Bombers' Moon (12 page)

Father was hearty in the way most older folk are when they’re not used to young people but I saw at once he didn’t even think of me as a
young
person. ‘Come to kiss me, child,’ he said.

I wanted to protest and then I paused. It would suit me to be a child I decided, that way I’d have no responsibilities. I realized I was a selfish bitch but I needed to look out for myself, I’d learned that in my fight with George all those months ago.

I dutifully kissed his cheek, which was sharp with bristles. ‘You haven’t shaved.’ It came out like an accusation. My father apologized.

‘I’m sorry, I was waiting for the kettle to boil. I need hot water, you see.’

I did feel awful then and hastily I pushed the kettle on the gas stove. ‘I’ll do what little I can to help you, Father.’ I was repentant and looked at his pale face and shadowed eyes, wondering what horrors he’d seen at the place they called ‘the front’.

‘Does it hurt much?’ I pointed to his bandaged stump without really looking. He replied with the bravery of the officer and gentleman.

‘Hardly at all, er . . .’

‘Meryl,’ I supplied helpfully.

‘Yes . . . Meryl.’ He leaned back in his chair and stared at me and I sort of slumped, not wanting him to see I was budding under my jumper, growing up.

‘It’s a pity your mother isn’t here to, well, to tell you things about, well . . . life.’

‘Hari’s here,’ I said at once, ‘she’s a good sister, she sees I’m safe down in Carmarthen away from the bombs.’ It didn’t hurt to emphasize the point that it wasn’t safe for me in Swansea, not when the bombers came.

In the afternoon, Hari called at the house briefly. ‘I’ve got to work tonight,’ she said casually, ‘but it’s a one-off, don’t worry, and Meryl is here if you need anything.’

I was alarmed and must have looked it. Hari frowned at me and her look told me to pull myself together. ‘It’s only this once.’ Her tone was brisk. ‘It won’t hurt you to help for one night, Meryl. You’ve got it easy the rest of the time.’

I’d never seen her so cross and I hugged her tight. ‘We’ll manage, don’t worry, we’ll be all right, won’t we, Father?’

‘Of course we will. You go, Angharad.’ I was to find that Father always called my sister by her full name. ‘You have your war work to do like the rest of us.’

I found myself making my father’s supper for him. I wasn’t a cook by any stretch of the imagination but I’d watched Aunt Jessie countless times whisk an egg with a little milk and scramble it in a pan. So I did that for my father and made a pile of toast with the bread and butter I’d brought from the farm.

He ate hungrily and for the first time I felt the satisfaction of feeding someone and watching their enjoyment of the food I’d prepared. I could hear Aunt Jessie’s voice in my head.

‘You’ll make someone a good wife yet, my girl.’ I thought lovingly of Michael and as always hugged to me the thought of us together that night, it seemed long ago now, that we’d huddled together for warmth and I’d slept with my cheek against his chest.

‘You’re dreaming, Meryl. Some boy is it?’

I looked sharply at my father – he was a clever man, I’d do well to remember that.

‘More tea?’ I lifted the pot and he smiled without saying any more.

That night there was an air raid. I hurried downstairs and Father was sitting on the edge of his bed looking for his stick. Then I saw his face go grey as he tried to stand.

‘We’ll need to get to the shelter, Meryl,’ he said, trying to sound as if he wasn’t in agony.

‘Let’s stay here,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll make us tea and we’ll take our chances. Folk in shelters get hurt too.’ I told him what Kate had said about the girl in the shelter who had cried out about her ears and how the ambulance man had called her a ‘poor bugger’.

So we sat and listened to the bombs fall. We drank tea and we talked and I began to learn a little about my father. And then a bomb fell near, very near, perhaps next door. Father covered me with his body to protect me, his big hands shielding my head. I hugged his body and felt the bond between father and daughter for the first time in my life and I knew I didn’t want my father to die.

I drew him from the bed, felt him wince as his bad leg touched the floor and then I was drawing him underneath the table and we clung there together while the walls shuddered, plaster fell from the ceiling and the air raid railed around us like a thunderstorm. I looked up and touched his now-shaven face. ‘I love you, Daddy,’ I said softly, and we both knew I meant it.

Twenty-Two

Kate sat with Stephen in the garden of Victoria Park. He held her hand and she didn’t mind. Now he treated her like a lady, he made no crude remarks, he was gentle and kind and he made her feel good again.

‘Tell me what it looks like, Steve,’ she said, ‘Are the leaves turning red and fluttering to the ground? Is it pretty?’

‘Not half as pretty as you.’ Stephen kissed her hand. ‘You look lovely, Kate, the sun brings red lights out in your dark hair and your skin is so white, so delicate. You’re a true Irish beauty.’

‘And you’ve kissed the Blarney stone,’ Kate said with a smile. She knew she’d put on weight, she could feel with her finger tips that her waist was thicker. She could feel the scar along her jaw line and despaired. What she couldn’t see was the bloom she had, a softness that appealed so much to the protective instinct in Stephen as he sat looking at her.

‘Kate,’ he said softly, ‘I wanted to ask you, will you marry me?’

She felt a stab of pain. The only man she wanted as a husband was her dear Eddie but he was lost to her for ever.

‘You were my first . . . woman,’ he said.

‘You can’t say ‘love’ can you, Stephen?’

‘Yes I can, Kate, now I can. Back when we first met I was too young and foolish to think of love, I knew nothing about life or love or death or pain. I do now, Kate. And, Kate, I’ve fallen in love with you, your gentle ways, your beautiful face.’ He laughed. ‘I can’t deny I find you attractive – I want to lay you down and make love to you, my darling.’

She was flattered, of course she was, but then weren’t they two wounded people reaching for comfort just as Stephen had reached for comfort when he’d taken her virginity?

‘Can I think about it, Stephen?’ she asked. ‘Will you have to go back to the war? That is an important question, Stephen.’

‘I will sit at a desk for the duration of the hostilities,’ he said, ‘I’m no longer up to the very high standard required of a pilot so you see you wouldn’t be getting a hero.’

Kate knew he’d been decorated for bravery, he was modest, gentle, kind and he would look after her. ‘It’s only just eight months ago that Eddie went missing,’ she said, ‘what if he came back?’

‘I’d let you go to him if that’s what you wanted but I hope you would’ve fallen in love with me and want to stay with me, of course I do.’

She got up from the bench wondering how so much had happened to her since the first raids on Swansea in 1941. She had been with many pilots and, as the months of the war went on into years, she’d lost her reputation, her ‘good name’. Men laughed about her, talked about her and she was an object of pity and scorn.

And then she’d met Eddie, who’d loved her, against all the odds, against the taunts of his friends, who told him in graphic detail how they’d ‘had her’. She’d lost her family, found Eddie’s mother, shared her grief when Eddie was lost. She’d been blown up by her country’s own weapons of defence, lost her sight. She had settled down now to a civilian life, queuing for food, accepted now by the women for the only men around were old or war wounded and she was no threat to anyone with her blind eyes.

‘I’ll think about it, Stephen,’ she said gently but she knew she wouldn’t. Her poor stomach was scarred, her belly hung around her like a huge grotesque belt, she could feel it hard and shiny and criss-crossed with wheals and lines. She was fat, hideous, though in her loose clothing Stephen couldn’t see any of that, he saw only her face, remembered the young taut-muscled girl she’d once been.

‘Take me back home, Stephen, there’s a love.’ She slipped her arm through his, at least she could treat him as a friend, he was humbled now by his experiences, he’d become a man, more sensitive than the callow boy he’d been. The war had changed them all.

Several weeks passed and Kate still hadn’t given Stephen an answer. To his credit he didn’t press her and for that she was grateful. As she drank her cocoa with Hilda one night, she began to feel an ache in her stomach. She winced and Hilda was at her side in a moment. ‘What is it, girl?’

‘Just a twinge in my belly – as you said, things settling down inside me after the explosion.’

Kate went to bed, perhaps she would feel better if she lay down. It was chilly in the bedroom and she wished there was enough coal to light the fire. She shivered as the pain squeezed her belly. It became worse as the night hours wore on and Kate thought she was going to die.

Hilda heard her moans and came into the bedroom and put on the gas light.

‘It hurts so much, Hilda, I think I’m going to die.’ She clutched her belly and writhed as the pain curled around her; the bones in her back felt as if they were being torn apart. ‘I feel as if my insides were going to fall out so I do.’

‘Here, let me take a look for God’s sake.’ Without worrying about dignity Hilda pushed up Kate’s nightgown and felt her taut belly.

‘God almighty!’ she said, ‘you’re about to give birth, your waters have just broke.’

Kate felt sick and then happy and then – terrified. ‘A baby, how can that be? The explosion, my scars, could a baby survive all that? It can’t be a baby, Hilda.’

‘Listen, girl, I’ve had four myself and lost all of them. It will be an hour, perhaps two, but by morning there will be another addition to my family.’ She sighed. ‘Our Eddie’s baby.’

Kate was grateful to Hilda for not questioning the paternity but then Hilda knew more than most what a hermit Kate had been since Eddie had gone missing.

‘Shame poor mite will be called a bastard,’ she almost whispered, ‘and you a good Catholic girl.’

‘No!’ Kate said, ‘it will not be a bastard! Fetch Stephen, fetch the priest, we will have a father for my child even though it won’t be the man I truly love. The baby will be made legitimate even if it only be minutes before it’s born.’

Kate hardly knew what was happening after that. In a swirl of pain she told Stephen the truth. ‘Are you willing to have me now?’

He took off his signet ring. ‘This will do for now, darling,’ he said.

The priest was old and wise and swept through the ceremony with as much dignity and speed as he could muster.

‘Another push now, good girl.’ The midwife had miraculously appeared. ‘The head is coming, bear down, Kate, like the good Irish girl you are.’

Feeling as if she was going to explode, Kate put all her strength into pushing the child out of her straining body.

The midwife looked anxiously at the deep scars on Kate’s belly. ‘Pray to God they hold,’ she said, ‘it’s a miracle a babe survived all that but then I’ve learned by now mother nature will do anything to preserve humankind. Now one strong push, Kate, one more strong push and it will all be over.’

Kate pushed her chin into her chest, there was a burning sensation between her legs and then she felt the head emerge and the slide of the little body and her belly relaxed.

‘It’s a big healthy boy!’ Hilda said joyfully, ‘my Eddie’s got a son.’

The baby was put against Kate’s chest. He wriggled and cried, and a great wash of tenderness swept over her. She managed to grasp a flailing arm, felt for the fingers and they curled around hers as though her son recognized her as his mother. And it was then that Kate began to cry. Great tears rolled down her face as she held her squirming baby close to her and prayed to God that he would never have to go to war.

Stephen took her hand and she clutched at him gratefully, realizing she had become a wife just an hour before she became a mother.

Twenty-Three

Hari looked at Michael across the tea-stained tablecloth in the cheap café across the road from Swansea beach. The bay was rimed in frost on this early February day. He’d come for Meryl.

Meryl had been home for yet another visit to Father; it was good to see him and his daughter growing close, but now it was time for Meryl to go back to the farm and her schooling. Hari forced herself to break the silence that had come between her and Michael.

‘Why did you want to see me alone, Michael?’

He shrugged, ‘I borrowed a little car and managed to get some petrol. This visit I thought I’d save you the bother of driving to Carmarthen.’

‘But you asked to meet me first, why?’ She took a deep breath, she knew they were attracted to each other, she felt drawn to Michael more and more each time she saw him. Now that Meryl came regularly to see Father Hari had spent a great deal of time with Michael. She knew she cared for him and knew it would never work.

‘I could never live in the country. I love my job in Bridgend so much I couldn’t leave it.’ Today she had learned that Germany had suffered its first defeat of the war, Stalingrad having at last fallen after months of fighting; the Germans were in retreat. It was good news but news she felt unable to share with Michael.

‘My little sister has enjoyed her visit to Swansea,’ she said awkwardly. It was true: Meryl visited the munitions as often as she was in Swansea; she loved the business of the office, the radio signals, the codes, loved it all.

She had picked up the codes with remarkable swiftness, her young mind making mincemeat of what Hari had struggled so hard to learn.

‘And yet Meryl thinks of the farm as her home. I’m a town girl to the soles of my feet,’ Hari said casually, hoping to deflect what he was about to say but realizing he was going to speak his mind anyway.

‘I’m falling in love with you, Hari.’ He rested his hand on hers across the table and she looked down into her cold cup of tea without seeing it.

‘It’s no good,’ she said, ‘there’s so much wrong, the timing is all wrong. There’s the war, my father, my job and, not the least, Meryl.’

‘She’s only a child.’

‘Wake up Michael, she’s sixteen, she’s grown into a woman. Haven’t you noticed?’