Forgive and Forget (46 page)

For a moment she wavered. Her heart overflowed with love and pity for him. Leo, whom she’d always loved with all her heart and still did, was asking her – begging her – to go upstairs with him. Into the bed she’d shared with Roland, the bed where Jacob had been conceived and where she’d given birth to him.

She felt as if her heart was breaking; it was a physical pain she would not have believed possible. She tried to pull away, but he held her fast.

‘He’d never know. I swear I’d be careful. I – I wouldn’t let you get pregnant.’

Pregnant! With Leo’s child. The longing threatened to overwhelm her. To feel his hands caressing her; to know he loved her, needed her and then to plant his seed within her. To bear him a child. It was what she’d always dreamed of; it was still what she dreamed of in the darkness of the long, lonely nights.

Yet, somehow, very gently and with great sorrow, she found the strength to pull her hands from his grasp. ‘I – can’t, Leo. I can’t betray my husband in such a way.’

Whilst she struggled with her own desire, she was shocked at the change in Leo. The Leo she knew and loved would never have asked such a thing of her. How this dreadful war had changed them all. Some, like Micky Fowler, had proved he had a better side to his disreputable character and even Roland, diffident and shy, had found the bravery to enlist and do his duty. But the man sitting before her, who’d always put duty above everything else, had left his high principles buried in the mud of Flanders.

He sat slumped in the chair, broken and defeated. He looked so forlorn, so utterly without hope, that Polly almost relented. Her arms ached to hold him. Her breath quickened as she imagined the feel of his arms about her, the touch of his lips on hers, searching, demanding and then . . .

She closed her mind to what that would, inevitably, lead to. She couldn’t let it happen; she wouldn’t let it happen. She would never forgive herself.

Leo raised unhappy eyes to gaze at her. ‘I – I’d better go,’ he said heavily. ‘If your father got to hear I’d been here . . .’

‘It’s all right. He’s over all that now.’

Leo frowned. ‘Over what?’

‘The – the trouble.’

He blinked, as if that dreadful time now seemed a million years ago, obliterated by the vast horror of the war. ‘Oh yes, that.’

There was a long silence until he asked softly, ‘But are you, Poll?’

‘Am I what?’

‘Over it?’

Polly sighed, releasing all the long-held resentment, letting go of all the bitterness. It was a sigh of forgiveness.

‘It’s taken a war –
this
war – to make us realize just how futile fighting is. Dad thought he was doing right, standing up for what he believed in. But nothing’s worth men losing their lives over. And lives were lost back then and they shouldn’t have been. No more than all the thousands that have been lost and are still being lost every day.’

‘We have to defend ourselves, Poll? As a nation, we have to.’

‘I know that – but we shouldn’t start the trouble.’

‘We didn’t – well, not with the war, I mean.’

She frowned. ‘I’m not quite sure how – or why – the war started, Leo. I never understood it at the time and I still don’t. All I know is that a generation of fine young men has been wiped out and a generation of young women has been left to remain spinsters the whole of their lives. They’ll never be wives and mothers. They’ll never know the joy of holding their babies. We’ve not lost one generation but the next and the next and so on. No, this war has taught me a lot, Leo. And Dad too. He’s mellowed. He’s not the fiery, quick-tempered man he was.’

A smile, so long unused, quivered on his mouth. ‘You haven’t changed, my lovely Polly. You’re still as feisty as ever.’

She put her head on one side, her eyes twinkled and she smiled, really smiled for the first time in a long time. ‘Oh yes, every bit. When it comes to defending those I – I love, I most certainly am. But – ’ the smile faded and she became very serious again – ‘I have learned, finally, to forgive. My father’s been given a second chance. They were short-handed on the railway because of the war and they took him back.’

‘So it was only because of the shortage of workers?’

‘At first, yes, but he’s behaving himself because he knows that if he causes trouble again he’ll be out, and out for good next time. Of course, they all know what he did. Folks don’t always forget, but they do seem to have forgiven him. Even his employers – and that’s really something. He always was a good worker – no one has ever said otherwise. And now his boss has made his job permanent. He’s promised Dad that even when the war ends, there’ll still be a job for him.’

Leo’s face clouded. ‘
If
it ever ends.’

‘It must,’ Polly said simply. ‘It has to.’

‘But how many more lives are going to be lost before it does?’

To that Polly had no answer.

With Fate’s cruel irony, on the last day in September when news came that the Allies had broken through enemy lines and were ‘sweeping all before them along the whole Western Front’, the national newspapers also reported that Spanish flu had spread into Europe and even to America. China and India had been hit badly by the disease, with millions reported dead, and now it was said that more US servicemen had died of the flu than had been killed in the war. Civilians, weakened by the privations of war, were succumbing to it in their thousands.

By mid-October, the flu was rife throughout Britain. Reading the news, Polly shuddered. Another dreadful disease was about to hit their city.

On the last Friday morning of the month, a solemn-faced Nancy met Polly as she arrived at the school. Polly’s heart leapt in fear. There had been a quiet rejoicing amongst the staff at the school the previous day, with news that the war could soon be over. The children were caught up in the fever of excitement that had rippled through the classrooms, so much so that it had been difficult to maintain discipline, a most unusual occurrence in Celia Broughton’s school.

‘What is it? What’s happened? It’s not your brother, is it?’ Polly whispered so as not to be heard by the children clattering into the classroom. Nancy’s younger brother had been called up a few months earlier and had been sent abroad recently.

Nancy shook her head. ‘No, no, he’s fine. As far as we know. Mother had a letter last week. Of course . . .’ Her voice faded away, but Polly knew what she meant. Even though the arrival of a letter heartened and reassured the families that their loved one had been safe and well at the time of writing, no one could be sure that in the days since, something hadn’t happened to them. Relief was always tempered by a renewed fear of what might be happening now, at this very minute.

‘It’s not that,’ Nancy was saying. ‘Miss Broughton has received notice to close the school until at least a week on Tuesday because of the influenza. It might be for even longer than that. Another teacher has sent word this morning that she’s ill, and fewer and fewer children are coming each day. It’s getting worse, Polly.’

Nancy’s eyes met Polly’s. The two young women were of a similar age and could both remember the typhoid epidemic. Although this was a different cause, the fear sweeping through the city was the same.

Polly sighed. ‘I suppose they’re right. What’s going to happen?’

‘Miss Broughton is dismissing everyone this morning.’

Polly nodded. She would miss her work at the school, but she knew the decision was the right one.

But despite such precautions, the disease spread and reached their own streets, and once again Leo’s mother, Bertha, was in great demand, going from house to house helping to nurse the sick without regard for her own health.

‘I can’t stop her,’ Leo told Polly. He’d taken to calling round and Polly hadn’t the heart nor, if she were truthful, the desire to stop him. Let the neighbours gossip, she told herself. She had nothing to be ashamed of and she would tell Roland herself if he came home.

When he came home, she repeated to herself.
When
Roland came home. The guilt swept through her. She wasn’t feeling the joy, the excited anticipation that she should have been at the thought that her husband was coming home. There was none of that thankfulness that there’d been when Leo had appeared on her doorstep, wounded but safe. Polly closed her eyes and groaned. She couldn’t help her feelings; she was a wicked, wicked woman, she told herself, but she vowed that Roland would never know, would never guess.

For Roland’s survival meant the end of the innermost secret longing of her heart: a future with Leo.

The war was over and the city paused to celebrate. There was revelry throughout the streets, though the jubilation was tempered by the memory of all those sons, husbands and fathers who would never be coming home again.

‘So.’ Leo regarded her solemnly. ‘Roland’s coming back.’ They were standing together outside Polly’s family home watching the children shrieking and laughing in the street. Despite the grey skies of the November day, everyone had come out of their houses and an impromptu street party was developing.

Polly widened her smile. ‘Yes, isn’t it wonderful? I had a letter only last week, so I’m sure he’s still safe.’

‘I’m sure he is,’ Leo said softly. ‘I
hope
he is, Polly, truly I do. I want you to believe that and I – I’m so sorry for what I said to you – how I acted – when I first came home. It was despicable and I hate myself for it.’

Polly glanced up at him. He looked so much better now. His face had filled out and his limp was less pronounced, but the haunted look in his eyes was still there and she knew the horrors he’d seen would never fully leave him. He and thousands like him would never forget this terrible war and the suffering it had caused.

‘Please don’t,’ she said softly. ‘You weren’t yourself.’

And he hadn’t been, not her proud, conscientious, principled Leo. And though his devotion to duty had split them apart, she’d always in her heart of hearts admired him for it.

‘Thank God you were strong enough for both of us, Poll.’

‘It’s over, Leo. Forgotten. No one else knows what passed between us and they never will. Not from me anyway.’

‘Nor me,’ he murmured with a heartfelt promise. ‘But what about the wagging tongues? Just look at Hetty Fowler over there. She can’t take her eyes of us. There’s a juicy bit of gossip in the making right here, Poll.’

Polly chuckled and waved. ‘Come on, let’s go across and talk to her. That’ll stop her in her tracks.’

‘Eh?’ Leo looked scandalized. ‘Talk to the Fowlers? I thought you were sworn enemies.’

Polly laughed again, throwing back her head with a loud, joyous sound. ‘Not if you look at my dad and Bert Fowler leaning against each other over there. I don’t know who’s going to fall down first.’

Leo, seeing the sense in her suggestion of confounding the gossips to their faces, pushed himself off the wall where he’d been leaning, laughing as he did so. ‘Well, if one of them falls down the other’ll go down an’ all.’

They made slow progress down the street until they came near to Hetty standing in her own doorway, a shawl pulled tightly round her shoulders. ‘They could a’ picked a warmer day to call an armistice,’ she greeted them, but Polly ignored her grumbles.

‘It’s a wonderful day, though, Mrs Fowler, whatever the weather. And your Micky’s coming home. And our Stevie too.’

‘Aye, he is, thank the good Lord. And your man – ’ the woman glanced at Leo as she asked the question – ‘is he safe?’

‘Yes, yes, he is. Roland,’ Polly stressed the name deliberately, ‘will be coming home too.’ She sobered as she added, ‘We’ve been lucky really in this street. Only – only our Eddie.’

‘Aye, I was sorry about that, lass.’ Hetty’s tone softened. ‘I reckon you’ve had more’n your fair share of trouble an’ I wouldn’t have wished that on you. He were a bit of a rascal, your Eddie, but he were no worse than our Micky.’ She laughed. ‘I reckon they egged each other on.’

‘More than likely, Mrs Fowler.’

The careworn woman glanced at Leo with a hint of sauciness in her eyes, almost a girlish coquetry from her youth that must have caught Bert Fowler’s eye long, long ago. ‘I shouldn’t be saying all this in front of our local copper, now should I?’

‘I’m no longer a copper, Mrs Fowler,’ Leo said seriously and there was more than a hint of regret in his tone. ‘I can’t go back into the force.’

‘Then I’m sorry to hear that, lad. Real sorry, ’cos we all knew, if we’re honest about it, that you was only doing your duty as you saw it. And, most of the time, you were right.’ Polly felt the woman’s eyes upon her, but she avoided meeting her gaze as Hetty added, ‘Even my Bert said you were one of the fairest coppers we had around here, and that was summat coming from our Bert.’

‘Indeed it was, Mrs Fowler,’ Leo murmured. ‘Thank you.’

There was a pause whilst the three of them still stood together watching the youngsters playing and in the midst of them all, lifting her skirts and skipping with the rest of them, was Violet.

‘Aye, an’ it’ll be a good thing when our lad does get home. I reckon your Violet’s been missing him, Polly.’ Was there a hint of accusation or even sarcasm in the woman’s tone? Polly chose to ignore it and said simply instead, ‘She has, Mrs Fowler. We’ll all be glad to see the boys home.’