a man in a pinstriped suit introduced himself to Frankie. ‘My name is Doctor Roger Trent-Ellis,’ he began. ‘I am so sorry for your loss. It’s a shocking affair.’
‘Thank you for coming,’ Frankie murmured mechanically.
‘Dr Delaney was very much in love with you,’ he went on. ‘It was my cottage you were staying in.’
‘Oh,’ Frankie said, giving him her full attention. ‘Thank you so much for that. You gave us … me, some very happy memories.’
The man pressed something into Frankie’s hand. When she looked down it was a long white envelope. ‘A few of my colleagues and I have motored down from London,’ he went on, closing her fingers around the envelope. ‘Dr Delaney and I became good friends when we worked together in the same hospital. I was the person who sent his letter. We are all indebted to your husband and so my colleagues and I want you to have this.’
Frankie began to protest but he squeezed her hand. ‘Please allow us to do this for him. You will never know how much we respected and admired him.’
When she finally got back to the farm, Frankie opened the envelope. Inside there was a card signed by loads and loads of people and enough money to pay for everything. It hadn’t dawned on her until she was on the train that Doctor what-ever-his-name-was said he’d sent her Romare’s letter. What letter? She’d never received a letter. That was upsetting enough but what was worse – now she couldn’t remember the doctor’s name and neither could anyone else.
*
The next few weeks were a nightmare. A yawning emptiness flooded her whole being from the moment she woke up in the morning. She knew Aunt Bet was very worried about her but she couldn’t seem to function properly. Frankie wrote letters to Romare’s family but since she didn’t have their address, (oh why hadn’t they thought of these things when he was alive?) she had to entrust them to the army base. The days without him seemed to grow longer and longer. She would find herself staring into space, forgetting what she was doing; her mind wandering off to God-knows-where. Her own doctor said she should try to get back to normal living so a month and three days after Romare had died, Frankie reported for duty. Friends and family tried to talk her out of it but she was anxious to carry on and, at the very least, it gave her something else to think about. The D-Day invasion had gone well and the Allies had secured a toe hold in France. ATS riders were in great demand. After a chat with her CO, Frankie was told to prepare for a posting to Belgium. As she had already been away from the unit for more than four weeks, her embarkation leave was reduced to three days, which she spent quietly with Aunt Bet and Uncle Lorry.
Frankie was to set sail from Poole. She and the other girls who would be in her battery were given some Belgian francs and as Army regulations required, she wrote her will. She hadn’t got much but she left it all to Aunt Bet and Uncle Lorry with the Russian doll donated to The Red Cross to sell or dispose of as they saw fit. There were two sections at the back of her pay book called Diagnosis and Disposal. If she was killed, the army would record how she had died (that was diagnosis) and they would fill in what happened to her body or remains (that was disposal). It was a sobering thought but now that Romare was gone, it didn’t hold much terror. The details in their pay books were censored in case they were captured by the enemy. It was only then that Frankie understood what it meant to be in a war zone.
The day they marched onto the quay, there were several ships waiting to set sail. They were told to stand easy to allow a group of injured GIs to embark their vessel. They were a sorry lot. Some had bandaged heads, some had missing limbs and there were a few stretcher cases. These were the men who had been in that first wave over in Normandy and now, severely injured, they were going home. Everyone on the quay had enormous respect for them. Frankie joined her friends in shaking a few hands and wishing them luck.
‘Thank you for what you’ve done. We’ll never forget you.’
About half the men had struggled aboard their ship when Frankie heard a voice some way behind her, which made her freeze.
‘Mind my leg. Be careful. And get your hands off me, boy.’
It was him. Lyman Spinks. He hadn’t died after all. He was on crutches and she looked down to see one trouser leg flapping. So, the inspector was right. When he’d come to Worthing to hear her side of the story, he’d hinted as much. Lyman Spinks had taken the coward’s way out to avoided combat but he’d lost his leg in the process. Looking at him, all she felt was contempt. Served him bloody well right.
As he came nearer she felt her heart race and the anger rising in his chest. For two pins she wanted to kick him over the gang plank and into the water, or snatch one of his crutches away and yet she knew that if she attacked him she would only descend to his level; the level of the thug and the bully. Romare had fought discrimination and unfairness with dignity. He’d gained a reputation and worked hard but he wasn’t a mamby-pamby or a pushover. He held his head high and his attitude had a way of making people look at themselves and the way they behaved. Without making speeches or being obnoxious, he made them feel so ashamed that they treated him with respect.
Spinks was almost level with her now. God, she hated him. He had no right to be here. The man should be locked up. There should have been a trial. Why hadn’t Inspector Collins charged him? But even as she asked herself the questions, she knew the answers. The inspector had tried hard enough but to the American authorities Romare was only a tiny cog in the wheel and there were far more important things to do. They weren’t going to arrest Spinks because he was wealthy and came from an influential family. Money talks, she thought bitterly, and the tide of resentment swelled inside her until it almost made her retch.
A medic was helping Spinks because he was on crutches. Another medic hovered close by. Frankie guessed that Spinks had lost his temper with the poor man because he was black. Ungrateful pig.
‘Hello,’ she said sweetly. ‘Fancy seeing you again.’ She had the satisfaction of seeing his face blanch. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your foot.’
Several other soldiers were looking her way. Frankie raised her voice slightly.
‘You should have aimed your gun above your foot, staff sergeant. That way you would have done less damage. Oh but then everyone would have known this was a self-inflicted injury, wouldn’t they? Silly me. I’m guessing you did it because you didn’t want to go over to France.’ She put her index finger onto her cheek and looked thoughtful. ‘Or could it be because you murdered my husband,’ her voice had become cold and harsh, ‘and this was a good way of getting away with it?’
By now she had caused a stir. Any sympathy he might have had evaporated. She noticed that the black medic assigned to help him up the gangplank had moved back a step or two to help someone else coming up behind him. The injured soldiers nearest him had also moved away. Spinks lifted his crutch to push Frankie aside.
‘Careful now,’ she said innocently. ‘I’m only a small woman and you are a very big man. My jaw has only just recovered from the last time you hit me.’
His eyes flashed. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ma’am,’ he snarled. ‘I’ve never seen you in my life before.’
‘Of course you haven’t, Staff Sergeant Lyman Spinks,’ she said pronouncing his name in deliberate and ringing tones. ‘Of course you would say that, wouldn’t you. But let me make one thing very clear. I don’t know how I shall do it, but I am here to assure you that one day I shall see you get your comeuppance. Justice for my husband will be done.’
She looked around. ‘This man was responsible for my husband’s death,’ she told the crowd. ‘He had him lynche
d. Yes, hung from an English oak for no better reason than he was black and he married me.’
‘Get away from me,’ Spinks snarled. ‘You’ve no proof of anything.’
She could hear a buzz of conversation going around. ‘Hands up if any of you men have had a blood transfusion.’
A few hands went up cautiously, including a few black hands.
Frankie smiled. ‘For everyone here who has had a blood transfusion,’ she said addressing the black soldiers in particular, ‘my husband is the reason you are alive today. He fought for your right to have blood plasma.’
Frankie could see several heads nodding in agreement. ‘Doctor Romare Delaney believed that every man’s life was precious, no matter what the colour of his skin.’ She turned back to Spinks with a curl in her lip, ‘And you hung him out of jealousy and spite.’
As Spinks lunged towards her, Frankie could feel someone tugging at her arm. One of the other girls, anxious that she might get hurt, was encouraging her back towards the others. ‘Frankie,’ she whispered. ‘That’s enough.’
Spinks barged his way to the gang plank. Frankie stood with her hands on her hips to watch every painful step as he struggled to the top. Once on board the ship, he leaned over the rail and spat in her direction.
Only then did Frankie turn on her heel and allow herself to be led away. She was exhausted and trembling but she held her head high. She hadn’t gone many steps before she heard a ripple of applause coming from the ship and by the time she had reached the rest of the girls in her battery the sound of thunderous applause, whistling and calling resounded all around the quay.
Thirty-Nine
Even as she heard the applause, Frankie struggled not to break down. Every cell in her body wanted to let out her grief and loss. It was Joan who had tugged at her arm, the girl who had been with Frankie at her first posting. She had opted to be a mess orderly because she struggled with the skills she needed to be in the battery. Nearly five years on, she had risen through the ranks. She led Frankie back to the others. No one said a word but every now and then she felt a pat on her back or an encouraging touch on her arm. There wasn’t a dry eye on the dock and everyone admired what she had done. For Frankie it had been satisfying and yet nowhere near enough. Romare deserved more than that; much more. He deserved justice, a proper trial, a conviction, and due punishment, something which had eluded him simply because he was black. All she had managed for his killer was a little humiliation. It was a small comfort that perhaps the men who had clapped her would make Lyman’s journey home one to remember. He didn’t deserve to be with those men anyway. They had been wounded in the field of battle. He had taken the coward’s way out.
They boarded their ship and Joan made it her job to make sure Frankie was comfortable. As for Frankie, she dared not cry. If she started, she knew it would be impossible to stop. So she breathed in hard and stuffed it all inside, telling herself that the war wasn’t over yet and she still had a job to do.
‘You all right?’ Joan asked as the ship pulled away from its berth.
Frankie nodded and her old pal squeezed her shoulder.
*
The crossing to Ostend was pretty grim. The weather had deteriorated and the sea was choppy. Several of the girls were sick and before long the open areas of the deck reeked of vomit. Frankie spent most of the trip trying to clean Joan up and convince her that she wasn’t going to die. It was with a great sense of relief that everyone saw the port finally come into view. A couple of army trucks were waiting for them on the dock side but they didn’t drive very far. Their first night was spent in some sort of municipal building which, up until a few weeks ago, had been used by the Germans. The place had been stripped bare but the plumbing still worked and it didn’t take the army long to get the place up and running as a billet, albeit a rather meagre one. The girls cleaned themselves up and some of those who had managed not to be sick washed the vomit-stained shirts of the others.
That night, Frankie lay on her bunk and stared at the ceiling. Her thoughts were still centered on Romare and what might have been, but in her heart of hearts she longed for more. If only she could get some semblance of justice for him and clear his name. How dare the authorities insist her husband had committed suicide just because he was a black man and it was expedient? Spinks was a monster but in a funny kind of way, he couldn’t help it. He had been brought up to think of himself as superior. He had been taught to hate the black man, but why? A hundred years ago those poor African slaves had never asked to come to the cotton plantations. They had been forced from their homelands in Africa and shipped across the ocean to a land which, to them, must have seemed like hell on earth. The story might have been played out in the southern states but the people of Britain and Europe didn’t have clean hands either. True, there came a time when they had been among the first to understand how appallingly the Africans had been treated and they started the anti-slavery movement but the prejudice remained. The Negro might have secured his freedom a century ago but was he really free? Until the mindless prejudice ended, no one was free to be himself. But what could she do about it? She was one woman, a not very well educated woman at that, who had been briefly married to a wonderful man, a doctor who happened to be black. Nevertheless, lying on that bunk bed and looking up at that ceiling in Ostend, she decided that when the war was over, she would try and make his voice and the voices of other downtrodden human beings heard. She couldn’t help her beloved, damn it, but she would always stick up for his people.
*
Frankie spent the next few days escorting the convoys as the girls were posted to their new batteries and taking messages to various senior command posts. Because girls were not allowed in combat areas, she ended up manning an ack-ack gun at an abandoned German barracks in the middle of the countryside. Frankie thought she would struggle to remember what she’d been taught all those years ago but a few hours into her shift it became second nature. They were a grand bunch. The people she was closest to were Joan, the girl who had helped her at the quay side, and Connie from Blackpool, who was engaged to be married to a lad who happened to be posted in the same area. The place where they ended up had few facilities and was surrounded by muddy fields.
‘Hardly the Ritz, darling,’ Connie said sniffily as they walked into their hut.
‘Good job you didn’t pack your tiara then, M’lady,’ Joan said dryly.
They made the most of it but the nights were cold. Each girl had two blankets but they had to resort to putting their great coats on the beds as well. ‘I could do with a man in this bed to keep me warm,’ said Joan.
‘I wouldn’t have the energy,’ somebody yawned further along the barracks.
They were lucky enough to be invited to dances put on mostly for the troops. The Belgian people always gave them a warm welcome and the girls certainly didn’t lack an invitation to go onto the dance floor. Frankie was polite but she didn’t really join in. The Allies might have pushed through but it soon became clear that Hitler wasn’t about to give up. Every night, hundreds of V1 rockets targeting Antwerp and London flew overhead and it was the job of the ATS girls to shoot down as many as they could. It wasn’t easy. Quite a lot of the rockets flew at a terrific speed, under the range of the ack-ack guns, and for a terrible moment it looked as if the enemy would once again gain the upper hand.
Frankie knew they were some distance away from the front but that didn’t make it any the less scary. A couple of times when she’d been out dispatch riding she’d come across a big sign at the side of the road saying ‘Road under shell fire’. She wasn’t a coward but it began to trouble her because it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore what was happening to her body. When she’d come over on the boat, she’d managed to avoid being sick but for a couple of weeks she had woken each morning feeling decidedly queasy. Now that her breasts had started tingling the truth of the matter dawned. It was two months since she’d arrived in Belgium and four and a half months since her wedding day. Her
uniform was becoming difficult to do up at the waist and it certainly wasn’t because of the food. She was pregnant.
She told the girls in her battery first. They were all thrilled for her but it meant facing yet another tearful goodbye.
‘Keep in touch,’ Joan said. ‘We want to know all about your baby.’
‘I will,’ Frankie promised.
Almost immediately, Frankie’s commanding officer made arrangements for her to be posted back to Britain and to be medically discharged from the service.
Forty
Broadwater, North Farm, Winter 1944
It wasn’t until she came home that Frankie realised just how exhausted she was. The first three days back at the farm, she slept a lot. Without the other girls around and orders to follow, she found herself mourning her loss more keenly. She wished Romare could have known about the baby. And how on earth, she wondered, was she going to bring up her baby alone? She was a widow but her husband had been in the US army. She was their responsibility except that he hadn’t died in combat. As far as the Americans were concerned he had died in mysterious circumstances, possibly by his own hand. As far as the British were concerned, he had, as the saying goes, been murdered by a person or persons unknown. Inspector Collins had done his best, but without a trial and conviction she was caught between two stools and, as a result, she was always someone else’s responsibility.
Aunt Bet had been surprised when Frankie explained her condition but in her usual way, she had taken it in her stride and was already borrowing knitting patterns and sewing a layette. ‘I’ve got a little saved up,’ Frankie murmured, ‘but what am I going to do for money?’
‘Something will turn up,’ Aunt Bet said breezily – and something did.
As Romare’s wife she had inherited his money. She’d known the paperwork was coming, but the process had been slow and it came as a surprise to find out now that he had a tidy sum in the bank. If she was careful, it would get her through the first years with the baby but of course she would have to find a job eventually. Aunt Bet told her she was sure that in a few years’ time she would find a new husband. ‘You’re an attractive girl,’ she said. ‘I’m sure someone will snap you up before long.’