Forgive and Forget (40 page)

As they made their way out of the station, Bertha said reproachfully, ‘You could have waved him off, Polly. You could at least have waved goodbye to Leo an’ all.’

Left alone in the terraced house with only Jacob to care for, Polly’s days were long and lonely. To make matters worse, a few days after Roland and Leo had left to start their basic training, the newspapers were full of reports on a British spring offensive near Ypres. And now the soldiers were facing a new and deadly weapon: chlorine gas. Roland and Leo wouldn’t be involved in that particular battle – they’d still be training, but Polly shuddered and threw down the paper in disgust. Eddie might be there, though. He might be facing not only bullets and shells, but also the dreadful gas that attacked the lungs of anyone who breathed it in and led to a slow and painful death. She was almost tempted to stop reading the news. The lists of casualties and the graphic descriptions of life in the trenches at the Front just caused her more heartache. She’d have to find something else to do to take her mind off things.

The following morning she put Jacob into the perambulator and walked round the corner to the Thorpes’ home two streets away.

When she opened the door, a look of fear flitted across Selina’s face and she invited her visitor in with obvious reluctance. ‘You’ve come to take him away, haven’t you? You – you want Michael back? Well, I suppose it was going to happen once you got back on your feet after having little Jacob.’

‘What?’ Polly stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment before she understood. ‘Oh no, Selina, no. It’s not that. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite.’

Now it was Selina’s turn to look mystified.

Polly smiled. ‘I was wondering if you’d think about looking after Jacob as well. D’you think you could manage two?’ Polly was babbling, but then she saw Selina’s eyes light up with joy.

‘Manage? Of course I could manage.’ Selina clasped her hands together. ‘Oh, Polly, I’d love it. That’s if – if you’d trust me with him.’

‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. It’s not that I don’t enjoy looking after him – I do. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing. I might find I miss him too much, but . . .’

Selina, ever intuitive, finished Polly’s sentence, ‘You haven’t enough to do now your hubby’s gone and you want to go back to work.’

Polly gaped at her. ‘How – ?’ she began, but then she stopped and smiled. Of course Selina knew. ‘Just a little part-time job somewhere. I – I want to be able to talk to adults now and again.’

‘You can always come round here,’ Selina began, then laughed at herself. ‘Hark at me, trying to talk myself out of looking after your lovely little boy.’

Polly chuckled inwardly, feeling more light-hearted than she had done in weeks. She didn’t say what was in her mind: that talking to Selina would be little better than trying to converse with Jacob. Selina’s whole world was bound up in Michael. Polly wondered if Albie ever got fed up of hearing Selina’s daily report on the child’s antics when he came home tired after a long day at the market.

‘Have you got something in mind then?’

Polly shook her head. ‘Not really. I don’t want to go back to the factory – I know that.’ She still blamed the women there for Roland enlisting. She was sure there’d been whispers that had affected him, even though he’d denied it. And besides, with Violet still working there, it might make things difficult for her sister. Violet had carved out her own niche amongst the other women workers and Polly didn’t want to upset things.

‘I was talking to some of the other mothers,’ Selina went on and again Polly hid her smile. She talked as if Michael really was her child. ‘Some of them have little jobs when their youngsters are at school. You might ask around. Best place to catch them is when the bairns are coming out of school. Most of them congregate near the school gate.’

Polly beamed at her. ‘I never thought of that. What a good idea.’

Her heart was beating faster as she pushed the heavy perambulator that had served so many children in the Longden family towards the school. As Selina had said, there were several young mothers gathered outside the gates chatting to each other whilst they waited.

Polly hovered near a group of three young women who looked not much older than she was. She hesitated to interrupt as one of them was in full flow. She stood listening, not wanting to be thought to be eavesdropping, but unable to drag herself away.

‘. . . and I said to him, how can you give up a good job like you’ve got to go and be shot at by the Huns? And leaving me with three children to bring up on my own? But would he listen? No. So he’s gone. And it’s not only me he’s left . . .’ She nodded towards the school building. ‘What about all the youngsters he taught? They need him nearly as much as his family. And he loved his job, loved being a teacher. I can’t understand him, really I can’t.’

‘It’s the shame of being thought a coward,’ one of the other women put in. ‘My Tom’d be off like a shot. In fact, he got as far as the medical but he was turned down. Now he’s as miserable as sin ’cos he reckons everyone’s pointing the finger at him.’

‘What’s he do? Any good at teaching, is he? Because they’re crying out for teachers now.’ Again the woman whose husband had volunteered nodded towards the school just as they heard a bell sound in the distance, saw the doors burst open and a flood of running children come surging across the playground.

Polly’s heart had skipped a beat and then begun to thud so loudly she was sure the three women must hear it.

Teachers! They were looking for teachers. She ran her tongue around her lips that were suddenly dry with excitement. She hadn’t even needed to ask about a job. Overhearing what the woman had said had given her an idea.

Miriam came skipping towards her. ‘I didn’t know you was coming to meet me today, Poll.’

Miriam, at ten, was trusted to walk home on her own from school now, but Polly felt guilty when she realized she hadn’t given her young sister a thought. Her mind had been filled with possibilities . . .

Polly smiled down at her as Miriam bent over the pram. Her mind worked quickly. ‘I was wondering if you’d just mind Jacob for me for a few minutes while I have a word with Miss Broughton.’

Startled, Miriam looked up. ‘Why? Is it about me? Am I in trouble?’

‘Heavens, no, darling. Whatever gave you that idea?’

Miriam shrugged. ‘Just wondered why you’d come to see Miss Broughton, that’s all.’

‘It’s not about you, I promise.’ She paused and then asked again, ‘So will you look after Jacob for me?’

‘Can I wheel him round the playground?’

‘I expect so.’

Leaving Miriam chattering happily to the child, Polly walked slowly across the schoolyard. Her heart was pounding, but determination led her on. She pushed open the door leading into the school, the door she had entered so many times as a child, for this was the school she’d attended. It squeaked as it swung open; she remembered the sound so well that it felt as if she were coming home.

She walked along the familiar corridor, her feet taking her, almost of their own accord, towards her old classroom. Would Miss Broughton still be there in the very same room after all this time?

Polly stopped outside the door and peered through the glass panel into the room. She caught her breath. Seated on the high chair behind the tall desk, she saw the woman who had been her teacher, mentor and, yes, friend for most of the time she had spent within these walls.

Miss Broughton hadn’t changed so very much. The dark hair, still drawn back into its familiar bun at the back of her head, was streaked with grey now, but her figure in the navy blue dress with its white collar and cuffs was still trim. She was bending over an exercise book on her desk, gently chewing her bottom lip. Polly smiled. How well she recalled the teacher’s little habit when she was concentrating.

Strangely nervous as she realized just how important the next few minutes might be, Polly tapped on the door and then opened it.

As Miss Broughton raised her head and saw who her visitor was, she smiled. ‘Polly, my dear. How nice to see you. Please – come in.’

Automatically, without really thinking what she was doing, Polly moved towards the desk directly in front of the teacher, the desk where she’d sat in her final months at school and which she’d hoped to occupy for so much longer than she’d been able.

She sat down at the double desk and folded her hands on the ink-stained surface. She glanced around the familiar room. It was just the same: the blackboard and easel, the list of tables – she could almost hear the children chanting them. Two times two is four, two times three is six . . . The pegs where they hung their coats in winter and the big black stove at the back, around which all the children clustered on cold winter mornings. The years faded away; it was as if she’d never left as she gazed up into the face of the woman she’d admired so much. Miss Broughton, from her lofty chair, smiled down at her.

‘How are you, Polly? Surely, you’ve not come about enrolling your little boy yet.’ Her smile broadened and her eyes crinkled with laughter lines. She’d been a wonderful teacher, strict when it was needed but also kind and fun-loving. She’d made the lessons so enjoyable. She’d instilled most of her pupils with her own love of learning, and school for Polly and her classmates had never been the place that many a youngster dreaded.

‘You – you know about my little boy?’

‘Oh yes, Polly. I try to keep up with what most of my pupils are doing with their lives even after they have left my charge.’ Her face clouded for a moment. ‘I was so sorry when you had to leave school, Polly, and the reason for it. And it must have been difficult for you, having to take on caring for your family at such a young age and to give up your own plans.’

‘It – it was good of you to come when – when Mam died,’ Polly said huskily as she remembered that awful time when she’d lost not only her mother, but also her hopes and dreams. Even after she’d been obliged to leave school and work in the glue factory, Polly had always harboured the hope that one day – somehow – she’d be able to achieve her ambition of becoming a teacher. But after her mother’s death her hopes had crumbled to dust. She could never have dreamt that it would take a war to offer her that chance again.

But she was leaping ahead, she told herself sternly. Perhaps Miss Broughton would not be able to help her.

And then, unwittingly, Miss Broughton touched on an even more bitter memory. ‘But you’re married and with a little boy. You’re happy now.’

It was a statement rather than a question, but it opened the raw wound of her broken romance with Leo. She shied away from giving a direct response and said, ‘Roland – my husband – has enlisted.’

There was a pause during which Miss Broughton watched her one-time star pupil before saying softly, ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but please,’ she added hastily, ‘don’t tell anyone I said so. We’re supposed to be terribly patriotic here. We have to be, whatever our own thoughts might be. So many children’s fathers have gone to war, we have to make them feel that it’s all worthwhile.’

‘But you don’t think it is?’

Miss Broughton avoided meeting her gaze as she sighed. ‘I believe in the right to defend ourselves if attacked, but we haven’t been. At least, not yet. Oh, it’s difficult to explain. I’m not even sure of my own feelings sometimes.’

‘But you must understand all the political reasons that started it. I don’t, I’m afraid. Roland tried to explain it all, but it’s beyond me.’

Miss Broughton smiled. ‘I’m not surprised and I don’t mean that as an insult to your intelligence, Polly. I think it’s beyond a lot of us. And the losses . . .’ She stopped, suddenly realizing what she had been about to say might distress Polly. Swiftly, she changed the subject. ‘So what does bring you to see me?’

Polly took a deep breath. ‘I’ve too much time on my hands with only Jacob to look after now that Roland has gone. Too much time to think – to brood. I’ve got a good friend who looks after Violet’s little boy. You knew Violet had a baby, I suppose?’

Miss Broughton nodded.

‘She’s married now. To the father and they’re really trying to make a go of it. You remember Micky Fowler?’

The teacher’s mouth tightened. ‘Indeed I do.’

Polly chuckled. ‘He was a right little tearaway at school, wasn’t he?’

Now Miss Broughton’s eyes twinkled too. ‘That’s a polite way of putting it. Go on.’

‘He’s settled down a lot and they’ve found lodgings with the Thorpes – you know Albie Thorpe on the market?’

Miss Broughton nodded and Polly continued, telling her former teacher everything that had happened to her family over the last few years. She left nothing out, not even the terrible time of her father’s involvement in the riots and his subsequent imprisonment. Polly felt Miss Broughton’s eyes watching her the whole time. She saw the sympathy there but still, even when she came back to the present, the teacher had not guessed the reason for her visit.

‘I need something to do. Selina – Mrs Thorpe – is willing to have Jacob. In fact, she jumped at the chance. She just loves children and she can’t have any of her own. Anyway, she said if I came to the school gates at coming-out time, the other mothers might know of part-time work going. I don’t want to go back to the glue factory,’ she added swiftly.